The Witch of Prague Part 17

"I know nothing about it," he answered.

"But what do you think?"

"Nothing. Either it is possible, or it is not, and until the one proposition or the other is proved I suspend my judgment. Have you seen a ghost?"

"I do not know. I have seen something----" She stopped, as though the recollections were unpleasant.

"Then" said Keyork, "the probability is that you saw a living person.

Shall I sum up the question of ghosts for you?"

"I wish you would, in some way that I can understand."

"We are, then, in precisely the same position with regard to the belief in ghosts which we occupy towards such questions as the abolition of death. The argument in both cases is inductive and all but conclusive.

We do not know of any case, in the two hundred generations of men, more or less, with whose history we are in some degree acquainted, of any individual who has escaped death. We conclude that all men must die.

Similarly, we do not know certainly--not from real, irrefutable evidence at least--that the soul of any man or woman dead has ever returned visibly to earth. We conclude, therefore, that none ever will. There is a difference in the two cases, which throws a slight balance of probability on the side of the ghost. Many persons have a.s.serted that they have seen ghosts, though none have ever a.s.serted that men do not die. For my own part, I have had a very wide, practical, and intimate acquaintance with dead people--sometimes in very queer places--but I have never seen anything even faintly suggestive of a ghost. Therefore, my dear lady, I advise you to take it for granted that you have seen a living person."

"I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the sight of any living thing," said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her eyes with her hand.

"But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you particularly disliked?" asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.

"Disliked?" repeated Unorna in a harsh voice. She changed her position and looked at him. "Yes, perhaps that is possible. I had not thought of that. And yet--I would rather it had been a ghost."

"More interesting, certainly, and more novel," observed Keyork, slowly polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand. His head, and the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory b.a.l.l.s of different sizes.

"I was standing before him," said Unorna. "The place was lonely and it was already night. The stars shone on the snow, and I could see distinctly. Then she--that woman--pa.s.sed softly between us. He cried out, calling her by name, and then fell forward. After that, the woman was gone. What was it that I saw?"

"You are quite sure that it was not really a woman?"

"Would a woman, and of all women that one, have come and gone without a word?"

"Not unless she is a very singularly reticent person," answered Keyork, with a laugh. "But you need not go so far as the ghost theory for an explanation. You were hypnotised, my dear friend, and he made you see her. That is as simple as anything need be."

"But that is impossible, because----" Unorna stopped and changed colour.

"Because you had hypnotised him already," suggested Keyork gravely.

"The thing is not possible," Unorna repeated, looking away from him.

"I believe it to be the only natural explanation. You had made him sleep. You tried to force his mind to something contrary to its firmest beliefs. I have seen you do it. He is a strong subject. His mind rebelled, yielded, then made a final and desperate effort, and then collapsed. That effort was so terrible that it momentarily forced your will back upon itself, and impressed his vision on your sight. There are no ghosts, my dear colleague. There are only souls and bodies. If the soul can be defined as anything it can be defined as Pure Being in the Mode of Individuality but quite removed from the Mode of Matter. As for the body--well, there it is before you, in a variety of shapes, and in various states of preservation, as incapable of producing a ghost as a picture or a statue. You are altogether in a very nervous condition to-day. It is really quite indifferent whether that good lady be alive or dead."

"Indifferent!" exclaimed Unorna fiercely. Then she was silent.

"Indifferent to the validity of the theory. If she is dead, you did not see her ghost, and if she is alive you did not see her body, because, if she had been there in the flesh, she would have entered into an explanation--to say the least. Hypnosis will explain anything and everything, without causing you a moment's anxiety for the future."

"Then I did not hear shrieks and moans, nor see your specimens moving when I was here along just now?"

"Certainly not! Hypnosis again. Auto-hypnosis this time. You should really be less nervous. You probably stared at the lamp without realising the fact. You know that any shining object affects you in that way, if you are not careful. It is a very bright lamp, too.

Instantaneous effect--bodies appear to move and you hear unearthly yells--you offer your soul for sale and I buy it, appearing in the nick of time? If your condition had lasted ten seconds longer you would have taken me for his majesty and lived, in imagination, through a dozen years or so of sulphurous purgatorial treatment under my personal supervision, to wake up and find yourself unscorched--and unredeemed, as ever."

"You are a most comforting person, Keyork," said Unorna, with a faint smile. "I only wish I could believe everything you tell me."

"You must either believe me or renounce all claim to intelligence,"

answered the little man, climbing from his chair and sitting upon the table at her elbow. His short, st.u.r.dy legs swung at a considerable height above the floor, and he planted his hands firmly upon the board on either side of him. The att.i.tude was that of an idle boy, and was so oddly out of keeping with his age and expression that Unorna almost laughed as she looked at him.

"At all events," he continued, "you cannot doubt my absolute sincerity.

You come to me for an explanation. I give you the only sensible one that exists, and the only one which can have a really sedative effect upon your excitement. Of course, if you have any especial object in believing in ghosts--if it affords you any great and lasting pleasure to a.s.sociate, in imagination, with spectres, wraiths, and airily-malicious shadows, I will not cross your fancy. To a person of solid nerves a banshee may be an entertaining companion, and an apparition in a well-worn winding-sheet may be a pretty toy. For all I know, it may be a delight to you to find your hair standing on end at the unexpected appearance of a dead woman in a black cloak between you and the person with whom you are engaged in animated conversation. All very well, as a mere pastime, I say. But if you find that you are reaching a point on which your judgment is clouded, you had better shut up the magic lantern and take the rational view of the case."

"Perhaps you are right."

"Will you allow me to say something very frank, Unorna?" asked Keyork with unusual diffidence.

"If you can manage to be frank without being brutal."

"I will be short, at all events. It is this. I think you are becoming superst.i.tious." He watched her closely to see what effect the speech would produce. She looked up quickly.

"Am I? What is superst.i.tion?"

"Gratuitous belief in things not proved."

"I expected a different definition from you."

"What did you expect me to say?"

"That superst.i.tion is belief."

"I am not a heathen," observed Keyork sanctimoniously.

"Far from it," laughed Unorna. "I have heard that devils believe and tremble."

"And you cla.s.s me with those interesting things, my dear friend?"

"Sometimes: when I am angry with you."

"Two or three times a day, then? Not more than that?" inquired the sage, swinging his heels, and staring at the rows of skulls in the background.

"Whenever we quarrel. It is easy for you to count the occasions."

"Easy, but endless. Seriously, Unorna, I am not the devil. I can prove it to you conclusively on theological grounds."

"Can you? They say that his majesty is a lawyer, and a successful one, in good practice."

"What caused Satan's fall? Pride. Then pride is his chief characteristic. Am I proud, Unorna? The question is absurd, I have nothing to be proud of--a little old man with a gray beard, of whom n.o.body ever heard anything remarkable. No one ever accused me of pride.

How could I be proud of anything? Except of your acquaintance, my dear lady," he added gallantly, laying his hand on his heart, and leaning towards her as he sat.

Unorna laughed at the speech, and threw back her dishevelled hair with a graceful gesture. Keyork paused.

"You are very beautiful," he said thoughtfully, gazing at her face and at the red gold lights that played in the tangled tresses.