I was not frightened, for I was one
of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost
stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as 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 at finding myself, as I conceived,
neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of
roaring; when 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, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her
hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her,
smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep
again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two 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, and, as I thought, hid 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 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. “And how soon does he come?” I asked. “Not till autumn. Not for two months, I dare say,” he answered. “And I
am very glad now, dear, that you never knew Mademoiselle Rheinfeldt.”

“And why?” I asked, both mortified and curious. “Because the poor young lady is dead,” he replied. “I quite forgot I
had not told you, but you were not in the room when I received the
General’s letter this evening.”

I was very much shocked. General Spielsdorf had mentioned in his first
letter, six or seven weeks before, that she was not so well as he would
wish her, but there was nothing to suggest the remotest suspicion of
danger. “Here is the General’s letter,” he said, handing it to me. “I am afraid
he is in great affliction; the letter appears to me to have been
written very nearly in distraction.”

We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent lime trees. The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan
horizon, and the stream that flows beside our home, and passes under
the steep old bridge I have mentioned, wound through many a group of
noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading
crimson of the sky. General Spielsdorf’s letter was so extraordinary,
so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it
twice over—the second time aloud to my father—and was still unable to
account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind. It said “I have lost my darling daughter, for as such I loved her.