Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (4 page)

Following the direction of her hand, I saw that the wall was
transparent, and that I could see through a portion of it into a small
square space beyond, as though I was looking through gauze instead of
bricks. This small inner space was lighted, and on stooping down I saw
that it was a sort of cupboard or cell-like cage let into the wall. The
thing that purred was there in the centre of it.

I looked closer. It was a being, apparently a
human
being, crouched
down in its narrow cage, feeding. I saw the body stooping over a
quantity of coarse-looking, piled-up substance that was evidently food.
It was like a man huddled up. There it squatted, happy and contented,
with the minimum of air, light, and space, dully satisfied with its
prisoned cage behind the bars, utterly unconscious of the vast world
about it, grunting with pleasure, purring like a great cat, scornfully
ignorant of what might lie beyond. The cell, moreover, I saw was a
perfect masterpiece of mechanical contrivance and inventive
ingenuity—the very last word in comfort, safety and scientific skill.
I was in the act of trying to fit in my memory some of the details of
its construction and arrangement, when I made a chance noise, and at
once became too agitated to note carefully what I saw. For at the noise
the creature turned, and I saw that it
was
a human being—a man. I
was aware of a face close against my own as it pressed forward, but a
face with embryonic features impossible to describe and utterly
loathsome, with eyes, ears, nose and skin, only just sufficiently alive
and developed to transfer the minimum of gross sensation to the brain.
The mouth, however, was large and thick-lipped, and the jaws were still
moving in the act of slow mastication.

I shrank back, shuddering with mingled pity and disgust, and at the
same moment the woman beside me called me softly
by my own name
. She
had moved forward a little so that she stood quite close to me, full in
the thin stream of moonlight that fell across the floor, and I was
conscious of a swift transition from hell to heaven as my gaze passed
from that embryonic visage to a countenance so refined, so majestic, so
divinely sensitive in its strength, that it was like turning from the
face of a devil to look upon the features of a goddess.

At the same instant I was aware that both beings—the creature and the
woman—were moving rapidly toward me.

A pain like a sharp sword dived deep down into me and twisted horribly
through my heart, for as I saw them coming I realized in one swift
moment of terrible intuition that they had their life in me, that they
were born of my own being, and were indeed
projections of myself
.
They were portions of my consciousness projected outwardly into
objectivity, and their degree of reality was just as great as that of
any other part of me.

With a dreadful swiftness they rushed toward me, and in a single second
had merged themselves into my own being; and I understood in some
marvellous manner beyond the possibility of doubt that they were
symbolic of my own soul: the dull animal part of me that had hitherto
acknowledged nothing beyond its cage of minute sensations, and the
higher part, almost out of reach, and in touch with the stars, that for
the first time had feebly awakened into life during my journey over the
hill.

I forget altogether how it was that I escaped, whether by the window or
the door. I only know I found myself a moment later making great speed
over the moor, followed by screaming birds and shouting winds, straight
on the track downhill toward the Manor House. Something must have
guided me, for I went with the instinct of an animal, having no
uncertainties as to turnings, and saw the welcome lights of windows
before I had covered another mile. And all the way I felt as though a
great sluice gate had been opened to let a flood of new perceptions
rush like a sea over my inner being, so that I was half ashamed and
half delighted, partly angry, yet partly happy.

Servants met me at the door, several of them, and I was aware at once
of an atmosphere of commotion in the house. I arrived breathless and
hatless, wet to the skin, my hands scratched and my boots caked with
mud.

"We made sure you were lost, sir," I heard the old butler say, and I
heard my own reply, faintly, like the voice of someone else:

"I thought so too."

A minute later I found myself in the study, with the old folk-lorist
standing opposite. In his hands he held the book I had brought down for
him in my bag, ready addressed. There was a curious smile on his face.

"It never occurred to me that you would dare to
walk
—to-night of all
nights," he was saying.

I stared without a word. I was bursting with the desire to tell him
something of what had happened and try to be patient with his
explanations, but when I sought for words and sentences my story seemed
suddenly flat and pointless, and the details of my adventure began to
evaporate and melt away, and seemed hard to remember.

"I had an exciting walk," I stammered, still a little breathless from
running. "The weather was all right when I started from the station."

"The weather is all right still," he said, "though you may have found
some evening mist on the top of the hills. But it's not that I meant."

"What then?"

"I meant," he said, still laughing quizzically, "that you were a very
brave man to walk to-night over the enchanted hills, because this is
May Day eve, and on May Day eve, you know,
They
have power over the
minds of men, and can put glamour upon the imagination—"

"Who—'
they
?' What do you mean?"

He put my book down on the table beside him and looked quietly for a
moment into my eyes, and as he did so the memory of my adventure began
to revive in detail, and I thought quickly of the shadowy man who had
shown me the way first. What could it have been in the face of the old
folk-lorist that made me think of this man? A dozen things ran like
flashes through my excited mind, and while I attempted to seize them I
heard the old man's voice continue. He seemed to be talking to himself
as much as to me.

"The elemental beings you have always scoffed at, of course; they who
operate ceaselessly behind the screen of appearances, and who fashion
and mould the moods of the mind. And an extremist like you—for
extremes are always dangerously weak—is their legitimate prey."

"Pshaw!" I interrupted him, knowing that my manner betrayed me
hopelessly, and that he had guessed much. "Any man may have subjective
experiences, I suppose—"

Then I broke off suddenly. The change in his face made me start; it had
taken on for the moment so exactly the look of the man on the hillside.
The eyes gazing so steadily into mine had shadows in them, I thought.

"
Glamour!
" he was saying, "all glamour! One of them must have come
very close to you, or perhaps touched you." Then he asked sharply, "Did
you meet anyone? Did you speak with anyone?"

"I came by Tom Bassett's cottage," I said. "I didn't feel quite sure of
my way and I went in and asked."

"All glamour," he repeated to himself, and then aloud to me, "and as
for Bassett's cottage, it was burnt down three years ago, and nothing
stands there now but broken, roofless walls—"

He stopped because I had seized him by the arm. In the shadows of the
lamp-lit room behind him I thought I caught sight of dim forms moving
past the book-shelves. But when my eye tried to focus them they faded
and slipped away again into ceiling and walls. The details of the
hill-top cottage, however, started into life again at the sight, and I
seized my friend's arm to tell him. But instantly, when I tried, it all
faded away again as though it had been a dream, and I could recall
nothing intelligible to repeat to him.

He looked at me and laughed.

"They always obliterate the memory afterward," he said gently, "so that
little remains beyond a mood, or an emotion, to show how profoundly
deep their touch has been. Though sometimes part of the change remains
and becomes permanent—as I hope in your case it may."

Then, before I had time to answer, to swear, or to remonstrate, he
stepped briskly past me and closed the door into the hall, and then
drew me aside farther into the room. The change that I could not
understand was still working in his face and eyes.

"If you have courage enough left to come with me," he said, speaking
very seriously, "we will go out again and see more. Up till midnight,
you know, there is still the opportunity, and with me perhaps you won't
feel so—so—"

It was impossible somehow to refuse; everything combined to make me go.
We had a little food and then went out into the hall, and he clapped a
wide-awake on his gray hairs. I took a cloak and seized a walking-stick
from the stand. I really hardly knew what I was doing. The new world I
had awakened to seemed still a-quiver about me.

As we passed out on to the gravel drive the light from the hall windows
fell upon his face, and I saw that the change I had been so long
observing was nearing its completeness, for there breathed about him
that keen, wonderful atmosphere of eternal youth I had felt upon the
inmates of the cottage. He seemed to have gone back forty years; a veil
was gathering over his eyes; and I could have sworn that somehow his
stature had increased, and that he moved beside me with a vigour and
power I had never seen in him before.

And as we began to climb the hill together in silence I saw that the
stars were clear overhead and there was no mist, that the trees stood
motionless without wind, and that beyond us on the summit of the hills
there were lights dancing to and fro, appearing and disappearing like
the inflection of stars in water.

From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my inclinations
had been towards microscopic investigations. When I was not more than
ten years old, a distant relative of our family, hoping to astonish my
inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a
disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was
sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus,
magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct
and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my
imagination to a preternatural state of excitement.

Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained to
me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope, related to
me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished through its agency,
and ended by promising to send me one regularly constructed,
immediately on his return to the city. I counted the days, the hours,
the minutes, that intervened between that promise and his departure.

Meantime I was not idle. Every transparent substance that bore the
remotest resemblance to a lens I eagerly seized upon, and employed in
vain attempts to realize that instrument, the theory of whose
construction I as yet only vaguely comprehended. All panes of glass
containing those oblate spheroidal knots familiarly known as
"bull's-eyes" were ruthlessly destroyed, in the hope of obtaining
lenses of marvelous power. I even went so far as to extract the
crystalline humour from the eyes of fishes and animals, and endeavored
to press it into the microscopic service. I plead guilty to having
stolen the glasses from my Aunt Agatha's spectacles, with a dim idea of
grinding them into lenses of wondrous magnifying properties,—in which
attempt it is scarcely necessary to say that I totally failed.

At last the promised instrument came. It was of that order known as
Field's simple microscope, and had cost perhaps about fifteen dollars.
As far as educational purposes went, a better apparatus could not have
been selected. Accompanying it was a small treatise on the
microscope,—its history, uses, and discoveries. I comprehended then
for the first time the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dull veil
of ordinary existence that hung across the world seemed suddenly to
roll away, and to lay bare a land of enchantments. I felt towards my
companions as the seer might feel towards the ordinary masses of men. I
held conversations with nature in a tongue which they could not
understand. I was in daily communication with living wonders, such as
they never imagined in their wildest visions. I penetrated beyond the
external portal of things, and roamed through the sanctuaries. Where
they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass, I
saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to
physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as
fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould,
which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped away
from her jam pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew,
enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage
and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these
microscopic forests, hung strange fruits glittering with green, and
silver, and gold.

It was no scientific thirst that at this time filled my mind. It was
the pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been
disclosed. I talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my
microscope, I dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night,
poring over the marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who,
having discovered the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive
glory, should resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to
mortal the secret of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this
moment. I destined myself to be a microscopist.

Of course, like every novice, I fancied myself a discoverer. I was
ignorant at the time of the thousands of acute intellects engaged in
the same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a
thousand times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek,
Williamson, Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schmaltz, Dujardin, Staccato, and
Schlseiden were then entirely unknown to me, or if known, I was
ignorant of their patient and wonderful researches. In every fresh
specimen of cryptogamic which I placed beneath my instrument I believed
that I discovered wonders of which the world was as yet ignorant. I
remember well the thrill of delight and admiration that shot through me
the first time that I discovered the common wheel animalcule (
Rotifera
vulgaris
) expanding and contracting its flexible spokes, and seemingly
rotating through the water. Alas! as I grew older, and obtained some
works treating of my favorite study, I found that I was only on the
threshold of a science to the investigation of which some of the
greatest men of the age were devoting their lives and intellects.