A VERY STRANGE AGONY.
When we got into the drawing-room, and had sat down to our coffee and
chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself
again, and Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a
little card party, in the course of which papa came in for what he
called his "dish of tea."
When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and
asked her, a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother
since her arrival.
She answered "No."
He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at
present.
"I cannot tell," she answered ambiguously, "but I have been thinking of
leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I
have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a
carriage to-morrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall
ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you."
"But you must not dream of any such thing," exclaimed my father, to my
great relief. "We can't afford to lose you so, and I won't consent to
your leaving us, except under the care of your mother, who was so good
as to consent to your remaining with us till she should herself return.
I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from her; but this
evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has
invaded our neighbourhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful
guest, I do feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother,
very much. But I shall do my best; and one thing is certain, that you
must not think of leaving us without her distinct direction to that
effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to consent to it
easily."
"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," she answered,
smiling bashfully. "You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been
so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful château, under your
care, and in the society of your dear daughter."
So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and
pleased at her little speech.
I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with
her while she was preparing for bed.
"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide fully in
me?"
She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on
me.
"You won't answer that?" I said. "You can't answer pleasantly; I ought
not to have asked you."
"You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how
dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to
look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not
tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall
know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is
always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you
cannot know. You must come with me, loving me,--to death; or else hate
me and still come with me, and _hating_ me through death and after.
There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature."
"Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again," I said
hastily.
"Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for
your sake I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?"
"No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be."
"I almost forget, it is years ago."
I laughed.
"You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet."
"I remember everything about it--with an effort. I see it all, as divers
see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but
transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture,
and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed,
wounded _here_," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since."
"Were you near dying?"
"Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life.
Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to
sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?"
She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under
her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes
followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not
decipher.
I bid her good-night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable
sensation.
I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. _I_
certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never
came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night
she never left the drawing-room to attend our brief evening prayers in
the hall.
If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless
talks that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a
Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a
word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or
antipathy would not have so much surprised me.
The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like
temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had
adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into
my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling
assassins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search
through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking assassin or robber
was "ensconced."
These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light
was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and
which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.
Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through
stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their
persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh
at locksmiths.
I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.
I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep.
But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed,
precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its
furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and
I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could
not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black
animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or
five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the hearth-rug as it
passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe
sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out,
although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing
faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark
that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring
lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly
I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two
apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The room was lighted
by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a female
figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It
was in a dark loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its
shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was
not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure
appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then,
close to it, the door opened, and it passed out.
I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was
that Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten to
secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the
inside. I was afraid to open it--I was horrified. I sprang into my bed
and covered my head up in the bed-clothes, and lay there more dead than
alive till morning.