Usher Inn

The light held steady as she led the way up the stairs. It was dark here at night, especially in winter, though Harriet could not remember a time it hadn't been dark at the inn. The sun never seemed to break through the constant cloud-cover. She supposed that was why they had fewer and fewer visitors traveling the dirt roads. Still, there was always visitors, some just passing through, others electing to stay. She was the housemaid, and it was her duty to see they were all comfortable.

As she held the candle aloft, shielding it from drafts with her hand, she glanced back at the guest. He was not like the others. The others who stopped were always exhausted, happy for the company and to take their ease at the fireside. But not him. He was jittery, edgy, as if afraid bandits would set on him and rob him of his meager belongings—as far as Harriet could tell, the clothes he wore were the sum total. This kind of demeanor immediately put Mr. Usher in mind of a fugitive from the law, and he instructed Harriet to be more than usually vigilant. But she did not agree. If he was hounded, it was by his own sadness and loneliness.

"Here we are, Doctor . . .?" Though he carried no bag of instruments and dressed strangely, without cravat or hat, there was a weightiness to him that convinced her his credentials were not forged. She couldn't read, so when held he held up the flap of leather with his cards, she told him so and he smiled, relieved. He'd seemed almost cheerful for a few moments then, and had asked her name, which few gentlemen did, at least, not ones with honorable intentions. He'd laughed and she could see his was a face that took naturally to smiles. But abruptly he'd asked to be shown to his room.

So there she stood, at the top of the stairs, shielding her light with the door open. "If you please, sir," she said nervously, bobbing a curtsy. He walked past her slowly, warily, and she hastened to light the candles in the room. "I'll just draw you a fire, sir," she said, reaching for the tinder and the poker.

"That's not necessarily," he said.

"But sir—" she protested.

"Harriet," he said, "is there something wrong with the mirror?"

She had just gotten the fire started. Fed up, she wiped her hands on her apron and moved to where he was standing, perfectly motionless. It was a cheval glass, a little old perhaps, but she had recently polished it. She couldn't remember exactly when—her memory was something dreadful these days. She held the candle up, prepared to indulge the gentleman since he was kind. Reflected, she saw her own figure—the outline of her lace cap, many times mended, a gift from her mother when she first went into service, the apron, he starched linen collar, the high-waisted brown gingham, patched in places. Behind her was the Doctor, pale and ill at ease, as if he'd never seen his own reflection before, as if he could not recognize himself. As if he'd seen a ghost, or maybe two.

She was about to say it was late at night and long journeys did make the eyes sore, but then there was a light on the glass and she blinked. The Doctor was a haze, and just for a second there was nothing where she was standing. She stepped back, alarmed, and laughed. "It do play tricks on the eyes." She turned back to look at him, his face was grim but satisfied. He sat on the edge of the bed and crossed his arms. "I'll just get this fire going," Harriet said, shaking herself, "and then I'll be off."

He didn't respond, and so she was on her knees with the tinder in hand, blowing on the flames, when he asked, "Tell me, Harriet, how long have you been working here?"

It was a peculiar thing for a gentleman to ask, but Harriet thought there was no harm in answering. "Well, since I was a little girl, sir. My sisters and brothers and I have all been in service."

"And you've never worked anywhere else?"

She had to stop to think. Her eldest brother was a footman in London, and the others were in great houses . . . it seemed a long time she had visited her mother . . . surely it was her last birthday when she'd had the day off . . . when was her birthday again?

"Is it always this dark?" he asked.

She stood up, poking the coals. "Yes, sir. The weather is not particularly good, but we do the best we . . ." She couldn't remember the last time she had seen the sun!

"Do many people stay at the inn?"

She turned around to look at him. There was something slightly wild in his gaze, and yet it did not frighten her. She felt almost exhilarated, as if fires of ambition beyond her understanding burned brightly within him. "Always from the west road," she answered. "Some leave by the east road, and we never see them. Some stay. Many stay."

"Well, I won't be staying," the Doctor announced, getting off the bed and pacing. "As soon as my vehicle repowers—" he glanced at her, "I mean, as soon as my horses are rested I'll be taking the east road out."

She curtseyed. She knew no one had seen the Doctor's carriage arrive, and where his horses were being watered, no one knew. Already the scullery maid was making up wild stories about carriage being a stolen one, or him a dispossessed royal from some country far away. Some preferred to think less positively, like Mr. Usher, whose inn it was. But Mr. Usher never refused a traveler; that was the unquestionable order of things.

"Good night, then, Doctor," she said, taking her candle.

"Harriet," he said. "You don't have to stay here." His voice was low, but it held no hope of swaying her. "You could come with me."

She felt her cheeks burn scarlet. "You make an assault upon my honor! And me a poor housemaid, with no one to protect her!"

"I don't mean like that," he snapped, and she froze, overawed by the chill in his voice. "I could take you to where the sun shines, where it's summer and the stars multiply in their billions!"

Harriet drew in breath, frowning. "If that is so, then take me to my mother's house, for that is the only other place I would like to be."

The Doctor sighed, and his eyes glowed like the candle flame. "I'm sorry. I can't take you there."

Harriet frowned, quite convinced she was being made fun of, an object of ridicule to this much-learned medicinal man. But the expression of sorrow on the Doctor's face was sincere, and she wondered suddenly, if he too could not go home. "Good night," she repeated. "Rest, sir, you are surely exhausted by your long journey."

He had retreated to the bed, gazing into the fireplace. "It was a very long journey."

"Breakfast will be at seven," she said, "if you'd care to go downstairs."

"I'll be gone long before that," said the Doctor. "Goodbye, Harriet."

She decided he was being precipitous, and she repeated her good night. There were tears reflecting the firelight, streaming down his face, completely silently. She wondered if he was even aware of them. Awed by his grief, she closed the door just as quietly.

By the morning he was gone, without a single physical trace that he had ever been, not even a shape in the bedclothes. And slowly, as more visitors streamed in from the west and each day arrived without a dawn, Harriet forgot she had ever met a man who would have saved her from her fate. And eventually she forgot to look for the sun, as she forgot where her mother lived and then, at last, her own name. That is when she had no image at all in any mirror.