The
parents, he said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by
the terrible death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that
death. On the evening of the day which I received Phillips’ letter I
was at Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white
with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow
where once had stood the older temple of the “God of the Deeps,” and
saw a house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had
lived. I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the place,
I found, knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke to on the
matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to
be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very
commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I
knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above
the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the
valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we
looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. For many
an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right
and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy
and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks;
lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of
wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of
the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the
dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the
wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering
amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond
them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up from
the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil. But in all my
wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday
that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient
Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had
walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement
of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and
tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps,
looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing
on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and
sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land
over the sea. On the other side was the valley and the river and hill
following hill as wave on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and
white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks
in the north. And so at last I came to the place. The track went up a
gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick
undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the
distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant
summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I
did not stay long there. In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the
most part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at
various times. On the day after my arrival in Caermaen I walked over to
the town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting the
museum. After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins,
rings, coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place
contains, I was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had
been recently discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking,
and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road
broadens out. On one side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I
took a note. Some of the letters have been defaced, but I do not think
there can be any doubt as to those which I supply. The inscription is
as follows:

DEVOMNODENT_i_
FLA_v_IVSSENILISPOSSV_it_
PROPTERNVP_tias_
_qua_SVIDITSVBVMB_ra_


“To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius
Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw
beneath the shade.”

The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were
much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in
translating it, but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is
made. ...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan,
whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost
incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but a good deal,
nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can understand the
strange likeness you remarked in both the portrait and in the actual
face; you have seen Helen’s mother. You remember that still summer
night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the
shadows, and of the god Pan. You remember Mary. She was the mother of
Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night. Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the while
upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died. I fancy
that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the
old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and
groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that night when you were
present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or
caring what might pass forth or enter in. I recollect your telling me
at the time, sharply enough, and rightly too, in one sense, that I had
ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on an
absurd theory. You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all
absurdity. What I said Mary would see she saw, but I forgot that no
human eyes can look on such a sight with impunity. And I forgot, as I
have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there
may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become
the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which
I did not understand, you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan did
well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was
horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing
and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and
from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you
witness, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you sent
for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the
moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I
surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you
may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror,
and after a few years I felt I could bear it no more, and I sent Helen
Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood.