𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐀 ━ 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐮

𝘼 𝙑𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙎𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝘼𝙜𝙤𝙣𝙮

WHEN WE GOT into the drawing room, and had sat down to our coffee and
chocolate, although Carmilla did not take any, she seemed quite herself again, and
Madame, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, joined us, and made a little card party, in
the course of which papa came in for what he called his “dish of tea.”
When the game was over he sat down beside Carmilla on the sofa, and asked her,
a little anxiously, whether she had heard from her mother since her arrival.
She answered “No.”
He then asked whether she knew where a letter would reach her at present.
“I cannot tell,” she answered ambiguously, “but I have been thinking of leaving
you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an
infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit
of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you.”
“But you must not dream of any such thing,” exclaimed my father, to my great
relief. “We can’t afford to lose you so, and I won’t consent to your leaving us, except
under the care of your mother, who was so good as to consent to your remaining with
us till she should herself return. I should be quite happy if I knew that you heard from
her: but this evening the accounts of the progress of the mysterious disease that has
invaded our neighborhood, grow even more alarming; and my beautiful guest, I do
feel the responsibility, unaided by advice from your mother, very much. But I shall do
my best; and one thing is certain, that you must not think of leaving us without her
distinct direction to that effect. We should suffer too much in parting from you to
consent to it easily.”
“Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality,” she answered, smiling
bashfully. “You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life
before, as in your beautiful chateau, under your care, and in the society of your dear
daughter.”
So he gallantly, in his old-fashioned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at
her little speech.

I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while
she was preparing for bed.
“Do you think,” I said at length, “that you will ever confide fully in me?”
She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me.
“You won’t answer that?” I said. “You can’t answer pleasantly; I ought not to have
asked you.”
“You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you
are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for.
But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even
to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel,
very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I
am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me. andhating me through death and after. There is no such word
as indifference in my apathetic nature.”
“Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily.
“Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I’ll talk
like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?”
“No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be.”
“I almost forget, it is years ago.”
I laughed.
“You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.”
“I remember everything about it — with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is
going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There
occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was
all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here,” she touched her breast, “and never
was the same since.”
“Were you near dying?”
“Yes, very — a cruel love — strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will
have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy.
How can I get up just now and lock my door?”
She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under her cheek,
her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved,
with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher.
I bid her good night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation.

I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. I certainly had
never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after
our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing room to attend
our brief evening prayers in the hall.
If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that
she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a
subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better,
this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so much surprised me.
The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like
temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Carmilla’s
habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical
alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins. I had also adopted her
precaution of making a brief search through her room, to satisfy herself that no
lurking assassin or robber was “ensconced.”
These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning
in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which nothing could have
tempted me to dispense with.
Thus fortifed I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls,
light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their
entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.

I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony.
I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep.
But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I
actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it
last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the
bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a
sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or
five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and
it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage.

I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was
growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I
could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The
two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large
needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. The
room was lighted by the candle that burnt there all through the night, and I saw a
female figure standing at the foot of the bed, a little at the right side. It was in a dark
loose dress, and its hair was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could
not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at
it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then,
close to it, the door opened, and it passed out.
I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that
Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten to secure my door. I
hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside. I was afraid to open it — I
was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in the bedclothes, and lay
there more dead than alive till morning.