The Witch of Prague: A Fantastic Tale. F. Marion Crawford
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 massive, 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.”
Unorna turned, almost fiercely, and came back a step.
“Keyork Arabian, do you think you can play upon me as on an instrument? Do you suppose that I will come and go at your word like a child—or like a dog? Do you think you can taunt me at one moment, and flatter me the next, and find my humour always at your command?”
The gnome-like little man looked down, made a sort of inclination of his short body, and laid his hand upon his heart.
“I was never presumptuous, my dear lady. I never had the least intention of taunting you, as you express it, and as for your humour—can you suppose that I could expect to command, where it is only mine to obey?”
“It is of no use to talk in that way,” said Unorna, haughtily. “I am not prepared to be deceived by your comedy this time.”
“Nor I to play one. Since I have offended you, I ask your pardon. Forgive the expression, for the sake of the meaning; the thoughtless word for the sake of the unworded thought.”
“How cleverly you turn and twist both thoughts and words!”
“Do not be so unkind, dear friend.”
“Unkind to you? I wish I had the secret of some unkindness that you should feel!”
“The knowledge of what I can feel is mine alone,” answered Keyork, with a touch of sadness. “I am not a happy man. The world, for me, holds but one interest and one friendship. Destroy the one, or embitter the other, and Keyork’s remnant of life becomes but a foretaste of death.”
“And that interest—that friendship—where are they?” asked Unorna in a tone still bitter, but less scornful than before.
“Together, in this room, and both in danger, the one through your young haste and impetuosity, the other through my wretched weakness in being made angry; forgive me, Unorna, as I ask forgiveness——”
“Your repentance is too sudden; it savours of the death-bed.”
“Small wonder, when my life is in the balance.”
“Your life?” She uttered the question incredulously, but not without curiosity.
“My life—and for your word,” he answered, earnestly. He spoke so impressively, and in so solemn a tone, that Unorna’s face became grave. She advanced another step towards him, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair in which she previously had sat.
“We must understand each other—to-day or never,” she said. “Either we must part and abandon the great experiment—for, if we part, it must be abandoned—”
“We cannot part, Unorna.”
“Then, if we are to be associates and companions—”
“Friends,” said Keyork in a low voice.
“Friends? Have you laid the foundation for a friendship between us? You say that your life is in the balance. That is a figure of speech, I suppose. Or has your comedy another act? I can believe well enough that your greatest interest in life lies there, upon that couch, asleep. I know that you can do nothing without me, as you know it yourself. But in your friendship I can never trust—never!—still less can I believe that any words of mine can affect your happiness, unless they be those you need for the experiment itself. Those, at least, I have not refused to pronounce.”
While she was speaking, Keyork began to walk up and down the room, in evident agitation, twisting his fingers and bending down his head.
“My accursed folly!” he exclaimed, as though speaking to himself. “My damnable ingenuity in being odious! It is not to be believed! That a man of my age should think one thing and say another—like a tetchy girl or a spoilt child! The stupidity of the thing! And then, to have the idiotic utterances of the tongue registered and judged as a confession of faith—or rather, of faithlessness! But it is only just—it is only right—Keyork Arabian’s self is ruined again by Keyork Arabian’s vile speeches, which have no more to do with his self than the clouds on earth have with the sun above them! Ruined, ruined—lost, this time. Cut off from the only living being he respects—the only being whose respect he covets;