The first few pages of the story are clumsy and badly written – clearly the product of an unformed story-teller's mind – but the last bit pays off better than I remembered; there is a genuine frisson in what Mr. Wharton finds waiting for him in the East Room. I suppose that's at least part of the reason I agreed to allow this mostly unremarkable work to be reprinted after all these years. And there is at least a token effort to create characters which are more than paper-doll cutouts; Wharton and Reynard are antagonists, but neither is
'the good guy' or 'the bad guy.' The real villain is behind that plastered-over door. And I also see an odd echo of 'The Glass Floor' in a very recent work called 'The Library Policeman.' That work, a short novel, will be published as part of a collection of short novels called
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Mostly I'm allowing the story to be republished to send a message to young writers who are out there right now, trying to be published, and collecting rejection slips from such magazines as
If that Little spark is there, someone will probably see it sooner or later, gleaming faintly in the dark. And, if you tend the spark nestled in the kindling, it really can grow into a large, blazing fire. It happened to me, and it started here.
I remember getting the idea for the story, and it just came as the ideas come now – casually, with no flourish of trumpets. I was walking down a dirt road to see a friend, and for no reason at all I began to wonder what it would be like to stand in a room whose floor was a mirror. The image was so intriguing that writing the story became a necessity. It wasn't written for money; it was written so I could see better. Of course I did not see it as well as I had hoped; there is still that shortfall between what I hope I will accomplish and what I actually manage. Still, I came away from it with two valuable things: a salable story after five years of rejection slips, and a bit of experience. So here it is, and as that fellow Griner says in Dickey's novel, it ain't really as bad as I thought.
Wharton moved slowly up the wide steps, hat in hand, craning his neck to get a better look at the Victorian monstrosity that his sister had died in. It wasn't a house at all, he reflected, but a mausoleum – a huge, sprawling mausoleum. It seemed to grow out of the top of the hill like an outsized, perverted toadstool, all gambrels and gables and jutting, blank-windowed cupolas. A brass weather-vane surmounted the eighty degree slant of shake-shingled roof, the tarnished effigy of a leering little boy with one hand shading eyes Wharton was just as glad he could not see.
Then he was on the porch, and the house as a whole was cut off from him. He twisted the old-fashioned bell, and listened to it echo hollowly through the dim recesses within. There was a rose-tinted fanlight over the door, and Wharton could barely make out the date 1770 chiseled into the glass.
The door suddenly swung open. 'Yes, sir?' The housekeeper stared out at him. She was old, hideously old. Her face hung like limp dough on her skull, and the hand on the door above the chain was grotesquely twisted by arthritis.
'I've come to see Anthony Reynard,' Wharton said. He fancied he could even smell the sweetish odor of decay emanating from the rumpled silk of the shapeless black dress she wore.
'Mr Reynard isn't seein' anyone. He's mournin'.'
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'He'll see me,' Wharton said. 'I'm Charles Wharton. Janine's brother.'
'Oh.' Her eyes widened a little, and the loose bow of her mouth worked around the empty ridges of her gums. 'Just a minute.' She disappeared, leaving the door ajar.
Wharton stared into the dim mahogany shadows, making out high-backed easy chairs, horse-hair upholstered divans, tall narrow-shelved bookcases, curlicued, floridly carven wainscoting.
A tall figure materialized suddenly out of the gloom, slope-shouldered, head thrust forward, eyes deeply sunken and downcast.
Anthony Reynard reached out and unhooked the door-chain. 'Come in, Mr. Wharton, ' he said heavily.
Wharton stepped into the vague dimness of the house, looking up curiously at the man who had married his sister. There were rings beneath the hollows of his eyes, blue and bruised-looking. The suit he wore was wrinkled and hung limp on him, as if he had lost a great deal of weight. He looks tired, Wharton thought. Tired and old.
'My sister has already been buried?' Wharton asked.
'Yes.' He shut the door slowly, imprisoning Wharton in the decaying gloom of the house. 'My deepest sorrow, sir. Wharton. I loved your sister dearly.' He made a vague gesture. 'I'm sorry.'
He seemed about to add more, then shut his mouth with an abrupt snap. When he spoke again, it was obvious he had bypassed whatever had been on his lips. 'Would you care to sit down? I'm sure you have questions.”
'I do.” Somehow it came out more curtly than he had intended.
Reynard sighed and nodded slowly. He led the way deeper into the living room and gestured at a chair. Wharton sank deeply into it, and it seemed to gobble him up rather than give beneath him. Reynard sat next to the fireplace and dug for cigarettes. He offered them wordlessly to Wharton, and he shook his head.
He waited until Reynard lit his cigarette, then asked, 'Just how did she die? Your letter didn't say much.
Reynard blew out the match and threw it into the fireplace. It landed on one of the ebony iron fire-dogs, a carven gargoyle that stared at Wharton with toad's eyes.
'She fell,' he said. 'She was dusting in one of the other rooms, up along the eaves. We were planning to paint, and she said it would have to be well-dusted before we could begin. She had the ladder. It slipped.
Her neck was broken.' There was a clicking sound in his throat as he swallowed.
'She died – instantly?'
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'Yes.' He lowered his head and
