“Good-night,” he said, and in the next moment she had disappeared within.
CHAPTER XVIII
Having made the necessary explanations to account for her sudden appearance, Unorna found herself installed in two rooms of modest dimensions, and very simply though comfortably furnished. It was quite a common thing for ladies to seek retreat and quiet in the convent during two or three weeks of the year, and there was plenty of available space at the disposal of those who wished to do so. Such visits were indeed most commonly made during the lenten season, and on the day when Unorna sought refuge among the nuns it chanced that there was but one other stranger within the walls. She was glad to find that this was the case. Her peculiar position would have made it hard for her to bear with equanimity the quiet observation of a number of woman, most of whom would probably have been to some extent acquainted with the story of her life, and some of whom would certainly have wished out of curiosity to enter into nearer acquaintance with her while within the convent, while not intending to prolong their intercourse with her any further. It could not be expected, indeed, that in a city like Prague such a woman as Unorna could escape notice, and the fact that little or nothing was known of her true history had left a very wide field for the imaginations of those who chose to invent one for her. The common story, and the one which on the whole was nearest to the truth, told that she was the daughter of a noble of eastern Bohemia who had died soon after her birth, the last of his family, having converted his ancestral possessions into money for Unorna’s benefit, in order to destroy all trace of her relationship to him. The secret must, of course, have been confided to some one, but it had been kept faithfully, and Unorna herself was no wiser than those who mused themselves with fruitless speculations regarding her origin. If from the first, from the moment when, as a young girl, she left the convent to enter into possession of her fortune she had chosen to assert some right to a footing in the most exclusive aristocracy in the world, it is not impossible that the protection of the Abbess might have helped her to obtain it. The secret of her birth would, however, have rendered a marriage with a man of that class all but impossible, and would have entirely excluded her from the only other position considered dignified for a well-born woman of fortune, unmarried and wholly without living relations or connections—that of a lady-canoness on the Crown foundation. Moreover, her wild bringing-up, and the singular natural gifts she possessed, and which she could not resist the impulse to exercise, had in a few months placed her in a position from which no escape was possible so long as she continued to live in Prague; and against those few—chiefly men—who for her beauty’s sake, or out of curiosity, would gladly have made her acquaintance, she raised an impassable barrier of pride and reserve. Nor was her reputation altogether an evil one. She lived in a strange fashion, it is true, but the very fact of her extreme seclusion had kept her name free from stain. If people spoke of her as the Witch, it was more from habit and half in jest than in earnest. In strong contradiction to the cruelty which she could exercise ruthlessly when roused to anger, was her well-known kindness to the poor, and her charities to institutions founded for their benefit were in reality considerable, and were said to be boundless. These explanations seem necessary in order to account for the readiness with which she turned to the convent when she was in danger, and for the facilities which were then at once offered her for a stay long or short, as she should please to make it. Some of the more suspicious nuns looked grave when they heard that she was under their roof; others, again, had been attached to her during the time she had formerly spent among them; and there were not lacking those who, disapproving of her presence, held their peace, in the anticipation that the rich and eccentric lady would on departing present a gift of value to their order.
The rooms which were kept at the disposal of ladies desiring to make a religious retreat for a short time were situated on the first floor of one wing of the convent overlooking a garden which was not within the cloistered precincts, but which was cultivated for the convenience of the nuns, who themselves never entered it. The windows on this side were not latticed, and the ladies who occupied the apartments were at liberty to look out upon the small square of land, their view of the street beyond being cut off however by a wall in which there was one iron gate for the convenience of the gardeners, who were thus not obliged to pass through the main entrance of the convent in order to reach their work. Within the rooms all opened out upon a broad vaulted corridor, lighted in the day-time by a huge arched window looking upon an inner court, and at night by a single lamp suspended in the middle of the passage by a strong iron chain. The pavement of this passage was of broad stones, once smooth and even but now worn and made irregular by long use. The rooms for the guests were carpeted with sober colours and warmed by high stoves built up of glazed white tiles. The furniture, as has been said, was simple, but afforded all that was strictly necessary for ordinary comfort, each apartment consisting of a bedroom and sitting-room, small in lateral dimensions but relatively very high. The walls were thick and not easily penetrated by any sounds from without, and, as in many religious houses, the entrances from the corridor were all closed by double doors, the outer one of strong oak with a lock and a solid bolt, the inner one of lighter material, but thickly padded to exclude sound as well as currents of cold air. Each sitting-room contained a table, a sofa, three or four chairs, a small book-shelf, and a praying-stool provided with a hard and well-worn cushion for the knees. Over this a brown wooden crucifix was hung upon the gray wall.
In the majority of convents it is not usual, nor even permissible, for ladies in retreat to descend to the nuns’ refectory. When there are many guests they are usually served by lay sisters in a hall set apart for the purpose; when there are few, their simple meals are brought to them in their rooms. Moreover they of course put on no religious robe, though they dress themselves in black. In the church, or chapel, as the case may be, they do not take places within the latticed choir with the sisters, but either sit in the body of the building, or occupy a side chapel reserved for their use, or else perform their devotions kneeling at high windows above the choir, which communicate within with rooms accessible from the convent. It is usual for them to attend Mass, Vespers, the Benediction and Complines, but when there are midnight services they are not expected to be present.
Unorna was familiar with convent life and was aware that the Benediction was over, and that the hour for the evening meal was approaching. A fire had been lighted in her sitting-room, but the air was still very cold and she sat wrapped in her furs as when she had arrived, leaning back in a corner of the sofa, her head inclined forward, and one white hand resting on the green baize cloth which covered the table.
She was very tired, and the absolute stillness was refreshing and restoring after the long-drawn-out emotions of the stormy day. Never, in her short and passionate life, had so many events been crowded into the space of a few hours. Since the morning she had felt almost everything that her wild, high-strung nature was capable of feeling—love, triumph, failure, humiliation—anger, hate, despair, and danger of sudden death. She was amazed when, looking back, she remembered that at noon on that day her life and all its interests had been stationary at the point familiar to her during a whole month, the point that still lay within the boundaries of hope’s kingdom, the point at which the man she loved had wounded her by speaking of brotherly affection and sisterly regard. She could almost believe, when she thought of it all, that some one had done to her as she had done to others, that she had been cast into a state of sleep, and had been forced against her will to live through the storms of years in the lethargy of an hour. And yet, despite all, her memory was distinct, her faculties were awake, her intellect had lost none of its clearness, even in the last and worst hour of all. She could recall each look on the Wanderer’s face, each tone of his cold speech, each intonation of her own passionate outpourings. Her strong memory had retained all, and there was not the slightest break in the continuity of her recollections. But there was little comfort to be derived from the certainty that she had not been dreaming, and that everything had really taken place precisely as she remembered it. She would have given all she possessed, which was much, to return to the hour of noon on that same day.
In so far as a very unruly nature can understand itself, Unorna understood the springs of the actions, she regretted and confessed that in all likelihood she would do again as she had done at each successive stage. Indeed, since the last great outbreak of her heart, she realised more than ever the great proportions which her love had of late assumed; and she saw that she was indeed ready, as she had said, to dare everything and risk everything for the sake of obtaining the very least show of passion in return. It was quite clear to her, since she had failed so totally, that she should have had patience, that she ought to have accepted gratefully the man’s offer of brotherly devotion, and trusted in time to bring about a further and less platonic development. But she was equally sure that she could never have found the patience, and that if she had restrained herself to-day she would have given way to-morrow. She possessed all the blind indifference to consequences which is a chief characteristic of the Slav nature when dominated by passion. She had shone it in her rash readiness to face Israel Kafka at the moment of leaving her own home. If she could not have what she longed for, she cared as little what became of her as she cared for Kafka’s own fate. She had but one object, one passion, one desire, and to all else her indifference was supreme. Life and death, in this world or the next, were less weighty than feathers in a scale that measures hundreds of tons. The very idea of balance was for the moment beyond her imagination. For a while indeed the pride of a woman at once young, beautiful, and accustomed to authority, had kept her firm in the determination to be loved for herself, as she believed that she deserved to be loved; and just so long as that remained, she had held her head high, confidently expecting that the mask of indifference would soon be shivered, that the eyes she adored would soften with warm light, that the hand she worshipped would tremble suddenly, as though waking to life within her own. But that pride was gone, and from its disappearance there had been but one step to the most utter degradation of soul to which a woman can descend, and from that again but one step more to a resolution almost stupid in its hardened obstinacy. But as though to show how completely she was dominated by the man whom she could not win even her last determination had yielded under the slightest pressure from his will. She had left her house beside him with the mad resolve never again to be parted from him, cost what it might, reputation, fortune, life itself. And yet ten minutes had not elapsed before she found herself alone, trusting to a mere word of his for the hope of ever seeing him again. She seemed to have no individuality left. He had spoken and she had obeyed. He had commanded and she had done his bidding. She was even more ashamed of this than of having wept, and sobbed, and dragged herself at his feet. In the first moment she had submitted, deluding herself with the idea she had expressed, that he was consigning her to a prison and that her freedom was dependent on his will. The foolish delusion vanished. She saw that she was free, when she chose, to descend the steps she had just mounted, to go out through the gate she had lately entered, and to go whithersoever she would, at the mere risk of meeting Israel Kafka. And that risk she heartily despised, being thoroughly brave by nature, and utterly indifferent to death by force of circumstance.
She comforted herself with the thought that the Wanderer would come to her, once at least, when she was pleased to send for him. She had that loyal belief inseparable from true love until violently overthrown by irrefutable evidence, and which sometimes has such power as to return even then, overthrowing the evidence of the senses themselves. Are there not men who trust women, and women who trust men, in spite of the vilest betrayals? Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions, creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible, fiction and proof against the artillery of facts. Unorna’s confidence was, however, not misplaced. The man whose promise she had received had told the truth when he had said that he had never broken any promise whatsoever.