Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  In an instant he unrolled a leather case, full of all manner of odd little steel instruments.

  “See here, my lady,” he said, displaying it, and addressing me, “I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. Plague take the dog!” he interpolated. “Silence, beast! He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word. Your noble friend, the young, lady at your right, has the sharpest tooth, — long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle; ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?”

  The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back from the window.

  “How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart-whip, and burnt to the bones with the castle brand!”

  She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback and his follies.

  My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.

  “All this,” said my father, “is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbours.”

  “But that very circumstance frightens one horribly,” said Carmilla.

  “How so?” inquired my father.

  “I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as bad as reality.”

  “We are in God’s hands; nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us.”

  “Creator! Nature!” said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. “And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All things proceed from Nature — don’t they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so.”

  “The doctor said he would come here to-day,” said my father, after a silence. “I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do.”

  “Doctors never did me any good,” said Carmilla.

  “Then you have been ill?” I asked.

  “More ill than ever you were,” she answered.

  “Long ago?”

  “Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases.”

  “You were very young then?”

  “I dare say; let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?” She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was busy over some papers near the window.

  “Why does your papa like to frighten us?” said the pretty girl, with a sigh and a little shudder.

  “He doesn’t, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind.”

  “Are you afraid, dearest?”

  “I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.”

  “You are afraid to die?”

  “Yes, every one is.”

  “But to die as lovers may — to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvæ, don’t you see — each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room.”

  Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:

  “Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?”

  The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head —

  “Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”

  And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.

  CHAPTER V.

  A WONDERFUL LIKENESS.

  This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, dark-faced son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was a journey of ten leagues, and whenever a messenger arrived at the schloss from our little capital of Gratz, we used to crowd about him in the hall, to hear the news.

  This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a sensation. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper. Then with assistants, and armed with hammer, ripping-chisel, and turnscrew, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled to witness the unpacking of the cases.

  Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which were about to be restored to their places, had come to us through her.

  My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don’t know that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly, very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but obliterated them.

  “There is a picture that I have not seen yet,” said my father. “In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could read, ‘Marcia Karnstein,’ and the date ‘1698’ and I am curious to see how it has turned out.”

  I remembered it; it was a small picture, about a foot and a half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so blackened by age that I could not make it out.

  The artist now produced it, with evident pride. It was quite beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of Carmilla!

  “Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are, living, smiling, ready to speak, in this picture. Isn’t it beautiful, papa? And see, even the little mole on her throat.”

  My father laughed, and said “Certainly it is a wonderful likeness,” but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little struck by it, and went on talking to the picture cleaner, who was also something of an artist, and discoursed with intelligence about the portraits or other works, which his art had just brought into light and colour, while I was more and more lost in wonder the more I looked at the picture.

  “Will you let me hang this picture in my room, papa?” I asked.

  “Certainly, dear,” said he, smiling, “I’m very glad you think it so like. It must be prettier even than I thought it, if it is.”

  The young lady did not acknowledge this pretty speech, did not seem to hear it. She was leaning back in her seat, her fine eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture.

  “And now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner. It is not Marcia; it looks as if it was done in gold. The name is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, and this is a little coronet over i
t, and underneath A.D. 1698. I am descended from the Karnsteins; that is, mamma was.”

  “Ah!” said the lady, languidly, “so am I, I think, a very long descent, very ancient. Are there any Karnsteins living now?”

  “None who bear the name, I believe. The family were ruined, I believe, in some civil wars, long ago, but the ruins of the castle are only about three miles away.”

  “How interesting!” she said, languidly. “But see what beautiful moonlight!” She glanced through the hall-door, which stood a little open. “Suppose you take a little ramble round the court, and look down at the road and river.”

  “It is so like the night you came to us,” I said.

  She sighed, smiling.

  She rose, and each with her arm about the other’s waist, we walked out upon the pavement.

  In silence, slowly we walked down to the drawbridge, where the beautiful landscape opened before us.

  “And so you were thinking of the night I came here?” she almost whispered. “Are you glad I came?”

  “Delighted, dear Carmilla,” I answered.

  “And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in your room,” she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my shoulder.

  “How romantic you are, Carmilla,” I said. “Whenever you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one great romance.”

  She kissed me silently.

  “I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on.”

  “I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.”

  How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!

  Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled.

  Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. “Darling, darling,” she murmured, “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.”

  I started from her.

  She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face colourless and apathetic.

  “Is there a chill in the air, dear?” she said drowsily. “I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in.”

  “You look ill, Carmilla; a little faint. You certainly must take some wine,” I said.

  “Yes, I will. I’m better now. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do give me a little wine,” answered Carmilla, as we approached the door. “Let us look again for a moment; it is the last time, perhaps, I shall see the moonlight with you.”

  “How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better?” I asked.

  I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded the country about us.

  “Papa would be grieved beyond measure,” I added, “if he thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know. We have a very skilful doctor near this, the physician who was with papa to-day.”

  “I’m sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little weakness. People say I am languid; I am incapable of exertion; I can scarcely walk as far as a child of three years old; and every now and then the little strength I have falters, and I become as you have just seen me. But after all I am very easily set up again; in a moment I am perfectly myself. See how I have recovered.”

  So, indeed, she had; and she and I talked a great deal, and very animated she was; and the remainder of that evening passed without any recurrence of what I called her infatuations. I mean her crazy talk and looks, which embarrassed, and even frightened me.

  But there occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even Carmilla’s languid nature into momentary energy.

  CHAPTER VI.

  A VERY STRANGE AGONY.

  When we got into the drawingroom, and had sat down to our coffee and chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a little card party, in the course of which papa came in for what he called his “dish of tea.”

  When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival.

  She answered “No.”

  He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present.

  “I cannot tell,” she answered ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.”

  “But you must not dream of any such thing,” exclaimed my father, to my great relief. “We can’t afford to lose you so, and I won’t consent to your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has invaded our neighbourhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving us without her distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it easily.”

  “Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality,” she answered, smiling bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful château, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter.”

  So he gallantly, in his oldfashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at her little speech.

  I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed.

  “Do you think,” I said at length, “that you will ever confide fully in me?”

  She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me.

  “You won’t answer that?” I said. “You can’t answer pleasantly; I ought not to have asked you.”

  “You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, — to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”

  “Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily.

  “Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?”

  “No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be.”

  “I almost forget, it is years ago.”

  I laughed.

  “You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.”

  “I remember everything about it — with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” she touched her breast, “and never was the same since.”

  “Were you near dying?”

  “Yes, very — a cruel love — strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so
lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?”

  She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher.

  I bid her goodnight, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation.

  I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawingroom to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall.

  If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so much surprised me.

  The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Carmilla’s habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber was “ensconced.”

  These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

  Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.

  I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.

  I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and it passed out.