The Witch of Prague Part 23

"That was wise," said Unorna, still pale. "How came we to be so imprudent! One word, and he might have suspected--"

"He could not have suspected all," answered Keyork. "No man could suspect that."

"Nevertheless, I suppose what we have done is not exactly--justifiable."

"Hardly. It is true that criminal law has not yet adjusted itself to meet questions of suggestion and psychic influence, but it draws the line, most certainly, somewhere between these questions and the extremity to which we have gone. Happily the law is at an immeasurable distance from science, and here, as usual in such experiments, no one could prove anything, owing to the complete unconsciousness of the princ.i.p.al witnesses."

"I do not like to think that we have been near to such trouble," said Unorna.

"Nor I. It was fortunate that I met the Wanderer when I did."

"And the other? Did he wake as I ordered him to do? Is all right? Is there no danger of his suspecting anything?"

It seemed as though Unorna had momentarily forgotten that such a contingency might be possible, and her anxiety returned with the recollection. Keyork's rolling laughter reverberated among the plants and filled the whole wide hall with echoes.

"No danger there," he answered. "Your witchcraft is above criticism.

Nothing of that kind that you have ever undertaken has failed."

"Except against you," said Unorna, thoughtfully.

"Except against me, of course. How could you ever expect anything of the kind to succeed against me, my dear lady?"

"And why not? After all, in spite of our jesting, you are not a supernatural being."

"That depends entirely on the interpretation you give to the word supernatural. But, my dear friend and colleague, let us not deceive each other, though we are able between us to deceive other people into believing almost anything. There is nothing in all this witchcraft of yours but a very powerful moral influence at work--I mean apart from the mere faculty of clairvoyance which is possessed by hundreds of common somnambulists, and which, in you, is a mere accident. The rest, this hypnotism, this suggestion, this direction of others' wills, is a moral affair, a matter of direct impression produced by words. Mental suggestion may in rare cases succeed, when the person to be influenced is himself a natural clairvoyant. But these cases are not worth taking into consideration. Your influence is a direct one, chiefly exercised by means of your words and through the impression of power which you know how to convey in them. It is marvellous, I admit. But the very definition puts me beyond your power."

"Why?"

"Because there is not a human being alive, and I do not believe that a human being ever lived, who had the sense of independent individuality which I have. Let a man have the very smallest doubt concerning his own independence--let that doubt be ever so transitory and produced by any accident whatsoever--and he is at your mercy."

"And you are sure that no accident could shake your faith in yourself?"

"My consciousness of myself, you mean. No. I am not sure. But, my dear Unorna, I am very careful in guarding against accidents of all sorts, for I have attempted to resuscitate a great many dead people and I have never succeeded, and I know that a false step on a slippery staircase may be quite as fatal as a teaspoonful of prussic acid--or an unrequited pa.s.sion. I avoid all these things and many others. If I did not, and if you had any object in getting me under your influence, you would succeed sooner or later. Perhaps the day is not far distant when I will voluntarily sleep under your hand."

Unorna glanced quickly at him.

"And in that case," he added, "I am sure you could make me believe anything you pleased."

"What are you trying to make me understand?" she asked, suspiciously, for he had never before spoken of such a possibility.

"You look anxious and weary," he said in a tone of sympathy in which Unorna could not detect the least false modulation, though she fancied from his fixed gaze that he meant her to understand something which he could not say. "You look tired," he continued, "though it is becoming to your beauty to be pale--I always said so. I will not weary you. I was only going to say that if I were under your influence--you might easily make me believe that you were not yourself, but another woman--for the rest of my life."

They stood looking at each other in silence during several seconds. Then Unorna seemed to understand what he meant.

"Do you really believe that is possible?" she asked earnestly.

"I know it. I know of a case in which it succeeded very well."

"Perhaps," she said, thoughtfully. "Let us go and look at him."

She moved in the direction of the aged sleeper's room and they both left the hall together.

CHAPTER XIII

Unorna was superst.i.tious, 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 trans.m.u.tation 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 a.s.surance 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances, 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.