HER HABITS--A SAUNTER.
I told you that I was charmed with her in most particulars.
There were some that did not please me so well.
She was above the middle height of women. I shall begin by describing
her. She was slender, and wonderfully graceful. Except that her
movements were languid--very languid--indeed, there was nothing in her
appearance to indicate an invalid. Her complexion was rich and
brilliant; her features were small and beautifully formed; her eyes
large, dark, and lustrous; her hair was quite wonderful, I never saw
hair so magnificently thick and long when it was down about her
shoulders; I have often placed my hands under it, and laughed with
wonder at its weight. It was exquisitely fine and soft, and in colour a
rich very dark brown, with something of gold. I loved to let it down,
tumbling with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her chair
talking, in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it, and spread
it out and play with it. Heavens! If I had but known all!
I said there were particulars which did not please me. I have told you
that her confidence won me the first night I saw her; but I found that
she exercised with respect to herself, her mother, her history,
everything in fact connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever
wakeful reserve. I dare say I was unreasonable, perhaps I was wrong; I
dare say I ought to have respected the solemn injunction laid upon my
father by the stately lady in black velvet. But curiosity is a restless
and unscrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience,
that her's should be baffled by another. What harm could it do anyone to
tell me what I so ardently desired to know? Had she no trust in my good
sense or honour? Why would she not believe me when I assured her, so
solemnly, that I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to
any mortal breathing.
There was a coldness, it seemed to me, beyond her years, in her smiling
melancholy persistent refusal to afford me the least ray of light.
I cannot say we quarrelled upon this point, for she would not quarrel
upon any. It was, of course, very unfair of me to press her, very
ill-bred, but I really could not help it; and I might just as well have
let it alone.
What she did tell me amounted, in my unconscionable estimation--to
nothing.
It was all summed up in three very vague disclosures:
First.--Her name was Carmilla.
Second.--Her family was very ancient and noble.
Third.--Her home lay in the direction of the west.
She would not tell me the name of her family, nor their armorial
bearings, nor the name of their estate, nor even that of the country
they lived in.
You are not to suppose that I worried her incessantly on these subjects.
I watched opportunity, and rather insinuated than urged my inquiries.
Once or twice, indeed, I did attack her more directly. But no matter
what my tactics, utter failure was invariably the result. Reproaches and
caresses were all lost upon her. But I must add this, that her evasion
was conducted with so pretty a melancholy and deprecation, with so many,
and even passionate declarations of her liking for me, and trust in my
honour, and with so many promises that I should at last know all, that I
could not find it in my heart long to be offended with her.
She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and
laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest,
your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the
irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is
wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous
humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly
die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your
turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty,
which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine,
but trust me with all your loving spirit."
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely
in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon
my cheek.
Her agitations and her language were unintelligible to me.
From these foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent occurrence,
I must allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies
seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear,
and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to
recover myself when she withdrew her arms.
In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange
tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with
a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her
while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into
adoration, and also of abhorrence. This I know is paradox, but I can
make no other attempt to explain the feeling.
I now write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling
hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences
and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously
passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main
current of my story. But, I suspect, in all lives there are certain
emotional scenes, those in which our passions have been most wildly and
terribly roused, that are of all others the most vaguely and dimly
remembered.
Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion
would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and
again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes,
and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous
respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it
was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to
her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would
whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you _shall_ be mine, you and I
are one for ever." Then she has thrown herself back in her chair, with
her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling.
"Are we related," I used to ask; "what can you mean by all this? I
remind you perhaps of some one whom you love; but you must not, I hate
it; I don't know you--I don't know myself when you look so and talk so."
She used to sigh at my vehemence, then turn away and drop my hand.
Respecting these very extraordinary manifestations I strove in vain to
form any satisfactory theory--I could not refer them to affectation or
trick. It was unmistakably the momentary breaking out of suppressed
instinct and emotion. Was she, notwithstanding her mother's volunteered
denial, subject to brief visitations of insanity; or was there here a
disguise and a romance? I had read in old story books of such things.
What if a boyish lover had found his way into the house, and sought to
prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old
adventuress. But there were many things against this hypothesis, highly
interesting as it was to my vanity.
I could boast of no little attentions such as masculine gallantry
delights to offer. Between these passionate moments there were long
intervals of common-place, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during
which, except that I detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire,
following me, at times I might have been as nothing to her. Except in
these brief periods of mysterious excitement her ways were girlish; and
there was always a langour about her, quite incompatible with a
masculine system in a state of health.
In some respects her habits were odd. Perhaps not so singular in the
opinion of a town lady like you, as they appeared to us rustic people.
She used to come down very late, generally not till one o'clock, she
would then take a cup of chocolate, but eat nothing; we then went out
for a walk, which was a mere saunter, and she seemed, almost
immediately, exhausted, and either returned to the schloss or sat on one
of the benches that were placed, here and there, among the trees. This
was a bodily langour in which her mind did not sympathise. She was
always an animated talker, and very intelligent.
She sometimes alluded for a moment to her own home, or mentioned an
adventure or situation, or an early recollection, which indicated a
people of strange manners, and described customs of which we knew
nothing. I gathered from these chance hints that her native country was
much more remote than I had at first fancied.
As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by. It
was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of
one of the rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the
coffin of his darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite
heartbroken. Peasants walking two-and-two came behind, they were singing
a funeral hymn.
I rose to mark my respect as they passed, and joined in the hymn they
were very sweetly singing.
My companion shook me a little roughly, and I turned surprised.
She said brusquely, "Don't you perceive how discordant that is?"
"I think it very sweet, on the contrary," I answered, vexed at the
interruption, and very uncomfortable, lest the people who composed the
little procession should observe and resent what was passing.
I resumed, therefore, instantly, and was again interrupted. "You pierce
my ears," said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her
tiny fingers. "Besides, how can you tell that your religion and mine are
the same; your forms wound me, and I hate funerals. What a fuss! Why you
must die--_everyone_ must die; and all are happier when they do. Come
home."
"My father has gone on with the clergyman to the churchyard. I thought
you knew she was to be buried to day."
"_She?_ I don't trouble my head about peasants. I don't know who she
is," answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes.
"She is the poor girl who fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and
has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired."
"Tell me nothing about ghosts. I shan't sleep to-night, if you do."
"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like
it," I continued. "The swineherd's young wife died only a week ago, and
she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed,
and nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany
some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank
afterwards, and died before a week."
"Well, _her_ funeral is over, I hope, and _her_ hymn sung; and our ears
shan't be tortured with that discord and jargon. It has made me nervous.
Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it
hard--hard--harder."
We had moved a little back, and had come to another seat.
She sat down. Her face underwent a change that alarmed and even
terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her
teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips,
while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over
with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies
seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly
tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her,
and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling
people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is
passing away."
And so gradually it did; and perhaps to dissipate the sombre 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 court-yard, 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 hedge-hogs, 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
court-yard, 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
castle brand!"
She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly
lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it
had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to
forget the little hunchback and his follies.
My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that
there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had
lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a
mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very
nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.
"All this," said my father, "is strictly referable to natural causes.
These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so
repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their
neighbours."
"But that very circumstance frightens one horribly," said Carmilla.
"How so?" inquired my father.
"I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as
bad as reality."
"We are in God's hands; nothing can happen without his permission, and
all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator;
He has made us all, and will take care of us."
"Creator! _Nature!_" said the young lady in answer to my gentle father.
"And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All
things proceed from Nature--don't they? All things in the heaven, in the
earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so."
"The doctor said he would come here to-day," said my father, after a
silence. "I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we
had better do."
"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla.
"Then you have been ill?" I asked.
"More ill than ever you were," she answered.
"Long ago?"
"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all
but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in
other diseases."
"You were very young then?"
"I dare say; let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?"
She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist
lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was busy over some
papers near the window.
"Why does your papa like to frighten us?" said the pretty girl, with a
sigh and a little shudder.
"He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his
mind."
"Are you afraid, dearest?"
"I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my
being attacked as those poor people were."
"You are afraid to die?"
"Yes, every one is."
"But to die as lovers may--to die together, so that they may live
together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be
finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are
grubs and larvæ, don't you see--each with their peculiar propensities,
necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in
the next room."
Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some
time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and
shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from
the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:
"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to
hippogriffs and dragons?"
The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head--
"Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little
of the resources of either."
And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the
doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.