“You would not have blood
on your hands. My God!” he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, “you
cannot mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?”

“No. I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with this
cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in it is not
done, I shall call the nearest policeman. That is all.”

“I must go now. I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear this. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Austin.”

The door shut, but in a moment it was open again, and Austin stood,
white and ghastly, in the entrance. “I was forgetting,” he said, “that I too have something to tell. I have
received a letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He says that he
attended Meyrick for three weeks before his death.”

“And does he say what carried him off in the prime of life? It was not
fever?”

“No, it was not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter
collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some severe shock. But
he states that the patient would tell him nothing, and that he was
consequently at some disadvantage in treating the case.”

“Is there anything more?”

“Yes. Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: ‘I think this is all the
information I can give you about your poor friend. He had not been long
in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one, with the exception of a
person who did not bear the best of characters, and has since left—a
Mrs. Vaughan.’”




VIII
THE FRAGMENTS


[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert Matheson,
of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of apoplectic seizure,
at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript paper was found, covered
with pencil jottings. These notes were in Latin, much abbreviated, and
had evidently been made in great haste. The MS. was only deciphered
with difficulty, and some words have up to the present time evaded all
the efforts of the expert employed. The date, “XXV Jul. 1888,” is
written on the right-hand corner of the MS. The following is a
translation of Dr. Matheson’s manuscript.] “Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be
published, I do not know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never
take the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of what is
here written, not only on account of my oath given freely to those two
persons who were present, but also because the details are too
abominable. It is probably that, upon mature consideration, and after
weighting the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or at
least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion,
to use it or to burn it, as he may think fit. “As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure
that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could
hardly think, but in a minute’s time I was sure that my pulse was
steady and regular, and that I was in my real and true senses. I then
fixed my eyes quietly on what was before me. “Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of
corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or
accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying
there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the
flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the
human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
adamant, began to melt and dissolve. “I know that the body may be separated into its elements by external
agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw. For here
there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused
dissolution and change. “Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before
my eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from
itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the
beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to
the depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life,
which makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed. “The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of
night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and
without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were
presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a
manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no
colours represented in it. “I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then
the ladder was ascended again... [_here the_ MS. _is illegible_] ...for
one instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will
not farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in
ancient sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava,
too foul to be spoken of... as a horrible and unspeakable shape,
neither man nor beast, was changed into human form, there came finally
death. “I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul,
here write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be
true. “ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr.”


...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The
burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could tell
it to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows
nothing of that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die,
lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun
and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel’s hand, called and
summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we
tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name
under a figure. I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that
resemblance, which struck me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw
the portrait, which filled the cup of terror at the end. What this can
mean I dare not guess. I know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and
yet in the last agony Mary’s eyes looked into mine. Whether there can
be any one who can show the last link in this chain of awful mystery, I
do not know, but if there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are
the man. And if you know the secret, it rests with you to tell it or
not, as you please. I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town. I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be
able to guess in which part. While the horror and wonder of London was
at its height—for “Mrs. Beaumont,” as I have told you, was well known
in society—I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief
outline, or rather hint, of what happened, and asking him to tell me
the name of the village where the events he had related to me occurred. He gave me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because
Rachel’s father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had
gone to a relative in the State of Washington six months before.