Mugby Junction

“It was a great bare room, and so imperfectly lighted by a single candle that it was almost impossible – except when the lightning flashed – to see into its great dark corners. A small rickety bedstead stood against one of the walls, shrouded by yellow cotton curtains, passed through a great iron ring in the ceiling. There was, for all other furniture, an old chest of drawers which served also as a washing-stand, having a small basin and ewer and a single towel arranged on the top of it. There were, moreover, two ancient chairs and a dressing-table. On this last, stood a large old-fashioned looking-glass with a carved frame.

“I must have seen all these things, because I remember them so well now, but I do not know how I could have seen them, for it seems to me that, from the moment of my entering that room, the action of my senses and of the faculties of my mind was held fast by the ghastly figure which stood motionless before the looking-glass in the middle of the empty room.

“How terrible it was! The weak light of one candle standing on the table shone upon Strange’s face, lighting it from below, and throwing (as I now remember) his shadow, vast and black, upon the wall behind him and upon the ceiling overhead. He was leaning rather forward, with his hands upon the table supporting him, and gazing into the glass which stood before him with a horrible fixity. The sweat was on his white face; his rigid features and his pale lips showed in that feeble light were horrible, more than words can tell, to look at. He was so completely stupefied and lost, that the noise I had made in knocking and in entering the room was unobserved by him. Not even when I called him loudly by name did he move or did his face change.

“What a vision of horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen into stone by some unexplained terror! And the silence and the stillness! The very thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose influence I acted mechanically, I crept with slow steps nearer and nearer to the table, and at last, half expecting to see some spectre even more horrible than this which I saw already, I looked over his shoulder into the looking-glass. I happened to touch his arm, though only in the lightest manner. In that one moment the spell which had held him – who knows how long? – enchained, seemed broken, and he lived in this world again. He turned round upon me, as suddenly as a tiger makes its spring, and seized me by the arm.

“I have told you that even before I entered my friend’s room I had felt, all that night, depressed and nervous. The necessity for action at this time was, however, so obvious, and this man’s agony made all that I had felt, appear so trifling, that much of my own discomfort seemed to leave me. I felt that I must be strong.

“The face before me almost unmanned me. The eyes which looked into mine were so scared with terror, the lips – if I may say so – looked so speechless. The wretched man gazed long into my face, and then, still holding me by the arm, slowly, very slowly, turned his head. I had gently tried to move him away from the looking-glass, but he would not stir, and now he was looking into it as fixedly as ever. I could bear this no longer, and, using such force as was necessary, I drew him gradually away, and got him to one of the chairs at the foot of the bed. ‘Come!’ I said – after the long silence my voice, even to myself, sounded strange and hollow – ’come! You are over-tired, and you feel the weather. Don’t you think you ought to be in bed? Suppose you lie down. Let me try my medical skill in mixing you a composing draught.’

“He held my hand, and looked eagerly into my eyes. ‘I am better now,’ he said, speaking at last very faintly. Still he looked at me in that wistful way. It seemed as if there were something that he wanted to do or say, but had not sufficient resolution. At length he got up from the chair to which I had led him, and beckoning me to follow him, went across the room to the dressing-table, and stood again before the glass. A violent shudder passed through his frame as he looked into it; but apparently forcing himself to go through with what he had now begun, he remained where he was, and, without looking away, moved to me with his hand to come and stand beside him. I complied.

“‘Look in there!’ he said, in an almost inaudible tone. He was supported, as before, by his hands resting on the table, and could only bow with his head towards the glass to intimate what he meant. ‘Look in there!’ he repeated.

“I did as he asked me.

“‘What do you see?’ he asked next.

“‘See?’ I repeated, trying to speak as cheerfully as I could, and describing the reflexion of his own face as nearly as I could. ‘I see a very, very pale face with sunken cheeks – ’

“‘What?’ he cried, with an alarm in his voice which I could not understand.

“‘With sunken cheeks,’ I went on, ‘and two hollow eyes with large pupils.’

“I saw the reflexion of my friend’s face change, and felt his hand clutch my arm even more tightly than he had done before. I stopped abruptly and looked round at him. He did not turn his head towards me, but, gazing still into the looking-glass, seemed to labour for utterance.

“‘What,’ he stammered at last. ‘Do you – see it – too?’

“‘See what?’ I asked, quickly.

“‘That face!’ he cried, in accents of horror. ‘That face – which is not mine – and which – I see instead of mine – always!’

“I was struck speechless by the words. In a moment this mystery was explained – but what an explanation! Worse, a hundred times worse, than anything I had imagined. What! Had this man lost the power of seeing his own image as it was reflected there before him? and, in its place, was there the image of another? Had he changed reflexions with some other man? The frightfulness of the thought struck me speechless for a time – then I saw how false an impression my silence was conveying.

“‘No, no, no!’ I cried, as soon as I could speak – ‘a hundred times, no! I see you, of course, and only you. It was your face I attempted to describe, and no other.’

“He seemed not to hear me. ‘Why, look there!’ he said, in a low, indistinct voice, pointing to his own image in the glass. ‘Whose face do you see there?’

“‘Why yours, of course.’ And then, after a moment, I added, ‘Whose do you see?’

“He answered, like one in a trance, ‘His– only his – always his!’ He stood still a moment, and then, with a loud and terrific scream, repeated those words, ‘Always his, always his,’ and fell down in a fit before me.

“I knew what to do now. Here was a thing which, at any rate, I could understand. I had with me my usual small stock of medicines and surgical instruments, and I did what was necessary: first to restore my unhappy patient, and next to procure for him the rest he needed so much. He was very ill – at death’s door for some days – and I could not leave him, though there was urgent need that I should be back in London. When he began to mend, I sent over to England for my servant – John Masey – whom I knew I could trust. Acquainting him with the outlines of the case, I left him in charge of my patient, with orders that he should be brought over to this country as soon as he was fit to travel.

“That awful scene was always before me. I saw this devoted man day after day, with the eyes of my imagination, sometimes destroying in his rage the harmless looking-glass, which was the immediate cause of his suffering, sometimes transfixed before the horrid image that turned him to stone. I recollect coming upon him once when we were stopping at a roadside inn, and seeing him stand so by broad daylight. His back was turned towards me, and I waited and watched him for nearly half an hour as he stood there motionless and speechless, and appearing not to breathe. I am not sure but that this apparition seen so by daylight was more ghastly than that apparition seen in the middle of the night, with the thunder rumbling among the hills.

“Back in London in his own house, where he could command in some sort the objects which should surround him, poor Strange was better than he would have been elsewhere. He seldom went out except at night, but once or twice I have walked with him by daylight, and have seen him terribly agitated when we have had to pass a shop in which looking-glasses were exposed for sale.

“It is nearly a year now since my poor friend followed me down to this place, to which I have retired. For some months he has been daily getting weaker and weaker, and a disease of the lungs has become developed in him, which has brought him to his death-bed. I should add, by-the-by, that John Masey has been his constant companion ever since I brought them together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a new servant.

“And now tell me,” the doctor added, bringing his tale to an end, “did you ever hear a more miserable history, or was ever man haunted in a more ghastly manner than this man?”

I was about to reply when I heard a sound of footsteps outside, and before I could speak old Masey entered the room, in haste and disorder.

“I was just telling this gentleman,” the doctor said: not at the moment observing old Masey’s changed manner: “how you deserted me to go over to your present master.”

“Ah! sir,” the man answered, in a troubled voice, “I’m afraid he won’t be my master long.”

The doctor was on his legs in a moment. “What! Is he worse?”

“I think, sir, he is dying,” said the old man.

“Come with me, sir; you may be of use if you can keep quiet.” The doctor caught up his hat as he addressed me in those words, and in a few minutes we had reached The Compensation House. A few seconds more, and we were standing in a darkened room on the first floor, and I saw lying on a bed before me – pale, emaciated, and, as it seemed, dying – the man whose story I had just heard.

He was lying with closed eyes when we came into the room, and I had leisure to examine his features. What a tale of misery they told! They were regular and symmetrical in their arrangement, and not without beauty – the beauty of exceeding refinement and delicacy. Force there was none, and perhaps it was to the want of this that the faults – perhaps the crime – which had made the man’s life so miserable were to be attributed. Perhaps the crime? Yes, it was not likely that an affliction, lifelong and terrible, such as this he had endured, would come upon him unless some misdeed had provoked the punishment. What misdeed we were soon to know.

It sometimes – I think generally – happens that the presence of any one who stands and watches beside a sleeping man will wake him, unless his slumbers are unusually heavy. It was so now. While we looked at him, the sleeper awoke very suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon us. He put out his hand and took the doctor’s in its feeble grasp. “Who is that?” he asked next, pointing towards me.

“Do you wish him to go? The gentleman knows something of your sufferings, and is powerfully interested in your case; but he will leave us, if you wish it,” the doctor said.

“No. Let him stay.”

Seating myself out of sight, but where I could both see and hear what passed, I waited for what should follow. Dr. Garden and John Masey stood beside the bed. There was a moment’s pause.

“I want a looking-glass,” said Strange, without a word of preface.

We all started to hear him say those words. “I am dying,” said Strange; “will you not grant me my request?”

Doctor Garden whispered to old Masey; and the latter left the room. He was not absent long, having gone no further than the next house. He held an oval-framed mirror in his hand when he returned. A shudder passed through the body of the sick man as he saw it.

“Put it down,” he said, faintly – “anywhere – for the present.”

No one of us spoke. I do not think, in that moment of suspense, that we could, any of us, have spoken if we had tried.

The sick man tried to raise himself a little. “Prop me up,” he said. “I speak with difficulty – I have something to say.”

They put pillows behind him, so as to raise his head and body.

“I have presently a use for it,” he said, indicating the mirror. “I want to see – ” He stopped, and seemed to change his mind. He was sparing of his words. “I want to tell you – all about it.” Again he was silent. Then he seemed to make a great effort and spoke once more, beginning very abruptly.

“I loved my wife fondly. I loved her – her name was Lucy. She was English; but, after we were married, we lived long abroad – in Italy. She liked the country, and I liked what she liked. She liked to draw, too, and I got her a master. He was an Italian. I will not give his name. We always called him ‘the Master.’ A treacherous insidious man this was, and, under cover of his profession, took advantage of his opportunities, and taught my wife to love him – to love him.

“I am short of breath. I need not enter into details as to how I found them out; but I did find them out. We were away on a sketching expedition when I made my discovery. My rage maddened me, and there was one at hand who fomented my madness. My wife had a maid, who, it seemed, had also loved this man – the Master – and had been ill treated and deserted by him. She told me all. She had played the part of go-between – had carried letters. When she told me these things, it was night, in a solitary Italian town, among the mountains. ‘He is in his room now,’ she said, ‘writing to her.’

“A frenzy took possession of me as I listened to those words. I am naturally vindictive – remember that – and now my longing for revenge was like a thirst. Travelling in those lonely regions, I was armed, and when the woman said, ‘He is writing to your wife,’ I laid hold of my pistols, as by an instinct. It has been some comfort to me since, that I took them both. Perhaps, at that moment, I may have meant fairly by him – meant that we should fight. I don’t know what I meant, quite. The woman’s words, ‘He is in his own room now, writing to her,’ rung in my ears.”

The sick man stopped to take breath. It seemed an hour, though it was probably not more than two minutes, before he spoke again.

“I managed to get into his room unobserved. Indeed, he was altogether absorbed in what he was doing. He was sitting at the only table in the room, writing at a travelling-desk, by the light of a single candle. It was a rude dressing-table, and – and before him – exactly before him – there was – there was a looking-glass.

“I stole up behind him as he sat and wrote by the light of the candle. I looked over his shoulder at the letter, and I read, ‘Dearest Lucy, my love, my darling.’ As I read the words, I pulled the trigger of the pistol I held in my right hand, and killed him – killed him – but, before he died, he looked up once – not at me, but at my image before him in the glass, and his face – such a face – has been there – ever since, and mine – my face – is gone!”

He fell back exhausted, and we all pressed forward thinking that he must be dead, he lay so still.

But he had not yet passed away. He revived under the influence of stimulants. He tried to speak, and muttered indistinctly from time to time words of which we could sometimes make no sense. We understood, however, that he had been tried by an Italian tribunal, and had been found guilty; but with such extenuating circumstances that his sentence was commuted to imprisonment, during, we thought we made out, two years. But we could not understand what he said about his wife, though we gathered that she was still alive, from something he whispered to the doctor of there being provision made for her in his will.

He lay in a doze for something more than an hour after he had told his tale, and then he woke up quite suddenly, as he had done when we had first entered the room. He looked round uneasily in all directions, until his eye fell on the looking-glass.

“I want it,” he said, hastily; but I noticed that he did not shudder now, as it was brought near. When old Masey approached, holding it in his hand, and crying like a child, Dr. Garden came forward and stood between him and his master, taking the hand of poor Strange in his.

“Is this wise?” he asked. “Is it good, do you think, to revive this misery of your life now, when it is so near its close? The chastisement of your crime,” he added, solemnly, “has been a terrible one. Let us hope in God’s mercy that your punishment is over.”

The dying man raised himself with a last great effort, and looked up at the doctor with such an expression on his face as none of us had seen on any face, before.

“I do hope so,” he said, faintly, “but you must let me have my way in this – for if, now, when I look, I see aright – once more – I shall then hope yet more strongly – for I shall take it as a sign.”

The doctor stood aside without another word, when he heard the dying man speak thus, and the old servant drew near, and, stooping over softly, held the looking-glass before his master. Presently afterwards, we, who stood around looking breathlessly at him, saw such a rapture upon his face, as left no doubt upon our minds that the face which had haunted him so long, had, in his last hour, disappeared.