THE GREAT GOD PAN(潘恩大帝)

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THE GREAT GOD PAN

By ARTHUR MACHEN

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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.

THE GREAT GOD PAN

"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 corners 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

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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.

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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.'"

THE GREAT GOD PAN

There was not much furniture in the laboratory. The table in the

centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, 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

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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

THE GREAT GOD PAN

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."

THE GREAT GOD PAN

MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS

Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the

strange experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character

caution and curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he

thought of the unusual and eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet,

deep in his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all

the more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter

tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for

though his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's

theories as the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in fantasy,

and would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that he

witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he was

conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable, and for

many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and rejected

all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some homeopathic

principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums,

hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him

altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though

caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he still pined for the unseen,

and little by little, the old passion began to reassert itself, as the face of

Mary, shuddering and convulsed with an unknown terror, faded slowly

from his memory. Occupied all day in pursuits both serious and lucrative,

the temptation to relax in the evening was too great, especially in the

winter months, when the fire cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor

apartment, and a bottle of some choice claret stood ready by his elbow.

His dinner digested, he would make a brief pretence of reading the

evening paper, but the mere catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and

Clarke would find himself casting glances of warm desire in the direction

of an old Japanese bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the

hearth. Like a boy before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover

indecisive, but lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his

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THEGREATGODPAN1THEGREATGODPANByARTHURMACHENTHEGREATGODPAN2ITHEEXPERIMENT"Iamgladyoucame,Clarke;verygladindeed.Iwasnotsureyoucouldsparethetime.""Iwasabletomakearrangementsforafewdays;thingsarenotverylivelyjustnow.Buthaveyounomisgivings,Raymond?Isitabsolutelysafe?"Thetwomenwereslowlypacingtheterracein...

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