Chapter VII

The Witch of Prague

by F. Marion Crawford

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.