Flood the
room with sunshine; stand before this glass with youth and hot blood
tingling on your cheeks; and the glass will give back neither sun nor
colour; but your own face, blue and dead, and behind it a horror of
inscrutable shadow.
Since I heard this mirror's history, I have stood more than once and
twice before it, and peered into this shadow. And these are the
simulacra I seem to have seen there darkly.
I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, hemmed in on two sides by a
grave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moors
climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and
wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the
angles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct
that this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room to
the left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will
belong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch.
Four children are within--three girls and a boy--and they are
disputing over a box of wooden soldiers. The eldest girl, a plain
child with reddish-brown eyes, and the most wonderfully small hands,
snatches up one of the wooden soldiers, crying, "This is the Duke of
Wellington! This shall be the Duke!" and her soldier is the gayest
of all, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part.
The second girl makes her choice, and they call him "Gravey" because
of the solemnity of his painted features.
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