 Chapter 9 of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFannou. As Carmilla would not hear of an attendant sleeping in her room, my father arranged that a servant should sleep outside her door, so that she would not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door. That night passed quietly, and next morning early the doctor whom my father had sent for without telling me a word about it arrived to see me. Madame accompanied me to the library, and there the grave little doctor, with white hair and spectacles whom I mentioned before, was waiting to receive me. I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver. We were standing, he and I, in the recess of one of the windows facing one another. When my statement was over he leaned with his shoulders against the wall, and with his eyes fixed on me earnestly, with an interest in which was a dash of horror. After a minute's reflection he asked Madame if he could see my father. He was sent for accordingly, and as he entered smiling he said, I dare say, doctor, you were going to tell me that I am an old fool for having brought you here. I hope I am. But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned him to him. He and the doctor talked for some time in the same recess where I had just conferred with the physician. It seemed an earnest and argumentative conversation. The room is very large, and I and Madame stood together, burning with curiosity, at the father end. Not a word could we hear, however, for they spoke in a very low tone, and the deep recess of the window quite concealed the doctor from view, and very nearly my father, whose foot, arm and shoulder only we could see. And the voices were, I suppose, all the less audible for the sort of closet which the thick wall and window formed. After a time my father's face looked into the room. It was pale, thoughtful, and I fancied, agitated. Laura, dear, come here for a moment. Madame, we shall trouble you, the doctor says, at present. Accordingly I approached for the first time a little alarmed, for although I felt very weak I did not feel ill. And strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please. My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near. But he was looking at the doctor, and said, it certainly is very odd. I don't understand it quite. Laura, come here, dear. Now attend to Dr. Spielsberg, and recollect yourself. You mentioned a sensation, like that of two needles piercing the skin, somewhere about your neck, on the night when you experienced your first horrible dream. Is there still any soreness? None at all, I answered. Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think this occurred? Very little below my throat, here, I answered. I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to. Now you can satisfy yourself, said the doctor. You won't mind your papa's lowering your dress a very little. It is necessary to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you have been suffering. I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar. God bless me. So it is, exclaimed my father, growing pale. You see it now with your own eyes, said the doctor, with a gloomy triumph. What is it? I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened. In my dear young lady, but a small blue spot about the size of the tip of your little finger. And now, he continued, turning to papa. The question is what is best to be done. Is there any danger? I urged, in great trepidation. I trust not, my dear, answered the doctor. I don't see why you should not recover. I don't see why you should not begin immediately to get better. That is the point at which the sense of strangulation begins. Yes, I answered. And recollect as well you can, the same point was a kind of centre of that thrill which you described just now, like the current of a cold stream running against you. It may have been. I think it was. I, you see, he added, turning to my father. Shall I say a word to madame? Really, said my father. He called madame to him, and said, I find my young friend here far from well. It won't be of any great consequence, I hope, but it will be necessary that some steps be taken which I will explain by and by. But in the meantime, madame, you will be so gorgeous not to let Miss Laura be alone for one moment. That is the only direction I need give for the present. It is indispensable. We may rely upon your kindness, madame, I know, added my father. Madame satisfied him eagerly. And you, dear Laura, I know you will observe the doctor's direction. I shall have to ask your opinion upon another patient whose symptoms slightly resemble those of my daughter that have just been detailed to you, very much milder in degree, but I believe quite of the same sort. She is a young lady, our guest, but as you say you will be passing this way again this evening, you can't do better than take your supper here, and you can then see her. She does not come down till the afternoon. I thank you, said the doctor. I shall be with you, then, at about seven this evening. And then they repeated their directions to me and to madame, and with this parting charge my father left us, and walked out with the doctor, and I saw them pacing together up and down between the road and the moat on the grassy platform in front of the castle, evidently absorbed in earnest conversation. The doctor did not return. I saw him mount his horse there, take his leave, and ride away eastward through the forest. Nearly at the same time I saw the man arrive from Dranfield with the letters and dismount and hand the bag to my father. In the meantime madame and I were both busy, lost in conjecture as to the reasons of the singular and earnest direction which the doctor and my father had concurred in imposing. Madame, as she afterwards told me, was afraid the doctor apprehended a sudden seizure, and that without prompt assistance I might either lose my life in a fit or at least be seriously hurt. The interpretation did not strike me, and I fancied, perhaps luckily for my nerves, that the arrangement was prescribed simply to secure a companion who would prevent me taking too much exercise, or eating unripe fruit, or doing any of the fifty foolish things to which young people are supposed to be prone. About half an hour after my father came in, he had a letter in his hand, and said, This letter had been delayed. It is from General Spielstorff. He might have been here yesterday. He may not come till tomorrow, or he may be here to-day. He put the open letter into my hand, but he did not look pleased, as he used when a guest, especially one so much loved as the general, was coming. On the contrary he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to die forge. Papa, darling, will you tell me this? said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face. Perhaps, he answered, smoothing my hair caressingly over my eyes, does the doctor think me very ill? No, dear. He thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again, at least on the high road to a complete recovery, in a day or two. He answered a little dryly. I wish our good friend, the general, had chosen any other time. That is, I wish you had been perfectly well to receive him. But do tell me, Papa, I insisted. What does he think is the matter with me? Nothing. You must not plague me with questions. He answered, with more irritation, than I ever remember him to have displayed before. And seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, You shall know all about it in a day or two. That is, all that I know. In the meantime, you were knocked to trouble your head about it. He turned and left the room, but came back before I had done wandering and puzzling over the oddity of all this. It was merely to say that he was going to Karnstein, and had ordered the carriage to be ready at twelve, and that I and Madame should accompany him. He was going to see the priest who lived near those picturesque grounds upon business, and as Carmilla had never seen them, she could follow when she came down with Madame Waselle, who would bring materials for what you call a picnic, which might be laid for us in the ruined castle. At twelve o'clock, accordingly, I was ready, and not long after, my father, Dame and I, set out upon our projected drive. Passing the drawbridge, we turned to the right, and followed the road over the steep Gothic Bridge, westward, to reach the deserted village and ruined castle of Karnstein. No silven drive can be fancied prettier. The ground breaks into the gentle hills and hollows, all clothed with beautiful wood, totally destitute of the comparative formality, which artificial planting and early culture and pruning impart. The irregularities of the ground often lead the road out of its course, and cause it to wind beautifully round the sides of broken hollows, and the steeper sides of the hills, among varieties of ground almost inexhaustible. Turning one of these points, we suddenly encountered our old friend, the general, riding towards us, attended by a mounted servant. His portmanteaus were following in a hired wagon, such as we term a cart. The general dismounted as we pulled up, and, after the usual greetings, was easily persuaded to accept the vacant seat in the carriage, and sent his horse on with his servants to the sloss. CHAPTER 10 of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanoux. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ashley Jane. CHAPTER 10. BEREAVED. It was about ten months since we had last seen him. But that time had suffice to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner. Recording of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterise his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a stern alight from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seem to have had their share in bringing it about. We had not long resumed our drive when the general began to talk with his usual soldierly directness of the bereavement, as he termed it, which he had sustained in the death of his beloved niece and ward. And he then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, invading against the hellish arts to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing with more exasperation than piety. His wonder that heaven should tolerate so monstrous and indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell. My father, who saw at once that something very extraordinary had befallen, asked him, if not too painful to him, to detail the circumstances which he thought justified the strong terms in which he expressed himself. I should tell you all with pleasure, said the general. But you would not believe me. Why should I not? he asked. Because, he answered, testily, you believe in nothing but what consists with your own prejudices and illusions. I remember when I was like you, but I have learned better. Try me, said my father, I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose, besides which I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed to respect your conclusions. You are right in supposing that I have not been led lightly into a belief in the marvellous. For what I have experienced is marvellous, and I have been forced by extraordinary evidence to credit that which ran counter, diametrically, to all my theories. I have been made the dupe of a preternatural conspiracy. Notwithstanding his professions of confidence in the general's penetration, I saw my father, at this point, glance at the general, with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity. The general did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us. You are going to the ruins of Karnstein," he said. Yes, it is a lucky coincidence. Do you know I was going to ask you to bring me there to inspect them? I have a special object in exploring. There is a ruined chapel, ain't there, with a great many tombs of that extinct family. So there are. Highly interesting, said my father. I hope you are thinking of claiming the title and estates. My father said this gaily, but the general did not recollect the laugh or even the smile with courtesy exacts for a friend's joke. On the contrary, he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter that stirred his anger and horror. Something very different, he said gruffly. I mean to one-arth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since. My father looked at him again, but this time not with a glance of suspicion, with an eye, rather, of keen intelligence and alarm. The house of Karnstein, he said, has been long extinct, a hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the Karnsteins, but the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle is a ruin. The very village is deserted. It is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there. Not a roof left. Quite true. I have heard a great deal about that since I last saw you. A great deal that will astonish you. But I had better relate everything in the order in which it occurred, said the general. You saw, my dear ward, my child, I may call her. No creature could have been more beautiful. And only three months ago none more blooming. Yes, poor thing, when I saw her last she certainly was quite lovely, said my father. I was grieved and sharped more than I can tell you, my dear friend. I knew what a blow it was to you. He took the general's hand and they exchanged a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldier's eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He said, we have been very old friends. I knew you would feel for me, childless as I am. She had become an object of very near interest to me, and repaid my care by an affection that cheered my home and made my life happy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long, but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance of heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty. You said just now that you intended relating everything as it occurred, said my father. Pray do. I assure you that it is not mere curiosity that prompts me. By this time we had reached the point at which the Drunstall Road, by which the general had come, diverges from the road which we were travelling to Karnstein. How far is it to the ruins? inquired the general, looking anxiously forward. About half a league, answered my father. Pray let us hear the story you were so good as to promise. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Lefannu This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ashley Jane Chapter 11 The Story With all my heart, said the general, with an effort, and after a short pause in which to arrange his subject he commenced one of the strangest narratives I ever heard. My dear child was looking forward with great pleasure to the visit you had been so good as to arrange for her to your charming daughter. Here he made a gallant but melancholy bow. In the meantime we had an invitation to my old friend, the Count Carlsfeld, whose sloss is about six leagues to the other side of Karnstein. It was to attend a series of fates which, you remember, were given by him in honour of his illustrious visitor, the Grand Duke Charles. Yes, and very splendid I believe they were, said my father. Princely. But then his hospitality's are quite regal. He has Aladdin's lamp, the night from which my sorrow dates was devoted to a magnificent masquerade. The grounds were thrown open, the trees hung with coloured lamps. There was such a display of fireworks as Paris itself had never witnessed, and such music. Music, you know, is my weakness, such ravishing music. The finest instrumental band perhaps in the world, and the finest singers who could be collected from all the great operas in Europe. As you wandered through these fantastically illuminated grounds, the moonlighted chateau throwing a rosy light from its long rows of windows, you would suddenly hear these ravishing voices stealing from the silence of some grove, or rising from boats upon the lake. I felt myself, as I looked and listened, carried back into the romance and poetry of my early youth. When the fireworks were ended and the ball beginning, we returned to the noble suite of rooms that were thrown open to the dancers. A masked ball, you know, is a beautiful sight. But so brilliant a spectacle of the kind I never saw before. It was a very aristocratic assembly. I was myself almost the only nobody present. My dear child was looking quite beautiful. She wore no mask. Her excitement and delight added an unspeakable charm to her features, always lovely. I remarked a young lady, dressed magnificently, but wearing a mask, who appeared to me to be observing my ward with extraordinary interest. I had seen her, earlier in the evening, in the great hall, and again for a few minutes walking near us, on the terrace under the castle windows similarly employed. A lady, also masked, richly and gravely dressed, and with a stately air, like a person of rank, accompanied her as a chaperone. Had the young lady not worn a mask, I could of course have been much more certain upon the question whether she was really watching my poor darling. I am now well assured that she was. We were now in one of the salons. My poor dear child had been dancing and was resting a little in one of the chairs near the door. I was standing near. The two ladies I had mentioned had approached, and the younger took the chair next to my ward, while her companion stood beside me, and for a little time addressed herself in a low tone to her charge. Availing herself of the privilege of her mask, she turned to me, and in the tone of an old friend, and calling me by my name, opened a conversation with me, which piqued my curiosity a good deal. She referred to many scenes while she had met me, at court, and at distinguished houses. She alluded to little incidents which I had long ceased to think of, but which I found had only lain in abeyance in my memory, for they instantly started into life at her touch. I became more and more curious to ascertain who she was every moment. She parried my attempts to discover very adroitly and pleasantly. The knowledge she showed of many passages in my life seemed to me all but unaccountable, and she appeared to take a not unnatural pleasure in foiling my curiosity, and in seeing me flounder in my eager perplexity from one conjecture to another. In the meantime, the young lady, whom her mother called by the odd name of Milarka, when she once or twice addressed her, had with the same ease and grace got into conversation with my ward. She introduced herself by saying that her mother was a very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a mask rendered practicable. She taught like a friend. She admired her dress and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the ballroom, and laughed at my poor child's fun. She was very witty and lively when she pleased, and after a time they had grown very good friends, and the young stranger lowered her mask, displaying a remarkably beautiful face. I had never seen it before. Neither had my dear child. But though it was new to us, the features were so engaging, as well as lovely, that it was impossible not to feel the attraction powerfully. My poor girl did so. I never saw any one more taken with another at first sight, unless indeed it was the stranger herself, who seemed quite to have lost her heart to her. In the meantime, availing myself of the licence of a masquerade, I put not a few questions to the elder lady. You have puzzled me utterly, I said, laughing. Is that not enough? Won't you now consent to stand on equal terms and do me the kindness to remove your mask? Can any request be more unreasonable? She replied. Ask a lady to yield an advantage. Beside, how do you know you should recognise me? Years make changes. As you see, I said with a bow, and I suppose a rather melancholy little laugh. As philosophers tell us, she said, and how do you know that a sight of my face would help you? I should take chance for that. I answered. It is vain trying to make yourself out an old woman. Your figure betrays you. Years nevertheless have passed since I saw you, rather since you saw me, for that is what I am considering. Melaka, there, is my daughter. I cannot then be young, even in the opinion of people whom time has taught to be indulgent, and I may not like to be compared with what you remember me. You have no mask to remove. You can offer me nothing in exchange. My petition is to your pity, to remove it, and mine to yours, to let it stay where it is. She replied. Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or German. You speak both languages so perfectly. I don't think I shall tell you that, General. You intend a surprise, and are meditating the particular point of attack. At all events, you won't deny this. I said, that being honoured by your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I say, madame La Comtesse? She laughed, and she would no doubt have met me with another evasion, if indeed I can treat any occurrence in an interview, every circumstance of which was pre-arranged, as I now believe, with the profoundest cunning as liable to be modified by accident. As to that, she began. But she was interrupted almost as she opened her lips by a gentleman dressed in black who looked particularly elegant and distinguished, with this drawback that his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no masquerade, in the plain evening dress of a gentleman, and he said without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow. Will madame La Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may interest her. The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of silence. She then said to me, Keep my place for me, general. I shall return when I have said a few words. And with this injunction playfully given, she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and I lost them for some minutes. I spent the interval in cuddling my brains for a conjecture as to the identity of the lady, who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having her name, title, chateau, and estates at my finger's ends. But at this moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said, I shall return and inform madame La Comtesse when her carriage is at the door. He withdrew with a bow. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ashley Jane Chapter 12 A Petition Then we are to lose madame La Comtesse, but I hope only for a few hours, I said with a low bow. It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky his speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me? I assured her I did not. You shall know me, she said, but not at present. We are older and better friends than perhaps you suspect. I cannot yet declare myself. I shall in three weeks pass your beautiful sloths about which I have been making inquiries. I shall then look in upon you for an hour or two and renew a friendship, which I never think of without thousand pleasant recollections. This moment piece of news has reached me like a thunderbolt. I must set out now and travel by a devious route, nearly a hundred miles, with all the dispatch I can possibly make. My perplexities multiply. I am only deterred by the compulsory reserve I practice as to my name, from making a very singular request of you. My poor child has not quite recovered her strength. Her horse fell with her at a hunt which she had ridden out to witness. Her nerves have not yet recovered the shock, and our physician says that she must on no account exert herself for some time to come. We came here in consequence by very easy stages, hardly six leagues a day. I must now travel day and night on a mission of life and death, a mission at the critical and momentous nature of which I shall be able to explain to you when we meet, as I hope we shall in a few weeks without the necessity of any concealment. She went on to make her petition, and it was in the tone of a person from whom such a request amounted to conferring, rather than seeking a favour. This was only in manner, and as it seemed, quite unconsciously. Then the terms in which it was expressed, nothing could be more deprecatory. It was simply that I would consent to take charge of her daughter during her absence. This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me by stating and admitting everything that could be urged against it, and throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, my poor child came to my side, and in an undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Milarka, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if Mama would allow her, she would like it extremely. At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until at least we knew who they were. But I had not a moment thinking. The two ladies assailed me together, and I must confess the refined and beautiful face of the young lady, about which there was something extremely engaging, as well as the elegance and fire of high birth, determined me, and, quite overpowered, I submitted, and undertook too easily, the care of the young lady, whom her mother called Milarka. The Countess beckoned to her daughter, who listened with grave attention while she told her in general terms, how suddenly, and peremptorily, she had been summoned. And also the arrangement she had made for her under my care, adding that I was one of her earliest and most valued friends. I made, of course, such speeches as the case seemed to call for, and found myself on reflection in a position which I did not half like. The gentleman in black returned, and very ceremoniously, conducted the lady from the room. The demeanour of this gentleman was such as to impress me with the conviction that the Countess was a lady of very much more importance, than her modest title alone might have led me to assume. Her last charge to me was that no attempt was to be made to learn more about her, than I might have already guessed, until her return. Our distinguished host, whose guess she was, knew her reasons. But here, she said, neither I nor my daughter could safely remain for more than a day. I removed my mask imprudently for a moment about an hour ago, and too late, I fancied you saw me. So I resolved to seek an opportunity of talking a little to you. Had I found that you had seen me, I would have thrown myself on your high sense of honour to keep my secret some weeks. As it is, I am satisfied that you did not see me. But if you now suspect, or on reflection should respect who I am, I commit myself, in like manner, entirely to your honour. My daughter will observe the same secrecy, and I know that you will, from time to time, remind her, lest she should thoughtlessly disclose it. She whispered a few words to her daughter, kissed her hurriedly twice, and went away, accompanied by the pale gentleman in black, and disappeared in the crowd. In the next room, said Melaka, there is a window that looks upon the hall-door. I should like to see the last of Mamar, and to kiss my hand to her. We assented, of course, and accompanied her to the window. We looked out, and saw a handsome old-fashioned carriage, with a troop of couriers and footmen. We saw the slim figure of the pale gentleman in black, as he held a thick velvet cloak, and placed it about her shoulders, and through the hood above her head. She nodded to him, and just touched his hand with hers. He bowed low repeatedly as the door closed, and the carriage began to move. She is gone, said Melaka with a sigh. She is gone. I repeated to myself, for the first time, in the hurried moments that had elapsed since my consent, reflecting upon the folly of my act. She did not look up, said the young lady, plaintively. The countess had taken off her mask, perhaps, and did not care to show her face. I said. And she could not know that you were in the window. She sighed and looked in my face. She was so beautiful that I relented. I was sorry I had, for a moment, repented of my hospitality, and I determined to make her a men's for the unavowed childishness of my reception. The young lady, replacing her mask, joined my ward in persuading me to return to the grounds, where the concert was soon to be renewed. We did so, and walked up and down the terrace that lies under the castle windows. Melaka became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people whom we saw upon the terrace. I liked her more and more every minute. Her gossip, without being ill-natured, was extremely diverting to me, who had been so long out of the great world. I thought what life she would give to our sometimes lonely evenings at home. The ball was not over until the morning sun had almost reached the horizon. It pleased the grand duke to dance till then, so loyal people could not go away or think of bed. We had just got through a crowded saloon, when my ward asked me what had become of Melaka. I thought she had been by her side, and she fancied she was by mine. The fact was, we had lost her. All my efforts to find her were vain. I feared that she had mistaken, in the confusion of a momentary separation from us, other people for her new friends, and had possibly pursued and lost them in the extensive grounds which were thrown open to us. Now, in its full force, I recognised a new folly in my having undertaken the charge of a young lady without so much as knowing her name, and fettered as I was by promises of the reasons for imposing which I knew nothing, I could not even point my inquiries before saying that the missing young lady was the daughter of the Countess who had taken her departure a few hours before. Morning broke. It was clear daylight before I gave up my search. It was not till near two o'clock next day that we heard anything of my missing charge. At about that time a servant knocked on my niece's door to say that he had been earnestly requested by a young lady, who appeared to be in great distress, to make out where she could find the general Baron Spielstorff and the young lady his daughter in whose charge she had been left by her mother. There could be no doubt notwithstanding the slight inaccuracy that our young friend had turned up, and so she had, would to heaven we had lost her. She told my poor child a story to account for her having failed to recover us for so long. Very late, she said, she had got to the housekeeper's bedroom in despair of finding us, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which, long as it was, had hardly suffice to recruit her strength after the fatigues of the ball. That's day Milaka came home with us. I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear girl. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Lafannou Chapter 13 The Woodman There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Milaka complained of extreme anger, the weakness that remained after her late illness, and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, and never disturbed the key from its place till she admitted the maid to assist at her toilet, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room in the very early morning, and at various times later in the day, before she wished it to be understood that she was stirring. She was repeatedly seen from the windows of the schloss in the first faint gray of the morning, walking through the trees in an easterly direction, and looking like a person in a trance. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window? In the midst of my pervuxities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself. My dear child began to lose her looks and health, and that, in a manner so mysterious and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened. She was at first visited by appalling dreams, then, as she fancied by a spectre, sometimes resembling malarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side. Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her a little below the throat with a very sharp pain. A few nights after followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation. Then came unconsciousness. I could hear distinctly every word the kind old general was saying, because by this time we were driving upon the short grass that spreads on either side of the road as you approached the ruthless village which had not shown the smoke of a chimney for more than half a century. You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at my father's chateau. You may suppose also how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla. A visage opened in the forest. We were on a sudden under the chimneys and gables of the ruined village, and the towers and battlements of the dismantled castle round which gigantic trees were grouped overhung us from a slight eminence. In a frightened dream I got down from the carriage and in silence, for we each had abundant matter for thinking, we soon mounted the ascent, and were among the spacious chambers winding stairs in dark corridors of the castle. And this was once the palatial residence of the car-steins, said the old general at length, as from a great window he looked out across the village, and saw the wide undulating expanse of forest. It was a bad family, and here its blood-stained annals were written, he continued. It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the car-steins, down there. He pointed down to the gray walls of the gothic building partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep. And I hear the axe of a woodman, he added, busy among the trees that surround it. He possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Markala, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich entitled so soon as the families themselves become extinct. We have a portrait at home of Markala, the Countess Karnstein. Should you like to see it? asked my father. Time enough, dear friend, replied the general. I believe that I have seen the original, and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I had first intended, was to explore the chapel which we are now approaching. What? See the Countess Markala? explained my father. Why, she has been dead more than a century. Not so dead as you fancy, I am told, answered the general. I confess, general, you puzzle me utterly, replied my father, looking at him I fancied, for a moment with a return of the suspicion I detected before. But although there was anger and detestation at times in the old general's manner, there was nothing flighty. There remains to me, he said, as we passed under the heavy arc of the Gothic Church, or its dimensions would have justified it being so styled. But one object which had interest me during the few years that remained to me on earth, and that is to recon her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal man. What vengeance can you mean? asked my father in increasing amazement. I mean to decapitate the monster. He answered with a fierce flush and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the hollow ruin, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe while he shook it ferociously in the air. What? exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered. To strike her head off. Caught her head off? I, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her motorist throat. You shall hear, he answered, trembling with rage, and hurrying forward, he said. That beam will answer for a seat. Your dear child is fatigued. Let her be seated, and I will, in a few sentences, close my dreadful story. The squared block of wood, which lay on the grass-grown pavement of the chapel, formed a bench on which I was very glad to seat myself, and in the meantime the general called to the woodsman, who had been removing some boughs which leaned upon the old walls, and, axe in hand, the hardy old fellow stood before us. He could not tell us anything of these monuments, but there was an old man, he said, a ranger of this forest, at present so journeying in the house of the priest, about two miles away, who could point out every monument of the old Karnstein family. And for her trifle he undertook to bring him back with him, if we would lend him one of our horses, in little more than half an hour. Have you been long employed about this forest? asked my father of the old man. I have been a woodman here, he answered in his patois. Under the forester all my days. So has my father before me, and so on, as many generations as I can count up. I could show you the very house in the village here, in which my ancestors lived. How came the village to be deserted? asked the general. It was troubled by a revenant, sir. Several were tracked to their graves, they're detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning. But not until many of the villages were killed. But after all these proceedings according to law, he continued, so many graves opened, and so many vampires deprived of their horrible animation. The village was not relieved. But a Morovian nobleman, who happened to be traveling this way, heard how matters were, and being skilled, as many people are in his country, in such affairs, he offered to deliver the village from its tormentor. He did so, thus. There being a bright moon that night, he ascended, shortly after sunset, the towers of the chapel here, from whence he could distinctly see the churchyard beneath him. You can see it from that window. From this point he watched until he saw the vampire come out of his grave, and placed near it the linen clothes in which he had been folded, and then glide away toward the village to plague its inhabitants. The stranger, having seen all this, came down from the steeple, took the linen wrappings of the vampire, and carried them up to the top of the tower, which he again mounted. When the vampire returned from his prowlings and missed his clothes, he cried furiously to the Morovian, whom he saw at the summit of the tower, and who, in reply, beckoned him to ascend and take them. Whereupon the vampire, accepting his invitation, began to climb the steeple, and so soon as he had reached the battlements, the Morovian, with a stroke of his sword, clove his skull in twain, hurtling him down to the churchyard, wither, descending by the winding stairs, the stranger followed, and cut his head off, and next day delivered it and the body to the villagers, who duly impaled and burnt them. This Morovian nobleman had authority from the then head of the family to remove the tomb of Makala, Countess Karnstein, which he did effectually, so that, in a little while, its sight was quite forgotten. Can you point out where it stood? asked the general eagerly. The forester shook his head and smiled. Not a soul living could tell you that now, he said. Besides, they say her body was removed. But no one is sure of that, either. Having thus spoken, as time pressed, he dropped his axe and departed, leaving us to hear the remainder of the general's strange story. CHAPTER XIV THE MEETING My beloved child, he resumed, was now growing rapidly worse. The physician who attended her had failed to produce the slightest impression on her disease, for such I then supposed it to be. He saw my alarm and suggested a consultation. I called in an abler physician from Graz. Several days elapsed before he arrived. He was a good and pious as well as a learned man. Having seen my poor ward together, they withdrew to my library to confer and discuss. I, from the adjoining room, where I awaited their summons, heard these two gentlemen's voices rage in something sharper than a strictly philosophical discussion. I knocked at the door and entered. I found the old physician from Graz maintaining his theory. His rival was combating it with undisguised ridicule, accompanied with bursts of laughter. This unseemly manifestation subsided, and the allocation ended on my entrance. Sir, said my first physician, my learned brother seems to think that you want a conjurer and not a doctor. On me, said the old physician from Graz, looking displeased, I shall state my own view of the case in my own way another time. I grieve, Monsir La General, that by my skill in science I can be of no use. Before I go I shall do myself the honour to suggest something to you. He seemed thoughtful and sat down at a table and began to write. Profoundly disappointed, I made my bow, and as I turned to go, the other doctor pointed over his shoulder to his companion who was writing, and then, with a shrug, significantly touched his forehead. This consultation then left me precisely where I was. I walked out into the grounds, all but distracted. The doctor from Graz, in ten or fifteen minutes, overtook me. He apologised for having followed me, but said that he could not conscientiously take his leave without a few words more. He told me that he could not be mistaken. No natural disease exhibited the same symptoms, and that death was already very near. There remained, however, a day or possibly two of life. If the fatal seizure were at once arrested, with great care and skill her strength might possibly return. But all hung now upon the confines of the irrevocable. One more assault might extinguish the last spark of vitality which is, every moment, ready to die. And what is the nature of the seizure you speak of? I entreated. I have stated all fully in this note, which I place in your hands upon the distinct condition that you send for the nearest clergyman, and open my letter in his presence. And on no account read it till he is with you. You would despise it else, and it is a matter of life and death. Should the priest fail you, then indeed you may read it. He asked me, before taking his leave finally, whether I would wish to see a man curiously learned on a very subject, which, after I had read his letter, would probably interest me above all others. And he urged me earnestly to invite him to visit him there. And so took his leave. The ecclesiastic was absent, and I read the letter by myself. At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what crackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake? Nothing, you will say, could be more absurd than the learned man's letter. It was monstrous enough to have consigned him to a madhouse. He said that the patient was suffering from the visits of a vampire. The punctures which he described as having occurred near the throat were, he insisted, the insertion of those two long, thin and sharp teeth which, it is well known, are peculiar to vampires. And there could be no doubt, he added, as to the well-defined presence of the small livid mark which all concurred in describing as that induced by the demon's lips. And every symptom described by the sufferer was an exact conformity with those recorded in every case of a similar visitation. Being myself wholly skeptical as to the existence of any such portent as the vampire, the supernatural theory of the good doctor furnished, in my opinion, but another instance, a learning and intelligence oddly associated with some one hallucination. I was so miserable, however, that rather than try nothing, I acted upon the instructions of the letter. I concealed myself in the dark dressing-room that opened upon the poor patient's room in which a candle was burning, and watched there until she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevasse, my sword laid on the table beside me, and as my directions prescribed, until a little while after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great palpitating mass. For a few moments I had stood petrified. I now sprang forward with my sword in my hand. The black creature suddenly contracted toward the foot of the bed, glided over it, and, standing on the floor about a yard below the foot of the bed, with a glare of skulking ferocity and horror fixed on me, I saw malarca. Speculating I know not what, I struck at her instantly with my sword, but I saw her standing near the door unscathed, horrified I pursued and struck again. She was gone, and my sword flew to shivers against the door. I can't describe to you all that passed on that horrible night. The whole house was up and stirring. The specter malarca was gone, but her victim was sinking fast, and before the morning dawned, she died. The old general was agitated. We did not speak to him. My father walked to some little distance, and began reading the inscriptions on the tombstones, and thus occupied he strolled into the door of a side-channel to prosecute his researches. The general leaned against the wall, dried his eyes, and sighed heavily. I was relieved on hearing the voices of Carmilla and Madame, who were at that moment approaching. The voices died away. In this solitude, having just listened to so strange a story, connected as it was, with the great and titled Dead, whose monuments were moldering among the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious case, in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on either side, dense and high above its noiseless walls, a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this trist and ominous scene. The old general's eyes were fixed on the ground as he leaned with his hand upon the basement of a shattered monument. Under a narrow arched doorway, surmounted by one of those demoniical grotesques in which the cynical and ghastly fancy of old gothic carving delights, I saw very gladly the beautiful face and figure of Carmilla enter the shadowy chapel. I was just about to rise and speak, and nodded smiling in answer to her peculiarly engaging smile. When with a cry the old man by my side caught up the woodman's hatchet and started forward. On seeing him a brutalized change came over her features. It was an instantaneous and horrible transformation as she made a crouching step backwards. Before I could utter a scream he struck at her with all his force, but she dived under his blow, and unscathed caught him in her tiny grasp by the wrist. She struggled for a moment to release his arm, but his hand opened, the axe fell to the ground, and the girl was gone. He staggered against the wall. His gray hair stood upon his head, and a moisture shone over his face as if he were at the point of death. The frightful scene had passed in a moment. The first thing I recollect after is Madame standing before me and impatiently repeating again and again the question, Where is Madame Waselle Carmilla? I answered at length, I don't know, I can't tell. She went there, and I pointed to the door through which Madame had just entered. Only a minute or two since, but I have been standing there in the passage ever since Madame Waselle Carmilla entered, and she did not return. She then began to call Carmilla through every door and passage in front of the windows, but no answer came. She called herself Carmilla, asked the general, still agitated. Carmilla, yes, I answered. I, he said, that is Malarca. That is the same person who long ago was called Mercala, Countess of Karnstein. Depart from this accursed ground, my poor child, as quickly as you can. Drive to the clergyman's house and stay there till we come. Be gone! May you never behold Carmilla more! You will not find her here. End of Chapter 14 Recording by Todd Chapter 15 of Carmilla This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanou Chapter 15 or Deal and Execution As he spoke, one of the strangest looking men I ever beheld entered the chapel at the door through which Carmilla had made her entrance and her exit. He was tall, narrow-chested, stooping, with high shoulders and dressed in black. His face was brown and dried in with deep furrows. He wore an oddly shaped hat with a broad leaf. His hair long and grizzled hung on his shoulders. He wore a pair of gold spectacles, unwalked slowly, with an odd shambling gait, with his face sometimes turned up to the sky and sometimes bowed down towards the ground. Seemed to wear a perpetual smile. His long thin arms were swinging, and his long hands, in old black gloves, ever so much too wide for them, waving and gesticulating in utter abstraction. The very man exclaimed the general, advancing with manifest delight, My dear Baron, how happy I am to see you! I had no hope of meeting you so soon. He signed to my father, who had by this time returned, and leading the fantastic old gentleman, whom he called the Baron to meet him. He introduced him formally, and they at once entered into earnest conversation. The stranger took a roll of paper from his pocket, and spread it on the worn surface of a tomb that stood by. He had a pencil case in his fingers, with which he traced imaginary lines, from point to point on the paper, which from there often glancing from it, together at certain points of the building, I concluded to be a plan of the chapel. He accompanied what I might term, his lecture, with occasional readings from a dirty little book, whose yellow leaves were closely written over. They sauntered together down the side aisle, opposite to the spot where I was standing, conversing as they went. Then they began measuring distances by paces, and finally they all stood together, facing a piece of the sidewall, which they began to examine with great minuteness, pulling off the ivies that clung over it, and wrapping the plaster with the ends of their sticks, scraping here and knocking there. At length, they ascertained the existence of a broad marble tablet, with letters carved in relief upon it. With the assistance of the woodman, who soon returned, a monumental inscription, and carved as kachan, were disclosed. They proved to be those of the long-lost monument of Mirkalla, Countess Karnstein. The old general, though not I fear given to the praying mood, raised his hands and eyes to heaven in mute thanksgiving for some moments. Tomorrow, I heard him say, the commissioner will be here, and the inquisition will be held according to law. Then, turning to the old man with the gold spectacles, whom I have described, he shook him warmly by both hands and said, Baron, how can I thank you? How can we all thank you? You will have delivered this region from a plague that has scorched its inhabitants for more than a century. The horrible enemy, thank God, is at last tracked. My father led the stranger aside, and the general followed. I know that he had led them out of hearing, that he might relate my case, and I saw them glance often quickly at me, as the discussion proceeded. My father came to me, kissed me again and again, and leading me from the chapel said, It is time to return, but before we go home we must add to our party is a good priest, who lives but a little way from this, and persuade him to accompany us to the schloss. In this quest we were successful, and I was glad being unspeakably fatigued when we reached home. But my satisfaction was changed to dismay, on discovering that there were no tidings of Carmilla, of the scene that had occurred in the ruined chapel no explanation was offered to me, and it was clear that it was a secret which my father for the present determined to keep from me. The sinister absence of Carmilla made the remembrance of the scene more horrible to me. The arrangements for the night were singular, two servants and madame were to sit up in my room that night, and a classic with my father kept watch in the adjoining dressing room. The priest had performed certain solemn rites that night, the purport of which I did not understand any more than I comprehended the reason of this extraordinary precaution taken for my safety during sleep. I saw all clearly a few days later. The disappearance of Carmilla was followed by the discontinuance of my nightly sufferings. You have heard no doubt of the appalling superstition that prevails in Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in Russia, the superstition, so we must call it, of the vampire. If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially, before commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps, than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt, the existence of such a phenomenon as the vampire. For my part, I have heard no theory by which to explain what I myself have witnessed and experienced, other than that, supplied by the ancient and well-attested belief of the country. The next day, the formal proceedings took place in the Chapel of Cornstein. The grave of the Countess Mercala was opened, and the general and my father recognized each, his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open, no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry attested the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic, and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches the body lay immersed. Here then were all the admitted signs and proofs of vampirism, the body therefore, in accordance with the ancient practice, was raised, and the sharp steak driven through the heart of the vampire, who uttered a piercing shriek at the moment, in all respects such as might escape from a living person in the last agony. Then the head was struck off, and a torrent of blood flowed from the severed neck. The body and head was next placed on a pile of wood and reduced to ashes, which were thrown upon the river and borne away, and that territory has never since been plagued by the wizards of a vampire. My father has a copy of the report of the imperial commission, with the signatures of all who were present at these proceedings, attached in verification of the statement. It is from this official paper that I have summarized my account of this last shocking scene. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Carmilla. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Conclusion. I write all this, you suppose, with composure, but far from it, I cannot think of it without agitation. Nothing but your earnest desire so repeatedly expressed could have induced me to sit down to a task that has unstrung my nerves for months to come and re-induced a shadow of the unspeakable horror which years after my deliverance continued to make my days and nights dreadful and solitude insupportably terrific. Let me add a word or two about that quaint Baron Vordenberg to whose curious lore we were indebted for the discovery of the Countess Mercala's grave. He had taken up his abode in Graz, where living upon a mere pittance, which was all that remained to him of the once princely estates of his family in Upper Styria, he devoted himself to the minute and laborious investigation of the marvelously authenticated tradition of vampirism. He had at his finger's ends all the great and little works upon the subject. Magipostuma, Flegonda Mirabilibus, Augustinas de Cura Pro Mortuiz, Philosophie Cristiani Coteatione Este Vampires by Jean-Christopher Harenberg, and a thousand others, among which I remember only a few of those which he lent to my father. He had a voluminous digest of all the judicial cases from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern, some always and others occasionally only, the condition of the vampire. I may mention in passing that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenance is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present in the grave and, when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are enumerated as those which proved the vampire life of the long-dead Countess Carnstein. How they escape from their graves and return to them for certain hours every day without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in the state of the coffin or the siemens has always been admitted to be utterly inexplicable. The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigor of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence resembling the passion of love by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will in these cases husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object overpowers with violence and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast. The vampire is apparently subject in certain situations to special conditions. In the particular instance of which I have given you a relation Mercala seems to be limited to a name which if not her real one should at least reproduce without the omission or addition of a single letter those as we say anagrammatically which compose it. Carmilla did this. So did Milarka. My father related to the Baron Vordenberg who remained with us for two or three weeks after the expulsion of Carmilla. The story about the Moravian no-woman and the vampire at Karnstein churchyard and then he asked the Baron how he had discovered the exact position of the long concealed tomb of the Countess Mercala. The Baron's grotesque features puckered up into a mysterious smile. He looked down still smiling on his worn spectacle case and fumbled with it. Then looking up he said I have many journals and other papers written by that remarkable man. The most curious among them is one treating of the visit of which you speak to Karnstein. The tradition of course discolors and distorts a little. He might have been termed a Moravian nobleman for he had changed his abode to that territory and was beside a noble but he was in truth a native of Upper Styria. It is enough to say that in very early youth he had been a passionate and favored lover of the beautiful Mercala Countess Karnstein. Her early death plunged him into inconsolable grief. It is the nature of vampires to increase and multiply but according to an ascertained and ghostly law assume at starting a territory perfectly free from that pest. How does it begin and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you a person more or less wicked puts an end to himself. A suicide under certain circumstances becomes a vampire. That specter visits living people in their slumbers. They die and almost invariably in the grave develop into vampires. This happened in the case of the beautiful Mercala who was haunted by one of those demons. My ancestor Vordenberg whose title I still bear soon discovered this and in the course of the studies to which he devoted himself learned a great deal more. Among other things he concluded that suspicion of vampirism would probably fall sooner or later upon the dead Countess who in life had been his idol. He conceived a horror bishi what she might of her remains being profaned by the outrage of a posthumous execution. He has left a curious paper to prove that the vampire on its expulsion from its amphibious existence is projected into a far more horrible life and he resolved to save his once beloved Mercala from this. He adopted the stratagem of a journey here a pretended removal of her remains and a real obliteration of her monument. When age had stolen upon him and from the veil of years he looked back on the scenes he was leaving. He considered in a different spirit what he had done and a horror took possession of him. He made the tracings and notes which have guided me to the very spot and drew up a confession of the deception that he had practiced. If he had intended any further action in this matter death prevented him and the hand of a remote descendant has too late for many directed the pursuit to the lair of the beast. We talked a little more and among other things he said was this one sign of the vampire is the power of the hand the slender hand of Mercala closed like a vice of steel on the general's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike but its power is not confined to its grasp it leaves a numbness in the limit seizes which is slowly if ever recovered from. The following spring my father took me on a tour through Italy. We remained away for more than a year it was long before the terror of recent events subsided and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations sometimes the playful languid beautiful girl sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church and often from a reverie I started fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door. End of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.