Part 2 (1/2)
Nothing could be simpler.”
”It seems to me that nothing could be more vague.”
”You were not formerly so slow to understand me,” said the strange little man with some impatience.
”Do you know a lady of Prague who calls herself Unorna?” the Wanderer asked, paying no attention to his friend's last remark.
”I do. What of her?” Keyork Arabian glanced keenly at his companion.
”What is she? She has an odd name.”
”As for her name, it is easily accounted for. She was born on the twenty-ninth day of February, the year of her birth being bis.e.xtile.
Unor means February, Unorna, derivative adjective, 'belonging to February.' Some one gave her the name to commemorate the circ.u.mstance.”
”Her parents, I suppose.”
”Most probably--whoever they may have been.”
”And what is she?” the Wanderer asked.
”She calls herself a witch,” answered Keyork with considerable scorn. ”I do not know what she is, or what to call her--a sensitive, an hysterical subject, a medium, a witch--a fool, if you like, or a charlatan if you prefer the term. Beautiful she is, at least, whatever else she may not be.”
”Yes, she is beautiful.”
”So you have seen her, have you?” The little man again looked sharply up at his tall companion. ”You have had a consultation----”
”Does she give consultations? Is she a professional seer?” The Wanderer asked the question in a tone of surprise. ”Do you mean that she maintains an establishment upon such a scale out of the proceeds of fortune-telling?”
”I do not mean anything of the sort. Fortune-telling is excellent! Very good!” Keyork's bright eyes flashed with amus.e.m.e.nt. ”What are you doing here--I mean in this church?” He put the question suddenly.
”Pursuing--an idea, if you please to call it so.”
”Not knowing what you mean I must please to call your meaning by your own name for it. It is your nature to be enigmatic. Shall we go out?
If I stay here much longer I shall be petrified instead of embalmed. I shall turn into dirty old red marble like Tycho's effigy there, an awful warning to future philosophers, and an example for the edification of the faithful who wors.h.i.+p here.”
They walked towards the door, and the contrast between the appearance of the two brought the ghost of a smile to the thin lips of the pale sacristan, who was occupied in renewing the tapers upon one of the side altars. Keyork Arabian might have stood for the portrait of the gnome-king. His high and pointed head, his immense beard, his stunted but powerful and thickset limbs, his short, st.u.r.dy strides, the fiery, half-humorous, half-threatening twinkle of his bright eyes gave him all the appearance of a fantastic figure from a fairy tale, and the diminutive height of his compact frame set off the n.o.ble stature and graceful motion of his companion.
”So you were pursuing an idea,” said the little man as they emerged into the narrow street. ”Now ideas may be divided variously into cla.s.ses, as, for instance, ideas which are good, bad, or indifferent. Or you may contrast the idea of Plato with ideas anything but platonic--take it as you please. Then there is my idea, which is in itself, good, interesting, and worthy of the embalming process; and there is your idea, which I am human enough to consider altogether bad, worthless, and frivolous, for the plain and substantial reason that it is not mine.
Perhaps that is the best division of all. Thine eye is necessarily, fatally, irrevocably evil, because mine is essentially, predestinately, and unchangeably good. If I secretly adopt your idea, I openly a.s.sert that it was never yours at all, but mine from the beginning, by the prerogatives of greater age, wider experience, and immeasurably superior wisdom. If you have an idea upon any subject, I will utterly annihilate it to my own most profound satisfaction; if you have none concerning any special point, I will force you to accept mine, as mine, or to die the intellectual death. That is the general theory of the idea.”
”And what does it prove?” inquired the Wanderer.
”If you knew anything,” answered Keyork, with twinkling eyes, ”you would know that a theory is not a demonstration, but an explanation. But, by the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly.
Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine, imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial images of men. Why do you drag me through this dismal pa.s.sage?”
”I pa.s.sed through it this morning and missed my way.”
”In pursuit of the idea, of course. That was to be expected. Prague is constructed on the same principle as the human brain, full of winding ways, dark lanes, and gloomy arches, all of which may lead somewhere, or may not. Its topography continually misleads its inhabitants as the convolutions of the brain mislead the thoughts that dwell there, sometimes bringing them out at last, after a patient search for daylight, upon a fine broad street where the newest fas.h.i.+ons in thought are exposed for sale in brightly illuminated shop windows and showcases; conducting them sometimes to the dark, unsavoury court where the miserable self drags out its unhealthy existence in the single room of its hired earthly lodging.”
”The self which you propose to preserve from corruption,” observed the tall man, who was carefully examining every foot of the walls between which he was pa.s.sing with his companion, ”since you think so poorly of the lodger and the lodging, I wonder that you should be anxious to prolong the sufferings of the one and his lease of the other.”