The Witch of Prague Part 5

"You do not really love me," she said softly.

Israel Kafka started, as a man who is struck unawares. The monstrous untruth which filled the words broke down his guard, sudden tears veiled the penetrating sharpness of his gaze, and his hand trembled.

"I do not love you? I! Unorna--Unorna!"

The first words broke from him in a cry of horror and stupefaction. But her name, when he spoke it, sounded as the death moan of a young wild animal wounded beyond all power to turn at bay.

He moved unsteadily and laid hold of the tall chair in which she sat.

He was behind her now, standing, but bending down so that his forehead pressed his fingers. He could not bear to look upon her hair, still less upon her face. Even his hands were white and bloodless. Unorna could hear his quick breathing just above her shoulder. She sat quite still, and her lips were smiling, though her brow was thoughtful and almost sad. She knew that the struggle was over and that she had gained the mastery, though the price of victory might be a broken heart.

"You thought I was jesting," she said in a low voice, looking before her into the deep foliage, but knowing that her softest whisper would reach him. "But there was no jest in what I said--nor any unkindness in what I meant, though it is all my fault. But that is true--you never loved me as I would be loved."

"Unorna----"

"No, I am not unkind. Your love is young, fierce, inconstant; half terrible, half boyish, aflame to-day, asleep to-morrow, ready to turn into hatred at one moment, to melt into tears at the next, intermittent, unstable as water, fleeting as a cloud's shadow on the mountain side--"

"It pleased you once," said Israel Kafka in broken tones. "It is not less love because you are weary of it, and of me."

"Weary, you say? No, not weary--and very truly not of you. You will believe that to-day, to-morrow, you will still try to force life into your belief--and then it will be dead and gone like all thoughts which have never entered into the shapes of reality. We have not loved each other. We have but fancied that it would be sweet to love, and the knife of truth has parted the web of our dreams, keenly, in the midst, so that we see before us what is, though the ghost of what might have been is yet lingering near."

"Who wove that web, Unorna? You, or I?" He lifted his heavy eyes and gazed at her coiled hair.

"What matters it whether it was your doing or mine? But we wove it together--and together we must see the truth."

"If this is true, there is no more 'together' for you and me."

"We may yet glean friendship in the fields where love has grown."

"Friendship! The very word is a wound! Friendship! The very dregs and lees of the wine of life! Friendship! The sour drainings of the heart's cup, left to moisten the lips of the d.a.m.ned when the blessed have drunk their fill! I hate the word, as I hate the thought!"

Unorna sighed, partly, perhaps, that he might hear the sigh, and put upon it an interpretation soothing to his vanity, but partly, too, from a sincere regret that he should need to suffer as he was evidently suffering. She had half believed that she loved him, and she owed him pity. Women's hearts pay such debts unwillingly, but they do pay them, nevertheless. She wished that she had never set eyes upon Israel Kafka; she wished that she might never see him again; even his death would hardly have cost her a pang, and yet she was sorry for him. Diana, the huntress, shot her arrows with unfailing aim; Diana, the G.o.ddess, may have sighed and shed one bright immortal tear, as she looked into the fast-glazing eyes of the dying stag--may not Diana, the maiden, have felt a touch of human sympathy and pain as she listened to the deep note of her hounds baying on poor Actaeon's track! No one is all bad, or all good. No woman is all earthly, nor any G.o.ddess all divine.

"I am sorry," said Unorna. "You will not understand----"

"I have understood enough. I have understood that a woman can have two faces and two hearts, two minds, two souls; it is enough, my understanding need go no farther. You sighed before you spoke. It was not for me; it was for yourself. You never felt pain or sorrow for another."

He was trying hard to grow cold and to find cold words to say, which might lead her to believe him stronger than he was and able to master his grief. But he was too young, too hot, too changeable for such a part. Moreover, in his first violent outbreak Unorna had dominated him, and he could not now regain the advantage.

"You are wrong, Israel Kafka. You would make me less than human. If I sighed, it was indeed for you. See--I confess that I have done you wrong, not in deeds, but in letting you hope. Truly, I myself have hoped also. I have thought that the star of love was trembling just below the east, and that you and I might be one to another--what we cannot be now.

My wisdom has failed me, my sight has been deceived. Am I the only woman in this world who has been mistaken? Can you not forgive? If I had promised, if I had said one word--and yet, you are right, too, for I have let you think in earnest what has been but a pa.s.sing dream of my own thoughts. It was all wrong; it was all my fault. There, lay your hand in mine and say that you forgive, as I ask forgiveness."

He was still standing behind her, leaning against the back of her chair.

Without looking round she raised her hand above her shoulder as though seeking for his. But he would not take it.

"Is it so hard?" she asked softly. "Is it even harder for you to give than for me to ask? Shall we part like this--not to meet again--each bearing a wound, when both might be whole? Can you not say the word?"

"What is it to you whether I forgive you or not?"

"Since I ask it, believe that it is much to me," she answered, slowly turning her head until, without catching sight of his face, she could just see where his fingers were resting on her chair. Then, over her shoulder, she touched them, and drew them to her cheek. He made no resistance.

"Shall we part without one kind thought?" Her voice was softer still and so low and sweet that it seemed as though the words were spoken in the ripple of the tiny fountain. There was magic in the place, in the air, in the sounds, above all in the fair woman's touch.

"Is this friendship?" asked Kafka. Then he sank upon his knees beside her, and looked up into her face.

"It is friendship; yes--why not? Am I like other women?"

"Then why need there be any parting?"

"If you will be my friend there need be none. You have forgiven me now--I see it in your eyes. Is it not true?"

He was at her feet, pa.s.sive at last under the superior power which he had never been able to resist. Unorna's fascination was upon him, and he could only echo her words, as he would have executed her slightest command, without consciousness of free will or individual thought. It was enough that for one moment his anger should cease to give life to his resistance; it was sufficient that Unorna should touch him thus, and speak softly, his eyelids quivered and his look became fixed, his strength was absorbed in hers and incapable of acting except under her direction. So long as she might please the spell would endure.

"Sit beside me now, and let us talk," she said.

Like a man in a dream, he rose and sat down near her.

Unorna laughed, and there was something in the tone that was not good to hear. A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick and brought the hot, angry blood to his face. Now he laughed with her, vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth.

"You are only my slave, after all," said Unorna scornfully.

"I am only your slave, after all," he repeated.

"I could touch you with my hand and you would hate me, and forget that you ever loved me."

This time the man was silent. There was a contraction of pain in his face, as though a violent mental struggle were going on within him.

Unorna tapped the pavement impatiently with her foot and bent her brows.

"You would hate me and forget that you ever loved me," she repeated, dwelling on each word as though to impress it on his consciousness. "Say it. I order you."

The contraction of his features disappeared.

"I should hate you and forget that I ever loved you," he said slowly.

"You never loved me."

"I never loved you."

Again Unorna laughed, and he joined in her laughter, unintelligently, as he had done before. She leaned back in her seat, and her face grew grave. Israel Kafka sat motionless in his chair, staring at her with unwinking eyes. But his gaze did not disturb her. There was no more meaning in it than in the expression of a marble statue, far less than in that of a painted portrait. Yet the man was alive and in the full strength of his magnificent youth, supple, active, fierce by nature, able to have killed her with his hands in the struggle of a moment. Yet she knew that without a word from her he could neither turn his head nor move in his seat.

For a long time Unorna was absorbed in her meditations. Again and again the vision of a newer happiness took shape and colour before her, so clearly and vividly that she could have clasped it and held it and believed in its reality, as she had done before Israel Kafka had entered. But there was a doubt now, which constantly arose between her and it, the dark and shapeless shadow of a reasoning she hated and yet knew to be strong.

"I must ask him," she said unconsciously.

"You must ask him," repeated Israel Kafka from his seat.

For the third time Unorna laughed aloud as she heard the echo of her own words.

"Whom shall I ask?" she inquired contemptuously, as she rose to her feet.