In Whitby Thomas Argument is known for his mirrors. He makes them himself, casting the glass in his shop, painting the silver foil on the backs of the plates with his own brush. This is part of the competitiveness of Thomas Argument: his mirrors must contain no flaws, no warps, no blurs, no bubbles. His rival across the street, William Cloverdale, makes mirrors, too; once Thomas Argument, who looks very closely into things, found a bubble in one of Cloverdale’s mirrors, and this, for Argument, was a triumph. A bubble in glass is a great misfortune, sir, a great misfortune, madam, Argument has been known to tell his customers, because a bubble, madam, is a flaw; and what is flawed is fragile; and what is fragile can break—never forget it. Argument has certainly never let Cloverdale forget it, referring, whenever they meet, to the misfortunate bubble. Of course it is unpleasant; Thomas Argument is not always a pleasant man. But his mirrors are very good, this even William Cloverdale must concede. Argument makes mirrors that can turn a single, poor room into an endless suite, a dark claustrophobic hallway into a maze. Light, reflected in his mirrors, is more vivid; colors are brighter; shadows more dense; faces more beautiful; images are multiplied, fragmented, reduced, distorted . . . But my mother has not heard about Thomas Argument’s mirrors, and, overwhelmed, she does not notice them, hanging along the back wall of the shop (the better to reflect, to magnify, to multiply Argument’s wares, which are vast enough in any case), until it is too late—until she suddenly finds herself a hundred times reflected (a small woman, blond, pale, astonished), staring over her own shoulder, a hundred times, into the cold, unblinking blue eye of her enemy, the sea.
She gasps; cries out one or two words that she will not remember but that sound (Thomas Argument will tell her later) like My Papa! or, perhaps, more puzzlingly, the contradictory Not my Papa! Then she faints (her collapse reflected a hundred times in a hundred reflecting surfaces); sags against Argument’s crowded shelves, but so gently that nothing falls, nothing breaks; there is just an ominous shiver, followed by the soft, high-pitched, troubled sighing of glass.
• • •
When she returns to herself (this strange expression implying she has lost herself somewhere—and perhaps she has—or perhaps she will) she finds she is no longer in the bright main room of the shop, with its relentless light and its vertiginous shelves of glass, but in another room, darker; the light here filtered through thick, drawn curtains, a vigorous fire burning on the hearth. It is warm—almost too warm. Someone has laid her on a couch thick with pillows and tapestries; someone (the same someone?) has removed from her feet the clever little black boots that her father bought her in France. Her skirts are disarranged, her stockings exposed, but nonetheless, in this close and thickly carpeted space, she feels cosseted, wrapped, strangely protected. She feels (for the first time, perhaps, since the day Felix Girard disappeared from the decks of the Narcissus): safe.
Madam, Thomas Argument says to her, you frightened me.
Clotilde starts. In the semidarkness she has been unaware of Thomas Argument, except as a mysterious rescuing presence, a cosseter-in-wraps, an unseen remover-of-boots; now, suddenly, she realizes he has been sitting behind her, in a low, leather chair, all along, watching. She does not know how long he has watched her, and the sudden consciousness that it may have been a very long time fills her with shame. She colors, and is briefly confused about everything: who she is, where she is, who Thomas Argument is. She is confused at being addressed as a married woman. In her faint she has momentarily forgotten about Leopold, about her marriage. Who does he mean? Madam who? But the ring is there on her finger—evidence, clearly. Clearly Thomas Argument has noticed it. He is a man who misses very little; and so, inevitably, he has noticed Clotilde’s confusion, as brief as it is, as quickly disguised. Indeed, he enjoys her confusion, for he already perceives, better than she, everything that it contains. The only question remaining for Thomas Argument is what, if anything, he wants to do about it.
This he will decide in time.
Now he says again, gently, You frightened me. Are you all right?
Yes . . . I . . . it was so bright . . .