The Story
It had been three years since we had last seen Mr. Blythe. Before he left Avonlea, he was wracked with coughing so often that he was pale and stooped. Three years on the prairies had restored his health to a marvelous degree, and although he was still thin, his tall form stood erect and his broad shoulders unbowed.
Despite this return to health, there was a gauntness about his face. His hazel eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about.
As we walked the long way 'round by the road, Mr. Blythe began to talk with his usual directness, of the bereavement he had sustained in the death of his beloved daughter Bertha. He then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell.
I did not understand his strange speech. By the expression on my father's face, he did not know the particulars either, although something of the matter must have been contained in Mr. Blythe's recent letter.
"Can you tell us what happened, John?" Father asked.
"I should tell you all with pleasure," said Mr. Blythe, "but you would not believe me."
"Why not?"
"You're a logical man, George," he answered. "You will believe what I can prove, but you may not believe what I have seen."
Father was quiet for a long moment. Then he ventured tentatively, "I have seen enough strange things recently to make me trust in your experience, John."
Mr. Blythe let out a harsh, wild laugh, such as I can only term a cackle. "Oh, but you have not heard it yet, George. See what you think when my story is all told."
I saw my father, at this point, glance at Mr. Blythe, with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity.
Mr. Blythe did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us.
"First, I will tell you why I insisted that we go to Green Gable immediately," he said. "Do you know the name of Cuthbert?"
Father nodded. "Yes. Elizabeth is related to them, a cousin of sorts."
"Indeed. My own grandmother was a Cuthbert and their cursed blood flows through my veins."
At this extraordinary pronouncement, my own blood seemed to curdle. If Mr. Blythe's blood were cursed, did that mean that mine was as well?
"There have been no true Cuthberts for decades," Father said in the gentle voice he used to soothe me when I was ill. "The house is ruined and nothing remains but a few graves."
"Graves, yes," Mr. Blythe said gruffly. "I will tell you what I mean to do. I mean to unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since."
My father looked at him with alarm. "John . . ."
"We have been very old friends, George," Mr. Blythe said. "You know how much I adored Bertha. After Sarah died, Bertha was all I had in the world, my light and my joy. That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long, but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to serve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!"
"Tell us, John," Father said, his voice thick will feeling. "What happened to Bertha?"
I was quite desperate to know the meaning of all this, and was very much gratified when Mr. Blythe took a long, slow breath, and began to speak:
"Three years ago, Dr. Blair advised me to go to a sanatorium in Alberta for my health. I could not bear to be parted from my dear Bertha, nor she from me, and so I arranged to bring her with me. The director of the sanatorium was very sympathetic and arranged for us to have a little cottage on the grounds, not so very far from the main building. The prairie air did wonders for my lungs, and in time I began to recover. All this past year my health has been so much improved that Bertha and I began to hope that we might soon come home to Avonlea.
As you know, Bertha was a great comfort and support to me throughout my illness. A sanatorium is no place for a young girl to pass the bloom of her youth, and I felt very sorry over Bertha having to attend me there. So you may imagine my delight when she made a friend.
About six months ago, she encountered a girl of just her age walking in the gardens of the sanatorium. Bertha told me that the girl's guardian was a new patient and that she, too, was very lonely. From the first day, the two were fast friends — kindred spirits, as Millarca used to say."
"Millarca?" Father asked.
"Indeed, she called herself Millarca. At first, I was not very curious about her. The girls would spend their days in the gardens or roaming the nearby prairies, and I was pleased that Bertha had found such a charming companion.
One day, a woman came to sit beside me as I took the fresh air on a bench in the garden. She was a striking personage, and though I had not seen her before, I could not help but feel that she was familiar in some way. She introduced herself as Millarca's guardian and we fell to talking about all manner of things. I found her to be a most agreeable companion. However, she made a startling request:
'Forgive me, sir,' she said. 'I cannot help but notice that our girls have formed a fast friendship in just a few short days. I hesitate to ask it of you, but the doctors tell me that I must undergo an intensive treatment that will keep me confined inside a breathing apparatus for some days. Would you be so kind as to take my dear Millarca home to your cottage with you and your daughter? I will come to fetch her as soon as I am finished with my treatment.
This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, Bertha came to my side, and, in an undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her guardian would allow her, she would like it extremely.
At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in.
So I consented."
At this point, Mr. Blythe paused in his story, as if overcome with emotion. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow, sniffling several times before he was able to continue.
"That day Millarca came home with us," he said. "I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear Bertha. Millarca became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people whom she had known or imagined.
There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Millarca complained of extreme languor and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window?
In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself.
My dear Bertha began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened.
She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied, by a specter, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side.
Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness."
You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at Orchard Slope. You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla!
Tentatively, my father asked, "John, can you describe this girl, this . . . Millarca? That is to say, what can you say of her appearance?"
"Oh, a most striking girl," Mr. Blythe answered. "Tall and slender, with green eyes and hair the color of carrots! No, there is no mistaking Millarca."
My father had made an odd, choking sound. I was alarmed to see that his face had gone very gray, as if perhaps his heart were failing. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and said, "Go on, John. I fear we must hear the end of this sad tale."
Mr. Blythe nodded, his face as long and sorrowful as ever.
"There is not much more to tell," he said with agony writ plain across his face. "My dear Bertha sank away slowly until I could not call her back. On the day she died, Millarca vanished from our cottage and from the sanatorium. When I went in search of her guardian, the director told me that they had no such patient under their care.
I buried sweet Bertha all in white, an innocent until the end. And since that day, I have traveled many miles, chasing whispers, hunting for the ghoul who brought such misery to me and mine."
My father was frowning so deeply that the expression seemed likely to remain etched in his face for all time.
"Forgive me, John," he said. "I do not doubt your account — no! Believe me, I do not! But I must ask, for the sake of absolute clarity: Is it not possible that Bertha succumbed to a natural illness, perhaps the very consumption for which you yourself sought treatment?"
Mr. Blythe laughed, a cruel, unhinged sound that made my flesh creep over my bones. "Indeed not!" he hissed. "It was not consumption that stole my Bertha from me, but the hell-demon Millarca! Do not doubt me, for I have learned much in my travels.
In Kingsport, I found a professor at the university who had made a study of demons, and in particular of the vampire, who drains the life from her victims under cover of night. Most people thought him quite mad, but I heard the sense in his words. I told him of Millarca and he knew immediately of whom I spoke.
He took me to his office, where he showed me many strange and wonderful documents, one of which was a map of Prince Edward Island. Imagine my surprise when I saw that Avonlea was given as much importance on his map as Charlottetown! Indeed, the professor told me that Avonlea is well known among those who study the occult, for it was once the home of the Cuthberts."
At that moment, we came to the ruined gate at the end of the lane that led up to Green Gables. The lane beyond the gate was rough and overgrown, leading to a forest of sumac and brambles that had grown up around the ruins of the old house. The Lombardies that once must have stood as stately sentinels were ragged now, and the willows hugely overgrown until they resembled monsters with a thousand swaying arms, looming over the remains of the gabled roof.
"And this was once the home of the Cuthberts!" said Mr. Blythe. "It was a bad family, and here its bloodstained annals were written. It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts."
Father and I stared, hardly knowing what to make of this speech and Mr. Blythe's extraordinary story.
"So you think that Millarca is connected to the Cuthberts?" Father ventured as we climbed the hill toward the house.
"Indeed." Mr. Blythe said, drawing a paper from his pocket. "The professor made it very plain. Look."
He held out the page, upon which was written in large, black letters:
MARILLA C
MILLARCA
CARMILLA
"You see," he said, eyes alight. "They are all three of them one and the same. She may try to hide herself in anagrams, but she is none other than Marilla C, last of the true Cuthberts, who walks the earth by many names, seeking her victims! I have come to find her grave and put a stop to her reign of horror!"
For my own part, I could not take the meaning of Mr. Blythe's words. How could Millarca and my Carmilla really be this long-dead Marilla C? My beloved, beautiful friend was no monster, and neither had she ever offered me the least injury. A vampire? I could not realize it.
Intent on his mission, Mr. Blythe did not stop at the house, but continued past it, seeking out the huge willow that shaded the tombs of the Cuthberts. He took a hand scythe from his pack and began to hack at the vegetation that grew over and around the gate, keeping it shut as effectively as any lock.
"We have a portrait, at home, marked Marilla C.; should you like to see it?" asked my father, seemingly hoping to divert Mr. Blythe from his goal.
"Time enough, dear friend," replied Mr. Blythe, breathing hard with the effort of his labors. "I believe that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the grave which we are now approaching."
"What! See Marilla C!" exclaimed my father. "Why, she has been dead more than a century!"
"Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered Mr. Blythe. "There remains to me but one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm."
"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in increasing amazement.
"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the undergrowth, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air.
"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered.
"To strike her head off."
"Cut her head off!"
"Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat!"
Mr. Blythe's hazel eyes, normally so kind and placid, burned with an intensity that seemed likely to burn holes in the objects of his gaze. With one last furious stroke, he cut away the bittersweet vines that held the gate closed, and kicked it open, lifting it from its very hinges. Panting, he stepped into the little graveyard, with Father and I at his heels.
It was a small space, only twenty feet square, with perhaps a dozen old-fashioned gravestones carved from slate and red sandstone. Many of these had been effaced by time and weather, but not all.
In the center of the graveyard stood a tall, flat headstone of gray slate, most wonderfully embellished with grim carvings: a crowned skeleton holding the moon in one hand and the sun in the other, attended by bats and wreathed in the sinuous body on an ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail and thus goes round and round unto infinity. The words engraved beneath this forbidding icon were obscured by rain-splattered mud, dry now, that flaked away when Mr. Blythe brushed it with his hand. There, etched deep in the stone were letters that filled me with a mortal terror:
MARILLA C
