Volume Iii Part 9 (2/2)

So he gallantly, in his old-fas.h.i.+oned way, kissed her hand, smiling and pleased at her little speech.

I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed.

”Do you think,” I said at length, ”that you will ever confide fully in me?”

She turned round smiling, but made no answer, only continued to smile on me.

”You won't answer that?” I said. ”You can't answer pleasantly; I ought not to have asked you.”

”You were quite right to ask me that, or anything. You do not know how dear you are to me, or you could not think any confidence too great to look for. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me,--to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and _hating_ me through death and after.

There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.”

”Now, Carmilla, you are going to talk your wild nonsense again,” I said hastily.

”Not I, silly little fool as I am, and full of whims and fancies; for your sake I'll talk like a sage. Were you ever at a ball?”

”No; how you do run on. What is it like? How charming it must be.”

”I almost forget, it is years ago.”

I laughed.

”You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet.”

”I remember everything about it--with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. There occurred that night what has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but a.s.sa.s.sinated in my bed, wounded _here_,” she touched her breast, ”and never was the same since.”

”Were you near dying?”

”Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life.

Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood. Let us go to sleep now; I feel so lazy. How can I get up just now and lock my door?”

She was lying with her tiny hands buried in her rich wavy hair, under her cheek, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes followed me wherever I moved, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher.

I bid her good-night, and crept from the room with an uncomfortable sensation.

I often wondered whether our pretty guest ever said her prayers. _I_ certainly had never seen her upon her knees. In the morning she never came down until long after our family prayers were over, and at night she never left the drawing-room to attend our brief evening prayers in the hall.

If it had not been that it had casually come out in one of our careless talks that she had been baptised, I should have doubted her being a Christian. Religion was a subject on which I had never heard her speak a word. If I had known the world better, this particular neglect or antipathy would not have so much surprised me.

The precautions of nervous people are infectious, and persons of a like temperament are pretty sure, after a time, to imitate them. I had adopted Carmilla's habit of locking her bedroom door, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling a.s.sa.s.sins. I had also adopted her precaution of making a brief search through her room, to satisfy herself that no lurking a.s.sa.s.sin or robber was ”ensconced.”

These wise measures taken, I got into my bed and fell asleep. A light was burning in my room. This was an old habit, of very early date, and which nothing could have tempted me to dispense with.

Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.

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