"carmilla" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fanu J Sheridan Le)

he was pallid and elderly. How well I remember his long saturnine face,
slightly pitted with small-pox, 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 remember, 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 remember 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