The Witch of Prague Part 26

This one chance of wounding was given to him and he would use it to the utmost, with all subtlety, with all cruelty, with all determination to torture.

"Whatsoever she covets is hers to take. No one escapes the spell in the end, no one resists the charm. And yet it is written in the book of her fate that she shall one day taste the fruit of ashes, and drink of the bitter water. It is written that whosoever slays with the sword shall die by the sword also. She has killed with love, and by love she shall perish. I loved her once. I know what I am saying."

Again he paused, lingering thoughtfully upon the words. The Wanderer glanced at Unorna as though asking her whether he should not put a sudden end to the strange monologue. She was pale and her eyes were bright; but she shook her head.

"Let him say what he will say," she answered, taking the question as though it had been spoken. "Let him say all he will. Perhaps it is the last time."

"And so you give me your gracious leave to speak," said Israel Kafka.

"And you will let me say all that is in my heart to say to you--before this other man. And then you will make an end of me. I see. I accept the offer. I can even thank you for your patience. You are kind to-day--I have known you harder. Well, then, I will speak out. I will tell my story, not that any one may judge between you and me. There is neither judge nor justice for those who love in vain. So I loved you. That is the whole story. Do you understand me, sir? I loved this woman, but she would not love me. That is all. And what of it, and what then? Look at her, and look at me--the beginning and the end."

In a manner familiar to Orientals the unhappy man laid one finger upon his own breast, and with the other hand pointed at Unorna's fair young face. The Wanderer's eyes obeyed the guiding gesture, and he looked from one to the other, and again the belief crossed his thoughts that there was less of madness about Israel Kafka than Keyork would have had him think. Trying to read the truth from Unorna's eyes, he saw that they avoided his, and he fancied he detected symptoms of distress in her pallor and contracted lips. And yet he argued that if it were all true she would silence the speaker, and that the only reason for her patience must be sought in her willingness to humour the diseased brain in its wanderings. In either case he pitied Israel Kafka profoundly, and his compa.s.sion increased from one moment to another.

"I loved her. There is a history in those three words which neither the eloquent tongue nor the skilled pen can tell. See how coldly I speak.

I command my speech, I may pick and choose among ten thousand words and phrases, and describe love at my leisure. She grants me time; she is very merciful to-day. What would you have me say? You know what love is. Think of such love as yours can have been, and take twice that, and three times over, and a hundred thousand times, and cram it, burning, flaming, melting into your bursting heart--then you would know a tenth of what I have known. Love, indeed! Who can have known love but me? I stand alone. Since the dull, unlovely world first jarred and trembled and began to move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound. Describe it? Tell it? Look at me! I am both love's description and the epitaph on his gravestone. In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to live again as he has lived this once. There is no justice and no mercy!

Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in return. Do not think that--do not dream that. Do you not know that the fiercest drought is as a spring rain to the rocks, which thirst not and need no refreshment?"

Again he fixed his eyes on Unorna's face and faintly smiled. Apparently she was displeased.

"What is it that you would say?" she asked coldly. "What is this that you tell us of rocks and rain, and death-wounds, and the rest? You say you loved me once--that was a madness. You say that I never loved you--that, at least, is truth. Is that your story? It is indeed short enough, and I marvel at the many words in which you have put so little!"

She laughed in a hard tone. But Israel Kafka's eyes grew dark and the sombre fire beamed in them as he spoke again. The weary, tortured smile left his wan lips, and his pale face grew stern.

"Laugh, laugh, Unorna!" he cried. "You do not laugh alone. And yet--I love you still, I love you so well in spite of all that I cannot laugh at you as I would, even though I were to see you again clinging to the rock and imploring it to take pity on your thirst. And he who dies for you, Unorna--of him you ask nothing, save that he will crawl away and die alone, and not disturb your delicate life with such an unseemly sight."

"You talk of death!" exclaimed Unorna scornfully. "You talk of dying for me because you are ill to-day. To-morrow, Keyork Arabian will have cured you, and then, for aught I know, you will talk of killing me instead.

This is child's talk, boy's talk. If we are to listen to you, you must be more eloquent. You must give us such a tale of woe as shall draw tears from our eyes and sobs from our b.r.e.a.s.t.s--then we will applaud you and let you go. That shall be your reward."

The Wanderer glanced at her in surprise. There was a bitterness in her tone of which he had not believed her soft voice capable.

"Why do you hate him so if he is mad?" he asked.

"The reason is not far to seek," said Kafka. "This woman here--G.o.d made her crooked-hearted! Love her, and she will hate you as only she has learned how to hate. Show her that cold face of yours, and she will love you so that she will make a carpet of her pride for you to walk on--ay, or spit on either, if you deign to be so kind. She has a wonderful kind of heart, for it freezes when you burn it, and melts when you freeze it."

"Are you mad, indeed?" asked the Wanderer, suddenly planting himself in front of Kafka. "They told me so--I can almost believe it."

"No--I am not mad yet," answered the younger man, facing him fearlessly.

"You need not come between me and her. She can protect herself. You would know that if you knew what I saw her do with you, first when I came here."

"What did she do?" The Wanderer turned quickly as he stood, and looked at Unorna.

"Do not listen to his ravings," she said. The words seemed weak and poorly chosen, and there was a strange look in her face as though she were either afraid or desperate, or both.

"She loves you," said Israel Kafka calmly. "And you do not know it. She has power over you, as she has over me, but the power to make you love her she has not. She will destroy you, and your state will be no better than mine to-day. We shall have moved on a step, for I shall be dead and you will be the madman, and she will have found another to love and to torture. The world is full of them. Her altar will never lack sacrifices."

The Wanderer's face was grave.

"You may be mad or not," he said. "I cannot tell. But you say monstrous things, and you shall not repeat them."

"Did she not say that I might speak?" asked Kafka with a bitter laugh.

"I will keep my word," said Unorna. "You seek your own destruction. Find it in your own way. It will not be the less sure. Speak--say what you will. You shall not be interrupted."

The Wanderer drew back, not understanding what was pa.s.sing, nor why Unorna was so long-suffering.

"Say all you have to say," she repeated, coming forward so that she stood directly in front of Israel Kafka. "And you," she added, speaking to the Wanderer, "leave him to me. He is quite right--I can protect myself if I need any protection."

"You remember how we parted, Unorna?" said Kafka. "It is a month to-day.

I did not expect a greeting of you when I came back, or, if I did expect it, I was foolish and unthinking. I should have known you better. I should have known that there is one half of your word which you never break--the cruel half, and one thing which you cannot forgive, and which is my love for you. And yet that is the very thing which I cannot forget. I have come back to tell you so. You may as well know it."

Unorna's expression grew cold, as she saw that he abandoned the strain of reproach and spoke once more of his love for her.

"Yes, I see what you mean," he said, very quietly. "You mean to show me by your face that you give me no hope. I should have known that by other things I have seen here. G.o.d knows, I have seen enough! But I meant to find you alone. I went to your home, I saw you go out, I followed you, I entered here--I heard all--and I understood, for I know your power, as this man cannot know it. Do you wonder that I followed you? Do you despise me? Do you think I still care, because you do? Love is stronger than the woman loved and for her we do deeds of baseness, unblus.h.i.+ngly, which she would forbid our doing, and for which she despises us when she hates us, and loves us the more dearly when she loves us at all. You hate me--then despise me, too, if you will. It is too late to care. I followed you like a spy, I saw what I expected to see, I have suffered what I knew I should suffer. You know that I have been away during this whole month, and that I have travelled thousands of leagues in the hope of forgetting you."

"And yet I fancied I had seen you within the month," Unorna said, with a cruel smile.

"They say that ghosts haunt the places they have loved," answered Kafka unmoved. "If that be true I may have troubled your dreams and you may have seen me. I have come back broken in body and in heart. I think I have come back to die here. The life is going out of me, but before it is quite gone I can say two things. I can tell you that I know you at last, and that, in spite of the horror of knowing what you are, I love you still."

"Am I so very horrible?" she asked scornfully.

"You know what you are, better than I can tell you, but not better than I know. I know even the secret meaning of your moods and caprices. I know why you are willing to listen to me, this last time, so patiently, with only now and then a sneer and a cutting laugh."

"Why?"

"In order to make me suffer the more. You will never forgive me now, for you know that I know, and that alone is a sin past all forgiveness, and over and above that I am guilty of the crime of loving when you have no love for me."

"And as a last resource you come to me and recapitulate your misdeeds.

The plan is certainly original, though it lacks wit."

"There is least wit where there is most love, Unorna. I take no account of the height of my folly when I see the depth of my love, which has swallowed up myself and all my life. In the last hour I have known its depth and breadth and strength, for I have seen what it can bear. And why should I complain of it? Have I not many times said that I would die for you willingly--and is it not dying for you to die of love for you?

To prove my faith it were too easy a death. When I look into your face I know that there is in me the heart that made true Christian martyrs----"

Unorna laughed.

"Would you be a martyr?" she asked.

"Nor for your Faith--but for the faith I once had in you, and for the love that no martyrdom could kill. Ay--to prove that love I would die a hundred deaths--and to gain yours I would die the death eternal."

"And you would have deserved it. Have you not deserved enough already, enough of martyrdom, for tracking me to-day, following me stealthily, like a thief and a spy, to find out my ends and my doings?"

"I love you, Unorna."

"And therefore you suspect me of unimaginable evil--and therefore you come out of your hiding-place and accuse me of things I have neither done nor thought of doing, building up falsehood upon lie, and lie upon falsehood in the attempt to ruin me in the eyes of one who has my friends.h.i.+p and who is my friend. You are foolish to throw yourself upon my mercy, Israel Kafka."

"Foolish? Yes, and mad, too! And my madness is all you have left me--take it--it is yours! You cannot kill my love. Deny my words, deny your deeds! Let all be false in you--it is but one pain more, and my heart is not broken yet. It will bear another. Tell me that what I saw had no reality--that you did not make him sleep--here, on this spot, before my eyes--that you did not pour your love into his sleeping ears, that you did not command, implore, entreat--and fail! What is it all to me, whether you speak truth or not? Tell me it is not true that I would die a thousand martyrdoms for your sake, as you are, and if you were a thousand times worse than you are! Your wrong, your right, your truth, your falsehood, you yourself are swallowed up in the love I bear you! I love you always, and I will say it, and say it again--ah, your eyes! I love them, too! Take me into them, Unorna--whether in hate or love--but in love--yes--love--Unorna--golden Unorna!"

With the cry on his lips--the name he had given her in other days--he made one mad step forwards, throwing out his arms as though to clasp her to him. But it was too late. Even while he had been speaking her mysterious influence had overpowered him, as he had known that it would, when she so pleased.

She caught his two hands in the air, and pressed him back and held him against the tall slab. The whole pitilessness of her nature gleamed like a cold light in her white face.