The Ebony Frame, E. Nesbit [nonfiction book recommendations .TXT] 📗

The Ebony Frame

by E. Nesbit

To be rich is a luxurious sensation, the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist; all callings utterly inconsistent with one’s family feeling and one’s direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy.

When my Aunt Dorcas died and left me seven hundred a year and a furnished house in Chelsea, I felt that life had nothing left to offer except immediate possession of the legacy. Even Mildred Mayhew, whom I had hitherto regarded as my life’s light, became less luminous. I was not engaged to Mildred, but I lodged with her mother, and I sang duets with Mildred and gave her gloves when it would run to it, which was seldom. She was a dear, good girl, and I meant to marry her some day. It is very nice to feel that a good little woman is thinking of you — it helps you in your work — and it is pleasant to know she will say “Yes,” when you say, “Will you?”

But my legacy almost put Mildred out of my head, especially as she was staying with friends in the country.

Before the gloss was off my new mourning, I was seated in my aunt’s armchair in front of the fire in the drawing-room of my own house. My own house! It was grand, but rather lonely. I did think of Mildred just then.

The room was comfortably furnished with rosewood and damask. On the walls hung a few fairly good oil paintings, but the space above the mantelpiece was disfigured by an exceedingly bad print, “The Trial of Lord William Russell,” framed in a dark frame. I got up to look at it. I had visited my aunt with dutiful regularity, but I never remembered seeing this frame before. It was not intended for a print, but for an oil-painting. It was of fine ebony, beautifully and curiously carved. I looked at it with growing interest, and when my aunt’s housemaid — I had retained her modest staff of servants — came in with the lamp, I asked her how long the print had been there.

“Mistress only bought it two. days before she was took ill,” she said; “but the frame — she didn’t want to buy a new one — so she got this out of the attic. There’s lots of curious old things there, sir.”

“Had my aunt had this frame long?”

“Oh, yes, sir. It must have come long before I did, and I’ve been here seven years come Christmas. There was a picture in it. That’s upstairs too — but it’s that black and ugly it might as well be a chimney-back.”

I felt a desire to see this picture. What if it were some priceless old master, in which my aunt’s eyes had only seen rubbish?

Directly after breakfast next morning, I paid a visit to the attic.

It was crammed with old furniture enough to stock a curiosity shop. All the house was furnished solidly in the Mid-Victorian style, and in this room everything not in keeping with the drawing-room suite ideal was stowed away. Tables of papier-maché and mother-of-pearl, straight-backed chairs with twisted feet and faded needlework cushions, fire-screens of gilded carving and beaded banners, oak bureaux with brass handles, a little worktable with its faded, moth-eaten, silk flutings hanging in disconsolate shreds; on these, and the dust that covered them, blazed the full daylight as I pulled up the blinds. I promised myself a good time in re-enshrining these household gods in my parlour, and promoting the Victorian suite to the attic. But at present my business was to find the picture as “black as the chimney back”; and presently, behind a heap of fenders and boxes, I found it.

Jane, the housemaid, identified it at once. I took it downstairs carefully, and examined it. Neither subject nor colour was distinguishable. There was a splodge of a darker tint in the middle, but whether it was figure, or tree, or house, no man could have told. It seemed to be painted on a very thick panel bound with leather. I decided to send it to one of those persons who pour on rotting family portraits the water of eternal youth; but even as I did so, I thought — why not try my own restorative hand at a corner of it.

My bath-sponge soap and nail-brush, vigorously applied for a few seconds, showed me that there was no picture to clean. Bare oak presented itself to my persevering brush. I tried the other side, Jane watching me with indulgent interest. The same result. Then the truth dawned on me. Why was the panel so thick? I tore off the leather binding, and the panel divided and fell to the ground in a cloud of dust. There were two pictures — they had been nailed face to face. I leaned them against the wall, and the next moment I was leaning against it myself.

For one of the pictures was myself — a perfect portrait — no shade of expression or turn of feature wanting. Myself — in the dress men wore when James the First was King. When had this been done? And how, without my knowledge? Was this some whim of my aunt’s?

“Lor’, sir!” the shrill surprise of Jane at my elbow; “what a lovely photo it is! Was it a fancy ball, sir?”

“Yes,” I stammered. “I — I don’t think I want anything more now. You can go.”

She went; and I turned, still with my heart beating violently, to the other picture. This was a beautiful woman’s picture — very beautiful she was. I noted all her beauties — straight nose, low brows, full lips, thin hands, large, deep, luminous eyes. She wore a black velvet gown. It was a three-quarter-length portrait. Her arms rested on a table beside her, and her head on her hands; but her face was turned full forward, and her eyes met those of the spectator bewilderingly. On the table by her were compasses and shining instruments whose uses I did not know, books, a goblet, and a heap of papers and pens. I saw all this afterwards. I believe it was a quarter of an hour before I could turn my eyes from her. I have never see any other eyes like hers; they appealed, as a child’s or a dog’s do; they commanded, as might those of an empress.

“Shall I sweep up the dust sir?” Curiosity had brought Jane back. I acceded. I turned from her my portrait. I kept between her and the woman in the black velvet. When I was alone again I tore down “The Trial of Lord William Russell,” and I put the picture of the woman in its strong ebony frame.

Then I wrote to a frame-maker for a frame for my portrait. It had so long lived face to face with this beautiful witch that I had not the heart to banish it from her presence; I suppose I am sentimental — if it be sentimental to think such things as that.

The new frame came home, and I hung it opposite the fireplace. An exhaustive search among my aunt’s papers showed no explanation of the portrait of myself, no history of the portrait of the woman with the wonderful eyes. I only learned that all the old furniture together had come to my aunt at the death of my great-uncle, the head of the family; and I should have concluded that the resemblance was only a family one, if everyone who came in had not exclaimed at the “speaking likeness.” I adopted Jane’s “fancy ball” explanation.

And there, one might suppose, the matter of the portraits ended. One might suppose it, that is, if there were not evidently a good deal more written here about it. However, to me then the matter seemed ended.

I went to see Mildred; I invited her and her mother to come and stay with me; I rather avoided glancing at the picture in ebony frame. I could not forget, nor remember without singular emotion, the look in the eyes of that woman when mine first met them. I shrank from meeting that look again.

I reorganised the house somewhat, preparing for Mildred’s visit. I brought down much of the old-fashioned furniture, and after a long day of arranging and re-arranging, I sat down before the fire, and lying back in a pleasant languor, I idly raised my eyes to the picture of the woman. I met her dark, deep, hazel eyes, and once more my gaze was held fixed as by strong magic — the kind of fascination that keeps one sometimes staring for whole minutes into one’s own eyes in the glass. I gazed into her eyes, and felt my own dilate, pricked with a smart like the smart of tears.

“I wish,” I said, “oh, how I wish you were a woman and not a picture! Come down! Ah, come down!”

I laughed at myself as I spoke; but even as I laughed, I held out my arms.

I was not sleepy; I was not drunk. I was as wide awake and as sober as ever was a man in the world. And yet, as I held out my arms, I saw the eyes of the picture dilate, her lips tremble — if I were to be hanged for saying it, it is true

Her hands moved slightly; and a sort of flicker of a smile passed over her face.

I sprang to my feet. “This won’t do,” I said aloud. “Firelight does play strange tricks. I’ll have the lamp.”

I made for the bell. My hand was on it, when I heard a sound behind me, and turned — the bell still unrung. The fire had burned low and the corners of the room were deeply shadowed; but surely, there — behind the tall worked chair — was something darker than a shadow.

“I must face this out,” I said, “or I shall never be able to face myself again.” I left the bell, I seized the poker, and battered the dull coals to a blaze. Then I stepped back resolutely, and looked at the picture. The ebony frame was empty! From the shadow of the worked chair came a soft rustle, and out of the shadow the woman of the picture was coming — coming towards me.

I hope I shall never again know a moment of terror as blank and absolute. I could not have moved or spoken to save my life. Either all the known laws of nature were nothing, or I was mad. I stood trembling, but, I am thankful to remember, I stood still, while the black velvet gown swept across the hearthrug towards me.

Next moment a hand touched me — a hand, soft, warm, and human — and a low voice said, “You called me. I am here.”

At that touch and that voice, the world seemed to give a sort of bewildering half-turn. I hardly know how to express it, but at once it seemed not awful, not even unusual, for portraits to become flesh — only most natural, most right, most unspeakably fortunate.

I laid my hand on hers. I looked from her to my portrait. I could not see it in the firelight. “We are not strangers,” I said.

“Oh,