The Great God Pan

by Arthur Machen

  Produced by Brandi Weed. HTML version by Al Haines.

  THE GREAT GOD PAN

  by

  ARTHUR MACHEN

  CONTENTS

  I THE EXPERIMENT II MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS III THE CITY OF RESURRECTIONS IV THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET V THE LETTER OF ADVICE VI THE SUICIDES VII THE ENCOUNTER IN SOHO VIII THE FRAGMENTS

  I

  THE EXPERIMENT

  "I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure youcould spare the time."

  "I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not verylively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is itabsolutely safe?"

  The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond'shouse. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but itshone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air wasquiet; 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 betweenthe lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, afaint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymondturned sharply to his friend.

  "Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simpleone; 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 havedevoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. Ihave heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all thewhile I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached thegoal, and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shalldo tonight."

  "I should like to believe it is all true." Clarke knit his brows, andlooked 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 amiddle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as heanswered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.

  "Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill followingafter hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fieldsof 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 youthat all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out inthe sky to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these arebut dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from oureyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and thisvision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond themall as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has everlifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see itlifted this very night from before another's eyes. You may think thisall strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and theancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing thegod 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 astrange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knifeis absolutely necessary?"

  "Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a triflingrearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that wouldescape 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 massof technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leaveyou as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read,casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strideshave been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw aparagraph the other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber'sdiscoveries. Theories and discoveries! Where they are standing now, Istood fifteen years ago, and I need not tell you that I have not beenstanding still for the last fifteen years. It will be enough if I saythat five years ago I made the discovery that I alluded to when I saidthat ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour, afteryears of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and nights ofdisappointments and sometimes of despair, in which I used now and thento tremble and grow cold with the thought that perhaps there wereothers seeking for what I sought, at last, after so long, a pang ofsudden 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 amoment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that Ihad tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, andI 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 thinkthis 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 forthin plain and lonely terms. For instance, this world of ours is prettywell girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, withsomething less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise tosunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places.Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that heand his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistakingthem for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man sawuttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flashforth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and thevoice of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds ourthought. As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I havedone; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood hereone evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as itdoes now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, theunthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world ofmatter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dimbefore me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earthto the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may look inBrowne Faber's book, if you like, and you will find that to the presentday men of science are unable to account for the presence, or tospecify 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 fancifultheories. I am not in the position of Browne Faber and thespecialists, I am perfectly instructed as to the possible functions ofthose nerve-centers in the scheme of things. With a touch I can bringthem into play, with a touch, I say, I can set free the current, with atouch I can complete the communication between this world of senseand--we shall be able to finish the sentence later on. Yes, the knifeis necessary; but think what that knife will effect. It will levelutterly the solid wall of sense, and probably, for the first time sinceman was made, a spirit will gaze on a spirit-world. Clarke, Mary willsee the god Pan!"

  "But you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would berequisite that she--"

  He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.

  "Not at all, not at all. That is nonsense. I assure you. Indeed, itis 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 ofyour days."

  "No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescuedMary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she wasa child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it'sgetting late; we had better go in."

  Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down along dark passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavydoor, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been abil
liard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of theceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of thedoctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table inthe middle of the room.

  Clarke looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; therewere shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes andcolours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale book-case. Raymondpointed to this.

  "You see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first toshow me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself. Thatis a strange saying of his: 'In every grain of wheat there lies hiddenthe soul of a star.'"

  There was not much furniture in the laboratory. The table in thecentre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs onwhich Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except anodd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked atit, and raised his eyebrows.

  "Yes, that is the chair," said Raymond. "We may as well place it inposition." He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and beganraising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back atvarious angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortableenough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as thedoctor 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 hebent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. Thedoctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledgeabove his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down atthe great shadowy room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliantlight and undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon hebecame conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion ofodour, in the room, and as it grew more decided he felt surprised thathe was not reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery. Clarke foundhimself idly endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and half conscious,he began to think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spentroaming through the woods and meadows near his own home. It was aburning day at the beginning of August, the heat had dimmed theoutlines of all things and all distances with a faint mist, and peoplewho observed the thermometer spoke of an abnormal register, of atemperature that was almost tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot dayof the fifties rose up again in Clarke's imagination; the sense ofdazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and thelights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating ingusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heardthe myriad murmur of the summer.

  "I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothingunwholesome about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all."

  Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond wasspeaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himselffrom his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had takenfifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he hadknown since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliantlight, as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrilsthe scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of thewoods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth bythe sun's heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were witharms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fanciesmade him wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into thewood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth ofbeech-trees; and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rocksounded as a clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astrayand to mingle with other thoughts; the beech alley was transformed to apath between ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from boughto bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes,and the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out againstthe dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, wasconscious that the path from his father's house had led him into anundiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of itall, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, aninfinite 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, butall things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. Andin that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and avoice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness ofdarkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.

  When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops ofsome 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 tenminutes."

  Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had butpassed from one dream into another. He half expected to see the wallsof 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 wonderat what the doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over faceand neck and arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.

  "Mary," he said, "the time has come. You are quite free. Are youwilling 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 youreyes," he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, andlonged for sleep, and Raymond placed the green phial to her nostrils.Her face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, andthen with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her armsupon her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The brightlight of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changesfleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the summerclouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, andthe doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious.Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sankback. Clarke saw him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from herhair, and the lamp was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glitteringinstrument 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; hisknees shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.

  Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenlydid the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, andsuddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone withan awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon herface, 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 awfulterror. The muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shookfrom head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within thehouse of flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, asshe fell shrieking to the floor.

  Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lyingwide-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 ahopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, shehas seen the Great God Pan."