“I only asked you to come with me,” she repeated softly. “There is nothing supernatural about that. When I saw that you did not believe me I did not try to lead you then, though she is waiting for you. She bade me bring you to her.”
“You have seen her? You have talked with her? She sent you? Oh, for God’s sake, come quickly! — come, come!”
He put out his hand as though to take hers and lead her away. She grasped it eagerly. He had not seen that she had drawn off her glove. He was lost. Her eyes held him and her fingers touched his bare wrist. His lids drooped and his will was hers. In the intolerable anxiety of the moment he had forgotten to resist, he had not even thought of resisting.
There were great blocks of stone in the desolate place, landed there before the river had frozen for a great building, whose gloomy, unfinished mass stood waiting for the warmth of spring to be completed. She led him by the hand, passive and obedient as a child, to a sheltered spot and made him sit down upon one of the stones. It was growing dark.
“Look at me,” she said, standing before him, and touching his brow. He obeyed.
“You are the image in my eyes,” she said, after a moment’s pause.
“Yes. I am the image in your eyes,” he answered in a dull voice.
“You will never resist me again, I command it. Hereafter it will be enough for me to touch your hand, or to look at you, and if I say, ‘Sleep,’ you will instantly become the image again. Do you understand that?”
“I understand it.”
“Promise!”
“I promise,” he replied, without perceptible effort.
“You have been dreaming for years. From this moment you must forget all your dreams.”
His face expressed no understanding of what she said. She hesitated a moment and then began to walk slowly up and down before him. His half-glazed look followed her as she moved. She came back and laid her hand upon his head.
“My will is yours. You have no will of your own. You cannot think without me,” She spoke in a tone of concentrated determination, and a slight shiver passed over him.
“It is of no use to resist, for you have promised never to resist me again,” she continued. “All that I command must take place in your mind instantly, without opposition. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he answered, moving uneasily.
For some seconds she again held her open palm upon his head. She seemed to be evoking all her strength for a great effort.
“Listen to me, and let everything I say take possession of your mind for ever. My will is yours, you are the image in my eyes, my word is your law. You know what I please that you should know. You forget what I command you to forget. You have been mad these many years, and I am curing you. You must forget your madness. You have now forgotten it. I have erased the memory of it with my hand. There is nothing to remember any more.”
The dull eyes, deep-set beneath the shadows of the overhanging brow, seemed to seek her face in the dark, and for the third time there was a nervous twitching of the shoulders and limbs. Unorna knew the symptom well, but had never seen it return so often, like a protest of the body against the enslaving of the intelligence. She was nervous in spite of her success. The immediate results of hypnotic suggestion are not exactly the same in all cases, even in the first moments; its consequences may be widely different with different individuals. Unorna, indeed, possessed an extraordinary power, but on the other hand she had to deal with an extraordinary organisation. She knew this instinctively, and endeavoured to lead the sleeping mind by degrees to the condition in which she wished it to remain.
The repeated tremor in the body was the outward sign of a mental resistance which it would not be easy to overcome. The wisest course was to go over the ground already gained. This she was determined to do by means of a sort of catechism.
“Who am I?” she asked.
“Unorna,” answered the powerless man promptly, but with a strange air of relief.
“Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Awake?”
“No.”
“In what state are you?”
“I am an image.”
“And where is your body?”
“Seated upon that stone.”
“Can you see your face?”
“I see it distinctly. The eyes in the body are glassy.”
“The body is gone now. You do not see it any more. Is that true?”
“It is true. I do not see it. I see the stone on which it was sitting.”
“You are still in my eyes. Now” — she touched his head again— “now, you are no longer an image. You are my mind.”
“Yes. I am your mind.”
“You, my Mind, know that I met to-day a man called the Wanderer, whose body you saw when you were in my eyes. Do you know that or not?”
“I know it. I am your mind.”
“You know, Mind, that the man was mad. He had suffered for many years from a delusion. In pursuit of the fixed idea he had wandered far through the world. Do you know whither his travels had led him?”
“I do not know. That is not in your mind. You did not know it when I became your mind.”
“Good. Tell me, Mind, what was this man’s delusion?”
“He fancied that he loved a woman whom he could not find.”
“The man must be cured. You must know that he was mad and is now sane. You, my Mind, must see that it was really a delusion. You see it now.”
“Yes. I see it.”
Unorna watched the waking sleeper narrowly. It was now night, but the sky had cleared and the starlight falling upon the snow in the lonely, open place, made it possible to see very well. Unorna seemed as unconscious of the bitter cold as her subject, whose body was in a state past all outward impressions. So far she had gone through all the familiar process of question and answer with success, but this was not all. She knew that if, when he awoke, the name he loved still remained in his memory, the result would not be accomplished. She must produce entire forgetfulness, and to do this, she must wipe out every association, one by one. She gathered her strength during a short pause. She was greatly encouraged by the fact that the acknowledgment of the delusion had been followed by no convulsive reaction in the body. She was on the very verge of a complete triumph, and the concentration of her will during a few moments longer might win the battle.
She could not have chosen a spot better suited for her purpose. Within five minutes’ walk of streets in which throngs of people were moving about, the scene which surrounded her was desolate and almost wild. The unfinished building loomed like a ruin behind her; the rough hewn blocks lay like boulders in a stony desert; the broad gray ice lay like a floor of lustreless iron before her under the uncertain starlight. Only afar off, high up in the mighty Hradschin, lamps gleamed here and there from the windows, the distant evidences of human life. All was still. Even the steely ring of the skates had ceased.
“And so,” she continued, presently, “this man’s whole life has been a delusion, ever since he began to fancy in the fever of an illness that he loved a certain woman. Is this clear to you, my Mind?”
“It is quite clear,” answered the muffled voice.
“He was so utterly mad that he even gave that woman a name — a name, when she had never existed except in his imagination.”
“Except in his imagination,” repeated the sleeper, without resistance.
“He called her Beatrice. The name was suggested to him because he had fallen ill in a city of the South where a woman called Beatrice once lived and was loved by a great poet. That was the train of self-suggestion in his delirium. Mind, do you understand?”
“He suggested to himself the name in his illness.”
“In the same way that he suggested to himself the existence of the woman whom he afterwards believed he loved?”
“In exactly the same way.”
“It was all a curious and very interesting case of auto-hypnotic suggestion. It made him ve
ry mad. He is now cured of it. Do you see that he is cured?”
The sleeper gave no answer. The stiffened limbs did not move, indeed, nor did the glazed eyes reflect the starlight. But he gave no answer. The lips did not even attempt to form words. Had Unorna been less carried away by the excitement in her own thoughts, or less absorbed in the fierce concentration of her will upon its passive subject, she would have noticed the silence and would have gone back again over the old ground. As it was, she did not pause.
“You understand therefore, my Mind, that this Beatrice was entirely the creature of the man’s imagination. Beatrice does not exist, because she never existed. Beatrice never had any real being. Do you understand?”
This time she waited for an answer, but none came.
“There never was any Beatrice,” she repeated firmly, laying her hand upon the unconscious head and bending down to gaze into the sightless eyes.
The answer did not come, but a shiver like that of an ague shook the long, graceful limbs.
“You are my Mind,” she said fiercely. “Obey me! There never was any Beatrice, there is no Beatrice now, and there never can be.”
The noble brow contracted in a look of agonising pain, and the whole frame shook like an aspen leaf in the wind. The mouth moved spasmodically.
“Obey me! Say it!” cried Unorna with passionate energy.
The lips twisted themselves, and the face was as gray as the gray snow.
“There is — no — Beatrice.” The words came out slowly, and yet not distinctly, as though wrung from the heart by torture.
Unorna smiled at last, but the smile had not faded from her lips when the air was rent by a terrible cry.
“By the Eternal God of Heaven!” cried the ringing voice. “It is a lie! — a lie! — a lie!”
She who had never feared anything earthly or unearthly shrank back. She felt her heavy hair rising bodily upon her head.
The Wanderer had sprung to his feet. The magnitude and horror of the falsehood spoken had stabbed the slumbering soul to sudden and terrible wakefulness. The outline of his tall figure was distinct against the gray background of ice and snow. He was standing at his full height, his arms stretched up to heaven, his face luminously pale, his deep eyes on fire and fixed upon her face, forcing back her dominating will upon itself. But he was not alone!
“Beatrice!” he cried in long-drawn agony.
Between him and Unorna something passed by, something dark and soft and noiseless, that took shape slowly — a woman in black, a veil thrown back from her forehead, her white face turned towards the Wanderer, her white hands hanging by her side. She stood still, and the face turned, and the eyes met Unorna’s, and Unorna knew that it was Beatrice.
There she stood, between them, motionless as a statue, impalpable as air, but real as life itself. The vision, if it was a vision, lasted fully a minute. Never, to the day of her death, was Unorna to forget that face, with its deathlike purity of outline, with its unspeakable nobility of feature.
It vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. A low broken sound of pain escaped from the Wanderer’s lips, and with his arms extended he fell forwards. The strong woman caught him and he sank to the ground gently, in her arms, his head supported upon her shoulder, as she kneeled under the heavy weight.
There was a sound of quick footsteps on the frozen snow. A Bohemian watchman, alarmed by the loud cry, was running to the spot.
“What has happened?” he asked, bending down to examine the couple.
“My friend has fainted,” said Unorna calmly. “He is subject to it. You must help me to get him home.”
“Is it far?” asked the man.
“To the House of the Black Mother of God.”
CHAPTER IX
THE PRINCIPAL ROOM of Keyork Arabian’s dwelling was in every way characteristic of the man. In the extraordinary confusion which at first disturbed a visitor’s judgment, some time was needed to discover the architectural bounds of the place. The vaulted roof was indeed apparent, as well as small portions of the wooden flooring. Several windows, which might have been large had they filled the arched embrasures in which they were set, admitted the daylight when there was enough of it in Prague to serve the purpose of illumination. So far as could be seen from the street, they were commonplace windows without shutters and with double casements against the cold, but from within it was apparent that the tall arches in the thick walls had been filled in with a thinner masonry in which the modern frames were set. So far as it was possible to see, the room had but two doors; the one, masked by a heavy curtain made of a Persian carpet, opened directly upon the staircase of the house; the other, exactly opposite, gave access to the inner apartments. On account of its convenient size, however, the sage had selected for his principal abiding place this first chamber, which was almost large enough to be called a hall, and here he had deposited the extraordinary and heterogeneous collection of objects, or, more property speaking, of remains, upon the study of which he spent a great part of his time.
Two large tables, three chairs and a divan completed the list of all that could be called furniture. The tables were massive, dark, and old-fashioned; the feet at each end consisted of thick flat boards sawn into a design of simple curves, and connected by strong crosspieces keyed to them with large wooden bolts. The chairs were ancient folding stools, with movable backs and well-worn cushions of faded velvet. The divan differed in no respect from ordinary oriental divans in appearance, and was covered with a stout dark Bokhara carpet of no great value; but so far as its use was concerned, the disorderly heaps of books and papers that lay upon it showed that Keyork was more inclined to make a book-case of it than a couch.
The room received its distinctive character however neither from its vaulted roof, nor from the deep embrasures of its windows, nor from its scanty furniture, but from the peculiar nature of the many curious objects, large and small, which hid the walls and filled almost all the available space on the floor. It was clear that every one of the specimens illustrated some point in the great question of life and death which formed the chief study of Keyork Arabian’s latter years; for by far the greater number of the preparations were dead bodies, of men, of women, of children, of animals, to all of which the old man had endeavoured to impart the appearance of life, and in treating some of which he had attained results of a startling nature. The osteology of man and beast was indeed represented, for a huge case, covering one whole wall, was filled to the top with a collection of many hundred skulls of all races of mankind, and where real specimens were missing, their place was supplied by admirable casts of craniums; but this reredos, so to call it, of bony heads, formed but a vast, grinning background for the bodies which stood and sat and lay in half-raised coffins and sarcophagi before them, in every condition produced by various known and lost methods of embalming. There were, it is true, a number of skeletons, disposed here and there in fantastic attitudes, gleaming white and ghostly in their mechanical nakedness, the bones of human beings, the bones of giant orang-outangs, of creatures large and small down to the flimsy little framework of a common bull frog, strung on wires as fine as hairs, which squatted comfortably upon an old book near the edge of a table, as though it had just skipped to that point in pursuit of a ghostly fly and was pausing to meditate a farther spring. But the eye did not discover these things at the first glance. Solemn, silent, strangely expressive, lay three slim Egyptians, raised at an angle as though to give them a chance of surveying their fellow-dead, the linen bandages unwrapped from their heads and arms and shoulders, their jet-black hair combed and arranged and dressed by Keyork’s hand, their faces softened almost to the expression of life by one of his secret processes, their stiffened joints so limbered by his art that their arms had taken natural positions again, lying over the edges of the sarcophagi in which they had rested motionless and immovable through thirty centuries. For the man had pursued his idea in every shape and with every experiment, testing, as it were, the potential imperishabilit
y of the animal frame by the degree of life-like plumpness and softness and flexibility which it could be made to take after a mummification of three thousand years. And he had reached the conclusion that, in the nature of things, the human body might vie, in resisting the mere action of time, with the granite of the pyramids. Those had been his earliest trials. The results of many others filled the room. Here a group of South Americans, found dried in the hollow of an ancient tree, had been restored almost to the likeness of life, and were apparently engaged in a lively dispute over the remains of a meal — as cold as themselves and as human. There, towered the standing body of an African, leaning upon a knotted club, fierce, grinning, lacking only sight in the sunken eyes to be terrible. There again, surmounting a lay figure wrapped in rich stuffs, smiled the calm and gentle face of a Malayan lady — decapitated for her sins, so marvellously preserved that the soft dark eyes still looked out from beneath the heavy, half-drooping lids, and the full lips, still richly coloured, parted a little to show the ivory teeth. Other sights there were, more ghastly still, triumphs of preservation, if not of semi-resuscitation, over decay, won on its own most special ground. Triumphs all, yet almost failures in the eyes of the old student, they represented the mad efforts of an almost supernatural skill and superhuman science to revive, if but for one second, the very smallest function of the living body. Strange and wild were the trials he had made; many and great the sacrifices and blood offerings lavished on his dead in the hope of seeing that one spasm which would show that death might yet be conquered; many the engines, the machines, the artificial hearts, the applications of electricity that he had invented; many the powerful reactives he had distilled wherewith to excite the long dead nerves, or those which but two days had ceased to feel. The hidden essence was still undiscovered, the meaning of vitality eluded his profoundest study, his keenest pursuit. The body died, and yet the nerves could still be made to act as though alive for the space of a few hours — in rare cases for a day. With his eyes he had seen a dead man spring half across a room from the effects of a few drops of musk — on the first day; with his eyes he had seen the dead twist themselves, and move and grin under the electric current — provided it had not been too late. But that “too late” had baffled him, and from his first belief that life might be restored when once gone, he had descended to what seemed the simpler proposition of the two, to the problem of maintaining life indefinitely so long as its magic essence lingered in the flesh and blood. And now he believed that he was very near the truth; how terribly near he had yet to learn.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 461