Carmilla

PROLOGUE

Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has
written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a reference to his
Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual learning and
acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation. It will form but one
volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s collected papers.

As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the
“laity,” I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in
nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain
from presenting any précis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extract
from his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, not
improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its
intermediates.”

I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence commenced
by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so clever and careful
as his informant seems to have been. Much to my regret, however, I found that
she had died in the interval.

She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she communicates
in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce, such conscientious
particularity.

I.

An Early Fright

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or
schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or
nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered
among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name,
although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place,
where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don’t see how ever so
much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his
patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which
it stands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in
a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge,
never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by
many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its
Gothic chapel.

The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate,
and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that
winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely
place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road,
the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and
twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your
English miles to the left. The nearest inhabited schloss of any historic
associations, is that of old General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to
the right.

I have said “the nearest inhabited village,” because there
is, only three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General
Spielsdorf’s schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church,
now roofless, in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the proud family
of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which,
in the thick of the forest, overlooks the silent ruins of the town.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot,
there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.

I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the inhabitants
of our castle. I don’t include servants, or those dependents who occupy
rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss. Listen, and wonder! My father,
who is the kindest man on earth, but growing old; and I, at the date of my
story, only nineteen. Eight years have passed since then.

I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian
lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had been with
me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her
fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory.

This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature now in
part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even remember, so
early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner party. There was a
fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a
“finishing governess.” She spoke French and German, Madame Perrodon
French and broken English, to which my father and I added English, which,
partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly from
patriotic motives, we spoke every day. The consequence was a Babel, at which
strangers used to laugh, and which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this
narrative. And there were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty
nearly of my own age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter
terms; and these visits I sometimes returned.

These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance visits
from “neighbors” of only five or six leagues distance. My life was,
notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.

My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might conjecture such
sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled girl, whose only parent
allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.

The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon
my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest
incidents of my life which I can recollect. Some people will think it so
trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by,
why I mention it. The nursery, as it was called, though I had it all to myself,
was a large room in the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I
can’t have been more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and
looking round the room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was
my nurse there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one
of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories,
of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the
door cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of
a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at
finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory
to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very
pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady
who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a
kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands,
and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt
immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a
sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment,
and I cried loudly. The lady started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then
slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.

I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and
main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and hearing my
story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child
as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of
anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under
tables and pluck open cupboards; and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse:
“Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie
there, so sure as you did not; the place is still warm.”

I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my chest, where
I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible
that any such thing had happened to me.

The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the nursery,
remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant always sat up in
the nursery until I was about fourteen.

I was very nervous for a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he was
pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face, slightly
pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while, every second day,
he came and gave me medicine, which of course I hated.

The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and could
not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment.

I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking
cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and laughing very
heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me,
and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could
not hurt me.

But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was
not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.

I was a little consoled by the nursery maid’s assuring me that it was she
who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed, and that I
must have been half-dreaming not to have known her face. But this, though
supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me.

I remembered, in the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black
cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and talking a
little to them, and very kindly to me; his face was very sweet and gentle, and
he told me they were going to pray, and joined my hands together, and desired
me to say, softly, while they were praying, “Lord hear all good prayers
for us, for Jesus’ sake.” I think these were the very words, for I
often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used for years to make me say them
in my prayers.

I remembered so well the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired old man, in
his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room, with the clumsy
furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about him, and the scanty light
entering its shadowy atmosphere through the small lattice. He kneeled, and the
three women with him, and he prayed aloud with an earnest quavering voice for,
what appeared to me, a long time. I forget all my life preceding that event,
and for some time after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just
described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria
surrounded by darkness.

II.

A Guest

I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your
faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only true, nevertheless,
but truth of which I have been an eyewitness.

It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to
take a little ramble with him along that beautiful forest vista which I have
mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.

“General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had hoped,” said
my father, as we pursued our walk.

He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his arrival
next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his niece and ward,
Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but whom I had heard described
as a very charming girl, and in whose society I had promised myself many happy
days. I was more disappointed than a young lady living in a town, or a bustling
neighborhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new acquaintance it
promised, had furnished my day dream for many weeks.

“And how soon does he come?” I asked.

“Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say,” he answered.
“And I am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle
Rheinfeldt.”

“And why?” I asked, both mortified and curious.

“Because the poor young lady is dead,” he replied. “I quite
forgot I had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the
General’s letter this evening.”

I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first letter,
six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would wish her, but
there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of danger.

“Here is the General’s letter,” he said, handing it to me.
“I am afraid he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have
been written very nearly in distraction.”

We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun
was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan horizon, and the
stream that flows beside our home, and passes under the steep old bridge I have
mentioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet,
reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky. General
Spielsdorf’s letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places
so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over—the second time aloud to
my father—and was still unable to account for it, except by supposing
that grief had unsettled his mind.

It said “I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her. During
the last days of dear Bertha’s illness I was not able to write to you.

Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn
all, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the glorious
hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our infatuated hospitality
has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a
charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I been!

I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings.
She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the
accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to
tracking and extinguishing a monster. I am told I may hope to accomplish my
righteous and merciful purpose. At present there is scarcely a gleam of light
to guide me. I curse my conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of
superiority, my blindness, my obstinacy—all—too late. I cannot
write or talk collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a
little recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may
possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, two months hence,
or earlier if I live, I will see you—that is, if you permit me; I will
then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now. Farewell. Pray for me,
dear friend.”

In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never seen Bertha
Rheinfeldt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence; I was
startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.

The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned the
General’s letter to my father.

It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the possible
meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had just been reading.
We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the road that passes the schloss
in front, and by that time the moon was shining brilliantly. At the drawbridge
we met Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, who had come out,
without their bonnets, to enjoy the exquisite moonlight.

We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we approached. We joined
them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire with them the beautiful
scene.

The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left the
narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid
the thickening forest. At the right the same road crosses the steep and
picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower which once guarded that
pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered with trees, and
showing in the shadows some grey ivy-clustered rocks.

Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like smoke,
marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there we could see
the river faintly flashing in the moonlight.

No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard made it
melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound serenity, and
the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect.

My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking in silence over
the expanse beneath us. The two good governesses, standing a little way behind
us, discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon the moon.

Madame Perrodon was fat, middle-aged, and romantic, and talked and sighed
poetically. Mademoiselle De Lafontaine—in right of her father who was a
German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical, and something of a
mystic—now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it
was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of
the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams,
it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people, it had marvelous physical
influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that her cousin, who was
mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on
his back, with his face full in the light on the moon, had wakened, after a
dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly
drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its
equilibrium.

“The moon, this night,” she said, “is full of idyllic and
magnetic influence—and see, when you look behind you at the front of the
schloss how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendor, as if
unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests.”

There are indolent styles of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk
ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I gazed on,
pleased with the tinkle of the ladies’ conversation.

“I have got into one of my moping moods tonight,” said my father,
after a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our
English, he used to read aloud, he said:

“‘In truth I know not why I am so sad.

It wearies me: you say it wearies you;

But how I got it—came by it.’

“I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging
over us. I suppose the poor General’s afflicted letter has had something
to do with it.”

At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs upon the
road, arrested our attention.

They seemed to be approaching from the high ground overlooking the bridge, and
very soon the equipage emerged from that point. Two horsemen first crossed the
bridge, then came a carriage drawn by four horses, and two men rode behind.

It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank; and we were all
immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle. It became, in a
few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the carriage had passed the
summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders, taking fright, communicated his
panic to the rest, and after a plunge or two, the whole team broke into a wild
gallop together, and dashing between the horsemen who rode in front, came
thundering along the road towards us with the speed of a hurricane.

The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear, long-drawn
screams of a female voice from the carriage window.

We all advanced in curiosity and horror; me rather in silence, the rest with
various ejaculations of terror.

Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle drawbridge, on
the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside a magnificent lime
tree, on the other stands an ancient stone cross, at sight of which the horses,
now going at a pace that was perfectly frightful, swerved so as to bring the
wheel over the projecting roots of the tree.

I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and turned my
head away; at the same moment I heard a cry from my lady friends, who had gone
on a little.

Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two of the
horses were on the ground, the carriage lay upon its side with two wheels in
the air; the men were busy removing the traces, and a lady with a commanding
air and figure had got out, and stood with clasped hands, raising the
handkerchief that was in them every now and then to her eyes.

Through the carriage door was now lifted a young lady, who appeared to be
lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the elder lady, with his hat in
his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the resources of his schloss. The
lady did not appear to hear him, or to have eyes for anything but the slender
girl who was being placed against the slope of the bank.

I approached; the young lady was apparently stunned, but she was certainly not
dead. My father, who piqued himself on being something of a physician, had just
had his fingers on her wrist and assured the lady, who declared herself her
mother, that her pulse, though faint and irregular, was undoubtedly still
distinguishable. The lady clasped her hands and looked upward, as if in a
momentary transport of gratitude; but immediately she broke out again in that
theatrical way which is, I believe, natural to some people.

She was what is called a fine looking woman for her time of life, and must have
been handsome; she was tall, but not thin, and dressed in black velvet, and
looked rather pale, but with a proud and commanding countenance, though now
agitated strangely.

“Who was ever being so born to calamity?” I heard her say, with
clasped hands, as I came up. “Here am I, on a journey of life and death,
in prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child will not
have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can say how long. I
must leave her: I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on, sir, can you tell, is
the nearest village? I must leave her there; and shall not see my darling, or
even hear of her till my return, three months hence.”

I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear: “Oh!
papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us—it would be so delightful. Do,
pray.”

“If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of her
good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit her to remain as our guest, under
my charge, until her return, it will confer a distinction and an obligation
upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and devotion which so sacred
a trust deserves.”

“I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and chivalry
too cruelly,” said the lady, distractedly.

“It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at
the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by a
cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great deal
of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care it will be her best
consolation. The nearest village on your route is distant, and affords no such
inn as you could think of placing your daughter at; you cannot allow her to
continue her journey for any considerable distance without danger. If, as you
say, you cannot suspend your journey, you must part with her tonight, and
nowhere could you do so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than
here.”

There was something in this lady’s air and appearance so distinguished
and even imposing, and in her manner so engaging, as to impress one, quite
apart from the dignity of her equipage, with a conviction that she was a person
of consequence.

By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position, and the horses,
quite tractable, in the traces again.

The lady threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was not quite so
affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the scene;
then she beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew two or three steps with
him out of hearing; and talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance, not
at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken.

I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the change,
and also unspeakably curious to learn what it could be that she was speaking,
almost in his ear, with so much earnestness and rapidity.

Two or three minutes at most I think she remained thus employed, then she
turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay, supported by
Madame Perrodon. She kneeled beside her for a moment and whispered, as Madame
supposed, a little benediction in her ear; then hastily kissing her she stepped
into her carriage, the door was closed, the footmen in stately liveries jumped
up behind, the outriders spurred on, the postilions cracked their whips, the
horses plunged and broke suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon
again to become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same
rapid pace by the two horsemen in the rear.

III.

We Compare Notes

We followed the cortege with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to sight
in the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels died away in
the silent night air.

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a
moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes. I could not
see, for her face was turned from me, but she raised her head, evidently
looking about her, and I heard a very sweet voice ask complainingly,
“Where is mamma?”

Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added some comfortable
assurances.

I then heard her ask:

“Where am I? What is this place?” and after that she said, “I
don’t see the carriage; and Matska, where is she?”

Madame answered all her questions in so far as she understood them; and
gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about, and was
glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on, the carriage was hurt; and on
learning that her mamma had left her here, till her return in about three
months, she wept.

I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame Perrodon when
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine placed her hand upon my arm, saying:

“Don’t approach, one at a time is as much as she can at present
converse with; a very little excitement would possibly overpower her
now.”

As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up to her room and
see her.

My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback for the physician,
who lived about two leagues away; and a bedroom was being prepared for the
young lady’s reception.

The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madame’s arm, walked slowly over
the drawbridge and into the castle gate.

In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was conducted forthwith to
her room. The room we usually sat in as our drawing room is long, having four
windows, that looked over the moat and drawbridge, upon the forest scene I have
just described.

It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and the chairs
are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The walls are covered with tapestry,
and surrounded with great gold frames, the figures being as large as life, in
ancient and very curious costume, and the subjects represented are hunting,
hawking, and generally festive. It is not too stately to be extremely
comfortable; and here we had our tea, for with his usual patriotic leanings he
insisted that the national beverage should make its appearance regularly with
our coffee and chocolate.

We sat here this night, and with candles lighted, were talking over the
adventure of the evening.

Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine were both of our party. The
young stranger had hardly lain down in her bed when she sank into a deep sleep;
and those ladies had left her in the care of a servant.

“How do you like our guest?” I asked, as soon as Madame entered.
“Tell me all about her?”

“I like her extremely,” answered Madame, “she is, I almost
think, the prettiest creature I ever saw; about your age, and so gentle and
nice.”

“She is absolutely beautiful,” threw in Mademoiselle, who had
peeped for a moment into the stranger’s room.

“And such a sweet voice!” added Madame Perrodon.

“Did you remark a woman in the carriage, after it was set up again, who
did not get out,” inquired Mademoiselle, “but only looked from the
window?”

“No, we had not seen her.”

Then she described a hideous black woman, with a sort of colored turban on her
head, and who was gazing all the time from the carriage window, nodding and
grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white
eyeballs, and her teeth set as if in fury.

“Did you remark what an ill-looking pack of men the servants were?”
asked Madame.

“Yes,” said my father, who had just come in, “ugly, hang-dog
looking fellows as ever I beheld in my life. I hope they mayn’t rob the
poor lady in the forest. They are clever rogues, however; they got everything
to rights in a minute.”

“I dare say they are worn out with too long traveling,” said
Madame.

“Besides looking wicked, their faces were so strangely lean, and dark,
and sullen. I am very curious, I own; but I dare say the young lady will tell
you all about it tomorrow, if she is sufficiently recovered.”

“I don’t think she will,” said my father, with a mysterious
smile, and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared
to tell us.

This made us all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him and the
lady in the black velvet, in the brief but earnest interview that had
immediately preceded her departure.

We were scarcely alone, when I entreated him to tell me. He did not need much
pressing.

“There is no particular reason why I should not tell you. She expressed a
reluctance to trouble us with the care of her daughter, saying she was in
delicate health, and nervous, but not subject to any kind of seizure—she
volunteered that—nor to any illusion; being, in fact, perfectly
sane.”

“How very odd to say all that!” I interpolated. “It was so
unnecessary.”

“At all events it was said,” he laughed, “and as you
wish to know all that passed, which was indeed very little, I tell you. She
then said, ‘I am making a long journey of vital
importance—she emphasized the word—rapid and secret; I shall return
for my child in three months; in the meantime, she will be silent as to who we
are, whence we come, and whither we are traveling.’ That is all she said.
She spoke very pure French. When she said the word ‘secret,’ she
paused for a few seconds, looking sternly, her eyes fixed on mine. I fancy she
makes a great point of that. You saw how quickly she was gone. I hope I have
not done a very foolish thing, in taking charge of the young lady.”

For my part, I was delighted. I was longing to see and talk to her; and only
waiting till the doctor should give me leave. You, who live in towns, can have
no idea how great an event the introduction of a new friend is, in such a
solitude as surrounded us.

The doctor did not arrive till nearly one o’clock; but I could no more
have gone to my bed and slept, than I could have overtaken, on foot, the
carriage in which the princess in black velvet had driven away.

When the physician came down to the drawing room, it was to report very
favorably upon his patient. She was now sitting up, her pulse quite regular,
apparently perfectly well. She had sustained no injury, and the little shock to
her nerves had passed away quite harmlessly. There could be no harm certainly
in my seeing her, if we both wished it; and, with this permission I sent,
forthwith, to know whether she would allow me to visit her for a few minutes in
her room.

The servant returned immediately to say that she desired nothing more.

You may be sure I was not long in availing myself of this permission.

Our visitor lay in one of the handsomest rooms in the schloss. It was, perhaps,
a little stately. There was a somber piece of tapestry opposite the foot of the
bed, representing Cleopatra with the asps to her bosom; and other solemn
classic scenes were displayed, a little faded, upon the other walls. But there
was gold carving, and rich and varied color enough in the other decorations of
the room, to more than redeem the gloom of the old tapestry.

There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up; her slender pretty
figure enveloped in the soft silk dressing gown, embroidered with flowers, and
lined with thick quilted silk, which her mother had thrown over her feet as she
lay upon the ground.

What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little
greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from
before her? I will tell you.

I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which
remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often
ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking.

It was pretty, even beautiful; and when I first beheld it, wore the same
melancholy expression.

But this almost instantly lighted into a strange fixed smile of recognition.

There was a silence of fully a minute, and then at length she spoke; I could
not.

“How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Twelve years ago, I saw your
face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since.”

“Wonderful indeed!” I repeated, overcoming with an effort the
horror that had for a time suspended my utterances. “Twelve years ago, in
vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face. It has
remained before my eyes ever since.”

Her smile had softened. Whatever I had fancied strange in it, was gone, and it
and her dimpling cheeks were now delightfully pretty and intelligent.

I felt reassured, and continued more in the vein which hospitality indicated,
to bid her welcome, and to tell her how much pleasure her accidental arrival
had given us all, and especially what a happiness it was to me.

I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the
situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand, she laid hers
upon it, and her eyes glowed, as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again,
and blushed.

She answered my welcome very prettily. I sat down beside her, still wondering;
and she said:

“I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that you and
I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream, that each should have
seen, I you and you me, looking as we do now, when of course we both were mere
children. I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and
troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, wainscoted
clumsily in some dark wood, and with cupboards and bedsteads, and chairs, and
benches placed about it. The beds were, I thought, all empty, and the room
itself without anyone but myself in it; and I, after looking about me for some
time, and admiring especially an iron candlestick with two branches, which I
should certainly know again, crept under one of the beds to reach the window;
but as I got from under the bed, I heard someone crying; and looking up, while
I was still upon my knees, I saw you—most assuredly you—as I see
you now; a beautiful young lady, with golden hair and large blue eyes, and
lips—your lips—you as you are here.

“Your looks won me; I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I
think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up
screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed
to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again
in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since. I could not be
misled by mere resemblance. You are the lady whom I saw then.”

It was now my turn to relate my corresponding vision, which I did, to the
undisguised wonder of my new acquaintance.

“I don’t know which should be most afraid of the other,” she
said, again smiling—“If you were less pretty I think I should be
very much afraid of you, but being as you are, and you and I both so young, I
feel only that I have made your acquaintance twelve years ago, and have already
a right to your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined,
from our earliest childhood, to be friends. I wonder whether you feel as
strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a
friend—shall I find one now?” She sighed, and her fine dark eyes
gazed passionately on me.

Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I
did feel, as she said, “drawn towards her,” but there was also
something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of
attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful
and so indescribably engaging.

I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing over her, and
hastened to bid her good night.

“The doctor thinks,” I added, “that you ought to have a maid
to sit up with you tonight; one of ours is waiting, and you will find her a
very useful and quiet creature.”

“How kind of you, but I could not sleep, I never could with an attendant
in the room. I shan’t require any assistance—and, shall I confess
my weakness, I am haunted with a terror of robbers. Our house was robbed once,
and two servants murdered, so I always lock my door. It has become a
habit—and you look so kind I know you will forgive me. I see there is a
key in the lock.”

She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my ear,
“Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but good night;
tomorrow, but not early, I shall see you again.”

She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me with a
fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again “Good night, dear
friend.”

Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the evident,
though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me. I liked the confidence with
which she at once received me. She was determined that we should be very near
friends.

Next day came and we met again. I was delighted with my companion; that is to
say, in many respects.

Her looks lost nothing in daylight—she was certainly the most beautiful
creature I had ever seen, and the unpleasant remembrance of the face presented
in my early dream, had lost the effect of the first unexpected recognition.

She confessed that she had experienced a similar shock on seeing me, and
precisely the same faint antipathy that had mingled with my admiration of her.
We now laughed together over our momentary horrors.

IV.

Her Habits—A Saunter

I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars.

There were some that did not please me so well.

She was above the middle height of women. I shall begin by describing her.

She was slender, and wonderfully graceful. Except that her movements were
languid—very languid—indeed, there was nothing in her appearance to
indicate an invalid. Her complexion was rich and brilliant; her features were
small and beautifully formed; her eyes large, dark, and lustrous; her hair was
quite wonderful, I never saw hair so magnificently thick and long when it was
down about her shoulders; I have often placed my hands under it, and laughed
with wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in color a
rich very dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down, tumbling
with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her chair talking in her
sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with
it. Heavens! If I had but known all!

I said there were particulars which did not please me. I have told you that her
confidence won me the first night I saw her; but I found that she exercised
with respect to herself, her mother, her history, everything in fact connected
with her life, plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve. I dare say I was
unreasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I dare say I ought to have respected the
solemn injunction laid upon my father by the stately lady in black velvet. But
curiosity is a restless and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure,
with patience, that hers should be baffled by another. What harm could it do
anyone to tell me what I so ardently desired to know? Had she no trust in my
good sense or honor? Why would she not believe me when I assured her, so
solemnly, that I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to any
mortal breathing.

There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling
melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light.

I cannot say we quarreled upon this point, for she would not quarrel upon any.
It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very ill-bred, but I really
could not help it; and I might just as well have let it alone.

What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation—to
nothing.

It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:

First—Her name was Carmilla.

Second—Her family was very ancient and noble.

Third—Her home lay in the direction of the west.

She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their armorial bearings, nor
the name of their estate, nor even that of the country they lived in.

You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on these subjects. I
watched opportunity, and rather insinuated than urged my inquiries. Once or
twice, indeed, I did attack her more directly. But no matter what my tactics,
utter failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and caresses were all lost
upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion was conducted with so pretty a
melancholy and deprecation, with so many, and even passionate declarations of
her liking for me, and trust in my honor, and with so many promises that I
should at last know all, that I could not find it in my heart long to be
offended with her.

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her
cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little
heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my
strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with
yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and
you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I
draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the
rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no
more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.”

And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her
trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.

Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.

From these foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent occurrence, I must
allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies seemed to fail me.
Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance
into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her
arms.

In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange
tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague
sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such
scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also
of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can make no other attempt to
explain the feeling.

I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand,
with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and
situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though
with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main current of my story.

But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain emotional scenes, those in which
our passions have been most wildly and terribly roused, that are of all others
the most vaguely and dimly remembered.

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would
take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again;
blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing
so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was
like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet
over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips
traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs,
“You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for
ever.” Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small
hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling.

“Are we related,” I used to ask; “what can you mean by all
this? I remind you perhaps of someone whom you love; but you must not, I hate
it; I don’t know you—I don’t know myself when you look so and
talk so.”

She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my hand.

Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove in vain to form any
satisfactory theory—I could not refer them to affectation or trick. It
was unmistakably the momentary breaking out of suppressed instinct and emotion.
Was she, notwithstanding her mother’s volunteered denial, subject to
brief visitations of insanity; or was there here a disguise and a romance? I
had read in old storybooks of such things. What if a boyish lover had found his
way into the house, and sought to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the
assistance of a clever old adventuress. But there were many things against this
hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity.

I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gallantry delights to
offer. Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of
commonplace, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during which, except that I
detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire, following me, at times I might
have been as nothing to her. Except in these brief periods of mysterious
excitement her ways were girlish; and there was always a languor about her,
quite incompatible with a masculine system in a state of health.

In some respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so singular in the opinion of
a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people. She used to come
down very late, generally not till one o’clock, she would then take a cup
of chocolate, but eat nothing; we then went out for a walk, which was a mere
saunter, and she seemed, almost immediately, exhausted, and either returned to
the schloss or sat on one of the benches that were placed, here and there,
among the trees. This was a bodily languor in which her mind did not
sympathize. She was always an animated talker, and very intelligent.

She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or mentioned an adventure
or situation, or an early recollection, which indicated a people of strange
manners, and described customs of which we knew nothing. I gathered from these
chance hints that her native country was much more remote than I had at first
fancied.

As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by. It was
that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of one of the
rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his
darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken.

Peasants walking two-and-two came behind, they were singing a funeral hymn.

I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they were very
sweetly singing.

My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised.

She said brusquely, “Don’t you perceive how discordant that
is?”

“I think it very sweet, on the contrary,” I answered, vexed at the
interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the little
procession should observe and resent what was passing.

I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted. “You pierce
my ears,” said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her
tiny fingers. “Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are
the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why you must
die—everyone must die; and all are happier when they do. Come
home.”

“My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard. I thought
you knew she was to be buried today.”

“She? I don’t trouble my head about peasants. I don’t know
who she is,” answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.

“She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and
has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired.”

“Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan’t sleep tonight if you
do.”

“I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like
it,” I continued. “The swineherd’s young wife died only a
week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her
bed, and nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany
some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards,
and died before a week.”

“Well, her funeral is over, I hope, and her hymn sung; and
our ears shan’t be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me
nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it
hard-hard-harder.”

We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.

She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even terrified me
for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were
clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon
the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as
irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with
which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of
suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. “There!
That comes of strangling people with hymns!” she said at last.
“Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away.”

And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the somber impression which
the spectacle had left upon me, she became unusually animated and chatty; and
so we got home.

This was the first time I had seen her exhibit any definable symptoms of that
delicacy of health which her mother had spoken of. It was the first time, also,
I had seen her exhibit anything like temper.

Both passed away like a summer cloud; and never but once afterwards did I
witness on her part a momentary sign of anger. I will tell you how it happened.

She and I were looking out of one of the long drawing room windows, when there
entered the courtyard, over the drawbridge, a figure of a wanderer whom I knew
very well. He used to visit the schloss generally twice a year.

It was the figure of a hunchback, with the sharp lean features that generally
accompany deformity. He wore a pointed black beard, and he was smiling from ear
to ear, showing his white fangs. He was dressed in buff, black, and scarlet,
and crossed with more straps and belts than I could count, from which hung all
manner of things. Behind, he carried a magic lantern, and two boxes, which I
well knew, in one of which was a salamander, and in the other a mandrake. These
monsters used to make my father laugh. They were compounded of parts of
monkeys, parrots, squirrels, fish, and hedgehogs, dried and stitched together
with great neatness and startling effect. He had a fiddle, a box of conjuring
apparatus, a pair of foils and masks attached to his belt, several other
mysterious cases dangling about him, and a black staff with copper ferrules in
his hand. His companion was a rough spare dog, that followed at his heels, but
stopped short, suspiciously at the drawbridge, and in a little while began to
howl dismally.

In the meantime, the mountebank, standing in the midst of the courtyard, raised
his grotesque hat, and made us a very ceremonious bow, paying his compliments
very volubly in execrable French, and German not much better.

Then, disengaging his fiddle, he began to scrape a lively air to which he sang
with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me
laugh, in spite of the dog’s howling.

Then he advanced to the window with many smiles and salutations, and his hat in
his left hand, his fiddle under his arm, and with a fluency that never took
breath, he gabbled a long advertisement of all his accomplishments, and the
resources of the various arts which he placed at our service, and the
curiosities and entertainments which it was in his power, at our bidding, to
display.

“Will your ladyships be pleased to buy an amulet against the oupire,
which is going like the wolf, I hear, through these woods,” he said
dropping his hat on the pavement. “They are dying of it right and left
and here is a charm that never fails; only pinned to the pillow, and you may
laugh in his face.”

These charms consisted of oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and
diagrams upon them.

Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I.

He was looking up, and we were smiling down upon him, amused; at least, I can
answer for myself. His piercing black eye, as he looked up in our faces, seemed
to detect something that fixed for a moment his curiosity,

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 cattle
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
neighbors.”

“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 today,” 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 larvae,
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.

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 color, 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 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 colorless 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 us, the physician who was with papa
today.”

“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.

VI.

A Very Strange Agony

When we got into the drawing room, 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
neighborhood, 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 chateau, under
your care, and in the society of your dear daughter.”

So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned 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 good night, 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
drawing room 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 fortifed 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.

I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that
Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten to secure my
door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside. I was
afraid to open it—I was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my
head up in the bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till morning.

VII.

Descending

It would be vain my attempting to tell you the horror with which, even now, I
recall the occurrence of that night. It was no such transitory terror as a
dream leaves behind it. It seemed to deepen by time, and communicated itself to
the room and the very furniture that had encompassed the apparition.

I could not bear next day to be alone for a moment. I should have told papa,
but for two opposite reasons. At one time I thought he would laugh at my story,
and I could not bear its being treated as a jest; and at another I thought he
might fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had
invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and as he had
been rather an invalid for some time, I was afraid of alarming him.

I was comfortable enough with my good-natured companions, Madame Perrodon, and
the vivacious Mademoiselle Lafontaine. They both perceived that I was out of
spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay so heavy at my heart.

Mademoiselle laughed, but I fancied that Madame Perrodon looked anxious.

“By-the-by,” said Mademoiselle, laughing, “the long lime tree
walk, behind Carmilla’s bedroom window, is haunted!”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Madame, who probably thought the theme rather
inopportune, “and who tells that story, my dear?”

“Martin says that he came up twice, when the old yard gate was being
repaired, before sunrise, and twice saw the same female figure walking down the
lime tree avenue.”

“So he well might, as long as there are cows to milk in the river
fields,” said Madame.

“I daresay; but Martin chooses to be frightened, and never did I see fool
more frightened.”

“You must not say a word about it to Carmilla, because she can see down
that walk from her room window,” I interposed, “and she is, if
possible, a greater coward than I.”

Carmilla came down rather later than usual that day.

“I was so frightened last night,” she said, so soon as were
together, “and I am sure I should have seen something dreadful if it had
not been for that charm I bought from the poor little hunchback whom I called
such hard names. I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I
awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark
figure near the chimneypiece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the
moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain,
only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its
appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we heard
of.

“Well, listen to me,” I began, and recounted my adventure, at the
recital of which she appeared horrified.

“And had you the charm near you?” she asked, earnestly.

“No, I had dropped it into a china vase in the drawing room, but I shall
certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it.”

At this distance of time I cannot tell you, or even understand, how I overcame
my horror so effectually as to lie alone in my room that night. I remember
distinctly that I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost
immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night.

Next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless.

But I wakened with a sense of lassitude and melancholy, which, however, did not
exceed a degree that was almost luxurious.

“Well, I told you so,” said Carmilla, when I described my quiet
sleep, “I had such delightful sleep myself last night; I pinned the charm
to the breast of my nightdress. It was too far away the night before. I am
quite sure it was all fancy, except the dreams. I used to think that evil
spirits made dreams, but our doctor told me it is no such thing. Only a fever
passing by, or some other malady, as they often do, he said, knocks at the
door, and not being able to get in, passes on, with that alarm.”

“And what do you think the charm is?” said I.

“It has been fumigated or immersed in some drug, and is an antidote
against the malaria,” she answered.

“Then it acts only on the body?”

“Certainly; you don’t suppose that evil spirits are frightened by
bits of ribbon, or the perfumes of a druggist’s shop? No, these
complaints, wandering in the air, begin by trying the nerves, and so infect the
brain, but before they can seize upon you, the antidote repels them. That I am
sure is what the charm has done for us. It is nothing magical, it is simply
natural.

I should have been happier if I could have quite agreed with Carmilla, but I
did my best, and the impression was a little losing its force.

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same
lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl.
A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have
interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly
sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was
sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet.

Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my papa, or to
have the doctor sent for.

Carmilla became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of
languid adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with increasing ardor
the more my strength and spirits waned. This always shocked me like a momentary
glare of insanity.

Without knowing it, I was now in a pretty advanced stage of the strangest
illness under which mortal ever suffered. There was an unaccountable
fascination in its earlier symptoms that more than reconciled me to the
incapacitating effect of that stage of the malady. This fascination increased
for a time, until it reached a certain point, when gradually a sense of the
horrible mingled itself with it, deepening, as you shall hear, until it
discolored and perverted the whole state of my life.

The first change I experienced was rather agreeable. It was very near the
turning point from which began the descent of Avernus.

Certain vague and strange sensations visited me in my sleep. The prevailing one
was of that pleasant, peculiar cold thrill which we feel in bathing, when we
move against the current of a river. This was soon accompanied by dreams that
seemed interminable, and were so vague that I could never recollect their
scenery and persons, or any one connected portion of their action. But they
left an awful impression, and a sense of exhaustion, as if I had passed through
a long period of great mental exertion and danger.

After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in
a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see;
and especially of one clear voice, of a female’s, very deep, that spoke
as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of
indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand
was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips
kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat,
but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and
fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of
strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my
senses left me and I became unconscious.

It was now three weeks since the commencement of this unaccountable state.

My sufferings had, during the last week, told upon my appearance. I had grown
pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had
long felt began to display itself in my countenance.

My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which now
seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was quite well.

In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily
derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination, or the nerves,
and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a morbid reserve, very
nearly to myself.

It could not be that terrible complaint which the peasants called the oupire,
for I had now been suffering for three weeks, and they were seldom ill for much
more than three days, when death put an end to their miseries.

Carmilla complained of dreams and feverish sensations, but by no means of so
alarming a kind as mine. I say that mine were extremely alarming. Had I been
capable of comprehending my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on
my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting upon me, and my
perceptions were benumbed.

I am going to tell you now of a dream that led immediately to an odd discovery.

One night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard
one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said,

“Your mother warns you to beware of the assassin.” At the same time
a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of
my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one
great stain of blood.

I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla was being
murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and my next recollection is that of
standing on the lobby, crying for help.

Madame and Mademoiselle came scurrying out of their rooms in alarm; a lamp
burned always on the lobby, and seeing me, they soon learned the cause of my
terror.

I insisted on our knocking at Carmilla’s door. Our knocking was
unanswered.

It soon became a pounding and an uproar. We shrieked her name, but all was
vain.

We all grew frightened, for the door was locked. We hurried back, in panic, to
my room. There we rang the bell long and furiously. If my father’s room
had been at that side of the house, we would have called him up at once to our
aid. But, alas! he was quite out of hearing, and to reach him involved an
excursion for which we none of us had courage.

Servants, however, soon came running up the stairs; I had got on my dressing
gown and slippers meanwhile, and my companions were already similarly
furnished. Recognizing the voices of the servants on the lobby, we sallied out
together; and having renewed, as fruitlessly, our summons at Carmilla’s
door, I ordered the men to force the lock. They did so, and we stood, holding
our lights aloft, in the doorway, and so stared into the room.

We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room.
Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it
on bidding her good night. But Carmilla was gone.

VIII.

Search

At sight of the room, perfectly undisturbed except for our violent entrance, we
began to cool a little, and soon recovered our senses sufficiently to dismiss
the men. It had struck Mademoiselle that possibly Carmilla had been wakened by
the uproar at her door, and in her first panic had jumped from her bed, and hid
herself in a press, or behind a curtain, from which she could not, of course,
emerge until the majordomo and his myrmidons had withdrawn. We now recommenced
our search, and began to call her name again.

It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation increased. We examined
the windows, but they were secured. I implored of Carmilla, if she had
concealed herself, to play this cruel trick no longer—to come out and to
end our anxieties. It was all useless. I was by this time convinced that she
was not in the room, nor in the dressing room, the door of which was still
locked on this side. She could not have passed it. I was utterly puzzled. Had
Carmilla discovered one of those secret passages which the old housekeeper said
were known to exist in the schloss, although the tradition of their exact
situation had been lost? A little time would, no doubt, explain
all—utterly perplexed as, for the present, we were.

It was past four o’clock, and I preferred passing the remaining hours of
darkness in Madame’s room. Daylight brought no solution of the
difficulty.

The whole household, with my father at its head, was in a state of agitation
next morning. Every part of the chateau was searched. The grounds were
explored. No trace of the missing lady could be discovered. The stream was
about to be dragged; my father was in distraction; what a tale to have to tell
the poor girl’s mother on her return. I, too, was almost beside myself,
though my grief was quite of a different kind.

The morning was passed in alarm and excitement. It was now one o’clock,
and still no tidings. I ran up to Carmilla’s room, and found her standing
at her dressing table. I was astounded. I could not believe my eyes. She
beckoned me to her with her pretty finger, in silence. Her face expressed
extreme fear.

I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and again. I
ran to the bell and rang it vehemently, to bring others to the spot who might
at once relieve my father’s anxiety.

“Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in
agonies of anxiety about you,” I exclaimed. “Where have you been?
How did you come back?”

“Last night has been a night of wonders,” she said.

“For mercy’s sake, explain all you can.”

“It was past two last night,” she said, “when I went to sleep
as usual in my bed, with my doors locked, that of the dressing room, and that
opening upon the gallery. My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know,
dreamless; but I woke just now on the sofa in the dressing room there, and I
found the door between the rooms open, and the other door forced. How could all
this have happened without my being wakened? It must have been accompanied with
a great deal of noise, and I am particularly easily wakened; and how could I
have been carried out of my bed without my sleep having been interrupted, I
whom the slightest stir startles?”

By this time, Madame, Mademoiselle, my father, and a number of the servants
were in the room. Carmilla was, of course, overwhelmed with inquiries,
congratulations, and welcomes. She had but one story to tell, and seemed the
least able of all the party to suggest any way of accounting for what had
happened.

My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I saw Carmilla’s
eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance.

When my father had sent the servants away, Mademoiselle having gone in search
of a little bottle of valerian and salvolatile, and there being no one now in
the room with Carmilla, except my father, Madame, and myself, he came to her
thoughtfully, took her hand very kindly, led her to the sofa, and sat down
beside her.

“Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a
question?”

“Who can have a better right?” she said. “Ask what you
please, and I will tell you everything. But my story is simply one of
bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you
please, but you know, of course, the limitations mamma has placed me
under.”

“Perfectly, my dear child. I need not approach the topics on which she
desires our silence. Now, the marvel of last night consists in your having been
removed from your bed and your room, without being wakened, and this removal
having occurred apparently while the windows were still secured, and the two
doors locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory and ask you a
question.”

Carmilla was leaning on her hand dejectedly; Madame and I were listening
breathlessly.

“Now, my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of walking in
your sleep?”

“Never, since I was very young indeed.”

“But you did walk in your sleep when you were young?”

“Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old nurse.”

My father smiled and nodded.

“Well, what has happened is this. You got up in your sleep, unlocked the
door, not leaving the key, as usual, in the lock, but taking it out and locking
it on the outside; you again took the key out, and carried it away with you to
some one of the five-and-twenty rooms on this floor, or perhaps upstairs or
downstairs. There are so many rooms and closets, so much heavy furniture, and
such accumulations of lumber, that it would require a week to search this old
house thoroughly. Do you see, now, what I mean?”

“I do, but not all,” she answered.

“And how, papa, do you account for her finding herself on the sofa in the
dressing room, which we had searched so carefully?”

“She came there after you had searched it, still in her sleep, and at
last awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to find herself where she
was as any one else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently
explained as yours, Carmilla,” he said, laughing. “And so we may
congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation of
the occurrence is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no
burglars, or poisoners, or witches—nothing that need alarm Carmilla, or
anyone else, for our safety.”

Carmilla was looking charmingly. Nothing could be more beautiful than her
tints. Her beauty was, I think, enhanced by that graceful languor that was
peculiar to her. I think my father was silently contrasting her looks with
mine, for he said:

“I wish my poor Laura was looking more like herself”; and he
sighed.

So our alarms were happily ended, and Carmilla restored to her friends.

IX.

The Doctor

As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my father
arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she would not
attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door.

That night passed quietly; and next morning early, the doctor, whom my father
had sent for without telling me a word about it, arrived to see me.

Madame accompanied me to the library; and there the grave little doctor, with
white hair and spectacles, whom I mentioned before, was waiting to receive me.

I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver.

We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows, facing one
another. When my statement was over, he leaned with his shoulders against the
wall, and with his eyes fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which was a
dash of horror.

After a minute’s reflection, he asked Madame if he could see my father.

He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered, smiling, he said:

“I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool for
having brought you here; I hope I am.”

But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned
him to him.

He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had just
conferred with the physician. It seemed an earnest and argumentative
conversation. The room is very large, and I and Madame stood together, burning
with curiosity, at the farther end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they
spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window quite concealed the
doctor from view, and very nearly my father, whose foot, arm, and shoulder only
could we see; and the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort
of closet which the thick wall and window formed.

After a time my father’s face looked into the room; it was pale,
thoughtful, and, I fancied, agitated.

“Laura, dear, come here for a moment. Madame, we shan’t trouble
you, the doctor says, at present.”

Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; for, although I
felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a
thing that may be picked up when we please.

My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking at the
doctor, and he said:

“It certainly is very odd; I don’t understand it quite. Laura, come
here, dear; now attend to Doctor Spielsberg, and recollect yourself.”

“You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing the skin,
somewhere about your neck, on the night when you experienced your first
horrible dream. Is there still any soreness?”

“None at all,” I answered.

“Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think
this occurred?”

“Very little below my throat—here,” I answered.

I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to.

“Now you can satisfy yourself,” said the doctor. “You
won’t mind your papa’s lowering your dress a very little. It is
necessary, to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you have been
suffering.”

I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar.

“God bless me!—so it is,” exclaimed my father, growing pale.

“You see it now with your own eyes,” said the doctor, with a gloomy
triumph.

“What is it?” I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened.

“Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of
the tip of your little finger; and now,” he continued, turning to papa,
“the question is what is best to be done?”

Is there any danger?”I urged, in great trepidation.

“I trust not, my dear,” answered the doctor. “I don’t
see why you should not recover. I don’t see why you should not begin
immediately to get better. That is the point at which the sense of
strangulation begins?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“And—recollect as well as you can—the same point was a kind
of center of that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a
cold stream running against you?”

“It may have been; I think it was.”

“Ay, you see?” he added, turning to my father. “Shall I say a
word to Madame?”

“Certainly,” said my father.

He called Madame to him, and said:

“I find my young friend here far from well. It won’t be of any
great consequence, I hope; but it will be necessary that some steps be taken,
which I will explain by-and-by; but in the meantime, Madame, you will be so
good as not to let Miss Laura be alone for one moment. That is the only
direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable.”

“We may rely upon your kindness, Madame, I know,” added my father.

Madame satisfied him eagerly.

“And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctor’s
direction.”

“I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient, whose symptoms
slightly resemble those of my daughter, that have just been detailed to
you—very much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the same sort. She
is a young lady—our guest; but as you say you will be passing this way
again this evening, you can’t do better than take your supper here, and
you can then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon.”

“I thank you,” said the doctor. “I shall be with you, then,
at about seven this evening.”

And then they repeated their directions to me and to Madame, and with this
parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor; and I saw
them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat, on the grassy
platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation.

The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his leave, and
ride away eastward through the forest.

Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfield with the letters,
and dismount and hand the bag to my father.

In the meantime, Madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to the
reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my father
had concurred in imposing. Madame, as she afterwards told me, was afraid the
doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that, without prompt assistance, I
might either lose my life in a fit, or at least be seriously hurt.

The interpretation did not strike me; and I fancied, perhaps luckily for my
nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion, who
would prevent my taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any
of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be prone.

About half an hour after my father came in—he had a letter in his
hand—and said:

“This letter had been delayed; it is from General Spielsdorf. He might
have been here yesterday, he may not come till tomorrow or he may be here
today.”

He put the open letter into my hand; but he did not look pleased, as he used
when a guest, especially one so much loved as the General, was coming.

On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea.
There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge.

“Papa, darling, will you tell me this?” said I, suddenly laying my
hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face.

“Perhaps,” he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes.

“Does the doctor think me very ill?”

“No, dear; he thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well
again, at least, on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day or
two,” he answered, a little dryly. “I wish our good friend, the
General, had chosen any other time; that is, I wish you had been perfectly well
to receive him.”

“But do tell me, papa,” I insisted, “what does he think is
the matter with me?”

“Nothing; you must not plague me with questions,” he answered, with
more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing
that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, “You shall
know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the meantime
you are not to trouble your head about it.”

He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wondering and
puzzling over the oddity of all this; it was merely to say that he was going to
Karnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and
Madame should accompany him; he was going to see the priest who lived near
those picturesque grounds, upon business, and as Carmilla had never seen them,
she could follow, when she came down, with Mademoiselle, who would bring
materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined
castle.

At twelve o’clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after, my
father, Madame and I set out upon our projected drive.

Passing the drawbridge we turn to the right, and follow the road over the steep
Gothic bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and ruined castle of
Karnstein.

No sylvan drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks into gentle hills
and hollows, all clothed with beautiful wood, totally destitute of the
comparative formality which artificial planting and early culture and pruning
impart.

The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and
cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows and the steeper
sides of the hills, among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible.

Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend, the
General, riding towards us, attended by a mounted servant. His portmanteaus
were following in a hired wagon, such as we term a cart.

The General dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual greetings, was
easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the carriage and send his horse
on with his servant to the schloss.

X.

Bereaved

It was about ten months since we had last seen him: but that time had sufficed
to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner;
something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity
which used to characterize his features. His dark blue eyes, always
penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey
eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier
passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about.

We had not long resumed our drive, when the General began to talk, with his
usual soldierly directness, of the bereavement, as he termed it, which he had
sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward; and he then broke out in
a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the “hellish
arts” to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more
exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an
indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.

My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had befallen,
asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the circumstances which he
thought justified the strong terms in which he expressed himself.

“I should tell you all with pleasure,” said the General, “but
you would not believe me.”

“Why should I not?” he asked.

“Because,” he answered testily, “you believe in nothing but
what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was
like you, but I have learned better.”

“Try me,” said my father; “I am not such a dogmatist as you
suppose.

Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you
believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed to respect your
conclusions.”

“You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a
belief in the marvelous—for what I have experienced is
marvelous—and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that
which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe
of a preternatural conspiracy.”

Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the General’s
penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the General, with, as I
thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.

The General did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into
the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us.

“You are going to the Ruins of Karnstein?” he said. “Yes, it
is a lucky coincidence; do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to
inspect them. I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel,
ain’t there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family?”

“So there are—highly interesting,” said my father. “I
hope you are thinking of claiming the title and estates?”

My father said this gaily, but the General did not recollect the laugh, or even
the smile, which courtesy exacts for a friend’s joke; on the contrary, he
looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and
horror.

“Something very different,” he said, gruffly. “I mean to
unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by God’s blessing, to
accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain
monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being
assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such
as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since.”

My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of
suspicion—with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm.

“The house of Karnstein,” he said, “has been long extinct: a
hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the
Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle is a
ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the smoke of a
chimney was seen there; not a roof left.”

“Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you; a
great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything in the
order in which it occurred,” said the General. “You saw my dear
ward—my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more
beautiful, and only three months ago none more blooming.”

“Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly was quite
lovely,” said my father. “I was grieved and shocked more than I can
tell you, my dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you.”

He took the General’s hand, and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears
gathered in the old soldier’s eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He
said:

“We have been very old friends; I knew you would feel for me, childless
as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my
care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all
gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but by
God’s mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and
to subserve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor
child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!”

“You said, just now, that you intended relating everything as it
occurred,” said my father. “Pray do; I assure you that it is not
mere curiosity that prompts me.”

By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall road, by which the
General had come, diverges from the road which we were traveling to Karnstein.

“How far is it to the ruins?” inquired the General, looking
anxiously forward.

“About half a league,” answered my father. “Pray let us hear
the story you were so good as to promise.”

XI.

The Story

With all my heart,” said the General, with an effort; and after a short
pause in which to arrange his subject, he commenced one of the strangest
narratives I ever heard.

“My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you
had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter.” Here
he made me a gallant but melancholy bow. “In the meantime we had an
invitation to my old friend the Count Carlsfeld, whose schloss is about six
leagues to the other side of Karnstein. It was to attend the series of fetes
which, you remember, were given by him in honor of his illustrious visitor, the
Grand Duke Charles.”

“Yes; and very splendid, I believe, they were,” said my father.

“Princely! But then his hospitalities are quite regal. He has
Aladdin’s lamp. The night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a
magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with
colored lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never
witnessed. And such music—music, you know, is my weakness—such
ravishing music! The finest instrumental band, perhaps, in the world, and the
finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in Europe. As
you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds, the moon-lighted
chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly
hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove, or rising
from boats upon the lake. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back
into the romance and poetry of my early youth.

“When the fireworks were ended, and the ball beginning, we returned to
the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A masked ball,
you know, is a beautiful sight; but so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I
never saw before.

“It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only
‘nobody’ present.

“My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her
excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always
lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but wearing a mask, who
appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had seen
her, earlier in the evening, in the great hall, and again, for a few minutes,
walking near us, on the terrace under the castle windows, similarly employed. A
lady, also masked, richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a
person of rank, accompanied her as a chaperon.

Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could, of course, have been much more
certain upon the question whether she was really watching my poor darling.

I am now well assured that she was.

“We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been dancing,
and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door; I was standing
near. The two ladies I have mentioned had approached and the younger took the
chair next my ward; while her companion stood beside me, and for a little time
addressed herself, in a low tone, to her charge.

“Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to me, and in
the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my name, opened a conversation
with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes
where she had met me—at Court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded
to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which, I found,
had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at
her touch.

“I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was, every moment.
She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge
she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable; and
she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and in
seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity, from one conjecture to another.

“In the meantime the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd name
of Millarca, when she once or twice addressed her, had, with the same ease and
grace, got into conversation with my ward.

“She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very old
acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a mask rendered
practicable; she talked like a friend; she admired her dress, and insinuated
very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing
criticisms upon the people who crowded the ballroom, and laughed at my poor
child’s fun. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a
time they had grown very good friends, and the young stranger lowered her mask,
displaying a remarkably beautiful face. I had never seen it before, neither had
my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were so engaging, as
well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully.
My poor girl did so. I never saw anyone more taken with another at first sight,
unless, indeed, it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her
heart to her.

“In the meantime, availing myself of the license of a masquerade, I put
not a few questions to the elder lady.

“‘You have puzzled me utterly,’ I said, laughing. ‘Is
that not enough?

Won’t you, now, consent to stand on equal terms, and do me the kindness
to remove your mask?’

“‘Can any request be more unreasonable?’ she replied.
‘Ask a lady to yield an advantage! Beside, how do you know you should
recognize me? Years make changes.’

“‘As you see,’ I said, with a bow, and, I suppose, a rather
melancholy little laugh.

“‘As philosophers tell us,’ she said; ‘and how do you
know that a sight of my face would help you?’

“‘I should take chance for that,’ I answered. ‘It is
vain trying to make yourself out an old woman; your figure betrays you.’

“‘Years, nevertheless, have passed since I saw you, rather since
you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Millarca, there, is my daughter;
I cannot then be young, even in the opinion of people whom time has taught to
be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me.

You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange.’

“‘My petition is to your pity, to remove it.’

“‘And mine to yours, to let it stay where it is,’ she
replied.

“‘Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or
German; you speak both languages so perfectly.’

“‘I don’t think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a
surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack.’

“‘At all events, you won’t deny this,’ I said,
‘that being honored by your permission to converse, I ought to know how
to address you. Shall I say Madame la Comtesse?’

“She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another
evasion—if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every
circumstance of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the profoundest
cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

“‘As to that,’ she began; but she was interrupted, almost as
she opened her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly
elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the most
deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no masquerade—in the
plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said, without a smile, but with a
courtly and unusually low bow:—

“‘Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which
may interest her?’

“The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence;
she then said to me, ‘Keep my place for me, General; I shall return when
I have said a few words.’

“And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside
with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very
earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them
for some minutes.

“I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains for a conjecture as to the
identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was thinking of
turning about and joining in the conversation between my pretty ward and the
Countess’s daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I
might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name, title, chateau,
and estates at my fingers’ ends. But at this moment she returned,
accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

“‘I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is
at the door.’

“He withdrew with a bow.”

XII.

A Petition

“‘Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few
hours,’ I said, with a low bow.

“‘It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very
unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me?’

“I assured her I did not.

“‘You shall know me,’ she said, ‘but not at present. We
are older and better friends than, perhaps, you suspect. I cannot yet declare
myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful schloss, about which I have
been making enquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two, and
renew a friendship which I never think of without a thousand pleasant
recollections. This moment a piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I
must set out now, and travel by a devious route, nearly a hundred miles, with
all the dispatch I can possibly make. My perplexities multiply. I am only
deterred by the compulsory reserve I practice as to my name from making a very
singular request of you. My poor child has not quite recovered her strength.
Her horse fell with her, at a hunt which she had ridden out to witness, her
nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and our physician says that she must
on no account exert herself for some time to come. We came here, in
consequence, by very easy stages—hardly six leagues a day. I must now
travel day and night, on a mission of life and death—a mission the
critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when
we meet, as I hope we shall, in a few weeks, without the necessity of any
concealment.’

“She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person
from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking a favor.

This was only in manner, and, as it seemed, quite unconsciously. Than the terms
in which it was expressed, nothing could be more deprecatory. It was simply
that I would consent to take charge of her daughter during her absence.

“This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious
request. She in some sort disarmed me, by stating and admitting everything that
could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At
the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that
happened, my poor child came to my side, and, in an undertone, besought me to
invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding
her, and thought, if her mamma would allow her, she would like it extremely.

“At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at
least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in. The two
ladies assailed me together, and I must confess the refined and beautiful face
of the young lady, about which there was something extremely engaging, as well
as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me; and, quite overpowered,
I submitted, and undertook, too easily, the care of the young lady, whom her
mother called Millarca.

“The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with grave attention
while she told her, in general terms, how suddenly and peremptorily she had
been summoned, and also of the arrangement she had made for her under my care,
adding that I was one of her earliest and most valued friends.

“I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call for, and
found myself, on reflection, in a position which I did not half like.

“The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously conducted the
lady from the room.

“The demeanor of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the
conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance than her
modest title alone might have led me to assume.

“Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more
about her than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our
distinguished host, whose guest she was, knew her reasons.

“‘But here,’ she said, ‘neither I nor my daughter could
safely remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently for a moment,
about an hour ago, and, too late, I fancied you saw me. So I resolved to seek
an opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found that you had seen me, I
would have thrown myself on your high sense of honor to keep my secret some
weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me; but if you now
suspect, or, on reflection, should suspect, who I am, I commit myself, in like
manner, entirely to your honor. My daughter will observe the same secrecy, and
I well know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should
thoughtlessly disclose it.’

“She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hurriedly twice,
and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and disappeared in
the crowd.

“‘In the next room,’ said Millarca, ‘there is a window
that looks upon the hall door. I should like to see the last of mamma, and to
kiss my hand to her.’

“We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked
out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and
footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a
thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders and threw the hood over
her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with hers. He bowed low
repeatedly as the door closed, and the carriage began to move.

“‘She is gone,’ said Millarca, with a sigh.

“‘She is gone,’ I repeated to myself, for the first
time—in the hurried moments that had elapsed since my
consent—reflecting upon the folly of my act.

“‘She did not look up,’ said the young lady, plaintively.

“‘The Countess had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not care to
show her face,’ I said; ‘and she could not know that you were in
the window.’

“She sighed, and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that I relented.
I was sorry I had for a moment repented of my hospitality, and I determined to
make her amends for the unavowed churlishness of my reception.

“The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in persuading me to
return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We did so, and
walked up and down the terrace that lies under the castle windows.

Millarca became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions
and stories of most of the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked
her more and more every minute. Her gossip without being ill-natured, was
extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I
thought what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home.

“This ball was not over until the morning sun had almost reached the
horizon. It pleased the Grand Duke to dance till then, so loyal people could
not go away, or think of bed.

“We had just got through a crowded saloon, when my ward asked me what had
become of Millarca. I thought she had been by her side, and she fancied she was
by mine. The fact was, we had lost her.

“All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in
the confusion of a momentary separation from us, other people for her new
friends, and had, possibly, pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds
which were thrown open to us.

“Now, in its full force, I recognized a new folly in my having undertaken
the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name; and fettered as
I was by promises, of the reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could
not even point my inquiries by saying that the missing young lady was the
daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure a few hours before.

“Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was
not till near two o’clock next day that we heard anything of my missing
charge.

“At about that time a servant knocked at my niece’s door, to say
that he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in
great distress, to make out where she could find the General Baron Spielsdorf
and the young lady his daughter, in whose charge she had been left by her
mother.

“There could be no doubt, notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy, that our
young friend had turned up; and so she had. Would to heaven we had lost her!

“She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to
recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had got to the
housekeeper’s bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into
a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly sufficed to recruit her strength
after the fatigues of the ball.

“That day Millarca came home with us. I was only too happy, after all, to
have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl.”

XIII.

The Woodman

“There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place,
Millarca complained of extreme languor—the weakness that remained after
her late illness—and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon
was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered,
although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key
from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was
undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at
various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she
was stirring. She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss, in the
first faint grey of the morning, walking through the trees, in an easterly
direction, and looking like a person in a trance. This convinced me that she
walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she
pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she
escape from the house without unbarring door or window?

“In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind
presented itself.

“My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner
so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened.

“She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied, by a
specter, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast,
indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side.

Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said,
resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she
felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the
throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and
convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness.”

I could hear distinctly every word the kind old General was saying, because by
this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on either side of
the road as you approach the roofless village which had not shown the smoke of
a chimney for more than half a century.

You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly
described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the
catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my
father’s chateau. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail
habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful
guest, Carmilla!

A vista opened in the forest; we were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables
of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle,
round which gigantic trees are grouped, overhung us from a slight eminence.

In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage, and in silence, for we had
each abundant matter for thinking; we soon mounted the ascent, and were among
the spacious chambers, winding stairs, and dark corridors of the castle.

“And this was once the palatial residence of the Karnsteins!” said
the old General at length, as from a great window he looked out across the
village, and saw the wide, undulating expanse of forest. “It was a bad
family, and here its bloodstained annals were written,” he continued.
“It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human
race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, down
there.”

He pointed down to the grey walls of the Gothic building partly visible through
the foliage, a little way down the steep. “And I hear the axe of a
woodman,” he added, “busy among the trees that surround it; he
possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the
grave of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local
traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich and titled
so soon as the families themselves become extinct.”

“We have a portrait, at home, of Mircalla, the Countess Karnstein; should
you like to see it?” asked my father.

“Time enough, dear friend,” replied the General. “I believe
that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier
than I at first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now
approaching.”

“What! see the Countess Mircalla,” exclaimed my father; “why,
she has been dead more than a century!”

“Not so dead as you fancy, I am told,” answered the General.

“I confess, General, you puzzle me utterly,” replied my father,
looking at him, I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I
detected before. But although there was anger and detestation, at times, in the
old General’s manner, there was nothing flighty.

“There remains to me,” he said, as we passed under the heavy arch
of the Gothic church—for its dimensions would have justified its being so
styled—“but one object which can interest me during the few years
that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I
thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm.”

“What vengeance can you mean?” asked my father, in increasing
amazement.

“I mean, to decapitate the monster,” he answered, with a fierce
flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his
clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an
axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.

“What?” exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.

“To strike her head off.”

“Cut her head off!”

“Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave
through her murderous throat. You shall hear,” he answered, trembling
with rage. And hurrying forward he said:

“That beam will answer for a seat; your dear child is fatigued; let her
be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story.”

The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of the chapel,
formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the
General called to the woodman, who had been removing some boughs which leaned
upon the old walls; and, axe in hand, the hardy old fellow stood before us.

He could not tell us anything of these monuments; but there was an old man, he
said, a ranger of this forest, at present sojourning in the house of the
priest, about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old
Karnstein family; and, for a trifle, he undertook to bring him back with him,
if we would lend him one of our horses, in little more than half an hour.

“Have you been long employed about this forest?” asked my father of
the old man.

“I have been a woodman here,” he answered in his patois,
“under the forester, all my days; so has my father before me, and so on,
as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the
village here, in which my ancestors lived.”

“How came the village to be deserted?” asked the General.

“It was troubled by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves,
there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by
decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of the villagers
were killed.

“But after all these proceedings according to law,” he
continued—“so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of
their horrible animation—the village was not relieved. But a Moravian
nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way, heard how matters were, and
being skilled—as many people are in his country—in such affairs, he
offered to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so thus: There being
a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the
chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him;
you can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the
vampire come out of his grave, and place near it the linen clothes in which he
had been folded, and then glide away towards the village to plague its
inhabitants.

“The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the
linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower,
which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed
his clothes, he cried furiously to the Moravian, whom he saw at the summit of
the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon
the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon
as he had reached the battlements, the Moravian, with a stroke of his sword,
clove his skull in twain, hurling him down to the churchyard, whither,
descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed and cut his head off,
and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and
burnt them.

“This Moravian nobleman had authority from the then head of the family to
remove the tomb of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein, which he did effectually, so
that in a little while its site was quite forgotten.”

“Can you point out where it stood?” asked the General, eagerly.

The forester shook his head, and smiled.

“Not a soul living could tell you that now,” he said;
“besides, they say her body was removed; but no one is sure of that
either.”

Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and departed, leaving
us to hear the remainder of the General’s strange story.

XIV.

The Meeting

“My beloved child,” he resumed, “was now growing rapidly
worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest
impression on her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm,
and suggested a consultation. I called in an abler physician, from Gratz.

Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and pious, as well as a
learned man. Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my library to
confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons,
heard these two gentlemen’s voices raised in something sharper than a
strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found
the old physician from Gratz maintaining his theory. His rival was combating it
with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly
manifestation subsided and the altercation ended on my entrance.

“‘Sir,’ said my first physician,’my learned brother
seems to think that you want a conjuror, and not a doctor.’

“‘Pardon me,’ said the old physician from Gratz, looking
displeased, ‘I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another
time. I grieve, Monsieur le General, that by my skill and science I can be of
no use.

Before I go I shall do myself the honor to suggest something to you.’

“He seemed thoughtful, and sat down at a table and began to write.

Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other doctor
pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and then, with a
shrug, significantly touched his forehead.

“This consultation, then, left me precisely where I was. I walked out
into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Gratz, in ten or fifteen
minutes, overtook me. He apologized for having followed me, but said that he
could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told me
that he could not be mistaken; no natural disease exhibited the same symptoms;
and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day, or
possibly two, of life. If the fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great
care and skill her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the
confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish the last spark
of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die.

“‘And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of?’ I
entreated.

“‘I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands
upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open
my letter in his presence, and on no account read it till he is with you; you
would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death. Should the priest
fail you, then, indeed, you may read it.’

“He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to
see a man curiously learned upon the very subject, which, after I had read his
letter, would probably interest me above all others, and he urged me earnestly
to invite him to visit him there; and so took his leave.

“The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another
time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what
quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means
have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?

“Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man’s
letter.

It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He said that the
patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire! The punctures which she
described as having occurred near the throat, were, he insisted, the insertion
of those two long, thin, and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar
to vampires; and there could be no doubt, he added, as to the well-defined
presence of the small livid mark which all concurred in describing as that
induced by the demon’s lips, and every symptom described by the sufferer
was in exact conformity with those recorded in every case of a similar
visitation.

“Being myself wholly skeptical as to the existence of any such portent as
the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my
opinion, but another instance of learning and intelligence oddly associated
with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that, rather than try
nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter.

“I concealed myself in the dark dressing room, that opened upon the poor
patient’s room, in which a candle was burning, and watched there till she
was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my
sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little
after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to
me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor
girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating
mass.

“For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward, with my
sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted towards the foot of
the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard below the foot
of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw
Millarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my sword;
but I saw her standing near the door, unscathed. Horrified, I pursued, and
struck again. She was gone; and my sword flew to shivers against the door.

“I can’t describe to you all that passed on that horrible night.
The whole house was up and stirring. The specter Millarca was gone. But her
victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died.”

The old General was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked to some
little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones; and thus
occupied, he strolled into the door of a side chapel to prosecute his
researches. The General leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed
heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were
at that moment approaching. The voices died away.

In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected, as it
was, with the great and titled dead, whose monuments were moldering among the
dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own
mysterious case—in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage
that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a
horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends
were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this triste and ominous scene.

The old General’s eyes were fixed on the ground, as he leaned with his
hand upon the basement of a shattered monument.

Under a narrow, arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniacal
grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old Gothic carving
delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the
shadowy chapel.

I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling, in answer to her
peculiarly engaging smile; when with a cry, the old man by my side caught up
the woodman’s hatchet, and started forward. On seeing him a brutalized
change came over her features. It was an instantaneous and horrible
transformation, as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a
scream, he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under his blow, and
unscathed, caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. He struggled for a moment
to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to the ground, and the
girl was gone.

He staggered against the wall. His grey hair stood upon his head, and a
moisture shone over his face, as if he were at the point of death.

The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I recollect after,
is Madame standing before me, and impatiently repeating again and again, the
question, “Where is Mademoiselle Carmilla?”

I answered at length, “I don’t know—I can’t
tell—she went there,” and I pointed to the door through which
Madame had just entered; “only a minute or two since.”

“But I have been standing there, in the passage, ever since Mademoiselle
Carmilla entered; and she did not return.”

She then began to call “Carmilla,” through every door and passage
and from the windows, but no answer came.

“She called herself Carmilla?” asked the General, still agitated.

“Carmilla, yes,” I answered.

“Aye,” he said; “that is Millarca. That is the same person
who long ago was called Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Depart from this accursed
ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman’s
house, and stay there till we come. Begone! May you never behold Carmilla more;
you will not find her here.”

XV.

Ordeal and Execution

As he spoke one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld entered the chapel
at the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and her exit. He was
tall, narrow-chested, stooping, with high shoulders, and dressed in black. His
face was brown and dried in with deep furrows; he wore an oddly-shaped hat with
a broad leaf. His hair, long and grizzled, hung on his shoulders. He wore a
pair of gold spectacles, and walked slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with
his face sometimes turned up to the sky, and sometimes bowed down towards the
ground, seemed to wear a perpetual smile; his long thin arms were swinging, and
his lank hands, in old black gloves ever so much too wide for them, waving and
gesticulating in utter abstraction.

“The very man!” exclaimed the General, advancing with manifest
delight. “My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you, I had no hope of
meeting you so soon.” He signed to my father, who had by this time
returned, and leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he called the Baron to
meet him. He introduced him formally, and they at once entered into earnest
conversation. The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket, and spread it
on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil case in his
fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines from point to point on the paper,
which from their often glancing from it, together, at certain points of the
building, I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied, what I may
term, his lecture, with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose
yellow leaves were closely written over.

They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot where I was
standing, conversing as they went; then they began measuring distances by
paces, and finally they all stood together, facing a piece of the sidewall,
which they began to examine with great minuteness; pulling off the ivy that
clung over it, and rapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping
here, and knocking there. At length they ascertained the existence of a broad
marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it.

With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental
inscription, and carved escutcheon, were disclosed. They proved to be those of
the long lost monument of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein.

The old General, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his hands
and eyes to heaven, in mute thanksgiving for some moments.

“Tomorrow,” I heard him say; “the commissioner will be here,
and the Inquisition will be held according to law.”

Then turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have described, he
shook him warmly by both hands and said:

“Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have
delivered this region from a plague that has scourged its inhabitants for more
than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked.”

My father led the stranger aside, and the General followed. I know that he had
led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them glance
often quickly at me, as the discussion proceeded.

My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the
chapel, said:

“It is time to return, but before we go home, we must add to our party
the good priest, who lives but a little way from this; and persuade him to
accompany us to the schloss.”

In this quest we were successful: and I was glad, being unspeakably fatigued
when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering
that there were no tidings of Carmilla. Of the scene that had occurred in the
ruined chapel, no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a
secret which my father for the present determined to keep from me.

The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene more
horrible to me. The arrangements for the night were singular. Two servants, and
Madame were to sit up in my room that night; and the ecclesiastic with my
father kept watch in the adjoining dressing room.

The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of which
I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this
extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep.

I saw all clearly a few days later.

The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of my nightly
sufferings.

You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in Upper
and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in
Russia; the superstition, so we must call it, of the Vampire.

If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially, before
commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for
integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps
than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is
difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the
Vampire.

For my part I have heard no theory by which to explain what I myself have
witnessed and experienced, other than that supplied by the ancient and
well-attested belief of the country.

The next day the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of Karnstein.

The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the General and my father
recognized each his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed
to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her
funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous
smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the
other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvelous fact
that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action
of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the
leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body
lay immersed.

Here then, were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism. The body,
therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and a sharp
stake driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at
the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the
last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from
the severed neck. The body and head was next placed on a pile of wood, and
reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that
territory has never since been plagued by the visits of a vampire.

My father has a copy of the report of the Imperial Commission, with the
signatures of all who were present at these proceedings, attached in
verification of the statement. It is from this official paper that I have
summarized my account of this last shocking scene.

XVI.

Conclusion

I write all this you suppose with composure. But far from it; I cannot think of
it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed,
could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for
months to come, and reinduced a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years
after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful, and
solitude insupportably terrific.

Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenburg, to whose curious
lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mircalla’s grave.

He had taken up his abode in Gratz, where, living upon a mere pittance, which
was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family, in
Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of
the marvelously authenticated tradition of Vampirism. He had at his
fingers’ ends all the great and little works upon the subject.

“Magia Posthuma,” “Phlegon de Mirabilibus,”
“Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis,” “Philosophicae et
Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris,” by John Christofer Herenberg; and
a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to
my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases, from which he
had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern—some always,
and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention,
in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a
mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show
themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to
light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as
those which proved the vampire-life of the long-dead Countess Karnstein.

How they escape from their graves and return to them for certain hours every
day, without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in the
state of the coffin or the cerements, has always been admitted to be utterly
inexplicable. The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily
renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the
vigor of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an
engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In
pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for
access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will
never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of
its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its
murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the
gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for
something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its
object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single
feast.

The vampire is, apparently, subject, in certain situations, to special
conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a relation,
Mircalla seemed to be limited to a name which, if not her real one, should at
least reproduce, without the omission or addition of a single letter, those, as
we say, anagrammatically, which compose it.

Carmilla did this; so did Millarca.

My father related to the Baron Vordenburg, who remained with us for two or
three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla, the story about the Moravian
nobleman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard, and then he asked the Baron
how he had discovered the exact position of the long-concealed tomb of the
Countess Mircalla? The Baron’s grotesque features puckered up into a
mysterious smile; he looked down, still smiling on his worn spectacle case and
fumbled with it. Then looking up, he said:

“I have many journals, and other papers, written by that remarkable man;
the most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you speak, to
Karnstein. The tradition, of course, discolors and distorts a little. He might
have been termed a Moravian nobleman, for he had changed his abode to that
territory, and was, beside, a noble. But he was, in truth, a native of Upper
Styria. It is enough to say that in very early youth he had been a passionate
and favored lover of the beautiful Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Her early
death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to
increase and multiply, but according to an ascertained and ghostly law.

“Assume, at starting, a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does
it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or
less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances,
becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers; they
die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires. This happened
in the case of the beautiful Mircalla, who was haunted by one of those demons.
My ancestor, Vordenburg, whose title I still bear, soon discovered this, and in
the course of the studies to which he devoted himself, learned a great deal
more.

“Among other things, he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would
probably fall, sooner or later, upon the dead Countess, who in life had been
his idol. He conceived a horror, be she what she might, of her remains being
profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper
to prove that the vampire, on its expulsion from its amphibious existence, is
projected into a far more horrible life; and he resolved to save his once
beloved Mircalla from this.

“He adopted the stratagem of a journey here, a pretended removal of her
remains, and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen upon him,
and from the vale of years, he looked back on the scenes he was leaving, he
considered, in a different spirit, what he had done, and a horror took
possession of him. He made the tracings and notes which have guided me to the
very spot, and drew up a confession of the deception that he had practiced. If
he had intended any further action in this matter, death prevented him; and the
hand of a remote descendant has, too late for many, directed the pursuit to the
lair of the beast.”

We talked a little more, and among other things he said was this:

“One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of
Mircalla closed like a vice of steel on the General’s wrist when he
raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it
leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered
from.”

The following Spring my father took me a tour through Italy. We remained away
for more than a year. It was long before the terror of recent events subsided;
and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous
alternations—sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes
the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have
started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.

Other books by J. Sheridan LeFanu



The Cock and Anchor

Torlogh O’Brien

The House by the Churchyard

Uncle Silas

Checkmate

Carmilla

The Wyvern Mystery

Guy Deverell

Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery

The Chronicles of Golden Friars

In a Glass Darkly

The Purcell Papers

The Watcher and Other Weird Stories

A Chronicle of Golden Friars and Other Stories

Madam Growl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery

Green Tea and Other Stories

Sheridan LeFanu: The Diabolic Genius

Best Ghost Stories of J.S. LeFanu

The Best Horror Stories

The Vampire Lovers and Other Stories

Ghost Stories and Mysteries

The Hours After Midnight

J.S. LeFanu: Ghost Stories and Mysteries

Ghost and Horror Stories

Green Tea and Other Ghost Stones

Carmilla and Other Classic Tales of Mystery