A Tale of a Vampire. Richard Francis Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ for a moment his curiosity. In an instant he unrolled a leather case, full of all manner of odd little steel instruments.

      “See here, my lady,” he said, displaying it, and addressing me, “I profess, among other things less useful, the art of dentistry. Plague take the dog!” he interpolated. “Silence, beast! He howls so that your ladyships can scarcely hear a word. Your noble friend, the young lady at your right, has the sharpest tooth — long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle; ha, ha! With my sharp and long sight, as I look up, I have seen it distinctly; now if it happens to hurt the young lady, and I think it must, here am I, here are my file, my punch, my nippers; I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?”

      The young lady, indeed, looked very angry as she drew back from the window.

      “How dares that mountebank insult us so? Where is your father? I shall demand redress from him. My father would have had the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart whip, and burnt to the bones with the castle brand!”

      She retired from the window a step or two, and sat down, and had hardly lost sight of the offender, when her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little hunchback and his follies.

      My father was out of spirits that evening. On coming in he told us that there had been another case very similar to the two fatal ones which had lately occurred. The sister of a young peasant on his estate, only a mile away, was very ill, had been, as she described it, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking.

      “All this,” said my father, “is strictly referable to natural causes. These poor people infect one another with their superstitions, and so repeat in imagination the images of terror that have infested their neighbors.”

      “But that very circumstance frightens one horribly,” said Carmilla.

      “How so?” inquired my father.

      “I am so afraid of fancying I see such things; I think it would be as bad as reality.”

      “We are in God’s hands: nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us.”

      “Creator! Nature!“ said the young lady in answer to my gentle father. “And this disease that invades the country is natural. Nature. All things proceed from Nature — don’t they? All things in the heaven, in the earth, and under the earth, act and live as Nature ordains? I think so.”

      “The doctor said he would come here today,” said my father, after a silence. “I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do.”

      “Doctors never did me any good,” said Carmilla.

      “Then you have been ill?” I asked.

      “More ill than ever you were,” she answered.

      “Long ago?”

      “Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases.”

      “You were very young then?”

      “I dare say, let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?”

      She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly, and led me out of the room. My father was busy over some papers near the window.

      “Why does your papa like to frighten us?” said the pretty girl with a sigh and a little shudder.

      “He doesn’t, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind.”

      “Are you afraid, dearest?”

      “I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.”

      “You are afraid to die?”

      “Yes, every one is.”

      “But to die as lovers may — to die together, so that they may live together.

      “Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see — each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room.”

      Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some time.

      He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:

      “Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?”

      The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head —

      “Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”

      And so the walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.

      CHAPTER 5.

       A WONDERFUL LIKENESS

       Table of Contents

      This evening there arrived from Gratz the grave, dark-faced son of the picture cleaner, with a horse and cart laden with two large packing cases, having many pictures in each. It was a journey of ten leagues, and whenever a messenger arrived at the schloss from our little capital of Gratz, we used to crowd about him in the hall, to hear the news.

      This arrival created in our secluded quarters quite a sensation. The cases remained in the hall, and the messenger was taken charge of by the servants till he had eaten his supper. Then with assistants, and armed with hammer, ripping chisel, and turnscrew, he met us in the hall, where we had assembled to witness the unpacking of the cases.

      Carmilla sat looking listlessly on, while one after the other the old pictures, nearly all portraits, which had undergone the process of renovation, were brought to light. My mother was of an old Hungarian family, and most of these pictures, which were about to be restored to their places, had come to us through her.

      My father had a list in his hand, from which he read, as the artist rummaged out the corresponding numbers. I don’t know that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly, very old, and some of them very curious also. They had, for the most part, the merit of being now seen by me, I may say, for the first time; for the smoke and dust of time had all but obliterated them.

      “There is a picture that I have not seen yet,” said my father. “In one corner, at the top of it, is the name, as well as I could read, ‘Marcia Karnstein,’ and the date ‘1698’; and I am curious to see how it has turned out.”

      I СКАЧАТЬ