The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 6/Number 11/The Face in the Mirror

by Richard Barker Shelton

The Face in the Mirror.^[1]

by Richard Barker Shelton.

T was Caverley's intention to select a present for her birthday—no ordinary, conventional little gift, but something which would show her that the selection had required time and search, something you couldn't see lying in shop-windows or advertised in the back of magazines, something to bring the color to her cheeks and the sparkle to her eyes and cause her to exclaim, "You've rummaged all over town for it, haven't you, you dear old boy?"

To this end he spent many afternoons in queer places—pawn-brokers' shops, curio stores and musty basements, where odd volumes or first editions might be brought to light. But his search was for a long time in vain. He could find nothing to suit his needs, for the tilings he found out of the ordinary would not gratify her taste, and the things which would suit her taste were too ordinary.

He had wellnigh given up further search and decided to go back to a little shop uptown and purchase an hour-glass of quaintly carved ivory—he hadn't the faintest idea to what use she could put it—when a lucky chance changed his plans.

He was passing an auction-room, where a red flag flaunted over the sidewalk and a shabby man with leathern lungs bawled forth an announcement that the entire stock of treasures inside would be sacrificed at auction at 2.30, and in the same breath he invited the passersby to step in and inspect it. More from idle curiosity than anything else, Caverley went within. There was the usual array of vases and chinaware, statuettes and rather glaring lamps. He wandered about, while a little man with a high-pitched voice trotted beside him, telling wonderful tales about every article before which Caverley made a momentary pause.

"Delft, sir, genuine Delft,” the little man was saying as he held up some hideous blue plates, when Caverley interrupted him with ail exclamation of surprise. His eye had fallen on a silver hand-mirror, and he picked it up and examined it carefully.

"The very thing," he said to himself; then turning to his self-appointed guide, "How much?"

Everything was to be sold at the auction, the man explained—still, if the gentleman desired it very much and found it inconvenient to come in the afternoon—

"I do," said Caverley shortly. "How much?"

How much did he think it worth to him? Caverley named a price and the other made haste to take him up. A few moments later, with his purchase in his pocket, he was hurrying up the street.

It was a queer little mirror. The back was of oxidized silver, quaintly embossed—an impossible Cupid reaching out for a laurel wreath which completely surrounded him. Several sprays of laurel trailed from the ends of the wreath and these were twisted round and round to form the handle. A unique idea and rather a good bit of work, Caverley thought, as he examined the mirror carefully at his apartments. Assuredly it would bring the sparkle to her eyes, and assuredly she would tell him what a dear old boy he was to take so much trouble in her behalf. The Cupid was such a fat, contented-looking little god, that he laughed aloud! Symbolical, too, it seemed to him, for theirs had been a contented affair of the heart. Surely it was the very thing for a present to her.

For some time he sat turning the mirror about in his hands, making jocular comments now and then to the enwreathed Cupid. Then suddenly he sat bolt upright with a strange expression on his face. He had glanced into the mirror and the reflection he beheld there was not that of his own features. He could scarcely believe his sight. He looked again. The face he beheld was one from which he shrank; a strong, firm face it might have been at some time, but now it was disfigured by hideous scars. He laid the mirror on a nearby table and sprang from his chair. He knew it was weakness, but for the life of him he could not help walking over to the glass on his shaving table and glancing into it. It was his own face that met his gaze, and he was heartily ashamed of the sigh of relief he gave as he saw it.

He returned to his chair and picked up the mirror. Again he glanced into it. This time it was his own square, clean-shaven face which looked back at him.

"Well, I am a skittish fool," said he, and turned the mirror over. The Cupid favored him with the smile which was its perpetual attribute, and at that Caverley laughed easily and put the mirror in a drawer.

Some evenings later he again looked at the mirror. As lie turned it about he was aware that the same face was looking back at him—the face with the scars and the eyes which seemed to be half reproachful, half pleading.

"Good Lord!" said he, and laid the mirror down rather suddenly. Then, thoroughly at odds with his childishness, he picked it up again. This time, as he peered into it, he saw the reflection of his own face.

"This," he announced to the Cupid, "is a clear case of indigestion. Take Thingummy's pills, you know." Yet he was aware, with a strange feeling of awe, that he regarded the mirror in a new and not altogether pleasing light.

"You're not quite so much the article I wanted as I took you to be," he observed, as he banged the drawer shut.

But some sort of morbid fascination about the mirror caused him to take it often from the drawer. He came to look upon it with loathing, and each time that uncouth face peered back at him he felt creepy sensations, of alternate warmth and chill, yet so strong was the spell it cast over his better senses that he was unable to keep his mind from it.

When ner birthday came, Caverley took her the hour-glass and made no mention of the mirror. Indeed, he spoke of it to no one, for he felt an intense disgust at his own actions regarding it. Yet every night he brought it out and turned it about until the face he had come to hate stared back at him. Then with a curse lie would throw it into the drawer and pace the room until he was tired out.

In time he discovered that the mirror must be held in a certain position for the face to appear. Otherwise it gave normal reflections. His discovery gave him a certain courage. It took away some of the weirdness of the thing, and suggested the prosaic course of inquiring into the origin of the curio. He sought the manager of the auction room, who, with a smile and bow, professed entire ignorance of the source whence the mirror had come. Caverley, taking out a twenty-dollar note, clipped it in two with his pocket scissors, and handed one half to the auctioneer.

"This half is now useless to me," he said, "but it will be worth twenty dollars to you when you discover who sold you the mirror."

Some weeks passed and Caverley studied the mirror in a practical way. He noted that it was of unusual thickness, and this aroused his suspicions.

"I’ll take it to pieces," said he, and this he proceeded to do. It took considerable time and patience to work the back loose without damaging the glass, but, by dint of perseverance, he managed it. Back of the glass, he found a shallow metal pan. He attacked this, and in a few moments had separated it from the mirror proper. The pan removed, the whole matter was plain. Set slantwise beneath the bevelling on the right-hand side was an ambrotype of the face he knew so well. The picture extended perhaps a third of the distance across the mirror, and was covered with a thick plate of glass, so that looking squarely into the mirror, reflection was normal, but by sloping it to the right until the ambrotype was horizontal, the face with the scars appeared.

Caverley took the ambrotype to the light and stood looking at it for some time.

"Whoever you are," said he, "you're not an attractive chap, but I'd double that twenty to find out about you."

The matter was rapidly slipping from his mind when one day the manager of the auction-room called on him and brought with him an elderly gentleman whom Caverley judged rightly to be a lawyer.

"That mirror," the elderly gentleman said when the matter on which they had called was broached, "was the property of a client of mine, a Miss Damon. It was sold, after her death, with a lot of other personal property not disposed of in her will. There's a queer story about it, but I don't know that I can tell it correctly, for it was told to me in fragments whenever my client cared to mention the subject, which, I can assure you, sir, was seldom indeed. As well as I can piece these bits together it was something like this:

"Many years ago her family lived in the South and there she met a young physician, who became greatly attached to her. It seems an epidemic of smallpox broke out, and the doctor risked his professional reputation in getting the Damons away and through the lines of the 'shot-gun quarantine' which had been established. He remained there and eventually came down with the disease, which left him with horrible scars. Upon his recovery, he wrote Miss Damon telling her of this and she replied in a letter filled with expressions of deepest sympathy; scars of the skin, she wrote, could not mar the soul, and bade him come to her, but, somehow, the letter miscarried and he never received it. He waited for the answer through several trying months and then wrote her saying he should go abroad to bury himself somewhere in Europe. She was right, he said, to consider him as one dead. He sent the mirror at the same time. There wasn't much to tell, and I fear I have hardly done it justice,” the lawyer concluded.

Caverley, with great patience, put the mirror together again, and that evening he took it to the lady for whom he had bought it, and told her the stoiy. And she, being a sympathetic little woman, wept.

1. Copyright, 1901, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights reserved.