The Witch of Prague: A Fantastic Tale
by F. Marion Crawford · English · Gutenberg #3816 · 759,171 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Witch of Prague: A Fantastic Tale
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release date: April 13, 2006 [eBook #3816]
Most recently updated: November 3, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3816
Credits: Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH OF PRAGUE: A FANTASTIC TALE ***
Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
THE WITCH OF PRAGUE
A FANTASTIC TALE
By F. Marion Crawford
CHAPTER I
A great multitude of people filled the church, crowded together in
the old black pews, standing closely thronged in the nave and aisles,
pressing shoulder to shoulder even in the two chapels on the right and
left of the apse, a vast gathering of pale men and women whose eyes
were sad and in whose faces was written the history of their nation. The
mighty shafts and pilasters of the Gothic edifice rose like the stems of
giant trees in a primeval forest from a dusky undergrowth, spreading out
and uniting their stony branches far above in the upper gloom. From the
clerestory windows of the nave an uncertain light descended halfway to
the depths and seemed to float upon the darkness below as oil upon the
water of a well. Over the western entrance the huge fantastic organ
bristled with blackened pipes and dusty gilded ornaments of colossal
size, like some enormous kingly crown long forgotten in the lumber
room of the universe, tarnished and overlaid with the dust of ages.
Eastwards, before the rail which separated the high altar from the
people, wax torches, so thick that a man might not span one of them with
both his hands, were set up at irregular intervals, some taller, some
shorter, burning with steady, golden flames, each one surrounded with
heavy funeral wreaths, and each having a tablet below it, whereon were
set forth in the Bohemian idiom, the names, titles, and qualities of
him or her in whose memory it was lighted. Innumerable lamps and tapers
before the side altars and under the strange canopied shrines at the
bases of the pillars, struggled ineffectually with the gloom, shedding
but a few sickly yellow rays upon the pallid faces of the persons
nearest to their light.
Suddenly the heavy vibration of a single pedal note burst from the
organ upon the breathing silence, long drawn out, rich, voluminous,
and imposing. Presently, upon the massive bass, great chords grew up,
succeeding each other in a simple modulation, rising then with the
blare of trumpets and the simultaneous crash of mixtures, fifteenths
and coupled pedals to a deafening peal, then subsiding quickly again
and terminating in one long sustained common chord. And now, as the
celebrant bowed at the lowest step before the high altar, the voices of
the innumerable congregation joined the harmony of the organ, ringing
up to the groined roof in an ancient Slavonic melody, melancholy
and beautiful, and rendered yet more unlike all other music by the
undefinable character of the Bohemian language, in which tones softer
than those of the softest southern tongue alternate so oddly with rough
gutturals and strident sibilants.
The Wanderer stood in the midst of the throng, erect, taller than the
men near him, holding his head high, so that a little of the light from
the memorial torches reached his thoughtful, manly face, making the
noble and passionate features to stand out clearly, while losing its
power of illumination in the dark beard and among the shadows of his
hair. His was a face such as Rembrandt would have painted, seen under
the light that Rembrandt loved best; for the expression seemed to
overcome the surrounding gloom by its own luminous quality, while the
deep gray eyes were made almost black by the wide expansion of the
pupils; the dusky brows clearly defined the boundary in the face between
passion and thought, and the pale forehead, by its slight recession into
the shade from its middle prominence, proclaimed the man of heart, the
man of faith, the man of devotion, as well as the intuitive nature of
the delicately sensitive mind and the quick, elastic qualities of the
man’s finely organized, but nervous bodily constitution. The long white
fingers of one hand stirred restlessly, twitching at the fur of his
broad lapel which was turned back across his chest, and from time to
time he drew a deep breath and sighed, not painfully, but wearily and
hopelessly, as a man sighs who knows that his happiness is long past
and that his liberation from the burden of life is yet far off in the
future.
The celebrant reached the reading of the Gospel and the men and women
in the pews rose to their feet. Still the singing of the long-drawn-out
stanzas of the hymn continued with unflagging devotion, and still the
deep accompaniment of the ancient organ sustained the mighty chorus of
voices. The Gospel over, the people sank into their seats again, not
standing, as is the custom in some countries, until the Creed had
been said. Here and there, indeed, a woman, perhaps a stranger in the
country, remained upon her feet, noticeable among the many figures
seated in the pews. The Wanderer, familiar with many lands and many
varying traditions of worship, unconsciously noted these exceptions,
looking with a vague curiosity from one to the other. Then, all at once,
his tall frame shivered from head to foot, and his fingers convulsively
grasped the yielding sable on which they lay.
She was there, the woman he had sought so long, whose face he had not
found in the cities and dwellings of the living, neither her grave in
the silent communities of the dead. There, before the uncouth monument
of dark red marble beneath which Tycho Brahe rests in peace, there she
stood; not as he had seen her last on that day when his senses had left
him in the delirium of his sickness, not in the freshness of her bloom
and of her dark loveliness, but changed as he had dreamed in evil dreams
that death would have power to change her. The warm olive of her cheek
was turned to the hue of wax, the soft shadows beneath her velvet eyes
were deepened and hardened, her expression, once yielding and changing
under the breath of thought and feeling as a field of flowers when
the west wind blows, was now set, as though for ever, in a death-like
fixity. The delicate features were drawn and pinched, the nostrils
contracted, the colourless lips straightened out of the lines of beauty
into the mould of a lifeless mask. It was the face of a dead woman, but
it was her face still, and the Wanderer knew it well; in the kingdom
of his soul the whole resistless commonwealth of the emotions revolted
together to dethrone death’s regent--sorrow, while the thrice-tempered
springs of passion, bent but not broken, stirred suddenly in the palace
of his body and shook the strong foundations of his being.
During the seconds that followed, his eyes were riveted upon the beloved
head. Then, as the Creed ended, the vision sank down and was lost to his
sight. She was seated now, and the broad sea of humanity hid her from
him, though he raised himself the full height of his stature in the
effort to distinguish even the least part of her head-dress. To move
from his place was all but impossible, though the fierce longing to be
near her bade him trample even upon the shoulders of the throng to reach
her, as men have done more than once to save themselves from death by
fire in crowded places. Still the singing of the hymn continued, and
would continue, as he knew, until the moment of the Elevation. He
strained his hearing to catch the sounds that came from the quarter
where she sat. In a chorus of a thousand singers he fancied that he
could have distinguished the tender, heart-stirring vibration of her
tones. Never woman sang, never could woman sing again, as she had once
sung, though her voice had been as soft as it had been sweet, and tuned
to vibrate in the heart rather than in the ear. As the strains rose
and fell, the Wanderer bowed his head and closed his eyes, listening,
through the maze of sounds, for the silvery ring of her magic note.
Something he heard at last, something that sent a thrill from his ear to
his heart, unless indeed his heart itself were making music for his
ears to hear. The impression reached him fitfully, often interrupted and
lost, but as often renewing itself and reawakening in the listener the
certainty of recognition which he had felt at the sight of the singer’s
face.
He who loves with his whole soul has a knowledge and a learning which
surpass the wisdom of those who spend their lives in the study of things
living or long dead, or never animate. They, indeed, can construct
the figure of a flower from the dried web of a single leaf, or by the
examination of a dusty seed, and they can set up the scheme of life of a
shadowy mammoth out of a fragment of its skeleton, or tell the story
of hill and valley from the contemplation of a handful of earth or of
a broken pebble. Often they are right, sometimes they are driven deeper
and deeper into error by the complicated imperfections of their own
science. But he who loves greatly possesses in his intuition the
capacities of all instruments of observation which man has invented and
applied to his use. The lenses of his eyes can magnify the infinitesimal
detail to the dimensions of common things, and bring objects to his
vision from immeasurable distances; the labyrinth of his ear can choose
and distinguish amidst the harmonies and the discords of the world,
muffling in its tortuous passages the reverberation of ordinary sounds
while multiplying a hundredfold the faint tones of the one beloved
voice. His whole body and his whole intelligence form together an
instrument of exquisite sensibility whereby the perceptions of his
inmost soul are hourly tortured, delighted, caught up into ecstasy, torn
and crushed by jealousy and fear, or plunged into the frigid waters of
despair.
The melancholy hymn resounded through the vast church, but though the
Wanderer stretched the faculty of hearing to the utmost, he could no
longer find the note he sought amongst the vibrations of the dank and
heavy air. Then an irresistible longing came upon him to turn and force
his way through the dense throng of men and women, to reach the aisle
and press past the huge pillar till he could slip between the tombstone
of the astronomer and the row of back wooden seats. Once there, he
should see her face to face.
He turned, indeed, as he stood, and he tried to move a few steps. On all
sides curious looks were directed upon him, but no one offered to make
way, and still the monotonous singing continued until he felt himself
deafened, as he faced the great congregation.
“I am ill,” he said in a low voice to those nearest to him. “Pray let me
pass!”
His face was white, indeed, and those who heard his words believed him.
A mild old man raised his sad blue eyes, gazed at him, and while trying
to draw back, gently shook his head. A pale woman, whose sickly features
were half veiled in the folds of a torn black shawl, moved as far as
she could, shrinking as the very poor and miserable shrink when they are
expected to make way before the rich and the strong. A lad of fifteen
stood upon tiptoe to make himself even slighter than he was and thus to
widen the way, and the Wanderer found himself, after repeated efforts,
as much as two steps distant from his former position. He was still
trying to divide the crowd when the music suddenly ceased, and the
tones of the organ died away far up under the western window. It was the
moment of the Elevation, and the first silvery tinkling of the bell,
the people swayed a little, all those who were able kneeling, and those
whose movements were impeded by the press of worshippers bending towards
the altar as a field of grain before the gale. The Wanderer turned again
and bowed himself with the rest, devoutly and humbly, with half-closed
eyes, as he strove to collect and control his thoughts in the presence
of the chief mystery of his Faith. Three times the tiny bell was rung, a
pause followed, and thrice again the clear jingle of the metal broke the
solemn stillness. Then once more the people stirred, and the soft sound
of their simultaneous motion was like a mighty sigh breathed up from the
secret vaults and the deep foundations of the ancient church; again the
pedal note of the organ boomed through the nave and aisles, and again
the thousands of human voices took up the strain of song.
The Wanderer glanced about him, measuring the distance he must traverse
to reach the monument of the Danish astronomer and confronting it with
the short time which now remained before the end of the Mass. He saw
that in such a throng he would have no chance of gaining the position he
wished to occupy in less than half an hour, and he had not but a
scant ten minutes at his disposal. He gave up the attempt therefore,
determining that when the celebration should be over he would move
forward with the crowd, trusting to his superior stature and energy
to keep him within sight of the woman he sought, until both he and she
could meet, either just within or just without the narrow entrance of
the church.
Very soon the moment of action came. The singing died away, the
benediction was given, the second Gospel was read, the priest and the
people repeated the Bohemian prayers, and all was over. The countless
heads began to move onward, the shuffling of innumerable feet sent
heavy, tuneless echoes through vaulted space, broken every moment by the
sharp, painful cough of a suffering child whom no one could see in the
multitude, or by the dull thud of some heavy foot striking against the
wooden seats in the press. The Wanderer moved forward with the rest.
Reaching the entrance of the pew where she had sat he was kept back
during a few seconds by the half dozen men and women who were forcing
their way out of it before him. But at the farthest end, a figure
clothed in black was still kneeling. A moment more and he might enter
the pew and be at her side. One of the other women dropped something
before she was out of the narrow space, and stooped, fumbling and
searching in the darkness. At the minute, the slight, girlish figure
rose swiftly and passed like a shadow before the heavy marble monument.
The Wanderer saw that the pew was open at the other end, and without
heeding the woman who stood in his way, he sprang upon the low seat,
passed her, stepped to the floor upon the other side and was out in
the aisle in a moment. Many persons had already left the church and the
space was comparatively free.
She was before him, gliding quickly toward the door. Ere he could reach
her, he saw her touch the thick ice which filled the marble basin, cross
herself hurriedly and pass out. But he had seen her face again, and he
knew that he was not mistaken. The thin, waxen features were as those of
the dead, but they were hers, nevertheless. In an instant he could be by
her side. But again his progress was momentarily impeded by a number of
persons who were entering the building hastily to attend the next Mass.
Scarcely ten seconds later he was out in the narrow and dismal passage
which winds between the north side of the Teyn Kirche and the buildings
behind the Kinsky Palace. The vast buttresses and towers cast deep
shadows below them, and the blackened houses opposite absorb what
remains of the uncertain winter’s daylight. To the left of the church a
low arch spans the lane, affording a covered communication between the
north aisle and the sacristy. To the right the open space is somewhat
broader, and three dark archways give access to as many passages,
leading in radiating directions and under the old houses to the streets
beyond.
The Wanderer stood upon the steps, beneath the rich stone carvings which
set forth the Crucifixion over the door of the church, and his quick
eyes scanned everything within sight. To the left, no figure resembling
the one he sought was to be seen, but on the right, he fancied that
among a score of persons now rapidly dispersing he could distinguish
just within one of the archways a moving shadow, black against the
blackness. In an instant he had crossed the way and was hurrying through
the gloom. Already far before him, but visible and, as he believed,
unmistakable, the shade was speeding onward, light as mist, noiseless as
thought, but yet clearly to be seen and followed. He cried aloud, as he
ran,
“Beatrice! Beatrice!”
His strong voice echoed along the dank walls and out into the court
beyond. It was intensely cold, and the still air carried the sound
clearly to the distance. She must have heard him, she must have known
his voice, but as she crossed the open place, and the gray light fell
upon her, he could see that she did not raise her bent head nor slacken
her speed.
He ran on, sure of overtaking her in the passage she had now entered,
for she seemed to be only walking, while he was pursuing her at a
headlong pace. But in the narrow tunnel, when he reached it, she was
not, though at the farther end he imagined that the fold of a black
garment was just disappearing. He emerged into the street, in which he
could now see in both directions to a distance of fifty yards or more.
He was alone. The rusty iron shutters of the little shops were all
barred and fastened, and every door within the range of his vision was
closed. He stood still in surprise and listened. There was no sound to
be heard, not the grating of a lock, nor the tinkling of a bell, nor the
fall of a footstep.
He did not pause long, for he made up his mind as to what he should do
in the flash of a moment’s intuition. It was physically impossible that
she should have disappeared into any one of the houses which had their
entrances within the dark tunnel he had just traversed. Apart from the
presumptive impossibility of her being lodged in such a quarter, there
was the self-evident fact that he must have heard the door opened and
closed. Secondly, she could not have turned to the right, for in that
direction the street was straight and without any lateral exit, so that
he must have seen her. Therefore she must have gone to the left, since
on that side there was a narrow alley leading out of the lane, at some
distance from the point where he was now standing--too far, indeed, for
her to have reached it unnoticed, unless, as was possible, he had been
greatly deceived in the distance which had lately separated her from
him.
Without further hesitation, he turned to the left. He found no one
in the way, for it was not yet noon, and at that hour the people were
either at their prayers or at their Sunday morning’s potations, and the
place was as deserted as a disused cemetery. Still he hastened onward,
never pausing for breath, till he found himself all at once in the
great Ring. He knew the city well, but in his race he had bestowed no
attention upon the familiar windings and turnings, thinking only of
overtaking the fleeting vision, no matter how, no matter where. Now, on
a sudden, the great, irregular square opened before him, flanked on the
one side by the fantastic spires of the Teyn Church, and the blackened
front of the huge Kinsky Palace, on the other by the half-modern Town
Hall with its ancient tower, its beautiful porch, and the graceful oriel
which forms the apse of the chapel in the second story.
One of the city watchmen, muffled in his military overcoat, and
conspicuous by the great bunch of dark feathers that drooped from his
black hat, was standing idly at the corner from which the Wanderer
emerged. The latter thought of inquiring whether the man had seen a lady
pass, but the fellow’s vacant stare convinced him that no questioning
would elicit a satisfactory answer. Moreover, as he looked across the
square he caught sight of a retreating figure dressed in black, already
at such a distance as to make positive recognition impossible. In his
haste he found no time to convince himself that no living woman could
have thus outrun him, and he instantly resumed his pursuit, gaining
rapidly upon her he was following. But it is not an easy matter to
overtake even a woman, when she has an advantage of a couple of
hundred yards, and when the race is a short one. He passed the ancient
astronomical clock, just as the little bell was striking the third
quarter after eleven, but he did not raise his head to watch the
sad-faced apostles as they presented their stiff figures in succession
at the two square windows. When the blackened cock under the small
Gothic arch above flapped his wooden wings and uttered his melancholy
crow, the Wanderer was already at the corner of the little Ring, and
he could see the object of his pursuit disappearing before him into the
Karlsgasse. He noticed uneasily that the resemblance between the woman
he was following and the object of his loving search seemed now to
diminish, as in a bad dream, as the distance between himself and her
decreased. But he held resolutely on, nearing her at every step, round
a sharp corner to the right, then to the left, to the right again, and
once more in the opposite direction, always, as he knew, approaching
the old stone bridge. He was not a dozen paces behind her as she turned
quickly a third time to the right, round the wall of the ancient house
which faces the little square over against the enormous buildings
comprising the Clementine Jesuit monastery and the astronomical
observatory. As he sprang past the corner he saw the heavy door just
closing and heard the sharp resounding clang of its iron fastening. The
lady had disappeared, and he felt sure that she had gone through that
entrance.
He knew the house well, for it is distinguished from all others in
Prague, both by its shape and its oddly ornamented, unnaturally narrow
front. It is built in the figure of an irregular triangle, the blunt
apex of one angle facing the little square, the sides being erected on
the one hand along the Karlsgasse and on the other upon a narrow alley
which leads away towards the Jews’ quarter. Overhanging passages are
built out over this dim lane, as though to facilitate the interior
communications of the dwelling, and in the shadow beneath them there is
a small door studded with iron nails which is invariably shut. The main
entrance takes in all the scant breadth of the truncated angle which
looks towards the monastery. Immediately over it is a great window,
above that another, and, highest of all, under the pointed gable, a
round and unglazed aperture, within which there is inky darkness. The
windows of the first and second stories are flanked by huge figures of
saints, standing forth in strangely contorted attitudes, black with the
dust of ages, black as all old Prague is black, with the smoke of the
brown Bohemian coal, with the dark and unctuous mists of many autumns,
with the cruel, petrifying frosts of ten score winters.
He who knew the cities of men as few have known them, knew also
this house. Many a time had he paused before it by day and by night,
wondering who lived within its massive, irregular walls, behind those
uncouth, barbarously sculptured saints who kept their interminable watch
high up by the lozenged windows. He would know now. Since she whom
he sought had entered, he would enter too; and in some corner of that
dwelling which had long possessed a mysterious attraction for his eyes,
he would find at last that being who held power over his heart, that
Beatrice whom he had learned to think of as dead, while still believing
that somewhere she must be yet alive, that dear lady whom, dead or
living, he loved beyond all others, with a great love, passing words.
CHAPTER II
The Wanderer stood still before the door. In the freezing air, his
quick-drawn breath made fantastic wreaths of mist, white and full of
odd shapes as he watched the tiny clouds curling quickly into each other
before the blackened oak. Then he laid his hand boldly upon the chain of
the bell. He expected to hear the harsh jingling of cracked metal, but
he was surprised by the silvery clearness and musical quality of the
ringing tones which reached his ear. He was pleased, and unconsciously
took the pleasant infusion for a favourable omen. The heavy door swung
back almost immediately, and he was confronted by a tall porter in dark
green cloth and gold lacings, whose imposing appearance was made still
more striking by the magnificent fair beard which flowed down almost to
his waist. The man lifted his heavy cocked hat and held it low at
his side as he drew back to let the visitor enter. The latter had not
expected to be admitted thus without question, and paused under the
bright light which illuminated the arched entrance, intending to make
some inquiry of the porter. But the latter seemed to expect nothing of
the sort. He carefully closed the door, and then, bearing his hat in one
hand and his gold-headed staff in the other, he proceeded gravely to the
other end of the vaulted porch, opened a great glazed door and held it
back for the visitor to pass.
The Wanderer recognized that the farther he was allowed to penetrate
unhindered into the interior of the house, the nearer he should be to
the object of his search. He did not know where he was, nor what he
might find. For all that he knew, he might be in a club, in a great
banking-house, or in some semi-public institution of the nature of a
library, an academy or a conservatory of music. There are many such
establishments in Prague, though he was not acquainted with any in which
the internal arrangements so closely resembled those of a luxurious
private residence. But there was no time for hesitation, and he ascended
the broad staircase with a firm step, glancing at the rich tapestries
which covered the walls, at the polished surface of the marble steps
on either side of the heavy carpet, and at the elaborate and beautiful
iron-work of the hand-rail. As he mounted higher, he heard the quick
rapping of an electric signal above him, and he understood that the
porter had announced his coming. Reaching the landing, he was met by a
servant in black, as correct at all points as the porter himself, and
who bowed low as he held back the thick curtain which hung before the
entrance. Without a word the man followed the visitor into a high room
of irregular shape, which served as a vestibule, and stood waiting to
receive the guest’s furs, should it please him to lay them aside. To
pause now, and to enter into an explanation with a servant, would have
been to reject an opportunity which might never return. In such an
establishment, he was sure of finding himself before long in the
presence of some more or less intelligent person of his own class, of
whom he could make such inquiries as might enlighten him, and to whom he
could present such excuses for his intrusion as might seem most fitting
in so difficult a case. He let his sables fall into the hands of the
servant and followed the latter along a short passage.
The man introduced him into a spacious hall and closed the door, leaving
him to his own reflections. The place was very wide and high and without
windows, but the broad daylight descended abundantly from above through
the glazed roof and illuminated every corner. He would have taken the
room for a conservatory, for it contained a forest of tropical trees and
plants, and whole gardens of rare southern flowers. Tall letonias,
date palms, mimosas and rubber trees of many varieties stretched their
fantastic spikes and heavy leaves half-way up to the crystal ceiling;
giant ferns swept the polished marble floor with their soft embroideries
and dark green laces; Indian creepers, full of bright blossoms, made
screens and curtains of their intertwining foliage; orchids of every
hue and of every exotic species bloomed in thick banks along the walls.
Flowers less rare, violets and lilies of the valley, closely set and
luxuriant, grew in beds edged with moss around the roots of the larger
plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist
and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in
southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of
softly-falling water.
Having advanced a few steps from the door, the Wanderer stood still and
waited, supposing that the owner of the dwelling would be made aware
of a visitor’s presence and would soon appear. But no one came. Then
a gentle voice spoke from amidst the verdure, apparently from no great
distance.
“I am here,” it said.
He moved forward amidst the ferns and the tall plants, until he found
himself on the farther side of a thick network of creepers. Then he
paused, for he was in the presence of a woman, of her who dwelt among
the flowers. She was sitting before him, motionless and upright in a
high, carved chair, and so placed that the pointed leaves of the palm
which rose above her cast sharp, star-shaped shadows over the broad
folds of her white dress. One hand, as white, as cold, as heavily
perfect as the sculpture of a Praxiteles or a Phidias, rested with
drooping fingers on the arm of the chair. The other pressed the pages
of a great book which lay open on the lady’s knee. Her face was turned
toward the visitor, and her eyes examined his face; calmly and with no
surprise in them, but not without a look of interest. Their expression
was at once so unusual, so disquieting, and yet so inexplicably
attractive as to fascinate the Wanderer’s gaze. He did not remember that
he had ever seen a pair of eyes of distinctly different colours, the one
of a clear, cold gray, the other of a deep, warm brown, so dark as to
seem almost black, and he would not have believed that nature could so
far transgress the canons of her own art and yet preserve the appearance
of beauty. For the lady was beautiful, from the diadem of her red gold
hair to the proud curve of her fresh young lips; from her broad, pale
forehead, prominent and boldly modelled at the angles of the brows, to
the strong mouldings of the well-balanced chin, which gave evidence of
strength and resolution wherewith to carry out the promise of the high
aquiline features and of the wide and sensitive nostrils.
“Madame,” said the Wanderer, bending his head courteously and advancing
another step, “I can neither frame excuses for having entered your house
unbidden, nor hope to obtain indulgence for my intrusion, unless you are
willing in the first place to hear my short story. May I expect so much
kindness?”
He paused, and the lady looked at him fixedly and curiously. Without
taking her eyes from his face, and without speaking, she closed the book
she had held on her knee, and laid it beside her upon a low table. The
Wanderer did not avoid her gaze, for he had nothing to conceal, nor any
sense of timidity. He was an intruder upon the privacy of one whom he
did not know, but he was ready to explain his presence and to make such
amends as courtesy required, if he had given offence.
The heavy odours of the flowers filled his nostrils with an unknown,
luxurious delight, as he stood there, gazing into the lady’s eyes; he
fancied that a gentle breath of perfumed air was blowing softly over his
hair and face out of the motionless palms, and the faint plashing of the
hidden fountain was like an exquisite melody in his ears. It was good to
be in such a place, to look on such a woman, to breathe such odours, and
to hear such tuneful music. A dreamlike, half-mysterious satisfaction of
the senses dulled the keen self-knowledge of body and soul for one
short moment. In the stormy play of his troubled life there was a brief
interlude of peace. He tasted the fruit of the lotus, his lips were
moistened in the sweet waters of forgetfulness.
The lady spoke at last, and the spell left him, not broken, as by a
sudden shock, but losing its strong power by quick degrees until it was
wholly gone.
“I will answer your question by another,” said the lady. “Let your reply
be the plain truth. It will be better so.”
“Ask what you will. I have nothing to conceal.”
“Do you know who and what I am? Do you come here out of curiosity, in
the vain hope of knowing me, having heard of me from others?”
“Assuredly not.” A faint flush rose in the man’s pale and noble face.
“You have my word,” he said, in the tone of one who is sure of being
believed, “that I have never, to my knowledge, heard of your existence,
that I am ignorant even of your name--forgive my ignorance--and that I
entered this house, not knowing whose it might be, seeking and following
after one for whom I have searched the world, one dearly loved, long
lost, long sought.”
“It is enough. Be seated. I am Unorna.”
“Unorna?” repeated the Wanderer, with an unconscious question in his
voice, as though the name recalled some half-forgotten association.
“Unorna--yes. I have another name,” she added, with a shade of
bitterness, “but it is hardly mine. Tell me your story. You loved--you
lost--you seek--so much I know. What else?”
The Wanderer sighed.
“You have told in those few words the story of my life--the unfinished
story. A wanderer I was born, a wanderer I am, a wanderer I must ever
be, until at last I find her whom I seek. I knew her in a strange land,
far from my birthplace, in a city where I was known but to a few, and
I loved her. She loved me, too, and that against her father’s will. He
would not have his daughter wed with one not of her race; for he himself
had taken a wife among strangers, and while she was yet alive he had
repented of what he had done. But I would have overcome his reasons and
his arguments--she and I could have overcome them together, for he did
not hate me, he bore me no ill-will. We were almost friends when I last
took his hand. Then the hour of destiny came upon me. The air of that
city was treacherous and deadly. I had left her with her father, and my
heart was full of many things, and of words both spoken and unuttered. I
lingered upon an ancient bridge that spanned the river, and the sun went
down. Then the evil fever of the south laid hold upon me and
poisoned the blood in my veins, and stole the consciousness from my
understanding. Weeks passed away, and memory returned, with the strength
to speak. I learned that she I loved and her father were gone, and none
knew whither. I rose and left the accursed city, being at that time
scarce able to stand upright upon my feet. Finding no trace of those I
sought, I journeyed to their own country, for I knew where her father
held his lands. I had been ill many weeks and much time had passed, from
the day on which I had left her, until I was able to move from my bed.
When I reached the gates of her home, I was told that all had been
lately sold, and that others now dwelt within the walls. I inquired of
those new owners of the land, but neither they or any of all those whom
I questioned could tell me whither I should direct my search. The father
was a strange man, loving travel and change and movement, restless and
unsatisfied with the world, rich and free to make his own caprice his
guide through life; reticent he was, moreover, and thoughtful, not given
to speaking out his intentions. Those who administered his affairs in
his absence were honourable men, bound by his especial injunction not to
reveal his ever-varying plans. Many times, in my ceaseless search, I met
persons who had lately seen him and his daughter and spoken with them.
I was ever on their track, from hemisphere to hemisphere, from continent
to continent, from country to country, from city to city, often
believing myself close upon them, often learning suddenly that an ocean
lay between them and me. Was he eluding me, purposely, resolutely, or
was he unconscious of my desperate pursuit, being served by chance alone
and by his own restless temper? I do not know. At last, some one told me
that she was dead, speaking thoughtlessly, not knowing that I loved her.
He who told me had heard the news from another, who had received it on
hearsay from a third. None knew in what place her spirit had parted;
none knew by what manner of sickness she had died. Since then, I have
heard others say that she is not dead, that they have heard in their
turn from others that she yet lives. An hour ago, I knew not what to
think. To-day, I saw her in a crowded church. I heard her voice, though
I could not reach her in the throng, struggle how I would. I followed
her in haste, I lost her at one turning, I saw her before me at the
next. At last a figure, clothed as she had been clothed, entered your
house. Whether it was she I know not certainly, but I do know that in
the church I saw her. She cannot be within your dwelling without your
knowledge; if she be here--then I have found her, my journey is ended,
my wanderings have led me home at last. If she be not here, if I have
been mistaken, I entreat you to let me set eyes on that other whom I
mistook for her, to forgive then my mannerless intrusion and to let me
go.”
Unorna had listened with half-closed eyes, but with unfaltering
attention, watching the speaker’s face from beneath her drooping lids,
making no effort to read his thoughts, but weighing his words and
impressing every detail of his story upon her mind. When he had done
there was silence for a time, broken only by the plash and ripple of the
falling water.
“She is not here,” said Unorna at last. “You shall see for yourself.
There is indeed in this house a young girl to whom I am deeply attached,
who has grown up at my side and has always lived under my roof. She is
very pale and dark, and is dressed always in black.”
“Like her I saw.”
“You shall see her again. I will send for her.” Unorna pressed an ivory
key in the silver ball which lay beside her, attached to a thick cord of
white silk. “Ask Sletchna Axenia to come to me,” she said to the servant
who opened the door in the distance, out of sight behind the forest of
plants.
Amid less unusual surroundings the Wanderer would have rejected with
contempt the last remnants of his belief in the identity of Unorna’s
companion, with Beatrice. But, being where he was, he felt unable to
decide between the possible and the impossible, between what he might
reasonably expect and what lay beyond the bounds of reason itself.
The air he breathed was so loaded with rich exotic perfumes, the woman
before him was so little like other women, her strangely mismatched eyes
had for his own such a disquieting attraction, all that he saw and felt
and heard was so far removed from the commonplaces of daily life as to
make him feel that he himself was becoming a part of some other person’s
existence, that he was being gradually drawn away from his identity, and
was losing the power of thinking his own thoughts. He reasoned as
the shadows reason in dreamland, the boundaries of common probability
receded to an immeasurable distance, and he almost ceased to know where
reality ended and where imagination took up the sequence of events.
Who was this woman, who called herself Unorna? He tried to consider the
question, and to bring his intelligence to bear upon it. Was she a great
lady of Prague, rich, capricious, creating a mysterious existence for
herself, merely for her own good pleasure? Her language, her voice,
her evident refinement gave colour to the idea, which was in itself
attractive to a man who had long ceased to expect novelty in this
working-day world. He glanced at her face, musing and wondering,
inhaling the sweet, intoxicating odours of the flowers and listening to
the tinkling of the hidden fountain. Her eyes were gazing into his, and
again, as if by magic, the curtain of life’s stage was drawn together
in misty folds, shutting out the past, the present, and the future, the
fact, the doubt, and the hope, in an interval of perfect peace.
He was roused by the sound of a light footfall upon the marble pavement.
Unorna’s eyes were turned from his, and with something like a movement
of surprise he himself looked towards the new comer. A young girl was
standing under the shadow of a great letonia at a short distance from
him. She was very pale indeed, but not with that death-like, waxen
pallor which had chilled him when he had looked upon that other face.
There was a faint resemblance in the small, aquiline features, the dress
was black, and the figure of the girl before him was assuredly neither
much taller nor much shorter than that of the woman he loved and sought.
But the likeness went no further, and he knew that he had been utterly
mistaken.
Unorna exchanged a few indifferent words with Axenia and dismissed her.
“You have seen,” she said, when the young girl was gone. “Was it she who
entered the house just now?”
“Yes. I was misled by a mere resemblance. Forgive me for my
importunity--let me thank you most sincerely for your great kindness.”
He rose as he spoke.
“Do not go,” said Unorna, looking at him earnestly.
He stood still, silent, as though his attitude should explain itself,
and yet expecting that she would say something further. He felt that her
eyes were upon him, and he raised his own to meet the look frankly, as
was his wont. For the first time since he had entered her presence
he felt that there was more than a mere disquieting attraction in her
steady gaze; there was a strong, resistless fascination, from which he
had no power to withdraw himself. Almost unconsciously he resumed his
seat, still looking at her, while telling himself with a severe effort
that he would look but one instant longer and then turn away. Ten
seconds passed, twenty, half a minute, in total silence. He was
confused, disturbed, and yet wholly unable to shut out her penetrating
glance. His fast ebbing consciousness barely allowed him to wonder
whether he was weakened by the strong emotions he had felt in the
church, or by the first beginning of some unknown and unexpected malady.
He was utterly weak and unstrung. He could neither rise from his seat,
nor lift his hand, nor close the lids of his eyes. It was as though
an irresistible force were drawing him into the depths of a fathomless
whirlpool, down, down, by its endless giddy spirals, robbing him of a
portion of his consciousness at every gyration, so that he left behind
him at every instant something of his individuality, something of the
central faculty of self-recognition. He felt no pain, but he did
not feel that inexpressible delight of peace which already twice had
descended upon him. He experienced a rapid diminution of all perception,
of all feeling, of all intelligence. Thought, and the memory of thought,
ebbed from his brain and left it vacant, as the waters of a lock subside
when the gates are opened, leaving emptiness in their place.
Unorna’s eyes turned from him, and she raised her hand a moment, letting
it fall again upon her knee. Instantly the strong man was restored to
himself; his weakness vanished, his sight was clear, his intelligence
was awake. Instantly the certainty flashed upon him that Unorna
possessed the power of imposing the hypnotic sleep and had exercised
that gift upon him, unexpectedly and against his will. He would have
more willingly supposed that he had been the victim of a momentary
physical faintness, for the idea of having been thus subjected to the
influence of a woman, and of a woman whom he hardly knew, was repugnant
to him, and had in it something humiliating to his pride, or at least
to his vanity. But he could not escape the conviction forced upon him by
the circumstances.
“Do not go far, for I may yet help you,” said Unorna, quietly. “Let us
talk of this matter and consult what is best to be done. Will you accept
a woman’s help?”
“Readily. But I cannot accept her will as mine, nor resign my
consciousness into her keeping.”
“Not for the sake of seeing her whom you say you love?”
The Wanderer was silent, being yet undetermined how to act, and still
unsteadied by what he had experienced. But he was able to reason, and he
asked of his judgment what he should do, wondering what manner of woman
Unorna might prove to be, and whether she was anything more than one of
those who live and even enrich themselves by the exercise of the unusual
faculties of powers nature has given them. He had seen many of that
class, and he considered most of them to be but half fanatics, half
charlatans, worshipping in themselves as something almost divine that
which was but a physical power, or weakness, beyond their own limited
comprehension. Though a whole school of wise and thoughtful men had
already produced remarkable results and elicited astounding facts by
sifting the truth through a fine web of closely logical experiment,
it did not follow that either Unorna, or any other self-convinced,
self-taught operator could do more than grope blindly towards the light,
guided by intuition alone amongst the varied and misleading phenomena
of hypnotism. The thought of accepting the help of one who was probably,
like most of her kind, a deceiver of herself and therefore, and thereby,
of others, was an affront to the dignity of his distress, a desecration
of his love’s sanctity, a frivolous invasion of love’s holiest ground.
But, on the other hand, he was stimulated to catch at the veriest
shadows of possibility by the certainty that he was at last within the
same city with her he loved, and he knew that hypnotic subjects are
sometimes able to determine the abode of persons whom no one else can
find. To-morrow it might be too late. Even before to-day’s sun had set
Beatrice might be once more taken from him, snatched away to the ends
of the earth by her father’s ever-changing caprice. To lose a moment now
might be to lose all.
He was tempted to yield, to resign his will into Unorna’s hands, and his
sight to her leading, to let her bid him sleep and see the truth. But
then, with a sudden reaction of his individuality, he realized that
he had another course, surer, simpler, more dignified. Beatrice was in
Prague. It was little probable that she was permanently established in
the city, and in all likelihood she and her father were lodged in one of
the two or three great hotels. To be driven from the one to the other of
these would be but an affair of minutes. Failing information from this
source, there remained the registers of the Austrian police, whose
vigilance takes note of every stranger’s name and dwelling-place.
“I thank you,” he said. “If all my inquiries fail, and if you will let
me visit you once more to-day, I will then ask your help.”
“You are right,” Unorna answered.
CHAPTER III
He had been deceived in supposing that he must inevitably find the
names of those he sought upon the ordinary registers which chronicle
the arrival and departure of travellers. He lost no time, he spared
no effort, driving from place to place as fast as two sturdy Hungarian
horses could take him, hurrying from one office to another, and again
and again searching endless pages and columns which seemed full of all
the names of earth, but in which he never found the one of all others
which he longed to read. The gloom in the narrow streets was already
deepening, though it was scarcely two hours after mid-day, and the
heavy air had begun to thicken with a cold gray haze, even in the broad,
straight Przikopy, the wide thoroughfare which has taken the place and
name of the moat before the ancient fortifications, so that distant
objects and figures lost the distinctness of their outlines. Winter in
Prague is but one long, melancholy dream, broken sometimes at noon by an
hour of sunshine, by an intermittent visitation of reality, by the shock
and glare of a little broad daylight. The morning is not morning,
the evening is not evening; as in the land of the Lotus, it is ever
afternoon, gray, soft, misty, sad, save when the sun, being at his
meridian height, pierces the dim streets and sweeps the open places with
low, slanting waves of pale brightness. And yet these same dusky streets
are thronged with a moving multitude, are traversed ever by ceaseless
streams of men and women, flowing onward, silently, swiftly, eagerly.
The very beggars do not speak above a whisper, the very dogs are dumb.
The stillness of all voices leaves nothing for the perception of the
hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle
of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the
clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive
silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious,
half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of the sound.
And yet Prague is a great city, the capital of the Bohemian Crownland,
the centre of a not unimportant nation, the focus in which are
concentrated the hottest, if not the brightest, rays from the fire of
regeneration kindled within the last half century by the Slavonic race.
There is an ardent furnace of life hidden beneath the crust of ashes:
there is a wonderful language behind that national silence.
The Wanderer stood in deep thought under the shadow of the ancient
Powder Tower. Haste had no further object now, since he had made every
inquiry within his power, and it was a relief to feel the pavement
beneath his feet and to breathe the misty frozen air after having been
so long in the closeness of his carriage. He hesitated as to what
he should do, unwilling to return to Unorna and acknowledge himself
vanquished, yet finding it hard to resist his desire to try every means,
no matter how little reasonable, how evidently useless, how puerile
and revolting to his sounder sense. The street behind him led directly
towards Unorna’s house. Had he found himself in a more remote quarter,
he might have come to another and a wiser conclusion. Being so near to
the house of which he was thinking, he yielded to the temptation. Having
reached this stage of resolution, his mind began to recapitulate the
events of the day, and he suddenly felt a strong wish to revisit the
church, to stand in the place where Beatrice had stood, to touch in the
marble basin beside the door the thick ice which her fingers had touched
so lately, to traverse again the dark passages through which he had
pursued her. To accomplish his purpose he need only turn aside a few
steps from the path he was now following. He left the street almost
immediately, passing under a low arched way that opened on the
right-hand side, and a moment later he was within the walls of the Teyn
Kirche.
The vast building was less gloomy than it had been in the morning.
It was not yet the hour of vespers, the funeral torches had been
extinguished, as well as most of the lights upon the high altar, there
were not a dozen persons in the church, and high up beneath the roof
broad shafts of softened sunshine, floating above the mists of the city
without, streamed through the narrow lancet windows and were diffused
in the great gloom below. The Wanderer went to the monument of Brahe and
sat down in the corner of the blackened pew. His hands trembled a little
as he clasped them upon his knee, and his head sank slowly towards his
breast.
He thought of all that might have been if he had risked everything that
morning. He could have used his strength to force a way for himself
through the press, he could have thrust the multitude to the right and
left, and he could have reached her side. Perhaps he had been weak,
indolent, timid, and he accused himself of his own failure. But then,
again, he seemed to see about him the closely packed crowd, the sea of
faces, the thick, black mass of humanity, and he knew the tremendous
power that lay in the inert, passive resistance of a vast gathering
such as had been present. Had it been anywhere else, in a street, in a
theatre, anywhere except in a church, all would have been well. It had
not been his fault, for he knew, when he thought of it calmly, that the
strength of his body would have been but as a breath of air against the
silent, motionless, and immovable barrier presented by a thousand men,
standing shoulder to shoulder against him. He could have done nothing.
Once again his fate had defeated him at the moment of success.
He was aware that some one was standing very near to him. He looked up
and saw a very short, gray-bearded man engaged in a minute examination
of the dark red marble face on the astronomer’s tomb. The man’s head,
covered with closely-cropped gray hair, was half buried between his
high, broad shoulders, in an immense collar of fur, but the shape of
the skull was so singular as to distinguish its possessor, when hatless,
from all other men. The cranium was abnormally shaped, reaching a great
elevation at the summit, then sinking suddenly, then spreading forward
to an enormous development at the temple just visible as he was then
standing, and at the same time forming unusual protuberances behind the
large and pointed ears. No one who knew the man could mistake his head,
when even the least portion of it could be seen. The Wanderer recognised
him at once.
As though he were conscious of being watched, the little man turned
sharply, exhibiting his wrinkled forehead, broad at the brows, narrow
and high in the middle, showing, too, a Socratic nose half buried in the
midst of the gray hair which grew as high as the prominent cheek bones,
and suggesting the idea of a polished ivory ball lying in a nest of
grayish wool. Indeed all that was visible of the face above the beard
might have been carved out of old ivory, so far as the hue and quality
of the surface were concerned; and if it had been necessary to sculpture
a portrait of the man, no material could have been chosen more fitted
to reproduce faithfully the deep cutting of the features, to render the
close network of the wrinkles which covered them like the shadings of a
line engraving, and at the same time to give the whole that appearance
of hardness and smoothness which was peculiar to the clear, tough skin.
The only positive colour which relieved the half tints of the face lay
in the sharp bright eyes which gleamed beneath the busy eyebrows like
tiny patches of vivid blue sky seen through little rifts in a curtain of
cloud. All expression, all mobility, all life were concentrated in those
two points.
The Wanderer rose to his feet.
“Keyork Arabian!” he exclaimed, extending his hand. The little man
immediately gripped it in his small fingers, which, soft and delicately
made as they were, possessed a strength hardly to have been expected
either from their shape, or from the small proportions of him to whom
they belonged.
“Still wandering?” asked the little man, with a slightly sarcastic
intonation. He spoke in a deep, caressing bass, not loud, but rich in
quality and free from that jarring harshness which often belongs to very
manly voices. A musician would have discovered that the pitch was that
of those Russian choristers whose deep throats yield organ tones, a full
octave below the compass of ordinary singers in other lands.
“You must have wandered, too, since we last met,” replied the taller
man.
“I never wander,” said Keyork. “When a man knows what he wants,
knows where it is to be found, and goes thither to take it, he is not
wandering. Moreover, I have no thought of removing myself or my goods
from Prague. I live here. It is a city for old men. It is saturnine. The
foundations of its houses rest on the silurian formation, which is more
than can be said for any other capital, as far as I know.”
“Is that an advantage?” inquired the Wanderer.
“To my mind. I would say to my son, if I had one--my thanks to a blind
but intelligent destiny for preserving me from such a calamity!--I would
say to him, ‘Spend thy youth among flowers in the land where they are
brightest and sweetest; pass thy manhood in all lands where man strives
with man, thought for thought, blow for blow; choose for thine old age
that spot in which, all things being old, thou mayest for the longest
time consider thyself young in comparison with thy surroundings.’ A man
can never feel old if he contemplates and meditates upon those
things only which are immeasurably older than himself. Moreover the
imperishable can preserve the perishable.”
“It was not your habit to talk of death when we were together.”
“I have found it interesting of late years. The subject is connected
with one of my inventions. Did you ever embalm a body? No? I could tell
you something singular about the newest process.”
“What is the connection?”
“I am embalming myself, body and mind. It is but an experiment,
and unless it succeeds it must be the last. Embalming, as it is now
understood, means substituting one thing for another. Very good. I
am trying to purge from my mind its old circulating medium; the new
thoughts must all be selected from a class which admits of no decay.
Nothing could be simpler.”
“It seems to me that nothing could be more vague.”
“You were not formerly so slow to understand me,” said the strange
little man with some impatience.
“Do you know a lady of Prague who calls herself Unorna?” the Wanderer
asked, paying no attention to his friend’s last remark.
“I do. What of her?” Keyork Arabian glanced keenly at his companion.
“What is she? She has an odd name.”
“As for her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the
twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bisextile.
Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, ‘belonging to
February.’ Some one gave her the name to commemorate the circumstance.”
“Her parents, I suppose.”
“Most probably--whoever they may have been.”
“And what is she?” the Wanderer asked.
“She calls herself a witch,” answered Keyork with considerable scorn. “I
do not know what she is, or what to call her--a sensitive, an hysterical
subject, a medium, a witch--a fool, if you like, or a charlatan if you
prefer the term. Beautiful she is, at least, whatever else she may not
be.”
“Yes, she is beautiful.”
“So you have seen her, have you?” The little man again looked sharply up
at his tall companion. “You have had a consultation----”
“Does she give consultations? Is she a professional seer?” The Wanderer
asked the question in a tone of surprise. “Do you mean that she
maintains an establishment upon such a scale out of the proceeds of
fortune-telling?”
“I do not mean anything of the sort. Fortune-telling is excellent! Very
good!” Keyork’s bright eyes flashed with amusement. “What are you doing
here--I mean in this church?” He put the question suddenly.
“Pursuing--an idea, if you please to call it so.”
“Not knowing what you mean I must please to call your meaning by your
own name for it. It is your nature to be enigmatic. Shall we go out?
If I stay here much longer I shall be petrified instead of embalmed. I
shall turn into dirty old red marble like Tycho’s effigy there, an awful
warning to future philosophers, and an example for the edification of
the faithful who worship here.”
They walked towards the door, and the contrast between the appearance
of the two brought the ghost of a smile to the thin lips of the pale
sacristan, who was occupied in renewing the tapers upon one of the
side altars. Keyork Arabian might have stood for the portrait of the
gnome-king. His high and pointed head, his immense beard, his stunted
but powerful and thickset limbs, his short, sturdy strides, the fiery,
half-humorous, half-threatening twinkle of his bright eyes gave him
all the appearance of a fantastic figure from a fairy tale, and the
diminutive height of his compact frame set off the noble stature and
graceful motion of his companion.
“So you were pursuing an idea,” said the little man as they emerged into
the narrow street. “Now ideas may be divided variously into classes,
as, for instance, ideas which are good, bad, or indifferent. Or you may
contrast the idea of Plato with ideas anything but platonic--take it
as you please. Then there is my idea, which is in itself, good,
interesting, and worthy of the embalming process; and there is your
idea, which I am human enough to consider altogether bad, worthless,
and frivolous, for the plain and substantial reason that it is not mine.
Perhaps that is the best division of all. Thine eye is necessarily,
fatally, irrevocably evil, because mine is essentially, predestinately,
and unchangeably good. If I secretly adopt your idea, I openly assert
that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the
prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior
wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate
it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none concerning any
special point, I will force you to accept mine, as mine, or to die the
intellectual death. That is the general theory of the idea.”
“And what does it prove?” inquired the Wanderer.
“If you knew anything,” answered Keyork, with twinkling eyes, “you would
know that a theory is not a demonstration, but an explanation. But, by
the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly.
Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine,
imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which
the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial
images of men. Why do you drag me through this dismal passage?”
“I passed through it this morning and missed my way.”
“In pursuit of the idea, of course. That was to be expected. Prague is
constructed on the same principle as the human brain, full of winding
ways, dark lanes, and gloomy arches, all of which may lead somewhere,
or may not. Its topography continually misleads its inhabitants as
the convolutions of the brain mislead the thoughts that dwell there,
sometimes bringing them out at last, after a patient search for
daylight, upon a fine broad street where the newest fashions in thought
are exposed for sale in brightly illuminated shop windows and showcases;
conducting them sometimes to the dark, unsavoury court where the
miserable self drags out its unhealthy existence in the single room of
its hired earthly lodging.”
“The self which you propose to preserve from corruption,” observed the
tall man, who was carefully examining every foot of the walls between
which he was passing with his companion, “since you think so poorly
of the lodger and the lodging, I wonder that you should be anxious to
prolong the sufferings of the one and his lease of the other.”
“It is all I have,” answered Keyork Arabian. “Did you think of that?”
“That circumstance may serve as an excuse, but it does not constitute a
reason.”
“Not a reason! Is the most abject poverty a reason for throwing away the
daily crust? My self is all I have. Shall I let it perish when an effort
may preserve it from destruction? On the one side of the line stands
Keyork Arabian, on the other floats the shadow of an annihilation, which
threatens to swallow up Keyork’s self, while leaving all that he has
borrowed of life to be enjoyed, or wasted by others. Could Keyork be
expected to hesitate, so long as he may hope to remain in possession
of that inestimable treasure, his own individuality, which is his only
means for enjoying all that is not his, but borrowed?”
“So soon as you speak of enjoyment, argument ceases,” answered the
Wanderer.
“You are wrong, as usual,” returned the other. “It is the other way.
Enjoyment is the universal solvent of all arguments. No reason can
resist its mordant action. It will dissolve any philosophy not founded
upon it and modelled out of its substance, as Aqua Regia will dissolve
all metals, even to gold itself. Enjoyment? Enjoyment is the protest of
reality against the tyranny of fiction.”
The little man stopped short in his walk, striking his heavy stick
sharply upon the pavement and looking up at his companion, very much as
a man of ordinary size looks up at the face of a colossal statue.
“Have wisdom and study led you no farther than that conclusion?”
Keyork’s eyes brightened suddenly, and a peal of laughter, deep and
rich, broke from his sturdy breast and rolled long echoes through
the dismal lane, musical as a hunting-song heard among great trees in
winter. But his ivory features were not discomposed, though his white
beard trembled and waved softly like a snowy veil blown about by the
wind.
“If wisdom can teach how to prolong the lease, what study can be
compared with that of which the results may beautify the dwelling?
What more can any man do for himself than make himself happy? The
very question is absurd. What are you trying to do for yourself at the
present moment? Is it for the sake of improving the physical condition
or of promoting the moral case of mankind at large that you are dragging
me through the slums and byways and alleys of the gloomiest city on this
side of eternal perdition? It is certainly not for my welfare that
you are sacrificing yourself. You admit that you are pursuing an idea.
Perhaps you are in search of some new and curious form of mildew, and
when you have found it--or something else--you will name your discovery
_Fungus Pragensis_, or _Cryptogamus minor Errantis_--‘the Wanderer’s
toadstool.’ But I know you of old, my good friend. The idea you pursue
is not an idea at all, but that specimen of the _genus homo_ known
as ‘woman,’ species ‘lady,’ variety ‘true love,’ vulgar designation
‘sweetheart.’”
The Wanderer stared coldly at his companion.
“The vulgarity of the designation is indeed only equalled by that
of your taste in selecting it,” he said slowly. Then he turned away,
intending to leave Keyork standing where he was.
But the little man had already repented of his speech. He ran quickly
to his friend’s side and laid one hand upon his arm. The Wanderer paused
and again looked down.
“Is it of any use to be offended with my speeches? Am I an acquaintance
of yesterday? Do you imagine that it could ever be my intention to annoy
you?” the questions were asked rapidly in tones of genuine anxiety.
“Indeed, I hardly know how I could suppose that. You have always been
friendly--but I confess--your names for things are not--always----”
The Wanderer did not complete the sentence, but looked gravely at
Keyork as though wishing to convey very clearly again what he had before
expressed in words.
“If we were fellow-countrymen and had our native language in common,
we should not so easily misunderstand one another,” replied the other.
“Come, forgive my lack of skill, and do not let us quarrel. Perhaps I
can help you. You may know Prague well, but I know it better. Will you
allow me to say that I know also whom it is you are seeking here?”
“Yes. You know. I have not changed since we last met, nor have
circumstances favoured me.”
“Tell me--have you really seen this Unorna, and talked with her?”
“This morning.”
“And she could not help you?”
“I refused to accept her help, until I had done all that was in my own
power to do.”
“You were rash. And have you now done all, and failed?”
“I have.”
“Then, if you will accept a humble suggestion from me, you will go back
to her at once.”
“I know very little of her. I do not altogether trust her--”
“Trust! Powers of Eblis--or any other powers! Who talks of trust? Does
the wise man trust himself? Never. Then how can he dare trust any one
else?”
“Your cynical philosophy again!” exclaimed the Wanderer.
“Philosophy? I am a mysosophist! All wisdom is vanity, and I hate it!
Autology is my study, autosophy my ambition, autonomy my pride. I am the
great Panegoist, the would-be Conservator of Self, the inspired prophet
of the Universal I. I--I--I! My creed has but one word, and that word
but one letter, that letter represents Unity, and Unity is Strength. I
am I, one, indivisible, central! O I! Hail and live for ever!”
Again the little man’s rich bass voice rang out in mellow laughter. A
very faint smile appeared upon his companion’s sad face.
“You are happy, Keyork,” he said. “You must be, since you can laugh at
yourself so honestly.”
“At myself? Vain man! I am laughing at you, and at every one else, at
everything except myself. Will you go to Unorna? You need not trust her
any more than the natural infirmity of your judgment suggests.”
“Can you tell me nothing more of her? Do you know her well?”
“She does not offer her help to every one. You would have done well to
accept it in the first instance. You may not find her in the same humour
again.”
“I had supposed from what you said of her that she made a profession of
clairvoyance, or hypnotism, or mesmerism--whatever may be the right term
nowadays.”
“It matters very little,” answered Keyork, gravely. “I used to wonder at
Adam’s ingenuity in naming all living things, but I think he would have
made but a poor figure in a tournament of modern terminologists. No.
Unorna does not accept remuneration for her help when she vouchsafes to
give it.”
“And yet I was introduced to her presence without even giving my name.”
“That is her fancy. She will see any one who wishes to see her, beggar,
gentleman, or prince. But she only answers such questions as she pleases
to answer.”
“That is to say, inquiries for which she is already prepared with a
reply,” suggested the Wanderer.
“See for yourself. At all events, she is a very interesting specimen. I
have never known any one like her.”
Keyork Arabian was silent, as though he were reflecting upon Unorna’s
character and peculiar gifts, before describing them to his friend. His
ivory features softened almost imperceptibly, and his sharp blue eyes
suddenly lost their light, as though they no longer saw the outer
world. But the Wanderer cared for none of these things, and bestowed
no attention upon his companion’s face. He preferred the little man’s
silence to his wild talk, but he was determined, if possible, to extract
some further information concerning Unorna, and before many seconds had
elapsed he interrupted Keyork’s meditations with a question.
“You tell me to see for myself,” he said. “I would like to know what I
am to expect. Will you not enlighten me?”
“What?” asked the other vaguely, as though roused from sleep.
“If I go to Unorna and ask a consultation of her, as though she were
a common somnambulist, and if she deigns to place her powers at my
disposal what sort of assistance shall I most probably get?”
They had been walking slowly forward, and Keyork again stopped, rapping
the pavement with his iron-shod stick, and looking up from under his
bushy, overhanging eyebrows.
“Of two things, one will happen,” he answered. “Either she will herself
fall into the abnormal state and will answer correctly any questions you
put to her, or she will hypnotise you, and you will yourself see--what
you wish to see.”
“I myself?”
“You yourself. The peculiarity of the woman is her duality, her
double power. She can, by an act of volition, become hypnotic,
clairvoyant--whatever you choose to call it. Or, if her visitor is at
all sensitive, she can reverse the situation and play the part of the
hypnotiser. I never heard of a like case.”
“After all, I do not see why it should not be so,” said the Wanderer
thoughtfully. “At all events, whatever she can do, is evidently done by
hypnotism, and such extraordinary experiments have succeeded of late--”
“I did not say that there was nothing but hypnotism in her processes.”
“What then? Magic?” The Wanderer’s lip curled scornfully.
“I do not know,” replied the little man, speaking slowly. “Whatever her
secret may be, she keeps it, even when speaking in sleep. This I can
tell you. I suspect that there is some other being, or person, in that
queer old house of hers whom she consults on grave occasions. At a loss
for an answer to a difficult scientific question, I have known her to
leave the room and to come back in the course of a few minutes with a
reply which I am positive she could never have framed herself.”
“She may have consulted books,” suggested the Wanderer.
“I am an old man,” said Keyork Arabian suddenly. “I am a very old man;
there are not many books which I have not seen and partially read at one
time or at another, and my memory is surprisingly good. I have excellent
reasons for believing that her information is not got from anything that
was ever written or printed.”
“May I ask of what general nature your questions were?” inquired the
other, more interested than he had hitherto been in the conversation.
“They referred to the principles of embalmment.”
“Much has been written about that since the days of the Egyptians.”
“The Egyptians!” exclaimed Keyork with great scorn. “They embalmed their
dead after a fashion. Did you ever hear that they embalmed the living?”
The little man’s eyes shot fire.
“No, nor will I believe in any such outrageous impossibilities! If that
is all, I have little faith in Unorna’s mysterious counsellor.”
“The faith which removes mountains is generally gained by experience
when it is gained at all, and the craving for explanation takes the
place, in some minds, of a willingness to learn. It is not my business
to find explanations, nor to raise my little self to your higher level,
by standing upon this curbstone, in order to deliver a lecture in the
popular form, upon matters that interest me. It is enough that I have
found what I wanted. Go and do likewise. See for yourself. You have
nothing to lose and everything to gain. You are unhappy, and unhappiness
is dangerous, in rare cases fatal. If you tell me to-morrow that Unorna
is a charlatan, you will be in no worse plight than to-day, nor will
your opinion of her influence mine. If she helps you to find what you
want--so much the better for you--how much the better, and how great the
risk you run, are questions for your judgment.”
“I will go,” answered the Wanderer, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Very good,” said Keyork Arabian. “If you want to find me again, come to
my lodging. Do you know the house of the Black Mother of God?”
“Yes--there is a legend about a Spanish picture of our Lady once
preserved there--”
“Exactly, it takes its name from that black picture. It is on the corner
of the Fruit Market, over against the window at which the Princess
Windischgratz was shot. I live in the upper story. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
CHAPTER IV
After the Wanderer had left her, Unorna continued to hold in her
hand the book she had again taken up, following the printed lines
mechanically from left to right, from the top of the page to the foot.
Having reached that point, however, she did not turn over the leaf. She
was vaguely aware that she had not understood the sense of the words,
and she returned to the place at which she had begun, trying to
concentrate her attention upon the matter, moving her fresh lips to form
the syllables, and bending her brows in the effort of understanding,
so that a short, straight furrow appeared, like a sharp vertical cut
extending from between the eyes to the midst of the broad forehead. One,
two and three sentences she grasped and comprehended; then her thoughts
wandered again, and the groups of letters passed meaningless before
her sight. She was accustomed to directing her intelligence without any
perceptible effort, and she was annoyed at being thus led away from her
occupation, against her will and in spite of her determination. A third
attempt showed her that it was useless to force herself any longer, and
with a gesture and look of irritation she once more laid the volume upon
the table at her side.
During a few minutes she sat motionless in her chair, her elbow leaning
on the carved arm-piece, her chin supported upon the back of her
half-closed hand, of which the heavy, perfect fingers were turned
inwards, drooping in classic curves towards the lace about her throat.
Her strangely mismatched eyes stared vacantly towards an imaginary
horizon, not bounded by banks of flowers, nor obscured by the fantastic
foliage of exotic trees.
Presently she held up her head, her white hand dropped upon her knee,
she hesitated an instant, and then rose to her feet, swiftly, as though
she had made a resolution and was about to act upon it. She made a step
forward, and then paused again, while a half-scornful smile passed like
a shadow over her face. Very slowly she began to pace the marble floor,
up and down in the open space before her chair, turning and turning
again, the soft folds of her white gown following her across the smooth
pavement with a gentle, sweeping sound, such as the breeze makes among
flowers in spring.
“Is it he?” she asked aloud in a voice ringing with the joy and the
fear of a passion that has waited long and is at last approaching the
fulfilment of satisfaction.
No answer came to her from among the thick foliage nor in the scented
breath of the violets and the lilies. The murmuring song of the little
fountain alone disturbed the stillness, and the rustle of her own
garments as she moved.
“Is it he? Is it he? Is it he?” she repeated again and again, in
varying tones, chiming the changes of hope and fear, of certainty
and vacillation, of sadness and of gladness, of eager passion and of
chilling doubt.
She stood still, staring at the pavement, her fingers clasped together,
the palms of her hands turned downward, her arms relaxed. She did not
see the dark red squares of marble, alternating with the white and
the gray, but as she looked a face and a form rose before her, in
the contemplation of which all her senses and faculties concentrated
themselves. The pale and noble head grew very distinct in her inner
sight, the dark gray eyes gazed sadly upon her, the passionate features
were fixed in the expression of a great sorrow.
“Are you indeed he?” she asked, speaking softly and doubtfully, and yet
unconsciously projecting her strong will upon the vision, as though to
force it to give the answer for which she longed.
And the answer came, imposed by the effort of her imagination upon the
thing imagined. The face suddenly became luminous, as with a radiance
within itself; the shadows of grief melted away, and in their place
trembled the rising light of a dawning love. The lips moved and the
voice spoke, not as it had spoken to her lately, but in tones long
familiar to her in dreams by day and night.
“I am he, I am that love for whom you have waited; you are that dear one
whom I have long sought throughout the world. The hour of our joy has
struck, the new life begins to-day, and there shall be no end.”
Unorna’s arms went out to grasp the shadow, and she drew it to her in
her fancy and kissed its radiant face.
“To ages of ages!” she cried.
Then she covered her eyes as though to impress the sight they had seen
upon the mind within, and groping blindly for her chair sank back
into her seat. But the mechanical effort of will and memory could not
preserve the image. In spite of all inward concentration of thought,
its colours faded, its outlines trembled, grew faint and vanished, and
darkness was in its place. Unorna’s hand dropped to her side, and a
quick throb of pain stabbed her through and through, agonising as the
wound of a blunt and jagged knife, though it was gone almost before she
knew where she had felt it. Then her eyes flashed with unlike fires, the
one dark and passionate as the light of a black diamond, the other keen
and daring as the gleam of blue steel in the sun.
“Ah, but I will!” she exclaimed. “And what I will--shall be.”
As though she were satisfied with the promise thus made to herself, she
smiled, her eyelids drooped, the tension of her frame was relaxed, and
she sank again into the indolent attitude in which the Wanderer had
found her. A moment later the distant door turned softly upon its hinges
and a light footfall broke the stillness. There was no need for Unorna
to speak in order that the sound of her voice might guide the new comer
to her retreat. The footsteps approached swiftly and surely. A young man
of singular beauty came out of the green shadows and stood beside the
chair in the open space.
Unorna betrayed no surprise as she looked up into her visitor’s face.
She knew it well. In form and feature the youth represented the noblest
type of the Jewish race. It was impossible to see him without thinking
of a young eagle of the mountains, eager, swift, sure, instinct with
elasticity, far-sighted and untiring, strong to grasp and to hold,
beautiful with the glossy and unruffled beauty of a plumage continually
smoothed in the sweep and the rush of high, bright air.
Israel Kafka stood still, gazing down upon the woman he loved, and
drawing his breath hard between his parted lips. His piercing eyes
devoured every detail of the sight before him, while the dark blood rose
in his lean olive cheek, and the veins of his temples swelled with the
beating of his quickened pulse.
“Well?”
The single indifferent word received the value of a longer speech from
the tone in which it was uttered, and from the look and gesture
which accompanied it. Unorna’s voice was gentle, soft, half-indolent,
half-caressing, half-expectant, and half-careless. There was something
almost insolent in its assumption of superiority, which was borne out by
the little defiant tapping of two long white fingers upon the arm of the
carved chair. And yet, with the rising inflection of the monosyllable
there went a raising of the brows, a sidelong glance of the eyes, a
slowly wreathing smile that curved the fresh lips just enough to
unmask two perfect teeth, all of which lent to the voice a meaning,
a familiarity, a pliant possibility of favourable interpretation, fit
rather to flatter a hope than to chill a passion.
The blood beat more fiercely in the young man’s veins, his black eyes
gleamed yet more brightly, his pale, high-curved nostrils quivered at
every breath he drew. The throbbings of his heart unseated his thoughts
and strongly took possession of the government of his body. Under an
irresistible impulse he fell upon his knees beside Unorna, covering her
marble hand with all his lean, dark fingers and pressing his forehead
upon them, as though he had found and grasped all that could be dear to
him in life.
“Unorna! My golden Unorna!” he cried, as he knelt.
Unorna looked down upon his bent head. The smile faded from her face,
and for a moment a look of hardness lingered there, which gave way to
an expression of pain and regret. As though collecting her thoughts she
closed her eyes, as she tried to draw back her hand; then as he held it
still, she leaned back and spoke to him.
“You have not understood me,” she said, as quietly as she could.
The strong fingers were not lifted from hers, but the white face, now
bloodless and transparent, was raised to hers, and a look of such fear
as she had never dreamed of was in the wide black eyes.
“Not--understood?” he repeated in startled, broken tones.
Unorna sighed, and turned away, for the sight hurt her and accused her.
“No, you have not understood. Is it my fault? Israel Kafka, that hand is
not yours to hold.”
“Not mine? Unorna!” Yet he could not quite believe what she said.
“I am in earnest,” she answered, not without a lingering tenderness in
the intonation. “Do you think I am jesting with you, or with myself?”
Neither of the two stirred during the silence which followed. Unorna sat
quite still, staring fixedly into the green shadows of the foliage, as
though not daring to meet the gaze she felt upon her. Israel Kafka still
knelt beside her, motionless and hardly breathing, like a dangerous wild
animal startled by an unexpected enemy, and momentarily paralysed in
the very act of springing, whether backward in flight, or forward in the
teeth of the foe, it is not possible to guess.
“I have been mistaken,” Unorna continued at last. “Forgive--forget--”
Israel Kafka rose to his feet and drew back a step from her side.
All his movements were smooth and graceful. The perfect man is most
beautiful in motion, the perfect woman in repose.
“How easy it is for you!” exclaimed the Moravian. “How easy! How simple!
You call me, and I come. You let your eyes rest on me, and I kneel
before you. You sigh, and I speak words of love. You lift your hand and
I crouch at your feet. You frown--and I humbly leave you. How easy!”
“You are wrong, and you speak foolishly. You are angry, and you do not
weigh your words.”
“Angry! What have I to do with so common a madness as anger? I am more
than angry. Do you think that because I have submitted to the veering
gusts of your good and evil humours these many months, I have lost all
consciousness of myself? Do you think that you can blow upon me as upon
a feather, from east and west, from north and south, hotly or coldly, as
your unstable nature moves you? Have you promised me nothing? Have you
given me no hope? Have you said and done nothing whereby you are bound?
Or can no pledge bind you, no promise find a foothold in your slippery
memory, no word of yours have meaning for those who hear it?”
“I never gave you either pledge or promise,” answered Unorna in a harder
tone. “The only hope I have ever extended to you was this, that I would
one day answer you plainly. I have done so. You are not satisfied. Is
there anything more to be said? I do not bid you leave my house for
ever, any more than I mean to drive you from my friendship.”
“From your friendship! Ah, I thank you, Unorna; I most humbly thank
you! For the mercy you extend in allowing me to linger near you, I am
grateful! Your friend, you say? Ay, truly, your friend and servant, your
servant and your slave, your slave and your dog. Is the friend impatient
and dissatisfied with his lot? A soft word shall turn away his anger. Is
the servant over-presumptuous? Your scorn will soon teach him his duty.
Is the slave disobedient? Blows will cure him of his faults. Does your
dog fawn upon you too familiarly? Thrust him from you with your foot and
he will cringe and cower till you smile again. Your friendship--I have
no words for thanks!”
“Take it, or take it not--as you will.” Unorna glanced at his angry face
and quickly looked away.
“Take it? Yes, and more too, whether you will give it or not,” answered
Israel Kafka, moving nearer to her. “Yes. Whether you will, or whether
you will not, I have all, your friendship, your love, your life, your
breath, your soul--all, or nothing!”
“You are wise to suggest the latter alternative as a possibility,” said
Unorna coldly and not heeding his approach.
The young man stood still, and folded his arms. The colour had returned
to his face and a deep flush was rising under his olive skin.
“Do you mean what you say?” he asked slowly. “Do you mean that I shall
not have all, but nothing? Do you still dare to mean that, after all
that has passed between you and me?”
Unorna raised her eyes and looked steadily into his.
“Israel Kafka, do not speak to me of daring.”
But the young man’s glance did not waver. The angry expression of his
features did not relax; he neither drew back nor bent his head. Unorna
seemed to be exerting all the strength of her will in the attempt to
dominate him, but without result. In the effort she made to concentrate
her determination her face grew pale and her lips trembled. Kafka
faced her resolutely, his eyes on fire, the rich colour mantling in his
cheeks.
“Where is your power now?” he asked suddenly. “Where is your witchery?
You are only a woman, after all. You are only a weak woman!”
Very slowly he drew nearer to her side, his lithe figure bending a
little as he looked down upon her. Unorna leaned far back, withdrawing
her face from his as far as she could, but still trying to impose her
will upon him.
“You cannot,” he said between his teeth, answering her thought.
Men who have tamed wild beasts alone know what such a moment is like. A
hundred times the brave man has held the tiger spell-bound and crouching
under his cold, fearless gaze. The beast, ever docile and submissive,
has cringed at his feet, fawned to his touch, and licked the hand that
snatched away the half-devoured morsel. Obedient to voice and eye, the
giant strength and sinewy grace have been debased to make the sport of
multitudes; the noble, pliant frame has contorted itself to execute the
mean antics of the low-comedy ape--to counterfeit death like a poodle
dog; to leap through gaudily-painted rings at the word of command; to
fetch and carry like a spaniel. A hundred times the changing crowd has
paid its paltry fee to watch the little play that is daily acted behind
the stout iron bars by the man and the beast. The man, the nobler,
braver creature, is arrayed in a wretched flimsy finery of tights and
spangles, parading his physical weakness and inferiority in the
toggery of a mountebank. The tiger, vast, sleepy-eyed, mysterious, lies
motionless in the front of his cage, the gorgeous stripes of his velvet
coat following each curve of his body, from the cushions of his great
fore paws to the arch of his gathered haunches. The watchfulness and
flexible activity of the serpent and the strength that knows no master
are clothed in the magnificent robes of the native-born sovereign. Time
and times again the beautiful giant has gone through the slavish
round of his mechanical tricks, obedient to the fragile creature of
intelligence, to the little dwarf, man, whose power is in his eyes and
heart only. He is accustomed to the lights, to the spectators, to the
laughter, to the applause, to the frightened scream of the hysterical
women in the audience, to the close air and to the narrow stage behind
the bars. The tamer in his tights and tinsel has grown used to his
tiger, to his emotions, to his hourly danger. He even finds at last that
his mind wanders during the performance, and that at the very instant
when he is holding the ring for the leap, or thrusting his head into the
beast’s fearful jaws, he is thinking of his wife, of his little child,
of his domestic happiness or household troubles, rather than of what
he is doing. Many times, perhaps many hundreds of times, all passes off
quietly and successfully. Then, inevitably, comes the struggle. Who
can tell the causes? The tiger is growing old, or is ill fed, or is not
well, or is merely in one of those evil humours to which animals are
subject as well as their masters. One day he refuses to go through with
the performance. First one trick fails, and then another. The public
grows impatient, the man in spangles grows nervous, raises his voice,
stamps loudly with his foot, and strikes his terrible slave with his
light switch. A low, deep sound breaks from the enormous throat, the
spectators hold their breath, the huge, flexible limbs are gathered for
the leap, and in the gaslight and the dead silence man and beast are
face to face. Life hangs in the balance, and death is at the door.
Then the tamer’s heart beats loud, his chest heaves, his brows are
furrowed. Even then, in the instant that still separates him from
triumph or destruction, the thought of his sleeping child or of his
watching wife darts through his brain. But the struggle has begun and
there is no escape. One of two things must happen: he must overcome or
he must die. To draw back, to let his glance waver, to show so much as
the least sign of fear, is death. The moment is supreme, and he knows
it.
Unorna grasped the arms of her chair as though seeking for physical
support in her extremity. She could not yield. Before her eyes arose a
vision unlike the reality in all its respects. She saw an older face,
a taller figure, a look of deeper thought between her and the angry man
who was trying to conquer her resistance with a glance. Between her and
her mistake the image of what should be stood out, bright, vivid, and
strong. A new conviction had taken the place of the old, a real passion
was flaming upon the altar whereon she had fed with dreams the semblance
of a sacred fire.
“You do not really love me,” she said softly.
Israel Kafka started, as a man who is struck unawares. The monstrous
untruth which filled the words broke down his guard, sudden tears veiled
the penetrating sharpness of his gaze, and his hand trembled.
“I do not love you? I! Unorna--Unorna!”
The first words broke from him in a cry of horror and stupefaction. But
her name, when he spoke it, sounded as the death moan of a young wild
animal wounded beyond all power to turn at bay.
He moved unsteadily and laid hold of the tall chair in which she sat.
He was behind her now, standing, but bending down so that his forehead
pressed his fingers. He could not bear to look upon her hair, still less
upon her face. Even his hands were white and bloodless. Unorna could
hear his quick breathing just above her shoulder. She sat quite still,
and her lips were smiling, though her brow was thoughtful and almost
sad. She knew that the struggle was over and that she had gained the
mastery, though the price of victory might be a broken heart.
“You thought I was jesting,” she said in a low voice, looking before her
into the deep foliage, but knowing that her softest whisper would reach
him. “But there was no jest in what I said--nor any unkindness in what
I meant, though it is all my fault. But that is true--you never loved me
as I would be loved.”
“Unorna----”
“No, I am not unkind. Your love is young, fierce, inconstant; half
terrible, half boyish, aflame to-day, asleep to-morrow, ready to turn
into hatred at one moment, to melt into tears at the next, intermittent,
unstable as water, fleeting as a cloud’s shadow on the mountain side--”
“It pleased you once,” said Israel Kafka in broken tones. “It is not
less love because you are weary of it, and of me.”
“Weary, you say? No, not weary--and very truly not of you. You will
believe that to-day, to-morrow, you will still try to force life into
your belief--and then it will be dead and gone like all thoughts which
have never entered into the shapes of reality. We have not loved each
other. We have but fancied that it would be sweet to love, and the knife
of truth has parted the web of our dreams, keenly, in the midst, so that
we see before us what is, though the ghost of what might have been is
yet lingering near.”
“Who wove that web, Unorna? You, or I?” He lifted his heavy eyes and
gazed at her coiled hair.
“What matters it whether it was your doing or mine? But we wove it
together--and together we must see the truth.”
“If this is true, there is no more ‘together’ for you and me.”
“We may yet glean friendship in the fields where love has grown.”
“Friendship! The very word is a wound! Friendship! The very dregs and
lees of the wine of life! Friendship! The sour drainings of the heart’s
cup, left to moisten the lips of the damned when the blessed have drunk
their fill! I hate the word, as I hate the thought!”
Unorna sighed, partly, perhaps, that he might hear the sigh, and put
upon it an interpretation soothing to his vanity, but partly, too,
from a sincere regret that he should need to suffer as he was evidently
suffering. She had half believed that she loved him, and she owed him
pity. Women’s hearts pay such debts unwillingly, but they do pay them,
nevertheless. She wished that she had never set eyes upon Israel Kafka;
she wished that she might never see him again; even his death would
hardly have cost her a pang, and yet she was sorry for him. Diana, the
huntress, shot her arrows with unfailing aim; Diana, the goddess, may
have sighed and shed one bright immortal tear, as she looked into the
fast-glazing eyes of the dying stag--may not Diana, the maiden, have
felt a touch of human sympathy and pain as she listened to the deep note
of her hounds baying on poor Actaeon’s track! No one is all bad, or all
good. No woman is all earthly, nor any goddess all divine.
“I am sorry,” said Unorna. “You will not understand----”
“I have understood enough. I have understood that a woman can have
two faces and two hearts, two minds, two souls; it is enough, my
understanding need go no farther. You sighed before you spoke. It was
not for me; it was for yourself. You never felt pain or sorrow for
another.”
He was trying hard to grow cold and to find cold words to say, which
might lead her to believe him stronger than he was and able to master
his grief. But he was too young, too hot, too changeable for such a
part. Moreover, in his first violent outbreak Unorna had dominated him,
and he could not now regain the advantage.
“You are wrong, Israel Kafka. You would make me less than human. If
I sighed, it was indeed for you. See--I confess that I have done you
wrong, not in deeds, but in letting you hope. Truly, I myself have hoped
also. I have thought that the star of love was trembling just below the
east, and that you and I might be one to another--what we cannot be now.
My wisdom has failed me, my sight has been deceived. Am I the only
woman in this world who has been mistaken? Can you not forgive? If I
had promised, if I had said one word--and yet, you are right, too, for
I have let you think in earnest what has been but a passing dream of
my own thoughts. It was all wrong; it was all my fault. There, lay your
hand in mine and say that you forgive, as I ask forgiveness.”
He was still standing behind her, leaning against the back of her chair.
Without looking round she raised her hand above her shoulder as though
seeking for his. But he would not take it.
“Is it so hard?” she asked softly. “Is it even harder for you to give
than for me to ask? Shall we part like this--not to meet again--each
bearing a wound, when both might be whole? Can you not say the word?”
“What is it to you whether I forgive you or not?”
“Since I ask it, believe that it is much to me,” she answered, slowly
turning her head until, without catching sight of his face, she could
just see where his fingers were resting on her chair. Then, over her
shoulder, she touched them, and drew them to her cheek. He made no
resistance.
“Shall we part without one kind thought?” Her voice was softer still and
so low and sweet that it seemed as though the words were spoken in the
ripple of the tiny fountain. There was magic in the place, in the air,
in the sounds, above all in the fair woman’s touch.
“Is this friendship?” asked Kafka. Then he sank upon his knees beside
her, and looked up into her face.
“It is friendship; yes--why not? Am I like other women?”
“Then why need there be any parting?”
“If you will be my friend there need be none. You have forgiven me
now--I see it in your eyes. Is it not true?”
He was at her feet, passive at last under the superior power which he
had never been able to resist. Unorna’s fascination was upon him, and
he could only echo her words, as he would have executed her slightest
command, without consciousness of free will or individual thought. It
was enough that for one moment his anger should cease to give life to
his resistance; it was sufficient that Unorna should touch him thus,
and speak softly, his eyelids quivered and his look became fixed, his
strength was absorbed in hers and incapable of acting except under her
direction. So long as she might please the spell would endure.
“Sit beside me now, and let us talk,” she said.
Like a man in a dream, he rose and sat down near her.
Unorna laughed, and there was something in the tone that was not good to
hear. A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick
and brought the hot, angry blood to his face. Now he laughed with her,
vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth.
“You are only my slave, after all,” said Unorna scornfully.
“I am only your slave, after all,” he repeated.
“I could touch you with my hand and you would hate me, and forget that
you ever loved me.”
This time the man was silent. There was a contraction of pain in his
face, as though a violent mental struggle were going on within him.
Unorna tapped the pavement impatiently with her foot and bent her brows.
“You would hate me and forget that you ever loved me,” she repeated,
dwelling on each word as though to impress it on his consciousness. “Say
it. I order you.”
The contraction of his features disappeared.
“I should hate you and forget that I ever loved you,” he said slowly.
“You never loved me.”
“I never loved you.”
Again Unorna laughed, and he joined in her laughter, unintelligently,
as he had done before. She leaned back in her seat, and her face grew
grave. Israel Kafka sat motionless in his chair, staring at her with
unwinking eyes. But his gaze did not disturb her. There was no more
meaning in it than in the expression of a marble statue, far less than
in that of a painted portrait. Yet the man was alive and in the full
strength of his magnificent youth, supple, active, fierce by nature,
able to have killed her with his hands in the struggle of a moment. Yet
she knew that without a word from her he could neither turn his head nor
move in his seat.
For a long time Unorna was absorbed in her meditations. Again and again
the vision of a newer happiness took shape and colour before her, so
clearly and vividly that she could have clasped it and held it and
believed in its reality, as she had done before Israel Kafka had
entered. But there was a doubt now, which constantly arose between her
and it, the dark and shapeless shadow of a reasoning she hated and yet
knew to be strong.
“I must ask him,” she said unconsciously.
“You must ask him,” repeated Israel Kafka from his seat.
For the third time Unorna laughed aloud as she heard the echo of her own
words.
“Whom shall I ask?” she inquired contemptuously, as she rose to her
feet.
The dull, glassy eyes sought hers in painful perplexity, following her
face as she moved.
“I do not know,” answered the powerless man.
Unorna came close to him and laid her hand upon his head.
“Sleep, until I wake you,” she said.
The eyelids drooped and closed at her command, and instantly the man’s
breathing became heavy and regular. Unorna’s full lips curled as she
looked down at him.
“And you would be my master!” she exclaimed.
Then she turned and disappeared among the plants, leaving him alone.
CHAPTER V
Unorna passed through a corridor which was, indeed, only a long balcony
covered in with arches and closed with windows against the outer air.
At the farther end three steps descended to a dark door, through the
thickness of a massive wall, showing that at this point Unorna’s house
had at some former time been joined with another building beyond, with
which it thus formed one habitation. Unorna paused, holding the key
as though hesitating whether she should put it into the lock. It was
evident that much depended upon her decision, for her face expressed
the anxiety she felt. Once she turned away, as though to abandon her
intention, hesitated, and then, with an impatient frown, opened the
door and went in. She passed through a small, well-lighted vestibule and
entered the room beyond.
The apartment was furnished with luxury, but a stranger would have
received an oddly disquieting impression of the whole at a first glance.
There was everything in the place which is considered necessary for a
bedroom, and everything was perfect of its kind, spotless and dustless,
and carefully arranged in order. But almost everything was of an unusual
and unfamiliar shape, as though designed for some especial reason to
remain in equilibrium in any possible position, and to be moved from
place to place with the smallest imaginable physical effort. The carved
bedstead was fitted with wheels which did not touch the ground, and
levers so placed as to be within the reach of a person lying in it. The
tables were each supported at one end only by one strong column, fixed
to a heavy base set on broad rollers, so that the board could be run
across a bed or a lounge with the greatest ease. There was but one chair
made like ordinary chairs; the rest were so constructed that the least
motion of the occupant must be accompanied by a corresponding change
of position of the back and arms, and some of them bore a curious
resemblance to a surgeon’s operating table, having attachments of
silver-plated metal at many points, of which the object was not
immediately evident. Before a closed door a sort of wheeled conveyance,
partaking of the nature of a chair and of a perambulator, stood upon
polished rails, which disappeared under the door itself, showing that
the thing was intended to be moved from one room to another in a certain
way and in a fixed line. The rails, had the door been opened, would have
been seen to descend upon the other side by a gentle inclined plane
into the centre of a huge marble basin, and the contrivance thus made
it possible to wheel a person into a bath and out again without
necessitating the slightest effort or change of position in the body. In
the bedroom the windows were arranged so that the light and air could
be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work,
apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable
trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven
wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances
intended to absorb the impurities of the air, and thus easily changed
and renewed from time to time. Immediately beneath the ceiling were
placed delicate glass globes of various soft colours, with silken
shades, movable from below by means of brass rods and handles. In the
ceiling itself there were large ventilators, easily regulated as might
be required, and there was a curious arrangement of rails and wheels
from which depended a sort of swing, apparently adapted for moving a
person or a weight to different parts of the room without touching the
floor. In one of the lounges, not far from the window, lay a colossal
old man, wrapped in a loose robe of warm white stuff, and fast asleep.
He was a very old man, so old, indeed, as to make it hard to guess his
age from his face and his hands, the only parts visible as he lay at
rest, the vast body and limbs lying motionless under his garment, as
beneath a heavy white pall. He could not be less than a hundred years
old, but how much older than that he might really be, it was impossible
to say. What might be called the waxen period had set in, and the high
colourless features seemed to be modelled in that soft, semi-transparent
material. The time had come when the stern furrows of age had broken
up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem
a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed
throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as
the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at
fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed had
taken with it its marks and scars, leaving the great features in their
original purity of design, lean, smooth, and clearly defined. That last
change in living man is rare enough, but when once seen is not to be
forgotten. There is something in the faces of the very, very old which
hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a
returning prime. Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining,
fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow
nails.
The old man lay quite still, breathing softly through his snowy beard.
Unorna came to his side. There was something of wonder and admiration
in her own eyes as she stood there gazing upon the face which other
generations of men and women, all long dead, had looked upon and known.
The secret of life and death was before her each day when she entered
that room, and on the very verge of solution. The wisdom hardly gained
in many lands was striving with all its concentrated power to preserve
that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were
daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most
elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing
the labour of living to the lowest conceivable degree of effort. The
great experiment was being tried. What Keyork Arabian described as the
embalming of a man still alive was being attempted. And he lived. For
years they had watched him and tended him, and looked critically for
the least signs of a diminution or an augmentation in his strength. They
knew that he was now in his one hundred and seventh year, and yet he
lived and was no weaker. Was there a limit; or was there not, since the
destruction of the tissues was arrested beyond doubt, so far as the most
minute tests could show? Might there not be, in the slow oscillations
of nature, a degree of decay, on this side of death, from which a return
should be possible, provided that the critical moment were passed in a
state of sleep and under perfect conditions? How do we know that all
men must die? We suppose the statement to be true by induction, from
the undoubted fact that men have hitherto died within a certain limit of
age. By induction, too, our fathers, our grandfathers, knew that it was
impossible for man to traverse the earth faster than at the full speed
of a galloping horse. After several thousand years of experience that
piece of knowledge, which seemed to be singularly certain, was suddenly
proved to be the grossest ignorance by a man who had been in the habit
of playing with a tea-kettle when a boy. We ourselves, not very long
ago, knew positively, as all men had known since the beginning of the
world, that it was quite impossible to converse with a friend at a
distance beyond the carrying power of a speaking trumpet. To-day, a
boy who does not know that one may talk very agreeably with a friend
a thousand miles away is an ignoramus; and experimenters whisper among
themselves that, if the undulatory theory of light have any foundation,
there is no real reason why we may not see that same friend at that same
distance, as well as talk with him. Ten years ago we were quite sure
that it was beyond the bounds of natural possibility to produce a bad
burn upon the human body by touching the flesh with a bit of cardboard
or a common lead pencil. Now we know with equal certainty that if upon
one arm of a hypnotised patient we impress a letter of the alphabet
cut out of wood, telling him that it is red-hot iron, the shape of the
letter will on the following day be found on a raw and painful wound
not only in the place we selected but on the other arm, in the exactly
corresponding spot, and reversed as though seen in a looking-glass;
and we very justly consider that a physician who does not know this and
similar facts is dangerously behind the times, since the knowledge is
open to all. The inductive reasoning of many thousands of years has
been knocked to pieces in the last century by a few dozen men who have
reasoned little but attempted much. It would be rash to assert that
bodily death may not some day, and under certain conditions, be
altogether escaped. It is nonsense to pretend that human life may not
possibly, and before long, be enormously prolonged, and that by some
shorter cut to longevity than temperance and sanitation. No man can say
that it will, but no man of average intelligence can now deny that it
may.
Unorna had hesitated at the door, and she hesitated now. It was in her
power, and in hers only, to wake the hoary giant, or at least to
modify his perpetual sleep so far as to obtain from him answers to her
questions. It would be an easy matter to lay one hand upon his brow,
bidding him see and speak--how easy, she alone knew. But on the other
hand, to disturb his slumber was to interfere with the continuity of the
great experiment, to break through a rule lately made, to incur the risk
of an accident, if not of death itself.
She drew back at the thought, as though fearing to startle him, and then
she smiled at her own nervousness. To wake him she must exercise her
will. There was no danger of his ever being roused by any sound or touch
not proceeding from herself. The crash of thunder had no reverberation
for his ears, the explosion of a cannon would not have penetrated into
his lethargy. She might touch him, move him, even speak to him, but
unless she laid her hand upon his waxen forehead and bid him feel and
hear, he would be as unconscious as the dead. She returned to his side
and gazed into his placid face. Strange faculties were asleep in that
ancient brain, and strange wisdom was stored there, gathered from
many sources long ago, and treasured unconsciously by the memory to be
recalled at her command.
The man had been a failure in his day, a scholar, a student, a searcher
after great secrets, a wanderer in the labyrinths of higher thought.
He had been a failure and had starved, as failures must, in order that
vulgar success may fatten and grow healthy. He had outlived the few that
had been dear to him, he had outlived the power to feed on thought, he
had outlived generations of men, and cycles of changes, and yet there
had been life left in the huge gaunt limbs and sight in the sunken eyes.
Then he had outlived pride itself, and the ancient scholar had begged
his bread. In his hundredth year he had leaned for rest against Unorna’s
door, and she had taken him in and cared for him, and since that time
she had preserved his life. For his history was known in the ancient
city, and it was said that he had possessed great wisdom in his day.
Unorna knew that this wisdom could be hers if she could keep alive the
spark of life, and that she could employ his own learning to that end.
Already she had much experience of her powers, and knew that if she once
had the mastery of the old man’s free will he must obey her fatally and
unresistingly. Then she conceived the idea of embalming, as it were, the
living being, in a perpetual hypnotic lethargy, from whence she recalled
him from time to time to an intermediate state, in which she caused
him to do mechanically all those things which she judged necessary to
prolong life.
Seeing her success from the first, she had begun to fancy that the
present condition of things might be made to continue indefinitely.
Since death was to-day no nearer than it had been seven years ago, there
was no reason why it might not be guarded against during seven years
more, and if during seven, why not during ten, twenty, fifty? She had
for a helper a physician of consummate practical skill--a man whose
interest in the result of the trial was, if anything, more keen than
her own; a friend, above all, whom she believed she might trust, and who
appeared to trust her.
But in the course of their great experiment they had together made
rules by which they had mutually agreed to be bound. They had of late
determined that the old man must not be disturbed in his profound rest
by any question tending to cause a state of mental activity. The test of
a very fine instrument had proved that the shortest interval of positive
lucidity was followed by a slight but distinctly perceptible rise
of temperature in the body, and this could mean only a waste of the
precious tissues they were so carefully preserving. They hoped and
believed that the grand crisis was at hand, and that, if the body did
not now lose strength and vitality for a considerable time, both would
slowly though surely increase, in consequence of the means they were
using to instill new blood into the system. But the period was supreme,
and to interfere in any way with the progress of the experiment was to
run a risk of which the whole extent could only be realised by Unorna
and her companion.
She hesitated therefore, well knowing that her ally would oppose her
intention with all his might, and dreading his anger, bold as she was,
almost as much as she feared the danger to the old man’s life. On the
other hand, she had a motive which the physician could not have, and
which, as she was aware, he would have despised and condemned. She had a
question to ask, which she considered of vital importance to herself,
to which she firmly believed that the true answer would be given, and
which, in her womanly impetuosity and impatience, she could not bear
to leave unasked until the morrow, much less until months should have
passed away. Two very powerful incentives were at work, two of the very
strongest which have influence with mankind, love and a superstitious
belief in an especial destiny of happiness, at the present moment on the
very verge of realisation.
She believed profoundly in herself and in the suggestions of her own
imagination. So fixed and unalterable was that belief that it amounted
to positive knowledge, so far as it constituted a motive of action. In
her strange youth wild dreams had possessed her, and some of them, often
dreamed again, had become realities to her now. Her powers were natural,
those gifts which from time to time are seen in men and women, which are
alternately scoffed at as impostures, or accepted as facts, but which
are never understood either by their possessor or by those who witness
the results. She had from childhood the power to charm with eye and hand
all living things, the fascination which takes hold of the consciousness
through sight and touch and word, and lulls it to sleep. It was
witchery, and she was called a witch. In earlier centuries her hideous
fate would have been sealed from the first day when, under her childish
gaze, a wolf that had been taken alive in the Bohemian forest crawled
fawning to her feet, at the full length of its chain, and laid its
savage head under her hand, and closed its bloodshot eyes and slept
before her. Those who had seen had taken her and taught her how to
use what she possessed according to their own shadowy beliefs and dim
traditions of the half-forgotten magic in a distant land. They had
filled her heart with longings and her brain with dreams, and she had
grown up to believe that one day love would come suddenly upon her and
bear her away through the enchanted gates of the earthly paradise; once
only that love would come, and the supreme danger of her life would be
that she should not know it when it was at hand.
And now she knew that she loved, for the place of her fondness for
the one man had been taken by her passion for the other, and she felt
without reasoning, where, before, she had tried to reason herself into
feeling. The moment had come. She had seen the man in whom her happiness
was to be, the time was short, the danger great if she should not grasp
what her destiny would offer her but once. Had the Wanderer been by her
side, she would have needed to ask no question, she would have known and
been satisfied. But hours must pass before she could see him again, and
every minute spent without him grew more full of anxiety and disturbing
passion than the last. The wild love-blossom that springs into existence
in a single moment has elements which do not enter into the gentler
being of that other love which is sown in indifference, and which grows
up in slowly increasing interest, tended and refreshed in the pleasant
intercourse of close acquaintance, to bud and bloom at last as
a mild-scented garden flower. Love at first sight is impatient,
passionate, ruthless, cruel, as the year would be, if from the calendar
of the season the months of slow transition were struck out; if the
raging heat of August followed in one day upon the wild tempests of the
winter; if the fruit of the vine but yesterday in leaf grew rich and
black to-day, to be churned to foam to-morrow under the feet of the
laughing wine treaders.
Unorna felt that the day would be intolerable if she could not hear from
other lips the promise of a predestined happiness. She was not really in
doubt, but she was under the imperious impulse of a passion which
must needs find some response, even in the useless confirmation of its
reality uttered by an indifferent person--the spirit of a mighty cry
seeking its own echo in the echoless, flat waste of the Great Desert.
Then, too, she placed a sincere faith in the old man’s answers to her
questions, regardless of the matter inquired into. She believed that
in the mysterious condition between sleep and waking which she could
command, the knowledge of things to be was with him as certainly as the
memory of what had been and of what was even now passing in the outer
world. To her, the one direction of the faculty seemed no less possible
than the others, though she had not yet attained alone to the vision of
the future. Hitherto the old man’s utterances had been fulfilled to the
letter. More than once, as Keyork Arabian had hinted, she had consulted
his second sight in preference to her own, and she had not been
deceived. His greater learning and his vast experience lent to his
sayings something divine in her eyes; she looked upon him as the
Pythoness of Delphi looked upon the divinity of her inspiration.
The irresistible longing to hear the passionate pleadings of her own
heart solemnly confirmed by the voice in which she trusted overcame at
last every obstacle. Unorna bent over the sleeper, looking earnestly
into his face, and she laid one hand upon his brow.
“You hear me,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “You are conscious of
thought, and you see into the future.”
The massive head stirred, the long limbs moved uneasily under the white
robe, the enormous, bony hands contracted, and in the cavernous eyes the
great lids were slowly lifted. A dull stare met her look.
“Is it he?” she asked, speaking more quickly in spite of herself. “Is it
he at last?”
There was no answer. The lips did not part, there was not even the
attempt to speak. She had been sure that the one word would be spoken
unhesitatingly, and the silence startled her and brought back the doubt
which she had half forgotten.
“You must answer my question. I command you to answer me. Is it he?”
“You must tell me more before I can answer.”
The words came in a feeble piping voice, strangely out of keeping with
the colossal frame and imposing features.
Unorna’s face was clouded, and the ready gleam of anger flashed in her
eyes as it ever did at the smallest opposition to her will.
“Can you not see him?” she asked impatiently.
“I cannot see him unless you lead me to him and tell me where he is.”
“Where are you?”
“In your mind.”
“And what are you?”
“I am the image in your eyes.”
“There is another man in my mind,” said Unorna. “I command you to see
him.”
“I see him. He is tall, pale, noble, suffering. You love him.”
“Is it he who shall be my life and my death? Is it he who shall love me
as other women are not loved?”
The weak voice was still for a moment, and the face seemed covered with
a veil of perplexity.
“I see with your eyes,” said the old man at last.
“And I command you to see into the future with your own!” cried Unorna,
concentrating her terrible will as she grew more impatient.
There was an evident struggle in the giant’s mind, an effort to obey
which failed to break down an obstacle. She bent over him eagerly and
her whole consciousness was centered in the words she desired him to
speak.
Suddenly the features relaxed into an expression of rest and
satisfaction. There was something unearthly in the sudden smile that
flickered over the old waxen face--it was as strange and unnatural as
though the cold marble effigy upon a sepulchre had laughed aloud in the
gloom of an empty church.
“I see. He will love you,” said the tremulous tones.
“Then it is he?”
“It is he.”
With a suppressed cry of triumph Unorna lifted her head and stood
upright. Then she started violently and grew very pale.
“You have probably killed him and spoiled everything,” said a rich bass
voice at her elbow--the very sub-bass of all possible voices.
Keyork Arabian was beside her. In her intense excitement she had not
heard him enter the room, and he had surprised her at once in the
breaking of their joint convention and in the revelation of her secret.
If Unorna could be said to know the meaning of the word fear in any
degree whatsoever, it was in relation to Keyork Arabian, the man who
during the last few years had been her helper and associate in the great
experiment. Of all men she had known in her life, he was the only one
whom she felt to be beyond the influence of her powers, the only one
whom she felt that she could not charm by word, or touch, or look. The
odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions
of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a
base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity
far beyond her reach to disturb. There was certainly no other being of
material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn pale by its
inopportune appearance.
“The best thing you can do is to put him to sleep at once,” said the
little man. “You can be angry afterwards, and, I thank heaven, so can
I--and shall.”
“Forget,” said Unorna, once more laying her hand upon the waxen brow.
“Let it be as though I had not spoken with you. Drink, in your sleep,
of the fountain of life, take new strength into your body and new blood
into your heart. Live, and when I next wake you be younger by as many
months as there shall pass hours till then. Sleep.”
A low sigh trembled in the hoary beard. The eyelids drooped over the
sunken eyes, there was a slight motion of the limbs, and all was still,
save for the soft and regular breathing.
“The united patience of the seven archangels, coupled with that of Job
and Simon Stylites, would not survive your acquaintance for a day,”
observed Keyork Arabian.
“Is he mine or yours?” Unorna asked, turning to him and pointing to the
sleeper.
She was quite ready to face her companion after the first shock of his
unexpected appearance. His small blue eyes sparkled angrily.
“I am not versed in the law concerning real estate in human kind in the
Kingdom of Bohemia,” he answered. “You may have property in a couple of
hundredweight, more or less, of old bones rather the worse for the wear
and tear of a century, but I certainly have some ownership in the life.
Without me, you would have been the possessor of a remarkably fine
skeleton by this time--and of nothing more.”
As he spoke, his extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of
portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ.
Unorna laughed scornfully.
“He is mine, Keyork Arabian, alive or dead. If the experiment fails,
and he dies, the loss is mine, not yours. Moreover, what I have done is
done, and I will neither submit to your reproaches nor listen to your
upbraidings. Is that enough?”
“Of its kind, quite. I will build an altar to Ingratitude, we will bury
our friend beneath the shrine, and you shall serve in the temple. You
could deify all the cardinal sins if you would only give your attention
to the subject, merely by the monstrously imposing proportions you would
know how to give them.”
“Does it ease you to make such an amazing noise?” inquired Unorna,
raising her eyebrows.
“Immensely. Our friend cannot hear it, and you can. You dare to tell me
that if he dies you are the only loser. Do fifty years of study count
for nothing? Look at me. I am an old man, and unless I find the secret
of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must
die--die, do you understand? Do you know what it means to die? How can
you comprehend that word--you girl, you child, you thing of five and
twenty summers!”
“It was to be supposed that your own fears were at the root of your
anger,” observed Unorna, sitting down upon her chair and calmly folding
her hands as though to wait until the storm should pass over.
“Is there anything at the root of anything except Self? You moth, you
butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the
incalculable value of Self--of that which is all to me and nothing to
you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing? You
are so young--you still believe in things, and interests, and good and
evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions
which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another!
What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death,
perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this
old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet?
I saw, I heard. How could he answer anything save that which was in your
own mind, when you were forcing him with your words and your eyes to
make a reply of some sort, or perish? Ah! You see now. You understand
now. I have opened your eyes a little. Why did he hesitate, and suffer?
Because you asked that to which he knew there was no answer. And you
tortured him with your will until his individuality fell into yours, and
spoke your words.”
Unorna’s head sank a little and she covered her eyes. The truth of what
he said flashed upon her suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing with it the
doubt which had left her at the moment when the sleeper had spoken. She
could not hide her discomfiture and Keyork Arabian saw his advantage.
“And for what?” he asked, beginning to pace the broad room. “To know
whether a man will love you or not! You seem to have forgotten what
you are. Is not such a poor and foolish thing as love at the command of
those who can say to the soul, be this, or be that, and who are obeyed?
Have you found a second Keyork Arabian, over whom your eyes have no
power--neither the one nor the other?”
He laughed rather brutally at the thought of her greatest physical
peculiarity, but then suddenly stopped short. She had lifted her face
and those same eyes were fastened upon him, the black and the gray, in a
look so savage and fierce that even he was checked, if not startled.
“They are certainly very remarkable eyes,” he said, more calmly, and
with a certain uneasiness which Unorna did not notice. “I wonder whom
you have found who is able to look you in the face without losing
himself. I suppose it can hardly be my fascinating self whom you wish to
enthrall,” he added, conscious after a moment’s trial that he was proof
against her influence.
“Hardly,” answered Unorna, with a bitter laugh.
“If I were the happy man you would not need that means of bringing me to
your feet. It is a pity that you do not want me. We should make a very
happy couple. But there is much against me. I am an old man, Unorna. My
figure was never of divine proportions, and as for my face, Nature made
it against her will. I know all that--and yet, I was young once, and
eloquent. I could make love then--I believe that I could still if it
would amuse you.”
“Try it,” said Unorna, who, like most people, could not long be angry
with the gnome-like little sage.
CHAPTER VI
“I could make love--yes, and since you tell me to try, I will.”
He came and stood before her, straightening his diminutive figure in a
comical fashion as though he were imitating a soldier on parade.
“In the first place,” he said, “in order to appreciate my skill, you
should realise the immense disadvantages under which I labour. I am a
dwarf, my dear Unorna. In the presence of that kingly wreck of a Homeric
man”--he pointed to the sleeper beside them--“I am a Thersites, if not
a pigmy. To have much chance of success I should ask you to close your
eyes, and to imagine that my stature matches my voice. That gift at
least, I flatter myself, would have been appreciated on the plains of
Troy. But in other respects I resemble neither the long-haired Greeks
nor the trousered Trojans. I am old and hideous, and in outward
appearance I am as like Socrates as in inward disposition I am totally
different from him. Admit, since I admit it, that I am the ugliest and
smallest man of your acquaintance.”
“It is not to be denied,” said Unorna with a smile.
“The admission will make the performance so much the more interesting.
And now, as the conjurer says when he begins, observe that there is no
deception. That is the figure of speech called lying, because there is
to be nothing but deception from beginning to end. Did you ever consider
the nature of a lie, Unorna? It is a very interesting subject.”
“I thought you were going to make love to me.”
“True; how easily one forgets those little things! And yet no woman ever
forgave a man who forgot to make love when she expected him to do so.
For a woman, who is a woman, never forgets to be exigent. And now there
is no reprieve, for I have committed myself, am sentenced, and
condemned to be made ridiculous in your eyes. Can there be anything more
contemptible, more laughable, more utterly and hopelessly absurd, than
an old and ugly man declaring his unrequited passion for a woman who
might be his granddaughter? Is he not like a hoary old owl, who leaves
his mousing to perch upon one leg and hoot love ditties at the evening
star, or screech out amorous sonnets to the maiden moon?”
“Very like,” said Unorna with a laugh.
“And yet--my evening star--dear star of my fast-sinking evening--golden
Unorna--shall I be cut off from love because my years are many? Or
rather, shall I not love you the more, because the years that are left
are few and scantily blessed? May not your dawn blend with my sunset and
make together one short day?”
“That is very pretty,” said Unorna, thoughtfully. He had the power of
making his speech sound like a deep, soft music.
“For what is love?” he asked. “Is it a garment, a jewel, a fanciful
ornament which only boys and girls may wear upon a summer’s holiday? May
we take it or leave it, as we please? Wear it, if it shows well upon our
beauty, or cast it off for others to put on when we limp aside out of
the race of fashion to halt and breathe before we die? Is love beauty?
Is love youth? Is love yellow hair or black? Is love the rose upon the
lip or the peach blossom in the cheek, that only the young may call it
theirs? Is it an outward grace, which can live but so long as the other
outward graces are its companions, to perish when the first gray hair
streaks the dark locks? Is it a glass, shivered by the first shock
of care as a mirror by a sword-stroke? Is it a painted mask, washed
colourless by the first rain of autumn tears? Is it a flower, so tender
that it must perish miserably in the frosty rime of earliest winter? Is
love the accident of youth, the complement of a fresh complexion, the
corollary of a light step, the physical concomitant of swelling pulses
and unstrained sinews?”
Keyork Arabian laughed softly. Unorna was grave and looked up into his
face, resting her chin upon her hand.
“If that is love, if that is the idol of your shrine, the vision of your
dreams, the familiar genius of your earthly paradise, why then, indeed,
he who worships by your side, and who would share the habitation of
your happiness, must wear Absalom’s anointed curls and walk with Agag’s
delicate step. What matter if he be but a half-witted puppet? He is
fair. What matter if he be foolish, faithless, forgetful, inconstant,
changeable as the tide of the sea? He is young. His youth shall cover
all his deficiencies and wipe out all his sins! Imperial love, monarch
and despot of the human soul, is become the servant of boys for the wage
of a girl’s first thoughtless kiss. If that is love let it perish out of
the world, with the bloom of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter
of the bright moth in June, with the song of the nightingale and the
call of the mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and
sweet but for a few short days. If that is love, why then love never
made a wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going
rose-garden of a world. The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and
feels nothing. If that is love, we may yet all develop into passionless
promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the earth may yet be
changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the sea to sugary lemonade
for us to drink, as the mad philosopher foretold, and we may yet all be
happy after love has left us.”
Unorna smiled, while he laughed again.
“Good,” she said. “You tell me what love is not, but you have not told
me what it is.”
“Love is the immortal essence of mortal passion, together they are as
soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul
is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly,
nor real to us at all, though still divine. Love is the world’s maker,
master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood,
and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove--ay,
and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle’s beak, and
talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke. Love is the spirit of life and the
angel of death. He speaks, and the thorny wilderness of the lonely heart
is become a paradise of flowers. He is silent, and the garden is but a
blackened desert over which a destroying flame has passed in the arms of
the east wind. Love stands at the gateway of each human soul, holding in
his hands a rose and a drawn sword--the sword is for the many, the rose
for the one.”
He sighed and was silent. Unorna looked at him curiously.
“Have you ever loved, that you should talk like that?” she asked. He
turned upon her almost fiercely.
“Loved? Yes, as you can never love; as you, in your woman’s heart, can
never dream of loving--with every thought, with every fibre, with
every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak
through and through, root and branch, core and knot, to feathery ashes
that you may scatter with a sigh--the only sigh you will ever breathe
for me, Unorna. Have I loved? Can I love? Do I love to-day as I loved
yesterday and shall love to-morrow? Ah, child! That you should ask that,
with your angel’s face, when I am in hell for you! When I would give my
body to death and my soul to darkness for a touch of your hand, for as
much kindness and gentleness in a word from your dear lips as you give
the beggars in the street! When I would tear out my heart with my hands
to feed the very dog that fawns on you--and who is more to you than
I, because he is yours, and all that is yours I love, and worship, and
adore!”
Unorna had looked up and smiled at first, believing that it was all but
a comedy, as he had told her that it should be. But as he spoke, and the
strong words chased each other in the torrent of his passionate speech,
she was startled and surprised. There was a force in his language, a
fiery energy in his look, a ring of half-desperate hope in his deep
voice, which moved her to strange thoughts. His face, too, was changed
and ennobled, his gestures larger, even his small stature ceased, for
once, to seem dwarfish and gnome-like.
“Keyork Arabian, is it possible that you love me?” she cried, in her
wonder.
“Possible? True? There is neither truth nor possibility in anything else
for me, in anything, in any one, but you, Unorna. The service of my love
fills the days and the nights and the years with you--fills the world
with you only; makes heaven to be on earth, since heaven is but the air
that is made bright with your breath, as the temple of all temples is
but the spot whereon your dear feet stand. The light of life is where
you are, the darkness of death is everywhere where you are not. But I am
condemned to die, cut off, predestined to be lost--for you have no pity,
Unorna, you cannot find it in you to be sorry for the poor old man whose
last pulse will beat for you; whose last word will be your name; whose
last look upon your beauty will end the dream in which he lived his
life. What can it be to you, that I love you so? Why should it be
anything to you? When I am gone--with the love of you in my heart,
Unorna--when they have buried the ugly old body out of your sight, you
will not even remember that I was once your companion, still less that
I knelt before you, that I kissed the ground on which you stood; that I
loved you as men love whose hearts are breaking, that I touched the hem
of your garment and was for one moment young--that I besought you to
press my hand but once, with one thought of kindness, with one last and
only word of human pity--”
He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which lent
intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee beside
Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his face
indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his outstretched hand
in hers.
“Poor Keyork!” she said, very kindly and gently. “How could I have ever
guessed all this?”
“It would have been exceedingly strange if you had,” answered Keyork, in
a tone that made her start.
Then a magnificent peal of bass laughter rolled through the room, as the
gnome sprang suddenly to his feet.
“Did I not warn you?” asked Keyork, standing back and contemplating
Unorna’s surprised face with delight. “Did I not tell you that I was
going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous and had everything
against me? That it was all a comedy for your amusement? That there was
to be nothing but deception from beginning to end? That I was like a
decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and many other things to a similar
effect?”
Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully.
“You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is
something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are
the devil himself!”
“Perhaps I am,” suggested the little man cheerfully.
“Do you know that there is a horror about all this?” Unorna rose to her
feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold.
As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily
examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the
body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with
his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes
to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all those
things which he was accustomed to do under the circumstances with a
promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared that the
old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the results of his
observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and watched him.
“Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other
people?” she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning
his notes to his pocket.
“I believe not,” he answered. “Nature spared me that indignity--or
denied me that happiness--as you may look at it. I am not like other
people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it is the other people
who are the losers.”
“The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so much of
yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your fellow-men.”
“I object to the expression, ‘fellow-men,’” returned Keyork promptly.
“I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and all their
component parts. A woman must have invented that particular phrase of
yours in order to annoy a man she disliked.”
“And why, if you please?”
“Because no one ever speaks of ‘fellow-women.’ The question of woman’s
duty to man has been amply discussed since the days of Menes the
Thinite--but no one ever heard of a woman’s duty to her fellow-women;
unless, indeed, her duty is to try and outdo them by fair means or foul.
Then why talk of man and his fellow-men? I can put the wisest rule of
life into two short phrases.”
“Give me the advantage of your wisdom.”
“The first rule is, Beware of women.”
“And the second?”
“Beware of men,” laughed the little sage. “Observe the simplicity and
symmetry. Each rule has three words, two of which are the same in each,
so that you have the result of the whole world’s experience at your
disposal at the comparatively small expenditure of one verb, one
preposition, and two nouns.”
“There is little room for love in your system,” remarked Unorna, “for
such love, for instance, as you described to me a few minutes ago.”
“There is too much room for it in yours,” retorted Keyork. “Your system
is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes nebulous
and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at enormous rates of
speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and astronomers would be much
happier without them.”
“I am not an astronomer.”
“Fortunately for the peace of the solar system. You have been sending
your comets dangerously near to our sick planet,” he added, pointing to
the sleeper. “If you do it again he will break up into asteroids. To use
that particularly disagreeable and suggestive word invented by men, he
will die.”
“He seems no worse,” said Unorna, contemplating the massive, peaceful
face.
“I do not like the word ‘seems,’” answered Keyork. “It is the refuge
of inaccurate persons, unable to distinguish between facts and
appearances.”
“You object to everything to-day. Are there any words which I may use
without offending your sense of fitness in language?”
“None which do not express a willing affirmation of all I say. I will
receive any original speech on your part at the point of the sword.
You have done enough damage to-day, without being allowed the luxury
of dismembering common sense. Seems, you say! By all that is unholy! By
Eblis, Ahriman, and the Three Black Angels! He is worse, and there is
no seeming. The heat is greater, the pulse is weaker, the heart flutters
like a sick bird.”
Unorna’s face showed her anxiety.
“I am sorry,” she said, in a low voice.
“Sorry! No doubt you are. It remains to be seen whether your sorrow
can be utilized as a simple, or macerated in tears to make a tonic, or
sublimated to produce a corrosive which will destroy the canker, death.
But be sorry by all means. It occupies your mind without disturbing
me, or injuring the patient. Be sure that if I can find an active
application for your sentiment, I will give you the rare satisfaction of
being useful.”
“You have the art of being the most intolerably disagreeable of living
men when it pleases you.”
“When you displease me, you should say. I warn you that if he dies--our
friend here--I will make further studies in the art of being unbearable
to you. You will certainly be surprised by the result.”
“Nothing that you could say or do would surprise me.”
“Indeed? We shall see.”
“I will leave you to your studies, then. I have been here too long as it
is.”
She moved and arranged the pillow under the head of the sleeping giant
and adjusted the folds of his robe. Her touch was tender and skilful in
spite of her ill-suppressed anger. Then she turned away and went towards
the door. Keyork Arabian watched her until her hand was upon the latch.
His sharp eyes twinkled, as though he expected something amusing to
occur.
“Unorna!” he said, suddenly, in an altered voice. She stopped and looked
back.
“Well?”
“Do not be angry, Unorna. Do not go away like this.”
Unorna turned, almost fiercely, and came back a step.
“Keyork Arabian, do you think you can play upon me as on an instrument?
Do you suppose that I will come and go at your word like a child--or
like a dog? Do you think you can taunt me at one moment, and flatter me
the next, and find my humour always at your command?”
The gnome-like little man looked down, made a sort of inclination of his
short body, and laid his hand upon his heart.
“I was never presumptuous, my dear lady. I never had the least intention
of taunting you, as you express it, and as for your humour--can you
suppose that I could expect to command, where it is only mine to obey?”
“It is of no use to talk in that way,” said Unorna, haughtily. “I am not
prepared to be deceived by your comedy this time.”
“Nor I to play one. Since I have offended you, I ask your pardon.
Forgive the expression, for the sake of the meaning; the thoughtless
word for the sake of the unworded thought.”
“How cleverly you turn and twist both thoughts and words!”
“Do not be so unkind, dear friend.”
“Unkind to you? I wish I had the secret of some unkindness that you
should feel!”
“The knowledge of what I can feel is mine alone,” answered Keyork, with
a touch of sadness. “I am not a happy man. The world, for me, holds but
one interest and one friendship. Destroy the one, or embitter the other,
and Keyork’s remnant of life becomes but a foretaste of death.”
“And that interest--that friendship--where are they?” asked Unorna in a
tone still bitter, but less scornful than before.
“Together, in this room, and both in danger, the one through your young
haste and impetuosity, the other through my wretched weakness in being
made angry; forgive me, Unorna, as I ask forgiveness----”
“Your repentance is too sudden; it savours of the death-bed.”
“Small wonder, when my life is in the balance.”
“Your life?” She uttered the question incredulously, but not without
curiosity.
“My life--and for your word,” he answered, earnestly. He spoke so
impressively, and in so solemn a tone, that Unorna’s face became grave.
She advanced another step towards him, and laid her hand upon the back
of the chair in which she previously had sat.
“We must understand each other--to-day or never,” she said. “Either we
must part and abandon the great experiment--for, if we part, it must be
abandoned--”
“We cannot part, Unorna.”
“Then, if we are to be associates and companions--”
“Friends,” said Keyork in a low voice.
“Friends? Have you laid the foundation for a friendship between us?
You say that your life is in the balance. That is a figure of speech, I
suppose. Or has your comedy another act? I can believe well enough that
your greatest interest in life lies there, upon that couch, asleep. I
know that you can do nothing without me, as you know it yourself. But in
your friendship I can never trust--never!--still less can I believe that
any words of mine can affect your happiness, unless they be those you
need for the experiment itself. Those, at least, I have not refused to
pronounce.”
While she was speaking, Keyork began to walk up and down the room, in
evident agitation, twisting his fingers and bending down his head.
“My accursed folly!” he exclaimed, as though speaking to himself. “My
damnable ingenuity in being odious! It is not to be believed! That a man
of my age should think one thing and say another--like a tetchy girl
or a spoilt child! The stupidity of the thing! And then, to have the
idiotic utterances of the tongue registered and judged as a confession
of faith--or rather, of faithlessness! But it is only just--it is only
right--Keyork Arabian’s self is ruined again by Keyork Arabian’s vile
speeches, which have no more to do with his self than the clouds on
earth have with the sun above them! Ruined, ruined--lost, this time. Cut
off from the only living being he respects--the only being whose
respect he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like
a friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own
irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a
broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible
peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is
perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to think
of! A fool to the last, Keyork, as you always were--and who would make a
friend of such a fool?”
Unorna leaned upon the back of the chair watching him, and wondering
whether, after all, he were not in earnest this time. He jerked out his
sentences excitedly, striking his hands together and then swinging
his arms in strange gestures. His tone, as he gave utterance to his
incoherent self-condemnation, was full of sincere conviction and of
anger against himself. He seemed not to see Unorna, nor to notice her
presence in the room. Suddenly, he stopped, looked at her and came
towards her. His manner became very humble.
“You are right, my dear lady,” he said. “I have no claim to your
forbearance for my outrageous humours. I have offended you, insulted
you, spoken to you as no man should speak to any woman. I cannot even
ask you to forgive me, and, if I tell you that I am sorry, you will not
believe me. Why should you? But you are right. This cannot go on. Rather
than run the risk of again showing you my abominable temper, I will go
away.”
His voice trembled and his bright eyes seemed to grow dull and misty.
“Let this be our parting,” he continued, as though mastering his
emotion. “I have no right to ask anything, and yet I ask this of you.
When I have left you, when you are safe for ever from my humours and my
tempers and myself--then, do not think unkindly of Keyork Arabian. He
would have seemed the friend he is, but for his unruly tongue.”
Unorna hesitated a moment. Then she put out her hand, convinced of his
sincerity in spite of herself.
“Let bygones be bygones, Keyork,” she said. “You must not go, for I
believe you.”
At the words, the light returned to his eyes, and a look of
ineffable beatitude overspread the face which could be so immovably
expressionless.
“You are as kind as you are good, Unorna, and as good as you are
beautiful,” he said, and with a gesture which would have been courtly in
a man of nobler stature, but which was almost grotesque in such a dwarf,
he raised her fingers to his lips.
This time, no peal of laugher followed to destroy the impression he had
produced upon Unorna. She let her hand rest in his a few seconds, and
then gently withdrew it.
“I must be going,” she said.
“So soon?” exclaimed Keyork regretfully. “There were many things I had
wished to say to you to-day, but if you have no time----”
“I can spare a few minutes,” answered Unorna, pausing. “What is it?”
“One thing is this.” His face had again become impenetrable as a mask
of old ivory, and he spoke in his ordinary way. “This is the question. I
was in the Teyn Kirche before I came here.”
“In church!” exclaimed Unorna in some surprise, and with a slight smile.
“I frequently go to church,” answered Keyork gravely. “While there, I
met an old acquaintance of mine, a strange fellow whom I have not seen
for years. The world is very small. He is a great traveller--a wanderer
through the world.”
Unorna looked up quickly, and a very slight colour appeared in her
cheeks.
“Who is he?” she asked, trying to seem indifferent. “What is his name?”
“His name? It is strange, but I cannot recall it. He is very tall, wears
a dark beard, has a pale, thoughtful face. But I need not describe him,
for he told me that he had been with you this morning. That is not the
point.”
He spoke carelessly and scarcely glanced at Unorna while speaking.
“What of him?” she inquired, trying to seem as indifferent as her
companion.
“He is a little mad, poor man, that is all. It struck me that, if you
would, you might save him. I know something of his story, though not
much. He once loved a young girl, now doubtless dead, but whom he still
believes to be alive, and he spends--or wastes--his life in a useless
search for her. You might cure him of the delusion.”
“How do you know that the girl is dead?”
“She died in Egypt, four years ago,” answered Keyork. “They had taken
her there in the hope of saving her, for she was at death’s door
already, poor child.”
“But if you convince him of that.”
“There is no convincing him, and if he were really convinced he would
die himself. I used to take an interest in the man, and I know that you
could cure him in a simpler and safer way. But of course it lies with
you.”
“If you wish it, I will try,” Unorna answered, turning her face from the
light. “But he will probably not come back to me.”
“He will. I advised him very strongly to come back, very strongly
indeed. I hope I did right. Are you displeased?”
“Not at all!” Unorna laughed a little. “And if he comes, how am I to
convince him that he is mistaken, and that the girl is dead?”
“That is very simple. You will hypnotise him, he will yield very
easily, and you will suggest to him very forcibly to forget the girl’s
existence. You can suggest to him to come back to-morrow and the next
day, or as often as you please, and you can renew the suggestion
each time. In a week he will have forgotten--as you know people can
forget--entirely, totally, without hope of recalling what is lost.”
“That is true,” said Unorna, in a low voice. “Are you sure that the
effect will be permanent?” she asked with sudden anxiety.
“A case of the kind occurred in Hungary last year. The cure was effected
in Pesth. I was reading it only a few months ago. The oblivion was still
complete, as long as six months after the treatment, and there seems no
reason to suppose that the patient’s condition will change. I thought it
might interest you to try it.”
“It will interest me extremely. I am very grateful to you for telling me
about him.”
Unorna had watched her companion narrowly during the conversation,
expecting him to betray his knowledge of a connection between the
Wanderer’s visit and the strange question she had been asking of the
sleeper when Keyork had surprised her. She was agreeably disappointed in
this however. He spoke with a calmness and ease of manner which disarmed
suspicion.
“I am glad I did right,” said he.
He stood at the foot of the couch upon which the sleeper was lying, and
looked thoughtfully and intently at the calm features.
“We shall never succeed in this way,” he said at last. “This condition
may continue indefinitely, till you are old, and I--until I am older
than I am by many years. He may not grow weaker, but he cannot grow
stronger. Theories will not renew tissues.”
Unorna looked up.
“That has always been the question,” she answered. “At least, you have
told me so. Will lengthened rest and perfect nourishment alone give a
new impulse to growth or will they not?”
“They will not. I am sure of it now. We have arrested decay, or made it
so slow as to be imperceptible. But we have made many attempts to renew
the old frame, and we are no farther advanced than we were nearly four
years ago. Theories will not make tissues.”
“What will?”
“Blood,” answered Keyork Arabian very softly.
“I have heard of that being done for young people in illness,” said
Unorna.
“It has never been done as I would do it,” replied the gnome, shaking
his head and gathering his great beard in his hand, as he gazed at the
sleeper.
“What would you do?”
“I would make it constant for a day, or for a week if I could--a
constant circulation; the young heart and the old should beat together;
it could be done in the lethargic sleep--an artery and a vein--a vein
and an artery--I have often thought of it; it could not fail. The new
young blood would create new tissue, because it would itself constantly
be renewed in the young body which is able to renew it, only expending
itself in the old. The old blood would itself become young again as it
passed to the younger man.”
“A man!” exclaimed Unorna.
“Of course. An animal would not do, because you could not produce the
lethargy nor make use of suggestion for healing purposes--”
“But it would kill him!”
“Not at all, as I would do it, especially if the young man were very
strong and full of life. When the result is obtained, an antiseptic
ligature, suggestion of complete healing during sleep, proper
nourishment, such as we are giving at present, by recalling the patient
to the hypnotic state, sleep again, and so on; in eight and forty hours
your young man would be waked and would never know what had happened to
him--unless he felt a little older, by nervous sympathy,” added the sage
with a low laugh.
“Are you perfectly sure of what you say?” asked Unorna eagerly.
“Absolutely. I have examined the question for years. There can be no
doubt of it. Food can maintain life, blood alone can renew it.”
“Have you everything you need here?” inquired Unorna.
“Everything. There is no hospital in Europe that has the appliances we
have prepared for every emergency.”
He looked at her face curiously. It was ghastly pale with excitement.
The pupil of her brown eye was so widely expanded that the iris looked
black, while the aperture of the gray one was contracted to the size
of a pin’s head, so that the effect was almost that of a white and
sightless ball.
“You seem interested,” said the gnome.
“Would such a man--such a man as Israel Kafka answer the purpose?” she
asked.
“Admirably,” replied the other, beginning to understand.
“Keyork Arabian,” whispered Unorna, coming close to him and bending down
to his ear, “Israel Kafka is alone under the palm tree where I always
sit. He is asleep, and he will not wake.”
The gnome looked up and nodded gravely. But she was gone almost before
she had finished speaking the words.
“As upon an instrument,” said the little man, quoting Unorna’s angry
speech. “Truly I can play upon you, but it is a strange music.”
Half an hour later Unorna returned to her place among the flowers, but
Israel Kafka was gone.
CHAPTER VII
The Wanderer, when Keyork Arabian had left him, had intended to revisit
Unorna without delay, but he had not proceeded far in the direction of
her house when he turned out of his way and entered a deserted street
which led towards the river. He walked slowly, drawing his furs closely
about him, for it was very cold.
He found himself in one of those moments of life in which the
presentiment of evil almost paralyses the mind’s power of making
any decision. In general, a presentiment is but the result upon the
consciousness of conscious or unconscious fear. This fear is very often
the natural consequence of the reaction which, in melancholy natures,
comes almost inevitably after a sudden and unexpected satisfaction
or after a period in which the hopes of the individual have been
momentarily raised by some unforeseen circumstance. It is by no means
certain that hope is of itself a good thing. The wise and mournful
soul prefers the blessedness of that non-expectancy which shall not be
disappointed, to the exhilarating pleasures of an anticipation which may
prove empty. In this matter lies one of the great differences between
the normal moral state of the heathen and that of the Christian. The
Greek hoped for all things in this world and for nothing in the next;
the Christian, on the contrary, looks for a happiness to come hereafter,
while fundamentally denying the reality of any earthly joy whatsoever
in the present. Man, however, is so constituted as to find it almost
impossible to put faith in either bliss alone, without helping his
belief by borrowing some little refreshment from the hope of the other.
The wisest of the Greeks believed the soul to be immortal; the sternest
of Christians cannot forget that once or twice in his life he had been
contemptibly happy, and condemns himself for secretly wishing that he
might be as happy again before all is over. Faith is the evidence of
things unseen, but hope is the unreasoning belief that unseen things may
soon become evident. The definition of faith puts earthly disappointment
out of the question; that of hope introduces it into human affairs as a
constant and imminent probability.
The development of psychologic research in our day has proved beyond
a doubt that individuals of a certain disposition may be conscious of
events actually occurring, or which have recently occurred, at a great
distance; but it has not shown satisfactorily that things yet to happen
are foreshadowed by that restless condition of the sensibilities which
we call presentiment. We may, and perhaps must, admit that all that is
or has been produces a real and perceptible impression upon all else
that is. But there is as yet no good reason for believing that an
impression of what shall be can be conveyed by anticipation--without
reasoning--to the mind of man.
But though the realisation of a presentiment may be as doubtful as any
event depending upon chance alone, yet the immense influence which a
mere presentiment may exercise is too well known to be denied. The human
intelligence has a strong tendency to believe in its own reasonings,
of which, indeed, the results are often more accurate and reliable than
those reached by the physical perceptions alone. The problems which can
be correctly solved by inspection are few indeed compared with those
which fall within the province of logic. Man trusts to his reason, and
then often confounds the impressions produced by his passions with the
results gained by semi-conscious deduction. His love, his hate, his
anger create fears, and these supply him with presentiments which he is
inclined to accept as so many well-reasoned grounds of action. If he is
often deceived, he becomes aware of his mistake, and, going to the other
extreme, considers a presentiment as a sort of warning that the contrary
of what he expects will take place; if he chances to be often right he
grows superstitious.
The lonely man who was pacing the icy pavement of the deserted street on
that bitter winter’s day felt the difficulty very keenly. He would not
yield and he could not advance. His heart was filled with forebodings
which his wisdom bade him treat with indifference, while his passion
gave them new weight and new horror with every minute that passed.
He had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. Beatrice had been
before him, and her voice had reached him among the voices of thousands,
but now, since the hours has passed and he had not found her, it was as
though he had been near her in a dream, and the strong certainty took
hold of him that she was dead and that he had looked upon her wraith in
the shadowy church.
He was a strong man, not accustomed to distrust his senses, and his
reason opposed itself instantly to the suggestion of the supernatural.
He had many times, on entering a new city, felt himself suddenly elated
by the irresistible belief that his search was at an end, and that
within a few hours he must inevitably find her whom he had sought so
long. Often as he passed through the gates of some vast burying-place,
he had almost hesitated to walk through the silent ways, feeling all at
once convinced that upon the very first headstone he was about to
see the name that was ever in his heart. But the expectation of
final defeat, like the anticipation of final success, had been always
deceived. Neither living nor dead had he found her.
Two common, reasonable possibilities lay before him, and two only. He
had either seen Beatrice, or he had not. If she had really been in the
Teyn Kirche, she was in the city and not far from him. If she had not
been there, he had been deceived by an accidental but extraordinary
likeness. Within the logical concatenation of cause and effect there was
no room for any other supposition, and it followed that his course was
perfectly clear. He must continue his search until he should find the
person he had seen, and the result would be conclusive, for he would
again see the same face and hear the same voice. Reason told him that he
had in all likelihood been mistaken after all. Reason reminded him that
the church had been dark, the multitude of worshippers closely
crowded together, the voices that sang almost innumerable and wholly
undistinguishable from each other. Reason showed him a throng of
possibilities, all pointing to an error of his perceptions and all in
direct contradiction with the one fact which his loving instinct held
for true.
The fear of evil, the presentiment of death, defied logic and put its
own construction and interpretation upon the strange event. He neither
believed, nor desired to believe, in a supernatural visitation, yet
the inexplicable certainty of having seen a ghostly vision overwhelmed
reason and all her arguments. Beatrice was dead. Her spirit had passed
in that solemn hour when the Wanderer had stood in the dusky church; he
had looked upon her shadowy wraith, and had heard the echo of a voice
from beyond the stars, whose crystal tones already swelled the diviner
harmony of an angelic strain.
The impression was so strong at first as to be but one step removed from
conviction. The shadow of a great mourning fell upon him, of a grief
too terrible for words, too solemn for tears, too strong to find any
expression save in death itself. He walked heavily, bending his head,
his eyes half closed as though in bodily pain, the icy pavement rang
like iron under his tread, the frozen air pierced through him, as his
sorrow pierced his heart, the gloom of the fast-sinking winter’s day
deepened as the darkness in his own soul. He, who was always alone, knew
at last what loneliness could mean. While she had lived she had been
with him always, a living, breathing woman, visible to his inner eyes,
speaking to his inward hearing, waking in his sleepless love. He had
sought her with restless haste and untiring strength through the length
and breadth of the whole world, but yet she had never left him, he had
never been separated from her for one moment, never, in the years of his
wandering, had he entered the temple of his heart without finding her
in its most holy place. Men had told him that she was dead, but he had
looked within himself and had seen that she was still alive; the dread
of reading her sacred name carved upon the stone that covered her
resting-place, had chilled him and made his sight tremble, but he had
entered the shrine of his soul and had found her again, untouched by
death, unchanged by years, living, loved, and loving. But now, when
he shut out the dismal street from view, and went to the sanctuary and
kneeled upon the threshold, he saw but a dim vision, as of something
lying upon an altar in the dark, something shrouded in white, something
shapely and yet shapeless, something that had been and was not any more.
He reached the end of the street, but he felt a reluctance to leave
it, and turned back again, walking still more slowly and heavily than
before. So far as any outward object or circumstance could be said to be
in harmony with his mood, the dismal lane, the failing light, the bitter
air, were at that moment sympathetic to him. The tomb itself is not more
sepulchral than certain streets and places in Prague on a dark
winter’s afternoon. In the certainty that the last and the greatest of
misfortunes had befallen him, the Wanderer turned back into the gloomy
by-way as the pale, wreathing ghosts, fearful of the sharp daylight
and the distant voices of men, sink back at dawn into the graves out
of which they have slowly risen to the outer air in the silence of the
night.
Death, the arch-steward of eternity, walks the bounds of man’s entailed
estate, and the headstones of men’s graves are landmarks in the great
possession committed to his stewardship, enclosing within their narrow
ring the wretched plot of land which makes up all of life’s inheritance.
From ever to always the generations of men do bondsmen’s service in that
single field, to plough it and sow it, and harrow it and water it, to
lay the sickle to the ripe corn if so be that their serfdom falls in the
years of plenty and the ear is full, to eat the bread of tears, if
their season of servitude be required of them in a time of scarcity and
famine. Bondsmen of death, from birth, they are sent forth out of the
sublime silence of the pathless forest which hems in the open glebe
land of the present and which is eternity, past and to come; bondsmen
of death, from youth to age, they join in the labour of the field,
they plough, they sow, they reap, perhaps, tears they shed many, and of
laughter there is also a little amongst them; bondsmen of death, to the
last, they are taken in the end, when they have served their tale of
years, many or few, and they are led from furrow and grass land, willing
or unwilling, mercifully or cruelly, to the uttermost boundary, and they
are thrust out quickly into the darkness whence they came. For their
place is already filled, and the new husbandmen, their children, have in
their turn come into the field, to eat of the fruit they sowed, to sow
in turn a seed of which they themselves shall not see the harvest, whose
sheaves others shall bind, whose ears others shall thresh, and of whose
corn others shall make bread after them. With our eyes we may yet see
the graves of two hundred generations of men, whose tombs serve but to
mark that boundary more clearly, whose fierce warfare, when they fought
against the master, could not drive back that limit by a handbreadth,
whose uncomplaining labour, when they accepted their lot patiently,
earned them not one scant foot of soil wherewith to broaden their
inheritance as reward for their submission; and of them all, neither
man nor woman was ever forgotten in the day of reckoning, nor was one
suffered to linger in the light. Death will bury a thousand generations
more, in graves as deep, strengthening year by year the strong chain of
his grim landmarks. He will remember us every one when the time comes;
to some of us he will vouchsafe a peaceful end, but some shall pass
away in mortal agony, and some shall be dragged unconscious to the other
side; but all must go. Some shall not see him till he is at hand, and
some shall dream of him in year-long dreams of horror, to be taken
unawares at the last. He will remember us every one and will come to us,
and the place of our rest shall be marked for centuries, for years, or
for seconds, for each a stone, or a few green sods laid upon a mound
beneath the sky, or the ripple on a changing wave when the loaded sack
has slipped from the smooth plank, and the sound of a dull splash has
died away in the wind. There be strong men, as well as weak, who shudder
and grow cold when they think of that yet undated day which must close
with its black letter their calendar of joy and sorrow; there are
weaklings, as well as giants, who fear death for those they love,
but who fear not anything else at all. The master treats courage and
cowardice alike; Achilles and Thersites must alike perish, and none will
be so bold as to say that he can tell the dust of the misshapen varlet
from the ashes of the swift-footed destroyer, whose hair was once so
bright, whose eyes were so fierce, whose mighty heart was so slothless,
so wrathful, so inexorable and so brave.
The Wanderer was of those who dread nothing save for the one
dearly-beloved object, but who, when that fear is once roused by a real
or an imaginary danger, can suffer in one short moment the agony which
should be distributed through a whole lifetime. The magnitude of his
passion could lend to the least thought or presentiment connected with
it the force of a fact and the overwhelming weight of a real calamity.
In order to feel any great or noble passion a man must have an
imagination both great and sensitive in at least one direction. The
execution of a rare melody demands as a prime condition an instrument
of wide compass and delicate construction, and one of even more rich and
varied capabilities is needed to render those grand harmonies which are
woven in the modulation of sonorous chords. A skilful hand may draw a
scale from wooden blocks set upon ropes of straw, but the great musician
must hold the violin, or must feel the keys of the organ under his
fingers and the responsive pedals at his feet, before he can expect to
interpret fittingly the immortal thought of the composer. The strings
must vibrate in perfect tune, the priceless wood must be seasoned and
penetrated with the melodies of years, and scores of years, the latent
music must be already trembling to be free, before the hand that draws
the bow can command the ears and hearts of those who hear. So, too,
love, the chief musician of this world, must find an instrument worthy
of his touch before he can show all his power, and make heart and soul
ring with the lofty strains of a sublime passion. Not every one knows
what love means; few indeed know all that love can mean. There is no
more equality among men than there is likeness between them, and no two
are alike. The many have little, the few have much. To the many is given
the faint perception of higher things, which is either the vestige, or
the promise, of a nobler development, past or yet to come. As through a
veil they see the line of beauty which it is not theirs to trace; as
in a dream they hear the succession of sweet tones which they can
themselves never bring together, though their half-grown instinct feels
a vague satisfaction in the sequence; as from another world, they listen
to the poet’s song, wondering, admiring, but powerless over the great
instrument of human speech, from whose 15,000 keys their touch can
draw but the dull, tuneless prose of daily question and answer; as in a
mirage of things unreal, they see the great deeds that are done in
their time for love or hate, for race or country, for ambition and for
vengeance, but though they see the result, and know the motive, the
inward meaning and spirit of it all escapes them. It is theirs to be,
and existence is in itself their all. To think, to create, to act, to
feel can be only for the few. To one is given the transcendent genius
that turns the very stones along life’s road to precious gems of
thought; whose gift it is to find speech in dumb things and eloquence in
the ideal half of the living world; to whom sorrow is a melody and joy
sweet music; to whom the humblest effort of a humble life can furnish
an immortal lyric, and in whom one thought of the Divine can inspire a
sublime hymn. Another stoops and takes a handful of clay from the earth,
and with the pressure of his fingers moulds it to the reality of an
unreal image seen in dreams; or, standing before the vast, rough
block of marble, he sees within the mass the perfection of a faultless
form--he lays the chisel to the stone, the mallet strikes the steel, one
by one the shapeless fragments fly from the shapely limbs, the
matchless curves are uncovered, the breathing mouth smiles through the
petrifaction of a thousand ages, the shroud of stone falls from
the godlike brow, and the Hermes of Olympia stands forth in all his
deathless beauty. Another is born to the heritage of this world’s power,
fore-destined to rule and fated to destroy; the naked sword of destiny
lies in his cradle; the axe of a king-maker awaits the awakening of his
strength; the sceptre of supreme empire hangs within his reach. Unknown,
he dreams and broods over the future; unheeded, he begins to move among
his fellows; a smile, half of encouragement, half of indifference,
greets his first effort; he advances a little farther, and thoughtful
men look grave, another step, and suddenly all mankind cries out and
faces him and would beat him back; but it is too late; one struggle
more, and the hush of a great and unknown fear falls on the wrangling
nations; they are silent, and the world is his. He is the man who
is already thinking when others have scarcely begun to feel; who is
creating before the thoughts of his rivals have reached any conclusion;
who acts suddenly, terribly and irresistibly, before their creations
have received life. And yet, the greatest and the richest inheritance of
all is not his, for it has fallen to another, to the man of heart, and
it is the inheritance of the kingdom of love.
In all ages the reason of the world has been at the mercy of brute
force. The reign of law has never had more than a passing reality, and
never can have more than that so long as man is human. The individual
intellect and the aggregate intelligence of nations and races have alike
perished in the struggles of mankind, to revive again, indeed, but as
surely to be again put to the edge of the sword. Here and there great
thoughts and great masterpieces have survived the martyrdom of a
thinker, the extinction of a school, the death of a poet, the wreck of a
high civilisation. Socrates is murdered with the creed of immortality on
his very lips; hardly had he spoken the wonderful words recorded in the
_Phaedo_ when the fatal poison sent its deathly chill through his limbs;
the Greeks are gone, yet the Hermes of Olympia remains, mutilated and
maimed, indeed, but faultless still, and still supreme. The very name
of Homer is grown wellnigh as mythic as his blindness. There are those
to-day who, standing by the grave of William Shakespeare, say boldly
that he was not the creator of the works that bear his name. And still,
through the centuries, Achilles wanders lonely by the shore of the
sounding sea; Paris loves, and Helen is false; Ajax raves, and Odysseus
steers his sinking ship through the raging storm. Still, Hamlet the
Avenger swears, hesitates, kills at last, and then himself is slain;
Romeo sighs in the ivory moonlight, and love-bound Juliet hears the
triumphant lark carolling his ringing hymn high in the cool morning
air, and says it is the nightingale--Immortals all, the marble god, the
Greek, the Dane, the love-sick boy, the maiden foredoomed to death. But
how short is the roll-call of these deathless ones! Through what raging
floods of destruction have they lived, through what tempests have they
been tossed, upon what inhospitable shores have they been cast up by
the changing tides of time! Since they were called to life by the
great, half-nameless departed, how often has their very existence been
forgotten by all but a score in tens of millions? Has it been given to
those embodied thoughts of transcendent genius to ride in the whirlwind
of men’s passions or to direct the stormy warfare of half frantic
nations? Since they were born in all their bright perfection, to live
on in unchanging beauty, violence has ruled the world; many a time since
then the sword has mown down its harvest of thinkers, many a time has
the iron harrow of war torn up and scarred the face of the earth. Athens
still stands in broken loveliness, and the Tiber still rolls its tawny
waters heavily through Rome; but Rome and Athens are to-day but places
of departed spirits; they are no longer the seats of life, their broken
hearts are petrified. All men may see the ports through which the
blood flowed to the throbbing centre, the traces of the mighty arteries
through which it was driven to the ends of the earth. But the blood is
dried up, the hearts are broken, and though in their stony ruins those
dead world-hearts be grander and more enduring than any which in our
time are whole and beating, yet neither their endurance nor their
grandeur have saved them from man, the destroyer, nor was the beauty
of their thoughts or the thoughtfully-devised machinery of their
civilisation a shield against a few score thousand rough-hammered
blades, wielded by rough-hewn mortals who recked neither of intellect
nor of civilisation, nor yet of beauty, being but very human men, full
of terribly strong and human passions. Look where you will, throughout
the length and breadth of all that was the world five thousand, or five
hundred years ago; everywhere passion has swept thought before it, and
belief, reason. And we, too, with our reason and our thoughts, shall be
swept from existence and the memory of it. Is this the age of reason,
and is this the reign of law? In the midst of this civilisation of ours
three millions of men lie down nightly by their arms, men trained to
handle rifle and sword, taught to destroy and to do nothing else; and
nearly as many more wait but a summons to leave their homes and join the
ranks. And often it is said that we are on the eve of a universal war.
At the command of a few individuals, at the touch of a few wires, more
than five millions of men in the very prime and glory of strength,
armed as men never were armed since time began, will arise and will kill
civilisation and thought, as both the one and the other have been slain
before by fewer hands and less deadly weapons. Is this reason, or is
this law? Passion rules the world, and rules alone. And passion is
neither of the head, nor of the hand, but of the heart. Passion cares
nothing for the mind. Love, hate, ambition, anger, avarice, either
make a slave of intelligence to serve their impulses, or break down its
impotent opposition with the unanswerable argument of brute force, and
tear it to pieces with iron hands.
Love is the first, the greatest, the gentlest, the most cruel, the most
irresistible of passions. In his least form he is mighty. A little love
has destroyed many a great friendship. The merest outward semblance of
love has made such havoc as no intellect could repair. The reality has
made heroes and martyrs, traitors and murderers, whose names will not
be forgotten, for glory or for shame. Helen is not the only woman whose
smile has kindled the beacon of a ten years’ war, nor Antony the only
man who has lost the world for a caress. It may be that the Helen who
shall work our destruction is even now twisting and braiding her golden
hair; it may be that the new Antony, who is to lose this same old world
again, already stands upon the steps of Cleopatra’s throne. Love’s day
is not over yet, nor has man outgrown the love of woman.
But the power to love greatly is a gift, differing much in kind, though
little in degree, from the inspiration of the poet, the genius of the
artist, or the unerring instinct and eagle’s glance of the conqueror;
for conqueror, artist and poet are moved by passion and not by reason,
which is but their servant in so far as it can be commanded to move
others, and their deadliest enemy when it would move themselves. Let the
passion and the instrument but meet, being suited to each other, and all
else must go down before them. Few, indeed, are they to whom is given
that rich inheritance, and they themselves alone know all their wealth,
and all their misery, all the boundless possibilities of happiness that
are theirs, and all the dangers and the terrors that beset their path.
He who has won woman in the face of daring rivals, of enormous odds, of
gigantic obstacles, knows what love means; he who has lost her, having
loved her, alone has measured with his own soul the bitterness of
earthly sorrow, the depth of total loneliness, the breadth of the
wilderness of despair. And he who has sorrowed long, who has long been
alone, but who has watched the small, twinkling ray still burning upon
the distant border of his desert--the faint glimmer of a single star
that was still above the horizon of despair--he only can tell what utter
darkness can be upon the face of the earth when that last star has
set for ever. With it are gone suddenly the very quarters and cardinal
points of life’s chart, there is no longer any right hand or any left,
any north or south, any rising of the sun or any going down, any forward
or backward direction in his path, any heaven above, or any hell below.
The world has stood still and there is no life in the thick, black
stillness. Death himself is dead, and one living man is forgotten
behind, to mourn him as a lost friend, to pray that some new destroyer,
more sure of hand than death himself, may come striding through the
awful silence to make an end at last of the tormented spirit, to bear it
swiftly to the place where that last star ceased to shine, and to let it
down into the restful depths of an unremembering eternity. But into
that place, which is the soul of man, no destroyer can penetrate; that
solitary life neither the sword, nor pestilence, nor age, nor eternity
can extinguish; that immortal memory no night can obscure. There was a
beginning indeed, but end there can be none.
Such a man was the Wanderer, as he paced the deserted street in the
cruel, gloomy cold of the late day. Between his sight and the star of
his own hope an impenetrable shadow had arisen, so that he saw it no
more. The memory of Beatrice was more than ever distinct to his inner
sense, but the sudden presentiment of her death, real in its working as
any certainty, had taken the reality of her from the ground on which he
stood. For that one link had still been between them. Somewhere, near
or far, during all these years, she, too, had trodden the earth with
her light footsteps, the same universal mother earth on which they both
moved and lived. The very world was hers, since she was touching it,
and to touch it in his turn was to feel her presence. For who could
tell what hidden currents ran in the secret depths, or what mysterious
interchange of sympathy might not be maintained through them? The air
itself was hers, since she was somewhere breathing it; the stars, for
she looked on them; the sun, for it warmed her; the cold of winter,
for it chilled her too; the breezes of spring, for they fanned her pale
cheek and cooled her dark brow. All had been hers, and at the thought
that she had passed away, a cry of universal mourning broke from the
world she had left behind, and darkness descended upon all things, as a
funeral pall.
Cold and dim and sad the ancient city had seemed before, but it was a
thousandfold more melancholy now, more black, more saturated with the
gloom of ages. From time to time the Wanderer raised his heavy lids,
scarcely seeing what was before him, conscious of nothing but the horror
which had so suddenly embraced his whole existence. Then, all at once,
he was face to face with some one. A woman stood still in the way, a
woman wrapped in rich furs, her features covered by a dark veil which
could not hide the unequal fire of the unlike eyes so keenly fixed on
his.
“Have you found her?” asked the soft voice.
“She is dead,” answered the Wanderer, growing very white.
CHAPTER VIII
During the short silence which followed, and while the two were still
standing opposite to each other, the unhappy man’s look did not change.
Unorna saw that he was sure of what he said, and a thrill of triumph, as
jubilant as his despair was profound ran through her. If she had cared
to reason with herself and to examine into her own sincerity, she would
have seen that nothing but genuine passion, good or bad, could have lent
the assurance of her rival’s death such power to flood the dark street
with sunshine. But she was already long past doubt upon that question.
The enchanter had bound her heart with his spells at the first glance,
and the wild nature was already on fire. For one instant the light shot
from her eyes, and then sank again as quickly as it had come. She had
other impulses than those of love, and subtle gifts of perception
that condemned her to know the truth, even when the delusion was most
glorious. He was himself deceived, and she knew it. Beatrice might,
indeed, have died long ago. She could not tell. But as she sought in the
recesses of his mind, she saw that he had no certainty of it, she saw
the black presentiment between him and the image, for she could see the
image too. She saw the rival she already hated, not receiving a vision
of the reality, but perceiving it through his mind, as it had always
appeared to him. For one moment she hesitated still, and she knew
that her whole life was being weighed in the trembling balance of that
hesitation. For one moment her face became an impenetrable mask, her
eyes grew dull as uncut jewels, her breathing ceased, her lips were set
like cold marble. Then the stony mask took life again, the sight grew
keen, and a gentle sigh stirred the chilly air.
“She is not dead.”
“Not dead!” The Wanderer started, but fully two seconds after she had
spoken, as a man struck by a bullet in battle, in whom the suddenness of
the shock has destroyed the power of instantaneous sensation.
“She is not dead. You have dreamed it,” said Unorna, looking at him
steadily.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and then moved it, as though
brushing away something that troubled him.
“Not dead? Not dead!” he repeated, in changing tones.
“Come with me. I will show her to you.”
He gazed at her and his senses reeled. Her words sounded like rarest
music in his ear; in the darkness of his brain a soft light began to
diffuse itself.
“Is it possible? Have I been mistaken?” he asked in a low voice, as
though speaking to himself.
“Come!” said Unorna again very gently.
“Whither? With you? How can you bring me to her? What power have you to
lead the living to the dead?”
“To the living. Come.”
“To the living--yes. I have dreamed an evil dream--a dream of death. She
is not--no, I see it now. She is not dead. She is only very far from
me, very, very far. And yet it was this morning--but I was mistaken,
deceived by some faint likeness. Ah, God! I thought I knew her face!
What is it that you want with me?”
He asked the question as though again suddenly aware of Unorna’s
presence. She had lifted her veil and her eyes drew his soul into their
mysterious depths.
“She calls you. Come.”
“She? She is not here. What can you know of her? Why do you look at me
so?”
He felt an unaccountable uneasiness under her gaze, like a warning of
danger not far off. The memory of his meeting with her on that same
morning was not clear at that moment, but he had not forgotten the odd
disturbance of his faculties which had distressed him at the time. He
was inclined to resist any return of the doubtful state and to oppose
Unorna’s influence. He felt the fascination of her glance, and he
straightened himself rather proudly and coldly as though to withdraw
himself from it. It was certain that Unorna, at the surprise of meeting
her, had momentarily dispelled the gloomy presentiment which had
given him such terrible pain. And yet, even his disturbed and anxious
consciousness found it more than strange that she should thus press him
to go with her, and so boldly promise to bring him to the object of his
search. He resisted her, and found that resistance was not easy.
“And yet,” said she, dropping her eyes and seeming to abandon the
attempt, “you said that if you failed to-day you would come back to me.
Have you succeeded, that you need no help?”
“I have not succeeded.”
“And if I had not come to you--if I had not met you here, you would have
failed for the last time. You would have carried with you the conviction
of her death to the moment of your own.”
“It was a horrible delusion, but since it was a delusion it would have
passed away in time.”
“With your life, perhaps. Who would have waked you, if I had not?”
“I was not sleeping. Why do you reason? What would you prove?”
“Much, if I knew how. Will you walk with me? It is very cold.”
They had been standing where they had met. As she spoke, Unorna looked
up with an expression wholly unlike the one he had seen a few moments
earlier. Her strong will was suddenly veiled by the most gentle and
womanly manner, and a little shiver, real or feigned, passed over her as
she drew the folds of her fur more closely round her. The man before her
could resist the aggressive manifestation of her power, but he was far
too courteous to refuse her request.
“Which way?” he asked quietly.
“To the river,” she answered.
He turned and took his place by her side. For some moments they walked
on in silence. It was already almost twilight.
“How short the days are!” exclaimed Unorna, rather suddenly.
“How long, even at their shortest!” replied her companion.
“They might be short--if you would.”
He did not answer her, though he glanced quickly at her face. She was
looking down at the pavement before her, as though picking her way, for
there were patches of ice upon the stones. She seemed very quiet. He
could not guess that her heart was beating violently, and that she found
it hard to say six words in a natural tone.
So far as he himself was concerned he was in no humour for talking. He
had seen almost everything in the world, and had read or heard almost
everything that mankind had to say. The streets of Prague had no
novelty for him, and there was no charm in the chance acquaintance of a
beautiful woman, to bring words to his lips. Words had long since grown
useless in the solitude of a life that was spent in searching for one
face among the millions that passed before his sight. Courtesy had
bidden him to walk with her, because she had asked it, but courtesy did
not oblige him to amuse her, he thought, and she had not the power that
Keyork Arabian had to force him into conversation, least of all into
conversing upon his own inner life. He regretted the few words he had
spoken, and would have taken them back, had it been possible. He felt no
awkwardness in the long silence.
Unorna for the first time in her life felt that she had not full control
of her faculties. She who was always so calm, so thoroughly mistress of
her own powers, whose judgment Keyork Arabian could deceive, but whose
self-possession he could not move, except to anger, was at the present
moment both weak and unbalanced. Ten minutes earlier she had fancied
that it would be an easy thing to fix her eyes on his and to cast the
veil of a half-sleep over his already half-dreaming senses. She had
fancied that it would be enough to say “Come,” and that he would follow.
She had formed the bold scheme of attaching him to herself, by visions
of the woman whom he loved as she wished to be loved by him. She
believed that if he were once in that state she could destroy the old
love for ever, or even turn it to hate, at her will. And it had seemed
easy. That morning, when he had first come to her, she had fastened her
glance upon him more than once, and she had seen him turn a shade paler,
had noticed the drooping of his lids and the relaxation of his hands.
She had sought him in the street, guided by something surer than
instinct, she had found him, had read his thoughts, and had felt him
yielding to her fixed determination. Then, suddenly, her power had left
her, and as she walked beside him, she knew that if she looked into his
face she would blush and be confused like a shy girl. She almost wished
that he would leave her without a word and without an apology.
It was not possible, however, to prolong the silence much longer. A
vague fear seized her. Had she really lost all her dominating strength
in the first moments of the first sincere passion she had ever felt?
Was she reduced to weakness by his presence, and unable so much as to
sustain a fragmentary conversation, let alone suggesting to his mind
the turn it should take? She was ashamed of her poverty of spirit in the
emergency. She felt herself tongue-tied, and the hot blood rose to her
face. He was not looking at her, but she could not help fancying that he
knew her secret embarrassment. She hung her head and drew her veil down
so that it should hide even her mouth.
But her trouble increased with every moment, for each second made it
harder to break the silence. She sought madly for something to say,
and she knew that her cheeks were on fire. Anything would do, no
matter what. The sound of her own voice, uttering the commonest of
commonplaces, would restore her equanimity. But that simple, almost
meaningless phrase would not be found. She would stammer, if she tried
to speak, like a child that has forgotten its lesson and fears the
schoolmaster as well as the laughter of its schoolmates. It would be so
easy if he would say something instead of walking quietly by her side,
suiting his pace to hers, shifting his position so that she might step
upon the smoothest parts of the ill-paved street, and shielding her, as
it were, from the passers-by. There was a courteous forethought for her
convenience and safety in every movement of his, a something which a
woman always feels when traversing a crowded thoroughfare by the side of
a man who is a true gentleman in every detail of life, whether husband,
or friend, or chance acquaintance. For the spirit of the man who
is really thoughtful for woman, as well as sincerely and genuinely
respectful in his intercourse with them, is manifest in his smallest
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