“Going to make a scarecrow to keep the ravens off old Teufel’s
pictures,” answered Heinrich, as he went on dressing the lay-figure in
Karl’s clothes. He next seated the creature at an easel with its back to
the door, so that it should be the first thing the painter should see
when he entered. Karl meant to remove this before he went, for it was
too comical to fall in with the rest of his proceedings. But the two sat
down to their supper, and by the time they had finished the wine, they
thought they should like to go to bed. So they got up and went home, and
Karl forgot the lay-figure, leaving it in busy motionlessness all night
before the easel. When Teufelsbürst saw it, he turned and fled with a
cry that brought his daughter to his help. He rushed past her, able only
to articulate:
“The vampire! The vampire! Painting!”
Far more courageous than he, because her conscience was more peaceful,
Lilith passed on to the studio. She too recoiled a step or two when she
saw the figure; but with the sight of the back of Karl, as she supposed
it to be, came the longing to see the face that was on the other side.
So she crept round and round by the wall, as far off as she could. The
figure remained motionless. It was a strange kind of shock that she
experienced when she saw the face, disgusting from its inanity. The
absurdity next struck her; and with the absurdity flashed into her mind
the conviction that this was not the doing of a vampire; for of all
creatures under the moon, he could not be expected to be a humorist. A
wild hope sprang up in her mind that Karl was not dead. Of this she soon
resolved to make herself sure.
She closed the door of the studio; in the strength of her new hope
undressed the figure, put it in its place, concealed the garments--all
the work of a few minutes; and then, finding her father just recovering
from the worst of his fear, told him there was nothing in the studio but
what ought to be there, and persuaded him to go and see. He not only saw
no one, but found that no further liberties had been taken with his
pictures. Reassured, he soon persuaded himself that the spectre in this
case had been the offspring of his own terror-haunted brain. But he had
no spirit for painting now. He wandered about the house, himself
haunting it like a restless ghost.
When night came, Lilith retired to her own room. The waters of fear had
begun to subside in the house; but the painter and his old attendant did
not yet follow her example.
As soon, however, as the house was quite still, Lilith glided
noiselessly down the stairs, went into the studio, where as yet there
assuredly was no vampire, and concealed herself in a corner.
As it would not do for an earnest student like Heinrich to be away from
his work very often, he had not asked to accompany Lottchen this time.
And indeed Karl himself, a little anxious about the result of the
scarecrow, greatly preferred going alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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