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Page 2
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.
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