Mr and Mrs Darcy 02 Suspense & Sensibility (31 page)

"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
look 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, discovenng 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 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 crafts-
an, 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
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 on to 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 shall give life for life.' In his 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 prisoners discarded body. But the unnatural reincar-
nation 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 perpertrator, 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 off 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."