I - THE EXPERIMENT
"I
am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could spare the
time."
"I was
able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very lively just now.
But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely safe?"
The
two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun
still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow
that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the
great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring
call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in
and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the
west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond
turned sharply to his friend.
"Safe?
Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon
could do it."
"And
there is no danger at any other stage?"
"None;
absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word. You are always
timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have devoted myself to
transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called
quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the right
path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then every day has been a
preparation for what we shall do tonight."
"I
should like to believe it is all true." Clarke knit his brows, and looked
doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. "Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that your
theory is not a phantasmagoria - a splendid vision, certainly, but a mere vision
after all?"
Dr.
Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged man, gaunt
and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered Clarke and faced him,
there was a flush on his cheek.
"Look
about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave
on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields of ripe corn, and the
meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside
you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things - yes, from that
star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet - I
say that all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real
world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this
vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras,
dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether
any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and
I shall see it lifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think
this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients
knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."
Clarke
shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.
"It
is wonderful indeed," he said. "We are standing on the brink of a
strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is
absolutely necessary?"
"Yes;
a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling rearrangement of
certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would escape the attention of
ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I don't want to bother you with
'shop,' Clarke; I might give you a mass of technical detail which would sound
very imposing, and would leave you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose
you have read, casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense
strides have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a
paragraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries.
Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years
ago, and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last
fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the
discovery that I alluded to when I said that ten years ago I reached the goal.
After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after
days and nights of disappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used
now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there were
others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang of sudden joy
thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey was at an end. By what seemed
then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought
followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times
already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of
sight, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great
oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up
his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth
beneath. You will think this all high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to
be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot be set
forth in plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is pretty
well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something
less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to
south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of
today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been
playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world;
suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and
words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond,
and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our
thought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done;
you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it
was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here,
and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound
between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the
great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light
leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may
look in Browne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find that to the present
day men of science are unable to account for the presence, or to specify the
functions of a certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it
were, land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the
position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed as to
the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a
touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the
current, with a touch I can complete the communication between this world of
sense and - we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knife is
necessary; but think what that knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid
wall of sense, and probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit
will gaze on a spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!"
"But
you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would be requisite that she -”
He
whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.
"Not
at all, not at all. That is nonsense. I assure you. Indeed, it is better as it
is; I am quite certain of that."
"Consider
the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility. Something might go
wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of your days."
"No,
I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued Mary from the
gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her
life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it's getting late; we had better go
in."
Dr.
Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a long dark
passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy door, and motioned
Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been a billiard-room, and was lighted
by a glass dome in the centre of the ceiling, whence there still shone a sad
grey light on the figure of the doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and
placed it on a table in the middle of the room.
Clarke
looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there were shelves all
around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and colours, and at one end
stood a little Chippendale book-case. Raymond pointed to this.
"You
see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first to show me the way,
though I don't think he ever found it himself. That is a strange saying of his:
'In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.'"
There
was not much furniture in the laboratory. The table in the centre, a stone slab
with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on which Raymond and Clarke were
sitting; that was all, except an odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the
room. Clarke looked at it, and raised his eyebrows.
"Yes,
that is the chair," said Raymond. "We may as well place it in
position." He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began raising
and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at various angles, and
adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable enough, and Clarke passed his
hand over the soft green velvet, as the doctor manipulated the levers.
"Now,
Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple hours' work before me;
I was obliged to leave certain matters to the last."
Raymond
went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he bent over a row
of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The doctor had a small
hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above his apparatus, and
Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down at the great shadowy room,
wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and undefined darkness
contrasting with one another. Soon he became conscious of an odd odour, at
first the merest suggestion of odour, in the room, and as it grew more decided
he felt surprised that he was not reminded of the chemist's shop or the
surgery. Clarke found himself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and
half conscious, he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had
spent roaming through the woods and meadows near his own home. It was a burning
day at the beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things
and all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer
spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost tropical.
Strangely that wonderful hot day of the fifties rose up again in Clarke's
imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out
the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air
beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and
heard the myriad murmur of the summer.
"I
hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing unwholesome about it.
It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all."
Clarke
heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was speaking to him,
but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from his lethargy. He could
only think of the lonely walk he had taken fifteen years ago; it was his last
look at the fields and woods he had known since he was a child, and now it all
stood out in brilliant light, as a picture, before him. Above all there came to
his nostrils the scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour
of the woods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by
the sun's heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms
stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him
wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a
little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees; and the trickle of
water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream.
Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley
was transformed to a path between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed
from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple
grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against
the dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious
that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country,
and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of
the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all
things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face
there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor
the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all
form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a
voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of
darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.
When
Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of some oily
fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.
"You
have been dozing," he said; "the journey must have tired you out. It
is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten minutes."
Clarke
lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but passed from one
dream into another. He half expected to see the walls of the laboratory melt
and disappear, and to awake in London, shuddering at his own sleeping fancies.
But at last the door opened, and the doctor returned, and behind him came a
girl of about seventeen, dressed all in white. She was so beautiful that Clarke
did not wonder at what the doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over
face and neck and arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.
"Mary,"
he said, "the time has come. You are quite free. Are you willing to trust
yourself to me entirely?"
"Yes,
dear."
"Do
you hear that, Clarke? You are my witness. Here is the chair, Mary. It is quite
easy. Just sit in it and lean back. Are you ready?"
"Yes,
dear, quite ready. Give me a kiss before you begin."
The
doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. "Now shut your
eyes," he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and
longed for sleep, and Raymond placed the green phial to her nostrils. Her face
grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and then with the
feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon her breast as a
little child about to say her prayers. The bright light of the lamp fell full
upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over her face as the changes of
the hills when the summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all
white and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite
unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly
sank back. Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair,
and the lamp was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from
a little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly. When he looked again the
doctor was binding up the wound he had made.
"She
will awake in five minutes." Raymond was still perfectly cool. "There
is nothing more to be done; we can only wait."
The
minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy, ticking. There was an old
clock in the passage. Clarke felt sick and faint; his knees shook beneath him,
he could hardly stand.
Suddenly,
as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly did the colour that
had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke
quailed before them. They shone with an awful light, looking far away, and a
great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch
what was invisible; but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the
most awful terror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook
from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house
of flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell
shrieking to the floor.
Three
days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying wide-awake,
rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.
"Yes,"
said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; she is a hopeless
idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great
God Pan."
II - MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS
Mr.
Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange experiment
of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and curiosity were
oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the unusual and eccentric
with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in his heart, there was a wide-eyed
inquisitiveness with respect to all the more recondite and esoteric elements in
the nature of men. The latter tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's
invitation, for though his considered judgment had always repudiated the
doctor's theories as the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in
fantasy, and would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that
he witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was
conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for many
years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected all
occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he
for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the
clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with
mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious.
Clarke knew that he still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old
passion began to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and convulsed
with an unknown terror, faded slowly from his memory. Occupied all day in
pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the evening was
too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire cast a warm glow over
his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle of some choice claret stood ready by
his elbow. His dinner digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the
evening paper, but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke
would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old
Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy
before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but lust
always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair, lighting a candle,
and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeon-holes and drawers teemed with documents
on the most morbid subjects, and in the well reposed a large manuscript volume,
in which he had painfully entered he gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine
contempt for published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest
him if it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading,
compiling, and rearranging what he called his "Memoirs to prove the
Existence of the Devil," and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed to
fly and the night appeared too short.
On
one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and raw with
frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to observe his
customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down again. He paced two
or three times up and down the room, and opened the bureau, stood still a
moment, and sat down. He leant back, absorbed in one of those dreams to which
he was subject, and at length drew out his book, and opened it at the last
entry. There were three or four pages densely covered with Clarke's round, set
penmanship, and at the beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:
Singular Narrative told me by my
Friend, Dr. Phillips.
He assures me that all the
facts related
therein are strictly and wholly
True, but
refuses to give either the
Surnames of the
Persons Concerned, or the Place
where these
Extraordinary Events occurred.
Mr. Clarke
began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing now and then at the
pencil notes he had made when it was told him by his friend. It was one of his
humours to pride himself on a certain literary ability; he thought well of his
style, and took pains in arranging the circumstances in dramatic order. He read
the following story: -
The
persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is still alive,
must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since deceased, who was a year
younger than the above, and Trevor W., an imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons
were at the period of the story inhabitants of a village on the borders of
Wales, a place of some importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now
a scattered hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls. It is situated on
rising ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and
picturesque forest.
Some
eleven years ago, Helen V. came to the village under rather peculiar
circumstances. It is understood that she, being an orphan, was adopted in her
infancy by a distant relative, who brought her up in his own house until she
was twelve years old. Thinking, however, that it would be better for the child
to have playmates of her own age, he advertised in several local papers for a
good home in a comfortable farmhouse for a girl of twelve, and this
advertisement was answered by Mr. R., a well-to-do farmer in the
above-mentioned village. His references proving satisfactory, the gentleman
sent his adopted daughter to Mr. R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that
the girl should have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be
at no trouble in the matter of education, as she was already sufficiently
educated for the position in life which she would occupy. In fact, Mr. R. was
given to understand that the girl be allowed to find her own occupations and to
spend her time almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly met her at the nearest station,
a town seven miles away from his house, and seems to have remarked nothing
extraordinary about the child except that she was reticent as to her former
life and her adopted father. She was, however, of a very different type from
the inhabitants of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her
features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character. She appears
to have settled down easily enough into farmhouse life, and became a favourite
with the children, who sometimes went with her on her rambles in the forest,
for this was her amusement. Mr. R. states that he has known her to go out by
herself directly after their early breakfast, and not return till after dusk,
and that, feeling uneasy at a young girl being out alone for so many hours, he
communicated with her adopted father, who replied in a brief note that Helen
must do as she chose. In the winter, when the forest paths are impassable, she
spent most of her time in her bedroom, where she slept alone, according to the
instructions of her relative. It was on one of these expeditions to the forest
that the first of the singular incidents with which this girl is connected
occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the village. The
preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the snow drifting to a great
depth, and the frost continuing for an unexampled period, and the summer
following was as noteworthy for its extreme heat. On one of the very hottest
days in this summer, Helen V. left the farmhouse for one of her long rambles in
the forest, taking with her, as usual, some bread and meat for lunch. She was
seen by some men in the fields making for the old Roman Road, a green causeway
which traverses the highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to
observe that the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun was
already tropical. As it happened, a labourer, Joseph W. by name, was working in
the forest near the Roman Road, and at twelve o'clock his little son, Trevor,
brought the man his dinner of bread and cheese. After the meal, the boy, who
was about seven years old at the time, left his father at work, and, as he
said, went to look for flowers in the wood, and the man, who could hear him
shouting with delight at his discoveries, felt no uneasiness. Suddenly,
however, he was horrified at hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the
result of great terror, proceeding from the direction in which his son had
gone, and he hastily threw down his tools and ran to see what had happened.
Tracing his path by the sound, he met the little boy, who was running headlong,
and was evidently terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man elicited that
after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay down on the grass and
fell asleep. He was suddenly awakened, as he stated, by a peculiar noise, a
sort of singing he called it, and on peeping through the branches he saw Helen
V. playing on the grass with a "strange naked man," who he seemed
unable to describe more fully. He said he felt dreadfully frightened and ran
away crying for his father. Joseph W. proceeded in the direction indicated by
his son, and found Helen V. sitting on the grass in the middle of a glade or
open space left by charcoal burners. He angrily charged her with frightening
his little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed at the
child's story of a "strange man," to which he himself did not attach
much credence. Joseph W. came to the conclusion that the boy had woke up with a
sudden fright, as children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in his story, and
continued in such evident distress that at last his father took him home,
hoping that his mother would be able to soothe him. For many weeks, however,
the boy gave his parents much anxiety; he became nervous and strange in his
manner, refusing to leave the cottage by himself, and constantly alarming the
household by waking in the night with cries of "The man in the wood!
father! father!"
In
course of time, however, the impression seemed to have worn off, and about
three months later he accompanied his father to the home of a gentleman in the
neighborhood, for whom Joseph W. occasionally did work. The man was shown into
the study, and the little boy was left sitting in the hall, and a few minutes
later, while the gentleman was giving W. his instructions, they were both
horrified by a piercing shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they
found the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror.
The doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced
the child to be suffering form a kind of fit, apparently produced by a sudden
shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some time recovered
consciousness, but only to pass into a condition described by the medical man
as one of violent hysteria. The doctor exhibited a strong sedative, and in the
course of two hours pronounced him fit to walk home, but in passing through the
hall the paroxysms of fright returned and with additional violence. The father
perceived that the child was pointing at some object, and heard the old cry,
"The man in the wood," and looking in the direction indicated saw a
stone head of grotesque appearance, which had been built into the wall above
one of the doors. It seems the owner of the house had recently made alterations
in his premises, and on digging the foundations for some offices, the men had
found a curious head, evidently of the Roman period, which had been placed in
the manner described. The head is pronounced by the most experienced
archaeologists of the district to be that of a faun or satyr. [Dr. Phillips
tells me that he has seen the head in question, and assures me that he has
never received such a vivid presentment of intense evil.]
From
whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed too severe for the boy Trevor,
and at the present date he suffers from a weakness of intellect, which gives
but little promise of amending. The matter caused a good deal of sensation at
the time, and the girl Helen was closely questioned by Mr. R., but to no
purpose, she steadfastly denying that she had frightened or in any way molested
Trevor.
The
second event with which this girl's name is connected took place about six
years ago, and is of a still more extraordinary character.
At
the beginning of the summer of 1882, Helen contracted a friendship of a
peculiarly intimate character with Rachel M., the daughter of a prosperous
farmer in the neighbourhood. This girl, who was a year younger than Helen, was
considered by most people to be the prettier of the two, though Helen's
features had to a great extent softened as she became older. The two girls, who
were together on every available opportunity, presented a singular contrast,
the one with her clear, olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and the other
of the proverbial red and white of our rural districts. It must be stated that
the payments made to Mr. R. for the maintenance of Helen were known in the
village for their excessive liberality, and the impression was general that she
would one day inherit a large sum of money from her relative. The parents of
Rachel were therefore not averse from their daughter's friendship with the
girl, and even encouraged the intimacy, though they now bitterly regret having
done so. Helen still retained her extraordinary fondness for the forest, and on
several occasions Rachel accompanied her, the two friends setting out early in
the morning, and remaining in the wood until dusk. Once or twice after these
excursions Mrs. M. thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar; she seemed
languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, "different from
herself," but these peculiarities seem to have been thought too trifling
for remark. One evening, however, after Rachel had come home, her mother heard
a noise which sounded like suppressed weeping in the girl's room, and on going
in found her lying, half undressed, upon the bed, evidently in the greatest
distress. As soon as she saw her mother, she exclaimed, "Ah, mother,
mother, why did you let me go to the forest with Helen?" Mrs. M. was
astonished at so strange a question, and proceeded to make inquiries. Rachel
told her a wild story. She said -
Clarke
closed the book with a snap, and turned his chair towards the fire. When his
friend sat one evening in that very chair, and told his story, Clarke had
interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to this, had cut short his words
in a paroxysm of horror. "My God!" he had exclaimed, "think,
think what you are saying. It is too incredible, too monstrous; such things can
never be in this quiet world, where men and women live and die, and struggle,
and conquer, or maybe fail, and fall down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer
strange fortunes for many a year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as
this. There must be some explanation, some way out of the terror. Why, man, if
such a case were possible, our earth would be a nightmare."
But
Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:
"Her
flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished in broad sunlight; they saw
her walking in a meadow, and a few moments later she was not there."
Clarke
tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and again his mind
shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable
elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh. Before him
stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the forest, as his friend
had described it; he saw the swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the
grass, he saw the sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long
distance, the two figure moved toward him. One was Rachel, but the other?
Clarke
had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the account, as he
had written it in his book, he had placed the inscription:
ET DIABOLUS INCARNATE EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.
III - THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS
"Herbert!
Good God! Is it possible?"
"Yes,
my name's Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I don't remember your
name. My memory is very queer."
"Don't
you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"
"So
it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was begging of
an old college friend. Good-night."
"My
dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but we won't go
there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a little way? But how in
heaven's name have you come to this pass, Herbert?"
"It's
a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it if you
like."
"Come
on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong."
The
ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty, evil-looking
rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a man about town, trim,
glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had emerged from his restaurant
after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little
flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic,
had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in
search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of
London teem in every quarter and every hour. Villiers prided himself as a
practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this
unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious
employment. Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with
undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic
diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula: "London has been
called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of
Resurrections," when these reflections were suddenly interrupted by a
piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal for alms. He looked around
in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the
embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his
face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by
greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had
matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise
for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests had
interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since Villiers had seen
Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay,
mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances
had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with
compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated
himself on his leisurely speculations outside the restaurant.
They
walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by stared in
astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed man with an
unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led
the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he repeated his question.
"How
on earth has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would succeed to an
excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father disinherit you? Surely
not?"
"No,
Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death; he died a
year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and I mourned his
death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a few months later I
came up to town and went a good deal into society. Of course I had excellent
introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of
way. I played a little, certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the few bets
I made on races brought me in money - only a few pounds, you know, but enough
to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the
tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?"
"No,
I never heard anything about it."
"Yes,
I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful and most
strange beauty, at the house of some people whom I knew. I cannot tell you her
age; I never knew it, but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have
been about nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had come to know
her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English
father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first
time I saw her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking to a
friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice
which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I was
introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers,
that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The night of the
wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her
talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her
beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the
blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness. You, Villiers, you
may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this
dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but
I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most
fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what
I have heard - and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors
that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask whether
it is possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I
was a ruined man, in body and soul - in body and soul."
"But
your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."
"I
sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old house - everything."
"And
the money?"
"She
took it all from me."
"And
then left you?"
"Yes;
she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am sure if I saw
her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no interest; sordid
misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and
talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I could tell you certain
things which would convince you, but you would never know a happy day again.
You would pass the rest of your life, as I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who
has seen hell."
Villiers
took the unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal. Herbert could eat
little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set before him. He sat moody and
silent by the fire, and seemed relieved when Villiers sent him away with a
small present of money.
"By
the way, Herbert," said Villiers, as they parted at the door, "what
was your wife's name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?"
"The
name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but what her real name
was I can't say. I don't think she had a name. No, no, not in that sense. Only
human beings have names, Villiers; I can't say anymore. Good-bye; yes, I will
not fail to call if I see any way in which you can help me. Good-night."
The
man went out into the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his fireside.
There was something about Herbert which shocked him inexpressibly; not his poor
rags nor the marks which poverty had set upon his face, but rather an
indefinite terror which hung about him like a mist. He had acknowledged that he
himself was not devoid of blame; the woman, he had avowed, had corrupted him
body and soul, and Villiers felt that this man, once his friend, had been an
actor in scenes evil beyond the power of words. His story needed no
confirmation: he himself was the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused curiously
over the story he had heard, and wondered whether he had heard both the first
and the last of it. "No," he thought, "certainly not the last,
probably only the beginning. A case like this is like a nest of Chinese boxes;
you open one after the other and find a quainter workmanship in every box. Most
likely poor Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there are stranger ones
to follow."
Villiers
could not take his mind away from Herbert and his story, which seemed to grow
wilder as the night wore on. The fire seemed to burn low, and the chilly air of
the morning crept into the room; Villiers got up with a glance over his
shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went to bed.
A
few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance, named
Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London life, both in its
tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still full of his encounter in Soho
and its consequences, thought Austin might possibly be able to shed some light
on Herbert's history, and so after some casual talk he suddenly put the
question:
"Do
you happen to know anything of a man named Herbert - Charles Herbert?"
Austin
turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with some astonishment.
"Charles
Herbert? Weren't you in town three years ago? No; then you have not heard of
the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of sensation at the time."
"What
was the case?"
"Well,
a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark dead, in the
area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Of course the
police did not make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and
have a light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if you
happen to be lying dead in somebody's area, you will be left alone. In this
instance, as in many others, the alarm was raised by some kind of vagabond; I
don't mean a common tramp, or a public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose
business or pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at
five o'clock in the morning. This individual was, as he said, 'going home,' it
did not appear whence or whither, and had occasion to pass through Paul Street
between four and five a.m. Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he
said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant physiognomy he
had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced down the area and was a good
deal astonished to see a man lying on the stones, his limbs all huddled
together, and his face turned up. Our gentleman thought his face looked
peculiarly ghastly, and so set off at a run in search of the nearest policeman.
The constable was at first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting
common drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man's face,
changed his tone, quickly enough. The early bird, who had picked up this fine
worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the policeman rang and knocked at the door
till a slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep. The
constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed loudly
enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man; had never seen
him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile, the original discoverer had come
back with a medical man, and the next thing was to get into the area. The gate
was open, so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor hardly needed
a moment's examination; he said the poor fellow had been dead for several
hours, and it was then the case began to get interesting. The dead man had not
been robbed, and in one of his pockets were papers identifying him as - well,
as a man of good family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy,
as far as could be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has
nothing to do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious point was
that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his death. There were some
slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so slight that it looked as if
he had been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door, and not thrown over the
railings from the street or even dragged down the steps. But there were
positively no other marks of violence about him, certainly none that would
account for his death; and when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace
of poison of any kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people
at Number 20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two
other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the house
were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed proprietor,
though it struck most people that Paul Street was not exactly the place to look
for country gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody seemed to know who or what she
was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the divers after her history found
themselves in rather strange waters. Of course they both denied knowing
anything about the deceased, and in default of any evidence against them they were
discharged. But some very odd things came out about them. Though it was between
five and six in the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had
collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They
were pretty free with their comments, by all accounts, and from these it
appeared that Number 20 was in very bad odour in Paul Street. The detectives
tried to trace down these rumours to some solid foundation of fact, but could
not get hold of anything. People shook their heads and raised their eyebrows
and thought the Herberts rather 'queer,' 'would rather not be seen going into
their house,' and so on, but there was nothing tangible. The authorities were
morally certain the man met his death in some way or another in the house and
was thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn't prove it, and the absence
of any indications of violence or poisoning left them helpless. An odd case,
wasn't it? But curiously enough, there's something more that I haven't told
you. I happened to know one of the doctors who was consulted as to the cause of
death, and some time after the inquest I met him, and asked him about it. 'Do
you really mean to tell me,' I said, 'that you were baffled by the case, that
you actually don't know what the man died of?' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'I know
perfectly well what caused death. Blank died of fright, of sheer, awful terror;
I never saw features so hideously contorted in the entire course of my
practice, and I have seen the faces of a whole host of dead.' The doctor was
usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his manner struck
me, but I couldn't get anything more out of him. I suppose the Treasury didn't
see their way to prosecuting the Herberts for frightening a man to death; at
any rate, nothing was done, and the case dropped out of men's minds. Do you
happen to know anything of Herbert?"
"Well,"
replied Villiers, "he was an old college friend of mine."
"You
don't say so? Have you ever seen his wife?"
"No,
I haven't. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years."
"It's
queer, isn't it, parting with a man at the college gate or at Paddington,
seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding him pop up his head in such
an odd place. But I should like to have seen Mrs. Herbert; people said
extraordinary things about her."
"What
sort of things?"
"Well,
I hardly know how to tell you. Everyone who saw her at the police court said
she was at once the most beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever
set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively
shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She
seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could
have told tales, he would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you
are again in another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like
Mr. Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer
house as Number 20? It's altogether a very odd case, isn't it?"
"It
is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn't think, when I asked you
about my old friend, I should strike on such strange metal. Well, I must be
off; good-day."
Villiers
went away, thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes; here was quaint
workmanship indeed.
IV - THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET
A
few months after Villiers' meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was sitting, as
usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding his fancies from
wandering in the direction of the bureau. For more than a week he had succeeded
in keeping away from the "Memoirs," and he cherished hopes of a
complete self-reformation; but, in spite of his endeavours, he could not hush
the wonder and the strange curiosity that the last case he had written down had
excited within him. He had put the case, or rather the outline of it,
conjecturally to a scientific friend, who shook his head, and thought Clarke
getting queer, and on this particular evening Clarke was making an effort to
rationalize the story, when a sudden knock at the door roused him from his
meditations.
"Mr.
Villiers to see you sir."
"Dear
me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have not seen you for
many months; I should think nearly a year. Come in, come in. And how are you,
Villiers? Want any advice about investments?"
"No,
thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty safe. No, Clarke, I
have really come to consult you about a rather curious matter that has been
brought under my notice of late. I am afraid you will think it all rather absurd
when I tell my tale. I sometimes think so myself, and that's just what I made
up my mind to come to you, as I know you're a practical man."
Mr.
Villiers was ignorant of the "Memoirs to prove the Existence of the
Devil."
"Well,
Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the best of my ability.
What is the nature of the case?"
"It's
an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my ways; I always keep my eyes open
in the streets, and in my time I have chanced upon some queer customers, and
queer cases too, but this, I think, beats all. I was coming out of a restaurant
one nasty winter night about three months ago; I had had a capital dinner and a
good bottle of Chianti, and I stood for a moment on the pavement, thinking what
a mystery there is about London streets and the companies that pass along them.
A bottle of red wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should
have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a beggar who had come
behind me, and was making the usual appeals. Of course I looked round, and this
beggar turned out to be what was left of an old friend of mine, a man named
Herbert. I asked him how he had come to such a wretched pass, and he told me.
We walked up and down one of those long and dark Soho streets, and there I
listened to his story. He said he had married a beautiful girl, some years
younger than himself, and, as he put it, she had corrupted him body and soul.
He wouldn't go into details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and
heard haunted him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I knew he was
speaking the truth. There was something about the man that made me shiver. I
don't know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money and sent him away,
and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for breath. His presence seemed
to chill one's blood."
"Isn't
this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the poor fellow had made
an imprudent marriage, and, in plain English, gone to the bad."
"Well,
listen to this." Villiers told Clarke the story he had heard from Austin.
"You
see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt that this Mr.
Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw something so awful, so
terrible, that it cut short his life. And what he saw, he most certainly saw in
that house, which, somehow or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I
had the curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It's a saddening kind
of street; the houses are old enough to be mean and dreary, but not old enough
to be quaint. As far as I could see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished
and unfurnished, and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there
the ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind; it's a
dismal street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let, and I went to the
agent's and got the key. Of course I should have heard nothing of the Herberts
in that quarter, but I asked the man, fair and square, how long they had left
the house and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked
at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after
the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the house had been
empty."
Mr.
Villiers paused for a moment.
"I
have always been rather fond of going over empty houses; there's a sort of
fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails sticking in the
walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills. But I didn't enjoy going over
Number 20, Paul Street. I had hardly put my foot inside the passage when I
noticed a queer, heavy feeling about the air of the house. Of course all empty
houses are stuffy, and so forth, but this was something quite different; I
can't describe it to you, but it seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front
room and the back room, and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and
dusty enough, as you would expect, but there was something strange about them
all. I couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the
rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish room,
and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but when I saw it,
paint, paper, and everything were most doleful. But the room was full of
horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on the door, and when I went
in, I thought I should have fallen fainting to the floor. However, I pulled
myself together, and stood against the end wall, wondering what on earth there
could be about the room to make my limbs tremble, and my heart beat as if I
were at the hour of death. In one corner there was a pile of newspapers
littered on the floor, and I began looking at them; they were papers of three
or four years ago, some of them half torn, and some crumpled as if they had
been used for packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found a
curious drawing; I will show it to you presently. But I couldn't stay in the
room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to come out, safe and
sound, into the open air. People stared at me as I walked along the street, and
one man said I was drunk. I was staggering about from one side of the pavement
to the other, and it was as much as I could do to take the key back to the
agent and get home. I was in bed for a week, suffering from what my doctor
called nervous shock and exhaustion. One of those days I was reading the
evening paper, and happened to notice a paragraph headed: 'Starved to Death.'
It was the usual style of thing; a model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door
locked for several days, and a dead man in his chair when they broke in. 'The
deceased,' said the paragraph, 'was known as Charles Herbert, and is believed
to have been once a prosperous country gentleman. His name was familiar to the
public three years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul Street,
Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of the house Number 20, in
the area of which a gentleman of good position was found dead under
circumstances not devoid of suspicion.' A tragic ending, wasn't it? But after
all, if what he told me were true, which I am sure it was, the man's life was
all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort than they put on the
boards."
"And
that is the story, is it?" said Clarke musingly.
"Yes,
that is the story."
"Well,
really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There are, no doubt,
circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the finding of the dead man in
the area of Herbert's house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of the
physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is conceivable that the
facts may be explained in a straightforward manner. As to your own sensations,
when you went to see the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid
imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semi-conscious way, over what
you had heard. I don't exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter;
you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is dead; where
then do you propose to look?"
"I
propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. She is the
mystery."
The
two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating himself on
having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the commonplace, and
Villiers wrapped in his gloomy fancies.
"I
think I will have a cigarette," he said at last, and put his hand in his
pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.
"Ah!"
he said, starting slightly, "I forgot I had something to show you. You
remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst the pile of
old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is."
Villiers
drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered with brown paper,
and secured with string, and the knots were troublesome. In spite of himself
Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent forward on his chair as Villiers painfully
undid the string, and unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping
of tissue, and Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to
Clarke without a word.
There
was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two man sat so still
that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned clock that stood
outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the slow monotony of sound
woke up a far, far memory. He was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink
sketch of the woman's head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by
a true artist, for the woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were
parted with a strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his
memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the
river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the dull red
sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a voice speaking
to him across the waves of many years, and saying "Clarke, Mary will see
the god Pan!" and then he was standing in the grim room beside the doctor,
listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the
figure lying on the green char beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he
looked into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him.
"Who
is this woman?" he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.
"That
is the woman who Herbert married."
Clarke
looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There certainly was
Mary's face, but there was something else, something he had not seen on Mary's
features when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with the doctor, nor
at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it
was, the glance that came from those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the
expression of the whole face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul,
and thought, unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid
presentment of evil I have ever seen." He turned the paper over
mechanically in his hand and glanced at the back.
"Good
God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death."
Villiers
had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a groan, and let
the paper drop from his hands.
"I
don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour me out a
little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few minutes."
Villiers
picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had done.
"You
saw that?" he said. "That's how I identified it as being a portrait
of Herbert's wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?"
"Better,
thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don't think I quite catch your
meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the picture?"
"This
word - 'Helen' - was written on the back. Didn't I tell you her name was Helen?
Yes; Helen Vaughan."
Clarke
groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.
"Now,
don't you agree with me," said Villiers, "that in the story I have
told you to-night, and in the part this woman plays in it, there are some very
strange points?"
"Yes,
Villiers," Clarke muttered, "it is a strange story indeed; a strange
story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be able to help you
or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night, Villiers, good-night.
Come and see me in the course of a week."
V - THE LETTER OF ADVICE
"Do
you know, Austin," said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing sedately
along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, "do you know I am convinced
that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts is a mere episode in
an extraordinary history? I may as well confess to you that when I asked you
about Herbert a few months ago I had just seen him."
"You
had seen him? Where?"
"He
begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable plight, but I
recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history, or at least the
outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this - he had been ruined by his
wife."
"In
what manner?"
"He
would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him, body and soul.
The man is dead now."
"And
what has become of his wife?"
"Ah,
that's what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner or later. I
know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of business, but shrewd
enough. You understand my meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of the
word, but a man who really knows something about men and life. Well, I laid the
case before him, and he was evidently impressed. He said it needed
consideration, and asked me to come again in the course of a week. A few days
later I received this extraordinary letter."
Austin
took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously. It ran as
follows: -
"MY DEAR
VILLIERS, - I have thought over the matter on which you consulted me the other
night, and my advice to you is this. Throw the portrait into the fire, blot out
the story from your mind. Never give it another thought, Villiers, or you will
be sorry. You will think, no doubt, that I am in possession of some secret
information, and to a certain extent that is the case. But I only know a
little; I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back
in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my
knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful still, more incredible
than any tale told of winter nights about the fire. I have resolved, and
nothing shall shake that resolve, to explore no whit farther, and if you value
your happiness you will make the same determination.
"Come
and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful topics than
this."
Austin folded
the letter methodically, and returned it to Villiers.
"It
is certainly an extraordinary letter," he said, "what does he mean by
the portrait?"
"Ah!
I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have made a
discovery."
Villiers
told his story as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin listened in silence. He
seemed puzzled.
"How
very curious that you should experience such an unpleasant sensation in that
room!" he said at length. "I hardly gather that it was a mere matter
of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short."
"No,
it was more physical than mental. It was as if I were inhaling at every breath
some deadly fume, which seemed to penetrate to every nerve and bone and sinew
of my body. I felt racked from head to foot, my eyes began to grow dim; it was
like the entrance of death."
"Yes,
yes, very strange certainly. You see, your friend confesses that there is some
very black story connected with this woman. Did you notice any particular
emotion in him when you were telling your tale?"
"Yes,
I did. He became very faint, but he assured me that it was a mere passing attack
to which he was subject."
"Did
you believe him?"
"I
did at the time, but I don't now. He heard what I had to say with a good deal
of indifference, till I showed him the portrait. It was then that he was seized
with the attack of which I spoke. He looked ghastly, I assure you."
"Then
he must have seen the woman before. But there might be another explanation; it
might have been the name, and not the face, which was familiar to him. What do
you think?"
"I
couldn't say. To the best of my belief it was after turning the portrait in his
hands that he nearly dropped from the chair. The name, you know, was written on
the back."
"Quite
so. After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution in a case like this.
I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as more commonplace and tedious than
the ordinary ghost story of commerce; but really, Villiers, it looks as if
there were something very queer at the bottom of all this."
The
two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading northward
from Piccadilly. It was a long street, and rather a gloomy one, but here and
there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark houses with flowers, and gay
curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors. Villiers glanced up as Austin
stopped speaking, and looked at one of these houses; geraniums, red and white,
drooped from every sill, and daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from
each window.
"It
looks cheerful, doesn't it?" he said.
"Yes,
and the inside is still more cheery. One of the pleasantest houses of the
season, so I have heard. I haven't been there myself, but I've met several men
who have, and they tell me it's uncommonly jovial."
"Whose
house is it?"
"A
Mrs. Beaumont's."
"And
who is she?"
"I
couldn't tell you. I have heard she comes from South America, but after all,
who she is is of little consequence. She is a very wealthy woman, there's no
doubt of that, and some of the best people have taken her up. I hear she has
some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine, which must have cost a fabulous
sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about it; he was there last Sunday evening.
He assures me he has never tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is
an expert. By the way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman,
this Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do you
think she said? 'About a thousand years, I believe.' Lord Argentine thought she
was chaffing him, you know, but when he laughed she said she was speaking quite
seriously and offered to show him the jar. Of course, he couldn't say anything
more after that; but it seems rather antiquated for a beverage, doesn't it?
Why, here we are at my rooms. Come in, won't you?"
"Thanks,
I think I will. I haven't seen the curiosity-shop for a while."
It
was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every jar and bookcase and table,
and every rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a thing apart, preserving each
its own individuality.
"Anything
fresh lately?" said Villiers after a while.
"No;
I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn't you? I thought so. I don't think
I have come across anything for the last few weeks."
Austin
glanced around the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in
search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an odd chest, pleasantly
and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of the room.
"Ah,"
he said, "I was forgetting, I have got something to show you." Austin
unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on the table, and
resumed the cigar he had put down.
"Did
you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?"
"A
little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend of mine. What has
become of him? I haven't heard his name mentioned for some time."
"He's
dead."
"You
don't say so! Quite young, wasn't he?"
"Yes;
only thirty when he died."
"What
did he die of?"
"I
don't know. He was an intimate friend of mine, and a thoroughly good fellow. He
used to come here and talk to me for hours, and he was one of the best talkers
I have met. He could even talk about painting, and that's more than can be said
of most painters. About eighteen months ago he was feeling rather overworked,
and partly at my suggestion he went off on a sort of roving expedition, with no
very definite end or aim about it. I believe New York was to be his first port,
but I never heard from him. Three months ago I got this book, with a very civil
letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos Ayres, stating that he had
attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his illness, and that the deceased had
expressed an earnest wish that the enclosed packet should be sent to me after
his death. That was all."
"And
haven't you written for further particulars?"
"I
have been thinking of doing so. You would advise me to write to the doctor?"
"Certainly.
And what about the book?"
"It
was sealed up when I got it. I don't think the doctor had seen it."
"It
is something very rare? Meyrick was a collector, perhaps?"
"No,
I think not, hardly a collector. Now, what do you think of these Ainu jugs?"
"They
are peculiar, but I like them. But aren't you going to show me poor Meyrick's
legacy?"
"Yes,
yes, to be sure. The fact is, it's rather a peculiar sort of thing, and I
haven't shown it to any one. I wouldn't say anything about it if I were you.
There it is."
Villiers
took the book, and opened it at haphazard.
"It
isn't a printed volume, then?" he said.
"No.
It is a collection of drawings in black and white by my poor friend
Meyrick."
Villiers
turned to the first page, it was blank; the second bore a brief inscription,
which he read:
Silet
per diem universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet nocturnis ignibus,
chorus Aegipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus
cymbalorum per oram maritimam.
On
the third page was a design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he
was gazing abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned page after page,
absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil,
strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black and
white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced before his eyes, the
darkness of the thicket, the dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely
shores, in green vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a
world before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder. Villiers
whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but the picture on the
last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the book.
"Austin!"
"Well,
what is it?"
"Do
you know who that is?"
It
was a woman's face, alone on the white page.
"Know
who it is? No, of course not."
"I
do."
"Who
is it?"
"It
is Mrs. Herbert."
"Are
you sure?"
"I
am perfectly sure of it. Poor Meyrick! He is one more chapter in her history."
"But
what do you think of the designs?"
"They
are frightful. Lock the book up again, Austin. If I were you I would burn it;
it must be a terrible companion even though it be in a chest."
"Yes,
they are singular drawings. But I wonder what connection there could be between
Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link between her and these designs?"
"Ah,
who can say? It is possible that the matter may end here, and we shall never
know, but in my own opinion this Helen Vaughan, or Mrs. Herbert, is only the beginning.
She will come back to London, Austin; depend on it, she will come back, and we
shall hear more about her then. I doubt it will be very pleasant news."
VI - THE SUICIDES
Lord
Argentine was a great favourite in London Society. At twenty he had been a poor
man, decked with the surname of an illustrious family, but forced to earn a
livelihood as best he could, and the most speculative of money-lenders would
not have entrusted him with fifty pounds on the chance of his ever changing his
name for a title, and his poverty for a great fortune. His father had been near
enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family livings, but
the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely have obtained so much as
this, and moreover felt no vocation for the ecclesiastical estate. Thus he
fronted the world with no better armour than the bachelor's gown and the wits
of a younger son's grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to
make a very tolerable fight of it. At twenty-five Mr. Charles Aubernon saw
himself still a man of struggles and of warfare with the world, but out of the
seven who stood before him and the high places of his family three only
remained. These three, however, were "good lives," but yet not proof
against the Zulu assegais and typhoid fever, and so one morning Aubernon woke
up and found himself Lord Argentine, a man of thirty who had faced the
difficulties of existence, and had conquered. The situation amused him
immensely, and he resolved that riches should be as pleasant to him as poverty
had always been. Argentine, after some little consideration, came to the
conclusion that dining, regarded as a fine art, was perhaps the most amusing
pursuit open to fallen humanity, and thus his dinners became famous in London, and
an invitation to his table a thing covetously desired. After ten years of
lordship and dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still persisted in
enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the cause of
joy in others, in short, as the best of company. His sudden and tragical death
therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could scarcely believe it,
even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the cry of
"Mysterious Death of a Nobleman" came ringing up from the street. But
there stood the brief paragraph: "Lord Argentine was found dead this
morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is stated that there
can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be
assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and
much liked for his genial manner and sumptuous hospitality. He is succeeded
by," etc., etc.
By
slow degrees the details came to light, but the case still remained a mystery.
The chief witness at the inquest was the deceased's valet, who said that the
night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with a lady of good position,
whose named was suppressed in the newspaper reports. At about eleven o'clock
Lord Argentine had returned, and informed his man that he should not require
his services till the next morning. A little later the valet had occasion to
cross the hall and was somewhat astonished to see his master quietly letting
himself out at the front door. He had taken off his evening clothes, and was
dressed in a Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat. The
valet had no reason to suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him, and though his
master rarely kept late hours, thought little of the occurrence till the next
morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine as usual. He
received no answer, and, after knocking two or three times, entered the room,
and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning forward at an angle from the bottom of
the bed. He found that his master had tied a cord securely to one of the short
bed-posts, and, after making a running noose and slipping it round his neck,
the unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow
strangulation. He was dressed in the light suit in which the valet had seen him
go out, and the doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct
for more than four hours. All papers, letters, and so forth seemed in perfect
order, and nothing was discovered which pointed in the most remote way to any
scandal either great or small. Here the evidence ended; nothing more could be
discovered. Several persons had been present at the dinner-party at which Lord
Augustine had assisted, and to all these he seemed in his usual genial spirits.
The valet, indeed, said he thought his master appeared a little excited when he
came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight,
hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue, and the
suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal
mania was generally accepted.
It
was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more gentlemen, one of
them a nobleman, and the two others men of good position and ample means,
perished miserably in the almost precisely the same manner. Lord Swanleigh was
found one morning in his dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall,
and Mr. Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine.
There was no explanation in either case; a few bald facts; a living man in the
evening, and a body with a black swollen face in the morning. The police had
been forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to explain the sordid
murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible suicides of Piccadilly and
Mayfair they were dumbfoundered, for not even the mere ferocity which did duty
as an explanation of the crimes of the East End, could be of service in the
West. Each of these men who had resolved to die a tortured shameful death was
rich, prosperous, and to all appearances in love with the world, and not the
acutest research should ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either
case. There was a horror in the air, and men looked at one another's faces when
they met, each wondering whether the other was to be the victim of the fifth
nameless tragedy. Journalists sought in vain for their scrapbooks for materials
whereof to concoct reminiscent articles; and the morning paper was unfolded in
many a house with a feeling of awe; no man knew when or where the next blow would
light.
A
short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came to see Mr.
Villiers. He was curious to know whether Villiers had succeeded in discovering
any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either through Clarke or by other sources,
and he asked the question soon after he had sat down.
"No,"
said Villiers, "I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I have
tried other channels, but without any result. I can't find out what became of
Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think she must have gone
abroad. But to tell the truth, Austin, I haven't paid much attention to the
matter for the last few weeks; I knew poor Herries intimately, and his terrible
death has been a great shock to me, a great shock."
"I
can well believe it," answered Austin gravely, "you know Argentine
was a friend of mine. If I remember rightly, we were speaking of him that day
you came to my rooms."
"Yes;
it was in connection with that house in Ashley Street, Mrs. Beaumont's house.
You said something about Argentine's dining there."
"Quite
so. Of course you know it was there Argentine dined the night before - before
his death."
"No,
I had not heard that."
"Oh,
yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine was
a great favourite of hers, and it is said she was in a terrible state for
sometime after."
A
curious look came over Villiers' face; he seemed undecided whether to speak or
not. Austin began again.
"I
never experienced such a feeling of horror as when I read the account of Argentine's
death. I didn't understand it at the time, and I don't now. I knew him well,
and it completely passes my understanding for what possible cause he - or any
of the others for the matter of that - could have resolved in cold blood to die
in such an awful manner. You know how men babble away each other's characters
in London, you may be sure any buried scandal or hidden skeleton would have
been brought to light in such a case as this; but nothing of the sort has taken
place. As for the theory of mania, that is very well, of course, for the
coroner's jury, but everybody knows that it's all nonsense. Suicidal mania is
not small-pox."
Austin
relapsed into gloomy silence. Villiers sat silent, also, watching his friend.
The expression of indecision still fleeted across his face; he seemed as if
weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the considerations he was resolving
left him still silent. Austin tried to shake off the remembrance of tragedies
as hopeless and perplexed as the labyrinth of Daedalus, and began to talk in an
indifferent voice of the more pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.
"That
Mrs. Beaumont," he said, "of whom we were speaking, is a great
success; she has taken London almost by storm. I met her the other night at
Fulham's; she is really a remarkable woman."
"You
have met Mrs. Beaumont?"
"Yes;
she had quite a court around her. She would be called very handsome, I suppose,
and yet there is something about her face which I didn't like. The features are
exquisite, but the expression is strange. And all the time I was looking at
her, and afterwards, when I was going home, I had a curious feeling that very
expression was in some way or another familiar to me."
"You
must have seen her in the Row."
"No,
I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it is that which makes it
puzzling. And to the best of my belief I have never seen anyone like her; what
I felt was a kind of dim far-off memory, vague but persistent. The only
sensation I can compare it to, is that odd feeling one sometimes has in a
dream, when fantastic cities and wondrous lands and phantom personages appear
familiar and accustomed."
Villiers
nodded and glanced aimlessly round the room, possibly in search of something on
which to turn the conversation. His eyes fell on an old chest somewhat like
that in which the artist's strange legacy lay hid beneath a Gothic scutcheon.
"Have
you written to the doctor about poor Meyrick?" he asked.
"Yes;
I wrote asking for full particulars as to his illness and death. I don't expect
to have an answer for another three weeks or a month. I thought I might as well
inquire whether Meyrick knew an Englishwoman named Herbert, and if so, whether
the doctor could give me any information about her. But it's very possible that
Meyrick fell in with her at New York, or Mexico, or San Francisco; I have no
idea as to the extent or direction of his travels."
"Yes,
and it's very possible that the woman may have more than one name."
"Exactly.
I wish I had thought of asking you to lend me the portrait of her which you
possess. I might have enclosed it in my letter to Dr. Matthews."
"So
you might; that never occurred to me. We might send it now. Hark! what are
those boys calling?"
While
the two men had been talking together a confused noise of shouting had been
gradually growing louder. The noise rose from the eastward and swelled down
Piccadilly, drawing nearer and nearer, a very torrent of sound; surging up
streets usually quiet, and making every window a frame for a face, curious or
excited. The cries and voices came echoing up the silent street where Villiers
lived, growing more distinct as they advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an
answer rang up from the pavement:
"The
West End Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full Details!"
Austin
rushed down the stairs and bought a paper and read out the paragraph to
Villiers as the uproar in the street rose and fell. The window was open and the
air seemed full of noise and terror.
"Another
gentleman has fallen a victim to the terrible epidemic of suicide which for the
last month has prevailed in the West End. Mr. Sidney Crashaw, of Stoke House,
Fulham, and King's Pomeroy, Devon, was found, after a prolonged search, hanging
dead from the branch of a tree in his garden at one o'clock today. The deceased
gentleman dined last night at the Carlton Club and seemed in his usual health
and spirits. He left the club at about ten o'clock, and was seen walking
leisurely up St. James's Street a little later. Subsequent to this his
movements cannot be traced. On the discovery of the body medical aid was at
once summoned, but life had evidently been long extinct. So far as is known,
Mr. Crashaw had no trouble or anxiety of any kind. This painful suicide, it
will be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last month. The authorities
at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any explanation of these terrible
occurrences."
Austin
put down the paper in mute horror.
"I
shall leave London to-morrow," he said, "it is a city of nightmares.
How awful this is, Villiers!"
Mr.
Villiers was sitting by the window quietly looking out into the street. He had
listened to the newspaper report attentively, and the hint of indecision was no
longer on his face.
"Wait
a moment, Austin," he replied, "I have made up my mind to mention a
little matter that occurred last night. It stated, I think, that Crashaw was
last seen alive in St. James's Street shortly after ten?"
"Yes,
I think so. I will look again. Yes, you are quite right."
"Quite
so. Well, I am in a position to contradict that statement at all events.
Crashaw was seen after that; considerably later indeed."
"How
do you know?"
"Because
I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two o'clock this morning."
"You
saw Crashaw? You, Villiers?"
"Yes,
I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were but a few feet between us."
"Where,
in Heaven's name, did you see him?"
"Not
far from here. I saw him in Ashley Street. He was just leaving a house."
"Did
you notice what house it was?"
"Yes.
It was Mrs. Beaumont's."
"Villiers!
Think what you are saying; there must be some mistake. How could Crashaw be in
Mrs. Beaumont's house at two o'clock in the morning? Surely, surely, you must
have been dreaming, Villiers; you were always rather fanciful."
"No;
I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you say, what I saw
would have roused me effectually."
"What
you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange about Crashaw? But I
can't believe it; it is impossible."
"Well,
if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if you please, what I think I saw,
and you can judge for yourself."
"Very
good, Villiers."
The
noise and clamour of the street had died away, though now and then the sound of
shouting still came from the distance, and the dull, leaden silence seemed like
the quiet after an earthquake or a storm. Villiers turned from the window and
began speaking.
"I
was at a house near Regent's Park last night, and when I came away the fancy
took me to walk home instead of taking a hansom. It was a clear pleasant night
enough, and after a few minutes I had the streets pretty much to myself. It's a
curious thing, Austin, to be alone in London at night, the gas-lamps stretching
away in perspective, and the dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and
clatter of a hansom on the stones, and the fire starting up under the horse's
hoofs. I walked along pretty briskly, for I was feeling a little tired of being
out in the night, and as the clocks were striking two I turned down Ashley
Street, which, you know, is on my way. It was quieter than ever there, and the
lamps were fewer; altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a forest in
winter. I had done about half the length of the street when I heard a door
closed very softly, and naturally I looked up to see who was abroad like myself
at such an hour. As it happens, there is a street lamp close to the house in
question, and I saw a man standing on the step. He had just shut the door and
his face was towards me, and I recognized Crashaw directly. I never knew him to
speak to, but I had often seen him, and I am positive that I was not mistaken
in my man. I looked into his face for a moment, and then - I will confess the
truth - I set off at a good run, and kept it up till I was within my own
door."
"Why?"
"Why?
Because it made my blood run cold to see that man's face. I could never have
supposed that such an infernal medley of passions could have glared out of any
human eyes; I almost fainted as I looked. I knew I had looked into the eyes of
a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form remained, but all hell was within
it. Furious lust, and hate that was like fire, and the loss of all hope and
horror that seemed to shriek aloud to the night, though his teeth were shut;
and the utter blackness of despair. I am sure that he did not see me; he saw
nothing that you or I can see, but what he saw I hope we never shall. I do not
know when he died; I suppose in an hour, or perhaps two, but when I passed down
Ashley Street and heard the closing door, that man no longer belonged to this
world; it was a devil's face I looked upon."
There
was an interval of silence in the room when Villiers ceased speaking. The light
was failing, and all the tumult of an hour ago was quite hushed. Austin had
bent his head at the close of the story, and his hand covered his eyes.
"What
can it mean?" he said at length.
"Who
knows, Austin, who knows? It's a black business, but I think we had better keep
it to ourselves, for the present at any rate. I will see if I cannot learn
anything about that house through private channels of information, and if I do
light upon anything I will let you know."
VII - THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO
Three
weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers, asking him to call either
that afternoon or the next. He chose the nearer date, and found Villiers
sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost in meditation on the drowsy
traffic of the street. There was a bamboo table by his side, a fantastic thing,
enriched with gilding and queer painted scenes, and on it lay a little pile of
papers arranged and docketed as neatly as anything in Mr. Clarke's office.
"Well,
Villiers, have you made any discoveries in the last three weeks?"
"I
think so; I have here one or two memoranda which struck me as singular, and
there is a statement to which I shall call your attention."
"And
these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont? It was really Crashaw whom you saw
that night standing on the doorstep of the house in Ashley Street?"
"As
to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but neither my inquiries nor their
results have any special relation to Crashaw. But my investigations have had a
strange issue. I have found out who Mrs. Beaumont is!"
"Who
is she? In what way do you mean?"
"I
mean that you and I know her better under another name."
"What
name is that?"
"Herbert."
"Herbert!"
Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.
"Yes,
Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier adventures unknown to me.
You had reason to recognize the expression of her face; when you go home look
at the face in Meyrick's book of horrors, and you will know the sources of your
recollection."
"And
you have proof of this?"
"Yes,
the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we say Mrs.
Herbert?"
"Where
did you see her?"
"Hardly
in a place where you would expect to see a lady who lives in Ashley Street,
Piccadilly. I saw her entering a house in one of the meanest and most
disreputable streets in Soho. In fact, I had made an appointment, though not
with her, and she was precise to both time and place."
"All
this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible. You must remember,
Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the ordinary adventure of London
society, talking and laughing, and sipping her coffee in a commonplace
drawing-room with commonplace people. But you know what you are saying."
"I
do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or fancies. It was with no
thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark
waters of the life of London, but such has been the issue."
"You
must have been in strange places, Villiers."
"Yes,
I have been in very strange places. It would have been useless, you know, to go
to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont to give me a short sketch of her
previous history. No; assuming, as I had to assume, that her record was not of
the cleanest, it would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must
have moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones. If you see mud
at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went
to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my
amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very
useful. It is, perhaps, needless to say that my friends had never heard the
name of Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite unable to
describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect way. The people there know
me; I have been able to do some of them a service now and again, so they made
no difficulty about giving their information; they were aware I had no
communication direct or indirect with Scotland Yard. I had to cast out a good
many lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the fish I
did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I listened to what I was told
out of a constitutional liking for useless information, and I found myself in
possession of a very curious story, though, as I imagined, not the story I was
looking for. It was to this effect. Some five or six years ago, a woman named
Raymond suddenly made her appearance in the neighbourhood to which I am
referring. She was described to me as being quite young, probably not more than
seventeen or eighteen, very handsome, and looking as if she came from the
country. I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in going to this
particular quarter, or associating with these people, for from what I was told,
I should think the worst den in London far too good for her. The person from
whom I got my information, as you may suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and
grew sick in telling me of the nameless infamies which were laid to her charge.
After living there for a year, or perhaps a little more, she disappeared as
suddenly as she came, and they saw nothing of her till about the time of the
Paul Street case. At first she came to her old haunts only occasionally, then
more frequently, and finally took up her abode there as before, and remained
for six or eight months. It's of no use my going into details as to the life
that woman led; if you want particulars you can look at Meyrick's legacy. Those
designs were not drawn from his imagination. She again disappeared, and the
people of the place saw nothing of her till a few months ago. My informant told
me that she had taken some rooms in a house which he pointed out, and these
rooms she was in the habit of visiting two or three times a week and always at
ten in the morning. I was led to expect that one of these visits would be paid
on a certain day about a week ago, and I accordingly managed to be on the
look-out in company with my cicerone at a quarter to ten, and the hour and the
lady came with equal punctuality. My friend and I were standing under an
archway, a little way back from the street, but she saw us, and gave me a
glance that I shall be long in forgetting. That look was quite enough for me; I
knew Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Herbert; as for Mrs. Beaumont she had quite gone
out of my head. She went into the house, and I watched it till four o'clock,
when she came out, and then I followed her. It was a long chase, and I had to
be very careful to keep a long way in the background, and yet not lose sight of
the woman. She took me down to the Strand, and then to Westminster, and then up
St. James's Street, and along Piccadilly. I felt queerish when I saw her turn
up Ashley Street; the thought that Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came into my
mind, but it seemed too impossible to be true. I waited at the corner, keeping
my eye on her all the time, and I took particular care to note the house at
which she stopped. It was the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers,
the house out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in his garden.
I was just going away with my discovery, when I saw an empty carriage come
round and draw up in front of the house, and I came to the conclusion that Mrs.
Herbert was going out for a drive, and I was right. There, as it happened, I
met a man I know, and we stood talking together a little distance from the
carriage-way, to which I had my back. We had not been there for ten minutes
when my friend took off his hat, and I glanced round and saw the lady I had
been following all day. 'Who is that?' I said, and his answer was 'Mrs.
Beaumont; lives in Ashley Street.' Of course there could be no doubt after
that. I don't know whether she saw me, but I don't think she did. I went home
at once, and, on consideration, I thought that I had a sufficiently good case
with which to go to Clarke."
"Why
to Clarke?"
"Because
I am sure that Clarke is in possession of facts about this woman, facts of
which I know nothing."
"Well,
what then?"
Mr.
Villiers leaned back in his chair and looked reflectively at Austin for a
moment before he answered:
"My
idea was that Clarke and I should call on Mrs. Beaumont."
"You
would never go into such a house as that? No, no, Villiers, you cannot do it.
Besides, consider; what result..."
"I
will tell you soon. But I was going to say that my information does not end
here; it has been completed in an extraordinary manner.
"Look
at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have
indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal
air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the
entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote
this escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many years. The
doctors tell him he must have sustained some severe shock to the nerves."
Austin
took the manuscript, but never read it. Opening the neat pages at haphazard his
eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed it; and, sick at heart,
with white lips and a cold sweat pouring like water from his temples, he flung
the paper down.
"Take
it away, Villiers, never speak of this again. Are you made of stone, man? Why,
the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of the man who stands in the
keen morning air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his ears,
and waits for the harsh rattle of the bolt, are as nothing compared to this. I
will not read it; I should never sleep again."
"Very
good. I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible enough; but after all, it
is an old story, an old mystery played in our day, and in dim London streets
instead of amidst the vineyards and the olive gardens. We know what happened to
those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that
all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an
exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most
awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things; forces before
which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies blacken
under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken,
cannot be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most of us
appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all
events, have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret place
of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is without form taking to
itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be? How is it that the very sunlight does
not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath
such a burden?"
Villiers
was pacing up and down the room, and the beads of sweat stood out on his
forehead. Austin sat silent for a while, but Villiers saw him make a sign upon
his breast.
"I
say again, Villiers, you will surely never enter such a house as that? You
would never pass out alive."
"Yes,
Austin, I shall go out alive - I, and Clarke with me."
"What
do you mean? You cannot, you would not dare..."
"Wait
a moment. The air was very pleasant and fresh this morning; there was a breeze
blowing, even through this dull street, and I thought I would take a walk.
Piccadilly stretched before me a clear, bright vista, and the sun flashed on
the carriages and on the quivering leaves in the park. It was a joyous morning,
and men and women looked at the sky and smiled as they went about their work or
their pleasure, and the wind blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the
scented gorse. But somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and
found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to
be no sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers loitered as they
walked, and hung indecisively about corners and archways. I walked along,
hardly knowing where I was going or what I did there, but feeling impelled, as
one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some
unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the
milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black
tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one
another in the short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder
that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had found what I
wanted. I looked up from the pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above
which the lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years ago
had grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to themselves the dust of
winters innumerable. I saw what I required; but I think it was five minutes
before I had steadied myself and could walk in and ask for it in a cool voice and
with a calm face. I think there must even then have been a tremor in my words,
for the old man who came out of the back parlour, and fumbled slowly amongst
his goods, looked oddly at me as he tied the parcel. I paid what he asked, and
stood leaning by the counter, with a strange reluctance to take up my goods and
go. I asked about the business, and learnt that trade was bad and the profits
cut down sadly; but then the street was not what it was before traffic had been
diverted, but that was done forty years ago, 'just before my father died,' he
said. I got away at last, and walked along sharply; it was a dismal street
indeed, and I was glad to return to the bustle and the noise. Would you like to
see my purchase?"
Austin
said nothing, but nodded his head slightly; he still looked white and sick.
Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long coil
of cord, hard and new; and at one end was a running noose.
"It
is the best hempen cord," said Villiers, "just as it used to be made
for the old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute from end to end."
Austin
set his teeth hard, and stared at Villiers, growing whiter as he looked.
"You
would not do it," he murmured at last. "You would not have blood on
your hands. My God!" he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, "you cannot
mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?"
"No.
I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with this cord in a
locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in it is not done, I shall call
the nearest policeman. That is all."
"I
must go now. I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear this.
Good-night."
"Good-night,
Austin."
The
door shut, but in a moment it was open again, and Austin stood, white and
ghastly, in the entrance.
"I
was forgetting," he said, "that I too have something to tell. I have
received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He says that he attended
Meyrick for three weeks before his death."
"And
does he say what carried him off in the prime of life? It was not fever?"
"No,
it was not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter collapse of the
whole system, probably caused by some severe shock. But he states that the
patient would tell him nothing, and that he was consequently at some
disadvantage in treating the case."
"Is
there anything more?"
"Yes.
Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: 'I think this is all the information I
can give you about your poor friend. He had not been long in Buenos Ayres, and
knew scarcely any one, with the exception of a person who did not bear the best
of characters, and has since left - a Mrs. Vaughan.'"
VIII - THE FRAGMENTS
[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert Matheson,
of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of apoplectic seizure, at the
beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript paper was found, covered with pencil
jottings. These notes were in Latin, much abbreviated, and had evidently been
made in great haste. The MS. was only deciphered with difficulty, and some
words have up to the present time evaded all the efforts of the expert
employed. The date, "XXV Jul. 1888," is written on the right-hand
corner of the MS. The following is a translation of Dr. Matheson's manuscript.]
"Whether
science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be published, I do not
know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never take the responsibility of
publishing or divulging one word of what is here written, not only on account
of my oath given freely to those two persons who were present, but also because
the details are too abominable. It is probably that, upon mature consideration,
and after weighting the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or
at least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion, to
use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.
"As
was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure that I was
suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could hardly think, but in a
minute's time I was sure that my pulse was steady and regular, and that I was
in my real and true senses. I then fixed my eyes quietly on what was before me.
"Though
horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of corruption
choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or accursed, I dare
not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying there black like ink,
transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the flesh, and the muscles, and the
bones, and the firm structure of the human body that I had thought to be
unchangeable, and permanent as adamant, began to melt and dissolve.
"I know that the body may be
separated into its elements by external agencies, but I should have refused to
believe what I saw. For here there was some internal force, of which I knew
nothing, that caused dissolution and change.
"Here
too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before my eyes. I saw
the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself, and then again
reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that
which was on the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all being.
The principle of life, which makes organism, always remained, while the outward
form changed.
"The
light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of night, in
which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and without difficulty.
But it was the negation of light; objects were presented to my eyes, if I may
say so, without any medium, in such a manner that if there had been a prism in
the room I should have seen no colours represented in it.
"I
watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the ladder
was ascended again... [here the MS. is illegible] ...for one instance I saw a
Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not farther describe. But the
symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings which
survived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken of... as a horrible and
unspeakable shape, neither man nor beast, was changed into human form, there
came finally death.
"I
who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul, here write my
name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be true.
"ROBERT MATHESON,
Med. Dr."
...Such,
Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The burden of it was
too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could tell it to none but you.
Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows nothing of that awful secret of
the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst
the summer flowers, half in sun and half in shadow, and holding the girl
Rachel's hand, called and summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form,
upon the earth we tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can
only name under a figure. I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that
resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw the
portrait, which filled the cup of terror at the end. What this can mean I dare
not guess. I know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last
agony Mary's eyes looked into mine. Whether there can be any one who can show
the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not know, but if there be
any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are the man. And if you know the secret,
it rests with you to tell it or not, as you please.
I
am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town. I have
been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be able to guess in
which part. While the horror and wonder of London was at its height - for
"Mrs. Beaumont," as I have told you, was well known in society - I
wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline, or rather hint, of
what happened, and asking him to tell me the name of the village where the
events he had related to me occurred. He gave me the name, as he said with the
less hesitation, because Rachel's father and mother were dead, and the rest of
the family had gone to a relative in the State of Washington six months before.
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 least
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:
DEVOMNODENTi
FLAvIVSSENILISPOSSvit
PROPTERNVPtias
quaSVIDITSVBVMra
"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. The rest of the strange story, and all else that you tell
me, as discovered by your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time,
almost to the last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions…
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