Authors: Sheridan Le Fanu
"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.
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."