Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Yet this love was not for her to whom he spoke, and she knew it as she answered him, though she answered truly, from the fulness of her heart. She had cast an enchantment over him unwittingly, and she was taken in the toils of her own magic even as she had sworn that she would never again put forth her powers. She shuddered as she realised it all. In a few short moments she had felt his kisses, and heard his words, and been clasped to his heart, as she had many a time madly hoped. But in those moments, too, she had known the truth of her woman’s instinct when it had told her that love must be for herself and for her own sake, or not be love at all.

  The falseness, the fathomless untruth of it, would have been bad enough alone. But the truth that was so strong made it horrible. Had she but inspired in him a burning love for herself, however much against his will, it would have been very different. She would have heard her name from his lips, she would have known that all, however false, however artificial, was for herself, while it might last. To know that it was real, and not for her, was intolerable. To see this love of his break out at last — this other love which she had dreaded, against which she had fought, which she had met with a jealousy as strong as itself, and struggled with and buried under an imposed forgetfulness — to feel its great waves surging around her and beating up against her heart, was more than she could bear. Her face grew whiter and her hands were cold. She dreaded each moment lest he should call her Beatrice again, and say that her fair hair was black and that he loved those deep dark eyes of hers.

  There had been one moment of happiness, in that first kiss, in the first pressure of those strong arms. Then night descended. The hands that held her had not been yet unclasped, the kiss was not cold upon her cheek, the first great cry of his love had hardly died away in a softened echo, and her punishment was upon her. His words were lashes, his touch poison, his eyes avenging fires. As in nature’s great alchemy the diamond and the blackened coal are one, as nature with the same elements pours life and death from the same vial with the same hand, so now the love which would have been life to Unorna was made worse than death because it was not for her.

  Yet the disguise was terribly perfect. The unconscious spell had done its work thoroughly. He took her for Beatrice, and her voice for Beatrice’s there in the broad light, in the familiar place where he had so often talked with her for hours and known her for Unorna. But a few paces away was the very spot where she had fallen at his feet last night and wept and abused herself before him. There was the carpet on which Israel Kafka had lain throughout the long hours while they had watched together. Upon that table at her side a book lay which they had read together but two days ago. In her own chair she sat, Unorna still, unchanged, unaltered save for him. She doubted her own senses as she heard him speak, and ever and again the name of Beatrice rang in her ears. He looked at her hands, and knew them; at her black dress, and knew it for her own, and yet he poured out the eloquence of his love — kneeling, then standing, then sitting at her side, drawing her head to his shoulder and smoothing her fair hair — so black to him — with a gentle hand. She was passive through it all, as yet. There seemed to be no other way. He paused sometimes, then spoke again. Perhaps, in the dream that possessed him, he heard her speak. Possibly, he was unconscious of her silence, borne along by the torrent of his own long pent-up speech. She could not tell, she did not care to know. Of one thing alone she thought, of how to escape from it all and be alone.

  She feared to move, still more to rise, not knowing what he would do. As he was now, she could not tell what effect her words would have if she spoke. It might be but a passing state after all. What would the awakening be? Would his forgetfulness of Beatrice and his coldness to herself return with the subsidence of his passion? Far better that than to see him and hear him as he was now.

  And yet there were moments now and then when he pronounced no name, when he recalled no memory of the past, when there was only the tenderness of love itself in his words, and then, as she listened, she could almost think it was for her. It was bitter joy, unreal and fantastic, but it was a relief. Had she loved him less, such a conflict between sense and senses would have been impossible even in imagination. But she loved him greatly and the deep desire to be loved in turn was in her still, shaming her better thoughts, but sometimes ruling her in spite of herself and of the pain she suffered with each word self-applied. All the vast contradictions, all the measureless inconsistency, all the enormous selfishness of which human hearts are capable, had met in hers as in a battle-ground, fighting each other, rending what they found of herself amongst them, sometimes uniting to throw their whole weight together against the deep-rooted passion, sometimes taking side with it to drive out every other rival.

  It was shameful, base, despicable, and she knew it. A moment ago she had longed to tear herself away, to silence him, to stop her ears, anything not to hear those words that cut like whips and stung like scorpions. And now again she was listening for the next, eagerly, breathlessly, drunk with their sound and revelling almost in the unreality of the happiness they brought. More and more she despised herself as the intervals between one pang of suffering and the next grew longer, and the illusion deeper and more like reality.

  After all, it was he, and no other. It was the man she loved who was pouring out his own love into her ears, and smoothing her hair and pressing the hand he held. Had he not said it once, and more than once? What matter where, what matter how, provided that he loved? She had received the fulfilment of her wish. He loved her now. Under another name, in a vision, with another face and another voice, yet, still, she was herself.

  As in a storm the thunder-claps came crashing through the air, deafening and appalling at first, then rolling swiftly into a far distance, fainter and fainter, till all is still and only the plash of the fast-falling rain is heard, so, as she listened, the tempest of her pain was passing away. Easier and easier it became to hear herself called Beatrice, easier and easier it grew to take the other’s place, to accept the kiss, the touch, the word, the pressure of the hand that were all another’s due, and given to herself only for the mask she wore in his dream.

  And the tide of the great temptation rose, and fell a little, and rose higher again each time, till it washed the fragile feet of the last good thought that lingered, taking refuge on the highest point above the waves. On and on it came, receding and coming back, higher and higher, surer and surer. Had she drawn back in time it would have been so easy. Had she turned and fled when the first moment of senseless joy was over, when she could still feel all the shame, and blush for all the abasement, it would have been over now, and she would have been safe. But she had learned to look upon the advancing water, and the sound of it had no more terror for her. It was very high now. Presently it would climb higher and close above her head.

  There were long intervals of silence now. The first rush of his speech had spent itself, for he had told her much and she had heard it all, even through the mists of her changing moods. And now that he was silent she longed to hear him speak again. She could never weary of that voice. It had been music to her in the days when it had been full of cold indifference — now each vibration roused high harmonies in her heart, each note was a full chord, and all the chords made but one great progression. She longed to hear it all again, wondering greatly how it could never have been not good to hear.

  Then with the greater temptation came the less, enclosed within it, suddenly revealed to her. There was but one thing she hated in it all. That was the name. Would he not give her another — her own perhaps? She trembled as she thought of speaking. Would she still have Beatrice’s voice? Might not her own break down the spell and destroy all at once? Yet she had spoken once before. She had told him that she loved him and he had not been undeceived.

  “Beloved—” she said at last, lingering on the single word and then hesitating.

  He looked into her face as he drew her to him, with happy eyes. She might speak, then, for he would hear tones not hers.


  “Beloved, I am tired of my name. Will you not call me by another?” She spoke very softly.

  “By another name?” he exclaimed, surprised, but smiling at what seemed a strange caprice.

  “Yes. It is a sad name to me. It reminds me of many things — of a time that is better forgotten since it is gone. Will you do it for me? It will make it seem as though that time had never been.”

  “And yet I love your own name,” he said, thoughtfully. “It is so much — or has been so much in all these years, when I had nothing but your name to love.”

  “Will you not do it? It is all I ask.”

  “Indeed I will, if you would rather have it so. Do you think there is anything that I would not do if you asked it of me?”

  They were almost the words she had spoken to him that night when they were watching together by Israel Kafka’s side. She recognised them and a strange thrill of triumph ran through her. What matter how? What matter where? The old reckless questions came to her mind again. If he loved her, and if he would but call her Unorna, what could it matter, indeed? Was she not herself? She smiled unconsciously.

  “I see it pleases you,” he said tenderly. “Let it be as you wish. What name will you choose for your dear self?”

  She hesitated. She could not tell how far he might remember what was past. And yet, if he had remembered he would have seen where he was in the long time that had passed since his awakening.

  “Did you ever — in your long travels — hear the name Unorna?” she asked with a smile and a little hesitation.

  “Unorna? No. I cannot remember. It is a Bohemian word — it means ‘she of February.’ It has a pretty sound — half familiar to me. I wonder where I have heard it.”

  “Call me Unorna, then. It will remind us that you found me in February.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  AFTER CAREFULLY LOCKING and bolting the door of the sacristy Sister Paul turned to Beatrice. She had set down her lamp upon the broad, polished shelf which ran all round the place, forming the top of a continuous series of cupboards, as in most sacristies, used for the vestments of the church. At the back of these high presses rose half way to the spring of the vault.

  The nun seemed a little nervous and her voice quavered oddly as she spoke. If she had tried to take up her lamp her hand would have shaken. In the moment of danger she had been brave and determined, but now that all was over her enfeebled strength felt the reaction from the strain. She turned to Beatrice and met her flashing black eyes. The young girl’s delicate nostrils quivered and her lips curled fiercely.

  “You are angry, my dear child,” said Sister Paul. “So am I, and it seems to me that our anger is just enough. ‘Be angry and sin not.’ I think we can apply that to ourselves.”

  “Who is that woman?” Beatrice asked. She was certainly angry, as the nun had said, but she felt by no means sure that she could resist the temptation of sinning if it presented itself as the possibility of tearing Unorna to pieces.

  “She was once with us,” the nun answered. “I knew her when she was a mere girl — and I loved her then, in spite of her strange ways. But she has changed. They call her a Witch — and indeed I think it is the only name for her.”

  “I do not believe in witches,” said Beatrice, a little scornfully. “But whatever she is, she is bad. I do not know what it was that she wanted me to do in the church, upon the altar there — it was something horrible. Thank God you came in time! What could it have been, I wonder?”

  Sister Paul shook her head sorrowfully, but said nothing. She knew no more than Beatrice of Unorna’s intention, but she believed in the existence of a Black Art, full of sacrilegious practices, and credited Unorna vaguely with the worst designs which she could think of, though in her goodness she was not able to imagine anything much worse than the saying of a Pater Noster backwards in a consecrated place. But she preferred to say nothing, lest she should judge Unorna unjustly. After all, she did not know. What she had seen had seemed bad enough and strange enough, but apart from the fact that Beatrice had been found upon the altar, where she certainly had no business to be, and that Unorna had acted like a guilty woman, there was little to lay hold of in the way of fact.

  “My child,” she said at last, “until we know more of the truth, and have better advice than we can give each other, let us not speak of it to any one of the sisters. In the morning I will tell all I have seen in confession, and then I shall get advice. Perhaps you should do the same. I know nothing of what happened before you left your room. Perhaps you have something to reproach yourself with. It is not for me to ask. Think it over.”

  “I will tell you the whole truth,” Beatrice answered, resting her elbow upon the polished shelf and supporting her head in her hand, while she looked earnestly into Sister Paul’s faded eyes.

  “Think well, my daughter. I have no right to any confession from you. If there is anything — —”

  “Sister Paul — you are a woman, and I must have a woman’s help. I have learned something to-night which will change my whole life. No — do not be afraid — I have done nothing wrong. At least, I hope not. While my father lived, I submitted. I hoped, but I gave no sign. I did not even write, as I once might have done. I have often wished that I had — was that wrong?”

  “But you have told me nothing, dear child. How can I answer you?” The nun was perplexed.

  “True. I will tell you. Sister Paul — I am five-and-twenty years old, I am a grown woman and this is no mere girl’s love story. Seven years ago — I was only eighteen then — I was with my father as I have been ever since. My mother had not been dead long then — perhaps that is the reason why I seemed to be everything to my father. But they had not been happy together, and I had loved her best. We were travelling — no matter where — and then I met the man I have loved. He was not of our country — that is, of my father’s. He was of the same people as my mother. Well — I loved him. How dearly you must guess, and try to understand. I could not tell you that. No one could. It began gradually, for he was often with us in those days. My father liked him for his wit, his learning, though he was young; for his strength and manliness — for a hundred reasons which were nothing to me. I would have loved him had he been a cripple, poor, ignorant, despised, instead of being what he was — the grandest, noblest man God ever made. For I did not love him for his face, nor for his courtly ways, nor for such gifts as other men might have, but for himself and for his heart — do you understand?”

  “For his goodness,” said Sister Paul, nodding in approval. “I understand.”

  “No,” Beatrice answered, half impatiently. “Not for his goodness either. Many men are good, and so was he — he must have been, of course. No matter. I loved him. That is enough. He loved me, too. And one day we were alone, in the broad spring sun, upon a terrace. There were lemon trees there — I can see the place. Then we told each other that we loved — but neither of us could find the words — they must be somewhere, those strong beautiful words that could tell how we loved. We told each other—”

  “Without your father’s consent?” asked the nun almost severely.

  Beatrice’s eyes flashed. “Is a woman’s heart a dog that must follow at heel?” she asked fiercely. “We loved. That was enough. My father had the power, but not the heart, to come between. We told him, then, for we were not cowards. We told him boldly that it must be. He was a thoughtful man, who spoke little. He said that we must part at once, before we loved each other better — and that we should soon forget. We looked at each other, the man I loved and I. We knew that we should love better yet, parted or together, though we could not tell how that could be. But we knew also that such love as there was between us was enough. My father gave no reasons, but I knew that he hated the name of my mother’s nation. Of course we met again. I remember that I could cry in those days. My father had not learned to part us then. Perhaps he was not quite sure himself, at all events the parting did not come so soon. We told him that we would wait, for ever if
it must be. He may have been touched, though little touched him at the best. Then, one day, suddenly and without warning, he took me away to another city. And what of him? I asked. He told me that there was an evil fever in the city and that it had seized him — the man I loved. ‘He is free to follow us if he pleases,’ said my father. But he never came. Then followed a journey, and another, and another, until I knew that my father was travelling to avoid him. When I saw that I grew silent, and never spoke his name again. Farther and farther, longer and longer, to the ends of the earth. We saw many people, many asked for my hand. Sometimes I heard of him, from men who had seen him lately. I waited patiently, for I knew that he was on our track, and sometimes I felt that he was near.”

  Beatrice paused.

  “It is a strange story,” said Sister Paul, who had rarely heard a tale of love.

  “The strange thing is this,” Beatrice answered. “That woman — what is her name? Unorna? She loves him, and she knows where he is.”

  “Unorna?” repeated the nun in bewilderment.

  “Yes. She met me after Compline to-night. I could not but speak to her, and then I was deceived. I cannot tell whether she knew what I am to him, but she deceived me utterly. She told me a strange story of her own life. I was lonely. In all those years I have never spoken of what has filled me. I cannot tell how it was. I began to speak, and then I forgot that she was there, and told all.”

  “She made you tell her, by her secret arts,” said Sister Paul in a low voice.

  “No — I was lonely and I believed that she was good, and I felt that I must speak. Then — I cannot think how I could have been so mad — but I thought that we should never meet again, and I showed her a likeness of him. She turned on me. I shall not forget her face. I heard her say that she knew him and loved him too. When I awoke I was lying on the altar. That is all I know.”