Chapter 1

Carmilla

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Contents

PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I. An Early Fright
CHAPTER II. A Guest
CHAPTER III. We Compare Notes
CHAPTER IV. Her Habits—A Saunter
CHAPTER V. A Wonderful Likeness
CHAPTER VI. A Very Strange Agony
CHAPTER VII. Descending
CHAPTER VIII. Search
CHAPTER IX. The Doctor
CHAPTER X. Bereaved
CHAPTER XI. The Story
CHAPTER XII. A Petition
CHAPTER XIII. The Woodman
CHAPTER XIV. The Meeting
CHAPTER XV. Ordeal and Execution
CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion

PROLOGUE

Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius
has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies with a
reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS.
illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his usual
learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and condensation.
It will form but one volume of the series of that extraordinary man’s
collected papers.

As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest the “laity,”
I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates it, in nothing; and
after due consideration, I have determined, therefore, to abstain from
presenting any précis of the learned Doctor’s reasoning, or extract
from his statement on a subject which he describes as “involving, not
improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and
its intermediates.”

I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the correspondence
commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before, with a person so
clever and careful as his informant seems to have been. Much to my
regret, however, I found that she had died in the interval.

She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative which she
communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I can pronounce,
such conscientious particularity.

I.
An Early Fright

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle,
or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great
way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours
would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English,
and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in
this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously
cheap, I really don’t see how ever so much more money would at all
materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and
his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small
estate on which it stands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight
eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of
its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with
perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white
fleets of water lilies.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers,
and its Gothic chapel.

The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its
gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a
stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that
this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from
the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands
extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest
inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left. The
nearest inhabited schloss of any historic associations, is that of old
General Spielsdorf, nearly twenty miles away to the right.

I have said “the nearest _inhabited_ village,” because there is, only
three miles westward, that is to say in the direction of General
Spielsdorf’s schloss, a ruined village, with its quaint little church,
now roofless, in the aisle of which are the moldering tombs of the
proud family of Karnstein, now extinct, who once owned the equally
desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooks the
silent ruins of the town.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy
spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time.

I must tell you now, how very small is the party who constitute the
inhabitants of our castle. I don’t include servants, or those
dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached to the schloss.
Listen, and wonder! My father, who is the kindest man on earth, but
growing old; and I, at the date of my story, only nineteen. Eight years
have passed since then.

I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a
Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess,
who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not
remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar
picture in my memory.

This was Madame Perrodon, a native of Berne, whose care and good nature
now in part supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I do not even
remember, so early I lost her. She made a third at our little dinner
party. There was a fourth, Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a lady such as
you term, I believe, a “finishing governess.” She spoke French and
German, Madame Perrodon French and broken English, to which my father
and I added English, which, partly to prevent its becoming a lost
language among us, and partly from patriotic motives, we spoke every
day. The consequence was a Babel, at which strangers used to laugh, and
which I shall make no attempt to reproduce in this narrative. And there
were two or three young lady friends besides, pretty nearly of my own
age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and
these visits I sometimes returned.

These were our regular social resources; but of course there were
chance visits from “neighbors” of only five or six leagues distance. My
life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you.

My gouvernantes had just so much control over me as you might
conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of a rather spoiled
girl, whose only parent allowed her pretty nearly her own way in
everything.

The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible
impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was
one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect.
Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded
here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it. The nursery,
as it was called, though I had it all to myself, was a large room in
the upper story of the castle, with a steep oak roof. I can’t have been
more than six years old, when one night I awoke, and looking round the
room from my bed, failed to see the nursery maid. Neither was my nurse
there; and I thought myself alone. I was not frightened, for I was one
of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost
stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our
heads when the door cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring
candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our
faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived,
neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of
roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face
looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young lady who
was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet. I looked at her with a
kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her
hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her,
smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep
again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my
breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The lady
started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the
floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed.

I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might
and main. Nurse, nursery maid, housekeeper, all came running in, and
hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could
meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were
pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the
bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open
cupboards; and the housekeeper whispered to the nurse: “Lay your hand
along that hollow in the bed; someone _did_ lie there, so sure as you
did not; the place is still warm.”

I remember the nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my
chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that
there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me.

The housekeeper and the two other servants who were in charge of the
nursery, remained sitting up all night; and from that time a servant
always sat up in the nursery until I was about fourteen.

I was very nervous for 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 sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under
the steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of
noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading
crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorf’s letter was so extraordinary,
so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it
twice over—the second time aloud to my father—and was still unable to
account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind.

It said “I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her.
During the last days of dear Bertha’s illness I was not able to write
to you.

Before then I had no idea of her danger. I have lost her, and now learn
_all_, too late. She died in the peace of innocence, and in the
glorious hope of a blessed futurity. The fiend who betrayed our
infatuated hospitality has done it all. I thought I was receiving into
my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha.
Heavens! what a fool have I been!

I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her
sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of
her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery.
I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster. I
am told I may hope to accomplish my righteous and merciful purpose. At
present there is scarcely a gleam of light to guide me. I curse my
conceited incredulity, my despicable affectation of superiority, my
blindness, my obstinacy—all—too late. I cannot write or talk
collectedly now. I am distracted. So soon as I shall have a little
recovered, I mean to devote myself for a time to enquiry, which may
possibly lead me as far as Vienna. Some time in the autumn, two months
hence, or earlier if I live, I will see you—that is, if you permit me;
I will then tell you all that I scarce dare put upon paper now.
Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend.”

In these terms ended this strange letter. Though I had never seen
Bertha Rheinfeldt my eyes filled with tears at the sudden intelligence;
I was startled, as well as profoundly disappointed.

The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned the
General’s letter to my father.

It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the
possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had
just been reading. We had nearly a mile to walk before reaching the
road that passes the schloss in front, and by that time the moon was
shining brilliantly. At the drawbridge we met Madame Perrodon and
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, who had come out, without their bonnets, to
enjoy the exquisite moonlight.

We heard their voices gabbling in animated dialogue as we approached.
We joined them at the drawbridge, and turned about to admire with them
the beautiful scene.

The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left
the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost
to sight amid the thickening forest. At the right the same road crosses
the steep and picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower
which once guarded that pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence
rises, covered with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey
ivy-clustered rocks.

Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like
smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and
there we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight.

No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard
made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound
serenity, and the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect.

My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking in silence
over the expanse beneath us. The two good governesses, standing a
little way behind us, discoursed upon the scene, and were eloquent upon
the moon.

Madame Perrodon was fat, middle-aged, and romantic, and talked and
sighed poetically. Mademoiselle De Lafontaine—in right of her father
who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical, and
something of a mystic—now declared that when the moon shone with a
light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special
spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of
brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it
acted on nervous people, it had marvelous physical influences connected
with life. Mademoiselle related that her cousin, who was mate of a
merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his
back, with his face full in the light on the moon, had wakened, after a
dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features
horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite
recovered its equilibrium.

“The moon, this night,” she said, “is full of idyllic and magnetic
influence—and see, when you look behind you at the front of the schloss
how all its windows flash and twinkle with that silvery splendor, as if
unseen hands had lighted up the rooms to receive fairy guests.”

There are indolent styles of the spirits in which, indisposed to talk
ourselves, the talk of others is pleasant to our listless ears; and I
gazed on, pleased with the tinkle of the ladies’ conversation.

“I have got into one of my moping moods tonight,” said my father, after
a silence, and quoting Shakespeare, whom, by way of keeping up our
English, he used to read aloud, he said:

“‘In truth I know not why I am so sad.
It wearies me: you say it wearies you;
But how I got it—came by it.’

“I forget the rest. But I feel as if some great misfortune were hanging
over us. I suppose the poor General’s afflicted letter has had
something to do with it.”

At this moment the unwonted sound of carriage wheels and many hoofs
upon the road, arrested our attention.

They seemed to be approaching from the high ground overlooking the
bridge, and very soon the equipage emerged from that point. Two
horsemen first crossed the bridge, then came a carriage drawn by four
horses, and two men rode behind.

It seemed to be the traveling carriage of a person of rank; and we were
all immediately absorbed in watching that very unusual spectacle. It
became, in a few moments, greatly more interesting, for just as the
carriage had passed the summit of the steep bridge, one of the leaders,
taking fright, communicated his panic to the rest, and after a plunge
or two, the whole team broke into a wild gallop together, and dashing
between the horsemen who rode in front, came thundering along the road
towards us with the speed of a hurricane.

The excitement of the scene was made more painful by the clear,
long-drawn screams of a female voice from the carriage window.

We all advanced in curiosity and horror; me rather in silence, the rest
with various ejaculations of terror.

Our suspense did not last long. Just before you reach the castle
drawbridge, on the route they were coming, there stands by the roadside
a magnificent lime tree, on the other stands an ancient stone cross, at
sight of which the horses, now going at a pace that was perfectly
frightful, swerved so as to bring the wheel over the projecting roots
of the tree.

I knew what was coming. I covered my eyes, unable to see it out, and
turned my head away; at the same moment I heard a cry from my lady
friends, who had gone on a little.

Curiosity opened my eyes, and I saw a scene of utter confusion. Two of
the horses were on the ground, the carriage lay upon its side with two
wheels in the air; the men were busy removing the traces, and a lady
with a commanding air and figure had got out, and stood with clasped
hands, raising the handkerchief that was in them every now and then to
her eyes.

Through the carriage door was now lifted a young lady, who appeared to
be lifeless. My dear old father was already beside the elder lady, with
his hat in his hand, evidently tendering his aid and the resources of
his schloss. The lady did not appear to hear him, or to have eyes for
anything but the slender girl who was being placed against the slope of
the bank.

I approached; the young lady was apparently stunned, but she was
certainly not dead. My father, who piqued himself on being something of
a physician, had just had his fingers on her wrist and assured the
lady, who declared herself her mother, that her pulse, though faint and
irregular, was undoubtedly still distinguishable. The lady clasped her
hands and looked upward, as if in a momentary transport of gratitude;
but immediately she broke out again in that theatrical way which is, I
believe, natural to some people.

She was what is called a fine looking woman for her time of life, and
must have been handsome; she was tall, but not thin, and dressed in
black velvet, and looked rather pale, but with a proud and commanding
countenance, though now agitated strangely.

“Who was ever being so born to calamity?” I heard her say, with clasped
hands, as I came up. “Here am I, on a journey of life and death, in
prosecuting which to lose an hour is possibly to lose all. My child
will not have recovered sufficiently to resume her route for who can
say how long. I must leave her: I cannot, dare not, delay. How far on,
sir, can you tell, is the nearest village? I must leave her there; and
shall not see my darling, or even hear of her till my return, three
months hence.”

I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear:
“Oh! papa, pray ask her to let her stay with us—it would be so
delightful. Do, pray.”

“If Madame will entrust her child to the care of my daughter, and of
her good gouvernante, Madame Perrodon, and permit her to remain as our
guest, under my charge, until her return, it will confer a distinction
and an obligation upon us, and we shall treat her with all the care and
devotion which so sacred a trust deserves.”

“I cannot do that, sir, it would be to task your kindness and chivalry
too cruelly,” said the lady, distractedly.

“It would, on the contrary, be to confer on us a very great kindness at
the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed
by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a
great deal of happiness. If you confide this young lady to our care it
will be her best consolation. The nearest village on your route is
distant, and affords no such inn as you could think of placing your
daughter at; you cannot allow her to continue her journey for any
considerable distance without danger. If, as you say, you cannot
suspend your journey, you must part with her tonight, and nowhere could
you do so with more honest assurances of care and tenderness than
here.”

There was something in this lady’s air and appearance so distinguished
and even imposing, and in her manner so engaging, as to impress one,
quite apart from the dignity of her equipage, with a conviction that
she was a person of consequence.

By this time the carriage was replaced in its upright position, and the
horses, quite tractable, in the traces again.

The lady threw on her daughter a glance which I fancied was not quite
so affectionate as one might have anticipated from the beginning of the
scene; then she beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew two or
three steps with him out of hearing; and talked to him with a fixed and
stern countenance, not at all like that with which she had hitherto
spoken.

I was filled with wonder that my father did not seem to perceive the
change, and also unspeakably curious to learn what it could be that she
was speaking, almost in his ear, with so much earnestness and rapidity.

Two or three minutes at most I think she remained thus employed, then
she turned, and a few steps brought her to where her daughter lay,
supported by Madame Perrodon. She kneeled beside her for a moment and
whispered, as Madame supposed, a little benediction in her ear; then
hastily kissing her she stepped into her carriage, the door was closed,
the footmen in stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred
on, the postilions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke
suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a
gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace
by the two horsemen in the rear.

III.
We Compare Notes

We followed the _cortege_ with our eyes until it was swiftly lost to
sight in the misty wood; and the very sound of the hoofs and the wheels
died away in the silent night air.

Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an
illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened
her eyes. I could not see, for her face was turned from me, but she
raised her head, evidently looking about her, and I heard a very sweet
voice ask complainingly, “Where is mamma?”

Our good Madame Perrodon answered tenderly, and added some comfortable
assurances.

I then heard her ask:

“Where am I? What is this place?” and after that she said, “I don’t see
the carriage; and Matska, where is she?”

Madame answered all her questions in so far as she understood them; and
gradually the young lady remembered how the misadventure came about,
and was glad to hear that no one in, or in attendance on, the carriage
was hurt; and on learning that her mamma had left her here, till her
return in about three months, she wept.

I was going to add my consolations to those of Madame Perrodon when
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine placed her hand upon my arm, saying:

“Don’t approach, one at a time is as much as she can at present
converse with; a very little excitement would possibly overpower her
now.”

As soon as she is comfortably in bed, I thought, I will run up to her
room and see her.

My father in the meantime had sent a servant on horseback for the
physician, who lived about two leagues away; and a bedroom was being
prepared for the young lady’s reception.

The stranger now rose, and leaning on Madame’s arm, walked slowly over
the drawbridge and into the castle gate.

In the hall, servants waited to receive her, and she was conducted
forthwith to her room. The room we usually sat in as our drawing room
is long, having four windows, that looked over the moat and drawbridge,
upon the forest scene I have just described.

It is furnished in old carved oak, with large carved cabinets, and the
chairs are cushioned with crimson Utrecht velvet. The walls are covered
with tapestry, and surrounded with great gold frames, the figures being
as large as life, in ancient and very curious costume, and the subjects
represented are hunting, hawking, and generally festive.