The Secret of Mirror House

by Jennifer Blake

  "Wait, I'll go with you," came a voice behind her, and she turned to see James limping out of the house. She smiled, glad to have company on her proposed ramblings. "I couldn't help overhearing Katherine just now," James continued as they went down the steps. "It really doesn't do to offer to help her, you know. She would really rather do it herself. Just now, she is counting the food stores, which is good, I suppose. I don't know. Bessie, she's the Negro woman who comes in to cook and clean, might be feeding her family off our table, but I would just as soon let her as count potatoes in this heat, not that I think she is, of course."

  She laughed with him as they crossed the lawn toward the lake, and Amelia wondered if perhaps he was talking to cover his embarrassment over the halting swing of his walk, though he seemed to walk more easily over the grass than he had on the porch.

  "Now me, I've been sitting in the cool parlor with the curtains pulled. Writing. No, not letters, a book. Not as easy as it sounds, either. It takes as much effort to get started on my work every day as it does to hoe a field of cotton-not that I have ever hoed a field of cotton." He laughed shortly.

  "What are you writing?" Amelia asked, watching his face with interest, as expressions glided quickly over its muscular slimness; now serious, now comical, and serious again.

  "A history of the war in Louisiana. I think in years to come the War Between the States will be so confused that historians will never be able to tell exactly what happened. Not that I am any more objective about it than anyone else. I read once that historians were just men bent on justifying their own prejudices and opinions in the name of history. Still, if enough men like me, who were there, put down everything as they saw it, I think a picture of the conflict will emerge."

  "Aren't you afraid you will make mistakes?" she asked idly, swinging her skirts over the seed heads of the tall grass on the overgrown lawn.

  "I have maps and charts, and then there is my diary, not that it covers much, but I did begin it a few months before the war started and put everything down as we heard it. I have my father's journal too. He was in from the beginning until he was killed at Gettysburg in '63." He was quiet a moment, then went on. "Nelville wouldn't keep a diary for me. He said the observations of a seventeen-year-old boy were not going to do any good. But, he did pick up a lot of loose papers and books in the camps and on the battlefields. He knew I would like to have that sort of thing even if I was too finicky to pick it up myself." He frowned, then smiled wryly as he saw Amelia watching his face.

  "You were very young, weren't you?" Amelia asked.

  "Nineteen when the war ended, though it was over for me in '64 after the Battle of the Wilderness. I was invalided out with this leg, you see. I must show you my commendation from Lee sometimes."

  "Why did you wait so long to write your book?" Amelia asked, to bring him back to the present.

  "At nineteen, I was sick of the whole thing. After nearly fifteen years, it is all clearer; you can see something better when you are further away from it. Besides, now the occupation army is finally gone and we can look around and say we really survived. The price of cotton is fairly good, and the plantation here is making a living at least. Now, we can begin to forget."

  They had reached the lake and were walking along its edge. With the advance of summer, the lake had shrunk, leaving a strip of land that the water had lapped flat; here grew a crisp thick carpet of cress like grass that was cool beneath Amelia's thin slippers. Tiny frogs hit the water with little plops, frightened by their long shadows slipping along before them. At the end of the lake was a grove of pines whose dark green limbs cast a deep shade. As they neared the grove, James pointed out a curving line of azaleas that formed a semicircle in front of the grove, following the curve of the lake. A double line of the same shrub edged a path of stone steps that climbed the slight slope up into the pines.

  Following a worn path strewn with pine straw, they came upon the little temple so suddenly that Amelia exclaimed, a soft sound of amazement.

  It was tiny, made of gray weathered stone that might once have been white, and built in a half circle with six stone pillars supporting a stone roof and a semicircular bench. The steps, edged with azalea and made of the same stone, dropped from the temple down to the lake, and the setting seemed as natural, ancient, and mellow as a scene from a painting of old Greek ruins. The seats were cool to the touch as James and Amelia seated themselves, and the only sounds were the sighing of the small breeze off the lake through the pines, and the lapping of the water against the stone at the bottom of the steps.

  "There used to be a little statue in the center of the floor there," James broke the silence, "an Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. Your grandfather built it as a gift for …"

  "For whom?" Amelia asked, thinking she might not have heard him.

  "For Mary Louise," he answered, studying her face with such a curious intentness that Amelia was warned of something unusual in the name.

  "For Mary Louise?" She waited for the answer, suddenly sure that she could, if she insisted, learn some of the answers to questions that had puzzled her all her life. When he didn't answer, only looking away with a pained expression, she guessed that a Victorian sense of propriety held him silent. She also remembered her mother's troubled reticence and other hints collected in childhood's curious recall. That same sense of propriety made her blush as she said, seeking to sound as if she knew more than she did in reality and that what she knew was somehow shameful, "My grandfather's …"

  "… mistress." He spoke the word the way some women speak of spiders. "You know about her?" he asked.

  "A little," she said, doing her best to sound knowledgeable and distant at the same time. "I'm not sure that I know the real story, the family version of it, that is. You wouldn't mind telling me, would you?"

  He glanced at her oddly, as if wondering if she were lying and took a deep breath. "Mary Louise is only part of the story," he said. "Look here a minute." Taking her hand, he pulled her up and guided her down the steps to stand at the water's edge.

  He pointed across the lake on the opposite shore from Mirror House. "If you will look closely over there, you will see the remains of four chimneys just like the ones on Mirror House. That's all that's left of Harvest Hall, the house old Juan Phillipe Harveston built."

  Amelia nodded. She could see the crumbling piles of vine and creeper covered brick in a thicket of sagebrush, scrub pines, and blackberry brambles that could once have been chimneys.

  "Juan Phillipe was an Englishman who came to Louisiana in the late 1700's. He became friendly with the Spanish and fought with them against the French in Florida. He was given a captain's rank and changed his name, probably accidently at first, when the Spanish used the Spanish form of his real name, John Phillip, and then deliberately because it was expedient in the Spanish colony. Being a captain, he was accepted into society, nominally at least, and was taken under the patronage of an influential man, Don Fernando de Galvez. De Galvez had a daughter who was unfortunate enough to have a deformity of the face, a harelip … I'm not boring you, am I?"

  "No, of course not," Amelia answered quickly. How could he be when the man he was talking about was her grandfather, and the story was a part of the riddle of her past.

  "Well, anyway, Isabella's father, Don de Galvez, offered Juan Phillipe a grant of land and a sizable dowry, if he would marry Isabella. I have no idea how Juan Phillipe felt about the match. No one does, even now, since he was not the kind of man who committed his thoughts to paper. Perhaps, he pitied her, or maybe he was just an opportunist, I don't suppose it matters now. But, he did marry her."

  "They came here to live?"

  "Yes, the land grant was here, and they came and built Harvest Hall-Harveston-Harvest Hall, a play on names, you see? They lived quietly. They didn't entertain or accept hospitality, though, of course, they took in travelers and sometimes Isabella's relatives came to visit, like Nelville, for instance; only the rest went home."

  She
glanced at him oddly, and he smiled as though it had been a joke, but something in his voice made her wonder.

  "It was the servants who circulated the tales of the masques," he said in a swift change of subject.

  "Masques?"

  "Yes, the silk scarves or whatever you want to call them that Isabella wore to cover the deformity of her face. She was quite attractive in them, even when I knew her. They suited her, if you know what I mean. She was mysterious. She almost never spoke, and then not clearly, because her lip was split, you see. Mysterious and silent, the perfect wife, some would say."

  She smiled at his little joke and asked, "But, Mirror House, what of it?"

  "After a while, Juan Phillipe teamed that his younger brother was coming out to Louisiana with his bride. There had been some trouble, very slight. I always favored the debtor's prison story myself."

  "The what?"

  "A rash of debts that would have got him thrown into prison if he had stayed in England; that always sounded like my father to me," he said with a cheerful grin, "though you are not to tell Katherine I said so, under any circumstances."

  Amelia couldn't resist a smile at the thought; then, she sobered as James went on. "So, anyway, Juan Phillipe decided to build his brother and his wife a new house, probably to keep them from living in the same house with him. For some reason, to save on hiring an architect or because the plan was handy, or because it just struck him as a novel idea, old Juan Phillipe built his brother a house across the lake that was just like Harvest Hall. Each house was reflected in the lake, and to look out the door of each house was to see the image of the other. But, it was my father who called it Mirror House and planted the magnolia and other trees on the right-hand side opposite from those at Harvest Hall on the left, to heighten the mirror image effect. I have often wondered why."

  "Yet, but what about Mary Louise?" Amelia asked, more interested in her than in the building of Mirror House.

  "I'm coming to her. Uncle Juan and Tante Isabella had been married over ten years and were still childless. This was especially hard to bear since his brother had a baby boy, Sylvestor. So, one day he simply came back from one of his frequent trips to New Orleans with Mary Louise."

  "Just like that?"

  "It seemed like that, that is, I suppose it must have. I wasn't around then, you know. But, there must have been some kind of courtship, some love. He built this little temple of love for her. She was small and pretty and of good family, they say, and maybe half as old as Juan Phillipe, who was in his forties at the time. They gave out that she was to be a companion for Tante Isabella, the polite explanation, but she had a son the next year."

  "My father, Phillip," Amelia said quietly, looking away. It was as if she had always known, yet she wanted to hear someone say it once and for all.

  "Yes," James answered and went on as if unaware of her feelings. "Juan and Isabella never had children."

  "And Harvest Hall? What happened to it?"

  "Oh, that was years later. The war had just begun and I was only fourteen or fifteen at the time. Uncle Juan Phillipe had a heart attack and everyone expected him to die. I think the war news and the uproar your mother's father was still making, more than a year after the marriage of your mother to Phillip-your mother's father was a preacher and bitterly opposed to her marrying an illegitimate son-were all too much of a strain on his heart. He was getting old. Everybody was there in the house that night except your father and mine who had gone to war, and your mother who had gone away … and my mother. She died when I was small."

  He stopped a minute, and then went on in a voice gone tired and dull, as if he were retelling an old, old story. "There was an argument or quarrel, since there was some doubt who would inherit if the old man died-Phillip, the illegitimate son, or my father and his children. Somehow, a fire broke out and Juan Phillipe and Mary Louise died in the fire."

  "How horrible," Amelia said, a chill shivering over her.

  "The most horrible death I can think of. There were rumors that the fire was started deliberately, but you know how people talk in a situation like that. I was there and I saw nothing suspicious."

  Turning her back on the crumbled chimneys, Amelia looked up at the little temple on the slope above them. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the shadows under the pines were dark, giving the gray of the stone a grim, funereal cast. "It looks sad, doesn't it?" she said, thinking out loud.

  "I guess it does," James answered tiredly, "but, then so does Mirror House. Look at it. Gray. No paint. Not much like it used to be. It's almost as though nothing has gone right since Harvest Hall burned, as if Mirror House is just marking time, waiting until it disappears like its reflection. All of us are like that, like reflections. Who is really living? Old Juan lived and so did Mary Louise, but who at Mirror House is living? We are all marking time, waiting for something to happen."

  Amelia glanced from him to the house, wondering at the ghost of passion in his voice, wondering at his choice of words. Then, he smiled. "Well, never mind. I think we have had enough of the past for one day. You will have to see our real progress-the fields, our hope of salvation."

  "The fields?" she asked, looking around. "Where are they?"

  "Back behind the house. Miles of them, it seems to me, every time I have to ride over them. A plantation is just a glorified farm these days. Perhaps, Nelville will show them to you someday."

  See the field with Nelville, Amelia thought, remembering the quick-moving man with his mercurial phrases that left her baffled and confused. Nothing more unlikely.

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  Chapter Three

  "HERE COMES KATHERINE," James said with a trace of what sounded like relief in his voice. "I have some work to catch up on, so why don't you just sit here and wait for her," he finished, leading her back to the stone bench in the temple.

  Amelia followed his line of vision and saw Katherine moving toward them down the slope from the house. The sun glinted in her hair and her long skirts lifted and swayed with the energy of her walk. They mounted the steps to the stone seat, and James stood waiting for Katherine while Amelia sank gratefully to the bench in the cool, deep shade. She still felt weak, and it was an irritation to her because she had always been so healthy.

  "I see you took my advice," Katherine said as she came up.

  "I'll see you later, Cousin," James said with a gentle smile and walked haltingly away, his back stiff as if he were afraid they might be watching.

  Amelia answered James and turned to Katherine. "Yes, and I'm so glad I did," she said smiling. "This is a lovely place, even with its ghosts."

  "Ghosts, my dear girl! What do you mean?"

  "James has been telling me about the burning of Harvest Hall and Juan and Mary Louise.

  "Has he?" she asked, staring after James's receding figure. Then, she smiled brightly and changed the subject. "I'm so glad you like it here, it's one of my favorite places, and often cool with a little breeze off the lake when everything else is sweltering," she said as she seated herself. "Do you like gardening?" she continued, handing Amelia a waxy, white, highly scented flower.

  Amelia took the Cape Jasmine, though she would have liked to refuse it. It reminded her of the bouquet a neighbor had brought her mother just before she died. She supposed she would always associate death with the heavy smell of Cape Jasmine. But, even as these thoughts flashed through her head, she smiled and sniffed the flower and answered Katherine's question. "I really haven't had much experience with gardening. Mother loved it and taught me, as we walked along the sidewalk, to recognize things growing in other people's yards, and we had potted plants in our rooms at the boarding house."

  "I'm glad to see you're interested, at least," Katherine said in unconscious disparagement. "We once had extensive gardens here with no less than ten yardmen for Mirror House alone. Now, there are only vestiges of the great beds, a few azalea, a row of crepe myrtles, a few straggling roses. You should have seen the roses we had! Teas,
musks, and Bourbons. I had a York and Lancaster, the only one in the neighborhood."

  "You must miss all that very much," Amelia said.

  "More than you can ever know. It hurts me to see the house like it is, so run down and worn, but it takes money to keep up a place as it should be kept up. Even the grounds, the flowers, take so much money and labor and time. Some people think that you have only to stick a flower out any old where and it will grow, but it takes fertilizer and the right growing conditions and care. Knowing just what every plant needs is what people mean when they say that so-and-so has a green thumb."

  "I would like to learn," Amelia said and earned a warm smile from her cousin.

  "Just look at that wisteria vine growing up the side of the house. It's trying to go in at the windows, see, there at your room? The thing will overrun the place if I don't watch it! Growing things sort of creep up on you; they never stand still like people do. They are doing, growing, blooming, reproducing all the time during their season, so long as you treat them right. People aren't like that. You turn your back and they stop, so that you have to keep after them to get them to do anything with themselves."

  "People have minds of their own," Amelia said, smiling to give her words a light air.

  "Yes, I'm afraid they do, more's the pity," Katherine said sharply.

  Amelia sternly repressed the smile that wanted to rise to her lips. It wouldn't do for her cousin to think that she was laughing at her. She was, of course, but not maliciously. It was just that in her quiet way she was often amused by people who were so unaware of their faults.

  "Well," Katherine sighed, letting her shoulders relax. She straightened into her usual fence-post-straight position and continued briskly. "I enjoyed our little chat, but I have a lot to do and I had better get back to it. No rest for the weary, they say. Just you stay right here, Amelia dear, and enjoy the breeze. It will be good for you." And with a determined stride, she climbed the slope back to the house.