Since I heard this mirror's history, I have stood more than once andtwice before it, and peered into this shadow. And these are thesimulacra I seem to have seen there darkly.
I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, hemmed in on two sides by agrave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moorsclimbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning andwuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around theangles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinctthat this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room tothe left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices willbelong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch.Four children are within--three girls and a boy--and they aredisputing over a box of wooden soldiers. The eldest girl, a plainchild with reddish-brown eyes, and the most wonderfully small hands,snatches up one of the wooden soldiers, crying, "This is the Duke ofWellington! This shall be the Duke!" and her soldier is the gayestof all, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part.The second girl makes her choice, and they call him "Gravey" becauseof the solemnity of his painted features. And then all laugh at theyoungest girl, for she has chosen a queer little warrior, much likeherself; but she smiles at their laughter, and smiles again when theychristen him "Waiting Boy." Lastly the boy chooses. He is handsomerthan his sisters, and is their hope and pride; and has a massive browand a mouth well formed though a trifle loose. His soldier shall becalled Bonaparte.
Though the door is closed between us, I can see these motherlesschildren under this same blue mirror--the glass that had helped topale the blood on their mother's face after she left the warm Cornishsea that was her home, and came to settle and die in this bleakexile. Some of her books are in the little bookcase here. They weresent round from the West by sea, and met with shipwreck. For themost part they are Methodist Magazines--for, like most Cornish folk,her parents were followers of Wesley--and the stains of the saltwater are still on their pages.
I know also that the father will be sitting in the room to my right--sitting at his solitary meal, for his digestion is queer, and heprefers to dine alone: a strange, small, purblind man, full of sorrowand strong will. He is a clergyman, but carries a revolver always inhis pocket by day, and by night sleeps with it under his pillow.He has done so ever since some one told him that the moors above wereunsafe for a person with his opinions.
All this the glass shows me, and more. I see the children growingup. I see the girls droop and pine in this dreary parsonage, wherethe winds nip, and the miasma from the churchyard chokes them.I see the handsome promising boy going to the devil--slowly at first,then by strides. As their hope fades from his sisters' faces, hedrinks and takes to opium-eating--and worse. He comes home from ashort absence, wrecked in body and soul. After this there is no restin the house. He sleeps in the room with that small, persistentfather of his, and often there are sounds of horrible strugglingswithin it. And the girls lie awake, sick with fear, listening, tilltheir ears grow heavy and dull, for the report of their father'spistol. At morning, the drunkard will stagger out, and look perhapsinto this glass, that gives him back more than all his despair."The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it," hestammers; "he does his best--the poor old man! but it's all over withme."
I see him go headlong at last and meet his end in the room aboveafter twenty minutes' struggle, with a curious desire at the last toplay the man and face his death standing. I see the second sisterfight with a swiftly wasting disease; and, because she is a solitaryTitanic spirit, refuse all help and solace. She gets up one morning,insists on dressing herself, and dies; and the youngest sisterfollows her but more slowly and tranquilly, as beseems her gentlernature.
Two only are left now--the queer father and the eldest of the fourchildren, the reddish-eyed girl with the small hands, the girl who"never talked hopefully." Fame has come to her and to her deadsisters. For looking from childhood into this livid glass thatreflected their world, they have peopled it with strange spirits.Men and women in the real world recognise the awful power of thesespirits, without understanding them, not having been brought upthemselves in front of this mirror. But the survivor knows themirror too well.
"Mademoiselle, vous etes triste."
"Monsieur, j'en ai bien le droit."
With a last look I see into the small, commonplace church that liesjust below the parsonage: and on a tablet by the altar I read a listof many names. . .
And the last is that of Charlotte Bronte.
THE END.
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