The Great God Pan
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 chair 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