Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
if report be true, possess the skill to ravish the mind away from
its trouble, to transport it to a radiant Elysium of illusions and
ecstasies. Do this for me, as you have done it for another, and,
whatever payment you demand, it shall be yours!"
She ceased.
Faintly through the silence came the chimes of convent bells from the
remote regions of the Aventine, pealing through the fragrant summer
night above the deep boom of distant thunder that seemed to come as
from the bowels of the earth.
Hormazd gave his interrogator a swift, searching glance, half of pity,
half of disdain.
"The great eastern drug should serve your turn," he replied
sardonically. "I know of no other means wherewith to stifle the voice
of conscience."
Theodora flushed darkly.
"Conscience?" she flashed in resentful accents.
The Persian nodded.
"There is such a thing. Do you profess to be without one?"
Theodora's eyes endeavored to pierce the inscrutable mask before her.
The ironical curtness of the question annoyed her.
"Your opinion of me does little honor to your wisdom," she said after a
pause.
"A foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sack-cloth," came the
dark reply.
"How know you that I desire relief from this imaginary malady?"
The Oriental gave a shrug.
"Why does Theodora come to the haunts of the Persian? Why does she ask
him to mock and delude her, as if it were his custom to make dupes of
those who appeal to him?"
"And are they not your dupes?" Theodora interposed, her face a deeper
pallor than before.
"Of that you shall judge after I have answered your questions," Hormazd
returned darkly. "There are but two things in life that will prompt a
woman like Theodora to seek aid of one like myself."--
"You arouse my curiosity!"
"Disappointment in power--or love!"
There was a silence.
"Will you help me?"
She was pleading now.
The Oriental sparred for time. It was not his purpose to commit himself
at once.
"I am but one who, long severed from the world, has long recognized
its vanities. My cures are for the body rather than the soul."
Theodora's face hardened into an expression of scorn.
"Am I to understand that you will do nothing for me?" she said in a
tone which convinced the Persian that the time for dallying was past.
The words came slowly from his lips.
"I can promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joys. I possess
an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control,
overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if
I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence
which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of
clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. But--what in that state
its experience may be, whether joy or sorrow, I cannot foretell."
"Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?"
"I am merely their interpreter!"
She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words.
"And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?"
"I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!"
"And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot
tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the
netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?"
"The liberated soul must shift for itself."
"Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send
me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world,
this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle
in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of
life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can
find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it
shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind
out the torture of life no more."
She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen
angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some
invisible opponent.
The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch
in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low
and tranquil tones:
"You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking
to obtain the impossible--"
"Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in
whose quest I am?"
The Persian bowed, but kept silent.
Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in
Theodora's face.
"Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white
hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to
you. I have kept silence long."
Hormazd nodded.
"In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force
a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up
suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever
unrevealed? Youth and innocence--"
Theodora raised her arm.
"Was I ever--what they call--innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When
I was young--alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty--the dream
of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a
Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I
was--it matters not. What I am--you know!"
She raised herself to her full height.
"I long for power. Men are my puppets. And I long for love! I have
sought it in all shapes, in every guise. But I found it not. Only
disillusion--disappointment have been my share. Will my one desire be
ever fulfilled?"
"Some day you shall know," he said quietly, keeping his dark gaze upon
her.
"I doubt me not I shall! But--when and where? Tell me then, you who
know so much! When and where?"
Hormazd regarded her quizzically, but made no immediate reply.
After a time she continued.
"Some say you are the devil's servant! Show me then your power. Read
for me my fate!"
She looked at him with an air of challenge.
"It was not for this you came," the Persian said calmly, meeting the
gaze of those mysterious wells of light whose appeal none had yet
resisted whom she wished to bend to her desires.
The woman turned a shade more pale.
"Then call it a whim!"
"What will it avail?"
Her eyes flashed.
"My will against--that other."
A flash of lightning was reflected on the dark walls of the chamber.
The thunder rolled in grand sullen echoes down the heavens.
She heard it not.
"What are you waiting for?" she turned to Hormazd.
There was a note of impatience in her tone.
"You are of to-day--yet not of to-day! Not of yesterday, nor to-morrow.
To some in time comes love--"
"But to me?"
His voice sank to a frozen silence.
She stood, gazing at him steadily. She was very pale, but the smile of
challenge still lingered on her lips.
"But to me?" she repeated.
He regarded her darkly.
"To you? Who knows?--Some day--"
"Ah! When my fate has chanced! Are you a cheat then, like the rest?"
He was silent, as one in the throes of some great emotion. She took a
step towards him. He raised both hands as if to ward her off. His eyes
saw shapes and scenes not within the reach of other's ken.
"Tell me the truth," she said calmly. "You cannot deceive me!"
Hormazd sprinkled the cauldron with some white powder that seethed and
hissed as it came in contact with the glowing metal and began to emit a
dense smoke, which filled the interior of the chamber with a strange,
pungent odor.
Then he slowly raised one hand until it touched Theodora. Dauntless
in spirit, her body was taken by surprise, and as his clammy fingers
closed round her own she gave an involuntary start. With a compelling
glance, still in silence, he looked into her face.
A strange transformation seemed to take place.
She was no longer in the chamber, but in a grove dark with trees and
shrubbery. A dense pall seemed to obscure the skies. The atmosphere was
breathless. Even as she looked he was no longer there. Great clouds of
greenish vapor rolled in through the trees and enveloped her so utterly
as to shut out all vision. It was as if she were alone in some isolated
spot, far removed from the ken of man. She was conscious of nothing
save the insistent touch of his hand upon her arm.
Gradually, as she peered into the vapors, they seemed to condense
themselves into a definite shape. It was that of a man coming towards
her, but some invisible agency seemed ever to retard his approach. In
fact the distance seemed not to lessen, and suddenly she saw her own
self standing by, vainly straining her gaze into space, indescribable
longing in her eyes.
A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the vault of heaven was
followed by so terrific a peal of thunder that it seemed to shake the
very earth.
A shriek broke from Theodora's lips.
"It is he! It is he!" she cried pointing to the curtain. Hormazd
turned, hardly less amazed than the woman. He distinctly saw, in the
recurrent flash, a face, pale and brooding, framed by the darkness, of
which it seemed a part.
At the next moment it was gone, as if it had melted into air.
Theodora's whole body was numb, as if every nerve had been paralyzed.
The Persian was hardly less agitated.
"Is it enough?" she heard Hormazd's deep voice say beside her.
She turned, but, though straining her eyes, she could not see him. The
flame in the tripod had died down. She was trembling from head to foot.
But her invincible will was unshaken.
"Nay," she said, and her voice still mocked. "Having seen the man my
soul desires, I must know more. The end! I have not seen the end! Shall
I possess him? Speak!"
"Seek no more!" warned the voice by her side. "Seek not to know the
end!"
She raised herself defiantly.
"The end!"
He made no reply. She saw the white vapors forming into faces. The hour
and the place of the last vision were not clear. She saw but the man
and herself, standing together at some strange point, where time seemed
to count for naught.
Between them lay a scarf of blue samite.
After a protracted silence a moan broke from Theodora's lips.
The Persian took no heed thereof. He did not even seem to hear. But,
beneath those half-closed lids, not a movement of the woman escaped his
penetrating gaze. Though possessed with a vague assurance of his own
dark powers, controlled by his nerve and coolness, Hormazd could read
in that fair, inscrutable face far more than in the magic scrolls.
And as he scanned it now, from under half-shut lids, it was fixed and
rigid as marble, pale, too, with an unearthly whiteness. She seemed to
have forgotten his presence. She seemed to look into space, yet even as
he gazed, the expression of that wonderfully fair face changed.
Theodora's eyes were fierce, her countenance bore a rigid expression,
bright, cold, unearthly, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.
The tools of love and ambition are sharp and double-edged, and Hormazd
knew it was safer to trust to wind and waves than to the whims of woman.
But already her mood had changed and her face had resumed its habitual
expression of inscrutable repose.
"Is it the gods or the devil who sway and torture us and mock at our
helplessness?" she turned to the Oriental, then, without waiting his
reply, she concluded with a searching glance that seemed to read his
very heart.
"Report speaks true of you. Unknowingly, unwittingly you have pointed
the way. Farewell!"
Long after she had disappeared Hormazd stared at the spot where her
swiftly retiring form had been engulfed by the darkness. Then, weighing
the purse, which she had left as an acknowledgment of his services, and
finding it sufficiently heavy to satisfy his avarice, the Persian stood
for a time wrapped in deep thoughts.