Carmilla Chapter I
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (General)Transcript
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Chapter one on early fright inst area. We, though by no means magnificent people inhabit a castle. Schloss, a small income in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or 900 a year does wonders scantily enough as would've 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 marvellously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would it all materially add to our comforts or even luxuries. My father was in the Austrian service and retired upon a pension on his patrimony and purchased this feudal residents on the smaller stay on which it stands a bargain. Nothing could 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 on floating on its surface, white fleets of water lilies. Overall, this the Schloss shows its many windowed front. It's towers on 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 whole door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stones extends 15 miles to the right and 12 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 spiels Dorf, nearly 20 miles away. To the right, I have said the nearest inhabited village, because there is only three miles westward, that is to say, the direction of general spiels. Dorf Schloss, a ruined village with its quaint little church, now ruthless in the isle of which are the mouldering tombs of the proud family of Constant, 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 the striking a 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 building's attached to the Schloss. Listen and wonder my father, who was the kind ist man on earth but growing old, and I at the date of my storey. Only 19 eight years have passed since then. I and my father constituted the family at the Schloss. My mother, a steri in 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, indignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory. This was Madame Paradorn, a native of Byrne whose care and good nature now impart, supplied to me the loss of my mother, whom I did not even remember so early. I lost her. She made a third our little dinner party. There was 1/4 mamma's l de la Fontaine, a lady such as you term, I believe, a finishing governess. She spoke French and German Madam Paradorn French on 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 usedto lof on 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 are occasional visitors for longer or shorter terms. And these visits I sometimes returned. These were have regular social resources, but of course there were chants, visits from neighbours of only five or six leagues. Distance my life, wass notwithstanding rather a solitary one, I can assure you. My governance had just so much control over me, as you might conjecture such sage persons would have in the case of 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's 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 cold. So I had it all to myself. It was a large room in the upper storey of the castle with a steep oak roof. I can't have been more than six years old when one night I awoke looking around the room for 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 has studiously kept in ignorance of ghost storeys of fairy tales and of all such Laura's 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 of finding myself as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper preparatory tow. A hearty bout of roaring went 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. On ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands and lay down beside me on the bed and drew me towards her, smiling, I have felt immediately, delightfully soothed and fell asleep again. I was awakened by a sensation, as if to 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 on DH, as I thought hit 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 storey. They made light of it soothing meal. They could meanwhile, but child as I wass, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwanted 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 Shaara's You did not. The place is still warm. I remember the nursery maid petting me on all three, examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture on pronouncing that there was no sign of 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 14. I was very nervous. For a long time after this, a doctor was called in. He was palate and elderly. How well I remember his long such an in face, slightly pitted with smallpox on 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 wass 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. I'm 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 maids, assuring me that it was she who had come and looked at me and lane down beside me in the bed. On 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 remember in the course of that day a venerable old man in a black castle coming into the room with the nurse and housekeeper and talking a little too them. I'm very kindly to me. His face was very sweet and gentle, and he told me they were going to pray and join my hands together and desired me to say softly while they were praying. Lord Harold, good prayers for us, for Jesus sake. I think these were the very words for I often repeated them to myself on my nurse used to for gears make me say them in my prayers. I remember so well the thoughtful, sweet face of that white haired old man in his black PASOK as he stood in that rude, lofty brown room with the clumsy furniture of a fashion 300 years old about him on 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 proceeding that event and for some after it is all obscure also. But the scenes I have just described standout, vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness.