Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [124]
“The cloth is no mere token,” he whispered, glancing toward the hall where Mrs. Molebury had shuffled away. “It is no outward and visible sign of my grief, though I am well acquainted with that constant article and need no black weavings to remind me. The fading of his life, the hectic fire in his cheeks, the heart’s blood on his lips: these things are never far away from my daily meditations. But it is something else.”
His hands were clenched in his lap, as if they had seized hold of a secret that they found difficult to disclose.
I waited, letting the drink restore me, gazing at him while my pulse flickered, as if my very blood already knew something fearsome that I did not.
At last he stood and leaned against the mantelpiece, his loose hair falling forward and half hiding the expressive face with its long crooked Saxton nose and the dark blue eyes.
“Can you not tell me?”
He turned his head slightly, staring intently at me as though he wished with all his heart to share a burden that oppressed its inmost chambers.
Then, looking up at the bound mirror, he said, “It’s a beautiful glass.”
“Shall we take away the pall? Let a little reflective light into the room?”
He gave me another glance freighted with unease. “You don’t know what you ask. And yet, we might as well.”
I helped him with the cloth, tugging it carefully from the oval mirror, and stood with my head cocked, the black spill in my arms, to examine the gilded and hand-carved souvenir of the Revolution, its massive wooden frame topped with a shrieking eagle, one taloned foot upraised, grasping a sheaf of arrows.
“What a fine piece of work,” I said, admiring the boldness of the carving.
Saxton stumbled, stepping back from the mantelpiece. I reached to help him and, as I saw the pallor of his face, swung round to gaze into the looking glass. Then I turned in confusion, not yet comprehending—searching for another mirror, perhaps, or for a portrait of one of the Saxton twins. I have long been prone to mild palpitations of the heart; and as I felt that temperamental organ jump a beat and then race to make up for the lost time, I pressed one hand hard against my chest.
“What do you see?” he said hoarsely.
“I see the two of us.” I hesitated to say more, the hair at my nape prickling. Like an animal in blackfly season, I gave a twitch and shivered to cast my biting fears away.
“And is that all? Is that all you see?”
The mug trembled in my hand, and I gripped it harder and with both hands. I drained the rest of the brandy and hard cider before I spoke.
“I see myself. I see you. But there is unmistakably something deeper in the mirror.” Coldness swirled around me, as though a key or twist of paper had been plucked from a lock and let in a piercing gust of air. I felt some reluctance to name the vision, as if it would somehow make real what could not be real, but at last I added these words, my voice unsteady: “A face. It resembles the features of Edward. Not as in life, it seems.”
Saxton slumped into a wing chair by the fire, shuttering his face in his hands as for some moments his shoulders shook with sobs. Then he recovered himself, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.
“I fancied for a time that I might be mad,” he said. “I was afraid to be among company, fearful what they would detect. I could not bear to risk a confidence—what might have happened to my reputation in this place? You know I was to be married to Miss Mathers, my dear Daphne . . . That blissful date has been postponed indefinitely, perhaps until the end of time. I have told her only that the break from Edward was more grievous than I had foreseen, and that I need some months to recover. More than that her family does not know, and I cannot explain.”
His voice gathered power, rushing through the story. “As the days passed, I became demoralized. No longer was I sure which of us was genuine.” The fingers of his right hand plucked at the flame-weave fabric of the chair. “I would catch glimpses of his face everywhere, denying reason. I met him in the sides of polished bowls, in pools