The Witch of Prague Part 51

"Then you wish to be informed of our friend's movements, as I understand it?" said Keyork going back to the main point.

"Yes--what happened on that day?" Beatrice asked, for she wished to hear more.

"Oh, on that day? Yes. Well, nothing happened worth mentioning. We talked a little and went out of the church and walked a little way together. I forget when we met next, but I have seen him at least a dozen times since then, I am sure."

Beatrice began to understand that Keyork had no intention of giving her any further information. She reflected that she had learned much in this interview. The Wanderer had been, and perhaps still was, in Prague.

Unorna loved him and they had been frequently together. He had been in the Teyn Kirche on the day she had last been there herself, and in all probability he had seen her, since he had chosen the very seat in which she had sat. Further, she gathered that Keyork had some interest in not speaking more frankly. She gave up the idea of examining him any further. He was a man not easily surprised, and it was only by means of a surprise that he could be induced to betray even by a pa.s.sing expression what he meant to conceal. Her means of attack were exhausted for the present. She determined at least to repeat her request clearly before dismissing him, in the hope that it might suit his plans to fulfil it, but without the least trust in his sincerity.

"Will you be so kind as to make some inquiry, and let me know the result to-day?" she asked.

"I will do everything to give you an early answer," said Keyork. "And I shall be the more anxious to obtain one without delay in order that I may have the very great pleasure of visiting you again. There is much that I would like to ask you, if you would allow me. For old friends, as I trust I may say that we are, you must admit that we have exchanged few--very few--confidences this morning. May I come again to-day? It would be an immense privilege to talk of old times with you, of our friends in Egypt and of our many journeys. For you have no doubt travelled much since then. Your dear father," he lowered his voice reverentially, "was a great traveller, as well as a very learned man.

Ah, well, my dear lady--we must all make up our minds to undertake that great journey one of these days. But I pain you. I was very much attached to your dear father. Command all my service. I will come again in the course of the day."

With many sympathetic smiles and half-comic inclinations of his short, broad body, the little man bowed himself out.

CHAPTER XXVI

Unorna drew one deep breath when she first heard her name fall with a loving accent from the Wanderer's lips. Surely the bitterness of despair was past since she was loved and not called Beatrice. The sigh that came then was of relief already felt, the forerunner, as she fancied, too, of a happiness no longer dimmed by shadows of fear and mists of rising remorse. Gazing into his eyes, she seemed to be watching in their reflection a magic change. She had been Beatrice to him, Unorna to herself, but now the transformation was at hand--now it was to come. For him she loved, and who loved her, she was Unorna even to the name, in her own thoughts she had taken the dark woman's face. She had risked all upon the chances of one throw and she had won. So long as he had called her by another's name the bitterness had been as gall mingled in the wine of love. But now that too was gone. She felt that it was complete at last. Her golden head sank peacefully upon his shoulder in the morning light.

"You have been long in coming, love," she said, only half consciously, "but you have come as I dreamed--it is perfect now. There is nothing wanting any more."

"It is all full, all real, all perfect," he answered, softly.

"And there is to be no more parting, now----"

"Neither here, nor afterwards, beloved."

"Then this is afterwards. Heaven has nothing more to give. What is Heaven? The meeting of those who love--as we have met. I have forgotten what it was to live before you came----"

"For me, there is nothing to remember between that day and this."

"That day when you fell ill," Unorna said, "the loneliness, the fear for you----"

Unorna scarcely knew that it had not been she who had parted from him so long ago. Yet she was playing a part, and in the semi-consciousness of her deep self-illusion it all seemed as real as a vision in a dream so often dreamed that it has become part of the dreamer's life. Those who fall by slow degrees under the power of the all-destroying opium remember yesterday as being very far, very long past, and recall faint memories of last year as though a century had lived and perished since then, seeing confusedly in their own lives the lives of others, and other existences in their own, until ident.i.ty is almost gone in the endless transmigration of their souls from the shadow in one dream-tale to the wraith of themselves that dreams the next. So, in that hour, Unorna drifted through the changing scenes that a word had power to call up, scarce able, and wholly unwilling, to distinguish between her real and her imaginary self. What matter how? What matter where? The very questions which at first she had asked herself came now but faintly as out of an immeasurable distance, and always more faintly still. They died away in her ears, as when, after long waiting, and false starts, and turnings back and anxious words exchanged, the great race is at last begun, the swift long limbs are gathered and stretched and strained and gathered again, the thunder of flying hoofs is in the air, and the rider, with low hands, and head inclined and eyes bent forward, hears the last anxious word of parting counsel tremble and die in the rush of the wind behind.

She had really loved him throughout all those years; she had really sought him and mourned for him and longed for a sight of his face; they had really parted and had really found each other but a short hour since; there was no Beatrice but Unorna and no Unorna but Beatrice, for they were one and indivisible and interchangeable as the glance of a man's two eyes that look on one fair sight; each sees alone, the same--but seeing together, the sight grows doubly fair.

"And all the sadness, where is it now?" she asked. "And all the emptiness of that long time? It never was, my love--it was yesterday we met. We parted yesterday, to meet to-day. Say it was yesterday--the little word can undo seven years."

"It seems like yesterday," he answered.

"Indeed, I can almost think so, now, for it was all night between.

But not quite dark, as night is sometimes. It was a night full of stars--each star was a thought of you, that burned softly and showed me where heaven was. And darkest night, they say, means coming morning--so when the stars went out I knew the sun must rise."

The words fell from her lips naturally. To her it seemed true that she had indeed waited long and hoped and thought of him. And it was not all false. Ever since her childhood she had been told to wait, for her love would come and would come only once. And so it was true, and the dream grew sweeter and the illusion of the enchantment more enchanting still.

For it was an enchantment and a spell that bound them together there, among the flowers, the drooping palms, the graceful tropic plants and the shadowy leaves. And still the day rose higher, but still the lamps burned on, fed by the silent, mysterious current that never tires, blending a real light with an unreal one, an emblem of Unorna's self, mixing and blending, too, with a self not hers.

"And the sun is risen, indeed," she added presently.

"Am I the sun, dear?" he asked, foretasting the delight of listening to her simple answer.

"You are the sun, beloved, and when you s.h.i.+ne, my eyes can see nothing else in heaven."

"And what are you yourself--Beatrice--no, Unorna--is that the name you chose? It is so hard to remember anything when I look at you."

"Beatrice--Unorna--anything," came the answer, softly murmuring.

"Anything, dear, any name, any face, any voice, if only I am I, and you are you, and we two love! Both, neither, anything--do the blessed souls in Paradise know their own names?"

"You are right--what does it matter? Why should you need a name at all, since I have you with me always? It was well once--it served me when I prayed for you--and it served to tell me that my heart was gold while you were there, as the goldsmith's mark upon his jewel stamps the pure metal, that all men may know it."

"You need no sign like that to show me what you are," said she, with a long glance.

"Nor I to tell me you are in my heart," he answered. "It was a foolish speech. Would you have me wise now?"

"If wisdom is love--yes. If not----" She laughed softly.

"Then folly?"

"Then folly, madness, anything--so that this last, as last it must, or I shall die!"

"And why should it not last? Is there any reason, in earth or Heaven, why we two should part? If there is--I will make that reason itself folly, and madness, and unreason. Dear, do not speak of this not lasting. Die, you say? Worse, far worse; as much as eternal death is worse than bodily dying. Last? Does any one know what for ever means, if we do not? Die, we must, in these dying bodies of ours, but part--no.

Love has burned the cruel sense out of that word, and bleached its blackness white. We wounded the devil, parting, with one kiss, we killed him with the next--this buries him--ah, love, how sweet----"

There was neither resistance nor the thought of resisting. Their lips met and were withdrawn only that their eyes might drink again the draught the lips had tasted, long draughts of sweetness and liquid light and love unfathomable. And in the interval of speech half false, the truth of what was all true welled up from the clear depths and overflowed the falseness, till it grew falser and more fleeting still--as a thing lying deep in a bright water casts up a distorted image on refracted rays.

Glance and kiss, when two love, are as body and soul, supremely human and transcendently divine. The look alone, when the lips cannot meet, is but the disembodied spirit, beautiful even in its sorrow, sad, despairing, saying "ever," and yet sighing "never," tasting and knowing all the bitterness of both. The kiss without the glance? The body without the soul? The mortal thing without the undying thought? Draw down the thick veil and hide the sight, lest devils sicken at it, and lest man should loathe himself for what man can be.

Truth or untruth, their love was real, hers as much as his. She remembered only what her heart had been without it. What her goal might be, now that it had come, she guessed even then, but she would not ask.

Was there never a martyr in old times, more human than the rest, who turned back, for love perhaps, if not for fear, and said that for love's sake life still was sweet, and brought a milk-white dove to Aphrodite's altar, or dropped a rose before Demeter's feet? There must have been, for man is man, and woman, woman. And if in the next month, or even the next year, or after many years, that youth or maid took heart to bear a Christian's death, was there then no forgiveness, no sign of holy cross upon the sandstone in the deep labyrinth of graves, no crown, no sainthood, and no reverent memory of his name or hers among those of men and women worthier, perhaps, but not more suffering?

No one can kill Self. No one can be altogether another, save in the pa.s.sing pa.s.sion of a moment's acting. I--in that syllable lies the whole history of each human life; in that history lives the individuality; in the clear and true conception of that individuality dwells such joint foreknowledge of the future as we can have, such vague solution as to us is possible of that vast equation in which all quant.i.ties are unknown save that alone, that I which we know as we can know nothing else.

"Bury it!" she said. "Bury that parting--the thing, the word, and the thought--bury it with all others of its kind, with change, and old age, and stealing indifference, and growing coldness, and all that cankers love--bury them all, together, in one wide deep grave--then build on it the house of what we are--"

"Change? Indifference? I do not know those words," the Wanderer said.

"Have they been in your dreams, love? They have never been in mine."

He spoke tenderly, but with the faintest echo of sadness in his voice.

The mere suggestion that such thoughts could have been near her was enough to pain him. She was silent, and again her head lay upon his shoulder. She found there still the rest and the peace. Knowing her own life, the immensity of his faith and trust in that other woman were made clear by the simple, heartfelt words. If she had been indeed Beatrice, would he have loved her so? If it had all been true, the parting, the seven years' separation, the utter loneliness, the hopelessness, the despair, could she have been as true as he? In the stillness that followed she asked herself the question which was so near a greater and a deadlier one. But the answer came quickly. That, at least, she could have done. She could have been true to him, even to death. It must be so easy to be faithful when life was but one faith. In that chord at least no note rang false.

"Change in love--indifference to you!" she cried, all at once, hiding her lovely face in his breast and twining her arms about his neck. "No, no! I never meant that such things could be--they are but empty words, words one hears spoken lightly by lips that never spoke the truth, by men and women who never had such truth to speak as you and I."

"And as for old age," he said, dwelling upon her speech, "what is that to us? Let it come, since come it must. It is good to be young and fair and strong, but would not you or I give up all that for love's sake, each of us of our own free will, rather than lose the other's love?"

"Indeed, indeed I would!" Unorna answered.

"Then what of age? What is it after all? A few gray hairs, a wrinkle here and there, a slower step, perhaps a dimmer glance. That is all it is--the quiet, sunny channel between the sea of earthly joy and the ocean of heavenly happiness. The breeze of love still fills the sails, wafting us softly onward through the narrows, never failing, though it be softer and softer, till we glide out, scarce knowing it, upon the broader water and are borne swiftly away from the lost land by the first breath of heaven."