



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 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 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