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!