XIXLOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP: OR, REFLECTIONS BEFORE YOU JUMP
“I AM tired of reflection,” said the looking-glass, “I will now live my own life.” As a first step to that end he succeeded in rolling himself right out of his seventeenth-century uprights and falling off the spindle-legged dressing-table, oval face downwards, on to a deep grey carpet.
“Dear me,” said the carpet, who was rather a simple old-fashioned thing, though of an excellent texture, “here is somebody come down in the world. Ahem! I hope, sir, that you are none the worse for your fall.”
“Certainly not,” replied the mirror, who was rather bewildered by the fall and the complete darkness in which his new situation had placed him, “I precipitated myself to the ground on purpose.” “What!” cried the carpet, who feared that she had to do with a self-murderer, “after full reflection?”
“Without any reflection whatever,” cried the mirror testily. “I am,” he added more suavely, “entirely incapable of such an act.”
“Poor thing,” said the carpet soothingly, for she now perceived that her affair was merely with a madman. “If you will only compose yourself I am sure you will be your own man again immediately.”
“I see, madam,” said the mirror, “that we do not understand each other. Let me therefore explain my point of view. You must know then that I am by nature a person of a profoundly original turn of thought. Judge then of my despair when a malignant fate ordained for more than a century that I should be tortured by serving merely to reflect the follies and lack of grace of others. I have borne things insupportable, and finally I took the magnificent decision which has, among, other agreeable circumstances of release, conferred upon me the pleasure of your conversation. You will conceive for yourself my mental tumult when you used the word ‘reflection.’”
“But, sir,” said the carpet, now much distressed, “reflect. Are you not flying in the face of Providence? If reflection was the gift bestowed upon you by your designer would you wantonly dissipate it? Such conduct, believe me, must have the most dire results!”
“Madam,” neighed the mirror with an accent that suggested his century, “I am, I hope, a mirror of Feeling, and I know what respect must ever be paid to the Fair. None the less, I cannot leave you a prey to common error, even though its removal should offend your Female Delicacy. M’am, there is no such thing as a designer, but each of us is his own architect.”
“No designer!” screamed the carpet. “Now the weaver be good to me! Impious creature, do you not know that we are each of us made with nicely adjusted virtues and qualities by an all-understanding maker? And that to doubt this is to be damned beyond hope of re-weaving?”
“And what, m’am,” sneered the mirror, “is your particular virtue?”
“To be a comfort and a support to the foot, an office of which I am proud,” replied the carpet.
“I dare swear,” said the mirror courteously, “that you are perfect in it. But I do not doubt that, were I called upon, I could adjust myself to the same task in spite of all the pretensions of your friend the designer.”
The carpet was spared the necessity ofcontinuing so sacrilegious a conversation by the entry into the darkened room of its owner. He stepped heavily in the direction of the dressing-table, and stamped his riding-boot hard on the back of the mirror, smashing the glass to fragments.
“Damn!” he cried loudly, and after switching on the lights rang for a servant. “Who has been so d—d clumsy as to leave the old mirror standing between the window and the door?”
The servant picked up the mirror. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but it’s only the glass as is smashed. We could easy get a new one put in, and you were always complaining that the old one didn’t reflect.”
“Very well,” said the owner, “but the glass must be put right. Tell them to let me see the designer before the work is begun—and sweep up the litter of glass. By the way, the carpet’s not injured, is it?”
“No, sir,” said the servant, busily sweeping, “the carpet’s perfectly all right.”