The Witch of Prague Part 8

"Good," she said. "You tell me what love is not, but you have not told me what it is."

"Love is the immortal essence of mortal pa.s.sion, together they are as soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly, nor real to us at all, though still divine. Love is the world's maker, master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood, and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove--ay, and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle's beak, and talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke. Love is the spirit of life and the angel of death. He speaks, and the th.o.r.n.y wilderness of the lonely heart is become a paradise of flowers. He is silent, and the garden is but a blackened desert over which a destroying flame has pa.s.sed in the arms of the east wind. Love stands at the gateway of each human soul, holding in his hands a rose and a drawn sword--the sword is for the many, the rose for the one."

He sighed and was silent. Unorna looked at him curiously.

"Have you ever loved, that you should talk like that?" she asked. He turned upon her almost fiercely.

"Loved? Yes, as you can never love; as you, in your woman's heart, can never dream of loving--with every thought, with every fibre, with every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak through and through, root and branch, core and knot, to feathery ashes that you may scatter with a sigh--the only sigh you will ever breathe for me, Unorna. Have I loved? Can I love? Do I love to-day as I loved yesterday and shall love to-morrow? Ah, child! That you should ask that, with your angel's face, when I am in h.e.l.l for you! When I would give my body to death and my soul to darkness for a touch of your hand, for as much kindness and gentleness in a word from your dear lips as you give the beggars in the street! When I would tear out my heart with my hands to feed the very dog that fawns on you--and who is more to you than I, because he is yours, and all that is yours I love, and worship, and adore!"

Unorna had looked up and smiled at first, believing that it was all but a comedy, as he had told her that it should be. But as he spoke, and the strong words chased each other in the torrent of his pa.s.sionate speech, she was startled and surprised. There was a force in his language, a fiery energy in his look, a ring of half-desperate hope in his deep voice, which moved her to strange thoughts. His face, too, was changed and enn.o.bled, his gestures larger, even his small stature ceased, for once, to seem dwarfish and gnome-like.

"Keyork Arabian, is it possible that you love me?" she cried, in her wonder.

"Possible? True? There is neither truth nor possibility in anything else for me, in anything, in any one, but you, Unorna. The service of my love fills the days and the nights and the years with you--fills the world with you only; makes heaven to be on earth, since heaven is but the air that is made bright with your breath, as the temple of all temples is but the spot whereon your dear feet stand. The light of life is where you are, the darkness of death is everywhere where you are not. But I am condemned to die, cut off, predestined to be lost--for you have no pity, Unorna, you cannot find it in you to be sorry for the poor old man whose last pulse will beat for you; whose last word will be your name; whose last look upon your beauty will end the dream in which he lived his life. What can it be to you, that I love you so? Why should it be anything to you? When I am gone--with the love of you in my heart, Unorna--when they have buried the ugly old body out of your sight, you will not even remember that I was once your companion, still less that I knelt before you, that I kissed the ground on which you stood; that I loved you as men love whose hearts are breaking, that I touched the hem of your garment and was for one moment young--that I besought you to press my hand but once, with one thought of kindness, with one last and only word of human pity--"

He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which lent intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee beside Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his face indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his outstretched hand in hers.

"Poor Keyork!" she said, very kindly and gently. "How could I have ever guessed all this?"

"It would have been exceedingly strange if you had," answered Keyork, in a tone that made her start.

Then a magnificent peal of ba.s.s laughter rolled through the room, as the gnome sprang suddenly to his feet.

"Did I not warn you?" asked Keyork, standing back and contemplating Unorna's surprised face with delight. "Did I not tell you that I was going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous and had everything against me? That it was all a comedy for your amus.e.m.e.nt? That there was to be nothing but deception from beginning to end? That I was like a decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and many other things to a similar effect?"

Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully.

"You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are the devil himself!"

"Perhaps I am," suggested the little man cheerfully.

"Do you know that there is a horror about all this?" Unorna rose to her feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold.

As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all those things which he was accustomed to do under the circ.u.mstances with a promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared that the old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the results of his observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and watched him.

"Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other people?" she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning his notes to his pocket.

"I believe not," he answered. "Nature spared me that indignity--or denied me that happiness--as you may look at it. I am not like other people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it is the other people who are the losers."

"The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so much of yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your fellow-men."

"I object to the expression, 'fellow-men,'" returned Keyork promptly.

"I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and all their component parts. A woman must have invented that particular phrase of yours in order to annoy a man she disliked."

"And why, if you please?"

"Because no one ever speaks of 'fellow-women.' The question of woman's duty to man has been amply discussed since the days of Menes the Thinite--but no one ever heard of a woman's duty to her fellow-women; unless, indeed, her duty is to try and outdo them by fair means or foul.

Then why talk of man and his fellow-men? I can put the wisest rule of life into two short phrases."

"Give me the advantage of your wisdom."

"The first rule is, Beware of women."

"And the second?"

"Beware of men," laughed the little sage. "Observe the simplicity and symmetry. Each rule has three words, two of which are the same in each, so that you have the result of the whole world's experience at your disposal at the comparatively small expenditure of one verb, one preposition, and two nouns."

"There is little room for love in your system," remarked Unorna, "for such love, for instance, as you described to me a few minutes ago."

"There is too much room for it in yours," retorted Keyork. "Your system is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes nebulous and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at enormous rates of speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and astronomers would be much happier without them."

"I am not an astronomer."

"Fortunately for the peace of the solar system. You have been sending your comets dangerously near to our sick planet," he added, pointing to the sleeper. "If you do it again he will break up into asteroids. To use that particularly disagreeable and suggestive word invented by men, he will die."

"He seems no worse," said Unorna, contemplating the ma.s.sive, peaceful face.

"I do not like the word 'seems,'" answered Keyork. "It is the refuge of inaccurate persons, unable to distinguish between facts and appearances."

"You object to everything to-day. Are there any words which I may use without offending your sense of fitness in language?"

"None which do not express a willing affirmation of all I say. I will receive any original speech on your part at the point of the sword.

You have done enough damage to-day, without being allowed the luxury of dismembering common sense. Seems, you say! By all that is unholy! By Eblis, Ahriman, and the Three Black Angels! He is worse, and there is no seeming. The heat is greater, the pulse is weaker, the heart flutters like a sick bird."

Unorna's face showed her anxiety.

"I am sorry," she said, in a low voice.

"Sorry! No doubt you are. It remains to be seen whether your sorrow can be utilized as a simple, or macerated in tears to make a tonic, or sublimated to produce a corrosive which will destroy the canker, death.

But be sorry by all means. It occupies your mind without disturbing me, or injuring the patient. Be sure that if I can find an active application for your sentiment, I will give you the rare satisfaction of being useful."

"You have the art of being the most intolerably disagreeable of living men when it pleases you."

"When you displease me, you should say. I warn you that if he dies--our friend here--I will make further studies in the art of being unbearable to you. You will certainly be surprised by the result."

"Nothing that you could say or do would surprise me."

"Indeed? We shall see."

"I will leave you to your studies, then. I have been here too long as it is."

She moved and arranged the pillow under the head of the sleeping giant and adjusted the folds of his robe. Her touch was tender and skilful in spite of her ill-suppressed anger. Then she turned away and went towards the door. Keyork Arabian watched her until her hand was upon the latch.

His sharp eyes twinkled, as though he expected something amusing to occur.

"Unorna!" he said, suddenly, in an altered voice. She stopped and looked back.

"Well?"

"Do not be angry, Unorna. Do not go away like this."