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 damned 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 goddess, 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 goddess 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 passing 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, passive 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. B
ut 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.
The dull, glassy eyes sought hers in painful perplexity, following her face as she moved.
“I do not know,” answered the powerless man.
Unorna came close to him and laid her hand upon his head.
“Sleep, until I wake you,” she said.
The eyelids drooped and closed at her command, and instantly the man’s breathing became heavy and regular. Unorna’s full lips curled as she looked down at him.
“And you would be my master!” she exclaimed.
Then she turned and disappeared among the plants, leaving him alone.
CHAPTER V
UNORNA PASSED THROUGH a corridor which was, indeed, only a long balcony covered in with arches and closed with windows against the outer air. At the farther end three steps descended to a dark door, through the thickness of a massive wall, showing that at this point Unorna’s house had at some former time been joined with another building beyond, with which it thus formed one habitation. Unorna paused, holding the key as though hesitating whether she should put it into the lock. It was evident that much depended upon her decision, for her face expressed the anxiety she felt. Once she turned away, as though to abandon her intention, hesitated, and then, with an impatient frown, opened the door and went in. She passed through a small, well-lighted vestibule and entered the room beyond.
The apartment was furnished with luxury, but a stranger would have received an oddly disquieting impression of the whole at a first glance. There was everything in the place which is considered necessary for a bedroom, and everything was perfect of its kind, spotless and dustless, and carefully arranged in order. But almost everything was of an unusual and unfamiliar shape, as though designed for some especial reason to remain in equilibrium in any possible position, and to be moved from place to place with the smallest imaginable physical effort. The carved bedstead was fitted with wheels which did not touch the ground, and levers so placed as to be within the reach of a person lying in it. The tables were each supported at one end only by one strong column, fixed to a heavy base set on broad rollers, so that the board could be run across a bed or a lounge with the greatest ease. There was but one chair made like ordinary chairs; the rest were so constructed that the least motion of the occupant must be accompanied by a corresponding change of position of the back and arms, and some of them bore a curious resemblance to a surgeon’s operating table, having attachments of silver-plated metal at many points, of which the object was not immediately evident. Before a closed door a sort of wheeled conveyance, partaking of the nature of a chair and of a perambulator, stood upon polished rails, which disappeared under the door itself, showing that the thing was intended to be moved from one room to another in a certain way and in a fixed line. The rails, had the door been opened, would have been seen to descend upon the other side by a gentle inclined plane into the centre of a huge marble basin, and the contrivance thus made it possible to wheel a person into a bath and out again without necessitating the slightest effort or change of position in the body. In the bedroom the windows were arranged so that the light and air could be regulated to a nicety. The walls were covered with fine basket work, apparently adapted in panels; but these panels were in reality movable trays, as it were, forming shallow boxes fitted with closely-woven wicker covers, and filled with charcoal and other porous substances intended to absorb the impurities of the air, and thus easily changed and renewed from time to time. Immediately beneath the ceiling were placed delicate glass globes of various soft colours, with silken shades, movable from below by means of brass rods and handles. In the ceiling itself there were large ventilators, easily regulated as might be required, and there was a curious arrangement of rails and wheels from which depended a sort of swing, apparently adapted for moving a person or a weight to different parts of the room without touching the floor. In one of the lounges, not far from the window, lay a colossal old man, wrapped in a loose robe of warm white stuff, and fast asleep.
He was a very old man, so old, indeed, as to make it hard to guess his age from his face and his hands, the only parts visible as he lay at rest, the vast body and limbs lying motionless under his garment, as beneath a heavy white pall. He could not be less than a hundred years old, but how much older than that he might really be, it was impossible to say. What might be called the waxen period had set in, and the high colourless features seemed to be modelled in that soft, semi-transparent material. The time had come when the stern furrows of age had broken up into countless minutely-traced lines, so close and fine as to seem a part of the texture of the skin, mere shadings, evenly distributed throughout, and no longer affecting the expression of the face as the deep wrinkles had done in former days; at threescore and ten, at fourscore, and even at ninety years. The century that had passed had taken with it its marks and scars, leaving the great features in their original purity of design, lean, smooth, and clearly defined. That last change in living man is rare enough, but when once seen is not to be forgotten. There is something in the faces of the very, very old which hardly suggests age at all, but rather the vague possibility of a returning prime. Only the hands tell the tale, with their huge, shining, fleshless joints, their shadowy hollows, and their unnatural yellow nails.
The old man lay quite still, breathing softly through his snowy beard. Unorna came to his side. There was something of wonder and admiration in her own eyes as she stood there gazing upon the face which other generations of men and women, all long dead, had looked upon and known. The secret of life and death was before her each day when she entered that room, and on the very verge of solution. The wisdom hardly gained in many lands was striving with all its concentrated power to preserve that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing the labour of living to the lowest conceivable degree of effort. The great experiment was being tried. What Keyork Arabian described as the embalming of a man still alive was being attempted. And he lived. For years they had watched him and tended him, and looked critically for the least signs of a diminution or an augmentation in his strength. They knew that he was now in his one hundred and seventh year, and yet he lived and was no weaker. Was there a limit; or was there not, since the destruction of the tissues was arrested beyond doubt, so far as the most minute tests could show? Might there not be, in the slow oscillations of nature, a degree of decay, on this side of death, from which a return should be possible, provided that the critical moment were passed in a state of sleep and under perfect conditions? How do we know that all men must die? We suppose the statement to be true by induction, from the undoubted fact that men have hitherto died within a certain limit of age. By induction, too, our fathers, our grandfathers, knew that it was impossible for man to traverse the earth faster than at the full speed of a galloping horse. After several thousand years of ex
perience that piece of knowledge, which seemed to be singularly certain, was suddenly proved to be the grossest ignorance by a man who had been in the habit of playing with a tea-kettle when a boy. We ourselves, not very long ago, knew positively, as all men had known since the beginning of the world, that it was quite impossible to converse with a friend at a distance beyond the carrying power of a speaking trumpet. To-day, a boy who does not know that one may talk very agreeably with a friend a thousand miles away is an ignoramus; and experimenters whisper among themselves that, if the undulatory theory of light have any foundation, there is no real reason why we may not see that same friend at that same distance, as well as talk with him. Ten years ago we were quite sure that it was beyond the bounds of natural possibility to produce a bad burn upon the human body by touching the flesh with a bit of cardboard or a common lead pencil. Now we know with equal certainty that if upon one arm of a hypnotised patient we impress a letter of the alphabet cut out of wood, telling him that it is red-hot iron, the shape of the letter will on the following day be found on a raw and painful wound not only in the place we selected but on the other arm, in the exactly corresponding spot, and reversed as though seen in a looking-glass; and we very justly consider that a physician who does not know this and similar facts is dangerously behind the times, since the knowledge is open to all. The inductive reasoning of many thousands of years has been knocked to pieces in the last century by a few dozen men who have reasoned little but attempted much. It would be rash to assert that bodily death may not some day, and under certain conditions, be altogether escaped. It is nonsense to pretend that human life may not possibly, and before long, be enormously prolonged, and that by some shorter cut to longevity than temperance and sanitation. No man can say that it will, but no man of average intelligence can now deny that it may.
Unorna had hesitated at the door, and she hesitated now. It was in her power, and in hers only, to wake the hoary giant, or at least to modify his perpetual sleep so far as to obtain from him answers to her questions. It would be an easy matter to lay one hand upon his brow, bidding him see and speak — how easy, she alone knew. But on the other hand, to disturb his slumber was to interfere with the continuity of the great experiment, to break through a rule lately made, to incur the risk of an accident, if not of death itself.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 455