The Ebony Frame - E. Nesbit (ebook reader with highlighter TXT) 📗

no, not strangers.” Those luminous eyes were looking up into mine, those red lips were near me. With a passionate cry, a sense of having recovered life’s one great good, that had seemed wholly lost, I clasped her in my arms. She was no ghost, she was a woman, the only woman in the world.

“How long,” I said, “how long is it since I lost you?”

She leaned back, hanging her full weight on the hands that were clasped behind my head. “How can I tell how long? There is no time in hell,” she answered.

It was not a dream. Ah! no — there are no such dreams. I wish to God there could be. When in dreams do I see her eyes, hear her voice, feel her lips against my cheek, hold her hands to my lips, as I did that night, the supreme night of my life! At first we hardly spoke. It seemed enough

after long grief and pain,

To feel the arms of my true love,

Round me once again.

It is very difficult to tell my story. There are no words to express the sense of glad reunion, the complete realisation of every hope and dream of a life, that came upon me as I sat with my hand in hers, and looked into her eyes.

How could it have been a dream, when I left her sitting in the straight-backed chair, and went down to the kitchen to tell the maids I should want nothing more — that I was busy, and did not wish to be disturbed; when I fetched wood for the fire with my own hands, and, bringing it in, found her still sitting there — saw the little brown head turn as I entered, saw the love in her dear eyes; when I threw myself at her feet and blessed the day I was born, since life had given me this.

Not a thought of Mildred; all other things in my life were a dream — this, its one splendid reality.

“I am wondering,” she said, after a while, when we had made such cheer, each of the other, as true lovers may after long parting — “I am wondering how much you remember of our past?”

“I remember nothing but that I love you — that I have loved you all my life.”

“You remember nothing — really nothing?”

“Only that I am truly yours; that we have both suffered; that — tell me, my mistress dear, all that you remember. Explain it all to me. Make me understand. And yet — No, I don’t want to understand. It is enough that we are together.”

If it was a dream, why have I never dreamed it again?

She leaned down towards me, her arm lay on my neck, and drew my head till it rested on her shoulder. “I am a ghost, I suppose,” she said, laughing softly; and her laughter stirred memories which I just grasped at and just missed. “But you and I know better, don’t we? I will tell you everything you have forgotten. We loved each other — ah! no, you have not forgotten that — and when you came back from the wars, we were to be married. Our pictures were painted before you went away. You know I was more learned than women of that day. Dear one, when you were gone, they said I was a witch. They tried me. They said I should be burned. Just because I had looked at the stars and gained more knowledge than other women, they must needs bind me to a stake and let me be eaten by the fire. And you far away!”

Her whole body trembled and shrank. Oh love, what dream would have told me that my kisses would soothe even that memory?

“The night before,” she went on, “the devil did come to me. I was innocent before — you know it, don’t you? And even then my sin was for you — for you — because of the exceeding love I bore you. — The devil came, and I sold my soul to eternal flame. But I got a good price. I got the right to come back through my picture (if anyone, looking at it, wished for me), as long as my picture stayed in its ebony frame. That frame was not carved by man’s hand. I got the right to come back to you, oh, my heart’s heart. And another thing I won, which you shall hear anon. They burned me for a witch, they made me suffer hell on earth. Those faces, all crowding round, the crackling wood and the choking smell of the smoke — “

“Oh, love, no more, no more!”

“When my mother sat that night before my picture, she wept and cried, ‘Come back, my poor, lost child!’ And I went to her with glad leaps of heart. Dear, she shrank from me, she fled, she shrieked and moaned of ghosts. She had our pictures covered from sight, and put again in the ebony frame. She had promised me my picture should stay always there. Ah, through all these years your face was against mine.”

She paused.

“But the man you loved?”

“You came home. My picture was gone. They lied to you, and you married another woman; but some day I knew you would walk the world again, and that I should find you.”

“The other gain?” I asked.

“The other gain. she said slowly, “I gave my soul for. It is this. If you also will give up your hopes of heaven, I can remain a woman, I can remain in your world — I can be your wife. Oh my dear, after all these years, at last — at last!”

“If I sacrifice my soul,” I said slowly, and the words did not seem an imbecility, “if I sacrifice my soul I win you? Why, love, it’s a contradiction in terms. You are my soul.”

Her eyes looked straight into mine. Whatever might happen, whatever did happen, whatever may happen, our two souls in that moment met and became one.

“Then you choose, you deliberately choose, to give up your hopes of heaven for me, as I gave up mine for you?”

“I will not,” I said, “give up my hope of heaven on any terms. Tell me what I must do that you and I may make our heaven here, as now?”

“I will tell you to-morrow,” she said. “Be alone here to-morrow night — twelve is ghost’s time, isn’t it? — and then I will come out of the picture, and never go back to it. I shall live with you, and die, and be buried, and there will be an end of me. But we shall live first, my heart’s heart.”

I laid my head on her knee. A strange drowsiness overcame me. Holding her hand against my cheek, I lost consciousness. When I awoke, the grey November dawn was glimmering, ghost like, through the uncurtained window. My head was pillowed on my arm, and rested — I raised my head quickly — ah! not on my lady’s knee, but on the needleworked cushion of the straight-backed chair. I sprang to my feet. I was stiff with cold and dazed with dreams, but I turned my eyes on the picture.. There she sat, my lady, my dear love. I held out my arms, but the passionate cry I would have uttered died on my lips. She had said twelve o’clock. Her lightest word was my law. So I only stood in front of the picture, and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.

“Oh! my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?”

No thought, then, of my whole life’s completion and consummation being a dream.

I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.

I remembered, at one o’clock, Mildred coming and her existence.

Now indeed the dream began.

With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else’s. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was not there.

Still, the situation was not intolerable, until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and mother kept the conversational pot boiling with a profusion of genteel commonplaces, and I bore it, as one in sight of heaven can bear mild purgatory. I looked up at my sweetheart in the ebony frame, and I felt that anything which might happen, any irresponsible imbecility, any bathos of boredom, was nothing, if, after all, she came to me again.

And yet, when Mildred, too, looked at the portrait and said: “Doesn’t she think a lot of herself? Theatrical character, I suppose? One of your flames, Mr. Devigne?” I had a sickening sense of impotent irritation which became absolute torture when Mildred — how could I ever have admired that chocolate-box barmaid style of prettiness — threw herself into the high-backed chair, covering the needlework with ridiculous flounces, and added, “Silence gives consent! Who is it, Mr. Devigne? Tell us all about her: I am sure she has a story.”

Poor little Mildred, sitting there smiling, serene in her confidence that her every word charmed me — sitting there with her rather pinched waist, her rather tight boots, her rather vulgar voice — sitting in the chair where my dear lady had sat when she told me her story! I could not bear it.

“Don’t sit there,” I said, “it’s not comfortable!”

But the girl would not be warned. With a laugh that set every nerve in my body vibrating with annoyance, she said, “Oh, dear! mustn’t I even sit in the same chair as your black-velvet woman?”

I looked at the chair in the picture. It was the same, and in her chair Mildred was sitting. Then a horrible sense of the reality of Mildred came upon me, Was all this a reality after all? But for fortunate chance, might Mildred have occupied, not only her chair, but her place in my life? I rose.

“I hope you won’t think me very rude,” I said, “but I am obliged to go out.”

I forget what appointment I alleged. The lie came readily enough.

I faced Mildred’s pouts with the hope that she and her mother would not wait dinner for me. I fled. In another minute I was safe, alone, under the chill, cloudy, autumn sky-free to think, think, think of my dear lady.

I walked for hours along streets and squares; I lived over and over again every look, word and hand-touch — every kiss; I was completely, unspeakably happy.

Mildred was utterly forgotten; my lady of the ebony frame filled my heart, and soul, and spirit.

As I heard eleven boom through the fog, I turned and went home.

When I got to my street, I found a crowd surging through it, a strong red, light filling the air.

A house was on fire. Mine!

I elbowed my way through the crowd.

The picture of my lady — that, at least, I could save.

As I sprang up the steps, I saw, as in a dream — yes, all this was really dream-like — I saw Mildred leaning out of the first-floor window, wringing her hands.

“Come back, sir,” cried a fireman; “we’ll get the young lady out right enough.”

But my lady? The stairs were crackling, smoking, and as hot as hell. I went up to the room where her picture was. Strange to say, I only felt that the picture was