The Great God Pan
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Arthur Machen >> The Great God Pan
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...