Dr Duthoit's Vision

Categories: GHOST STORIES FROM LITERARY SOURCES
Scary Books: The Haunters & The Haunted
: ARTHUR MACHEN

I knew a fine specimen of an English abbe when I was at school at

Hereford. This was Dr Duthoit, Prebendary of _Consumpta per Sabulum_ in

Hereford Cathedral, Rector of St Owen's, bookworm and, chiefly,

rose-grower. He was a middle-aged man when I was a little boy, but he

suffered me to walk with him in his garden sloping down to the Wye, near

a pleasaunce of the Vicars Choral, reciting sometimes the poems of

Traherne, hich he had in manuscript, but, for the most part,

demonstrating his progress in the art of growing a coal-black rose. This

was the true work of his life, and nearly forty years ago he could show

blooms whose copper and crimson tints were very near to utter darkness.

I believe that his ideal was never attained in absolute perfection; and

perhaps the perfect end and attainment of desire do not prove happiness

down here below.



After 1880 Prebendary Duthoit and I rarely saw each other, and rarely

wrote. He was at rest among his roses by the quiet Wye, and I dashed to

and fro in wilder waters, but each contrived to let the other know that

he was still alive, and so I was not altogether surprised to see the

Prebendary's queer, niggly writing on an envelope a week or two ago. He

said he had heard of a good deal to talk about.... Well, with a popular

legend with which I am understood to be in some way concerned, and he

thought that an odd experience of his might possibly interest me. I do

not give the text of his letter, chiefly because it is full of Latin

phrases, which I might be called upon to translate.



But the matter is as follows: On the 4th August, the day of the service

at St Paul's, Dr Duthoit was walking up and down and about that pleasant

garden on slopes of the Wye. Just above the water his gardener had

prepared under direction and instruction a plot of ground in a very

special manner. I do not gather the precise purpose of the operation,

but it seems that the soil had been very fine and level for a

superficies of about ten yards. To this place the Prebendary walked,

slowly and reflectively, wishing to assure himself that his orders had

been accurately carried out. The plot had been perfectly level the night

before, but Dr Duthoit wanted to be more than sure about it. But to his

extreme annoyance, when he turned by the fig-tree, he saw that the plot

was very far from even. He is an old man, but his sight is good, and at

a distance of several yards he could discern quite plainly that there

had been mischief. The chosen plot was in a disgraceful state. At first

the Prebendary thought that the Custos' sandy tom-cat had scaled the

wire entanglement on the top of the wall. Then he felt inclined to

consider the ruin done by Scamp, the Bishop's wire-haired fox-terrier,

and then, going across, he put on his spectacles and wondered what had

been at work. For the level which had been so carefully established was

all undone. At first the Doctor thought it was the mischief of some

random beast, this confusion of hills and valleys which had taken place

of the billiard-table of the night before. And then it reminded him of

the raised maps which he had seen in the Diocesan Training Schools, and

then it reminded him more distinctly of a sort of picture map which had

illustrated his morning paper a day or two before. And then he wondered

violently, because he saw that somebody had, with infinite pains, made

this garden plot of his into an exact model of Gallipoli Peninsula.



It was all so ingenious and perfect that the old clergyman held his

wrath for the moment, and peered into this miniature intricacy of peaks

and steeps, and gullies and valleys. He had scarcely gathered himself

together to wonder who had had the ingenious impudence for the mischief,

when amazement once more seized him. For he saw now, stooping down, that

this garden Gallipoli was swarming with life. There were hosts on it and

about it, and then Dr Duthoit forgot all about what we call the

realities and facts of life, forgot that this sort of thing does not

happen, and watched what was happening.



He writes that, queerly enough, he lost all sense of size. He was not a

Gulliver looking down upon Lilliput; the mounds ten inches high became

to him actual and lofty summits. The tiny precipices were tremendous.

And the red ants swarmed to attack the black ants that held the heights

with savage and desperate fury. He says he panted with excitement as he

watched the courage of the attack and defence, the savagery of the

"hand-to-hand" fighting. The black and red fell by myriads, and the

doctor had persuaded himself that he observed amazing incidents of

individual heroism. One particular range seemed to be the especial aim

of the red forces, and they swarmed up victorious and held it for a

while, and then retreated. The doctor could not quite make out the

reason of this. He started violently when his man called to him. Roberts

said he had called for five minutes without getting an answer, and that

the Dean was in a hurry, with only five minutes to spare. So the

Prebendary went into the house in a kind of dwam, as the Scots put it,

and had no notion of what the Dean had to say; and when he got back to

the garden he found his gardener smoothing the plot with a long rake,

and raking in a lot of dead ants with the mould. The gardener said it

was the boys; but the doctor took no notice, and went to the Custos that

night, and the Custos reading his paper a fortnight later began to think

that the old Prebendary was a prophet.



And the Prebendary? He ends his letter: "Quod superius est sicut quod

inferius" ("that which is above is as that which is below"), as the

Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus testifies, and it is my belief

that this is a world battle in the sense which we do not appreciate.

There have been some who have held that the earthly conflict is but a

reflection of the war in heaven. What if it be reflected infinitely, if

it penetrate to the uttermost depths of creation? And if a speck of dust

be a cosmos--the universe--of revolving worlds? There may be battles

between creatures that no microscope shall ever discover.