"As you wish," I replied gravely, accepting the papers.
I hesitated for a moment, glancing at the young girl. Pier radiant freshness seemed to be smothered in that tawdry setting.
"I'll open the window." I ventured; "the place is airless."
The manuscript bore every evidence of hasty writing and was difficult, at first, to read; but after a page or two I grew accustomed to it and went on smoothly enough, my companion, listening quietly, not uttering a word.
What follows here has been copied down word for word from that astounding narrative known as "The Strange Case of Nathaniel Broome":
VIII
Feeling that I have only a short while to live, I must try to set down, as clearly and as concisely as possible, the true story of my unfortunate life.
Scrimgeour, who has proved so big-hearted a friend, has a right to know. How often have I not seen that look of baffled inquiry in his gentle eyes when they rested upon my seemingly quiet, untroubled face!
And Marguerite, my daughter, who has been the object of my deepest affection, what must she think of me! Poor child, she, too, has every right to be told.
But such a tale: fantastic, incredible as the ravings of an opium-haunted nightmare…
My hand trembles; my eyes grow misty; I must make haste before it is too late.
My father, Lemuel Broome, was an artist, and from him, together with great physical beauty, I inherited a deep, aesthetic feeling for the beautiful.
My mother died upon giving birth to me. I was their only child.
I learned, in my childish years, to seek for Beauty and to know Beauty in everything.
"Beauty is Virtue; Ugliness is Sin." "That," my father used to say to me. "is all you know and all you need to know."
Small wonder is it then that as I grew from boyhood, through youth to manhood, sheltered and alone with my father, this doctrine of Beauty grew with me, became a part of my very soul.
I shunned all ugliness; ugly thoughts, ugly places, ugly people. The servants about my father's house and estate were chosen for their good looks and not for their trustworthiness or their honesty.
My education was given me by private tutor at home, so that I need not suffer the vulgar contamination of a public school. In fact, until after his death, I had scarce set foot outside the high stone walls of my father's home.
When I was twenty years of age my father died.
Ignorant as I was of business or of the ugly ways of the world, I was a fair target for the cunning of any scoundrel who might chance to come into my path.
Such an enterprising person was my tutor, James Shirley. He was probably the most physically perfect specimen of a man that I have ever seen; but to that flawless beauty there was added an equally flawless lack of moral principle.
The details of his swindles and more heinous crimes may be found among the prison records. Suffice it to say that before James Shirley died he had succeeded in robbing me of almost everything I possessed. Then, reduced practically to beggary, I met the woman who since became my wife.
Though Angela has been dead fifteen years, I still cannot think of her without emotion. She was the most beautiful woman whom I have ever seen, the most radiantly lovely; a wealth of grace, of tender sweetness and charm. For five years we lived a life of well-nigh perfect happiness.
It is true my wife could never quite understand my unusual outlook upon life. She was amazed and sometimes a little fearful of my acute physical horror of ugliness. Yet, secure in her own surpassing loveliness, she sought only to please me and to be pleasing in my eyes.
Shortly after our daughter Marguerite was born I began to notice a change in Angela. It was not that she had grown less beautiful, for motherhood had only added a new tenderness to her charms. No, the subtle change which I divined in her and mutely wondered at was to be found only in the expression of her eyes. The change which I thought could be noticed in them, however, was something that for a long time I could not find words to explain.
One evening as we sat together talking in the twilight, following some odd remark of hers, I glanced sharply at her and caught the weird expression for a moment in her face.
"My dearest," I exclaimed, "is there something the matter?"
She smiled and the strange look vanished.
"Why do you ask that question?" she returned. Then I told her of the fears which I had lately felt concerning her.
My explanation seemed deeply to move her,
"Oh, my dear, my dear," she cried, "you fill me with horror. For days past I have been trying to argue with myself that it has all been my childish fancy. I have told myself that over and over again. But now… if you, too, have seen it, it must be true!"
"Tell me, for heaven's sake," I cried in alarm, "tell me what it is!"
"Oh, I'm so much afraid! The terror of it has haunted me for so long! And yet you will protect me — if it's humanly possible to be protected."
"That is my right, dear," I answered. "Tell me."
"Come, then," she replied, and led me to the large mirror hanging above the mantel-piece.
"Stand perfectly still behind me, so. and look with all your courage at my reflection in the glass."
White with excitement engendered by the deathly seriousness of her words, I stood as she bade me, and gazed at our two faces, pale and drawn, reflected in the mirror.
Her countenance, beautiful as a madonna's, was aglow from the flickering, mellow light of the grate fire. I stared at her, half mad with her loveliness.
"You have never been so beautiful," I began. The scent from her hair and the nearness of her adorable self; the smoothness of her bare shoulders, made the blood leap intoxicatingly in my veins. I wanted to kneel to her. I yearned with all my soul to worship, to abase my body at her exquisite feet.
"You are wonderfully beautiful—"
"Wait — wait! Keep looking into the mirror!" she whispered.
"Is there — is there any change?" she asked fearfully.
"No," I replied, and she gave a deep sigh of relief. Then slowly her image in the mirror began to grow misty and indistinct.
"It's a trick!" I cried, and my voice seemed high and strained. "It's a trick! You are playing a joke upon me!"
"Then, it is true," I heard her say in a hard, cold voice.
"What — in God's name!"
"Look, look and you shall see!"
The blurred image in the looking-glass started to clear.
But instead of the face of my wife there began to take shape an image so hideous, so ghoulish, that I can only compare it to the disintegration of — of a human corpse!
IX
At this point in the extraordinary narrative I stopped reading. For, happening to glance up from the manuscript, I saw such' horror in my listener's eyes that I had not the courage to continue.
"It is too harrowing," I said. "J must not go on."
"Read, read, my friend," replied Miss Broome, shielding her eyes with her hands. I wondered at the remarkable nervous force displayed by one so young.
"Then first allow me to get you a drink of water," I replied.
She thanked me with a gracious inclination of her head as I returned with the glass. As she accepted it from my hand her cool fingers touched me. Something leaped in my turgid veins at the contact, and I resumed the reading of the story.
X
There was something, however, which I was able to notice even during the panic of fear that possessed me. I saw that the mysterious transmission of flesh had not changed the eyes. I seized my wife by the shoulders and turned her sharply about.
Her face was as I had always seen it, radiantly, hauntingly beautiful. The only change was in her eyes. Staring searchingly into them I tried with all my mind to read what I saw there. And the look that was in them was Pain.