Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (15 page)

She placed the lamp on the table and sat down on the foot of my bed. Then bending towards me, she said in the silvery, velvety voice which I had heard from no one but her:—

“I have made you wait a long time, dear Romualdo, and you must have thought I had forgotten you. But I have come from a very long distance, from a bourne whence no traveller has yet returned. There is neither moon nor sun in the country whence I have come; neither road nor path; naught but space and shadow; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet I am here, for love is stronger than death and overcomes it. Ah, what worn faces, what terrible things I have seen on my way! What difficulty my soul, which returned to this world by the power of will, experienced before it could find its own body and re-enter it! What efforts I had to make before I could push up the tombstone with which they had covered me! See! The palms of my poor hands are all bruised. Kiss them and cure them, my dear love.” And one after the other, she put the cold palms of her hands upon my lips. I did kiss them many a time, and she watched me with a smile of ineffable satisfaction.

I confess it to my shame,—I had wholly forgotten the counsels of Father Serapion and my own profession; I had fallen without resisting and at the first blow; I had not even endeavoured to drive away the tempter. The freshness of Clarimonda’s skin penetrated mine, and I felt voluptuous thrills running through my body. Poor child! In spite of all that I have seen of her, I find it difficult to believe that she was a demon; she certainly did not look like one, and never did Satan better conceal his claws and horns. She had pulled her feet up under her, and was curled up on the edge of my bed in an attitude full of nonchalant coquetry. From time to time she passed her little hand through my hair and rolled it into ringlets as if to try how different ways of dressing it would suit my face. I allowed her to go on with the most guilty complaisance, and while she toyed with me she chatted brightly. The remarkable thing is that I experienced no astonishment at so extraordinary an adventure, and with the facility we enjoy in dreams of admitting as quite simple the most amazing events, it seemed to me that everything that was happening was quite natural.

“I loved you long before I had seen you, dear Romualdo, and I had looked for you everywhere. You were my dream, and when I saw you in church at that fatal moment, I at once said, ‘It is he!’ I cast on you a glance in which I put all the love which I had had, which I had, and which I was to have for you; a glance that would have damned a cardinal and made a king kneel before my feet in the presence of his whole court. But you remained impassible; you preferred your God to me. Oh, I am jealous of God, whom you loved, and whom you still love more than me! Unfortunate that I am,—oh, most unfortunate! Your heart will never be wholly mine, though you brought me back to life with a kiss, though I am Clarimonda, who was dead and who for your sake burst the cerements of the tomb, and has come to devote to you a life which she has resumed only to make you happy!”

With these words she mingled intoxicating caresses which penetrated my senses and my reason to such a degree that I did not hesitate, in order to console her, to utter frightful blasphemies and to tell her that I loved her as much as I did God.

Her eyes brightened and shone like chrysoprase. “True? Quite true? As much as God?” she said, clasping me in her lovely arms. “Since that is so, you will go with me, you will follow me where I will. You shall cast off your ugly black clothes, you shall be the proudest and most envied of men, you shall be my lover. Oh, the lovely, happy life we shall lead! When shall we start?”

“To-morrow! To-morrow!” I cried in my delirium.

“To-morrow be it,” she replied. “I shall have time to change my dress, for this one is rather scanty and not of much use for travelling. Then I must also warn my people, who think me really dead, and who are mourning as hard as they can. Money, clothes, and carriage,—everything shall be ready, and I shall call for you at this same hour. Good-bye, dear heart,” and she touched my brow with her lips.

The lamp went out, the windows were closed, and I saw no more. A leaden, dreamless sleep overcame me and held me fast until the next morning. I awoke later than usual, and the remembrance of the strange vision agitated me the livelong day. At last I managed to persuade myself that it was a mere fever of my heated brain. Yet the sensation had been so intense that it was difficult to believe it was not real, and it was not without some apprehension of what might happen that I went to bed, after having prayed God to drive away from me evil thoughts and to protect the chastity of my sleep.

I soon fell fast asleep and my dream continued. The curtains were opened, and I saw Clarimonda, not as the first time, wan in her pale shroud, and the violets of death upon her cheeks, but gay, bright, and dainty, in a splendid travelling-dress of green velvet with gold braid, caught up on the side and showing a satin under-skirt. Her fair hair escaped in great curls from below her broad black felt hat with capriciously twisted white feathers. She held in her hand a small riding-whip ending in a golden whistle. She touched me lightly with it and said: “Well, handsome sleeper, is that the way you get ready? I expected to find you up. Rise quickly, we have no time to lose.”

I sprang from my bed.

“Come, put on your clothes and let us go,” she said, pointing to a small parcel which she had brought. “The horses are impatiently champing their bits at the door. We ought to be thirty miles away by now.”

I dressed hastily, and she herself passed me the clothes, laughing at my awkwardness and telling me what they were when I made a mistake. She arranged my hair for me, and when it was done, she held out a small pocket-mirror of Venice crystal framed with silver filigree and said to me, “What do you think of yourself? Will you take me as your valet?”

I was no longer the same man and did not recognise myself. I was no more like myself than a finished statue is like a block of stone. My former face seemed to me but a coarse sketch of the one reflected in the mirror. I was handsome, and my vanity was sensibly tickled by the metamorphosis. The elegant clothes, the rich embroidered jacket, made me quite a different person, and I admired the power of transformation possessed by a few yards of stuff cut in a certain way. The spirit of my costume entered into me, and in ten minutes I was passably conceited. I walked up and down the room a few times to feel more at my ease in my new garments. Clarimonda looked at me with an air of maternal complaisance and appeared well satisfied with her work.

“Now, that is childishness enough. Let us be off, dear Romualdo; we are going a long way and we shall never get there.” As she touched the doors they opened, and we passed by the dog without waking it.

At the door we found Margheritone, the equerry who had already conducted me. He held three horses, black like the first, one for me, one for himself, and one for Clarimonda. The horses must have been Spanish jennets, sired by the gale, for they went as fast as the wind, and the moon, which had risen to light us at our departure, rolled in the heavens like a wheel detached from its car. We saw it on our right spring from tree to tree, breathlessly trying to keep up with us. We soon reached a plain where by a clump of trees waited a carriage drawn by four horses. We got into it and the horses started off at a mad gallop. I had one arm around Clarimonda’s waist and one of her hands in mine; she leaned her head on my shoulder, and I felt her half-bare bosom against my arm. I had never enjoyed such lively happiness. I forgot everything at that moment. I no more remembered having been a priest, so great was the fascination which the evil spirit exercised over me. From that night my nature became in some sort double. There were in me two men unknown to each other. Sometimes I fancied myself a priest who dreamed every night he was a nobleman; sometimes I fancied I was a nobleman who dreamed he was a priest. I was unable to distinguish between the vision and the waking, and I knew not where reality began and illusion ended. The conceited libertine rallied the priest; the priest hated the excesses of the young nobleman. Two spirals, twisted one within the other and confounded without ever touching, very aptly represent this bicephalous life of mine. Yet, in spite of the strangeness of this position, I do not think that for one instant I was mad. I always preserved very clearly the perception of my double life. Only there was an absurd fact which I could not explain: it was that the feeling of the same self should exist in two men so utterly different. That was an anomaly which I did not understand, whether I believed myself to be the parish priest of the little village of——or il Signor Romualdo, the declared lover of Clarimonda.

What is certain is that I was, or at least believed that I was, in Venice. I have never yet been able to make out what was true and what was imaginary in that strange adventure. We dwelt in a great marble palace on the Canaleio, full of frescoes and statues, with two paintings in Titian’s best manner in Clarimonda’s bedroom. It was a palace worthy of a king. Each of us had his own gondola and gondoliers, his own livery, music-room, and poet. Clarimonda liked to live in great style, and she had something of Cleopatra in her nature. As for me, I lived like a prince’s son, and acted as if I belonged to the family of the twelve Apostles or the four Evangelists of the Most Serene Republic; I would not have got out of my way to let the Doge pass, and I do not think that since Satan fell from heaven there was any one so proud and so insolent as I. I used to go to the Ridotto and gamble fearfully. I met the best society in the world, ruined eldest sons, swindlers, parasites, and swashbucklers, yet in spite of this dissipated life, I remained faithful to Clarimonda. I loved her madly. She would have awakened satiety itself and fixed inconstancy. I should have been perfectly happy but for the accursed nightmare which returned every night, and in which I thought myself a parish priest living an ascetic life and doing penance for his excesses of the daytime. Reassured by the habit of being with her, I scarcely ever thought of the strange manner in which I had made her acquaintance. However, what Father Serapion had told me about her occasionally occurred to my mind and caused me some uneasiness.

For some time past Clarimonda’s health had been failing. Her complexion was becoming paler and paler every day. The doctors, when called in, failed to understand her disease and knew not how to treat it. They prescribed insignificant remedies, and did not return. Meanwhile she became plainly paler, and colder and colder. She was almost as white and as dead as on that famous night in the unknown château. I was bitterly grieved to see her thus slowly pining away. She, touched by my sorrow, smiled gently and sadly at me with the smile of one who knows she is dying.

One morning I was seated by her bed breakfasting at a small table, in order not to leave her a minute. As I pared a fruit I happened to cut my finger rather deeply. The blood immediately flowed in a purple stream, and a few drops fell upon Clarimonda. Her eyes lighted up, her face assumed an expression of fierce and savage joy which I had never before beheld. She sprang from her bed with the agility of an animal, of a monkey or of a cat, and sprang at my wound, which she began to suck with an air of inexpressible delight. She sipped the blood slowly and carefully like a gourmand who enjoys a glass of sherry or Syracuse wine; she winked her eyes, the green pupils of which had become oblong instead of round. From time to time she broke off to kiss my hand, then she again pressed the wound with her lips so as to draw out a few more red drops. When she saw that the blood had ceased to flow, she rose up, rosier than a May morn, her face full, her eyes moist and shining, her hand soft and warm; in a word, more beautiful than ever and in a perfect state of health.

“I shall not die! I shall not die!” she said, half mad with joy, as she hung around my neck. “I shall be able to love you a long time yet. My life is in yours, and all that I am comes from you. A few drops of your rich, noble blood, more precious and more efficacious than all the elixirs in the world, have restored my life.”

The scene preoccupied me a long time and filled me with strange doubts concerning Clarimonda. That very evening, when sleep took me back to the presbytery, I saw Father Serapion, graver and more care-worn than ever. He looked at me attentively, and said to me: “Not satisfied with losing your soul, you want to lose your body also. Unfortunate youth, what a trap you have fallen into!” The tone in which he said these few words struck me greatly, but in spite of its vivacity, the impression was soon dispelled and numerous other thoughts effaced it from my mind. However, one evening I saw in my mirror, the perfidious position of which she had not taken into account, Clarimonda pouring a powder into the cup of spiced wine she was accustomed to prepare for me after the meal. I took the cup, feigned to carry it to my lips, and put it away as if to finish it later at leisure, but I profited by a moment when my beauty had turned her back, to throw the contents under the table, after which I withdrew to my room and went to bed, thoroughly determined not to sleep, and to see what she would do. I had not long to wait. Clarimonda entered in her night-dress, and having thrown it off, stretched herself in the bed by me. When she was quite certain that I was asleep, she bared my arm, drew a golden pin from her hair, and whispered, “One drop, nothing but a little red drop, a ruby at the end of my needle! Since you still love me, I must not die. Oh, my dear love! I shall drink your beautiful, brilliant, purple blood. Sleep, my sole treasure, my god and my child. I shall not hurt you, I shall only take as much of your life as I need not to lose my own. If I did not love you so much, I might make up my mind to have other lovers whose veins I would drain; but since I have known you, I have a horror of every one else. Oh, what a lovely arm, how round and white it is! I shall never dare to prick that pretty blue vein.” And as she spoke, she wept, and I felt her tears upon my arm which she held in her hands. At last she made up her mind, pricked me with the needle, and began to suck the blood that flowed. Though she had scarcely imbibed a few drops, she feared to exhaust me. She tied my arm with a narrow band, after having rubbed my wound with an unguent which healed it immediately.