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 comers 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 comer,
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."
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