The Great God Pan
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 figures 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 incarnatus 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