After Many Years
Page 23
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 th
e 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.
Tomorrow Comes
(1934)
Judith Grayson—whose mother called her Judy and whose grandmother called her Hester—was born expecting things to happen. That they seldom did happen, even at Bartibog, under the watchful eyes of Grandmother and The Woman, never blighted her expectations in the least, especially at Bartibog. Things were just bound to happen at Bartibog. If not today then tomorrow. Of course The Woman had once said dourly, when Judy had promised to do something tomorrow: “Tomorrow never comes, Hester.” But Judy knew better. Tomorrow would come sometime. Some beautiful morning at Bartibog you would wake up and find it was Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things would happen—wonderful things. You might even have a day when you would be free to do as you liked, unwatched by Grandmother and The Woman, though that seemed almost too good ever to happen, even in Tomorrow. Or you might find out what was along that road—that wandering, twisted road, like a nice red snake—which led to the End of the World. You might even discover that the Island of Happiness was at the End of the World. Judy had always, all through her seven years of life, felt sure the Island of Happiness was somewhere if one could but find it.
But how could you explore for it, or for anything else, when Grandmother and The Woman bossed you all the time and wouldn’t let you out of their sight? Bossing was not Judy’s word. She had taken it over from Timothy Salt and thought it very expressive. Judy especially resented being bossed by The Woman. She did not like it in Grandmother, of course, but you felt reluctantly that perhaps a grandmother had a right to boss you. What right had The Woman?
The Woman’s name was really Martha Monkman, as Judy knew perfectly well, but once, long ago, she had heard someone say that Martha Monkman was old Mrs. Sinclair’s “woman” and Judy never thought of her as anything else after that. It suited her so well, especially when spelled, as Judy always saw it, with a capital—a great big, forbidding W, as full of angles and corners as Martha Monkman herself.
“I hate her,” Judy had once said passionately to Mother.
“Hush, hush.” Mother was always hush-hushing. Both Grandmother and The Woman would not have any noise about the house. Everybody had to move softly, speak softly, even, so Judy felt, think softly. Judy often felt perversely that she wanted to yell loud and long. She would do it sometime—when Tomorrow came—and O, how she would enjoy the look on The Woman’s face!
“Do you like her, Mother?” demanded Judy.
“Martha is very honest and faithful,” said Mother wearily. “She has been your grandmother’s companion for forty years.”
Judy did not thi
nk this was an answer at all.
“She hates me,” said Judy.
“Judith Grayson! Martha doesn’t—”
“She does…and Grandmother, too. They both do. You know they do, Mother.”
Mother looked aghast. She tried feebly to change Judy’s mind but she did not seem to be able to think of any good arguments. Judy brushed them all aside.
“Why do they hate me, Mother?”
“You are an absurd child. Grandmother and Martha are both old people and old people are easily disturbed and worried. Of course you annoy them sometimes. And…and…when they were young, children were brought up much more strictly than they are now. They cling to the old way.” There was no use in trying to extract anything from Mother. Judy knew this and gave it up. But she permitted herself one satisfaction…although she looked carefully around first to make sure the door was shut.
“Grandmother and The Woman are two tyrants,” she said deliberately, “and when Tomorrow comes I’m going to escape from them forever.”
She had expected Mother would nearly die of horror—I am afraid Judy really said that hoping to make a sensation—but Mother only looked at her strangely. And said a strange thing: “There is no escape for either of us now. Tomorrow will never come. As for you…they need not be so afraid to let you out of their sight. There is no fear of anyone kidnapping you.”
Mother laughed bitterly. It was unthinkable but Judy almost thought Mother was really sorry that there was no danger of her being kidnapped. And yet Judy knew that her mother loved her fiercely and tenderly and wholly…knew it just as indisputably as she knew that Grandmother and The Woman didn’t love her at all. Why, they never spoke of her by her name, even her middle name, if they could help it. It was always “the child.” How Judy hated to be called “the child,” just as they might have spoken of “the dog” or “the cat.” Only there was no dog or cat in Grandmother’s house.