The Witch of Prague Part 48

There were long intervals of silence now. The first rush of his speech had spent itself, for he had told her much and she had heard it all, even through the mists of her changing moods. And now that he was silent she longed to hear him speak again. She could never weary of that voice.

It had been music to her in the days when it had been full of cold indifference--now each vibration roused high harmonies in her heart, each note was a full chord, and all the chords made but one great progression. She longed to hear it all again, wondering greatly how it could never have been not good to hear.

Then with the greater temptation came the less, enclosed within it, suddenly revealed to her. There was but one thing she hated in it all.

That was the name. Would he not give her another--her own perhaps? She trembled as she thought of speaking. Would she still have Beatrice's voice? Might not her own break down the spell and destroy all at once?

Yet she had spoken once before. She had told him that she loved him and he had not been undeceived.

"Beloved--" she said at last, lingering on the single word and then hesitating.

He looked into her face as he drew her to him, with happy eyes. She might speak, then, for he would hear tones not hers.

"Beloved, I am tired of my name. Will you not call me by another?" She spoke very softly.

"By another name?" he exclaimed, surprised, but smiling at what seemed a strange caprice.

"Yes. It is a sad name to me. It reminds me of many things--of a time that is better forgotten since it is gone. Will you do it for me? It will make it seem as though that time had never been."

"And yet I love your own name," he said, thoughtfully. "It is so much--or has been so much in all these years, when I had nothing but your name to love."

"Will you not do it? It is all I ask."

"Indeed I will, if you would rather have it so. Do you think there is anything that I would not do if you asked it of me?"

They were almost the words she had spoken to him that night when they were watching together by Israel Kafka's side. She recognised them and a strange thrill of triumph ran through her. What matter how? What matter where? The old reckless questions came to her mind again. If he loved her, and if he would but call her Unorna, what could it matter, indeed?

Was she not herself? She smiled unconsciously.

"I see it pleases you," he said tenderly. "Let it be as you wish. What name will you choose for your dear self?"

She hesitated. She could not tell how far he might remember what was past. And yet, if he had remembered he would have seen where he was in the long time that had pa.s.sed since his awakening.

"Did you ever--in your long travels--hear the name Unorna?" she asked with a smile and a little hesitation.

"Unorna? No. I cannot remember. It is a Bohemian word--it means 'she of February.' It has a pretty sound--half familiar to me. I wonder where I have heard it."

"Call me Unorna, then. It will remind us that you found me in February."

CHAPTER XXV

After carefully locking and bolting the door of the sacristy Sister Paul turned to Beatrice. She had set down her lamp upon the broad, polished shelf which ran all round the place, forming the top of a continuous series of cupboards, as in most sacristies, used for the vestments of the church. At the back of these high presses rose half way to the spring of the vault.

The nun seemed a little nervous and her voice quavered oddly as she spoke. If she had tried to take up her lamp her hand would have shaken.

In the moment of danger she had been brave and determined, but now that all was over her enfeebled strength felt the reaction from the strain.

She turned to Beatrice and met her flas.h.i.+ng black eyes. The young girl's delicate nostrils quivered and her lips curled fiercely.

"You are angry, my dear child," said Sister Paul. "So am I, and it seems to me that our anger is just enough. 'Be angry and sin not.' I think we can apply that to ourselves."

"Who is that woman?" Beatrice asked. She was certainly angry, as the nun had said, but she felt by no means sure that she could resist the temptation of sinning if it presented itself as the possibility of tearing Unorna to pieces.

"She was once with us," the nun answered. "I knew her when she was a mere girl--and I loved her then, in spite of her strange ways. But she has changed. They call her a Witch--and indeed I think it is the only name for her."

"I do not believe in witches," said Beatrice, a little scornfully. "But whatever she is, she is bad. I do not know what it was that she wanted me to do in the church, upon the altar there--it was something horrible.

Thank G.o.d you came in time! What could it have been, I wonder?"

Sister Paul shook her head sorrowfully, but said nothing. She knew no more than Beatrice of Unorna's intention, but she believed in the existence of a Black Art, full of sacrilegious practices, and credited Unorna vaguely with the worst designs which she could think of, though in her goodness she was not able to imagine anything much worse than the saying of a _Pater Noster_ backwards in a consecrated place. But she preferred to say nothing, lest she should judge Unorna unjustly. After all, she did not know. What she had seen had seemed bad enough and strange enough, but apart from the fact that Beatrice had been found upon the altar, where she certainly had no business to be, and that Unorna had acted like a guilty woman, there was little to lay hold of in the way of fact.

"My child," she said at last, "until we know more of the truth, and have better advice than we can give each other, let us not speak of it to any one of the sisters. In the morning I will tell all I have seen in confession, and then I shall get advice. Perhaps you should do the same.

I know nothing of what happened before you left your room. Perhaps you have something to reproach yourself with. It is not for me to ask. Think it over."

"I will tell you the whole truth," Beatrice answered, resting her elbow upon the polished shelf and supporting her head in her hand, while she looked earnestly into Sister Paul's faded eyes.

"Think well, my daughter. I have no right to any confession from you. If there is anything----"

"Sister Paul--you are a woman, and I must have a woman's help. I have learned something to-night which will change my whole life. No--do not be afraid--I have done nothing wrong. At least, I hope not. While my father lived, I submitted. I hoped, but I gave no sign. I did not even write, as I once might have done. I have often wished that I had--was that wrong?"

"But you have told me nothing, dear child. How can I answer you?" The nun was perplexed.

"True. I will tell you. Sister Paul--I am five-and-twenty years old, I am a grown woman and this is no mere girl's love story. Seven years ago--I was only eighteen then--I was with my father as I have been ever since. My mother had not been dead long then--perhaps that is the reason why I seemed to be everything to my father. But they had not been happy together, and I had loved her best. We were travelling--no matter where--and then I met the man I have loved. He was not of our country--that is, of my father's. He was of the same people as my mother. Well--I loved him. How dearly you must guess, and try to understand. I could not tell you that. No one could. It began gradually, for he was often with us in those days. My father liked him for his wit, his learning, though he was young; for his strength and manliness--for a hundred reasons which were nothing to me. I would have loved him had he been a cripple, poor, ignorant, despised, instead of being what he was--the grandest, n.o.blest man G.o.d ever made. For I did not love him for his face, nor for his courtly ways, nor for such gifts as other men might have, but for himself and for his heart--do you understand?"

"For his goodness," said Sister Paul, nodding in approval. "I understand."

"No," Beatrice answered, half impatiently. "Not for his goodness either.

Many men are good, and so was he--he must have been, of course. No matter. I loved him. That is enough. He loved me, too. And one day we were alone, in the broad spring sun, upon a terrace. There were lemon trees there--I can see the place. Then we told each other that we loved--but neither of us could find the words--they must be somewhere, those strong beautiful words that could tell how we loved. We told each other--"

"Without your father's consent?" asked the nun almost severely.

Beatrice's eyes flashed. "Is a woman's heart a dog that must follow at heel?" she asked fiercely. "We loved. That was enough. My father had the power, but not the heart, to come between. We told him, then, for we were not cowards. We told him boldly that it must be. He was a thoughtful man, who spoke little. He said that we must part at once, before we loved each other better--and that we should soon forget. We looked at each other, the man I loved and I. We knew that we should love better yet, parted or together, though we could not tell how that could be. But we knew also that such love as there was between us was enough.

My father gave no reasons, but I knew that he hated the name of my mother's nation. Of course we met again. I remember that I could cry in those days. My father had not learned to part us then. Perhaps he was not quite sure himself, at all events the parting did not come so soon.

We told him that we would wait, for ever if it must be. He may have been touched, though little touched him at the best. Then, one day, suddenly and without warning, he took me away to another city. And what of him?

I asked. He told me that there was an evil fever in the city and that it had seized him--the man I loved. 'He is free to follow us if he pleases,' said my father. But he never came. Then followed a journey, and another, and another, until I knew that my father was travelling to avoid him. When I saw that I grew silent, and never spoke his name again. Farther and farther, longer and longer, to the ends of the earth.

We saw many people, many asked for my hand. Sometimes I heard of him, from men who had seen him lately. I waited patiently, for I knew that he was on our track, and sometimes I felt that he was near."

Beatrice paused.

"It is a strange story," said Sister Paul, who had rarely heard a tale of love.

"The strange thing is this," Beatrice answered. "That woman--what is her name? Unorna? She loves him, and she knows where he is."

"Unorna?" repeated the nun in bewilderment.

"Yes. She met me after Compline to-night. I could not but speak to her, and then I was deceived. I cannot tell whether she knew what I am to him, but she deceived me utterly. She told me a strange story of her own life. I was lonely. In all those years I have never spoken of what has filled me. I cannot tell how it was. I began to speak, and then I forgot that she was there, and told all."

"She made you tell her, by her secret arts," said Sister Paul in a low voice.

"No--I was lonely and I believed that she was good, and I felt that I must speak. Then--I cannot think how I could have been so mad--but I thought that we should never meet again, and I showed her a likeness of him. She turned on me. I shall not forget her face. I heard her say that she knew him and loved him too. When I awoke I was lying on the altar.

That is all I know."

"Her evil arts, her evil arts," repeated the nun, shaking her head.

"Come, my dear child, let us see if all is in order there, upon the altar. If these things are to be known they must be told in the right quarter. The sacristan must not see that any one has been in the church."