The Witch of Prague Part 10

"There is no convincing him, and if he were really convinced he would die himself. I used to take an interest in the man, and I know that you could cure him in a simpler and safer way. But of course it lies with you."

"If you wish it, I will try," Unorna answered, turning her face from the light. "But he will probably not come back to me."

"He will. I advised him very strongly to come back, very strongly indeed. I hope I did right. Are you displeased?"

"Not at all!" Unorna laughed a little. "And if he comes, how am I to convince him that he is mistaken, and that the girl is dead?"

"That is very simple. You will hypnotise him, he will yield very easily, and you will suggest to him very forcibly to forget the girl's existence. You can suggest to him to come back to-morrow and the next day, or as often as you please, and you can renew the suggestion each time. In a week he will have forgotten--as you know people can forget--entirely, totally, without hope of recalling what is lost."

"That is true," said Unorna, in a low voice. "Are you sure that the effect will be permanent?" she asked with sudden anxiety.

"A case of the kind occurred in Hungary last year. The cure was effected in Pesth. I was reading it only a few months ago. The oblivion was still complete, as long as six months after the treatment, and there seems no reason to suppose that the patient's condition will change. I thought it might interest you to try it."

"It will interest me extremely. I am very grateful to you for telling me about him."

Unorna had watched her companion narrowly during the conversation, expecting him to betray his knowledge of a connection between the Wanderer's visit and the strange question she had been asking of the sleeper when Keyork had surprised her. She was agreeably disappointed in this however. He spoke with a calmness and ease of manner which disarmed suspicion.

"I am glad I did right," said he.

He stood at the foot of the couch upon which the sleeper was lying, and looked thoughtfully and intently at the calm features.

"We shall never succeed in this way," he said at last. "This condition may continue indefinitely, till you are old, and I--until I am older than I am by many years. He may not grow weaker, but he cannot grow stronger. Theories will not renew tissues."

Unorna looked up.

"That has always been the question," she answered. "At least, you have told me so. Will lengthened rest and perfect nourishment alone give a new impulse to growth or will they not?"

"They will not. I am sure of it now. We have arrested decay, or made it so slow as to be imperceptible. But we have made many attempts to renew the old frame, and we are no farther advanced than we were nearly four years ago. Theories will not make tissues."

"What will?"

"Blood," answered Keyork Arabian very softly.

"I have heard of that being done for young people in illness," said Unorna.

"It has never been done as I would do it," replied the gnome, shaking his head and gathering his great beard in his hand, as he gazed at the sleeper.

"What would you do?"

"I would make it constant for a day, or for a week if I could--a constant circulation; the young heart and the old should beat together; it could be done in the lethargic sleep--an artery and a vein--a vein and an artery--I have often thought of it; it could not fail. The new young blood would create new tissue, because it would itself constantly be renewed in the young body which is able to renew it, only expending itself in the old. The old blood would itself become young again as it pa.s.sed to the younger man."

"A man!" exclaimed Unorna.

"Of course. An animal would not do, because you could not produce the lethargy nor make use of suggestion for healing purposes--"

"But it would kill him!"

"Not at all, as I would do it, especially if the young man were very strong and full of life. When the result is obtained, an antiseptic ligature, suggestion of complete healing during sleep, proper nourishment, such as we are giving at present, by recalling the patient to the hypnotic state, sleep again, and so on; in eight and forty hours your young man would be waked and would never know what had happened to him--unless he felt a little older, by nervous sympathy," added the sage with a low laugh.

"Are you perfectly sure of what you say?" asked Unorna eagerly.

"Absolutely. I have examined the question for years. There can be no doubt of it. Food can maintain life, blood alone can renew it."

"Have you everything you need here?" inquired Unorna.

"Everything. There is no hospital in Europe that has the appliances we have prepared for every emergency."

He looked at her face curiously. It was ghastly pale with excitement.

The pupil of her brown eye was so widely expanded that the iris looked black, while the aperture of the gray one was contracted to the size of a pin's head, so that the effect was almost that of a white and sightless ball.

"You seem interested," said the gnome.

"Would such a man--such a man as Israel Kafka answer the purpose?" she asked.

"Admirably," replied the other, beginning to understand.

"Keyork Arabian," whispered Unorna, coming close to him and bending down to his ear, "Israel Kafka is alone under the palm tree where I always sit. He is asleep, and he will not wake."

The gnome looked up and nodded gravely. But she was gone almost before she had finished speaking the words.

"As upon an instrument," said the little man, quoting Unorna's angry speech. "Truly I can play upon you, but it is a strange music."

Half an hour later Unorna returned to her place among the flowers, but Israel Kafka was gone.

CHAPTER VII

The Wanderer, when Keyork Arabian had left him, had intended to revisit Unorna without delay, but he had not proceeded far in the direction of her house when he turned out of his way and entered a deserted street which led towards the river. He walked slowly, drawing his furs closely about him, for it was very cold.

He found himself in one of those moments of life in which the presentiment of evil almost paralyses the mind's power of making any decision. In general, a presentiment is but the result upon the consciousness of conscious or unconscious fear. This fear is very often the natural consequence of the reaction which, in melancholy natures, comes almost inevitably after a sudden and unexpected satisfaction or after a period in which the hopes of the individual have been momentarily raised by some unforeseen circ.u.mstance. It is by no means certain that hope is of itself a good thing. The wise and mournful soul prefers the blessedness of that non-expectancy which shall not be disappointed, to the exhilarating pleasures of an antic.i.p.ation which may prove empty. In this matter lies one of the great differences between the normal moral state of the heathen and that of the Christian. The Greek hoped for all things in this world and for nothing in the next; the Christian, on the contrary, looks for a happiness to come hereafter, while fundamentally denying the reality of any earthly joy whatsoever in the present. Man, however, is so const.i.tuted as to find it almost impossible to put faith in either bliss alone, without helping his belief by borrowing some little refreshment from the hope of the other.

The wisest of the Greeks believed the soul to be immortal; the sternest of Christians cannot forget that once or twice in his life he had been contemptibly happy, and condemns himself for secretly wishing that he might be as happy again before all is over. Faith is the evidence of things unseen, but hope is the unreasoning belief that unseen things may soon become evident. The definition of faith puts earthly disappointment out of the question; that of hope introduces it into human affairs as a constant and imminent probability.

The development of psychologic research in our day has proved beyond a doubt that individuals of a certain disposition may be conscious of events actually occurring, or which have recently occurred, at a great distance; but it has not shown satisfactorily that things yet to happen are foreshadowed by that restless condition of the sensibilities which we call presentiment. We may, and perhaps must, admit that all that is or has been produces a real and perceptible impression upon all else that is. But there is as yet no good reason for believing that an impression of what shall be can be conveyed by antic.i.p.ation--without reasoning--to the mind of man.

But though the realisation of a presentiment may be as doubtful as any event depending upon chance alone, yet the immense influence which a mere presentiment may exercise is too well known to be denied. The human intelligence has a strong tendency to believe in its own reasonings, of which, indeed, the results are often more accurate and reliable than those reached by the physical perceptions alone. The problems which can be correctly solved by inspection are few indeed compared with those which fall within the province of logic. Man trusts to his reason, and then often confounds the impressions produced by his pa.s.sions with the results gained by semi-conscious deduction. His love, his hate, his anger create fears, and these supply him with presentiments which he is inclined to accept as so many well-reasoned grounds of action. If he is often deceived, he becomes aware of his mistake, and, going to the other extreme, considers a presentiment as a sort of warning that the contrary of what he expects will take place; if he chances to be often right he grows superst.i.tious.

The lonely man who was pacing the icy pavement of the deserted street on that bitter winter's day felt the difficulty very keenly. He would not yield and he could not advance. His heart was filled with forebodings which his wisdom bade him treat with indifference, while his pa.s.sion gave them new weight and new horror with every minute that pa.s.sed.

He had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. Beatrice had been before him, and her voice had reached him among the voices of thousands, but now, since the hours has pa.s.sed and he had not found her, it was as though he had been near her in a dream, and the strong certainty took hold of him that she was dead and that he had looked upon her wraith in the shadowy church.

He was a strong man, not accustomed to distrust his senses, and his reason opposed itself instantly to the suggestion of the supernatural.

He had many times, on entering a new city, felt himself suddenly elated by the irresistible belief that his search was at an end, and that within a few hours he must inevitably find her whom he had sought so long. Often as he pa.s.sed through the gates of some vast burying-place, he had almost hesitated to walk through the silent ways, feeling all at once convinced that upon the very first headstone he was about to see the name that was ever in his heart. But the expectation of final defeat, like the antic.i.p.ation of final success, had been always deceived. Neither living nor dead had he found her.

Two common, reasonable possibilities lay before him, and two only. He had either seen Beatrice, or he had not. If she had really been in the Teyn Kirche, she was in the city and not far from him. If she had not been there, he had been deceived by an accidental but extraordinary likeness. Within the logical concatenation of cause and effect there was no room for any other supposition, and it followed that his course was perfectly clear. He must continue his search until he should find the person he had seen, and the result would be conclusive, for he would again see the same face and hear the same voice. Reason told him that he had in all likelihood been mistaken after all. Reason reminded him that the church had been dark, the mult.i.tude of worshippers closely crowded together, the voices that sang almost innumerable and wholly undistinguishable from each other. Reason showed him a throng of possibilities, all pointing to an error of his perceptions and all in direct contradiction with the one fact which his loving instinct held for true.

The fear of evil, the presentiment of death, defied logic and put its own construction and interpretation upon the strange event. He neither believed, nor desired to believe, in a supernatural visitation, yet the inexplicable certainty of having seen a ghostly vision overwhelmed reason and all her arguments. Beatrice was dead. Her spirit had pa.s.sed in that solemn hour when the Wanderer had stood in the dusky church; he had looked upon her shadowy wraith, and had heard the echo of a voice from beyond the stars, whose crystal tones already swelled the diviner harmony of an angelic strain.

The impression was so strong at first as to be but one step removed from conviction. The shadow of a great mourning fell upon him, of a grief too terrible for words, too solemn for tears, too strong to find any expression save in death itself. He walked heavily, bending his head, his eyes half closed as though in bodily pain, the icy pavement rang like iron under his tread, the frozen air pierced through him, as his sorrow pierced his heart, the gloom of the fast-sinking winter's day deepened as the darkness in his own soul. He, who was always alone, knew at last what loneliness could mean. While she had lived she had been with him always, a living, breathing woman, visible to his inner eyes, speaking to his inward hearing, waking in his sleepless love. He had sought her with restless haste and untiring strength through the length and breadth of the whole world, but yet she had never left him, he had never been separated from her for one moment, never, in the years of his wandering, had he entered the temple of his heart without finding her in its most holy place. Men had told him that she was dead, but he had looked within himself and had seen that she was still alive; the dread of reading her sacred name carved upon the stone that covered her resting-place, had chilled him and made his sight tremble, but he had entered the shrine of his soul and had found her again, untouched by death, unchanged by years, living, loved, and loving. But now, when he shut out the dismal street from view, and went to the sanctuary and kneeled upon the threshold, he saw but a dim vision, as of something lying upon an altar in the dark, something shrouded in white, something shapely and yet shapeless, something that had been and was not any more.