The Witch of Prague Part 37

"Young then!" she exclaimed. "You are young now!"

"Less young than I was then," Unorna answered with a little sigh, followed instantly by a smile.

"I am five and twenty," said Beatrice, woman enough to try and force a confession from her new acquaintance.

"Are you? I would not have thought it--we are nearly of an age--quite, perhaps, for I am not yet twenty-six. But then, it is not the years--"

She stopped suddenly.

Beatrice wondered whether Unorna were married or not. Considering the age she admitted and her extreme beauty it seemed probable that she must be. It occurred to her that the acquaintance had been made without any presentation, and that neither knew the other's name.

"Since I am a little the younger," she said, "I should tell you who I am."

Unorna made a slight movement. She was on the point of saying that she knew already--and too well.

"I am Beatrice Varanger."

"I am Unorna." She could not help a sort of cold defiance that sounded in her tone as she p.r.o.nounced the only name she could call hers.

"Unorna?" Beatrice repeated, courteously enough, but with an air of surprise.

"Yes--that is all. It seems strange to you? They called me so because I was born in February, in the month we call Unor. Indeed it is strange, and so is my story--though it would have little interest for you."

"Forgive me, you are wrong, It would interest me immensely--if you would tell me a little of it; but I am such a stranger to you----"

"I do not feel as though you are that," Unorna answered with a very gentle smile.

"You are very kind to say so," said Beatrice quietly.

Unorna was perfectly well aware that it must seem strange, to say the least of it, that she should tell Beatrice the wild story of her life, when they had as yet exchanged barely a hundred words. But she cared little what Beatrice thought, provided that she could interest her. She had a distinct intention in making the time slip by unnoticed, until it should be late.

She related her history, so far as it was known to herself, simply and graphically, substantially as it has been already set forth, but with an abundance of anecdote and comment which enhanced the interest and at the same time extended its limits, interspersing her monologues with remarks which called for an answer and which served as tests of her companion's attention. She hinted but lightly at her possession of unusual power over animals, and spoke not at all of the influence she could exert upon people. Beatrice listened eagerly. She could have told, on her part, that for years her own life had been dull and empty, and that it was long since she had talked with any one who had so roused her interest.

At last Unorna was silent. She had reached the period of her life which had begun a month before that time, and at that point her story ended.

"Then you are not married?" Beatrice's tone expressed an interrogation and a certain surprise.

"No," said Unorna, "I am not married. And you, if I may ask?"

Beatrice started visibly. It had not occurred to her that the question might seem a natural one for Unorna to ask, although she had said that she was alone in the world. Unorna might have supposed her to have lost her husband. But Unorna could see that it was not surprise alone that had startled her. The question, as she knew it must, had roused a deep and painful train of thought.

"No," said Beatrice, in an altered voice. "I am not married. I shall never marry."

A short silence followed, during which she turned her face away.

"I have pained you," said Unorna with profound sympathy and regret.

"Forgive me! How could I be so tactless!"

"How could you know?" Beatrice asked simply, not attempting to deny the suggestion.

But Unorna was suffering too. She had allowed herself to imagine that in the long years which had pa.s.sed Beatrice might perhaps have forgotten.

It had even crossed her mind that she might indeed be married. But in the few words, and in the tremor that accompanied them, as well as in the increased pallor of Beatrice's face, she detected a love not less deep and constant and unforgotten than the Wanderer's own.

"Forgive me," Unorna repeated. "I might have guessed. I have loved too."

She knew that here, at least, she could not feign and she could not control her voice, but with supreme judgment of the effect she allowed herself to be carried beyond all reserve. In the one short sentence her whole pa.s.sion expressed itself, genuine, deep, strong, ruthless. She let the words come as they would, and Beatrice was startled by the pa.s.sionate cry that burst from the heart, so wholly unrestrained.

For a long time neither spoke again, and neither looked at the other.

To all appearances Beatrice was the first to regain her self-possession.

And then, all at once the words came to her lips which could be restrained no longer. For years she had kept silence, for there had been no one to whom she could speak. For years she had sought him, as best she could, as he had sought her, fruitlessly and at last hopelessly. And she had known that her father was seeking him also, everywhere, that he might drag her to the ends of the earth at the mere suspicion of the Wanderer's presence in the same country. It had amounted to a madness with him of the kind not seldom seen. Beatrice might marry whom she pleased, but not the one man she loved. Day by day and year by year their two strong wills had been silently opposed, and neither the one nor the other had ever been unconscious of the struggle, nor had either yielded a hair's-breadth. But Beatrice had been at her father's mercy, for he could take her whither he would, and in that she could not resist him. Never in that time had she lost faith in the devotion of the man she sought, and at last it was only in the belief that he was dead that she could discover an explanation of his failure to find her. Still she would not change, and still, through the years, she loved more and more truly, and pa.s.sionately, and unchangingly.

The feeling that she was in the presence of a pa.s.sion as great, as unhappy, and as masterful as her own, unloosed her tongue. Such things happen in this strange world. Men and women of deep and strong feedings, outwardly cold, reserved, taciturn and proud, have been known, once in their lives, to pour out the secrets of their hearts to a stranger or a mere acquaintance, as they could never have done to a friend.

Beatrice seemed scarcely conscious of what she was saying, or of Unorna's presence. The words, long kept back and sternly restrained, fell with a strange strength from her lips, and there was not one of them from first to last that did not sheathe itself like a sharp knife in Unorna's heart. The enormous jealousy of Beatrice which had been growing within her beside her love during the last month was reaching the climax of its overwhelming magnitude. She hardly knew when Beatrice ceased speaking, for the words were still all ringing in her ears, and clas.h.i.+ng madly in her own breast, and prompting her fierce nature to do some violent deed. But Beatrice looked for no sympathy and did not see Unorna's face. She had forgotten Unorna herself at the last, as she sat staring at the opposite wall.

Then she rose quickly, and taking something from the jewel-box, thrust it into Unorna's hands.

"I cannot tell why I have told you--but I have. You shall see him too.

What does it matter? We have both loved, we are both unhappy--we shall never meet again."

"What is it?" Unorna tried to ask, holding the closed case in her hands. She knew what was within it well enough, and her self-command was forsaking her. It was almost more than she could bear. It was as though Beatrice were wreaking vengeance on her, instead of her destroying her rival as she had meant to do, sooner or later.

Beatrice took the thing from her, opened it, gazed at it a moment, and put it again into Unorna's hands. "It was like him," she said, watching her companion as though to see what effect the portrait would produce.

Then she shrank back.

Unorna was looking at her. Her face was livid and unnaturally drawn, and the extraordinary contrast in the colour of her two eyes was horribly apparent. The one seemed to freeze, the other to be on fire. The strongest and worst pa.s.sions that can play upon the human soul were all expressed with awful force in the distorted mask, and not a trace of the magnificent beauty so lately there was visible. Beatrice shrank back in horror.

"You know him!" she cried, half guessing at the truth.

"I know him--and I love him," said Unorna slowly and fiercely, her eyes fixed on her enemy, and gradually leaning towards her so as to bring her face nearer and nearer to Beatrice.

The dark woman tried to rise, and could not. There was worse than anger, or hatred, or the intent to kill, in those dreadful eyes. There was a fascination from which no living thing could escape. She tried to scream, to shut out the vision, to raise her hand as a screen before it.

Nearer and nearer it came, and she could feel the warm breath of it upon her cheek. Then her brain reeled, her limbs relaxed, and her head fell back against the wall.

"I know him, and I love him," were the last words Beatrice heard.

CHAPTER XX[*]

[*] The deeds here recounted are not imaginary. Not very long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under circ.u.mstances that clearly proved the intention of some person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a convent occurred in Hungary not many years since, with a different object, namely, a daring robbery, but precisely as here described. A complete account of the case will be found, with authority and evidence, in a pamphlet ent.i.tled _Eine experimentale Studie auf dem Gebiete des Hypnotismus_, by Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Professor of Psychiatry and for nervous diseases, in the University of Gratz. Second Edition, Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke, 1889. It is not possible, in a work of fiction, to quote learned authorities at every chapter, but it may be said here, and once for all, that all the most important situations have been taken from cases which have come under medical observation within the last few years.

Unorna was hardly conscious of what she had done. She had not had the intention of making Beatrice sleep, for she had no distinct intention whatever at that moment. Her words and her look had been but the natural results of overstrained pa.s.sion, and she repeated what she had said again and again, and gazed long and fiercely into Beatrice's face before she realised that she had unintentionally thrown her rival and enemy into the intermediate state. It is rarely that the first stage of hypnotism produces the same consequences in two different individuals.

In Beatrice it took the form of total unconsciousness, as though she had merely fainted away.

Unorna gradually regained her self-possession. After all, Beatrice had told her nothing which she did not either wholly know or partly guess, and her anger was not the result of the revelation but of the way in which the story had been told. Word after word, phrase after phrase had cut her and stabbed her to the quick, and when Beatrice had thrust the miniature into her hands her wrath had risen in spite of herself.

But now that she had returned to a state in which she could think connectedly, and now that she saw Beatrice asleep before her, she did not regret what she had unwittingly done. From the first moment when, in the balcony over the church, she had realised that she was in the presence of the woman she hated, she had determined to destroy her. To accomplish this she would in any case have used her especial weapons, and though she had intended to steal by degrees upon her enemy, lulling her to sleep by a more gentle fascination, at an hour when the whole convent should be quiet, yet since the first step had been made unexpectedly and without her will, she did not regret it.

She leaned back and looked at Beatrice during several minutes, smiling to herself from time to time, scornfully and cruelly. Then she rose and locked the outer door and closed the inner one carefully. She knew from long ago that no sound could then find its way to the corridor without.