CHAPTER II
THE MIRROR
Nothing more happened for some days. I think it was about a week
after, when what I have now to tell took place.
I had often thought of the manuscript fragment, and repeatedly
tried to discover some way of releasing it, but in vain: I could
not find out what held it fast.
But I had for some time intended a thorough overhauling of the books
in the closet, its atmosphere causing me uneasiness as to their
condition. One day the intention suddenly became a resolve, and
I was in the act of rising from my chair to make a beginning, when
I saw the old librarian moving from the door of the closet toward
the farther end of the room. I ought rather to say only that
I caught sight of something shadowy from which I received the
impression of a slight, stooping man, in a shabby dress-coat reaching
almost to his heels, the tails of which, disparting a little as he
walked, revealed thin legs in black stockings, and large feet in
wide, slipper-like shoes.
At once I followed him: I might be following a shadow, but I
never doubted I was following something. He went out of the
library into the hall, and across to the foot of the great
staircase, then up the stairs to the first floor, where lay the
chief rooms. Past these rooms, I following close, he continued
his way, through a wide corridor, to the foot of a narrower stair
leading to the second floor. Up that he went also, and when I
reached the top, strange as it may seem, I found myself in a region
almost unknown to me. I never had brother or sister to incite to
such romps as make children familiar with nook and cranny; I was a
mere child when my guardian took me away; and I had never seen the
house again until, about a month before, I returned to take
possession.
Through passage after passage we came to a door at the bottom of
a winding wooden stair, which we ascended. Every step creaked under
my foot, but I heard no sound from that of my guide. Somewhere in
the middle of the stair I lost sight of him, and from the top of it
the shadowy shape was nowhere visible. I could not even imagine I
saw him. The place was full of shadows, but he was not one of them.
I was in the main garret, with huge beams and rafters over my head,
great spaces around me, a door here and there in sight, and long
vistas whose gloom was thinned by a few lurking cobwebbed windows
and small dusky skylights. I gazed with a strange mingling of awe
and pleasure: the wide expanse of garret was my own, and unexplored!
In the middle of it stood an unpainted inclosure of rough planks,
the door of which was ajar. Thinking Mr. Raven might be there, I
pushed the door, and entered.
The small chamber was full of light, but such as dwells in places
deserted: it had a dull, disconsolate look, as if it found itself
of no use, and regretted having come. A few rather dim sunrays,
marking their track through the cloud of motes that had just been
stirred up, fell upon a tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned
and rather narrow--in appearance an ordinary glass. It had an ebony
frame, on the top of which stood a black eagle, with outstretched
wings, in his beak a golden chain, from whose end hung a black ball.
I had been looking at rather than into the mirror, when suddenly
I became aware that it reflected neither the chamber nor my own
person. I have an impression of having seen the wall melt away,
but what followed is enough to account for any uncertainty:--could
I have mistaken for a mirror the glass that protected a wonderful
picture?
I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills
of no great height, but somehow of strange appearance, occupied
the middle distance; along the horizon stretched the tops of a
far-off mountain range; nearest me lay a tract of moorland, flat
and melancholy.
Being short-sighted, I stepped closer to examine the texture of a
stone in the immediate foreground, and in the act espied, hopping
toward me with solemnity, a large and ancient raven, whose purply
black was here and there softened with gray. He seemed looking for
worms as he came. Nowise astonished at the appearance of a live
creature in a picture, I took another step forward to see him
better, stumbled over something--doubtless the frame of the mirror--
and stood nose to beak with the bird: I was in the open air, on a
houseless heath!
