The Witch of Prague Part 18

"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed, still laughing. "Are you going to repeat the comedy you played so well this afternoon, and make love to me again?"

"If you like. But I do not need to win your affections now."

"Why not?"

"Have I not bought your soul, with everything in it, like a furnished house?" he asked merrily.

"Then you are the devil after all?"

"Or an angel. Why should the evil one have a monopoly in the soul-market? But you remind me of my argument. You would have distracted Demosthenes in the heat of a peroration, or Socrates in the midst of his defence, if you had flashed that hair of yours before their old eyes.

You have almost taken the life out of my argument. I was going to say that my peculiarity is not less exclusive than Lucifer's, though it takes a different turn. I was going to confess with the utmost frankness and the most sincere truth that my only crime against Heaven is a most perfect, unswerving, devotional love for my own particular Self. In that attachment I have never wavered yet--but I really cannot say what may become of Keyork Arabian if he looks at you much longer."

"He might become a human being," suggested Unorna.

"How can you be so cruel as to suggest such a horrible possibility?"

cried the gnome with a shudder, either real or extremely well feigned.

"You are betraying yourself, Keyork. You must control your feelings better, or I shall find out the truth about you."

He glanced keenly at her, and was silent for a while. Unorna rose slowly to her feet, and standing beside him, began to twist her hair into a great coil upon her head.

"What made you let it down?" asked Keyork with some curiosity, as he watched her.

"I hardly know," she answered, still busy with the braids. "I was nervous, I suppose, as you say, and so it got loose and came down."

"Nervous about our friend?"

She did not reply, but turned from him with a shake of the head and took up her fur mantle.

"You are not going?" said Keyork quietly, in a tone of conviction.

She started slightly, dropped the sable, and sat down again.

"No," she said, "I am not going yet. I do not know what made me take my cloak."

"You have really no cause for nervousness now that it is all over,"

remarked the sage, who had not descended from his perch on the table.

"He is very well. It is one of those cases which are interesting as being new, or at least only partially investigated. We may as well speak in confidence, Unorna, for we really understand each other. Do you not think so?"

"That depends on what you have to say."

"Not much--nothing that ought to offend you. You must consider, my dear," he said, a.s.suming an admirably paternal tone, "that I might be your father, and that I have your welfare very much at heart, as well as your happiness. You love this man--no, do not be angry, do not interrupt me. You could not do better for yourself, nor for him. I knew him years ago. He is a grand man--the sort of man I would like to be. Good. You find him suffering from a delusion, or a memory, whichever it be. Not only is this delusion--let us call it so--ruining his happiness and undermining his strength, but so long as it endures, it also completely excludes the possibility of his feeling for you what you feel for him.

Your own interest coincides exactly with the promptings of real, human charity. And yours is in reality a charitable nature, dear Unorna, though you are sometimes a little hasty with poor old Keyork. Good again. You, being moved by a desire for this man's welfare, most kindly and wisely take steps to cure him of his madness. The delusion is strong, but your will is stronger. The delusion yields after a violent struggle during which it has even impressed itself upon your own senses.

The patient is brought home, properly cared for, and disposed to rest. Then he wakes, apparently of his own accord, and behold! he is completely cured. Everything has been successful, everything is perfect, everything has followed the usual course of such mental cures by means of hypnosis. The only thing I do not understand is the waking. That is the only thing which makes me uneasy for the future, until I can see it properly explained. He had no right to wake without your suggestion, if he was still in the hypnotic state; and if he had already come out of the hypnotic state by a natural reaction, it is to be feared that the cure may not be permanent."

Unorna had listened attentively, as she always did when Keyork delivered himself of a serious opinion upon a psychiatric case. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he finished.

"If that is all that troubles you," she said, "you may set your mind at rest. After he had fallen, and while the watchman was getting the carriage, I repeated my suggestion and ordered him to wake without pain in an hour."

"Perfect! Splendid!" cried Keyork, clapping his hands loudly together.

"I did you an injustice, my dear Unorna. You are not so nervous as I thought, since you forgot nothing. What a woman! Ghost-proof, and able to think connectedly even at such a moment! But tell me, did you not take the opportunity of suggesting something else?" His eyes twinkled merrily, as he asked the question.

"What do you mean?" inquired Unorna, with sudden coldness.

"Oh, nothing so serious as you seem to think. I was only wondering whether a suggestion of reciprocation might not have been wise."

She faced him fiercely.

"Hold your peace, Keyork Arabian!" she cried.

"Why?" he asked with a bland smile, swinging his little legs and stroking his long beard.

"There is a limit! Must you for ever be trying to suggest, and trying to guide me in everything I do? It is intolerable! I can hardly call my soul my own!"

"Hardly, considering my recent acquisition of it," returned Keyork calmly.

"That wretched jest is threadbare."

"A jest! Wretched? And threadbare, too? Poor Keyork! His wit is failing at last."

He shook his head in mock melancholy over his supposed intellectual dotage. Unorna turned away, this time with the determination to leave him.

"I am sorry if I have offended you," he said, very meekly. "Was what I said so very unpardonable?"

"If ignorance is unpardonable, as you always say, then your speech is past forgiveness," said Unorna, relenting by force of habit, but gathering her fur around her. "If you know anything of women--"

"Which I do not," observed the gnome in a low-toned interruption.

"Which you do not--you would know how much such love as you advise me to manufacture by force of suggestion could be worth in a woman's eyes. You would know that a woman will be loved for herself, for her beauty, for her wit, for her virtues, for her faults, for her own love, if you will, and by a man conscious of all his actions and free of his heart; not by a mere patient reduced to the proper state of sentiment by a trick of hypnotism, or psychiatry, or of whatever you choose to call the effect of this power of mine which neither you, nor I, nor any one can explain.

I will be loved freely, for myself, or not at all."

"I see, I see," said Keyork thoughtfully, "something in the way Israel Kafka loves you."

"Yes, as Israel Kafka loves me, I am not afraid to say it. As he loves me, of his own free will, and to his own destruction--as I should have loved him, had it been so fated."

"So you are a fatalist, Unorna," observed her companion, still stroking and twisting his beard. "It is strange that we should differ upon so many fundamental questions, you and I, and yet be such good friends. Is it not?"

"The strangest thing of all is that I should submit to your exasperating ways as I do."

"It does not strike me that it is I who am quarrelling this time," said Keyork.

"I confess, I would almost prefer that to your imperturbable coolness.

What is this new phase? You used not to be like this. You are planning some wickedness. I am sure of it."

"And that is all the credit I get for keeping my temper! Did I not say a while ago that I would never quarrel with you again?"

"You said so, but--"

"But you did not expect me to keep my word," said Keyork, slipping from his seat on the table with considerable agility and suddenly standing close before her. "And do you not yet know that when I say a thing I do it, and that when I have got a thing I keep it?"