Suspense and Sensibility: Or, First Impressions Revisited

by Carrie Bebris

  “That may not necessarily be true.”

  Darcy heard a carriage arrive, followed by the front door opening. The welcome sound meant Elizabeth had returned, for Kitty and Georgiana had gone to spend a few days with the Gardiners before leaving London and thus were not expected home. He relaxed in anticipation of momentarily laying eyes on his wife and putting an end to this whole discussion.

  When she entered the drawing room, however, his disquiet increased rather than diminished. She seemed pale and looked as if she’d just come in out of a strong wind. She also moved more slowly than usual and had an air of anxiety about her.

  He rose and went to her immediately. “Are you well?”

  “I am fine. Though I have just returned from a distressing meeting and am glad to find you at home.” She turned to Randolph. “Your being here is also most fortunate, Professor, as we are going to want your assistance.”

  “It shall be given most willingly.”

  Darcy took her hand and led her to a chair. “What is the trouble? Did you find Mrs. Ferrars unwell?”

  “Mrs. Ferrars is quite well. Her nephew, however, is in grave danger.”

  “No doubt of his own making,” Darcy declared. “I cannot pity Mr. Dashwood.”

  “You will, Darcy, when I tell you what was happened to him.”

  Thereupon she commenced a tale he could not have countenanced the telling of, had it come from anyone but his wife. Only the vision of her sitting immediately before him, safe now, enabled him to attend her in patience. He heard with displeasure her confession that she had gone to Dashwood’s townhouse, with foreboding the news that the mirror had arrived just before her, and with incredulity her account of what had transpired after that.

  Mr. Dashwood’s spirit, imprisoned in his mirror? The very idea was beyond absurd.

  “Mr. Dashwood must have practiced some deceit upon you,” he pronounced when Elizabeth finished her narration. Grateful that she had escaped the ordeal unharmed, he sought a rational explanation of it. Harry Dashwood was a man without honor or conscience; morally, Darcy considered him capable of anything. What he had not yet determined was how the rogue had created a ruse elaborate enough to convince Elizabeth. His wife was an intelligent woman; mere sleight of hand would not suffice.

  “How, Darcy? How could he have embedded an old image of himself in the mirror?”

  “There—you have struck upon it exactly. It is an old image. He used his birthday portrait; he secured it in place of the glass. That is why you could not see your own reflection, because it is no longer a mirror. In fact, perhaps that is why the mirror was out of his possession recently. He sent it to Norland, where he had left his birthday portrait, and a cohort performed the modification.”

  “I could believe that if the image had been fixed,” she said. “But it was animated. It spoke to me—or tried to, at least. How could Mr. Dashwood accomplish that?”

  “I am still working that out.”

  “Well, while you ponder, poor Mr. Dashwood remains trapped in the glass.”

  “Elizabeth, people do not become trapped in looking glasses.”

  Randolph cleared his throat. “Perhaps in this one, they do.” He pushed his spectacles up and opened his book to a page with several illustrations, including one Darcy had to admit looked familiar, even from his vantage point. “Mrs. Darcy, is this the mirror you saw today?”

  She studied the drawing. “Yes. It’s not an exact rendering, but there’s no mistaking it.”

  “The artist never saw the original; he sketched it from description.” He offered the book to Darcy. “Mr. Darcy, does the picture match your recollection of Mr. Dashwood’s mirror, as well?”

  Darcy accepted the volume, discovering as he did so that it was older than he had realized. Its leather cover was worn smooth; many of its pages were mottled and warped. The metal lock that once guarded its contents looked to have lost its clasp long ago. From the style of the illuminations and hand-lettered text, he judged the book to be at least three or four centuries old. He handled it with reverence, appreciating its age and artistry.

  “What is this book?”

  “Mysteries of the Ancients, a text that describes numerous artifacts from Italy, Greece, and Egypt thought to have found their way to Britain.”

  Darcy examined the illustration Randolph had indicated and grudgingly conceded its similarity to his memory of Harry’s looking glass. While he had the book in his hands, he skimmed its words. The text itself was Latin; annotations in multiple hands and languages covered the page margins.

  The writers offered an explanation for the mirror’s anachronistic construction, but one in which Darcy could not invest any credence. Apparently, however, many others had. He gave the original myth only a cursory glance and skipped to later accounts of the glass. The legendary Mirror of Narcissus had already earned a deleterious reputation by the time of the book’s authorship, one amplified by successive owners of the volume.

  “The text and notes speak of the mirror’s owners meeting untimely deaths,” Darcy said, “yet also state that they died of old age. How is such an end unanticipated?”

  “If you read more closely, the authors indicate that those owners lived few years. They were young men and women who died elderly.”

  Elizabeth regarded the professor in puzzlement. “I do not understand.”

  “Let us start at the beginning.” Randolph accepted the book back from Darcy. “According to legend, the Mirror of Narcissus was created for a vain king who could not bear to see the changes time naturally wrought upon his face and form as he aged. He commanded his best craftsman to design a mirror that would reflect him as he had appeared in his prime. The craftsman, unable to follow this order, turned to Aphrodite for aid. He prayed to the goddess of beauty to enable him to create the most beautiful mirror in Greece.

  “After weeks of supplication, the goddess granted his request. Through her power, the artisan crafted a mirror unlike any ever seen before. When he had finished, he brought the mirror to the Temple of Aphrodite, made an offering of gratitude to the goddess, and begged one last petition: that she invest his creation with the power his master demanded.

  “The goddess appeared to him. She praised his work and blessed the hands that had produced it. But she denied his request, explaining that eternal youth, even in image only, was a privilege reserved for the gods.

  “The craftsman thanked her and returned to the palace with the mirror. He presented it to the king and related Aphrodite’s words. The king was angry. As he raged at the craftsman, he caught sight of himself—old, bent, and ugly with wrath—in the glass and grew still more furious. He cursed the mirror and ordered the craftsman’s hands cut off as punishment for his failure. The guards acted immediately and severed the hands that Aphrodite had blessed.

  “As they led the maimed craftsman away, the king pointed to the mirror and started to order it destroyed. But then he saw his reflection. In the glass, he was a young man once more. He instructed his servants to move the mirror to his private quarters and retired to gaze upon his image uninterrupted, as Narcissus had gazed into the water. In the morning, they found him dead, still staring into the glass.”

  Darcy listened with the interest he accorded any engaging story. “That is a good cautionary tale against the evils of vanity,” he pronounced when the archaeologist had finished, “but like any myth, hardly something to be accepted as fact.”

  “Subsequent tales support it,” Randolph replied. “According to this book, many of the mirror’s more vain owners through the centuries have undergone radical disfigurement in their final days. Young or old, they died ravaged by extreme effects of age.”

  What little color had been in Elizabeth’s face drained from it. “Are all its gazers cursed?”

  It bothered Darcy to witness distress in her. “Nobody is cursed,” he asserted. “The glass is an artifact whose history inspires embellishment—nothing more.”

  Randolph closed the book. “I don�
��t believe you are in any danger yourself, Mrs. Darcy, for having looked into the glass today. But I disagree with your husband. The Mirror of Narcissus is indeed cursed, and how the curse functions has been a subject of mystery and speculation for centuries.”

  Darcy found himself unable to sit still. Harry Dashwood’s transformation had been caused by his own excesses—not a looking glass, and certainly not a curse. He rose and went to the window, needing to distance himself from the discussion or risk responding uncivilly to the archaeologist. He looked out onto the street, with its buildings, carriages, people—tangible things, things that were real.

  “Until now, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain the nature of the curse,” Randolph continued. “However, based on your account of Harry’s memories, Mrs. Darcy, I have a new theory.”

  “Do let us hear it,” Darcy said.

  “I submit that the mirror’s original owner, the king, died because his spirit was absorbed by the glass. He wanted to become the image that he saw, and the mirror granted his request. His body, an empty shell, remained behind. As the mirror passed from owner to owner, those equally possessed by the same desire were also entrapped.”

  “It must be growing rather crowded in there,” Darcy scoffed.

  “Not at all,” Randolph replied. “Mrs. Darcy, kindly repeat what Sir Francis said when his followers released him from the glass.”

  “I believe it was ‘reddet animam pro anima.’”

  “From the Book of Exodus: Thou shalt give life for life.’ In this case, it could also be interpreted as ‘soul for soul,’ ” Randolph said. “The glass can hold only one life, or soul, at a time. The king’s essence remained incarcerated only until the next victim took his place. When his spirit left the mirror, it entered the new prisoner’s discarded body. But the unnatural reincarnation could not last long—the king’s soul was by then so old that the new body could not sustain it. The host suffered rapidly accelerated aging as the body’s clock strove to catch up with the spirit’s, until it ultimately burned out.”

  “And this cycle repeats itself with each new victim?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes, and is at work upon Harry Dashwood now.”

  Darcy stared out the window, unable to reconcile the image of the modern, mundane London before him with the mystical events Randolph imagined had taken place within it. Something strange was happening in Mr. Dashwood’s townhouse—having witnessed some of the goings-on himself, he could not refute that much. But he firmly believed Dashwood the perpetrator, not the victim, of deception. Even if he willingly suspended his disbelief, accepted for the sake of argument some of the professor’s premises, he still could not agree with Randolph’s conclusions.

  He turned from the window but remained beside it. “There is a flaw in your theory. Assuming my wife, through Mr. Dashwood’s memories, indeed witnessed this theoretical trading of souls between Sir Francis and Harry Dashwood”—an assumption Darcy could hardly voice, much less believe—“it required twelve others and a secret ceremony to effect the transfer. I find it hard to believe that each previous victim was involved in such a ritual.”

  “The other victims were willing participants in their own entrapment,” Elizabeth said. “Harry Dashwood was not.”

  “Precisely,” Randolph said. “The king and his successors were drawn in because they could not resist the sight of their former selves. Harry Dashwood, however, was in the full bloom of youth. He was not yet vulnerable to the mirror’s temptation and would not be for some time. I suspect that Sir Francis, already incarcerated for more than thirty years, grew impatient and forced the exchange.”

  Darcy remained unconvinced. “If he was trapped in the glass, how did he gather his former Hell-Fire Club together to perform the rite?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “And if Sir Francis was a victim of the mirror,” Darcy pressed, “why do no accounts of his death mention the accelerated aging suffered by the others?”

  “If he was already elderly and very close to the end of his natural life, the effects may have gone unnoticed. His body might have died within hours or even minutes of the mirror’s previous occupant taking possession of it.”

  “So short a time?” Elizabeth’s brow creased with worry. “Sir Francis has occupied Mr. Dashwood’s form for a month now. How much time do you think he has left?”

  “How old is Harry’s body supposed to be, and how old did he look when you saw him today?”

  “He is one-and-twenty, but he appears fifty at least.”

  “Do we know how old Sir Francis was when he died?”

  “In his seventies.”

  Professor Randolph withdrew a handkerchief from one of his many pockets and wiped his spectacles. “It sounds as if Harry Dashwood’s body is aging rapidly, indeed, and to compound matters, I understand Sir Francis has not been the most gentle tenant. I would guess your friend has perhaps a fortnight, if that, to reclaim himself.”

  “He is not our friend,” Darcy said. “And he has made it very clear to me that he does not want our assistance or interference in his affairs.”

  Elizabeth stared at him a long moment. His wife’s gaze made him uncomfortable, and he shifted under the weight of her disapprobation. When she rose and came to the window, came to him, he looked away. On the sofa, Randolph replaced his spectacles and consulted his book once more.

  “Darcy,” she said, speaking in tones so soft that they reached his ears alone. “It is Sir Francis, not Harry, who has behaved so uncivilly toward us.”

  He sighed heavily. “Elizabeth, this is all too far-fetched to be believed. At least by me. I can barely listen to it, let alone acknowledge it as possible.”

  “If you had seen what I saw, you would think otherwise.”

  “But I did not.”

  He at last faced her. Sadness spread across her face, and he disliked himself for having caused it. Worse, her eyes, normally bright with exuberance, dimmed with disappointment. In him.

  “Darcy, when we were last at Netherfield, we both stumbled into danger because you believed in reason more than you believed in me. I know what I experienced today. Will you not this time trust my perceptions?” She laid a hand on his arm. “I am certain that the Harry Dashwood we first met, the Harry Dashwood who won Kitty’s heart, whom you considered as a brother, still exists. He desperately needs our aid, and how I shall live with myself if we fail him, I do not know. If you will not act for Mr. Dashwood’s sake, will you do so for mine?”

  She had struck upon the only argument she could have used to win his cooperation. For a worthless rakehell he would do nothing. But to prevent the blackguard from causing his wife a moment’s further anguish—and to remove that expression from her eyes—he would do anything.

  “Professor Randolph, what must be done to release Harry?” He cast her a meaningful look. “Hypothetically?”

  She smiled.

  “The mirror will demand a soul for a soul,” Randolph replied, “and if Harry is to get his own body back, that soul must be Sir Francis’s. We must therefore trick Sir Francis into gazing at Harry’s reflection long enough to effect the exchange.”

  “The person presently answering to the name Harry Dashwood is many things, but he is not a fool. You said that without such a ceremony as Sir Francis arranged, a victim must be complicitous in his own entrapment. Sir Francis will never allow himself to risk reimprisonment,” Darcy said.

  “In fact,” Elizabeth added, “he schemes to rid himself of the mirror altogether. I heard him say that Lord Phillip Beaumont would retrieve it tomorrow.”

  Lord Phillip? Darcy suppressed a groan. Why the countess’s brother, of all people? Despite his skepticism over the whole enterprise and his recent rebuff from Lord Phillip himself, Darcy now felt himself obligated by his friendship with the earl to at least keep the mirror—whatever it might or might not be—out of Beaumont’s possession.

  “Why does Sir Francis not simply destroy the glass?” he asked.

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bsp; Randolph pushed his spectacles back to the bridge of his nose. “There is no account of any previous owner attempting to do so. Perhaps once released into a new body, a victim’s continued existence yet depends on the mirror’s enchantment. Or the victim may merely fear it does. However brief his new life may be, the newly freed prisoner is unwilling to risk it ending any sooner than it must.”

  The archaeologist shrugged. “Whatever his reasoning, let us be grateful for Harry’s sake that Sir Francis has not destroyed the glass in all the time he’s had to do so. But with Lord Phillip planning to take ownership of it, we now must devise a strategy quickly, as our task becomes far more difficult if the mirror leaves Sir Francis’s proximity. We also need to rescue Harry before Sir Francis wears out his body. If Sir Francis dies, Harry could be trapped inside the mirror indefinitely. He would be forced either to wait until another unsuspecting victim fell prey to the mirror’s curse, or to ask us to destroy the mirror with him in it, putting an end to the cycle.”

  “Let us formulate a plan, then, and go directly,” Elizabeth said.

  “I will go,” Darcy corrected. “You will stay here, out of danger and well away from anyone named Dashwood.”

  She appeared about to object, but Professor Randolph did it for her. “Mrs. Darcy’s participation may prove critical to our success. From her description of her encounter with Harry’s reflection, it sounds as if he was surprised that she could see him. Indeed, I expect most people can’t, or surely the servants would have noticed him by now, the way the mirror’s been moved around lately. Mrs. Darcy may possess a sensitivity to her environment which surpasses that of the average person.”

  Darcy disliked the reminder of a fact he preferred not to contemplate too often. If he acknowledged to himself that his wife’s perceptions were legitimate, he must also acknowledge that there were forces in the world that he could not himself perceive and therefore could not protect her from. It was far easier to deny the existence of cursed mirrors than to admit his own powerlessness.