Carmilla | Page 3

a long time after this. A doctor was called in, he
was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face,
slightly pitted with smallpox, and his chestnut wig. For a good while,
every second day, he came and gave me medicine, which of course I
hated.
The morning after I saw this apparition I was in a state of terror, and
could not bear to be left alone, daylight though it was, for a moment.
I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and
talking cheerfully, and asking the nurse a number of questions, and
laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the
shoulder, and kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it
was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me.
But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was
not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.
I was a little consoled by the nursery maid's assuring me that it was she
who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed,
and that I must have been half-dreaming not to have known her face.
But this, though supported by the nurse, did not quite satisfy me.
I remembered, in the course of that day, a venerable old man, in a black
cassock, coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper, and
talking a little to them, and very kindly to me; his face was very sweet
and gentle, and he told me they were going to pray, and joined my
hands together, and desired me to say, softly, while they were praying,
"Lord hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake." I think these were
the very words, for I often repeated them to myself, and my nurse used

for years to make me say them in my prayers.
I remembered so well the thoughtful sweet face of that white-haired old
man, in his black cassock, as he stood in that rude, lofty, brown room,
with the clumsy furniture of a fashion three hundred years old about
him, and the scanty light entering its shadowy atmosphere through the
small lattice. He kneeled, and the three women with him, and he prayed
aloud with an earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long
time. I forget all my life preceding that event, and for some time after it
is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid
as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness.

II
A Guest
I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all
your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only true,
nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eyewitness.
It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he
sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him along that beautiful
forest vista which I have mentioned as lying in front of the schloss.
"General Spielsdorf cannot come to us so soon as I had hoped," said
my father, as we pursued our walk.
He was to have paid us a visit of some weeks, and we had expected his
arrival next day. He was to have brought with him a young lady, his
niece and ward, Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt, whom I had never seen, but
whom I had heard described as a very charming girl, and in whose
society I had promised myself many happy days. I was more
disappointed than a young lady living in a town, or a bustling
neighborhood can possibly imagine. This visit, and the new
acquaintance it promised, had furnished my day dream for many
weeks.

"And how soon does he come?" I asked.
"Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say," he answered. "And I
am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle
Rheinfeldt."
"And why?" I asked, both mortified and curious.
"Because the poor young lady is dead," he replied. "I quite forgot I had
not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the
General's letter this evening."
I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first
letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would
wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of
danger.
"Here is the General's letter," he said, handing it to me. "I am afraid he
is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been written very
nearly in distraction."
We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees.
The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the