Chapter XIII

The Witch of Prague

by F. Marion Crawford

Unorna was superstitious, as Keyork Arabian had once told her. She
did not thoroughly understand herself and she had very little real
comprehension of the method by which she produced such remarkable
results. She was gifted with a sensitive and active imagination,
which supplied her with semi-mystic formulae of thought and speech in
place of reasoned explanations, and she undoubtedly attributed much
of her own power to supernatural influences. In this respect, at
least, she was no farther advanced than the witches of older days,
and if her inmost convictions took a shape which would have seemed
incomprehensible to those predecessors of hers, this was to be
attributed in part to the innate superiority of her nature, and
partly, also, to the high degree of cultivation in which her mental
faculties had reached development.

Keyork Arabian might spend hours in giving her learned
explanations of what she did, but he never convinced her. Possibly he
was not convinced himself, and he still hesitated, perhaps, between
the two great theories advanced to explain the phenomena of
hypnotism. He had told her that he considered her influence to be
purely a moral one, exerted by means of language and supported by her
extraordinary concentrated will. But it did not follow that he
believed what he told her, and it was not improbable that he might
have his own doubts on the subject--doubts which Unorna was not slow
to suspect, and which destroyed for her the whole force of his
reasoning. She fell back upon a sort of grossly unreasonable
mysticism, combined with a blind belief in those hidden natural
forces and secret virtues of privileged objects, which formed the
nucleus of mediaeval scientific research. The field is a fertile one
for the imagination and possesses a strange attraction for certain
minds. There are men alive in our own time to whom the transmutation
of metals does not seem an impossibility, nor the brewing of the
elixir of life a matter to be scoffed at as a matter of course. The
world is full of people who, in their inmost selves, put faith in the
latent qualities of precious stones and amulets, who believe their
fortunes, their happiness, and their lives to be directly influenced
by some trifling object which they have always upon them. We do not
know enough to state with assurance that the constant handling of any
particular metal, or gem, may not produce a real and invariable
corresponding effect upon the nerves. But we do know most positively
that, when the belief in such talismans is once firmly established,
the moral influence they exert upon men through the imagination is
enormous. From this condition of mind to that in which auguries are
drawn from outward and apparently accidental circumstances, is but a
step. If Keyork Arabian inclined to the psychic rather than to the
physical school in his view of Unorna's witchcraft and in his study
of hypnotism in general, his opinion resulted naturally from his
great knowledge of mankind, and of the unacknowledged, often
unsuspected, convictions which in reality direct mankind's activity.
It was this experience, too, and the certainty to which it had led
him, that put him beyond the reach of Unorna's power so long as he
chose not to yield himself to her will. Her position was in reality
diametrically opposed to his, and although he repeated his reasonings
to her from time to time, he was quite indifferent to the nature of
her views, and never gave himself any real trouble to make her change
them. The important point was that she should not lose anything of
the gifts she possessed, and Keyork was wise enough to see that the
exercise of them depended in a great measure upon her own conviction
regarding their exceptional nature.

Unorna herself believed in everything which strengthened and
developed that conviction, and especially in the influences of time
and place. It appeared to her a fortunate circumstance, when she at
last determined to overcome her pride, that the resolution should
have formed itself exactly a month after she had so successfully
banished the memory of Beatrice from the mind of the man she loved.
She felt sure of producing a result as effectual if, this time, she
could work the second change in the same place and under the same
circumstances as the first. And to this end everything was in her
favour. She needed not to close her eyes to fancy that thirty days
had not really passed between then and now, as she left her house in
the afternoon with the Wanderer by her side.

He had come back and had found her once more herself, calm,
collected, conscious of her own powers. No suspicion of the real
cause of the disturbance he had witnessed crossed his mind, still
less could he guess what thing she meditated as she directed their
walk towards that lonely place by the river which had been the scene
of her first great effort. She talked lightly as they went, and he,
in that strange humour of peaceful, well-satisfied indifference which
possessed him, answered her in the same strain. It was yet barely
afternoon, but there was already a foretaste of coming evening in the
chilly air.

"I have been thinking of what you said this morning," she said,
suddenly changing the current of the conversation. "Did I thank you
for your kindness?" She smiled as she laid her hand gently upon his
arm, to cross a crowded street, and she looked up into his quiet
face.

"Thank me? For what? On the contrary--I fancied that I had
annoyed you."

"Perhaps I did not quite understand it all at first," she
answered thoughtfully. "It is hard for a woman like me to realise
what it would be to have a brother--or a sister, or any one belonging
to me. I needed to think of the idea. Do you know that I am quite
alone in the world?"

The Wanderer had accepted her as he found her, strangely alone,
indeed, and strangely independent of the world, a beautiful,
singularly interesting woman, doing good, so far as he knew, in her
own way, separated from ordinary existence by some unusual
circumstances, and elevated above ordinary dangers by the strength
and the pride of her own character. And yet, indolent and indifferent
as he had grown of late, he was conscious of a vague curiosity in
regard to her story. Keyork either really knew nothing, or pretended
to know nothing of her origin.

"I see that you are alone," said the Wanderer. "Have you always
been so?"

"Always. I have had an odd life. You could not understand it, if
I told you of it."

"And yet I have been lonely too--and I believe I was once
unhappy, though I cannot think of any reason for it."

"You have been lonely--yes. But yours was another loneliness
more limited, less fatal, more voluntary. It must seem strange to
you--I do not even positively know of what nation I was born."

Her companion looked at her in surprise, and his curiosity
increased.

"I know nothing of myself," she continued. "I remember neither
father nor mother. I grew up in the forest, among people who did not
love me, but who taught me, and respected me as though I were their
superior, and who sometimes feared me. When I look back, I am amazed
at their learning and their wisdom--and ashamed of having learned so
little."

"You are unjust to yourself."

Unorna laughed.

"No one ever accused me of that," she said. "Will you believe
it? I do not even know where that place was. I cannot tell you even
the name of the kingdom in which it lay. I learned a name for it and
for the forest, but those names are in no map that has ever fallen
into my hands. I sometimes feel that I would go to the place if I
could find it."

"It is very strange. And how came you here?"

"I was told the time had come. We started at night. It was a
long journey, and I remember feeling tired as I was never tired
before or since. They brought me here, they left me in a religious
house among nuns. Then I was told that I was rich and free. My
fortune was brought with me. That, at least, I know. But those who
received it and who take care of it for me, know no more of its
origin than I myself. Gold tells no tales, and the secret has been
well kept. I would give much to know the truth--when I am in the
humour."

She sighed, and then laughed again.

"You see why it is that I find the idea of a brother so hard to
understand," she added, and then was silent.

"You have all the more need of understanding it, my dear
friend," the Wanderer answered, looking at her thoughtfully.

"Yes--perhaps so. I can see what friendship is. I can almost
guess what it would be to have a brother."

"And have you never thought of more than that?" He asked the
question in his calmest and most friendly tone, somewhat
deferentially as though fearing lest it should seem tactless and be
unwelcome.

"Yes, I have thought of love also," she answered, in a low
voice. But she said nothing more, and they walked on for some time in
silence.

They came out upon the open place by the river which she
remembered so well. Unorna glanced about her and her face fell. The
place was the same, but the solitude was disturbed. It was not Sunday
as it had been on that day a month ago. All about the huge blocks of
stone, groups of workmen were busy with great chisels and heavy
hammers, hewing and chipping and fashioning the material that it
might be ready for use in the early spring. Even the river was
changed. Men were standing upon the ice, cutting it into long
symmetrical strips, to be hauled ashore. Some of the great pieces
were already separated from the main ice, and sturdy fellows, clad in
dark woollen, were poling them over the dark water to the foot of the
gently sloping road where heavy carts stood ready to receive the load
when cut up into blocks. The dark city was taking in a great
provision of its own coldness against the summer months.

Unorna looked about her. Everywhere there were people at work,
and she was more disappointed than she would own to herself at the
invasion of the solitude. The Wanderer looked from the stone-cutters
to the ice- men with a show of curiosity.

"I have not seen so much life in Prague for many a day," he
observed.

"Let us go," answered Unorna, nervously. "I do not like it. I
cannot bear the sight of people to-day."

They turned in a new direction, Unorna guiding her companion by
a gesture. They were near to the Jewish quarter, and presently were
threading their way through narrow and filthy streets thronged with
eager Hebrew faces, and filled with the hum of low-pitched voices
chattering together, not in the language of the country, but in a
base dialect of German. They were in the heart of Prague, in that dim
quarter which is one of the strongholds of the Israelite, whence he
directs great enterprises and sets in motion huge financial schemes,
in which Israel sits, as a great spider in the midst of a dark web,
dominating the whole capital with his eagle's glance and weaving the
destiny of the Bohemian people to suit his intricate speculations.
For throughout the length and breadth of Slavonic and German Austria
the Jew rules, and rules alone.

Unorna gathered her furs more closely about her, in evident
disgust at her surroundings, but still she kept on her way. Her
companion, scarcely less familiar with the sights of Prague than she
herself, walked by her side, glancing carelessly at the passing
people, at the Hebrew signs, at the dark entrances that lead to
courts within courts and into labyrinths of dismal lanes and
passages, looking at everything with the same serene indifference,
and idly wondering what made Unorna choose to walk that way. Then he
saw that she was going towards the cemetery. They reached the door,
were admitted and found themselves alone in the vast wilderness.

In the midst of the city lies the ancient burial ground, now
long disused but still undisturbed, many acres of uneven land,
covered so thickly with graves, and planted so closely with granite
and sandstone slabs, that the paths will scarce allow two persons to
walk side by side. The stones stand and lie in all conceivable
positions, erect, slanting at every angle, prostrate upon the earth
or upon others already fallen before them--two, three, and even four
upon a grave, where generations of men have been buried one upon the
other--stones large and small, covered with deep-cut inscriptions in
the Hebrew character, bearing the sculpture of two uplifted hands,
wherever the Kohns, the children of the tribe of Aaron, are laid to
rest, or the gracefully chiselled ewer of the Levites. Here they lie,
thousands upon thousands of dead Jews, great and small, rich and
poor, wise and ignorant, neglected individually, but guarded as a
whole with all the tenacious determination of the race to hold its
own, and to preserve the sacredness of its dead. In the dim light of
the winter's afternoon it is as though a great army of men had fallen
fighting there, and had been turned to stone as they fell. Rank upon
rank they lie, with that irregularity which comes of symmetry
destroyed, like columns and files of soldiers shot down in the act of
advancing. And in winter, the gray light falling upon the untrodden
snow throws a pale reflection upwards against each stone, as though
from the myriad sepulchres a faintly luminous vapour were rising to
the outer air. Over all, the rugged brushwood and the stunted trees
intertwine their leafless branches and twigs in a thin, ghostly
network of gray, that clouds the view of the farther distance without
interrupting it, a forest of shadowy skeletons clasping fleshless,
bony hands one with another, from grave to grave, as far as the eye
can see.

The stillness in the place is intense. Not a murmur of distant
life from the surrounding city disturbs the silence. At rare
intervals a strong breath of icy wind stirs the dead branches and
makes them crack and rattle against the gravestones and against each
other as in a dance of death. It is a wild and dreary place. In the
summer, indeed, the thick leafage lends it a transitory colour and
softness, but in the depth of winter, when there is nothing to hide
the nakedness of truth, when the snow lies thick upon the ground and
the twined twigs and twisted trunks scarce cast a tracery of shadow
under the sunless sky, the utter desolation and loneliness of the
spot have a horror of their own, not to be described, but never to be
forgotten.

Unorna walked forward in silence, choosing a path so narrow that
her companion found himself obliged to drop behind and follow in her
footsteps. In the wildest part of this wilderness of death there is a
little rising of the ground. Here both the gravestones and the
stunted trees are thickest, and the solitude is, if possible, even
more complete than elsewhere. As she reached the highest point Unorna
stood still, turned quickly towards the Wanderer and held out both
her hands towards him.

"I have chosen this place, because it is quiet," she said, with
a soft smile.

Hardly knowing why he did so, he laid his hands in hers and
looked kindly down to her upturned face.

"What is it?" he asked, meeting her eyes.

She was silent, and her fingers did not unclasp themselves. He
looked at her, and saw for the hundredth time that she was very
beautiful. There was a faint colour in her cheeks, and her full lips
were just parted as though a loving word had escaped them which she
would not willingly recall. Against the background of broken neutral
tints, her figure stood out, an incarnation of youth and vitality. If
she had often looked weary and pale of late, her strength and
freshness had returned to her now in all their abundance. The
Wanderer knew that he was watching her, and knew that he was thinking
of her beauty and realising the whole extent of it more fully than
ever before, but beyond this point his thoughts could not go. He was
aware that he was becoming fascinated by her eyes, and he felt that
with every moment it was growing harder for him to close his own, or
to look away from her, and then, an instant later, he knew that it
would be impossible. Yet he made no effort. He was passive,
indifferent, will-less, and her gaze charmed him more and more. He
was already in a dream, and he fancied that the beautiful figure
shone with a soft, rosy light of its own in the midst of the gloomy
waste. Looking into her sunlike eyes, he saw there twin images of
himself, that drew him softly and surely into themselves until he was
absorbed by them and felt that he was no longer a reality but a
reflection. Then a deep unconsciousness stole over all his senses and
he slept, or passed into that state which seems to lie between sleep
and trance.

Unorna needed not to question him this time, for she saw that he
was completely under her influence. Yet she hesitated at the supreme
moment, and then, though to all real intents she was quite alone, a
burning flush of shame rose to her face, and her heart sank within
her. She felt that she could not do it.

She dropped his hands. They fell to his sides as though they had
been of lead. Then she turned from him and pressed her aching
forehead against a tall weather-worn stone that rose higher than her
own height from the midst of the hillock.

Her woman's nature rebelled against the trick. It was the truest
thing in her and perhaps the best, which protested so violently
against the thing she meant to do; it was the simple longing to be
loved for her own sake, and of the man's own free will, to be loved
by him with the love she had despised in Israel Kafka. But would this
be love at all, this artificial creation of her suggestion reacting
upon his mind? Would it last? Would it be true, faithful, tender?
Above all, would it be real, even for a moment? She asked herself a
thousand questions in a second of time.

Then the ready excuse flashed upon her--the pretext which the
heart will always find when it must have its way. Was it not
possible, after all, that he was beginning to love her even now?
Might not that outburst of friendship which had surprised her and
wounded her so deeply, be the herald of a stronger passion? She
looked up quickly and met his vacant stare.

"Do you love me?" she asked, almost before she knew what she was
going to say.

"No." The answer came in the far-off voice that told of his
unconsciousness, a mere toneless monosyllable breathed upon the murky
air. But it stabbed her like the thrust of a jagged knife. A long
silence followed, and Unorna leaned against the great slab of carved
sandstone.

Even to her there was something awful in his powerless,
motionless presence. The noble face, pale and set as under a mask,
the thoughtful brow, the dominating features, were not those of a man
born to be a plaything to the will of a woman. The commanding figure
towered in the grim surroundings like a dark statue, erect, unmoving,
and in no way weak. And yet she knew that she had but to speak and
the figure would move, the lips would form words, the voice would
reach her ear. He would raise this hand or that, step forwards or
backwards, at her command, affirm what she bid him affirm, and deny
whatever she chose to hear denied. For a moment she wished that he
had been as Keyork Arabian, stronger than she; then, with the
half-conscious comparison the passion for the man himself surged up
and drowned every other thought. She almost forgot that for the time
he was not to be counted among the living. She went to him, and
clasped her hands upon his shoulder, and looked up into his
scarce-seeing eyes.

"You must love me," she said, "you must love me because I love
you so. Will you not love me, dear? I have waited so long for
you!"

The soft words vibrated in his sleeping ear but drew forth
neither acknowledgment nor response. Like a marble statue he stood
still, and she leaned upon his shoulder.

"Do you not hear me?" she cried in a more passionate tone. "Do
you not understand me? Why is it that your love is so hard to win?
Look at me! Might not any man be proud to love me? Am I not beautiful
enough for you? And yet I know that I am fair. Or are you ashamed
because people call me a witch? Why then I will never be one again,
for your sake! What do I care for it all? Can it be anything to
me--can anything have worth that stands between me and you? Ah,
love--be not so very hard!"

The Wanderer did not move. His face was as calm as a sculptured
stone.

"Do you despise me for loving you?" she asked again, with a
sudden flush.

"No. I do not despise you." Something in her tone had pierced
through his stupor and had found an answer. She started at the sound
of his voice. It was as though he had been awake and had known the
weight of what she had been saying, and her anger rose at the cold
reply.

"No--you do not despise me, and you never shall!" she exclaimed
passionately. "You shall love me, as I love you--I will it, with all
my will! We are created to be all, one to the other, and you shall
not break through the destiny of love. Love me, as I love you--love
me with all your heart, love me with all your mind, love me with all
your soul, love me as man never loved woman since the world began! I
will it, I command it--it shall be as I say--you dare not disobey
me--you cannot if you would."

She paused, but this time no answer came. There was not even a
contraction of the stony features.

"Do you hear all I say?" she asked.

"I hear."

"Then understand and answer me," she said.

"I do not understand. I cannot answer."

"You must. You shall. I will have it so. You cannot resist my
will, and I will it with all my might. You have no will--you are
mine, your body, your soul, and your thoughts, and you must love me
with them all from now until you die--until you die," she repeated
fiercely.

Again he was silent. She felt that she had no hold upon his
heart or mind, seeing that he was not even disturbed by her repeated
efforts.

"Are you a stone, that you do not know what love is?" she cried,
grasping his hand in hers and looking with desperate eyes into his
face.

"I do not know what love is," he answered, slowly.

"Then I will tell you what love is," she said, and she took his
hand and pressed it upon her own brow.

The Wanderer started at the touch, as though he would have drawn
back. But she held him fast, and so far, at least, he was utterly
subject to her. His brow contracted darkly, and his face grew
paler.

"Read it there," she cried. "Enter into my soul and read what
love is, in his own great writing. Read how he steals suddenly into
the sacred place, and makes it his, and tears down the old gods and
sets up his dear image in their stead--read how he sighs, and speaks,
and weeps, and loves--and forgives not, but will be revenged at the
last. Are you indeed of stone, and have you a stone for a heart? Love
can melt even stones, being set in man as the great central fire in
the earth to burn the hardest things to streams of liquid flame! And
see, again, how very soft and gentle he can be! See how I love
you--see how sweet it is--how very lovely a thing it is to love as
woman can. There--have you felt it now? Have you seen into the depths
of my soul and into the hiding-places of my heart? Let it be so in
your own, then, and let it be so for ever. You understand now. You
know what it all is--how wild, how passionate, how gentle and how
great! Take to yourself this love of mine--is it not all yours? Take
it, and plant it with strong roots and seeds of undying life in your
own sleeping breast, and let it grow, and grow, till it is even
greater than it was in me, till it takes us both into itself,
together, fast bound in its immortal bonds, to be two in one, in life
and beyond life, for ever and ever and ever to the end of ends!"

She ceased and she saw that his face was no longer
expressionless and cold. A strange light was upon his features, the
passing radiance of a supreme happiness seen in the vision of a
dream. Again she laid her hands upon his shoulder clasped together,
as she had done at first. She knew that her words had touched him and
she was confident of the result, confident as one who loves beyond
reason. Already in imagination she fancied him returning to
consciousness, not knowing that he had slept, but waking with a
gentle word just trembling upon his lips, the words she longed to
hear.

One moment more, she thought. It was good to see that light upon
his face, to fancy how that first word would sound, to feel that the
struggle was past and that there was nothing but happiness in the
future, full, overflowing, overwhelming, reaching from earth to
heaven and through time to eternity. One moment, only, before she let
him wake--it was such glory to be loved at last! Still the light was
there, still that exquisite smile was on his lips. And they would be
always there now, she thought.

At last she spoke.

"Then love, since you are mine, and I am yours, wake from the
dream to life itself--wake, not knowing that you have slept, knowing
only that you love me now and always--wake, love wake!"

She waved her delicate hand before his eyes and still resting
the other upon his shoulder, watched the returning brightness in the
dark pupils that had been glazed and fixed a moment before. And as
she looked, her own beauty grew radiant in the splendour of a joy
even greater than she had dreamed of. As it had seemed to him when he
had lost himself in her gaze, so now she also fancied that the grim,
gray wilderness was full of a soft rosy light. The place of the dead
was become the place of life; the great solitude was peopled as the
whole world could never be for her; the crumbling gravestones were
turned to polished pillars in the temple of an immortal love, and the
ghostly, leafless trees blossomed with the undying flowers of the
earthly paradise.

One moment only, and then all was gone. The change came, sure,
swift and cruel. As she looked, it came, gradual, in that it passed
through every degree, but sudden also, as the fall of a fair and
mighty building, which being undermined in its foundations passes in
one short minute through the change from perfect completeness to
hopeless and utter ruin.

All the radiance, all the light, all the glory were gone in an
instant. Her own supremely loving look had not vanished, her lips
still parted sweetly, as forming the word that was to answer his, and
the calm indifferent face of the waking man was already before
her.

"What is it?" he asked, in his kind and passionless voice. "What
were you going to ask me, Unorna?"

It was gone. The terribly earnest appeal had been in vain. Not a
trace of that short vision of love remained impressed upon his
brain.

With a smothered cry of agony Unorna leaned against the great
slab of stone behind her and covered her eyes. The darkness of night
descended upon her, and with it the fire of a burning shame.

Then a loud and cruel laugh rang through the chilly air, such a
laugh as the devils in hell bestow upon the shame of a proud soul
that knows its own infinite bitterness. Unorna started and uncovered
her eyes, her suffering changed in a single instant to ungovernable
and destroying anger. She made a step forwards and then stopped
short, breathing hard. The Wanderer, too, had turned, more quickly
than she. Between two tall gravestones, not a dozen paces away, stood
a man with haggard face and eyes on fire, his keen, worn features
contorted by a smile in which unspeakable satisfaction struggled for
expression with a profound despair.

The man was Israel Kafka.