The Mirror

(1931)

She was alone at last. She had asked them all to go out and leave her alone for the last hour before the ceremony that was to make her the happy bride of Lester Barr. They went out with jest and smiles—all but Old Ellen. If Old Ellen had ever smiled or jested it had been so long ago that nobody remembered it. Old Ellen went out bent and smileless. But before she went out she did something quickly and furtively, in a dark, shadowy corner of the room. She turned at the door and looked for a long moment at Hilary standing wraith-like in her shimmer of satin and tulle. It was no look to fall on a bride. Hilary shivered slightly amid all her glow. But then, Old Ellen had really never liked her. Hilary had always known that, but she forgave Old Ellen for it because she had loved Star so much.

“Ellen, Mr. Barr will be here in half an hour. Let me know when he comes.”

“Ay,” said Old Ellen ungraciously. As she closed the door she muttered contemptuously: “Him and his carneying voice! Ay, he’ll soon be here for his bonny bride. But will she look in it first – will she look in it?”

Hilary heard the mutter, though not the words. She smiled again. Old Ellen hated Lester, of course, because she liked Alec Stanley. Hilary knew Old Ellen would not have been so dour and grim on this bridal day if Alec were the bridegroom.

She was glad Old Ellen had gone out—glad they had all gone out—though they were all dear girls. She wanted to be alone with her wonderful happiness for an hour before she gave herself to him forever.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was too pale for a bride and she had never been beautiful. She had a sweet, dark face, with eyes that no one ever quite knew for blue or gray or green, richly quilled about with black lashes. Her eyebrows might have been drawn in soot, so finely dark they were against her white face. But apart from her eyes she was insignificant, which made all the more marvelous the miracle of Lester Barr’s love. Out of a whole world of beautiful women, his for the asking, he had chosen her.

“This mirror always makes me look a wee bit green,” she thought with girlish petulance.

There was another mirror in the room—a mirror that would not have turned her green—but Hilary had no intention of looking into it. It hung on the wall in the corner by the window. A long oval mirror with a beautiful back of beaten copper. Hilary had turned its face to the wall when she had come to be mistress of Glenwood. She liked the beautiful mellow copper oval, which Old Ellen kept meticulously polished; but there was another reason for her action.

She did not think the mirror was her friend.

She went over to the high, arched, Georgian window looking out on the lawn. What a wretched day it was for a wedding. The sky at sunrise had been blood red, which soon darkened into sullen gray. The waves were moaning drearily on the sandshore. A snarling, quarrelsome wind, which blew an occasional bitter splash of rain against the window, was tormenting the boughs of the big aspen poplar Star had loved. Why could she not help thinking about Star—Star who should have been here to drape her veil and arrange her roses; Star, who had died, nobody knew why, one dark, haunted November afternoon just like this three years ago. She wanted to think of Lester and their exquisite love and the wonderful life before them—and she could think of nothing but Star. She had thought of Star when she wakened that morning to see that wild red sunrise through the trees; she had thought of her all the forenoon of hurry and preparation; and now it almost seemed that Star was with her in the room.

Star, who kept everyone laughing; Star, with her body like a young sapling not to be broken, however it might bend; Star, with her eyes like brown marigolds flecked with glints of gold; Star, with her soul of fire and snow. Glenwood was full of Star; everything about it held some memory of her. Star, running out at bedtime to kiss the flowers good-night; Star, chasing the reflection of the moon along the wet sandshore; Star holding buttercups under her saucy chin; Star with the new red boots she hated, deliberately putting her feet in a pail of buttermilk to ruin them; Star, with a wreath of ox-eye daisies on her bronze hair; Star, singing in the old Glenwood garden lying fragrant and velvety under the enchantment of a waning moon; Star, dancing—why, her very slippers would have danced by themselves the whole night through; lovely Star who loved everything beautiful; and now she was lying in the cold, damp grave in the churchyard and the long grasses and withered leaves must be blowing drearily around it.

Hilary shivered again. What thoughts for a wedding day! But when Lester came he would banish them.

Glenwood, with its colourful, pine-scented garden, full of wind-music and bee-song, that dropped in terraces to the harbour shore where there was always the luring sound of “perilous seas forlorn,” had always been a vital part of her life. She and Star, orphans who lived for the most part with Uncle Paul and Aunt Emily Tempest, spent every summer of their childhood there. Cousins came from everywhere to that old house—cousins who all worshipped Star and thought little about shy, plain Hilary. All but Alec Stanley who lived next door. He had never been fascinated by Star. There had never been anyone but Hilary for him, from the day when he had rescued her from Old Ellen’s ferocious gander. With what a lordly air he had caught the furious hissing creature by its snaky neck and hurled it over the fence. With what boyish tenderness he had turned to poor little seven-year-old Hilary, standing tranced in her childish terror. She had always felt so safe with Alec after that—dear Alec, whom she still liked so much—still loved, if only he were content with that kind of love. But Alec had known, too, from the day of the gander that Hilary had something in her hand for him if he could ever prevail on her to open her hand and give it. And nothing else would do him.

How furious Alec had been with old Great-Uncle Neil who, when he saw Hilary for the first time, had shaken her earnestly by the hand and said,

“Eh, nae beauty—nae beauty.” Alec never forgave people who preferred Star to Hilary. But Hilary found it easy to forgive them. She loved Star so much herself. Who could help loving Star? Her very look said “Come and love me.” Whenever she came into a room everyone in it felt happier. Aunt Mildred loved her and it was common surmise in the clan that she meant to leave Star her money and Glenwood. It was a proof of how greatly Star was loved that no one was jealous because of this.

Even Old Ellen loved Star. Old Ellen had always lived at Glenwood; she was some kind of a cousin of Aunt Mildred’s long-dead husband. Even then she seemed to the children incredibly old. Both Star and Hilary were terribly frightened of her. She always sat in a corner knitting and watching. They thought she must have sat there knitting for a hundred years. She never smiled but sometimes she looked at certain people and laughed maliciously and slyly. Her face was all dead except her eyes which were most horribly alive under the white frost of her hair. Star began by calling her Ancient of Days but soon dropped it. Even Star could not make a joke of Old Ellen.

“She’s a witch,” she told Hilary, “and rides on a broomstick over the harbour at nights.”

“Do you really think so?” whispered Hilary.

“Of course. She always knows what we’re thinking of. That shows she is a witch.”

The mirror hung on the wall of Aunt Mildred’s bedroom—a great long, softly gleaming thing in its ruddy frame. Aunt Mildred’s great-grandfather had brought it home from somewhere abroad and all the children who came to Glenwood were always eager to get into Aunt Mildred’s room and have a peep into the mirror. All but Hilary. Hilary was afraid of the mirror. Sometimes it seemed to her like a friend, sometimes an enemy. She never could decide which. Yet her very fear attracted her to it—she wanted to see if there were really anything to be afraid of. Who knew what face might look out of it—all the shadowy ladies who had once looked into it? Once, when Aunt Mildred had shut her in the room alone for some childish peccadillo, she had fancied for a moment she had seen a face looking at her out of it – a malicious, sneering face. She rather liked to talk to herself in it, but Old Ellen caught her at it once and frightened her from ever doing it again.

“Why mayn’t I talk to it,” she had asked rebelliously.

“Because that looking-glass isn’t like other looking-glasses,” said Old Ellen mysteriously. “There’s a curse on it. Your great-great-grandfather was a bad man. And a woman he scarred with a blow looked in the glass and when she saw her face she cursed it. Ay, her curse is on it. And there’s stories told of it.”

Hilary knew that. She had heard most of the stories at different times, though never in any detail. There was Aunt Mildred’s little sister, Claudia, who had seen—something—in the mirror and had never been “quite right” again. And there was Great-Aunt Kathleen who had gone to meet her lover and go away with him. The lover, coming to her, had been killed in a train wreck and beautiful, selfish Kathleen had hurried back home, thinking no one would know. But the doors were closed against her; her husband had looked in the mirror.

Margaret Tempest had seen her husband dying on a South African veldt in the Boer War on the night he died. And nobody ever knew what Lucia Tempest had seen for Lucia Tempest had dropped the lamp she was holding and her dress caught fire and she was dead in two hours.

Yet the mirror was not always malevolent. Rachel Tempest had known her lover was alive, shipwrecked on the Magdalens, when everyone else was sure for a whole winter that he was drowned. And Jennie Tempest had seen a ghostly minuet danced in it once, and had been none the worse of seeing it.

Not everyone could see things in it. Aunt Mildred had never seen anything, though it had hung in her room for forty years. She laughed at the silly stories that were told of it, and warned the children to put no faith in them. Star did not worry her sunny head about the mirror and its spooks. But Hilary continued to be afraid of it. When she let herself feel it, she always felt that the mirror was going to hurt her dreadfully some day.

So they had grown up. Everybody in the clan took it for granted Alec and Hilary would be married, though no actual engagement existed between them. Star had no acknowledged lover, though she had more beaus than would have been good for the average girl. It did not spoil Star. She was as dear and charming and lovable a girl as she had been a child. There was not a grain of bitterness or envy in her nature.

When Aunt Mildred died suddenly and an amazed clan found that she had left everything to Hilary instead of Star, it had been Star who was the first to fling her arms about Hilary and congratulate her whole-heartedly.

“It should have been you, Star, darling, it should have been you,” protested Hilary, furious with Aunt Mildred.

Star stopped the protesting lips with a kiss.

“I shouldn’t. You are the right one for Glenwood. Besides—” Star was roguish “—it joins the Stanley estate. And again besides—” Star was flushed and dreamy “—I couldn’t live there anyhow for long. I’ve been wanting to tell you, Hilary: up at Aunt Jean’s this summer, I met—”

Hilary never knew who Star had met, never knew who had called that dream into her eyes and that flush into her face. There was an interruption, Star went home in Aunt Jean’s car, and when Hilary got home herself, she found Aunt Jean had carried Star off for another visit.

Hilary wondered who Star’s lover was. It must be a lover—that look, that blush. Well, she would know when Star came back.

But Star never came back. Two days later she had gone out from Aunt Jean’s house—gay, laughing, happy—and next day they had found her dear, drenched little body in the pond below the rock garden.

After a while Hilary came to Glenwood to live. She had never thought she could bear it. But Aunt Emily had died and Uncle Paul wanted to go to live with his daughter. So there was nothing for her but Glenwood—Glenwood without Star, who was in her grave, with a white marble shaft above her.

Stella Tempest. Died November 10th 1925, aged eighteen.

Died, yes. But why? Hilary never ceased to ask that question. Why had Star, who had so much to live for, drowned herself?

At first she could not bear Glenwood. She felt that it was a terrible house full of old tragedies. And it was so strangely empty since Star’s laughter had gone out of it—that sweet laughter that had echoed so often through the twilights of the old place. O, surely Star could not be dead. Not Star. Would she not come stealing up by the birches or along the silvery solitude of the sandshore, wearing her youth like a golden rose? She could not have borne it had it not been for Alec. And after a while the pain grew a little less terrible and she loved Glenwood again with its mad galloping March winds, its winter birches with stars in their hair, its snow of cherry petals in spring and the low continuous thunder of the sea on the harbour bar. Life began to beckon once more; and there was always Alec.

Old Ellen was still at Glenwood. She looked no older—perhaps because it would have been impossible—and she still sat and knitted. When Hilary came she looked at her and said: “It should ha’ been Star.”

“Yes,” said Hilary gently, “but it’s not my fault that it isn’t, Ellen.”

“I’m not saying it is,” muttered Ellen. “But ain’t ye goin’ to find out who sent her to her death, Hilary Tempest, afore ye settle down to your own ease and happiness?”

“How could I find that out? I’ve tried, I’ve tried,” said Hilary wildly. “Nobody knows anything—not even who it was she went to meet. There’s no way of find out.”

“Eh, but there is a way,” said Old Ellen, and would say no more.

Hilary chose Aunt Mildred’s room for her own. It was the nicest room in Glenwood with the finest view. She had it redecorated and refurnished; yet still there seemed something strange and alien in the room, something a little hostile. But is there not something strange about any room that has been long occupied? Death had lurked in it. Love had been rose-red in it. Births had been there—all the passions, all the hopes. It was full of wraiths. No wonder people saw things in the mirror.

The mirror still hung in its old place. She had given up believing those funny old stories about it, but she was still afraid of it. She would have taken it down if Old Ellen had not held up her aged darkened hands in horror over the idea. To pacify Ellen, Hilary left it there, but she turned its face to the wall. Ellen muttered a good deal even over that.

Then she had met Lester Barr. He had kissed her at their second meeting—carelessly, on her cheek. Hilary had never been kissed before. Alec had never dared, and no other man had wanted to. The world still thought Hilary a cold shy girl, but that night she lay in her bed with thoughts that made her cheeks burn hotly in the darkness. The glow at her heart was with her when she woke, and went with her through the day.

He came again to her that evening. His beguiling eyes looked deep into hers, with a look that was a kiss. It sent a strange shiver of delight and terror all over her. She thought of Alec. She tried to be faithful to him and to their implied understanding. But she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Sooner or later Lester would win, if he seriously wished to win. And he left her in no doubt that he did wish to win. There came a night when she sat in the moonlight and looked at the two roads she might walk on through life. One with Lester, one with Alec. She thought of Alec curiously and pityingly—and a little disdainfully. He had given her up very easily; he had not put up any fight to keep her. Well, she knew Alec was like that. He would not want her if she did not want him. She was sorry for him, for somehow she knew, in spite of his passivity, that he was suffering. But he would get over it. She dismissed him very lightly from her thoughts and knew the path she had chosen. Her engagement to Lester Barr was announced. They were to be married in November and spend their honeymoon in Bermuda.

Hilary seemed to move and breathe in a trance of happiness. She could not get used to the miracle of finding herself engaged to Lester Barr. She could not get used to the wonder of her own passionate love for him. And once she had imagined she had loved Alec. Hilary smiled. She knew the difference now. There was only one drop of bitterness in her intoxicating cup: if only Star were here to share and understand and sympathize! She knew her clan rather disapproved this over-speedy wooing. After all, nobody knew much about Lester Barr. He was handsome and well-educated and nobody could deny that he was the newspaper correspondent he called himself. He was one of the Montreal Barrs—a good family, no doubt. After all, Hilary was old enough to please herself. It was a pity about Alec Stanley, but really he was a little slow. He shouldn’t have let Hilary keep him dangling so long. Everybody admitted Lester was charming. Everybody except Old Ellen, who hated him. But then Old Ellen would have hated anyone who was not Alec Stanley.

“But I love Lester and I don’t love Alec, Ellen,” Hilary protested, wondering why she did protest. Why care what Old Ellen thought?

“Ay, I’ve heard infatuation called love afore now,” said Old Ellen dourly.

A car was coming through the gate. It was Lester’s car, and Hilary turned away from the window with a sudden crimson flush. Then she paused. A strange little icy ripple ran over her. The wind for a moment was still and the ensuing silence seemed to hold some profound and terrible meaning. What was the matter with the room? It seemed more hostile and furtive than ever. There was a change in it. Its very shadows were heavy with doom. But in the dim corner where the mirror hung, there was light.

The face of the mirror was turned outward.

Hilary took a step forward. She did not mean to look in it; she meant to turn it back again. This was Old Ellen’s work. Andy why? Hilary seemed to feel a bodiless emotion in the room. She knew she was waiting for something evil and terrible.

Then, before she could help herself, she looked in the mirror.

Hilary never knew how long nor how short a time she stood there. What she saw was not her room, nor her own bridal form. It was as if she looked through a window, not a mirror, at a scene she knew well.

There was a pond under dun, branching, leafless trees and a path heaped with sodden, fallen leaves. And coming along the path to the man who waited for her—Star! Star, an exquisite, shimmering young thing, with face and eyes that were love and rapture incarnate. What was said to her that wiped all that exultant emotion out of her face in a few terrible moments? She held out her hands—Star had had such lovely hands—and said something. The man turned—Hilary saw his face, his handsome, arrogant, beloved face—and laughed. Laughed, and went swiftly away along the dim path. Star watched him go, then she looked straight at Hilary with her terrible tortured young eyes. The next moment, the dull shadowed waters of the pond closed over her.

Hilary sprang forward with a shriek and half fell, half hurled herself against the mirror in a mad effort to get through it to reach Star. But there was nothing there—nothing but a silvery-gleaming glass in a copper frame, reflecting her ghostly face and dark, cloud-like hair.

Hilary stared helplessly about her, sick and cold with agony to the depth of her being. The room was just the same. It seemed indecent that it should be so. The wind at the window seemed living—a bitter malignant thing. Old Ellen hobbled in without a pretense of knocking.

“He’s below,” she said contemptuously. “In the library. What’s your will?”

Hilary did not answer. She went slowly out, past Old Ellen and down the hall, down the stairs, to the room where Lester Barr waited.

He came to meet her, with his eager eyes and seeking lips, but Hilary raised her hand.

“Stop,” she said. “don’t touch me. You—you were Star’s lover. She killed herself because of you.”

“Who told you?” he cried, and betrayed himself. “Hilary, what foolishness is this—”

She silenced him with a look. Now her eyes were neither blue nor green not gray but a flame.

“No one told me. I know. Merciful heavens, that men like you should live!”

For a moment his handsome eyes looked like a snake’s.

“O, well—if you are going off the deep end! There was no need for that little fool of a sister of yours to drown herself. She should have known I couldn’t marry a girl with nothing. Come, Hilary, don’t you be a fool, too. You can’t draw back now; think how you’d be laughed at.”

“As if that matters. I will never look on your face again. You made love to Star because you thought she was Aunt Mildred’s heir—and you pretended to love me for the same reason. You dared!”

Then he laughed. She had known that sooner or later he would laugh, as he had laughed Star to her death.

“What man would marry you for anything but your money? You and your superior airs.”

She was glad he had said that. It set her free. She could despise him now. He went out laughing. Old Ellen was in the hall and Old Ellen was laughing, too—noiselessly. She laughed as she shut the door behind him; but the laughter went out of her dreadful old eyes as she faced Hilary.

“Ellen, send them all away. Tell them there will be no wedding.”

In her own room Hilary tore off her bridal finery. The mirror gleamed tranquilly. She did not turn it to the wall. She was not afraid of it any more.

But she felt desolate and cold and helpless as she looked from her window into the fog that was creeping up around Glenwood.

“What is there in life for me now,” she thought drearily.

Through the dreamlike landscape of the fog went Alec Stanley, crossing his lawn with his old dog slouching at his heels. What mad unreality, what unbelievable nightmare had come between them?

Hilary knew at last that the mirror was her friend.

Editors’ note: “The Mirror” was published in Canadian Home Journal (February 1931), illustrated by Roy Fisher. It is listed in the “Unverified Ledger Titles” section of the 1986 bibliography and was found by Carolyn Strom Collins.

The “Magdalens” referred to early in this story are the Magdalen Islands, located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, between Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. L. M. Montgomery’s father, Hugh John Montgomery, was shipwrecked there before his marriage to Clara Woolner Macneill early in 1874.

Another Montgomery story, “Some Fools and a Saint,” was published in Family Herald in May and June of 1931. Her novel, A Tangled Web, was also published that year.