Chapter 17

THE GREAT CHANGE.

The Bacillus of Beauty! Was the poor man insane? Had much study made of him a monomaniac babbling in a dream of absurdities? Do you wonder that I doubted?

And yet--the thought flashed through my mind that things almost as strange have become the commonplace. I had seen the bones of my own hand through the veiling flesh. I had listened to a voice a thousand miles away. I had seen insects cut in two, grafted together, head of one and tail of another, and living. I had seen many, many marvels which science has wrought along the lines of evolution. And yet--

My dream; my desire always! If it could be!

As I stared open-mouthed at the Professor, he began once more:--

"T'e danger, t'e risk--t'ere is none. You shall see. It is as harmless as--"

"Never mind about that!" I interrupted. "How would I look? Would it change me totally? Would I really be the most beautiful?--"

I stopped, blushing at my own eagerness.

"Absolutely; I svear it. T'e most perfectly beautiful voman in t'e vorld. Mein Gott, yes. How not? Never vas t'ere yet a perfectly beautiful voman. Not von. All have defects; none fulfills t'e ideal. You? You vill look like yourself. I do not miracles. T'e same soul vill look out of your eyes. You vill be perfect, but of your type. T'e same eyes, more bright; t'e same hair, more lustrous and abundant; t'e same complexion clear and pure; t'e same voman as she might have been if t'e race had gone on defeloping a hundred t'ousand years. Look you. Some admire blondes; some brunettes. You are not a Svede to be white, an Italian to be black. You are a brown American. You shall be t'e most beautiful brown American t'at efer lifed. And you shall be first. Vit' you as an example we shall convince t'e vorld. Ve shall accomplish in t'ree generations t'e vork of a hundred t'ousand years of defelopment. How vill humanity bless us if we can raise, out of t'e slums and squalor, out of t'e crooked and blind and degraded, out of t'e hospitals and prisons, t'e spawning dregs of humanity and make t'em perfect! T'ey shall valk t'e eart' like gods, rejoicing in t'eir strengt'. No more failures, no more abnormalities. Nature's vork hastened by science, aeons of veary vaiting and slow efolution forestalled by--by me!"

The little Professor stood erect, his eye fixed on mine, his mien commanding. I had never looked on man so transfigured.

The thought was intoxicating me, driving me wild. I tried to think, to struggle against the tide that was sweeping me away. He seemed to be hypnotizing me with his grave, uncanny eye. I could not move, I could not speak.

"You may ask," Darmstetter went on--though I had not thought of asking--"if t'e beauty vould be hereditable; if as an acquired characteristic, it vould pass to descendants, or, if each child vill not haf to be treated anew. I believe no. It is true t'at acquired traits are not hereditable. T'ere Weissmann is right, v'atefer doubters may say. You know t'e t'eory. T'e blacksmit's muscles are not transmitted to his son t'e clerk; but t'e black hair t'at he got from his fat'er. Only after fery many generations of blacksmit's could a boy be born who vould grow up as a clerk vit' blacksmit' muscles. Efolution shapes t'e vorld, yes; but t'e process is so slow, so slow! So education, modification, must begin afresh vit' each generation and continue forefer. But t'is bacillus does not add ornament to t'e outside. It is not like t'e masseuse, vit' her unguents and kneading. It changes all t'e nature. It is like compressing a million years of education by natural selection into von lifetime. T'at is my t'eory. I do not know--it is not yet tried--but how ot'ervise? Ve but hasten t'e process, as t'e chemist hastens fermentation; Nature constructs, she does not adapt or alter or modify. Ve produce beauty by Nature's own met'od. V'y not hereditary?"

I had made up my mind.

"I'll do it," I cried, no longer able to resist, for the fever of it was in my blood. "You shall make your attempt on me! It can do no harm. I do not see how it can accomplish all you claim, but if you think--it's an experiment full of possibilities--in the interests of science--"

"Interest of humbug!" snapped Prof. Darmstetter, his own sarcastic self again. "You consent because you vant to be beautiful. You care not'ing for science. I can trust you vit' my secret. You need svear no oat's not to reveal it. You vant to be t'e only perfect voman in t'e vorld, and so you shall be, for some time. T'at is right. T'at is your revard."

My cheeks flushed at his injustice. I do care for others. I am not selfish--not more than everybody. And yet--at that moment I feared him and his knowledge; I shuddered at nameless terrors.

Really, I often wonder that I ever had the courage to try. And oh, I am so glad!

Now there is no more fear. Darmstetter is my servant, if I will it. As for his marvellous power, I shall bless it and reverence it all my life. I thank God for letting me know this man. It is too wonderful--too wonderful for words!

The transformation was slow at first. The beginning--such an anxious time. Every day I studied myself and watched and waited for the first sign of growing grace, for the dawning glory. Sometimes I thought I could see the change already under way, and then again the same plain Nelly Winship looked at me from the uncomplimentary glass, and away flew all my hopes.

It was the fading of a little scar on my thumb that first let me know the blessed truth. Now I can scarcely see the place where it was, and I'm sure no one else would notice it. It will never go away entirely. Prof. Darmstetter says I am not proof against wounds and old age, because these are a part of Nature's great plan. But it faded, faded!

And my ears! How I used to hate their prominence! But soon they snuggled closer to my beautiful, beautiful face--and I'm in sure I don't blame them. Every morning when I woke, my shining eyes and the bloom of my cheeks told me I was growing perfect, just as he said I must do. Though I'm not yet quite perfect.

I could sit at my glass and look for hours at my reflected image--if it weren't for Kitty--and--

Why, it seems like another girl, and such a girl as never the world saw before--not me, but Her. Sometimes times I fear Her; but oftener and oftener, as I get used to the lovely vision, I want to hug Her right out of the cold mirror and kiss Her and pat Her smooth cheek like a child's, and put pretty clothes upon Her, as if she were a doll.

And then I try to realise that Her is Me, my own self, and I just cannot believe it! I look from the reflected image to a little photograph of the Helen Winship I once knew, and back again to the glass, and wonder, and thank God, and shudder with awe of my own loveliness. I luxuriate in it, I joy in it, I feel it in every fibre of my being. I am as happy as a queen. I am a queen--or She is.

I am but slightly taller. My form is more rounded and of better mould, but I am still slender. My face is the same face but--how can I express it? A Venus with the--the expression of a Western schoolgirl pursuing special studies in New York, looks at me with Her eyes. They are the eyes of Helen Winship, but larger and fuller orbed and more lustrous, with an appeal that makes me fall in love with myself, as I look. The nose is longer and straighter, the cheeks fuller and fairer, the chin daintier, the neck--ah, well, why shouldn't I be frank? I am beautiful!

And the complexion--still so strange I do not say "my complexion"--clear, fair, rosy all in one, with the fineness and purity of a baby's; it is the most indescribable of all the marvels that glow in my glass. Before, I had the rather sallow, powder-excusing skin of so many Western girls. Now it is perfect. I love to gaze by the hour at my own beauty. I should be renamed Narcissa.

My voice, too, is glorious. I have to school myself not to start at the sound of it when I speak. And most of all, what most impresses me when I try to consider myself fairly--candidly--critically--is the appearance of strength, of health, of unbounded power and deathless youth--as if the blood of generations of athletic girls and free, Viking men ran in my veins. I am, I believe, the only perfectly healthy woman on earth.

Will the gods smite me for my happiness? Are they jealous? Ah, well, I have never lived until now, and if I can stay a little while like this, I shall be satisfied; I shall be ready to die. If only beauty does not vanish as suddenly as it came! If it did, I should kill myself.

There are disadvantages. Such a time as I'm having with my clothes! Money to buy new is not so plenty as I could wish, though the $75 a month that Father sends was more than enough until the change. I'm saving to buy a microscope--a better one than those loaned to students at the laboratory; so I have to let out and contrive--I who so hate a needle!

And the staring admiration that is lavished on me everywhere! I suppose I'll get used to it; but it's a new experience. I like to be looked at, too, much as it embarrasses me. My loveliness is like a beautiful new dress; one is delighted to have it, but terribly shy about wearing it, at first.

Admiration! Why, the mystified music master is ready to go down on his knees to me, the janitor and the page boys are puzzled. I wonder--I wonder what John will say, I almost dread to think of his seeing me so; yet it will be the greatest test. Test! I need none!

The girls in the laboratory are divided between awe and envy, and Kitty Reid--poor Kitty! She began by being puzzled, then grew panic stricken.

The first time she noticed--I shall always remember it--was when I came in from the college one day, still skeptical of change, yet hoping it might be so.

"Why, you've a new way of doing your hair--no; same old pug--but somehow--you're looking uncommon fit to-day," she said glancing up from her drawings.

My heart leaped for joy. It was true then! It was true! But remembering Miss Coleman, I forced myself to reply as quietly as I could:--

"My genius must be beginning to sprout."

A little later Kitty was in constant mystification.

"How do you do it?" she would demand. "What have you got? Can't you let me into the secret? I just think you might introduce me to the fairy godmother."

If I were to tell any one, it would be Kitty, of course. Such a dear little red-headed angel she would make! But it would not be fair to Prof. Darmstetter. He is not ready yet. So I can only sham ignorance and joke with her about milk baths and cold cream and rain water. Now that she has reached the stage of fright, I have great fun with her.

"The age of miracles has come again," she says a hundred times a day. "I can't believe my eyes! How is it that you are growing so beautiful? Is it witchcraft?"

"Am I better looking?" I inquire languidly. "Well, I'm glad of it. I had an aunt who was well-favoured when she was young; it's high time I took after her, if I'm ever going to."

"No living aunt ever looked as you do now," Kitty will mutter, shaking her head. "I don't know what to think. I'm half afraid of you."

To tell the truth, she's more than half afraid of me, and I delight in mystifying her all I can.

But the strangest thing of all, the most ridiculous thing, considering his age, the oddest thing when one remembers that he himself is its creator--Professor Darmstetter is half in love with the beauty he has made; he would be, if he might, the gray and withered Pygmalion of my Galatea!