Mr Jones was a student of German, and it happened that Goethe’s Faust was lying on the table and that it caught his eye. He remembered the scene in which Faust conjures the spirits, and thought of the magical symbols of the pentagram, or Solomon’s Seal—a symbol ever potent to protect the student of the Black Art from the perils of his calling. In a moment he was down on his knees, drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk which he providentially had with him in his waistcoat pocket. He moved about while doing this, in order that he might have a fortification large enough to lie down in. He was very careful about the join of the angles and about seeing that no part of himself projected beyond the figure whilst he drew. During the time that he was engaged in this work he became conscious of a growing oppressiveness of the atmosphere: a dark cloud seemed to be forming between himself and the electric light. Suddenly, while he was putting the finishing touch to the last apex, the light went out. He was aware of a faint luminosity near the door. He watched it from his knees. Then it seemed to contract and grow less vague; gradually it took shape—the shape of the face that had glared at him from the fresco. Something seemed to snap in his brain and he swooned.
It was daylight when he came back to consciousness out of a particularly vivid dream of dramatic intensity, in which he had figured as the principal actor. He had been in a procession of youths and maidens, who sang as they danced round him and by his side. He knew, and the knowledge made him proud, that he was the central figure of the procession and an object of reverence to his companions. The procession was approaching Godstanely church. Then the church disappeared and in its stead there was a mound on which stood the white-robed figures of old men with long snowy beards; they were grouped around a great slab of stone, which was supported by two others. One of the white-robed figures, wearing a mask, advanced, and kneeling, proffered him with both hands a goblet from which he was to drink, but to which he was reluctant to put his lips. Then he was suddenly seized from behind, and at this moment the mask fell off and revealed the leering countenance of the devil in the fresco. He struggled in vain. The face came nearer with protruding tongue, which quivered with eagerness. He was suffocated by the monster’s foul breath. Then a drum began to beat, and the sound got louder and louder, till suddenly he was awake and the tapping resolved itself into a repeated knocking at the door.
‘Are you there, Mr Jones?’ It was the voice of his housekeeper. ‘Whatever is the matter, sir? The front door’s wide open and the electric light left on.’
‘I came in late and forgot,’ said Mr Jones, opening the door of his room. ‘The fact is,’ he went on, noticing that his housekeeper was looking at him with surprise, ‘I had a fit or something—No, I’m all right now; get me some breakfast as soon as you can.’
‘That I will, sir; you look as if you had seen a ghost. And the damp has got in terrible; look at the marks on the walls. It gave me a turn, it did, when I came in; I thought it was burglars.’
While having breakfast Mr Jones reflected. He felt that he was in deep waters spiritually, and that he must obtain advice. What better person before whom to lay his peculiar experiences than the vicar of Godstanely? He would explain to him what had happened in the church and offer to make such reparation as was possible. He would tell him of his supernatural visitant—if indeed the thing were not an hallucination; in the latter case he must see a brain specialist.
Mr Jones ascertained from a timetable that there was an early train on Sunday mornings to Hopton. As he breakfasted at 8.30 he reckoned that he could just catch it, and that he would have time enough to get to Godstanely for the morning service. He left with this object, after giving his housekeeper, who begged him to stay at home and rest, certain instructions.
The journey was uneventful. He arrived just as the service was about to begin. As he entered the church he glanced nervously at the fresco, his eyes seeking the spot where the dedication cross had been. The light was too dim for him to distinguish any details, but he thought that there was some difference between the fresco as it was and as it had been when he had last seen it. He had no time for close observation while he was conducted to a pew.
As the service droned its way along, the small size of the church enabled Mr Jones to study the vicar’s appearance attentively. He was a smallish man with deeply-lined face; he might have been fifty years of age or more. He had a noble forehead, but a cast in his left eye rendered his appearance unprepossessing. His expression was both haughty and furtive. It reminded the schoolmaster oddly of a colleague he had once had—a secretive sort of man whom he had disliked, and who, as it turned out, had a guilty secret. By the time the sermon began Mr Jones felt that it would be difficult to approach such a person as the vicar on the subject of his visit. The sermon itself, however, was to give him an opening.
The text was from II Samueclass="underline" ‘He hath cut off those that have familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land’, and the preacher, apropos of Saul’s visit to the witch of Endor, spoke of the long-continued efforts of mankind to obtain knowledge of the future by consulting the dead. It was clear that he had studied necromancy deeply; indeed, he spoke as one having a first-hand knowledge of the subject. So interspersed, however, was his sermon with Latin quotations and references to cabalistic writings that it almost certainly remained unintelligible to his rustic congregation. He was like a man soliloquizing rather than preaching, and his delivery, moreover, was faulty, so that, had it not been for Mr Jones’s intense interest in the subject matter, he would probably have failed to follow the thread. On happening to look round he saw from their vacant expressions that few people besides himself were listening to the preacher. One passage struck Mr Jones particularly. It concerned the visibility of spirits to some persons while they remained invisible to others who were present, and it offered an explanation of the general invisibility of the spirit world. The explanation was mathematical and involved the fourth dimension. We ourselves are unable even to imagine an object which has not three dimensions. We may, however, by analogy, obtain some notion of the way in which the spirit world, which is of four dimensions, can, exceptionally, become visible. If, for example, there were a two-dimensional world—a world in which there existed length and breadth but no thickness—the inhabitants of this world would clearly be unable to perceive the existence of such a world as ours. A three-dimensional object, though quite close, would remain invisible unless it happened to impinge on their two-dimensional world, and, if it did so, it would itself appear as an object of two dimensions. Hence, a four-dimensional object impinging on our world would appear as a thing of three dimensions, though at the same time, since it belonged to a Space which was not ours, it would remain what we call immaterial. Only those people who were attuned, as it were, by some mental twist to this unseen world would in certain circumstances obtain sight of it. The preacher went on to speak of the important scientific knowledge and power which might be obtained by such persons, and he hinted darkly at ways by which the ‘twist’ might be naturally or artificially produced. The secret of the method had been known to certain adepts in the Middle Ages, but the Church had set her face against such researches, the more so as they involved propitiation by sacrifice. In this connection the symbols of religion were of cosmic significance and implied meanings which even the most learned could not understand. At this point Mr Jones thought the preacher glanced in the direction of the fresco, but, as if recalling his wandering attention, he then continued in a more conventional manner. He wound up his discourse with an appeal to his congregation to observe a Christian humility and to accept Divine Providence without seeking curiously to enquire into matters too deep for human understanding.