XV.
THE PLATTNER STORY.
Whether the story of Gottfried Plattner is to be credited or not is apretty question in the value of evidence. On the one hand, we have sevenwitnesses--to be perfectly exact, we have six and a half pairs of eyes,and one undeniable fact; and on the other we have--what is it?--prejudice,common-sense, the inertia of opinion. Never were there seven morehonest-seeming witnesses; never was there a more undeniable fact than theinversion of Gottfried Plattner's anatomical structure, and--never wasthere a more preposterous story than the one they have to tell! The mostpreposterous part of the story is the worthy Gottfried's contribution (forI count him as one of the seven). Heaven forbid that I should be led intogiving countenance to superstition by a passion for impartiality, and socome to share the fate of Eusapia's patrons! Frankly, I believe there issomething crooked about this business of Gottfried Plattner; but what thatcrooked factor is, I will admit as frankly, I do not know. I have beensurprised at the credit accorded to the story in the most unexpected andauthoritative quarters. The fairest way to the reader, however, will befor me to tell it without further comment.
Gottfried Plattner is, in spite of his name, a freeborn Englishman. Hisfather was an Alsatian who came to England in the 'sixties, married arespectable English girl of unexceptionable antecedents, and died, after awholesome and uneventful life (devoted, I understand, chiefly to thelaying of parquet flooring), in 1887. Gottfried's age is seven-and-twenty.He is, by virtue of his heritage of three languages, Modern LanguagesMaster in a small private school in the south of England. To the casualobserver he is singularly like any other Modern Languages Master in anyother small private school. His costume is neither very costly nor veryfashionable, but, on the other hand, it is not markedly cheap or shabby;his complexion, like his height and his bearing, is inconspicuous. Youwould notice, perhaps, that, like the majority of people, his face was notabsolutely symmetrical, his right eye a little larger than the left, andhis jaw a trifle heavier on the right side. If you, as an ordinarycareless person, were to bare his chest and feel his heart beating, youwould probably find it quite like the heart of anyone else. But here youand the trained observer would part company. If you found his heart quiteordinary, the trained observer would find it quite otherwise. And once thething was pointed out to you, you too would perceive the peculiarityeasily enough. It is that Gottfried's heart beats on the right side of hisbody.
Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried's structure, althoughit is the only one that would appeal to the untrained mind. Carefulsounding of Gottfried's internal arrangements by a well-known surgeonseems to point to the fact that all the other unsymmetrical parts of hisbody are similarly misplaced. The right lobe of his liver is on the leftside, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are similarlycontraposed. What is still more singular, unless Gottfried is a consummateactor, we must believe that his right hand has recently become his left.Since the occurrences we are about to consider (as impartially aspossible), he has found the utmost difficulty in writing, except fromright to left across the paper with his left hand. He cannot throw withhis right hand, he is perplexed at meal-times between knife and fork, andhis ideas of the rule of the road--he is a cyclist--are still a dangerousconfusion. And there is not a scrap of evidence to show that before theseoccurrences Gottfried was at all left-handed.
There is yet another wonderful fact in this preposterous business.Gottfried produces three photographs of himself. You have him at the ageof five or six, thrusting fat legs at you from under a plaid frock, andscowling. In that photograph his left eye is a little larger than hisright, and his jaw is a trifle heavier on the left side. This is thereverse of his present living condition. The photograph of Gottfried atfourteen seems to contradict these facts, but that is because it is one ofthose cheap "Gem" photographs that were then in vogue, taken direct uponmetal, and therefore reversing things just as a looking-glass would. Thethird photograph represents him at one-and-twenty, and confirms the recordof the others. There seems here evidence of the strongest confirmatorycharacter that Gottfried has exchanged his left side for his right. Yethow a human being can be so changed, short of a fantastic and pointlessmiracle, it is exceedingly hard to suggest.
In one way, of course, these facts might be explicable on the suppositionthat Plattner has undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the strengthof his heart's displacement. Photographs may be faked, and left-handednessimitated. But the character of the man does not lend itself to any suchtheory. He is quiet, practical, unobtrusive, and thoroughly sane, from theNordau standpoint. He likes beer, and smokes moderately, takes walkingexercise daily, and has a healthily high estimate of the value of histeaching. He has a good but untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure insinging airs of a popular and cheerful character. He is fond, but notmorbidly fond, of reading,--chiefly fiction pervaded with a vaguely piousoptimism,--sleeps well, and rarely dreams. He is, in fact, the very lastperson to evolve a fantastic fable. Indeed, so far from forcing this storyupon the world, he has been singularly reticent on the matter. He meetsenquirers with a certain engaging--bashfulness is almost the word, thatdisarms the most suspicious. He seems genuinely ashamed that anything sounusual has occurred to him.
It is to be regretted that Plattner's aversion to the idea of post-mortemdissection may postpone, perhaps for ever, the positive proof that hisentire body has had its left and right sides transposed. Upon that factmainly the credibility of his story hangs. There is no way of taking a manand moving him about in space as ordinary people understand space, thatwill result in our changing his sides. Whatever you do, his right is stillhis right, his left his left. You can do that with a perfectly thin andflat thing, of course. If you were to cut a figure out of paper, anyfigure with a right and left side, you could change its sides simply bylifting it up and turning it over. But with a solid it is different.Mathematical theorists tell us that the only way in which the right andleft sides of a solid body can be changed is by taking that body clean outof space as we know it,--taking it out of ordinary existence, that is, andturning it somewhere outside space. This is a little abstruse, no doubt,but anyone with any knowledge of mathematical theory will assure thereader of its truth. To put the thing in technical language, the curiousinversion of Plattner's right and left sides is proof that he has movedout of our space into what is called the Fourth Dimension, and that he hasreturned again to our world. Unless we choose to consider ourselves thevictims of an elaborate and motiveless fabrication, we are almost bound tobelieve that this has occurred.
So much for the tangible facts. We come now to the account of thephenomena that attended his temporary disappearance from the world. Itappears that in the Sussexville Proprietary School, Plattner not onlydischarged the duties of Modern Languages Master, but also taughtchemistry, commercial geography, bookkeeping, shorthand, drawing, and anyother additional subject to which the changing fancies of the boys'parents might direct attention. He knew little or nothing of these varioussubjects, but in secondary as distinguished from Board or elementaryschools, knowledge in the teacher is, very properly, by no means sonecessary as high moral character and gentlemanly tone. In chemistry hewas particularly deficient, knowing, he says, nothing beyond the ThreeGases (whatever the three gases may be). As, however, his pupils began byknowing nothing, and derived all their information from him, this causedhim (or anyone) but little inconvenience for several terms. Then a littleboy named Whibble joined the school, who had been educated (it seems) bysome mischievous relative into an inquiring habit of mind. This little boyfollowed Plattner's lessons with marked and sustained interest, and inorder to exhibit his zeal on the subject, brought, at various times,substances for Plattner to analyse. Plattner, flattered by this evidenceof his power of awakening interest, and trusting to the boy's ignorance,analysed these, and even, made general statements as to their composition.Indeed, he was so far stimulated by his pupil as to obtain a work uponanalytical chemistry, and study it during his supervision of the
evening'spreparation. He was surprised to find chemistry quite an interestingsubject.
So far the story is absolutely commonplace. But now the greenish powdercomes upon the scene. The source of that greenish powder seems,unfortunately, lost. Master Whibble tells a tortuous story of finding itdone up in a packet in a disused limekiln near the Downs. It would havebeen an excellent thing for Plattner, and possibly for Master Whibble'sfamily, if a match could have been applied to that powder there and then.The young gentleman certainly did not bring it to school in a packet, butin a common eight-ounce graduated medicine bottle, plugged with masticatednewspaper. He gave it to Plattner at the end of the afternoon school. Fourboys had been detained after school prayers in order to complete someneglected tasks, and Plattner was supervising these in the small class-roomin which the chemical teaching was conducted. The appliances for thepractical teaching of chemistry in the Sussexville Proprietary School, asin most small schools in this country, are characterised by a severesimplicity. They are kept in a small cupboard standing in a recess, andhaving about the same capacity as a common travelling trunk. Plattner,being bored with his passive superintendence, seems to have welcomed theintervention of Whibble with his green powder as an agreeable diversion,and, unlocking this cupboard, proceeded at once with his analyticalexperiments. Whibble sat, luckily for himself, at a safe distance,regarding him. The four malefactors, feigning a profound absorption intheir work, watched him furtively with the keenest interest. For evenwithin the limits of the Three Gases, Plattner's practical chemistry was,I understand, temerarious.
They are practically unanimous in their account of Plattner's proceedings.He poured a little of the green powder into a test-tube, and tried thesubstance with water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and sulphuric acidin succession. Getting no result, he emptied out a little heap--nearlyhalf the bottleful, in fact--upon a slate and tried a match. He held themedicine bottle in his left hand. The stuff began to smoke and melt, andthen exploded with deafening violence and a blinding flash.
The five boys, seeing the flash and being prepared for catastrophes,ducked below their desks, and were none of them seriously hurt. The windowwas blown out into the playground, and the blackboard on its easel wasupset. The slate was smashed to atoms. Some plaster fell from the ceiling.No other damage was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the boysat first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied he was knocked down andlying out of their sight below the desks. They jumped out of their placesto go to his assistance, and were amazed to find the space empty. Beingstill confused by the sudden violence of the report, they hurried to theopen door, under the impression that he must have been hurt, and haverushed out of the room. But Carson, the foremost, nearly collided in thedoorway with the principal, Mr. Lidgett.
Mr. Lidgett is a corpulent, excitable man with one eye. The boys describehim as stumbling into the room mouthing some of those tempered expletivesirritable schoolmasters accustom themselves to use--lest worse befall."Wretched mumchancer!" he said. "Where's Mr. Plattner?" The boys areagreed on the very words. ("Wobbler," "snivelling puppy," and "mumchancer"are, it seems, among the ordinary small change of Mr. Lidgett's scholasticcommerce.)
Where's Mr. Plattner? That was a question that was to be repeated manytimes in the next few days. It really seemed as though that frantichyperbole, "blown to atoms," had for once realised itself. There was not avisible particle of Plattner to be seen; not a drop of blood nor a stitchof clothing to be found. Apparently he had been blown clean out ofexistence and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would cover asixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression! The evidence of hisabsolute disappearance as a consequence of that explosion is indubitable.
It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the commotion excited in theSussexville Proprietary School, and in Sussexville and elsewhere, by thisevent. It is quite possible, indeed, that some of the readers of thesepages may recall the hearing of some remote and dying version of thatexcitement during the last summer holidays. Lidgett, it would seem, dideverything in his power to suppress and minimise the story. He instituteda penalty of twenty-five lines for any mention of Plattner's name amongthe boys, and stated in the schoolroom that he was clearly aware of hisassistant's whereabouts. He was afraid, he explains, that the possibilityof an explosion happening, in spite of the elaborate precautions taken tominimise the practical teaching of chemistry, might injure the reputationof the school; and so might any mysterious quality in Plattner'sdeparture. Indeed, he did everything in his power to make the occurrenceseem as ordinary as possible. In particular, he cross-examined the fiveeye-witnesses of the occurrence so searchingly that they began to doubtthe plain evidence of their senses. But, in spite of these efforts, thetale, in a magnified and distorted state, made a nine days' wonder in thedistrict, and several parents withdrew their sons on colourable pretexts.Not the least remarkable point in the matter is the fact that a largenumber of people in the neighbourhood dreamed singularly vivid dreams ofPlattner during the period of excitement before his return, and that thesedreams had a curious uniformity. In almost all of them Plattner was seen,sometimes singly, sometimes in company, wandering about through acoruscating iridescence. In all cases his face was pale and distressed,and in some he gesticulated towards the dreamer. One or two of the boys,evidently under the influence of nightmare, fancied that Plattnerapproached them with remarkable swiftness, and seemed to look closely intotheir very eyes. Others fled with Plattner from the pursuit of vague andextraordinary creatures of a globular shape. But all these fancies wereforgotten in inquiries and speculations when on the Wednesday next but oneafter the Monday of the explosion, Plattner returned.
The circumstances of his return were as singular as those of hisdeparture. So far as Mr. Lidgett's somewhat choleric outline can be filledin from Plattner's hesitating statements, it would appear that onWednesday evening, towards the hour of sunset, the former gentleman,having dismissed evening preparation, was engaged in his garden, pickingand eating strawberries, a fruit of which he is inordinately fond. It is alarge old-fashioned garden, secured from observation, fortunately, by ahigh and ivy-covered red-brick wall. Just as he was stooping over aparticularly prolific plant, there was a flash in the air and a heavythud, and before he could look round, some heavy body struck him violentlyfrom behind. He was pitched forward, crushing the strawberries he held inhis hand, and that so roughly, that his silk hat--Mr. Lidgett adheres tothe older ideas of scholastic costume--was driven violently down upon hisforehead, and almost over one eye. This heavy missile, which slid over himsideways and collapsed into a sitting posture among the strawberry plants,proved to be our long-lost Mr. Gottfried Plattner, in an extremelydishevelled condition. He was collarless and hatless, his linen was dirty,and there was blood upon his hands. Mr. Lidgett was so indignant andsurprised that he remained on all-fours, and with his hat jammed down onhis eye, while he expostulated vehemently with Plattner for hisdisrespectful and unaccountable conduct.
This scarcely idyllic scene completes what I may call the exterior versionof the Plattner story--its exoteric aspect. It is quite unnecessary toenter here into all the details of his dismissal by Mr. Lidgett. Suchdetails, with the full names and dates and references, will be found inthe larger report of these occurrences that was laid before the Societyfor the Investigation of Abnormal Phenomena. The singular transposition ofPlattner's right and left sides was scarcely observed for the first day orso, and then first in connection with his disposition to write from rightto left across the blackboard. He concealed rather than ostended thiscurious confirmatory circumstance, as he considered it would unfavourablyaffect his prospects in a new situation. The displacement of his heart wasdiscovered some months after, when he was having a tooth extracted underanaesthetics. He then, very unwillingly, allowed a cursory surgicalexamination to be made of himself, with a view to a brief account in the_Journal of Anatomy_. That exhausts the statement of the materialfacts; and we may now go on to consider Plattner's account of the matter.
&
nbsp; But first let us clearly differentiate between the preceding portion ofthis story and what is to follow. All I have told thus far is establishedby such evidence as even a criminal lawyer would approve. Every one of thewitnesses is still alive; the reader, if he have the leisure, may hunt thelads out to-morrow, or even brave the terrors of the redoubtable Lidgett,and cross-examine and trap and test to his heart's content; GottfriedPlattner himself, and his twisted heart and his three photographs, areproducible. It may be taken as proved that he did disappear for nine daysas the consequence of an explosion; that he returned almost as violently,under circumstances in their nature annoying to Mr. Lidgett, whatever thedetails of those circumstances may be; and that he returned inverted, justas a reflection returns from a mirror. From the last fact, as I havealready stated, it follows almost inevitably that Plattner, during thosenine days, must have been in some state of existence altogether out ofspace. The evidence to these statements is, indeed, far stronger than thatupon which most murderers are hanged. But for his own particular accountof where he had been, with its confused explanations and wellnighself-contradictory details, we have only Mr. Gottfried Plattner's word. Ido not wish to discredit that, but I must point out--what so many writersupon obscure psychic phenomena fail to do--that we are passing here fromthe practically undeniable to that kind of matter which any reasonable manis entitled to believe or reject as he thinks proper. The previousstatements render it plausible; its discordance with common experiencetilts it towards the incredible. I would prefer not to sway the beam ofthe reader's judgment either way, but simply to tell the story as Plattnertold it me.
He gave me his narrative, I may state, at my house at Chislehurst, and sosoon as he had left me that evening, I went into my study and wrote downeverything as I remembered it. Subsequently he was good enough to readover a type-written copy, so that its substantial correctness isundeniable.
He states that at the moment of the explosion he distinctly thought he waskilled. He felt lifted off his feet and driven forcibly backward. It is acurious fact for psychologists that he thought clearly during his backwardflight, and wondered whether he should hit the chemistry cupboard or theblackboard easel. His heels struck ground, and he staggered and fellheavily into a sitting position on something soft and firm. For a momentthe concussion stunned him. He became aware at once of a vivid scent ofsinged hair, and he seemed to hear the voice of Lidgett asking for him.You will understand that for a time his mind was greatly confused.
At first he was under the impression that he was still standing in theclass-room. He perceived quite distinctly the surprise of the boys and theentry of Mr. Lidgett. He is quite positive upon that score. He did nothear their remarks; but that he ascribed to the deafening effect of theexperiment. Things about him seemed curiously dark and faint, but his mindexplained that on the obvious but mistaken idea that the explosion hadengendered a huge volume of dark smoke. Through the dimness the figures ofLidgett and the boys moved, as faint and silent as ghosts. Plattner's facestill tingled with the stinging heat of the flash. He, was, he says, "allmuddled." His first definite thoughts seem to have been of his personalsafety. He thought he was perhaps blinded and deafened. He felt his limbsand face in a gingerly manner. Then his perceptions grew clearer, and hewas astonished to miss the old familiar desks and other schoolroomfurniture about him. Only dim, uncertain, grey shapes stood in the placeof these. Then came a thing that made him shout aloud, and awoke hisstunned faculties to instant activity. _Two of the boys, gesticulating,walked one after the other clean through him_! Neither manifested theslightest consciousness of his presence. It is difficult to imagine thesensation he felt. They came against him, he says, with no more force thana wisp of mist.
Plattner's first thought after that was that he was dead. Having beenbrought up with thoroughly sound views in these matters, however, he was alittle surprised to find his body still about him. His second conclusionwas that he was not dead, but that the others were: that the explosion haddestroyed the Sussexville Proprietary School and every soul in it excepthimself. But that, too, was scarcely satisfactory. He was thrown back uponastonished observation.
Everything about him was profoundly dark: at first it seemed to have analtogether ebony blackness. Overhead was a black firmament. The only touchof light in the scene was a faint greenish glow at the edge of the sky inone direction, which threw into prominence a horizon of undulating blackhills. This, I say, was his impression at first. As his eye grewaccustomed to the darkness, he began to distinguish a faint quality ofdifferentiating greenish colour in the circumambient night. Against thisbackground the furniture and occupants of the class-room, it seems, stoodout like phosphorescent spectres, faint and impalpable. He extended hishand, and thrust it without an effort through the wall of the room by thefireplace.
He describes himself as making a strenuous effort to attract attention. Heshouted to Lidgett, and tried to seize the boys as they went to and fro.He only desisted from these attempts when Mrs. Lidgett, whom he (as anAssistant Master) naturally disliked, entered the room. He says thesensation of being in the world, and yet not a part of it, was anextraordinarily disagreeable one. He compared his feelings, not inaptly,to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window. Whenever he made amotion to communicate with the dim, familiar world about him, he found aninvisible, incomprehensible barrier preventing intercourse.
He then turned his attention to his solid environment. He found themedicine bottle still unbroken in his hand, with the remainder of thegreen powder therein. He put this in his pocket, and began to feel abouthim. Apparently he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered with a velvetymoss. The dark country about him he was unable to see, the faint, mistypicture of the schoolroom blotting it out, but he had a feeling (dueperhaps to a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a hill, and that asteep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green glow along the edge ofthe sky seemed to be growing in extent and intensity. He stood up, rubbinghis eyes.
It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply downhill, and thenstumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of rock towatch the dawn. He became aware that the world about him was absolutelysilent. It was as still as it was dark, and though there was a cold windblowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing of the boughsthat should have accompanied it, were absent. He could hear, therefore, ifhe could not see, that the hillside upon which he stood was rocky anddesolate. The green grew brighter every moment, and as it did so a faint,transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not mitigate, the blackness ofthe sky overhead and the rocky desolations about him. Having regard towhat follows, I am inclined to think that that redness may have been anoptical effect due to contrast. Something black fluttered momentarilyagainst the livid yellow-green of the lower sky, and then the thin andpenetrating voice of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. Anoppressive expectation grew with the growing light.
It is probable that an hour or more elapsed while he sat there, thestrange green light growing brighter every moment, and spreading slowly,in flamboyant fingers, upward towards the zenith. As it grew, the spectralvision of _our_ world became relatively or absolutely fainter.Probably both, for the time must have been about that of our earthlysunset. So far as his vision of our world went, Plattner, by his few stepsdownhill, had passed through the floor of the class-room, and was now, itseemed, sitting in mid-air in the larger schoolroom downstairs. He saw theboarders distinctly, but much more faintly than he had seen Lidgett. Theywere preparing their evening tasks, and he noticed with interest thatseveral were cheating with their Euclid riders by means of a crib, acompilation whose existence he had hitherto never suspected. As the timepassed, they faded steadily, as steadily as the light of the green dawnincreased.
Looking down into the valley, he saw that the light had crept far down itsrocky sides, and that the profound blackness of the abyss was now brokenby a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm. And almostimmediately the limb of a huge heavenly body of bl
azing green rose overthe basaltic undulations of the distant hills, and the monstroushill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate, in green light anddeep, ruddy black shadows. He became aware of a vast number of ball-shapedobjects drifting as thistledown drifts over the high ground. There werenone of these nearer to him than the opposite side of the gorge. The bellbelow twanged quicker and quicker, with something like impatientinsistence, and several lights moved hither and thither. The boys at workat their desks were now almost imperceptibly faint.
This extinction of our world, when the green sun of this other universerose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists. During theOther-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of thevividness with which the things of this world are visible. It becomes ariddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch noglimpse of the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparativelyvivid illumination of this world of ours. Plattner describes the middayof the Other-World, at its brightest, as not being nearly so bright asthis world at full moon, while its night is profoundly black.Consequently, the amount of light, even in an ordinary dark room, issufficient to render the things of the Other-World invisible, on thesame principle that faint phosphorescence is only visible in theprofoundest darkness. I have tried, since he told me his story, to seesomething of the Other-World by sitting for a long space in aphotographer's dark room at night. I have certainly seen indistinctlythe form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, I must admit, veryindistinctly indeed. The reader may possibly be more successful. Plattnertells me that since his return he has dreamt and seen and recognisedplaces in the Other-World, but this is probably due to his memoryof these scenes. It seems quite possible that people with unusuallykeen eyesight may occasionally catch a glimpse of this strange Other-Worldabout us.
However, this is a digression. As the green sun rose, a long street ofblack buildings became perceptible, though only darkly and indistinctly,in the gorge, and after some hesitation, Plattner began to clamber downthe precipitous descent towards them. The descent was long and exceedinglytedious, being so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also byreason of the looseness of the boulders with which the whole face of thehill was strewn. The noise of his descent--now and then his heels struckfire from the rocks--seemed now the only sound in the universe, for thebeating of the bell had ceased. As he drew nearer, he perceived that thevarious edifices had a singular resemblance to tombs and mausoleums andmonuments, saving only that they were all uniformly black instead of beingwhite, as most sepulchres are. And then he saw, crowding out of thelargest building, very much as people disperse from church, a number ofpallid, rounded, pale-green figures. These dispersed in several directionsabout the broad street of the place, some going through side alleys andreappearing upon the steepness of the hill, others entering some of thesmall black buildings which lined the way.
At the sight of these things drifting up towards him, Plattner stopped,staring. They were not walking, they were indeed limbless, and they hadthe appearance of human heads, beneath which a tadpole-like body swung. Hewas too astonished at their strangeness, too full, indeed, of strangeness,to be seriously alarmed by them. They drove towards him, in front of thechill wind that was blowing uphill, much as soap-bubbles drive before adraught. And as he looked at the nearest of those approaching, he saw itwas indeed a human head, albeit with singularly large eyes, and wearingsuch an expression of distress and anguish as he had never seen beforeupon mortal countenance. He was surprised to find that it did not turn toregard him, but seemed to be watching and following some unseen movingthing. For a moment he was puzzled, and then it occurred to him that thiscreature was watching with its enormous eyes something that was happeningin the world he had just left. Nearer it came, and nearer, and he was tooastonished to cry out. It made a very faint fretting sound as it cameclose to him. Then it struck his face with a gentle pat--its touch wasvery cold--and drove past him, and upward towards the crest of the hill.
An extraordinary conviction flashed across Plattner's mind that this headhad a strong likeness to Lidgett. Then he turned his attention to theother heads that were now swarming thickly up the hill-side. None made theslightest sign of recognition. One or two, indeed, came close to his headand almost followed the example of the first, but he dodged convulsivelyout of the way. Upon most of them he saw the same expression of unavailingregret he had seen upon the first, and heard the same faint sounds ofwretchedness from them. One or two wept, and one rolling swiftly uphillwore an expression of diabolical rage. But others were cold, and severalhad a look of gratified interest in their eyes. One, at least, was almostin an ecstasy of happiness. Plattner does not remember that he recognisedany more likenesses in those he saw at this time.
For several hours, perhaps, Plattner watched these strange thingsdispersing themselves over the hills, and not till long after they hadceased to issue from the clustering black buildings in the gorge, did heresume his downward climb. The darkness about him increased so much thathe had a difficulty in stepping true. Overhead the sky was now a bright,pale green. He felt neither hunger nor thirst. Later, when he did, hefound a chilly stream running down the centre of the gorge, and the raremoss upon the boulders, when he tried it at last in desperation, was goodto eat.
He groped about among the tombs that ran down the gorge, seeking vaguelyfor some clue to these inexplicable things. After a long time he came tothe entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from which the heads hadissued. In this he found a group of green lights burning upon a kind ofbasaltic altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging down intothe centre of the place. Round the wall ran a lettering of fire in acharacter unknown to him. While he was still wondering at the purport ofthese things, he heard the receding tramp of heavy feet echoing far downthe street. He ran out into the darkness again, but he could see nothing.He had a mind to pull the bell-rope, and finally decided to follow thefootsteps. But, although he ran far, he never overtook them; and hisshouting was of no avail. The gorge seemed to extend an interminabledistance. It was as dark as earthly starlight throughout its length, whilethe ghastly green day lay along the upper edge of its precipices. Therewere none of the heads, now, below. They were all, it seemed, busilyoccupied along the upper slopes. Looking up, he saw them drifting hitherand thither, some hovering stationary, some flying swiftly through theair. It reminded him, he said, of "big snowflakes"; only these were blackand pale green.
In pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that he never overtook, ingroping into new regions of this endless devil's dyke, in clambering upand down the pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits, and inwatching the drifting faces, Plattner states that he spent the better partof seven or eight days. He did not keep count, he says. Though once ortwice he found eyes watching him, he had word with no living soul. Heslept among the rocks on the hillside. In the gorge things earthly wereinvisible, because, from the earthly standpoint, it was far underground.On the altitudes, so soon as the earthly day began, the world becamevisible to him. He found himself sometimes stumbling over the dark greenrocks, or arresting himself on a precipitous brink, while all about himthe green branches of the Sussexville lanes were swaying; or, again, heseemed to be walking through the Sussexville streets, or watching unseenthe private business of some household. And then it was he discovered,that to almost every human being in our world there pertained some ofthese drifting heads; that everyone in the world is watched intermittentlyby these helpless disembodiments.
What are they--these Watchers of the Living? Plattner never learned. Buttwo, that presently found and followed him, were like his childhood'smemory of his father and mother. Now and then other faces turned theireyes upon him: eyes like those of dead people who had swayed him, orinjured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood. Whenever they lookedat him, Plattner was overcome with a strange sense of responsibility. Tohis mother he ventured to speak; but she made no answer. She looked sadly,steadfastly, and tenderly--a little reproachfully, too, it seemed--into
his eyes.
He simply tells this story: he does not endeavour to explain. We are leftto surmise who these Watchers of the Living may be, or, if they are indeedthe Dead, why they should so closely and passionately watch a world theyhave left for ever. It may be--indeed to my mind it seems just--that, whenour life has closed, when evil or good is no longer a choice for us, wemay still have to witness the working out of the train of consequences wehave laid. If human souls continue after death, then surely humaninterests continue after death. But that is merely my own guess at themeaning of the things seen. Plattner offers no interpretation, for nonewas given him. It is well the reader should understand this clearly. Dayafter day, with his head reeling, he wandered about this strange lit worldoutside the world, weary and, towards the end, weak and hungry. By day--byour earthly day, that is--the ghostly vision of the old familiar sceneryof Sussexville, all about him, irked and worried him. He could not seewhere to put his feet, and ever and again with a chilly touch one of theseWatching Souls would come against his face. And after dark the multitudeof these Watchers about him, and their intent distress, confused his mindbeyond describing. A great longing to return to the earthly life that wasso near and yet so remote consumed him. The unearthliness of things abouthim produced a positively painful mental distress. He was worried beyonddescribing by his own particular followers. He would shout at them todesist from staring at him, scold at them, hurry away from them. They werealways mute and intent. Run as he might over the uneven ground, theyfollowed his destinies.
On the ninth day, towards evening, Plattner heard the invisible footstepsapproaching, far away down the gorge. He was then wandering over the broadcrest of the same hill upon which he had fallen in his entry into thisstrange Other-World of his. He turned to hurry down into the gorge,feeling his way hastily, and was arrested by the sight of the thing thatwas happening in a room in a back street near the school. Both of thepeople in the room he knew by sight. The windows were open, the blinds up,and the setting sun shone clearly into it, so that it came out quitebrightly at first, a vivid oblong of room, lying like a magic-lanternpicture upon the black landscape and the livid green dawn. In addition tothe sunlight, a candle had just been lit in the room.
On the bed lay a lank man, his ghastly white face terrible upon thetumbled pillow. His clenched hands were raised above his head. A littletable beside the bed carried a few medicine bottles, some toast and water,and an empty glass. Every now and then the lank man's lips fell apart,to indicate a word he could not articulate. But the woman did not noticethat he wanted anything, because she was busy turning out papers from anold-fashioned bureau in the opposite corner of the room. At first thepicture was very vivid indeed, but as the green dawn behind it grewbrighter and brighter, so it became fainter and more and more transparent.
As the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer, those footsteps thatsound so loud in that Other-World and come so silently in this, Plattnerperceived about him a great multitude of dim faces gathering together outof the darkness and watching the two people in the room. Never before hadhe seen so many of the Watchers of the Living. A multitude had eyes onlyfor the sufferer in the room, another multitude, in infinite anguish,watched the woman as she hunted with greedy eyes for something she couldnot find. They crowded about Plattner, they came across his sight andbuffeted his face, the noise of their unavailing regrets was all abouthim. He saw clearly only now and then. At other times the picture quivereddimly, through the veil of green reflections upon their movements. In theroom it must have been very still, and Plattner says the candle flamestreamed up into a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears eachfootfall and its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. And the faces!Two, more particularly near the woman's: one a woman's also, white andclear-featured, a face which might have once been cold and hard, but whichwas now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth. The othermight have been the woman's father. Both were evidently absorbed in thecontemplation of some act of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which theycould no longer guard against and prevent. Behind were others, teachers,it may be, who had taught ill, friends whose influence had failed. Andover the man, too--a multitude, but none that seemed to be parents orteachers! Faces that might once have been coarse, now purged to strengthby sorrow! And in the forefront one face, a girlish one, neither angry norremorseful, but merely patient and weary, and, as it seemed to Plattner,waiting for relief. His powers of description fail him at the memory ofthis multitude of ghastly countenances. They gathered on the stroke of thebell. He saw them all in the space of a second. It would seem that he wasso worked on by his excitement that, quite involuntarily, his restlessfingers took the bottle of green powder out of his pocket and held itbefore him. But he does not remember that.
Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for the next, and there wassilence, and then suddenly, cutting through the unexpected stillness likea keen, thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. At that themultitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and a louder crying began all abouthim. The woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the candleflame. At the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of wind, icycold, blew through the host of watchers. They swirled about him like aneddy of dead leaves in the spring, and at the third stroke something wasextended through them to the bed. You have heard of a beam of light. Thiswas like a beam of darkness, and looking again at it, Plattner saw that itwas a shadowy arm and hand.
The green sun was now topping the black desolations of the horizon, andthe vision of the room was very faint. Plattner could see that the whiteof the bed struggled, and was convulsed; and that the woman looked roundover her shoulder at it, startled.
The cloud of watchers lifted high like a puff of green dust before thewind, and swept swiftly downward towards the temple in the gorge. Thensuddenly Plattner understood the meaning of the shadowy black arm thatstretched across his shoulder and clutched its prey. He did not dare turnhis head to see the Shadow behind the arm. With a violent effort, andcovering his eyes, he set himself to run, made, perhaps, twenty strides,then slipped on a boulder, and fell. He fell forward on his hands; and thebottle smashed and exploded as he touched the ground.
In another moment he found himself, stunned and bleeding, sitting face toface with Lidgett in the old walled garden behind the school.
* * * * *
There the story of Plattner's experiences ends. I have resisted, I believesuccessfully, the natural disposition of a writer of fiction to dress upincidents of this sort. I have told the thing as far as possible in theorder in which Plattner told it to me. I have carefully avoided anyattempt at style, effect, or construction. It would have been easy, forinstance, to have worked the scene of the death-bed into a kind of plot inwhich Plattner might have been involved. But, quite apart from theobjectionableness of falsifying a most extraordinary true story, any suchtrite devices would spoil, to my mind, the peculiar effect of this darkworld, with its livid green illumination and its drifting Watchers of theLiving, which, unseen and unapproachable to us, is yet lying all about us.
It remains to add that a death did actually occur in Vincent Terrace, justbeyond the school garden, and, so far as can be proved, at the moment ofPlattner's return. Deceased was a rate-collector and insurance agent. Hiswidow, who was much younger than himself, married last month a Mr.Whymper, a veterinary surgeon of Allbeeding. As the portion of this storygiven here has in various forms circulated orally in Sussexville, she hasconsented to my use of her name, on condition that I make it distinctlyknown that she emphatically contradicts every detail of Plattner's accountof her husband's last moments. She burnt no will, she says, althoughPlattner never accused her of doing so; her husband made but one will, andthat just after their marriage. Certainly, from a man who had never seenit, Plattner's account of the furniture of the room was curiouslyaccurate.
One other thing, even at the risk of an irksome repetition, I must insistupon, lest I seem to favour the credulous, superstitious
view. Plattner'sabsence from the world for nine days is, I think, proved. But that doesnot prove his story. It is quite conceivable that even outside spacehallucinations may be possible. That, at least, the reader must beardistinctly in mind.