THE CRUEL PAINTER.
Now to return to the Story-Club.
On the night appointed, we met. And to the delight of all the rest of
us, Harry arrived with a look that satisfied us that he was to be no
defaulter this time. The look was one of almost nervous uneasiness. Of
course this sprung from anxiety to please Adela--at least, so I
interpreted it. She occupied her old place on the couch; we all
arranged ourselves nearly as before; and the fire was burning very
bright. Before he began, however, Harry, turning to our host, said:
"May I arrange the scene as I please, for the right effect of my story?"
"Certainly," answered the colonel.
Harry rose, and extinguished the lamp.
"But, my dear sir," said the colonel, "how can you read now?"
"Perfectly, by the firelight," answered Harry.
He then went to the windows, and drawing aside the curtains, drew up
the blinds.
It was full high moon, and the light so clear that, notwithstanding the
brightness of the fire, each window seemed to lie in ghostly shimmer on
the floor. Not a breath of wind was abroad. The whole country being
covered with snow, the air was filled with a snowy light. On one side
rose the high roof of another part of the house, on which the snow was
lying thick and smooth, undisturbed save by the footprints, visible in
the moon, of a large black cat, which had now paused in the middle of
it, and was looking round suspiciously towards the source of the light
which had surprised him in his midnight walk.
"Now," said Harry, returning to his seat, and putting on an air of
confidence to conceal the lack of it, "let any one who has nerves
retire at once, both for his own sake and that of the company! This is
just such a night as I wanted to read my story
in--snow--stillness--moonlight outside, and nothing but firelight
inside. Mind, Ralph, you keep up the fire, for the room will be more
ready to get cold now the coverings are off the windows.--You will say
at once if you feel it cold, Miss Cathcart?"
Adela promised; and Harry, who had his manuscript gummed together in a
continuous roll, so that he might not have to turn over any leaves,
began at once:
"THE CRUEL PAINTER.
"Among the young men assembled at the University of Prague, in the year
159--, was one called Karl von Wolkenlicht. A somewhat careless
student, he yet held a fair position in the estimation of both
professors and men, because he could hardly look at a proposition
without understanding it. Where such proposition, however, had to do
with anything relating to the deeper insights of the nature, he was
quite content that, for him, it should remain a proposition; which,
however, he laid up in one of his mental cabinets, and was ready to
reproduce at a moment's notice. This mental agility was more than
matched by the corresponding corporeal excellence, and both aided in
producing results in which his remarkable strength was equally
apparent. In all games depending upon the combination of muscle and
skill, he had scarce rivalry enough to keep him in practice. His
strength, however, was embodied in such a softness of muscular outline,
such a rare Greek-like style of beauty, and associated with such a
gentleness of manner and behaviour, that, partly from the truth of the
resemblance, partly from the absurdity of the contrast, he was known
throughout the university by the diminutive of the feminine form of his
name, and was always called Lottchen.
"'I say, Lottchen,' said one of his fellow-students, called Richter,
across the table in a wine-cellar they were in the habit of
frequenting, 'do you know, Heinrich Hoellenrachen here says that he saw
this morning, with mortal eyes, whom do you think?--Lilith.'
"'Adam's first wife?' asked Lottchen, with an attempt at carelessness,
while his face flushed like a maiden's.
"'None of your chaff!'said Richter. 'Your face is honester than your
tongue, and confesses what you cannot deny, that you would give your
chance of salvation--a small one to be sure, but all you've got--for
one peep at Lilith. Wouldn't you now, Lottchen?'
"'Go to the devil!' was all Lottchen's answer to his tormentor; but he
turned to Heinrich, to whom the students had given the surname above
mentioned, because of the enormous width of his jaws, and said with
eagerness and envy, disguising them as well as he could, under the
appearance of curiosity:
"'You don't mean it, Heinrich? You've been taking the beggar in!
Confess now.'
"'Not I. I saw her with my two eyes.'
"'Notwithstanding the different planes of their orbits,' suggested
Richter.
"'Yes, notwithstanding the fact that I can get a parallax to any of the
fixed stars in a moment, with only the breadth of my nose for the
base,' answered Heinrich, responding at once to the fun, and careless
of the personal defect insinuated. 'She was near enough for even me to
see her perfectly.'
"'When? Where? How?' asked Lottchen.
"'Two hours ago. In the churchyard of St. Stephen's. By a lucky chance.
Any more little questions, my child?' answered Hoellenrachen.
"'What could have taken her there, who is seen nowhere?' said Richter.
"She was seated on a grave. After she left, I went to the place; but it
was a new-made grave. There was no stone up. I asked the sexton about
her. He said he supposed she was the daughter of the woman buried there
last Thursday week. I knew it was Lilith.'
"'Her mother dead!' said Lottchen, musingly. Then he thought with
himself--'She will be going there again, then!' But he took care that
this ghost-thought should wander unembodied. 'But how did you know her,
Heinrich? You never saw her before.'
"'How do you come to be over head and ears in love with her, Lottchen,
and you haven't seen her at all?' interposed Richter.
"'Will you or will you not go to the devil?' rejoined Lottchen, with a
comic crescendo; to which the other replied with a laugh.
"'No one could miss knowing her,' said Heinrich.
"'Is she so very like, then?'
"'It is always herself, her very self.'
"A fresh flask of wine, turning out to be not up to the mark, brought
the current of conversation against itself; not much to the
dissatisfaction of Lottchen, who had already resolved to be in the
churchyard of St. Stephen's at sun-down the following day, in the hope
that he too might be favoured with a vision of Lilith.
"This resolution he carried out. Seated in a porch of the church, not
knowing in what direction to look for the apparition he hoped to see,
and desirous as well of not seeming to be on the watch for one, he was
gazing at the fallen rose-leaves of the sunset, withering away upon the
sky; when, glancing aside by an involuntary movement, he saw a woman
seated upon a new-made grave, not many yards from where he sat, with
her face buried in her hands, and apparently weeping bitterly. Karl was
in the shadow of the porch, and could see her perfectly, without much
danger of being discovered by her; so he sat and watched her. She
raised her head for a moment, and the rose-flush of the west fell over
it, shining on the tears with which it was wet, and giving the whole a
bloom which did not belong to it, for it was always pale, and now pale
as death. It was indeed the face of Lilith, the most celebrated beauty
of Prague.
"Again she buried her face in her hands; and Karl sat with a strange
feeling of helplessness, which grew as he sat; and the longing to help
her whom he could not help, drew his heart towards her with a trembling
reverence which was quite new to him. She wept on. The western roses
withered slowly away, and the clouds blended with the sky, and the
stars gathered like drops of glory sinking through the vault of night,
and the trees about the churchyard grew black, and Lilith almost
vanished in the wide darkness. At length she lifted her head, and
seeing the night around her, gave a little broken cry of dismay. The
minutes had swept over her head, not through her mind, and she did not
know that the dark had come.
"Hearing her cry, Karl rose and approached her. She heard his
footsteps, and started to her feet. Karl spoke--
"'Do not be frightened,' he said. 'Let me see you home. I will walk
behind you.'
"'Who are you?' she rejoined.
"'Karl Wolkenlicht.'
"'I have heard of you. Thank you. I can go home alone.'
"Yet, as if in a half-dreamy, half-unconscious mood, she accepted his
offered hand to lead her through the graves, and allowed him to walk
beside her, till, reaching the corner of a narrow street, she suddenly
bade him good-night and vanished. He thought it better not to follow
her, so he returned her good-night and went home.
"How to see her again was his first thought the next day; as, in fact,
how to see her at all had been his first thought for many days. She
went nowhere that ever he heard of; she knew nobody that he knew; she
was never seen at church, or at market; never seen in the street. Her
home had a dreary, desolate aspect. It looked as if no one ever went
out or in. It was like a place on which decay had fallen because there
was no indwelling spirit. The mud of years was baked upon its door, and
no faces looked out of its dusty windows.
"How then could she be the most celebrated beauty of Prague? How then
was it that Heinrich Hoellenrachen knew her the moment he saw her?
Above all, how was it that Karl Wolkenlicht had, in fact, fallen in
love with her before ever he saw her? It was thus--
"Her father was a painter. Belonging thus to the public, it had taken
the liberty of re-naming him. Every one called him Teufelsbuerst, or
Devilsbrush. It was a name with which, to judge from the nature of his
representations, he could hardly fail to be pleased. For, not as a
nightmare dream, which may alternate with the loveliest visions, but as
his ordinary everyday work, he delighted to represent human suffering.
"Not an aspect of human woe or torture, as expressed in countenance or
limb, came before his willing imagination, but he bore it straightway
to his easel. In the moments that precede sleep, when the black space
before the eyes of the poet teems with lovely faces, or dawns into a
spirit-landscape, face after face of suffering, in all varieties of
expression, would crowd, as if compelled by the accompanying fiends, to
present themselves, in awful levee, before the inner eye of the
expectant master. Then he would rise, light his lamp, and, with rapid
hand, make notes of his visions; recording, with swift successive
sweeps of his pencil, every individual face which had rejoiced his evil
fancy. Then he would return to his couch, and, well satisfied, fall
asleep to dream yet further embodiments of human ill.
"What wrong could man or mankind have done him, to be thus fearfully
pursued by the vengeance of the artist's hate?
"Another characteristic of the faces and form which he drew was, that
they were all beautiful in the original idea. The lines of each face,
however distorted by pain, would have been, in rest, absolutely
beautiful; and the whole of the execution bore witness to the fact that
upon this original beauty the painter had directed the artillery of
anguish to bring down the sky-soaring heights of its divinity to the
level of a hated existence. To do this, he worked in perfect accordance
with artistic law, falsifying no line of the original forms. It was the
suffering, rather than his pencil, that wrought the change. The latter
was the willing instrument to record what the imagination conceived
with a cruelty composed enough to be correct.
"To enhance the beauty he had thus distorted, and so to enhance yet
further the suffering that produced the distortion, he would often
represent attendant demons, whom he made as ugly as his imagination
could compass; avoiding, however, all grotesqueness beyond what was
sufficient to indicate that they were demons, and not men. Their
ugliness rose from hate, envy, and all evil passions; amongst which he
especially delighted to represent a gloating exultation over human
distress. And often in the midst of his clouds of demon faces, would
some one who knew him recognise the painter's own likeness, such as the
mirror might have presented it to him when he was busiest over the
incarnation of some exquisite torture.
"But apparently with the wish to avoid being supposed to choose such
representations for their own sakes, he always found a story, often in
the histories of the church, whose name he gave to the painting, and
which he pretended to have inspired the pictorial conception. No one,
however, who looked upon his suffering martyrs, could suppose for a
moment that he honoured their martyrdom. They were but the vehicles for
his hate of humanity. He was the torturer, and not Diocletian or Nero.
"But, stranger yet to tell, there was no picture, whatever its subject,
into which he did not introduce one form of placid and harmonious
loveliness. In this, however, his fierceness was only more fully
displayed. For in no case did this form manifest any relation either to
the actors or the endurers in the picture. Hence its very loveliness
became almost hateful to those who beheld it. Not a shade crossed the
still sky of that brow, not a ripple disturbed the still sea of that
cheek. She did not hate, she did not love the sufferers: the painter
would not have her hate, for that would be to the injury of her
loveliness: would not have her love, for he hated. Sometimes she
floated above, as a still, unobservant angel, her gaze turned upward,
dreaming along, careless as a white summer cloud, across the blue. If
she looked down on the scene below, it was only that the beholder might
see that she saw and did not care--that not a feather of her outspread
pinions would quiver at the sight. Sometimes she would stand in the
crowd, as if she had been copied there from another picture, and had
nothing to do with this one, nor any right to be in it at all. Or when
the red blood was trickling drop by drop from the crushed limb, she
might be seen standing nearest, smiling over a primrose or the bloom on
a peach. Some had said that she was the painter's wife; that she had
been false to him; that he had killed her; and, finding that that was
no sufficing revenge, thus half in love, and half in deepest hate,
immortalized his vengeance. But it was now universally understood that
it was his daughter, of whose loveliness extravagant reports went
abroad; though all said, doubtless reading this from her father's
pictures, that she was a beauty without a heart. Strange theories of
something else supplying its place were rife among the anatomical
students. With the girl in the pictures, the wild imagination of
Lottchen, probably in part from her apparently absolute
unattainableness and her undisputed heartlessness, had fallen in love,
as far as the mere imagination can fall in love.
"But again, how was he to see her? He haunted the house night after
night. Those blue eyes never met his. No step responsive to his came
from that door. It seemed to have been so long unopened that it had
grown as fixed and hard as the stones that held its bolts in their
passive clasp. He dared not watch in the daytime, and with all his
watching at night, he never saw father or daughter or domestic cross
the threshold. Little he thought that, from a shot-window near the
door, a pair of blue eyes, like Lilith's, but paler and colder, were
watching him just as a spider watches the fly that is likely ere long
to fall into his toils. And into those toils Karl soon fell. For her
form darkened the page; her form stood on the threshold of sleep; and
when, overcome with watching, he did enter its precincts, her form
entered with him, and walked by his side. He must find her; or the
world might go to the bottomless pit for him. But how?
"Yes. He would be a painter. Teufelsbuerst would receive him as a
humble apprentice. He would grind his colours, and Teufelsbuerst would
teach him the mysteries of the science which is the handmaiden of art.
Then he might see _her_, and that was all his ambition.
"In the clear morning light of a day in autumn, when the leaves were
beginning to fall seared from the hand of that Death which has his
dance in the chapels of nature as well as in the cathedral aisles of
men--he walked up and knocked at the dingy door. The spider painter
opened it himself. He was a little man, meagre and pallid, with those
faded blue eyes, a low nose in three distinct divisions, and thin,
curveless, cruel lips. He wore no hair on his face; but long grey
locks, long as a woman's, were scattered over his shoulders, and hung
down on his breast. When Wolkenlicht had explained his errand, he
smiled a smile in which hypocrisy could not hide the cunning, and,
after many difficulties, consented to receive him as a pupil, on
condition that he would become an inmate of his house. Wolkenlicht's
heart bounded with delight, which he tried to hide: the second smile of
Teufelsbuerst might have shown him that he had ill succeeded. The fact
that he was not a native of Prague, but coming from a distant part of
the country, was entirely his own master in the city, rendered this
condition perfectly easy to fulfil; and that very afternoon he entered
the studio of Teufelsbuerst as his scholar and servant.
"It was a great room, filled with the appliances and results of art.
Many pictures, festooned with cobwebs, were hung carelessly on the
dirty walls. Others, half finished, leaned against them, on the floor.
Several, in different stages of progress, stood upon easels. But all
spoke the cruel bent of the artist's genius. In one corner a lay figure
was extended on a couch, covered with a pall of black velvet. Through
its folds, the form beneath was easily discernible; and one hand and
forearm protruded from beneath it, at right angles to the rest of the
frame. Lottchen could not help shuddering when he saw it. Although he
overcame the feeling in a moment, he felt a great repugnance to seating
himself with his back towards it, as the arrangement of an easel, at
which Teufelsbuerst wished him to draw, rendered necessary. He
contrived to edge himself round, so that when he lifted his eyes he
should see the figure, and be sure that it could not rise without his
being aware of it. But his master saw and understood his altered
position; and under some pretence about the light, compelled him to
resume the position in which he had placed him at first; after which he
sat watching, over the top of his picture, the expression of his
countenance as he tried to draw; reading in it the horrid fancy that
the figure under the pall had risen, and was stealthily approaching to
look over his shoulder. But Lottchen resisted the feeling, and, being
already no contemptible draughtsman, was soon interested enough to
forget it. And then, any moment _she_ might enter.
"Now began a system of slow torture, for the chance of which the
painter had been long on the watch--especially since he had first seen
Karl lingering about the house. His opportunities of seeing physical
suffering were nearly enough even for the diseased necessities of his
art; but now he had one in his power, on whom, his own will fettering
him, he could try any experiments he pleased for the production of a
kind of suffering, in the observation of which he did not consider that
he had yet sufficient experience. He would hold the very heart of the
youth in his hand, and wring it and torture it to his own content. And
lest Karl should be strong enough to prevent those expressions of pain
for which he lay on the watch, he would make use of further means,
known to himself, and known to few besides.
"All that day Karl saw nothing of Lilith; but he heard her voice
once--and that was enough for one day. The next, she was sitting to her
father the greater part of the day, and he could see her as often as he
dared glance up from his drawing. She had looked at him when she
entered, but had shown no sign of recognition; and all day long she
took no further notice of him. He hoped, at first, that this came of
the intelligence of love; but he soon began to doubt it. For he saw
that, with the holy shadow of sorrow, all that distinguished the
expression of her countenance from that which the painter so constantly
reproduced, had vanished likewise. It was the very face of the
unheeding angel whom, as often as he lifted his eyes higher than hers,
he saw on the wall above her, playing on a psaltery in the smoke of the
torment ascending for ever from burning Babylon.--The power of the
painter had not merely wrought for the representation of the woman of
his imagination; it had had scope as well in realizing her.
"Karl soon began to see that communication, other than of the eyes, was
all but hopeless; and to any attempt in that way she seemed altogether
indisposed to respond. Nor if she had wished it, would it have been
safe; for as often as he glanced towards her, instead of hers, he met
the blue eyes of the painter gleaming upon him like winter lightning.
His tones, his gestures, his words, seemed kind: his glance and his
smile refused to be disguised.
"The first day he dined alone in the studio, waited upon by an old
woman; the next he was admitted to the family table, with Teufelsbuerst
and Lilith. The room offered a strange contrast to the study. As far as
handicraft, directed by a sumptuous taste, could construct a
house-paradise, this was one. But it seemed rather a paradise of
demons; for the walls were covered with Teufelsbuerst's paintings.
During the dinner, Lilith's gaze scarcely met that of Wolkenlicht; and
once or twice, when their eyes did meet, her glance was so perfectly
unconcerned, that Karl wished he might look at her for ever without the
fear of her looking at him again. She seemed like one whose love had
rushed out glowing with seraphic fire, to be frozen to death in a more
than wintry cold: she now walked lonely without her love. In the
evenings, he was expected to continue his drawing by lamplight; and at
night he was conducted by Teufelsbuerst to his chamber. Not once did he
allow him to proceed thither alone, and not once did he leave him there
without locking and bolting the door on the outside. But he felt
nothing except the coldness of Lilith.
"Day after day she sat to her father, in every variety of costume that
could best show the variety of her beauty. How much greater that beauty
might be, if it ever blossomed into a beauty of soul, Wolkenlicht never
imagined; for he soon loved her enough to attribute to her all the
possibilities of her face as actual possessions of her being. To
account for everything that seemed to contradict this perfection, his
brain was prolific in inventions; till he was compelled at last to see
that she was in the condition of a rose-bud, which, on the point of
blossoming, had been chilled into a changeless bud by the cold of an
untimely frost. For one day, after the father and daughter had become a
little more accustomed to his silent presence, a conversation began
between them, which went on until he saw that Teufelsbuerst believed in
nothing except his art. How much of his feeling for that could be
dignified by the name of belief, seeing its objects were such as they
were, might have been questioned. It seemed to Wolkenlicht to amount
only to this: that, amidst a thousand distastes, it was a pleasant
thing to reproduce on the canvas the forms he beheld around him,
modifying them to express the prevailing feelings of his own mind.
"A more desolate communication between souls than that which then
passed between father and daughter could hardly be imagined. The father
spoke of humanity and all its experiences in a tone of the bitterest
scorn. He despised men, and himself amongst them; and rejoiced to think
that the generations rose and vanished, brood after brood, as the crops
of corn grew and disappeared. Lilith, who listened to it all unmoved,
taking only an intellectual interest in the question, remarked that
even the corn had more life than that; for, after its death, it rose
again in the new crop. Whether she meant that the corn was therefore
superior to man, forgetting that the superior can produce being without
losing its own, or only advanced an objection to her father's argument,
Wolkenlicht could not tell. But Teufelsbuerst laughed like the sound of
a saw, and said: 'Follow out the analogy, my Lilith, and you will see
that man is like the corn that springs again after it is buried; but
unfortunately the only result we know of is a vampire.'
"Wolkenlicht looked up, and saw a shudder pass through the frame, and
over the pale thin face of the painter. This he could not account for.
But Teufelsbuerst could have explained it, for there were strange
whispers abroad, and they had reached his ear; and his philosophy was
not quite enough for them. But the laugh with which Lilith met this
frightful attempt at wit, grated dreadfully on Wolkenlicht's feeling.
With her, too, however, a reaction seemed to follow. For, turning round
a moment after, and looking at the picture on which her father was
working, the tears rose in her eyes, and she said: 'Oh! father, how
like my mother you have made me this time!' 'Child!' retorted the
painter with a cold fierceness, 'you have no mother. That which is gone
out is gone out. Put no name in my hearing on that which is not. Where
no substance is, how can there be a name?'
"Lilith rose and left the room. Wolkenlicht now understood that Lilith
was a frozen bud, and could not blossom into a rose. But pure love
lives by faith. It loves the vaguely beheld and unrealized ideal. It
dares believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed. It is in
virtue of this that love loves on. And it was in virtue of this, that
Wolkenlicht loved Lilith yet more after he discovered what a grave of
misery her unbelief was digging for her within her own soul. For her
sake he would bear anything--bear even with calmness the torments of
his own love; he would stay on, hoping and hoping.--The text, that we
know not what a day may bring forth, is just as true of good things as
of evil things; and out of Time's womb the facts must come.
"But with the birth of this resolution to endure, his suffering abated;
his face grew more calm; his love, no less earnest, was less imperious;
and he did not look up so often from his work when Lilith was present.
The master could see that his pupil was more at ease, and that he was
making rapid progress in his art. This did not suit his designs, and he
would betake himself to his further schemes.
"For this purpose he proceeded first to simulate a friendship for
Wolkenlicht, the manifestations of which he gradually increased, until,
after a day or two, he asked him to drink wine with him in the evening.
Karl readily agreed. The painter produced some of his best; but took
care not to allow Lilith to taste it; for he had cunningly prepared and
mingled with it a decoction of certain herbs and other ingredients,
exercising specific actions upon the brain, and tending to the
inordinate excitement of those portions of it which are principally
under the rule of the imagination. By the reaction of the brain during
the operation of these stimulants, the imagination is filled with
suggestions and images. The nature of these is determined by the
prevailing mood of the time. They are such as the imagination would
produce of itself, but increased in number and intensity.
Teufelsbuerst, without philosophizing about it, called his preparation
simply a love-philtre, a concoction well known by name, but the
composition of which was the secret of only a few. Wolkenlicht had, of
course, not the least suspicion of the treatment to which he was
subjected.
"Teufelsbuerst was, however, doomed to fresh disappointment. Not that
his potion failed in the anticipated effect, for now Karl's real
sufferings began; but that such was the strength of Karl's will, and
his fear of doing anything that might give a pretext for banishing him
from the presence of Lilith, that he was able to conceal his feelings
far too successfully for the satisfaction of Teufelsbuerst's art. Yet
he had to fetter himself with all the restraints that self-exhortation
could load him with, to refrain from falling at the feet of Lilith and
kissing the hem of her garment. For that, as the lowliest part of all
that surrounded her, itself kissing the earth, seemed to come nearest
within the reach of his ambition, and therefore to draw him the most.
"No doubt the painter had experience and penetration enough to perceive
that he was suffering intensely; but he wanted to see the suffering
embodied in outward signs, bringing it within the region over which his
pencil held sway. He kept on, therefore, trying one thing after
another, and rousing the poor youth to agony; till to his other
sufferings were added, at length, those of failing health; a fact which
notified itself evidently enough even for Teufelsbuerst, though its
signs were not of the sort he chiefly desired. But Karl endured all
bravely.
"Meantime, for various reasons, he scarcely ever left the house.
"I must now interrupt the course of my story to introduce another
element.
"A few years before the period of my tale, a certain shoemaker of the
city had died under circumstances more than suggestive of suicide. He
was buried, however, with such precautions, that six weeks elapsed
before the rumour of the facts broke out; upon which rumour, not
before, the most fearful reports began to be circulated, supported by
what seemed to the people of Prague incontestable evidence.--A
_spectrum_ of the deceased appeared to multitudes of persons, playing
horrible pranks, and occasioning indescribable consternation throughout
the whole town. This went on till at last, about eight months after his
burial, the magistrates caused his body to be dug up; when it was found
in just the condition of the bodies of those who in the eastern
countries of Europe are called _vampires_. They buried the corpse under
the gallows; but neither the digging up nor the re-burying were of
avail to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pick-axe were set to
work, and the dead man being found considerably improved in _condition_
since his last interment, was, with various horrible indignities, burnt
to ashes, 'after which the _spectrum_ was never seen more.'
"And a second epidemic of the same nature had broken out a little
before the period to which I have brought my story.
"About midnight, after a calm frosty day, for it was now winter, a
terrible storm of wind and snow came on. The tempest howled frightfully
about the house of the painter, and Wolkenlicht found some solace in
listening to the uproar, for his troubled thoughts would not allow him
to sleep. It raged on all the next three days, till about noon on the
fourth day, when it suddenly fell, and all was calm. The following
night, Wolkenlicht, lying awake, heard unaccountable noises in the next
house, as of things thrown about, of kicking and fighting horses, and
of opening and shutting gates. Flinging wide his lattice and looking
out, the noise of howling dogs came to him from every quarter of the
town. The moon was bright and the air was still. In a little while he
heard the sounds of a horse going at full gallop round the house, so
that it shook as if it would fall; and flashes of light shone into his
room. How much of this may have been owing to the effect of the drugs
on poor Lottchen's brain, I leave my readers to determine. But when the
family met at breakfast in the morning, Teufelsbuerst, who had been
already out of doors, reported that he had found the marks of strange
feet in the snow, all about the house and through the garden at the
back; stating, as his belief, that the tracks must be continued over
the roofs, for there was no passage otherwise. There was a wicked gleam
in his eye as he spoke; and Lilith believed that he was only trying an
experiment on Karl's nerves. He persisted that he had never seen any
footprints of the sort before. Karl informed him of his experiences
during the night; upon which Teufelsbuerst looked a little graver
still, and proceeded to tell them that the storm, whose snow was still
covering the ground, had arisen the very moment that their next door
neighbour died, and had ceased as suddenly the moment he was buried,
though it had raved furiously all the time of the funeral, so that 'it
made men's bodies quake and their teeth chatter in their heads.' Karl
had heard that the man, whose name was John Kuntz, was dead and buried.
He knew that he had been a very wealthy, and therefore most
respectable, alderman of the town; that he had been very fond of
horses; and that he had died in consequence of a kick received from one
of his own, as he was looking at his hoof. But he had not heard that,
just before he died, a black cat 'opened the casement with her nails,
ran to his bed, and violently scratched his face and the bolster, as if
she endeavoured by force to remove him out of the place where he lay.
But the cat afterwards was suddenly gone, and she was no sooner gone,
but he breathed his last.'
"So said Teufelsbuerst, as the reporter of the town talk. Lilith looked
very pale and terrified; and it was perhaps owing to this that the
painter brought no more tales home with him. There were plenty to
bring, but he heard them all and said nothing. The fact was that the
philosopher himself could not resist the infection of the fear that was
literally raging in the city; and perhaps the reports that he himself
had sold himself to the devil had sufficient response from his own evil
conscience to add to the influence of the epidemic upon him. The whole
place was infested with the presence of the dead Kuntz, till scarce a
man or woman would dare to be alone. He strangled old men; insulted
women; squeezed children to death; knocked out the brains of dogs
against the ground; pulled up posts; turned milk into blood; nearly
killed a worthy clergyman by breathing upon him the intolerable airs of
the grave, cold and malignant and noisome; and, in short, filled the
city with a perfect madness of fear, so that every report was believed
without the smallest doubt or investigation.
"Though Teufelsbuerst brought home no more of the town talk, the old
servant was a faithful purveyor, and frequented the news-mart
assiduously. Indeed she had some nightmare experiences of her own that
she was proud to add to the stock of horrors which the city enjoyed
with such a hearty community of goods. For those regions were not far
removed from the birthplace and home of the vampire. The belief in
vampires is the quintessential concentration and embodiment of all the
passion of fear in Hungary and the adjacent regions. Nor, of all the
other inventions of the human imagination, has there ever been one so
perfect in crawling terror as this. Lilith and Karl were quite familiar
with the popular ideas on the subject. It did not require to be
explained to them, that a vampire was a body retaining a kind of animal
life after the soul had departed. If any relation existed between it
and the vanished ghost, it was only sufficient to make it restless in
its grave. Possessed of vitality enough to keep it uncorrupted and
pliant, its only instinct was a blind hunger for the sole food which
could keep its awful life persistent--living human blood. Hence it, or,
if not it, a sort of semi-material exhalation or essence of it,
retaining its form and material relations, crept from its tomb, and
went roaming about till it found some one asleep, towards whom it had
an attraction, founded on old affection. It sucked the blood of this
unhappy being, transferring so much of its life to itself as a vampire
could assimilate. Death was the certain consequence. If suspicion
conjectured aright, and they opened the proper grave, the body of the
vampire would be found perfectly fresh and plump, sometimes indeed of
rather florid complexion;--with grown hair, eyes half open, and the
stains of recent blood about its greedy, leech-like lips. Nothing
remained but to consume the corpse to ashes, upon which the vampire
would show itself no more. But what added infinitely to the horror was
the certainty that whoever died from the mouth of the vampire, wrinkled
grandsire or delicate maiden, must in turn rise from the grave, and go
forth a vampire, to suck the blood of the dearest left behind. This was
the generation of the vampire brood. Lilith trembled at the very name
of the creature. Karl was too much in love to be afraid of anything.
Yet the evident fear of the unbelieving painter took a hold of his
imagination; and, under the influence of the potions of which he still
partook unwittingly, when he was not thinking about Lilith, he was
thinking about the vampire.
"Meantime, the condition of things in the painter's household continued
much the same for Wolkenlicht--work all day; no communication between
the young people; the dinner and the wine; silent reading when work was
done, with stolen glances many over the top of the book, glances that
were never returned; the cold good-night; the locking of the door; the
wakeful night and the drowsy morning. But at length a change came, and
sooner than any of the party had expected. For, whether it was that the
impatience of Teufelsbuerst had urged him to yet more dangerous
experiments, or that the continuance of those he had been so long
employing had overcome at length the vitality of Wolkenlicht--one
afternoon, as he was sitting at his work, he suddenly dropped from his
chair, and his master hurrying to him in some alarm, found him rigid
and apparently lifeless. Lilith was not in the study when this took
place. In justice to Teufelsbuerst, it must be confessed that he
employed all the skill he was master of, which for beneficent purposes
was not very great, to restore the youth; but without avail. At last,
hearing the footsteps of Lilith, he desisted in some consternation; and
that she might escape being shocked by the sight of a dead body where
she had been accustomed to see a living one, he removed the lay figure
from the couch, and laid Karl in its place, covering him with a black
velvet pall. He was just in time. She started at seeing no one in
Karl's place and said:
"'Where is your pupil, father?'
"'Gone home,' he answered, with a kind of convulsive grin.
"She glanced round the room, caught sight of the lay figure where it
had not been before, looked at the couch, and saw the pall yet heaved
up from beneath, opened her eyes till the entire white sweep around the
iris suggested a new expression of consternation to Teufelsbuerst,
though from a quarter whence he did not desire or look for it; and
then, without a word, sat down to a drawing she had been busy upon the
day before. But her father, glancing at her now, as Wolkenlicht had
used to do, could not help seeing that she was frightfully pale. She
showed no other sign of uneasiness. As soon as he released her, she
withdrew, with one more glance, as she passed, at the couch and the
figure blocked out in black upon it. She hastened to her chamber, shut
and locked the door, sat down on the side of the couch, and fell, not
a-weeping, but a-thinking. Was he dead? What did it matter? They would
all be dead soon. Her mother was dead already. It was only that the
earth could not bear more children, except she devoured those to whom
she had already given birth. But what if they had to come back in
another form, and live another sad, hopeless, loveless life over
again?--And so she went on questioning, and receiving no replies; while
through all her thoughts passed and repassed the eyes of Wolkenlicht,
which she had often felt to be upon her when she did not see them, wild
with repressed longing, the light of their love shining through the
veil of diffused tears, ever gathering and never overflowing. Then came
the pale face, so worshipping, so distant in its self-withdrawn
devotion, slowly dawning out of the vapours of her reverie. When it
vanished, she tried to see it again. It would not come when she called
it; but when her thoughts left knocking at the door of the lost, and
wandered away, out came the pale, troubled, silent face again,
gathering itself up from some unknown nook in her world of phantasy,
and once more, when she tried to steady it by the fixedness of her own
regard, fading back into the mist. So the phantasm of the dead drew
near and wooed, as the living had never dared.--What if there were any
good in loving? What if men and women did not die all out, but some dim
shade of each, like that pale, mind-ghost of Wolkenlicht, floated
through the eternal vapours of chaos? And what if they might sometimes
cross each other's path, meet, know that they met, love on? Would not
that revive the withered memory, fix the fleeting ghost, give a new
habitation, a body even, to the poor, unhoused wanderers, frozen by the
eternal frosts, no longer thinking beings, but thoughts wandering
through the brain of the 'Melancholy Mass?' Back with the thought came
the face of the dead Karl, and the maiden threw herself on her bed in a
flood of bitter tears. She could have loved him if he had only lived:
she did love him, for he was dead. But even in the midst of the remorse
that followed--for had she not killed him?--life seemed a less hard and
hopeless thing than before. For it is love itself and not its responses
or results that is the soul of life and its pleasures.
"Two hours passed ere she could again show herself to her father, from
whom she seemed in some new way divided by the new feeling in which he
did not, and could not share. But at last, lest he should seek her, and
finding her, should suspect her thoughts, she descended and sought
him.--For there is a maidenliness in sorrow, that wraps her garments
close around her.--But he was not to be seen; the door of the study was
locked. A shudder passed through her as she thought of what her father,
who lost no opportunity of furthering his all but perfect acquaintance
with the human form and structure, might be about with the figure which
she knew lay dead beneath that velvet pall, but which had arisen to
haunt the hollow caves and cells of her living brain. She rushed away,
and up once more to her silent room, through the darkness which had now
settled down in the house; threw herself again on her bed, and lay
almost paralysed with horror and distress.
"But Teufelsbuerst was not about anything so frightful as she supposed,
though something frightful enough. I have already implied that
Wolkenlicht was, in form, as fine an embodiment of youthful manhood as
any old Greek republic could have provided one of its sculptors with as
model for an Apollo. It is true, that to the eye of a Greek artist he
would not have been more acceptable in consequence of the regimen he
had been going through for the last few weeks; but the emaciation of
Wolkenlicht's frame, and the consequent prominence of the muscles,
indicating the pain he had gone through, were peculiarly attractive to
Teufelsbuerst.--He was busy preparing to take a cast of the body of his
dead pupil, that it might aid to the perfection of his future labours.
"He was deep in the artistic enjoyment of a form, at the same time so
beautiful and strong, yet with the lines of suffering in every limb and
feature, when his daughter's hand was laid on the latch. He started,
flung the velvet drapery over the body, and went to the door. But
Lilith had vanished. He returned to his labours. The operation took a
long time, for he performed it very carefully. Towards midnight, he had
finished encasing the body in a close-clinging shell of plaster, which,
when broken off, and fitted together, would be the matrix to the form
of the dead Wolkenlicht. Before leaving it to harden till the morning,
he was just proceeding to strengthen it with an additional layer all
over, when a flash of lightning, reflected in all its dazzle from the
snow without, almost blinded him. A peal of long-drawn thunder
followed; the wind rose; and just such a storm came on as had risen
some time before at the death of Kuntz, whose spectre was still
tormenting the city. The gnomes of terror, deep hidden in the caverns
of Teufelsbuerst's nature, broke out jubilant. With trembling hands he
tried to cast the pall over the awful white chrysalis,--failed, and
fled to his chamber. And there lay the studio naked to the eyes of the
lightning, with its tortured forms throbbing out of the dark, and
quivering, as with life, in the almost continuous palpitations of the
light; while on the couch lay the motionless mass of whiteness,
gleaming blue in the lightning, almost more terrible in its crude
indications of the human form, than that which it enclosed. It lay
there as if dropped from some tree of chaos, haggard with the snows of
eternity--a huge misshapen nut, with a corpse for its kernel.
"But the lightning would soon have revealed a more terrible sight
still, had there been any eyes to behold it. At midnight, while a peal
of thunder was just dying away in the distance, the crust of death flew
asunder, rending in all directions; and, pale as his investiture,
staring with ghastly eyes, the form of Karl started up sitting on the
couch. Had he not been far beyond ordinary men in strength, he could
not thus have rent his sepulchre. Indeed, had Teufelsbuerst been able
to finish his task by the additional layer of gypsum which he
contemplated, he must have died the moment life revived; although, so
long as the trance lasted, neither the exclusion from the air, nor the
practical solidification of the walls of his chest, could do him any
injury. He had lain unconscious throughout the operations of
Teufelsbuerst, but now the catalepsy had passed away, possibly under
the influence of the electric condition of the atmosphere. Very likely
the strength he now put forth was intensified by a convulsive reaction
of all the powers of life, as is not infrequently the case in sudden
awakenings from similar interruptions of vital activity. The coming to
himself and the bursting of his case were simultaneous. He sat staring
about him, with, of all his mental faculties, only his imagination
awake, from which the thoughts that occupied it when he fell senseless
had not yet faded. These thoughts had been compounded of feelings about
Lilith, and speculations about the vampire that haunted the
neighbourhood; and the fumes of the last drug of which he had partaken,
still hovering in his brain, combined with these thoughts and fancies
to generate the delusion that he had just broken from the embrace of
his coffin, and risen, the last-born of the vampire race. The sense of
unavoidable obligation to fulfil his doom, was yet mingled with a faint
flutter of joy, for he knew that he must go to Lilith. With a deep
sigh, he rose, gathered up the pall of black velvet, flung it around
him, stepped from the couch, and left the study to find her.
"Meantime, Teufelsbuerst had sufficiently recovered to remember that he
had left the door of the studio unfastened, and that any one entering
would discover in what he had been engaged, which, in the case of his
getting into any difficulty about the death of Karl, would tell
powerfully against him. He was at the farther end of a long passage,
leading from the house to the studio, on his way to make all secure,
when Karl appeared at the door, and advanced towards him. The painter,
seized with invincible terror, turned and fled. He reached his room,
and fell senseless on the floor. The phantom held on its way, heedless.
"Lilith, on gaining her room the second time, had thrown herself on her
bed as before, and had wept herself into a troubled slumber. She lay
dreaming--and dreadful dreams. Suddenly she awoke in one of those peals
of thunder which tormented the high regions of the air, as a storm
billows the surface of the ocean. She lay awake and listened. As it
died away, she thought she heard, mingling with its last muffled
murmurs, the sound of moaning. She turned her face towards the room in
keen terror. But she saw nothing. Another light, long-drawn sigh
reached her ear, and at the same moment a flash of lightning illumined
the room. In the corner farthest from her bed, she spied a white face,
nothing more. She was dumb and motionless with fear. Utter darkness
followed, a darkness that seemed to enter into her very brain. Yet she
felt that the face was slowly crossing the black gulf of the room, and
drawing near to where she lay. The next flash revealed, as it bended
over her, the ghastly face of Karl, down which flowed fresh tears. The
rest of his form was lost in blackness. Lilith did not faint, but it
was the very force of her fear that seemed to keep her alive. It became
for the moment the atmosphere of her life. She lay trembling and
staring at the spot in the darkness where she supposed the face of Karl
still to be. But the next flash showed her the face far off, looking at
her through the panes of her lattice-window.
"For Lottchen, as soon as he saw Lilith, seemed to himself to go
through a second stage of awaking. Her face made him doubt whether he
could be a vampire after all; for instead of wanting to bite her arm
and suck the blood, he all but fell down at her feet in a passion of
speechless love. The next moment he became aware that his presence must
be at least very undesirable to her; and in an instant he had reached
her window, which he knew looked upon a lower roof that extended
between two different parts of the house, and before the next flash
came, he had stepped through the lattice and closed it behind him.
"Believing his own room to be attainable from this quarter, he
proceeded along the roof in the direction he judged best. The cold
winter air by degrees restored him entirely to his right mind, and he
soon comprehended the whole of the circumstances in which he found
himself. Peeping through a window he was passing, to see whether it
belonged to his room, he spied Teufelsbuerst, who, at the very moment,
was lifting his head from the faint into which he had fallen at the
first sight of Lottchen. The moon was shining clear, and in its light
the painter saw, to his horror, the pale face staring in at his window.
He thought it had been there ever since he had fainted, and dropped
again in a deeper swoon than before. Karl saw him fall, and the truth
flashed upon him that the wicked artist took him for what he had
believed himself to be when first he recovered from his trance--namely,
the vampire of the former Karl Wolkenlicht. The moment he comprehended
it, he resolved to keep up the delusion if possible. Meantime he was
innocently preparing a new ingredient for the popular dish of horrors
to be served at the ordinary of the city the next day. For the old
servant's were not the only eyes that had seen him besides those of
Teufelsbuerst. What could be more like a vampire, dragging his pall
after him, than this apparition of poor, half-frozen Lottchen, crawling
across the roof? Karl remembered afterwards that he had heard the dogs
howling awfully in every direction, as he crept along; but this was
hardly necessary to make those who saw him conclude that it was the
same phantasm of John Kuntz, which had been infesting the whole city,
and especially the house next door to the painter's, which had been the
dwelling of the respectable alderman who had degenerated into this most
disreputable of moneyless vagabonds. What added to the consternation of
all who heard of it, was the sickening conviction that the extreme
measures which they had resorted to in order to free the city from the
ghoul, beyond which nothing could be done, had been utterly unavailing,
successful as they had proved in every other known case of the kind.
For, urged as well by various horrid signs about his grave, which not
even its close proximity to the altar could render a place of repose,
they had opened it, had found in the body every peculiarity belonging
to a vampire, had pulled it out with the greatest difficulty on account
of a quite supernatural ponderosity; which rendered the horse which had
killed him--a strong animal--all but unable to drag it along, and had
at last, after cutting it in pieces, and expending on the fire two
hundred and sixteen great billets, succeeded in conquering its
incombustibleness, and reducing it to ashes. Such, at least, was the
story which had reached the painter's household, and was believed by
many; and if all this did not compel the perturbed corpse to rest, what
more could be done?
"When Karl had reached his room, and was dressing himself, the thought
struck him that something might be made of the report of the extreme
weight of the body of old Kuntz, to favour the continuance of the
delusion of Teufelsbuerst, although he hardly knew yet to what use he
could turn this delusion. He was convinced that he would have made no
progress however long he might have remained in his house; and that he
would have more chance of favour with Lilith if he were to meet her in
any other circumstances whatever than those in which he invariably saw
her--namely, surrounded by her father's influences, and watched by her
father's cold blue eyes.
"As soon as he was dressed, he crept down to the studio, which was now
quiet enough, the storm being over, and the moon filling it with her
steady shine. In the corner lay in all directions the fragments of the
mould which his own body had formed and filled. The bag of plaster and
the bucket of water which the painter had been using stood beside.
Lottchen gathered all the pieces together, and then making his way to
an outhouse where he had seen various odds and ends of rubbish lying,
chose from the heap as many pieces of old iron and other metal as he
could find. To these he added a few large stones from the garden. When
he had got all into the studio, he locked the door, and proceeded to
fit together the parts of the mould, filling up the hollow as he went
on with the heaviest things he could get into it, and solidifying the
whole by pouring in plaster; till, having at length completed it, and
obliterated, as much as possible, the marks of joining, he left it to
harden, with the conviction that now it would make a considerable
impression on Teufelsbuerst's imagination, as well as on his muscular
sense. He then left everything else as nearly undisturbed as he could;
and, knowing all the ways of the house, was soon in the street, without
leaving any signs of his exit.
"Karl soon found himself before the house in which his friend
Hoellenrachen resided. Knowing his studious habits, he had hoped to see
his light still burning, nor was he disappointed. He contrived to bring
him to his window, and a moment after, the door was cautiously opened.
"'Why, Lottchen, where do you come from?'
"'From the grave, Heinrich, or next door to it.'
"'Come in, and tell me all about it. We thought the old painter had
made a model of you, and tortured you to death.'
"'Perhaps you were not far wrong. But get me a horn of ale, for even a
vampire is thirsty, you know.'
"'A vampire!' exclaimed Heinrich, retreating a pace, and involuntarily
putting himself upon his guard.
"Karl laughed.
"'My hand was warm, was it not, old fellow?' he said. Vampires are
cold, all but the blood.'
"'What a fool I am!' rejoined Heinrich. 'But you know we have been
hearing such horrors lately that a fellow may be excused for shuddering
a little when a pale-faced apparition tells him at two o'clock in the
morning that he is a vampire, and thirsty, too.'
"Karl told him the whole story; and the mental process of regarding it
for the sake of telling it, revealed to him pretty clearly some of the
treatment of which he had been unconscious at the time. Heinrich was
quite sure that his suspicions were correct. And now the question was,
what was to be done next?
"'At all events,' said Heinrich, 'we must keep you out of the way for
some time. I will represent to my landlady that you are in hiding from
enemies, and her heart will rule her tongue. She can let you have a
garret-room, I know; and I will do as well as I can to bear you
company. We shall have time then to invent some plan of operation.'
"To this proposal Karl agreed with hearty thanks, and soon all was
arranged. The only conclusion they could yet arrive at was, that
somehow or other the old demon-painter must be tamed.
"Meantime, how fared it with Lilith? She too had no doubt that she had
seen the body-ghost of poor Karl, and that the vampire had, according
to rule, paid her the first visit because he loved her best. This was
horrible enough if the vampire were not really the person he
represented; but if in any sense it were Karl himself, at least it gave
some expectation of a more prolonged existence than her father had
taught her to look for; and if love anything like her mother's still
lasted, even along with the habits of a vampire, there was something to
hope for in the future. And then, though he had visited her, he had
not, as far as she was aware, deprived her of a drop of blood. She
could not be certain that he had not bitten her, for she had been in
such a strange condition of mind that she might not have felt it, but
she believed that he had restrained the impulses of his vampire nature,
and had left her, lest he should yet yield to them. She fell fast
asleep; and, when morning came, there was not, as far as she could
judge, one of those triangular leech-like perforations to be found upon
her whole body. Will it be believed that the moment she was satisfied
of this, she was seized by a terrible jealousy, lest Karl should have
gone and bitten some one else? Most people will wonder that she should
not have gone out of her senses at once; but there was all the
difference between a visit from a real vampire and a visit from a man
she had begun to love, even although she took him for a vampire. All
the difference does _not_ lie in a name. They were very different
causes, and the effects must be very different.
"When Teufelsbuerst came down in the morning, he crept into the studio
like a murderer. There lay the awful white block, seeming to his eyes
just the same as he had left it. What was to be done with it? He dared
not open it. Mould and model must go together. But whither? If inquiry
should be made after Wolkenlicht, and this were discovered anywhere on
his premises, would it not be enough to bring him at once to the
gallows? Therefore it would be dangerous to bury it in the garden, or
in the cellar.
"'Besides,' thought he, with a shudder, 'that would be to fix the
vampire as a guest for ever.'--And the horrors of the past night rushed
back upon his imagination with renewed intensity. What would it be to
have the dead Karl crawling about his house for ever, now inside, now
out, now sitting on the stairs, now staring in at the windows?
"He would have dragged it to the bottom of his garden, past which the
Moldau flowed, and plunged it into the stream; but then, should the
spectre continue to prove troublesome, it would be almost impossible to
reach the body so as to destroy it by fire; besides which, he could not
do it without assistance, and the probability of discovery. If,
however, the apparition should turn out to be no vampire, but only a
respectable ghost, they might manage to endure its presence, till it
should be weary of haunting them.
"He resolved at last to convey the body for the meantime into a
concealed cellar in the house, seeing something must be done before his
daughter came down. Proceeding to remove it, his consternation as
greatly increased when he discovered how the body had grown in weight
since he had thus disposed of it, leaving on his mind scarcely a hope
that it could turn out not to be a vampire after all. He could scarcely
stir it, and there was but one whom he could call to his
assistance--the old woman who acted as his housekeeper and servant.
"He went to her room, roused her, and told her the whole story. Devoted
to her master for many years, and not quite so sensitive to fearful
influences as when less experienced in horrors, she showed immediate
readiness to render him assistance. Utterly unable, however, to lift
the mass between them, they could only drag and push it along; and such
a slow toil was it that there was no time to remove the traces of its
track, before Lilith came down and saw a broad white line leading from
the door of the studio down the cellar-stairs. She knew in a moment
what it meant; but not a word was uttered about the matter, and the
name of Karl Wolkenlicht seemed to be entirely forgotten.
"But how could the affairs of a house go on all the same when every one
of the household knew that a dead body lay in the cellar?--nay more,
that, although it lay still and dead enough all day, it would come half
alive at nightfall, and, turning the whole house into a sepulchre by
its presence, go creeping about like a cat all over it in the
dark--perhaps with phosphorescent eyes? So it was not surprising that
the painter abandoned his studio early, and that the three found
themselves together in the gorgeous room formerly described, as soon as
twilight began to fall.
"Already Teufelsbuerst had begun to experience a kind of shrinking from
the horrid faces in his own pictures, and to feel disgusted at the
abortions of his own mind. But all that he and the old woman now felt
was an increasing fear as the night drew on, a kind of sickening and
paralysing terror. The thing down there would not lie quiet--at least
its phantom in the cellars of their imagination would not. As much as
possible, however, they avoided alarming Lilith, who, knowing all they
knew, was as silent as they. But her mind was in a strange state of
excitement, partly from the presence of a new sense of love, the
pleasure of which all the atmosphere of grief into which it grew could
not totally quench. It comforted her somehow, as a child may comfort
when his father is away.
"Bedtime came, and no one made a move to go. Without a word spoken on
the subject, the three remained together all night; the elders nodding
and slumbering occasionally, and Lilith getting some share of repose on
a couch. All night the shape of death might be somewhere about the
house; but it did not disturb them. They heard no sound, saw no sight;
and when the morning dawned, they separated, chilled and stupid, and
for the time beyond fear, to seek repose in their private chambers.
There they remained equally undisturbed.
"But when the painter approached his easel a few hours after, looking
more pale and haggard still than he was wont, from the fears of the
night, a new bewilderment took possession of him. He had been busy with
a fresh embodiment of his favourite subject, into which he had sketched
the form of the student as the sufferer. He had represented poor
Wolkenlicht as just beginning to recover from a trance, while a group
of surgeons, unaware of the signs of returning life, were absorbed in a
minute dissection of one of the limbs. At an open door he had painted
Lilith passing, with her face buried in a bunch of sweet peas. But when
he came to the picture, he found, to his astonishment and terror, that
the face of one of the group was now turned towards that of the victim,
regarding his revival with demoniac satisfaction, and taking pains to
prevent the others from discovering it. The face of this prince of
torturers was that of Teufelsbuerst himself. Lilith had altogether
vanished, and in her place stood the dim vampire reiteration of the
body that lay extended on the table, staring greedily at the assembled
company. With trembling hands the painter removed the picture from the
easel, and turned its face to the wall.
"Of course this was the work of Lottchen. When he left the house, he
took with him the key of a small private door, which was so seldom used
that, while it remained closed, the key would not be missed, perhaps
for many months. Watching the windows, he had chosen a safe time to
enter, and had been hard at work all night on these alterations.
Teufelsbuerst attributed them to the vampire, and left the picture as
he found it, not daring to put brush to it again.
"The next night was passed much after the same fashion. But the fear
had begun to die away a little in the hearts of the women, who did not
know what had taken place in the studio on the previous night. It
burrowed, however, with gathered force in the vitals of Teufelsbuerst.
But this night likewise passed in peace; and before it was over, the
old woman had taken to speculating in her own mind as to the best way
of disposing of the body, seeing it was not at all likely to be
troublesome. But when the painter entered his studio in trepidation the
next morning, he found that the form of the lovely Lilith was painted
out of every picture in the room. This could not be concealed; and
Lilith and the servant became aware that the studio was the portion of
the house in haunting which the vampire left the rest in peace.
"Karl recounted all the tricks he had played to his friend Heinrich,
who begged to be allowed to bear him company the following night. To
this Karl consented, thinking it would be considerably more agreeable
to have a companion. So they took a couple of bottles of wine and some
provisions with them, and before midnight found themselves snug in the
studio. They sat very quiet for some time, for they knew that if they
were seen, two vampires would not be so terrible as one, and might
occasion discovery. But at length Heinrich could bear it no longer. "'I
say, Lottchen, let's go and look; for your dead body. What has the old
beggar done with it?'
"'I think I know. Stop; let me peep out. All right! Come along.'
"With a lamp in his hand, he led the way to the cellars, and after
searching about a little they discovered it.
"'It looks horrid enough,' said Heinrich, 'but think a drop or two of
wine would brighten it up a little.'
"So he took a bottle from his pocket, and after they had had a glass
apiece, he dropped a third in blots all over the plaster. Being red
wine, it had the effect Hoellenrachen desired.
"'When they visit it next, they will know that the vampire can find the
food he prefers,' said he.
"In a corner close by the plaster, they found the clothes Karl had worn.
"'Hillo!' said Heinrich, 'we'll make something of this find.'
"So he carried them with him to the studio. There he got hold of the
lay-figure.
"'What are you about, Heinrich?'
"'Going to make a scarecrow to keep the ravens off old Teufel's
pictures,' answered Heinrich, as he went on dressing the lay-figure in
Karl's clothes. He next seated the creature at an easel with its back
to the door, so that it should be the first thing the painter should
see when he entered. Karl meant to remove this before he went, for it
was too comical to fall in with the rest of his proceedings. But the
two sat down to their supper, and by the time they had finished the
wine, they thought they should like to go to bed. So they got up and
went home, and Karl forgot the lay-figure, leaving it in busy
motionlessness all night before the easel.
"When Teufelsbuerst saw it, he turned and fled with a cry that brought
his daughter to his help. He rushed past her, able only to articulate:
"The vampire! The vampire! Painting!'
"Far more courageous than he, because her conscience was more peaceful,
Lilith passed on to the studio. She too recoiled a step or two when she
saw the figure; but with the sight of the back of Karl, as she supposed
it to be, came the longing to see the face that was on the other side.
So she crept round and round by the wall, as far off as she could. The
figure remained motionless. It was a strange kind of shock that she
experienced when she saw the face, disgusting from its inanity. The
absurdity next struck her; and with the absurdity flashed into her mind
the conviction that this was not the doing of a vampire; for of all
creatures under the moon, he could not be expected to be a humorist. A
wild hope sprang up in her mind that Karl was not dead. Of this she
soon resolved to make herself sure.
"She closed the door of the studio; in the strength of her new hope
undressed the figure, put it in its place, concealed the garments--all
the work of a few minutes; and then, finding her father just recovering
from the worst of his fear, told him there was nothing in the studio
but what ought to be there, and persuaded him to go and see. He not
only saw no one, but found that no further liberties had been taken
with his pictures. Reassured, he soon persuaded himself that the
spectre in this case had been the offspring of his own terror-haunted
brain. But he had no spirit for painting now. He wandered about the
house, himself haunting it like a restless ghost.
"When night came, Lilith retired to her own room. The waters of fear
had begun to subside in the house; but the painter and his old
attendant did not yet follow her example.
"As soon, however, as the house was quite still, Lilith glided
noiselessly down the stairs, went into the studio, where as yet there
assuredly was no vampire, and concealed herself in a corner.
"As it would not do for an earnest student like Heinrich to be away
from his work very often, he had not asked to accompany Lottchen this
time. And indeed Karl himself, a little anxious about the result of the
scarecrow, greatly preferred going alone.
"While she was waiting for what might happen, the conviction grew upon
Lilith, as she reviewed all the past of the story, that these phenomena
were the work of the real Karl, and of no vampire. In a few moments she
was still more sure of this. Behind the screen where she had taken
refuge, hung one of the pictures out of which her portrait had been
painted the night before last. She had taken a lamp with her into the
studio, with the intention of extinguishing it the moment she heard any
sign of approach; but as the vampire lingered, she began to occupy
herself with examining the picture beside her. She had not looked at it
long, before she wetted the tip of her forefinger, and began to rub
away at the obliteration. Her suspicions were instantly confirmed: the
substance employed was only a gummy wash over the paint. The delight
she experienced at the discovery threw her into a mischievous humour.
"'I will see,' she said to herself, 'whether I cannot match Karl
Wolkenlicht at this game.'
"In a closet in the room hung a number of costumes, which Lilith had at
different times worn for her father. Among them was a large white
drapery, which she easily disposed as a shroud. With the help of some
chalk, she soon made herself ghastly enough, and then placing her lamp
on the floor behind the screen, and setting a chair over it, so that it
should throw no light in any direction, she waited once more for the
vampire. Nor had she much longer to wait. She soon heard a door move,
the sound of which she hardly knew, and then the studio door opened.
Her heart beat dreadfully, not with fear lest it should be a vampire
after all, but with hope that it was Karl. To see him once more was too
great joy. Would she not make up to him for all her coldness! But would
he care for her now? Perhaps he had been quite cured of his longing for
a hard heart like hers. She peeped. It was he sure enough, looking as
handsome as ever. He was holding his light to look at her last work,
and the expression of his face, even in regarding her handiwork, was
enough to let her know that he loved her still. If she had not seen
this, she dared not have shown herself from her hiding-place. Taking
the lamp in her hand, she got upon the chair, and looked over the
screen, letting the light shine from below upon her face. She then made
a slight noise to attract Karl's attention. He looked up, evidently
rather startled, and saw the face of Lilith in the air. He gave a
stifled cry threw himself on his knees with his arms stretched towards
her, and moaned--
"'I have killed her! I have killed her!'
"Lilith descended, and approached him noiselessly. He did not move. She
came close to him and said--
"'Are you Karl Wolkenlicht?'
"His lips moved, but no sound came.
"'If you are a vampire, and I am a ghost,' she said--but a low happy
laugh alone concluded the sentence.
"Karl sprang to his feet. Lilith's laugh changed into a burst of
sobbing and weeping, and in another moment the ghost was in the arms of
the vampire.
"Lilith had no idea how far her father had wronged Karl, and though,
from thinking over the past, he had no doubt that the painter had
drugged him, he did not wish to pain her by imparting this conviction.
But Lilith was afraid of a reaction of rage and hatred in her father
after the terror was removed; and Karl saw that he might thus be
deprived of all further intercourse with Lilith, and all chance of
softening the old man's heart towards him; while Lilith would not hear
of forsaking him who had banished all the human race but herself. They
managed at length to agree upon a plan of operation.
"The first thing they did was to go to the cellar where the plaster
mass lay, Karl carrying with him a great axe used for cleaving wood.
Lilith shuddered when she saw it, stained as it was with the wine
Heinrich had spilt over it, and almost believed herself the midnight
companion of a vampire after all, visiting with him the terrible corpse
in which he lived all day. But Karl soon reassured her; and a few good
blows of the axe revealed a very different core to that which
Teufelsbuerst supposed to be in it. Karl broke it into pieces, and with
Lilith's help, who insisted on carrying her share, the whole was soon
at the bottom of the Moldau and every trace of its ever having existed
removed. Before morning, too, the form of Lilith had dawned anew in
every picture. There was no time to restore to its former condition the
one Karl had first altered; for in it the changes were all that they
seemed; nor indeed was he capable of restoring it in the master's
style; but they put it quite out of the way, and hoped that sufficient
time might elapse before the painter thought of it again.
"When they had done, and Lilith, for all his entreaties, would remain
with him no longer, Karl took his former clothes with him, and having
spent the rest of the night in his old room, dressed in them in the
morning. When Teufelsbuerst entered his studio next day, there sat
Karl, as if nothing had happened, finishing the drawing on which he had
been at work when the fit of insensibility came upon him. The painter
started, stared, rubbed his eyes, thought it was another spectral
illusion, and was on the point of yielding to his terror, when Karl
rose, and approached him with a smile. The healthy, sunshiny
countenance of Karl, let him be ghost or goblin, could not fail to
produce somewhat of a tranquilizing effect on Teufelsbuerst. He took
his offered hand mechanically, his countenance utterly vacant with
idiotic bewilderment. Karl said:
"'I was not well, and thought it better to pay a visit to a friend for
a few days; but I shall soon make up for lost time, for I am all right
now.'
"He sat down at once, taking no notice of his master's behaviour, and
went on with his drawing. Teufelsbuerst stood staring at him for some
minutes without moving, then suddenly turned and left the room. Karl
heard him hurrying down the cellar stairs. In a few moments he came up
again. Karl stole a glance at him. There he stood in the same spot, no
doubt more full of bewilderment than ever, but it was not possible that
his face should express more. At last he went to his easel, and sat
down with a long-drawn sigh as if of relief. But though he sat at his
easel, he painted none that day; and as often as Karl ventured a
glance, he saw him still staring at him. The discovery that his
pictures were restored to their former condition aided, no doubt, in
leading him to the same conclusion as the other facts, whatever that
conclusion might be--probably that he had been the sport of some evil
power, and had been for the greater part of a week utterly bewitched.
Lilith had taken care to instruct the old woman, with whom she was
all-powerful; and as neither of them showed the smallest traces of the
astonishment which seemed to be slowly vitrifying his own brain, he was
at last perfectly satisfied that things had been going on all right
everywhere but in his inner man; and in this conclusion he certainly
was not far wrong, in more senses than one. But when all was restored
again to the old routine, it became evident that the peculiar direction
of his art in which he had hitherto indulged had ceased to interest
him. The shock had acted chiefly upon that part of his mental being
which had been so absorbed. He would sit for hours without doing
anything, apparently plunged in meditation.--Several weeks elapsed
without any change, and both Lilith and Karl were getting dreadfully
anxious about him. Karl paid him every attention; and the old man, for
he now looked much older than before, submitted to receive his services
as well as those of Lilith. At length, one morning, he said in a slow
thoughtful tone:
"'Karl Wolkenlicht, I should like to paint you.'
"'Certainly, sir,' answered Karl, jumping up, 'where would you like me
to sit?'
"So the ice of silence and inactivity was broken, and the painter drew
and painted; and the spring of his art flowed once more; and he made a
beautiful portrait of Karl--a portrait without evil or suffering. And
as soon as he had finished Karl, he began once more to paint Lilith;
and when he had painted her, he composed a picture for the very purpose
of introducing them together; and in this picture there was neither
ugliness nor torture, but human feeling and human hope instead. Then
Karl knew that he might speak to him of Lilith; and he spoke, and was
heard with a smile. But he did not dare to tell him the truth of the
vampire story till one day that Teufelsbuerst was lying on the floor of
a room in Karl's ancestral castle, half smothered in grandchildren;
when the only answer it drew from the old man was a kind of shuddering
laugh and the words--'Don't speak of it, Karl, my boy!'"
* * * * *
No one had interrupted Harry. His brother had put a shovelful of coals
on the fire, to keep up the flame; but not a word had been spoken. The
cold moon had shone in at the windows all the time, her light made yet
colder by the snowy sheen from the face of the earth; and any horror
that the story could generate had had full freedom to operate on the
minds of the listeners.
"Well, I'm glad its over, for my part," said Mrs. Bloomfield. "It made
my flesh creep."
"I do not see any good in founding a story upon a superstition. One
knows it is false, all the time," said Mrs. Cathcart.
"But," said Harry, "all that I have related might have taken place; for
the story is not founded on the superstition itself, but on the belief
of the people of the time in the superstition. I have merely used this
belief to give the general tone to the story, and sometimes the
particular occasion for events in it, the vampire being a terrible fact
to those times."
"You write," said the curate, "as if you quoted occasionally from some
authority."
"The story of John Kuntz, as well as that of the shoemaker, is told by
Henry More in his _Antidote against Atheism_. He believed the whole
affair. His authority is Martin Weinrich, a Silesian doctor. I have
only taken the liberty of shifting the scene of the _post-mortem_
exploits of Kuntz from a town of Silesia to Prague."
"Well, Harry," said his sister-in-law, "if your object was to frighten
us, I confess that I for one was tolerably uncomfortable. But I don't
know that that is a very high aim in story-telling."
"If that were all--certainly not," replied Harry, glancing towards
Adela, who had not spoken. Nor did she speak yet. But her expression
showed plainly enough that it was not the horror of the story that had
taken chief hold of her mind. Her face was full of suppressed light,
and she was evidently satisfied--or shall I call it _gratified_?--as
well as delighted with the tale. Something or other in it had touched
her not only deeply, but nearly.
Nothing was said about another meeting--perhaps because, from Adela's
illness, the order had been interrupted, and the present had required a
special summons.
The ladies had gone up stairs to put on their bonnets. I had crossed
into the library, which was on the same floor with the drawing-room, to
find out if I was right in supposing I had seen some volumes of Henry
More's works on the shelves--certainly the colonel could never have
bought them. Our host, the curate and the schoolmaster had followed me.
Harry had remained behind in the drawing-room. Thinking of something I
wanted to say to him before he went, I left the gentlemen looking over
the book-shelves, and went to cross again to the drawing-room. But when
I reached the door, there stood at the top of the stair, Adela and
Harry. She had evidently just said something warm about the story. I
could almost read what she had said still lingering on her face, which
was turned up a good deal to look into his, so near each other were
they standing. Hers had a rosy flush as of sunset over it, while his
glowed like the sun rising in a mist. Evidently the pleasures of giving
and receiving were in this case nearly equal. But they were not of long
duration; for the moment I appeared, they bade each other a hurried
good night, and parted. I, thinking it better to pretermit my speech to
Harry, retreated into the library, and was glad to think that no one
had seen that conference but myself. Such a conjunction of planets
prefigured, however, not merely warm spring weather, but sultry gloom,
and thunderous clouds to follow; and although I was delighted with my
astronomical observation, I could not help growing anxious about the
omen.