The Worshipper of the Image

ByRICHARD LE GALLIENNE

JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEADLONDON AND NEW YORK1900

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 

TO SILENCIEUX

THIS TRAGIC FAIRY-TALE

Contents

CHAPTER

I. SMILING SILENCE

II. THE COMING OF SILENCIEUX

III. THE NORTHERN SPHINX

IV. AT THE RISING OF THE MOON

V. SILENCIEUX SPEAKS

VI. THE THREE BLACK PONDS

VII. THE LOVERS OF SILENCIEUX

VIII. A STRANGE KISS FOR SILENCIEUX

IX. THE WONDERFUL WEEK

X. SILENCIEUX WHISPERS

XI. WONDER IN THE WOOD

XII. AUTUMN IN THE VALLEY

XIII. THE HUMAN SACRIFICE

XIV. A SONG OF THE LITTLE DEAD

XV. SILENCIEUX ALONE IN THE WOOD

XVI. THE FIRST TALK ON THE HILLS

XVII. ANTONY ALONE ON THE HILLS

XVIII. THE SECOND TALK ON THE HILLS

XIX. LAST TALK ON THE HILLS

XX. ANTONY'S JUDGMENT UPON SILENCIEUX

XXI. "RESURGAM!"

XXII. THE STRANGENESS OF ANTONY

XXIII. BEATRICE FULFILS HER DESTINY

The Worshipper of the Image

CHAPTER I

SMILING SILENCE

Evening was in the wood, still as the dreaming bracken, secretive, moving softly among the pines as a young witch gathering simples. Shewore a hood of finely woven shadows, yet, though she drew it close, sunbeams trooping westward flashed strange lights across her hauntedface. 

The birds that lived in the wood had broken out into sudden singing asshe stole in, hungry for silence, passionate to be alone; and at thefoot of every tree she cried "Hush! Hush!" to the bedtime nests. Whenall but one were still, she slipped the hood from her face and listenedto her own bird, the night-jar, toiling at his hopeless love from abough on which already hung a little star. 

Then it was that a young man, with a face shining with sorrow, vaultedlightly over the mossed fence and dipped down the green path, among theshadows and the toadstools and the silence. 

"Silencieux, " he said over to himself--"I love you, Silencieux. "

Far down the wood came and went through the trees the black and whitegable of a little châlet to which he was dreaming his way. 

Suddenly a small bronze object caught his eye moving across the mossypath. It was a beautiful beetle, very slim and graceful in shape, withsingularly long and fine antennae. Antony had loved these things sincehe was a child, --dragonflies with their lamp-like eyes of luminous horn, moths with pall-like wings that filled the world with silence as youlooked at them, sleepy as death--loved them with the passion of aJapanese artist who delights to carve them on quaint nuggets of metal. Perhaps it was that they were so like words--words to which he had givenall the love and worship of his life. Surely he had loved Silencieux[1]more since he had found for her that beautiful name. 

He held the beetle in his hand a long while, loving it. Then he said tohimself, with a smile in which was the delight of a success: "Avase-shaped beetle with deer's horns. "

The phrase delighted him. He set the insect down on the path, tenderly. He had done with it. He had carved it in seven words. The little modelmight now touch its delicate way among the ferns at peace. 

"A vase-shaped beetle with deer's horns, " he repeated as he walked on, and then the gathering gloom of the wood suggested an addition: "Andsome day I shall find in the wood that moth of which I have dreamedsince childhood--the dark moth with the face of death between hiswings. "

The châlet stood on a little clearing, in a little circle of pines. Fromit the ground sloped down towards the valley, and at some distancebeneath smoke curled from a house lost amid clouds of foliage, theabounding green life of this damp and brooding hollow. A great windowlooking down the woodside filled one side of the châlet, and the otherswere dark with books, an occasional picture or figured jar lighting upthe shadow. A small fire flickered beneath a quaintly devised mantel, though it was summer--for the mists crept up the hill at night andchilled the souls of the books. A great old bureau, with a wonderfulbelly of mahogany, filled a corner of the room, breathing antiquemystery and refinement. At one end of it, on a small vacant space ofwall, hung a cast, apparently the death-mask of a woman, by which theeye was immediately attracted with something of a shock and held by acurious fascination. The face was smiling, a smile of great peace, andalso of a strange cunning. One other characteristic it had: the womanlooked as though at any moment she would suddenly open her eyes, and ifyou turned away from her and looked again, she seemed to be smiling toherself because she had opened them that moment behind your back, andjust closed them again in time. 

It was a face that never changed and yet was always changing. 

She looked doubly strange in the evening light, and her smile softenedand deepened as the shadows gathered in the room. 

Antony came and stood in front of her. 

"Silencieux, " he whispered, "I love you, Silencieux. Smiling Silence, Ilove you. All day long on the moors your smile has stolen like amoonbeam by my side--"

As he spoke, from far down the wood came the gentle sound of a woman'svoice calling "Antony, " and coming nearer as it called. 

With a shade of impatience, Antony bent nearer to the image and kissedit. 

"Good-bye, Silencieux, " he whispered, "Good-bye, until the rising of themoon. "

Then he passed out on to the little staircase that led down into thewood, and called back to the approaching voice: "I am coming, Beatrice, "--'Beatrice' being the name of his wife. 

As he called, a shaft of late sunlight suddenly irradiated the tallslim form of a woman coming up the wood. She wore no hat, and the sunmade a misty glory of her pale gold hair. She seemed a fairy romanticthing thus gliding in her yellow silk gown through the darkening pines. And her face was the face of the image, feature for feature. There wason it too the same light, the same smile. 

"Antony, " she called, as they drew nearer to each other, "where in thewide world have you been? Dinner has been waiting for half-an-hour. "

"Dinner!" he said, laughing, and kissing her kindly. "Fancy! the HighMuses have made me half-an-hour late for dinner. Beauty has made meforget my dinner. Disgraceful!"

"I don't mind your forgetting dinner, Antony--but you might haveremembered me. "

"Do you think I could remember Beauty and forget you? Yes! you _are_beautiful to-night, Silen--Beatrice. You look like a lady one meetswalking by a haunted well in some old Arthurian tale. "

"Hush!" said Beatrice, "listen to the night-jar. He is worth a hundrednightingales. "

"Yes; what a passion is that!" said Antony, "so sincere, and yet sofascinating too. "

"'Yet, ' do you say, Antony? Why, sincerity is the most fascinating thingin the world. "

And as they listened, Antony's heart had stolen back to Silencieux, andonce more in fancy he pressed his lips to hers in the dusk: "It is withsuch an eternal passion that I love you, Silencieux. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Of course, the writer is aware that while "Silencieux" isfeminine, her name is masculine. In such fanciful names, however, suchlicense has always been considered allowable. ]

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF SILENCIEUX

The manner in which Antony had found and come to love Silencieux was astrange illustration of that law by which one love grows out ofanother--that law by which men love living women because of the dead, and dead women because of the living. 

One day as chance had sent him, picking his way among the orange boxes, the moving farms, and the wig-makers of Covent Garden, he had come upona sculptor's shop, oddly crowded in among Cockney carters and decayingvegetables. Faces of Greece and Rome gazed at him suddenly from a broadwindow, and for a few moments he forsook the motley beauty of modernLondon for the ordered loveliness of antiquity. 

Through white corridors of faces he passed, with the cold breath ofclassic art upon his cheek, and in the company of the dead who live forever he was conscious of a contagion of immortality. 

Soon in an alcove of faces he grew conscious of a presence. Some one wassmiling near him. He turned, and, almost with a start, found that--as hethen thought--it was no living thing, but just a plaster cast among theothers, that was thus shining, like a star among the dead. A face notancient, not modern; but a face of yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 

Instantly he knew he had seen the face before. Where?

Why, of course, it was the face of Beatrice, feature for feature. Howstrange!--and, loving Beatrice, he bought it, because of his great lovefor her! Who was the artist, what the time and circumstance, that hadanticipated in this strange fashion the only face he had ever reallyloved on earth?

He sought information of the shopkeeper, who told him a strange littlestory of an unknown model and an unknown artist, and two tragic fates. 

When Antony had brought Silencieux home to Beatrice, she had at firsttaken that delight in her which every created thing takes in a perfect, or even an imperfect, reflection of itself. To have been anticipated ina manner so unusual gave back in romantic suggestiveness what at firstsight it seemed to steal from one's personal originality. Only at firstsight--for, if like Beatrice, you were the possessor of a face souncommon in type that your lover might, with little fear of disproof, declare, at all events in England, that there was none other like it, you might grow superstitious as you looked at an anticipation socreepily identical, and conceive strange fancies of re-incarnation. Whatif this had been you in some former existence! Or at all events, ifthere is any truth in those who tell us that in the mould and lines ofour faces and hands--yes! and in every secret marking of our bodies--ourfates are written as in a parchment; would it not be reasonable tosurmise, perhaps to fear, that the writing should mean the same on oneface as on the other, and the fates as well as the faces proveidentical?

Beatrice gave the mask back to Antony, with a little shiver. 

"It is very wonderful, very strange, but she makes me frightened. Whatwas the story the man told you, Antony?"

"No doubt it was all nonsense, " Antony replied, "but he said that it wasthe death-mask of an unknown girl found drowned in the Seine. "

"Drowned in the Seine!" exclaimed Beatrice, growing almost as white asthe image. 

"Yes! and he said too that the story went that the sculptor who mouldedit had fallen so in love with the dead girl, that he had gone mad anddrowned himself in the Seine also. "

"Can it be true, Antony?"

"I hope so, for it is so beautiful, --and nothing is really beautifultill it has come true. "

"But the pain, the pity of it--Antony. "

"That is a part of the beauty, surely--the very essence of its beauty--"

"Beauty! beauty! O Antony, that is always your cry. I can only think ofthe terror, the human anguish. Poor girl--" and she turned again to theimage as it lay upon the table, --"see how the hair lies moulded roundher ears with the water, and how her eyelashes stick to her cheek--Poorgirl. "

"But see how happy she looks. Why should we pity one who can smile likethat? See how peaceful she looks;" and with a sudden whim, Antony tookthe image and set it lying back on a soft cushion in a corner of thecouch, at the same time throwing round its neck his black cloak, whichhe had cast off as he came in. 

The image nestled into the cushion as though it had veritably been aliving woman weary for sleep, and softly smiling that it was near atlast. So comfortable she seemed, you could have sworn she breathed. 

Antony lifted her head once or twice with his fingers, to delighthimself with seeing her sink back luxuriously once more. 

Beatrice grew more and more white. 

"Antony, please stop. I cannot bear it. She looks so terribly alive. "

At that moment Antony's touch had been a little too forcible, the imagehung poised for a moment and then began to fall in the direction ofBeatrice. 

"Oh, she is falling, " she almost screamed, as Antony saved the cast fromthe floor. "For God's sake, stop!"

"How childish of you, Beatrice. She is only plaster. I never knew yousuch a baby. "

"I cannot help it, Antony. I know it is foolish, but I cannot help it. Ithink living in this place has made me morbid. She seems so alive--soevil, so cruel. I am sorry you bought her, Antony. I cannot bear to lookat her. Won't you take her away? Take her up into the wood. Keep herthere. Take her now. I shall not be able to sleep all night if I knowshe is in the house. "

She was half hysterical, and Antony soothed her gently. 

"Yes, yes, dear. I'm sorry. I'll take her up the wood now this minute. Wait till I light the lantern. Poor Beatrice, I never dreamed she wouldaffect you so. I loved her, dear--because I love you; but I would ratherbreak her in pieces than that she should make you unhappy. Though tobreak any image of you, dear, " he added tenderly, "would seem a kind ofsacrilege. You know how I love you, Beatrice, don't you?"

"Of course I do, dear; and it was sweet of you to buy her for my sake, and I'm quite silly to-night. To-morrow I shall think nothing about her. Still, dear, she does frighten me, I can't tell why. There seemssomething malignant about her, something that threatens our happiness. Oh, how silly I am--"

Meanwhile, Antony had lit an old brass lantern, and presently he wasflashing his way up among the dark sounds of the black old wood, withthat ghostly face tenderly pressed against his side. 

He stopped once to turn his lantern upon her. How mysterious she looked, here in the night, under the dark pines!

He too felt a little haunted as he climbed his châlet staircase andunlocked the door, every sound he made echoing fatefully in the silentwood; and when he had found a place for the image and hung her there, she certainly looked a ghostly companion for the midnight lamp, in themiddle of a wood. 

How strangely she smiled, the smile almost of one taking possession. 

No wonder Beatrice had been frightened. Was there some mysterious lifein the thing, after all? Why should these indefinite forebodings comeover him as he looked at her!--But he was growing as childish asBeatrice. Surely midnight, a dark wood, a lantern, and a death-mask, with two owls whistling to each other across the valley, were enough toaccount for any number of forebodings! But Antony shivered, for allthat, as he locked the door and hastened back again down the wood. 

CHAPTER III

THE NORTHERN SPHINX

Antony had not written a poem to his wife since their little girl Wonderhad been born, now some four years ago. Surely it was from no lack oflove, this silence, but merely due to the working of what would seem tobe a law of the artistic temperament: that to turn a muse into a wife, however long and faithfully loved, is to bid good-bye to the muse. But aday or two after the coming of Silencieux, Antony found himself suddenlyinspired once more to sing of his wife. It was the best poem he hadwritten for a long time, and when it was finished, he came down the woodimpatient to read it to Beatrice. This was the poem, which he called"The Northern Sphinx":--

 Sphinx of the North, with subtler smile Than hers who in the yellow South, With make-believe mysterious mouth, Deepens the _ennui_ of the Nile;

 And, with no secret left to tell, A worn and withered old coquette, Dreams sadly that she draws us yet, With antiquated charm and spell:

 Tell me your secret, Sphinx, --for mine!-- What means the colour of your eyes, Half innocent and all so wise, Blue as the smoke whose wavering line

 Curls upward from the sacred pyre Of sacrifice or holy death, Pale twisting wreaths of opal breath, From fire mounting into fire. 

 What is the meaning of your hair? That little fairy palace wrought With many a grave fantastic thought; I send a kiss to wander there, To climb from golden stair to stair, Wind in and out its cunning bowers, -- O garden gold with golden flowers, O little palace built of hair!

 The meaning of your mouth, who knows? O mouth, where many meanings meet-- Death kissed it stern, Love kissed it sweet, And each has shaped its mystic rose. 

 Mouth of all sweets, whose sweetness sips Its tribute honey from all hives, The sweetest of the sweetest lives, Soft flowers and little children's lips;

 Yet rather learnt its heavenly smile From sorrow, God's divinest art, Sorrow that breaks and breaks the heart, Yet makes a music all the while. 

 Ah! what is that within your eyes, Upon your lips, within your hair, The sacred art that makes you fair, The wisdom that hath made you wise?

 Tell me your secret, Sphinx, --for mine!-- The mystic word that from afar God spake and made you rose and star, The _fiat lux_ that bade you shine. 

While Antony read, Beatrice's face grew sadder and sadder. When he hadfinished she said:--

"It is very beautiful, Antony--but it is not written for me. "

"What can you mean, Beatrice? Who else can it be written for?"

"To the Image of me that you have set up in my place. "

"Beatrice, are you going mad?"

"It is quite true, all the same. Time will show. Perhaps you don't knowit yourself as yet, but you will before long. "

"But, Beatrice, the poem shows its own origin. Has your image blue eyes, or curiously coiled hair--"

"Oh, yes, of course, you thought of me. You filled in from me. But theinspiration, the wish to write it, came from the image--"

"It is certainly true that I love to look at it, as I love to look at apicture of you--because it is you--"

"As yet, no doubt, but you will soon love it for its own sake. You arealready beginning. "

"I love an image! You are too ridiculous, Beatrice. "

"Does it really seem so strange, dear? I sometimes think you have neverloved anything else. "

Antony had laughed down Beatrice's fancies, yet all the time she hadbeen talking he was conscious that the idea she had suggested wasappealing to him with a perverse fascination. 

To love, not the literal beloved, but the purified stainless image ofher, --surely this would be to ascend into the region of spiritual love, a love unhampered and untainted by the earth. 

As he said this to himself, his mind, ever pitilessly self-conscious, knew it was but a subterfuge, a fine euphemism for a strange desirewhich he had known was already growing within him; for when Beatrice hadspoken of his loving an image, it was no abstract passion he hadconceived, but some fanciful variation of earthly love--a love ofbeauty centring itself upon some form midway between life and death, inanimate and yet alive, human and yet removed from the accidents ofhumanity. 

To love an image with one's whole heart! If only one could achievethat--and never come out of the dream. 

These thoughts gave him a new desire to look again at the image. He feltthat in some way she would be changed, and he hastened up the wood in astrange expectancy. 

CHAPTER IV

AT THE RISING OF THE MOON

But a week or two more, and Beatrice's prophecy had progressed so fartowards fulfilment, that Antony was going about the woods and the moorssaying over to himself the name he had found for the Image, as we saw inthe first chapter; and his love for Silencieux, begun more or less as adetermined self-illusion, grew more and more of a reality. Every day newlife welled into Silencieux's face, as every day life ebbed from theface of Beatrice, surely foreseeing the coming on of what she hadfeared. For the love he gave to Silencieux Antony must take away fromBeatrice, from whom as the days went by he grew more and more withdrawn. 

It was true that the long lonely days which he spent in the wood borefruit in a remarkable productiveness. Never had his imagination been soenkindled, or his pen so winged. But this very industry, the proofs ofwhich he would each evening bring down the wood for that fine judgmentof Beatrice's, which, in spite of all, still remained more to him thanany other praise--this very industry was the secret confirmation forBeatrice's sad heart. No longer the inspirer, she was yet, she bitterlytold herself, honoured among women as a critic. Her heart might bleed, and her eyes fill with tears, as he read; but then, as he would say, theBeauty, the Music! Is it Beautiful? Is it Music? If it be that, nomatter how it has been made! Let us give thanks for creation, though itinvolves the sacrifice of our own most tender and sacred feelings. Toset mere personal feelings against Beauty--human tears against animmortal creation! Did he spare his own feelings? Indeed he did not. 

On the night when we first met him bidding good-bye to Silencieux "untilthe rising of the moon, " he had sat through dinner eating but little, feverishly and somewhat cruelly gay. Though he was as yet too kind toadmit it to himself, Beatrice was beginning to bore him, not merely byher sadness, which his absorption prevented his realising except inflashes, but by her very resemblance to the Image--of which, from havingbeen the beloved original, she was, in his eyes, becoming an indifferentmaterialisation. The sweet flesh he had loved so tenderly became anoffence to him, as a medium too gross for the embodiment of so beautifula face. Such a face as Silencieux's demanded a more celestial porcelain. 

Dinner at last finished, he made an excuse to Beatrice for leaving heralone once more at the end as he had during all the rest of the day, and hastened to keep his tryst with Silencieux. During dinner theconscious side of his mind had been luxuriating in the romantic sound of"until the rising of the moon, "--for he was as yet a long way from beingquite simple even with Silencieux, --and the idea of his going out withserious eagerness to meet one who, if she was as he knew a living being, was an image too, delighted his sense of fantastic make-believe. 

There is in all love that element of make-believe. Every woman who isloved is partly the creation of her lover's fancy. He consciouslysiderealises her, and with open eyes magnifies her importance to hislife. Antony but made believe and magnified uncommonly--and his dream ofvivifying white plaster was perhaps less desperate than the dreams ofsome, that would breathe the breath of life into the colder clay of somebeloved woman, who seems spontaneously to live but is dead all thewhile. 

Silencieux appeared to be dead, but beneath that eternal smile, asBeatrice had divined, as Antony was learning, she was only too terriblyalive. Yes! Antony's was the easier dream. 

The moon and Antony came up the wood together from opposite ends, andwhen Antony entered his châlet Silencieux was already waiting for him, her head crowned with a moonbeam. He kissed her softly and took her withhim out into the ferns. 

CHAPTER V

SILENCIEUX SPEAKS

So long as the moon held, Antony stole up the wood each night to meetSilencieux--"at the rising of the moon. " Sometimes he would lie in ahollow with her head upon his knee, and gaze for an hour at a time, entranced, into her face. He would feign to himself that she slept, andhe would hold his breath lest he should awaken her. Sometimes he wouldsay in a tender whisper, not loud enough for her to hear:--

"It is cold to-night, Silencieux. See, my cloak will keep you warm. "

Once as he did this she heaved a gentle sigh, as though thanking him. 

At other times he would place her against the gable of the châlet, sothat the moonlight fell upon her, and then he would plunge into thewood and walk its whole length, so that, as he wound his way backthrough the intervening brakes, her face would come and go, glimmeringaway off through the leafage, beckoning to him to return. And once hethought he heard her call his name very softly through the wood. 

That may have been an illusion, but it was during these days that he didactually hear her speak for the first time. He had been writing tillpast midnight, with her smile just above him, and when he had turned outthe lamp and was moving to the door through the vague flickering lightof the fire, he distinctly heard a voice very luxurious and tender say"Antony, " just behind him. It was hardly more than a whisper, but itssweetness thrilled his blood, and half in joy and fear he turned to heragain. But she was only smiling inscrutably as before, and she spoke nomore for that night. 

CHAPTER VI

THE THREE BLACK PONDS

At the bottom of the valley, approached by sunken honeysuckle lanes thatseemed winding into the centre of the earth, lay three black ponds, almost hidden in a _cul-de-sac_ of woodland. Though long sinceappropriated by nature, made her own by moss and rooted oaks, they wereso set one below the other, with green causeways between each, that anancient art, long since become nature, had evidently designed and dugthem, years, perhaps centuries, ago. So long dead were the oldpond-makers that great trees grew now upon the causeways, and vastjungles of rush and water grasses choked the trickling overflows fromone pond to the other. Once, it was said, when the earth of those partshad been rich in iron, these ponds had driven great hammers, --but longbefore the memory of the oldest cottager they had rested from theirlabours, and lived only the life of beauty and silence. Where iron hadonce been was now the wild rose, and the grim wounds of the earth hadbeen healed by the kisses of five hundred springs. 

About these ponds stole many a secret path, veined with clumsy roots, shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoingsometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Liliesfloated in circles about the ponds, like the crowns of sunken queens, and sometimes a bird broke the silence with a frightened cry. 

It was here that Beatrice and Wonder would often take their morningwalk, --Wonder, though but a little girl of four, having grown more andmore of a companion to her mother, since Antony's love for Silencieux. 

A morning in August the two were walking hand in hand. Wonder was one ofthose little girls that seem to know all the meanings of life, while yetstruggling with the alphabet of its unimportant words. 

The soul of such a child is, of all things, the most mysterious. Therewas that in her face, as she clung on to her mother's hand, which seemedto say: "O mother, I understand it all, and far more; if I might onlytalk to you in the language of heaven, --but my words are like my littlelegs, frail and uncertain of their footing, and, while I think all yourstrange grown-up thoughts, I can only talk of toys and dolls. Mother, father's blood as well as yours is in my veins, and so I understand youboth. Poor little mother! Poor little father!"

Little Wonder looked these things, she may indeed have thought them;but all she said was: "O mother, what was that?"

"That was a rabbit, dear. See, there is another! See his fluffy whitetail!"

And again: "O mother, what was that?"

"That was a water-hen, dear. She has a little house, a warm nest, closeto the water among the bushes yonder, and she calls like that to let herlittle children know she's coming home with some dainty things forlunch. She means 'Hush! Hush! Don't be frightened. I'm coming just asfast as I can. '"

"Funny little mother! What pretty stories you tell me. But do the birdsreally talk--Oh, but look, little mother, there's Daddy--"

It was Antony, deep in some dream of Silencieux. 

"Daddy! Daddy!" cried the little girl. 

He took her tenderly by the hand. 

"Daddy, where have you been all this long time? You have brought me noflowers for ever so long. "

"Flowers, little Wonder--they are nearly all gone away, gone to sleeptill next year--But see, I will gather you something prettier thanflowers. "

And, hardly marking Beatrice, he led Wonder up and down among thewinding underwood. Fungi of exquisite yellows and browns were popping upall about the wood. He gathered some of the most delicate, and put theminto the fresh small hands. 

"But, Daddy, I mustn't eat them, must I?"

"No, dear--they are too beautiful to eat. You must just look at them andlove them, like flowers. "

"But they are not flowers, Daddy. They don't smell like flowers. I wouldrather have flowers, Daddy. "

"But there are no flowers till next year. You must learn to love thesetoo, little Wonder; they are more beautiful than flowers. "

"Oh, no, Daddy, they are not--"

"Antony, " said Beatrice, "how strange you are! Would you poison her?See, dear, " (turning to Wonder) "Daddy is only teasing. Let us throwthem away. They are nasty, nasty things. Promise me never to gatherthem, won't you, Wonder?"

"Yes, mother. I don't like them. They frighten me. "

Antony turned into a by-path with a strange laugh, and was lost to themin the wood. 

CHAPTER VII

THE LOVERS OF SILENCIEUX

Silencieux often spoke to Antony now. Sometimes a sudden, startling wordwhen he was writing late at night; sometimes long tender talks; once aterrible whisper. But all this time she never opened her eyes. Thelashes still lay wet upon her cheeks, and when she spoke her lips seemedhardly to move, only to smile with a deeper meaning, an intenser life. Indeed, at these times, her face shone with so great a brightness thatAntony's vision was dazzled, and to his gaze she seemed almostfeatureless as a star. 

Once he had begged to see her eyes. 

"You know not what you ask, " she had answered. "When you see my eyes youwill die. Some day, Antony, you shall see my eyes. But not yet. Youhave much to do for me yet. There is yet much love for you and me beforethe end. "

"Have all died who saw your eyes, Silencieux?"

"Yes, all died. "

"You have had many lovers, Silencieux. Many lovers, and far from here, and long ago. "

"Yes, many lovers, long ago, " echoed Silencieux. 

"You have been very cruel, Silencieux. "

"Yes, very cruel, but very kind. It is true men have died for me. I havebeen cruel, yes, but to die for me has seemed better than to live forany other. And some of my lovers I have never forsaken. When they havelost all in the world, they have had me. Lonely garrets have seemedrichly furnished because of my face, and men with foodless lips havedied blest because I was near them at the last. Sometimes I have kissedtheir lips and died with them, and the world has missed my face for ahundred unlovely years--for the world is only beautiful when I and mylovers are in it. Antony, you are one of my lovers, one of my dearestlovers; be great enough, be all mine, and perhaps I will die with you, Antony--and leave the world in darkness for your sake, another hundredyears. "

"Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux. "

"Nearly three thousand years ago I loved a woman of Mitylene, very fairand made of fire. But she loved another more than I, and for his sakethrew herself from a rock into the sea. As she fell, the rose we hadmade together fell from her bosom, and was torn to pieces by the sea. Fishermen gathered here and there a petal floating on the waters, --butwhat were they?--and the world has never known how wonderful was thatrose of our love which she took with her into the depths of the sea. "

"You are faithful, Silencieux; you love her still. "

"Yes, I love her still. "

"And with whom did love come next, Silencieux?"

"Oh, I loved many those years, for the loss of a great love sends usvainly from hand to hand of many lesser loves, to ease a little thegreat ache; and at that time the world seemed full of my lovers. I haveforgotten none of them. They pass before me, a fair frieze ofunforgotten faces; but most I loved a Roman poet, because, perhaps, heloved so well the memory of her I had loved, and knew so skilfully tomake bloom again among his own red roses those petals of passionateivory which the fishermen of Lesbos had recovered from the sea. "

"Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux, " said Antony again. 

"Hundreds of years after, I loved in Florence a young poet with a faceof silver. His soul was given to a little red-cheeked girl. She died, and then I took him to my bosom, and loved him on through the years, till his face had grown iron with many sorrows. Now at last, hisbaby-girl by his side, he sits in heaven, with a face of gold. InParis, " she went on, "have I been wonderfully beloved, and in northernlands near the pole--"

"But--England?" said Antony. "Tell me of your English lovers. "

"Best of them I love two: one a laughing giant who loved me threehundred years ago, and the other a little London boy with large eyes ofvelvet, who mid all the gloom of your great city saw and loved my face, as none had seen and loved it since she of Mitylene. I found the giantsitting by a country stream, holding a daffodil in his mighty hands andwhistling to the birds. He took and wore me like a flower. I was to himas a nightingale that sang from his sleeve, for he loved so muchbesides. Yet me he loved best, as those who can read his secret poemsunderstand. But my little London boy loved me only. For him the worldheld nothing but my face, and it was of his great love for me that hedied. "

"But these were all poets, " said Antony. 

"Yes, poets are the greatest of all lovers. Though all who since theworld began have been the makers of beautiful things have loved me, Ilove my poets best. Sweeter than marble or many colours to my eyes isthe sound of a poet singing in my ears--"

"For whom, Silencieux, did you step down into the sad waters of theSeine?"

"It was a young poet of Paris, beloved of many women, a drunkard ofstrange dreams. He too died because he loved me, and when he died therewas none left whose voice seemed sweet after his. So I died with him. Idied with him, " she repeated, "to come to life again with you. Manylips have been pressed to mine, Antony, since the cold sleep of theSeine fell over me, but none were warm and wild like yours. I loved mysleep while the others kissed me, but with the touch of your lips thedreams of life began to stir within me again. O Antony, be great enough, be all mine, that we may fulfil our dream; and perhaps, Antony, I willdie with you--and leave the world in darkness for your sake, anotherhundred years. "

Exalted above the earth with the joy of Silencieux's words, Antonypressed his lips to hers in an ecstasy, and vowed his life and allwithin it inviolably to her. 

CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE KISS FOR SILENCIEUX

One hot August afternoon Antony took Silencieux with him to abramble-covered corner of the dark moor which bounded his little wood. Aruined bank soaked with sunshine, a haunt of lizards, a catacomb oflittle lives that creep and run and whisper, made their seat. 

Silencieux's face, out there under the open sky and in the full blaze ofthe sun, at once lost and gained in reality; gained by force of acontrast which accentuated while it limited her, lost by opposition tothe great faces of earth and sky. Her life, so concentrated, soself-absorbed, seemed more of an essence, potently distilled, comparedwith this abounding ichor of existence, that audibly sang in brimmingcirculation through the veins of this carelessly immortal earth. 

For some moments of self-conscious thought she shrank into a symbol, --asymbol of but one of the elements of the mighty world. Yet to thiselement did not all the others, more brutal in force, more extended inspace, conspire?

So in some hours will the most mortal maid of warmest flesh and bloodbecome an abstraction to her lover--sometimes shrink to the significanceof one more flower, and sometimes expand to the significance of amicrocosm, a firmament in mystical miniature. 

Thus in like manner for Antony did Silencieux alternate between realityand dream that afternoon, though all the time he knew that, however nowand again the daylight seemed to create an illusion of her remoteness, she was still his, and he of all men her chosen lover. 

Suddenly as they sat there together, silent and immovable, Antonycaught the peer of two bright little eyes fixed on the white face ofSilencieux. A tiny wedge-shaped head, with dashes of white across thebrows, reared itself out of a crevice in the bank. A forked tongue cameand went like black lightning through its eager little lips, and ahandsomely marked adder began to glide, like molten metal, along thebank to Silencieux. The brilliant whiteness of the image had fascinatedthe little creature. Antony kept very still. Darting its head from sideto side, venomously alert against the smallest sound, the adder reachedSilencieux. Then to Antony's delight it coiled itself round the whitethroat, still restlessly moving its head wonderingly beneath the chin. With a grace to which all movement from the beginning of time seemed tohave led up, it clasped Silencieux's neck and softly reared its lips tohers. Its black tongue darted to and fro along that strange smile. 

"He has kissed her!" Antony exclaimed, and in an instant the adder wasnothing more than a terrified rustle in the brushwood. 

He took Silencieux into his hands. There was poison on her lips. Foranother moment his fancy made him self-conscious, and turned Silencieuxagain into a symbol, --though it was but for a moment. 

"There is always poison on the lips of Art, " he said to himself. 

CHAPTER IX

THE WONDERFUL WEEK. 

As Antony and Silencieux became more and more to each other, poorBeatrice, though she had been the first occasion of their love, andlittle as she now demanded, seldom as Antony spoke to her, seldom as hesmiled upon her, distant as were the lonely walks she took, infrequentas was her sad footfall in the little wood, --poor Beatrice, thoughindeed, so far from active intrusion upon their loves, and as if only byher breathing with them the heavy air of that green unwholesome valley, was becoming an irksome presence of the imagination. They longed to besomewhere together where Beatrice had never been, where her sad facecould not follow them; and one night Silencieux whispered to Antony:--

"Take me to the sea, Antony--to some lonely sea. "

"To-morrow I will take you, " said Antony, "where the loneliest landmeets the loneliest sea. "

On the morrow evening the High Muses had once more made Antony late fordinner. One hour, and two hours, went by, and then Beatrice, in alarm, took the lantern and courageously braved the blackness of the wood. 

The châlet was in darkness, and the door was locked, but through theuncurtained glass of the window, she was able to irradiate the emptinessof its interior. Antony was not there. 

But she noticed, with a shudder, that the space usually filled by theImage was vacant. Then she understood, and with a hopeless sigh wentdown the wood again. 

Already Antony and Silencieux had found the place where the loneliestland meets the loneliest sea. Side by side they were sitting on amoonlit margin of the world, and Antony was singing low to the murmur ofthe waves:--

 Hopeless of hope, past desire even of thee, There is one place I long for, A desolate place That I sing all my songs for, A desolate place for a desolate face, Where the loneliest land meets the loneliest sea. 

 Green waves and green grasses--and nought else is nigh, But a shadow that beckons; A desolate face, And a shadow that beckons The desolate face to the desolate place Where the loneliest sea meets the loneliest sky. 

 Wide sea and wide heaven, and all else afar, But a spirit is singing, A desolate soul That is joyfully winging-- A desolate soul--to that desolate goal Where the loneliest wave meets the loneliest star. 

"It is not good, " said Silencieux. 

"I know, " answered Antony. 

"Throw it into the sea. "

"It is not worthy of the sea. "

"Burn it. "

"Fire is too august. "

"Throw it to the winds. "

"They are too busy. "

"Bury it. "

"It would make barren a whole meadow. "

"Forget it. "

"I will--And you?"

"I will. "

And Antony and Silencieux laughed softly together by the sea. 

Many days Antony and Silencieux stayed together by the sea. They lovedit together in all its changes, in sun and rain, in wild wind and dreamycalm; at morning when it shone like a spirit, at evening when itflickered like a ghost, at noon when it lay asleep curled up like awoman in the arms of the land. Sometimes at evening they sat in thelittle fishing harbour, watching the incoming boats, till the sky grewsad with rigging and old men's faces. 

Then at last Silencieux said: "I am weary of the sea. Let us go to thetown--to the lights and the sad cries of the human waves. "

So they went to the town and found a room high up, where they sat at thewindow and watched the human lights, and listened to the human music. 

Never had it been so wonderful to be together. 

For a week Antony lived in heaven. Never had Silencieux been so kind, soclose to him. 

"Let us be little children, " he said. "Let us do anything that comesinto our heads. "

So they ran in and out among pleasures together, joined strange dancesand sang strange songs. They clapped their hands to jugglers andacrobats, and animals tortured into talent. And sometimes, as the gaudytheatre resounded about them, they looked so still at each other thatall the rest faded away, and they were left alone with each other's eyesand great thoughts of God. 

"I love you, Silencieux. "

"I love you, Antony. "

"You will never leave me lonely in my dream, Silencieux?"

"Never, Antony. "

Oh, how tender sometimes was Silencieux!

Several nights they had the whim that Silencieux should masquerade inthe wardrobe of her past. 

"To-night, you shall go clothed as when you loved that woman inMitylene, " Antony would say. 

Or: "To-night you shall be a little shepherd-boy, with a leopard-skinacross your shoulder and mountain berries in your hair. "

Or again: "To-night you shall be Pierrot--mourning for his Columbine. "

Ah! how divine was Silencieux in all her disguises!--a divine child. Oh, how tender those nights was Silencieux!

Antony sat and watched her face in awe and wonder. Surely it was thenoblest face that had ever been seen in the world. 

"Is it true that that noble face is mine?" he would ask; "I cannotbelieve it. "

"Kiss it, " said Silencieux gaily, "and see. "

 * * * * *

Then on a sudden, what was this change in Silencieux! So cold, sosilent, so cruel, had she grown. 

"Silencieux, " Antony called to her. "Silencieux, " he pleaded. 

But she never spoke. 

"O Silencieux, speak! I cannot bear it. "

Then her lips moved. "Shall I speak?" she said, with a cruel smile. 

"Yes, " he besought her again. 

"I shall love you no more in this world. The lights are gone out, themagic faded. "

"Silencieux!"

But she spoke no more, and, with those lonely words in his ears, Antonycame out of his dream and heard the rain falling miserably through thewood. 

CHAPTER X

SILENCIEUX WHISPERS

So Antony first knew how cruel could be Silencieux to those who lovedher. Her sudden silences he had grown to understand, even to love. Always they had been broken again by some wonderful word, which he hadknown would come sooner or later. All great natures are full of silence. Silence is the soil of all passion. But now it was not silence that wasbetween them, but terrible speech. As with a knife she had stabbed theirlove right in its heart. Yet Antony knew that his love could never die, but only suffer. 

During these days he half turned to Beatrice. How kind was her simpleearth-warm affection, after the star-cold transcendentalism in which hehad been living! How full of comfort was her unselfish humanity, afterthe pitiless egoism of the divine!

And yet, while it momentarily soothed him, he realised, with a heart sadfor Beatrice as for himself, that it could never satisfy him again. Fordays he left Silencieux alone in the wood, and Beatrice's facebrightened with their renewed companionship; but all the time he seemedto hear Silencieux calling him, and he knew that he would have to goback. 

One night, almost happy again, as he lay by the side of Beatrice, whowas sleeping deeply, he rose stealthily, and looked out into the wood. 

The moonlight fell through it mysteriously, as on that night when he hadstolen up there to meet Silencieux--"at the rising of the moon. " Hecould hesitate no longer. Leaving Beatrice asleep, he was soon makinghis way once more through the moonlit trees. 

The little châlet looked very still and solemn, like a temple ofChaldean mysteries, and an unwonted chill of fear passed through Antonyas he stood in the circle of moonlight outside. His spirit seemed awareof some dread menace to the future in that moment, and a voice wascrying within him to go back. 

But the longing that had brought him so far was too strong for suchundefined warnings. Once more he turned the key in the lock, and lookedon Silencieux once more. 

The moonlight fell over her face like a veil of silver, and on hereyelashes was a glitter of tears. 

Her face was alive again, alive too with a softness of womanhood he hadnever seen before. 

"Forgive me, Antony, " she said. "I loved you all the time. "

What else need Silencieux say!

"But it was so strange, " said Antony after a while, "so strange. Icould have borne the pain, if only I could have understood. "

"Shall I tell you the reason, Antony?"

"Yes. "

"It was because I saw in your eyes a thought of Beatrice. For a momentyour thoughts had forsaken me and gone to pity Beatrice. I saw it inyour eyes. "

"Poor Beatrice!" said Antony. "It is little indeed I give her. Could younot spare her so little, Silencieux?"

"I can spare her nothing. You must be all mine, Antony--your everythought and hope and dream. So long as there is another woman in theworld for you except me, I cannot be yours in the depths of my being, nor you mine. There must always be something withheld. It will never beperfect, until--"

"Until when?"

"Until, Antony, "--and Silencieux lowered her voice to an awfulwhisper, --"until you have made for me the human sacrifice. "

"The human sacrifice!"

"Yes, Antony, --all my lovers have done that for me. They were not reallymine till then. Some have brought me many such offerings. Antony, whenwill you bring me the human sacrifice?"

"O Silencieux!"

Antony's heart chilled with terror at Silencieux's words. It was againstthis that the voices had warned him as he came up the wood. O that hehad never seen Silencieux more, never heard her poisonous voice again!

As one fleeing before the shadow of uncommitted sin that gains upon himat each stride, Antony fled from the place, and sought the moors. Themoon was near its setting, and soon the dawn would throw open theeastern doors of the sky. He walked on and on, waiting, praying for, stifling for the light; and, at last, with a freshening of the air, andfaint sounds of returning consciousness from distant farms, it came. 

High over a lake of ethereal silver welling up out of space, hung themorning star, shining as though its heart would break, bright as a tearthat must slip down the face of heaven and fall amid the grass. 

As Antony looked up at it, his soul escaped from its prison of darkthought, and such an exaltation had come with the quickening light, thatit seemed as though the body, with little more than pure aspiration towing it, might follow the soul's flight to that crystal sphere. 

In that moment, Antony knew that the love in the soul of man is matedonly with the infinite universe. In no marriage less than that shall itfind lasting fulfilment of itself. No single face, however beautiful, nosingle human soul, however vast, can absorb it. Silencieux, Beatrice, Wonder, himself, all faded away, in a trance-like sense of a stupendouspassion, an august possession. He felt that within him which rose upgigantic from the earth, and towered into eyries of space, from whencethat morning star seemed like a dewdrop glittering low down upon theearth. 

It was the god in him that knew itself for one brief space, a moment'sawakening in the sleep of fact. 

Could a god so great, so awakened, be again the slave of one earthlyface?

Yes, the greater the god, the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with theweakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morningstar to Silencieux. 

Her face was bathed in the delicate early sunlight and looked very pureand gentle, and he kissed her. 

Surely those terrible words had been an illusion of the dark hours. Silencieux had never said them. He kissed her again. 

"I love you, Silencieux, " he said. And then she spoke. 

"If you love me, Antony, " she said, "if you love me--"

"O what, Silencieux?" he cried, his heart growing cold once more. 

"Come nearer, Antony. Put your ear to my lips--Antony, if you loveme--the human sacrifice. "

"O God, " he cried, "here in the sunlight--It is true--"

And, a man with the doom of his nature heavy upon him, he once more wentout into the wood. 

CHAPTER XI

WONDER IN THE WOOD

A few days after this, little Wonder, playing about the garden, hadslipped away from her nurse, and, pleased in her little soul at hercleverness, had found her way up to her father's châlet. Antony wassitting at his desk, writing, with his door open. 

"Daddy, " suddenly came a little voice from the bottom of the staircase, "Daddy, where are you?"

Antony rose and went to the door. 

"Come in, little Wonder. Well, it is a clever girl to come all the wayup the wood by herself. "

"Yes, Daddy, " said the self-possessed little girl, as she toddled intothe châlet and looked round wonderingly at the books and pictures. Thenpresently:

"Daddy, what do you do all day in the wood?"

"I make beautiful things. "

"Show me some. "

Antony showed her a page of his beautiful manuscript. 

"Why, those are only words, silly Daddy!"

"But words, little Wonder, are the most beautiful things in the world. Listen--" and he took the child on his knee. "Listen:--

 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. 

The child had inherited a love of beautiful sound, and, though sheunderstood nothing of the meaning, the music charmed her, and shenestled close to her father, with wide eyes. 

"Say some more, Daddy. "

The sobbing cadences of the greatest of Irish songs came to Antony'smind, and he crooned a verse or two at random:

 All day long, in unrest, To and fro, do I move. The very soul within my breast Is wasted for you, love! The heart in my bosom faints To think of you, my queen, My life of life, my saint of saints, My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints, My dark Rosaleen!. .. . 

 Over dews, over sands, Will I fly for your weal: Your holy delicate white hands Shall girdle me with steel. At home in your emerald bowers, From morning's dawn till e'en, You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers, My dark Rosaleen! My fond Rosaleen! You'll think of me thro' daylight hours, My virgin flower, my flower of flowers, My dark Rosaleen!

 I could scale the blue air, I could plough the high hills, Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer To heal your many ills! And one beamy smile from you Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true, My dark Rosaleen! My fond Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew, A second life, a soul anew, My dark Rosaleen!

Wonder, child-like, wearied with the length of the verses, and suddenlythe white face of Silencieux caught her eye. 

"Who is that lady, Daddy?"

"That is Silencieux. "

"What a pretty name! Is she a kind lady, Daddy?"

"Sometimes. "

"She is very beautiful. She is like little mother. But her face is sowhite. She makes me frightened. Hold me, Daddy--" and she crouched inhis arms. 

"You mustn't be frightened of her, Wonder. She loves little girls. Seehow she is smiling at you. She wants to be friends with you. She wantsyou to kiss her, little Wonder. "

"Oh, no! no!" almost screamed the little girl. 

But suddenly a cruel whim to insist came over the father, and, half-coaxingly and half-forcibly, he held her up to the image, strokingits white cheek to reassure her. 

"See, how kind she is, little Wonder! See how she smiles--how she lovesyou. She loves little girls, and she never sees any up here in thelonely wood. It will make her so happy. Kiss her, little Wonder!"

Reluctantly the child obeyed, and with a shudder she said:--

"Oh, how cold her lips are, Daddy!"

"But were they not sweet, little Wonder?"

"No, Daddy, they tasted of dust. "

And as Antony had lifted her up, he had said in his heart: "Silencieux, I bring you my little child. "

CHAPTER XII

AUTUMN IN THE VALLEY

Autumn in the valley was autumn, melancholy and sinister, as you findher only in such low-lying immemorial drifting places of leaves, andoozy sinks of dank water. For the moors autumn is the spring come backin purple, and in golden woods and many another place where the yeardies happily, she smiles like a widow so young and fair that one thinksrather of life than death in her presence. 

But in the valley Autumn was a fearsome hag, a little crazy, two-double, gathering sticks in a scarlet cloak. When she turned her wicked old eyesupon you, the life died within you, and wherever you walked she wasalways somewhere in the bushes muttering evil spells. All the yearround under the green cloud of summer, you might meet Autumn creepingsomewhere in the valley, like foul mists that creep from pool to pool;for here all the year was decay to feed upon and dead leaves for her tosleep on. Always the year round in the valley, if you listened close, you would hear something sighing, something dying. To the happiestwalking there would come strange sinkings of the heart, unaccountablepremonitions of overhanging doom. There the least superstitious wouldstart at the sight of a toad, and come upon three magpies at once notwithout fear. Over all was a breath of imminent disaster, a look ofsorrow from which there was no escape. It was not many yards away from amerry high-road, but once in the shade of its lanes, it seemed as thoughyou had been shut away from the world of living men. Black slopes ofpine and melancholy bars of sunset walled you in, as in some funeralhall of judgment. 

Alas! Beatrice's was not the happiest of hearts, and all day long thisautumn, as the mornings came later and darker and the evenings earlier, always voices in the valley, voices of low-hanging mist and drippingrain, kept saying: "Death is coming! Death is coming!"

Tapped at the windows, ticking and crying in the rooms, was the samemessage; till, in a terror of the walls, she would flee into the widerprison of the woods, and oppressed by them in turn, would escape with abeating heart into the honest daylight of the high-road. So one fliesfrom a haunted house, or comes out of an evil dream. 

Sometimes it seemed as if the white face of Silencieux looked out fromthe woodside, and mocked her with the same cry: "Death is coming! Deathis coming!"

Silencieux! Ah, how happy they had been before the coming ofSilencieux! How frail is our happiness, how suddenly it can die! Onemoment it seems built for eternity, marble-based and glittering withtowers, --the next, where it stood is lonely grass and dew, not a stoneleft. Ah, yes, how happy they had been; and then Antony by a heartlesschance had seen Silencieux, and in an instant their happiness had beenat an end for ever. Only a glance of the eyes and love is born, only aglance of the eyes, and alas! love must die. 

A glance of the eyes and all the old kindness is gone, a glance of theeyes, and from the face you love the look you seek has died out foreverlasting. 

"O Antony! Antony!" moaned Beatrice, as she wandered alone in those dankautumn lanes, "if you would only come back to me for one short day, comeback with the old look on your face, be to me for a little while as youonce were, I think I could gladly die--"

Die! A tattered flower caught her glance, shaking chilly in the dampwind, and once more she heard the whisper, "Death is coming!"

Near where she walked, stood, in the midst of a small meadow overgrownwith nettles, the blackened ruin of a cottage long since destroyed byfire. On the edge of the little sandy lane, perilously near the feet ofthe passer-by, was its forgotten well, the mouth choked with weeds andbriers. 

In her absorption Beatrice had almost walked into it. Now she parted thebushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchralecho. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think oflooking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might dragthe three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come. Andin a little while--a very little while--Antony would forget, orsometimes make himself happy with his unhappiness. 

Ah! but Wonder! No, if Antony needed her no more, Wonder did. She muststay for Wonder's sake. And perhaps, who could say, Antony might yetneed her, might come to her some day and say "Beatrice, " with the oldvoice. To be really necessary to Antony again, if only for one littlehour, --yes! she could wait and suffer for that. 

CHAPTER XIII

THE HUMAN SACRIFICE

The valley was an ill place even for the body, a lair of rheums andagues; and disembodied fevers waited in wells for the sunk pail. For thevalley was very beautiful, beautiful with that green beauty that onlycomes of damp and decay. 

Late one October night, Antony, alone with Silencieux, as was now againhis custom, was surprised to hear footsteps coming hastily up the wood, and even more surprised at the sudden unusual appearance of Beatrice. 

"I am sorry to disturb you, Antony, " she said, noting with a pang howthe lamp had been arranged to throw a vivid light upon Silencieux, "butI want you to come down and look at Wonder. I'm afraid she is ill. "

"Wonder, ill!" exclaimed Antony, rising with a start, "I will come atonce;" and they went together. 

Wonder was lying in her bed, with flushed cheeks and bright yet heavyeyes. 

"Wonder, my little Wonder, " said Antony caressingly, as he bent overher. "Does little Wonder feel ill?"

"Yes, Daddy. I feel so sick, Daddy. "

"Never mind; she will be better to-morrow. " But he had noticed howburning hot were her hands, and how dry were her fresh little lips. 

"I must go for the doctor at once, " he said to his wife, when they wereoutside the room. The father, so long asleep, had sprung awake at thefirst hint of danger to the little child that in his neglectful way heloved deeply all the time; and, in spite of the danger to Wonder, afaint joy stirred in Beatrice's heart to see him thus humanly arousedonce more. 

"Kiss me, Beatrice, " he said, as he set out upon his errand. "Don't beanxious, it will be all right. " It was the first time he had kissed hiswife for many days. 

The doctor's was some three miles away across the moor. It was a brightstarlit night, and Antony, who knew the moor well, had no difficulty inmaking his way at a good pace along the mossy tracks. Presently he gavea little cry of pain and stood still. 

"O God, " he cried, "it cannot be that. Oh, it cannot. "

At that moment for the first time a dreadful thought had crossed hismind. Suddenly a memory of that afternoon when he had bade Wonder kissSilencieux flashed upon him; and once more he heard himself saying:"Silencieux, I bring you my little child. "

But he had never meant it so. It had all been a mad fancy. What wasSilencieux herself but a wilful, selfish dream? He saw it all now. Howcould a lifeless image have power over the life of his child?

And yet again, was Silencieux a lifeless image? And still again, if shewere an image, was it not always to an image that humanity from thebeginning had been sacrificed? Yes; perhaps if Silencieux were only animage there was all the more reason to fear her. 

When he returned he would go to Silencieux, go on his knees and beg forthe life of his child. Silencieux had been cruel, but she could hardlybe so cruel as that. 

He drove back across the moor by the doctor's side. 

"I have always thought you unwise to live in that valley, " said thedoctor. "It's pretty, but like most pretty places, it's unhealthy. Nature can seldom be good and beautiful at the same time. " The doctorwas somewhat of a philosopher. 

"Your little girl needs the hills. In fact you all do. Your wife isn'thalf the woman she was since you took her into the valley. You don'tlook any better for it, either. No, sir, believe me, beauty's all verywell, but it's not good to live with--And, by the way, have you had yourwell looked at lately? That valley is just a beautiful sewer for thedrainage of the hills; a very market-town for all the germs and bacilliof the district. "

And the doctor laughed, as, curiously enough, people always do at jestsabout bacilli. 

But when he looked at Wonder, he took a more serious view of bacilli. 

"You must have your well looked to at once, " he said. "Your little girlis very ill. She must be kept very quiet, and on no account excited. "

Beatrice and Antony took it in turns to watch by Wonder's bed thatnight, and once while Beatrice was watching, Antony found time to stealup the wood with his prayer to Silencieux. 

Never had she looked more mask-like, more lifeless. 

"Silencieux, " he cried, "I wickedly brought you my little child. O giveher back to me again! I cannot bear it. I cannot give her to you, Silencieux. Take me, if you will. I will gladly die for you. But spareher. O give her back to me, Silencieux!"

But the image was impassive and made no sign. 

"Silencieux, " he implored, "speak, for I know you hear me. Are you adevil, Silencieux; a devil I have worshipped all this time? God help me!Have you no pity, --what is her little flower-life to you? Why should yousnatch it out of the sun--"

But Silencieux made no sign. 

Then Antony grew angry in his remorse: "I hate you, Silencieux. Neverwill I look on your face again. You are an evil dream that has stolenfrom me the truth of life. I have broken a true heart that loved me, that would have died for me--for your sake; just to watch your lovelessbeauty, to hear the cold music of your voice. You are like the moon thatturns men mad, a hollow shell of silver drawing all your light from thesun of life, a silver shadow of the golden sun. "

But prayer and reproach were alike in vain. Silencieux remainedunheeding, and Antony returned to watch by Beatrice's side, with a heartthat had now no hope, and a soul weighed down with the sense ofirrevocable sin. There lay the little life he had murdered, delivered upto the Moloch of Art. No sorrow, no agonies, were now of any avail forever. Little Wonder would surely die, and all the old lost opportunitiesof loving her could never return. He had loved the shadow. This was apart of the price. 

Day after day the cruel fever consumed Wonder as fire consumes a flower. Her tiny face seemed too small for the visitation of such suffering asburned and hammered behind the high white brow, and yellowed and drewtight the skin upon the cheeks. She had so recently known the strangepain of being born. Already, for so little of life, she was to endurethe pain of death. 

Day after day, hour after hour, Antony hung over her bed, with adevotion and an unconsciousness of fatigue that made Beatrice look athim with astonishment, and sometimes even for a moment forget Wonder inthe joy with which she saw him transfigured by simple human love. Now, when it was too late, he had become a father indeed. And it brought someease to his fiercely tortured heart to notice that it was hisministrations that the dying child seemed to welcome most. For the mostpart she lay in a semi-conscious state, heeding nothing, and onlymoaning now and again, a sad little moan, like an injured bird. Sheseemed to say she was so little a thing to suffer so. Once, however, when Antony had just placed some fresh ice around her head, she openedher eyes and said, "Dear little Daddy, " and the light on Antony'sface--poor victim of perverse instincts that too often drew his reallyfine nature awry--was sanctifying to see. 

As terrible was the look of torture that came over his face, one nightnear the end, when Wonder in a sudden nightmare of delirium had seizedhis hand and cried:--

"O Daddy, the white lady! See her there at the end of the bed. She issmiling, Daddy--" Then lower, "You will not make me kiss her any more, will you, Daddy?"--

Beatrice had gone to snatch an hour or two's sleep, so she never heardthis, and it was no mere cowardly consolation for Antony to thinkafterwards that no one but he and his little child had known of thatfatal afternoon in the wood. The dead understand all, --yes, even thedead we have murdered. But the living can never be told a secret such asthat which Antony and his little daughter, whose soul was really grownup, though she spoke still in baby language, shared immortally betweenthem. 

When Beatrice returned to the room Wonder was sleeping peacefully again, but at the chill hour when watchers blow out the night-lights, and adreary greyness comes like a fog through the curtains, Antony andBeatrice fell into each other's arms in anguish, for Wonder was dead. 

CHAPTER XIV

A SONG OF THE LITTLE DEAD

They carried little Wonder to a green churchyard, a place of kind oldtrees and tender country bells. There were few birds to welcome her inthe grim November morning, but the grasses stole close and whisperedthat very soon the thrush and the nightingale would be coming, that theviolets were already on their way, and that when May was there sheshould lie all day in a bed of perfume. 

For very dear to Nature's heart are the Little Dead. The great dead lieimprisoned in escutcheoned vaults, but for the little dead Naturespreads out soft small graves, all snowdrops and dewdrops, whereday-long they can feel the earth rocking them as in a cradle, and atnight hear the hushed singing of the stars. 

Yes, Earth loves nothing so much as her little graves. There the tinybodies, like unexhausted censers, pour out all the stored sweetness theyhad no time to use above the ground, turning the earth they lie in toprecious spices. There the roots of the old yew trees feel abouttenderly for the little unguided hands, and sometimes at nightfall therain bends over them weeping like an inconsolable mother. 

It is on the little graves that the sun first rises at morn, and it isthere at evening that the moon lays softly her first silver flowers. 

There the wren will sometimes bring her sky-blue eggs for a gift, andthe summer wind come sowing seeds of magic to take the fancy of thelittle one beneath. Sometimes it shakes the hyacinths like a rattle ofsilver, and spreads the turf above with a litter of coloured toys. 

Here the butterflies are born with the first warm breath of the spring. All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in thecarving of little names, and with the first spring day they standdelicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves. There arethe honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timidearth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small. Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad bladesof the grasses, and in the cellars at their roots works many a humblelittle slave of the mighty elements. 

Yes, the emperors and the ants of Nature's vast economy alike love to bekind to the little graves. 

CHAPTER XV

SILENCIEUX ALONE IN THE WOOD. 

Beatrice's grief for Wonder was such as only a mother can know. She hadbut one consolation, --the kind sad eyes of Antony. She had lost Wonder, but Antony had come back again. Wonder was not so dead as Antony hadseemed a month ago. 

When they had left Wonder and were back in the house which was now twicedesolate, Antony took Beatrice's hands very tenderly and said:--

"I have been very wrong all these months. For a shadow I have missed thelovely reality of a little child--and for a shadow, my own faithfulwife, I have all this time done you cruel wrong. But my eyes are opennow, I have come out of the evil dream that bound me--and never shall Ienter it again. Let us go from here. Let us leave this valley and nevercome back to it any more. "

So it was arranged that they should winter far away, returning only tothe valley for a few short days in the spring, and then leave it forever. They had no heart now for more than just to fly from that hauntedplace, and before night fell in the valley they were already far away. 

In vain Silencieux listened for the sound of her lover's step in thewood, for he had vowed that he would never look upon her face again. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST TALK ON THE HILLS

Antony took Beatrice to the high hills where all the year long the sunand the snow shine together. He was afraid of the sea, for the sea wasSilencieux's for ever. In its depths lay a magic harp which filled allits waves with music--music lovely and accursed, the voice ofSilencieux. That he must never hear again. He would pile the hillsagainst his ears. Inland and upland, he and Beatrice should go, evercloser to the kind heart of the land, ever nearer to the forgetfulsilences of the sky, till huge walls of space were between them and thatharp of the sea. Nor in the whisper of leaves nor in the gloom offorests should the thought of Silencieux beset them. The earth thatheld least of her--to that earth they would go; the earth that rosenearest to heaven. 

Beauty indeed should be theirs--the Beauty of Nature and Love; no morethe vampire's beauty of Art. 

It was strange to each how their souls lightened as the valleys of theworld folded away behind them, and the simple slopes mounted in theirpath. In that pure unladen air which so exhilarated their very bodies, there seemed some mysterious property of exhilaration for the soul also. One might have dreamed that just to breathe on those heights all one'sdays would be to grow holy by the more cleansing power of the air. Withsuch bright currents ever running through the brain, surely one'sthoughts would circle there white as stones at the bottom of a spring. 

"O Antony, " said Beatrice, "why were we so long in finding the hills?"

"We found them once before, Beatrice--do you remember?"

"Yes! You have not forgotten?" said Beatrice, with the ray of a losthappiness in her eyes--lost, and yet could it be dawning again? Therewas a morning star in Antony's face. 

"And then, " said Antony, "we went into the valley--the Valley of Beautyand Death. "

Beatrice pressed his hand and looked all her love at him for comfort. Heknew how precious was such a forgiveness, the forgiveness of a motherheart broken for the child, which he, directly or indirectly, hadsacrificed, --directly as he and Wonder alone knew, indirectly by takingthem with him into the Valley of Beauty. 

"Ah, Beatrice, your love is almost greater than I can bear. I am notworthy of it. I never shall be worthy. There is something in the love ofa woman like you to which the best man is unequal. We can love--andgreatly--but it is not the same. "

"We went into the valley, " he cried, "and I lost you your littleWonder--"

"_Our_ little Wonder, " gently corrected Beatrice. "We found hertogether, and we lost her together. Perhaps some day we shall find hertogether again--"

"And do you know, Antony, " Beatrice continued, "I sometimes wonder ifher little soul was not sent and so taken away all as part of a missionto us, which in its turn is a part of the working out of her owndestiny. For life is very mysterious, Antony--"

"Alas! I had forgotten life, " answered Antony with a sigh. 

"Yes, dear, " Beatrice went on, pursuing her thought. "I have dared tohope that perhaps Wonder, as she was the symbol of our coming together, was taken away just at this time because we were being drawn apart. Perhaps it was to save our love that little Wonder died--"

Antony looked at Beatrice; half as one looks at a child, and half as onemight look at an angel. 

"Beatrice, " he said tenderly, "you believe in God. "

"All women believe in God, " answered Beatrice. 

"Yes, " said Antony musingly, and with no thought of irony, "it is thatwhich makes you women. "

CHAPTER XVII

ANTONY ALONE ON THE HILLS

But although Beatrice might forgive Antony, from himself came noforgiveness. He hid his remorse from her, sparing the mother-wound inher heart--but always when he was walking alone he kept saying tohimself: "I have lost our little Wonder. I killed our little Wonder. "

One day he climbed up the highest hill within reach, and there leanedinto the enormous silence, that he might cry it aloud for God to hear--

God!--poor little Beatrice, what God was there to hear! To look atBeatrice one might indeed believe in God--and yet was it not Beatricewho had made God in her own image? Was not God created of all pureoverflows of the human soul, the kind light of human eyes that not allthe suffering of the world can exhaust, the idealism of the human spiritthat not all the infamies of natural law can dismay?

Nevertheless, Antony confessed himself to God upon the hills, not indeedas one seeking pardon, but punishment. 

Yet Heaven's benign untroubled blue carried no cloud upon its face, because one breaking human heart had thus breathed into it its unholysecret. Around that whole enormous circle such cries and suchconfessions were being poured like noxious vapours, from a thousandcities; but that incorruptible ether remained unsullied as on the firstmorning, the black smoke of it all lost in the optimism of God. 

On some days he would live over again the scene with Wonder in the woodwith unbearable vividness. 

"Why, those are only words, silly Daddy!"--How many times a day did henot hear that quaint little voice making, with a child's profundity, that tremendous criticism upon literature. 

He had silenced her with the music of words, as he had silenced his ownheart and soul with the same music, but they were still only words nonethe less. Ah! if she were only here to-day, he would bring her somethingmore beautiful than words--or toadstools. 

He shuddered as he thought of the loathsome form his decaying fancy hadtaken, that morning by the Three Black Ponds. He had filled the smalloutstretched hands with Nature's filth and poison. She had asked forflowers, he had brought her toadstools. Oh, the shame, the crime, theanguish!

But worst of all was to hear himself saying in the silence of his soul, over and over again without any power to still it, as one is forcedsometimes to hear the beating of one's heart: "Silencieux, I bring youmy little child. "

There were times he heard this so plainly when he was with Beatrice thathe had to leave her and walk for hours alone. Only unseen among thehills dare he give vent to the mad despair with which that memory torehim. 

Yes, for words--"only words"--he had sacrificed that wonderful livingthing, a child. For words he had missed that magical intercourse, theintercourse with the mind of a child. How often had she come to him fora story, and he had been dull and preoccupied--with words; how oftenasked him to take her a walk up the lane, but he had been too busy--withwords!

O God, if only she might come and ask again. Now when she was so faraway his fancy teemed with stories. Every roadside flower had itsfairy-tale which cried, "Tell me to little Wonder"--and once he triedto make believe to himself that Wonder was holding his hand, and lookingup into his face with her big grave eyes, as he told some child'snonsense to the eternal hills. He broke off--half in anger with himself. Was he changing one illusion for another?

"Fool, no one hears you, " and he threw himself face down in the grassand sobbed. 

But a gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder and Beatrice's voicesaid, --

"I heard you, Antony--and loved you for it. "

So Antony had found the heart of a father when no longer he had a child. 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SECOND TALK ON THE HILLS

"But to think, " said Antony presently, in answer to Beatrice's soothinghand, "to think that I might have lived with a child--and I choseinstead to live with words. In all the mysterious ways of man, is thereanything quite so mysterious as that? Poor dream-led fool, poor lover ofcoloured shadows!

"And yet, how proud I was of the madness! How I loved to say that wordswere more beautiful than the things for which they stood, and that thenames of the world's beautiful women, Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere, weremore beautiful than Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere themselves; that thenames of the stars were lovelier than any star--who has ever found thePleiades so beautiful as their name, or any king so great as the soundof Orion?--and what, anywhere in the Universe, is lovely enough to bearArcturus for its name?--Ah! you know how I used to talk--poor fool, poorlover of coloured shadows!"

"Yes, dear, " said Beatrice soothingly, "but that is passed now, and youmust not dwell too persistently in the sorrow of it, or in your grieffor little Wonder. That too is to dwell with shadows, and to dwell withshadows either of grief or joy is dangerous for the soul. "

"I know. But fear not, Beatrice. Perhaps there was the danger of mypassing from one cloudland to another--for I never knew how I loved ourWonder till now, and I longed, if only by imagination, to follow herwhere she has gone, and share with her the life together we have losthere--"

"But that can never be, " said Beatrice; "you must accept it, Antony. Weshall only meet her again by doing that. The sooner we can say from ourhearts 'She is lost here, ' the nearer is she to being found in anotherworld. Yes, Antony dear, even Wonder's little shadow must be leftbehind, if we are to mount together the hills of life. "

"My wonderful Beatrice! Yes, the hills of life. No more its woods, butits hills, bathed in a vast and open sunshine. Look around us--how noblysimple is every line and shape! Far below the horizon nature iselaborate, full of fancies, --mazy watercourses, delicate dingles, fantastically gloomy ravines, misshapen woods, gibbering with diablerie;but here how simple, how great, how good she is! There is not a shapesubtler than a common bowl, and the colours are alphabetical--and yet, by what taking of thought could she have achieved an effect so grand, at once so beautiful and so holy?"

"Yes, one might call it the good beauty, " said Beatrice. 

"Yes, " continued Antony, perhaps somewhat ominously interested in thesubject, "that is a great mystery--the seeming moral meaning of theforms of things. Some shapes, however beautiful, suggest evil; others, however ugly, suggest good. As we look at a snake, or a spider, we knowthat evil is shaped like that; and not only animate things butinanimate. Some aspects of nature are essentially evil. There arelandscapes that injure the soul to look at, there are sunsets that areunholy, there are trees breathing spiritual pestilence as surely as somemen breathe it--"

"Do you remember, " continued Antony with a smile, which died as herealised he was committed to an allusion best forgotten, "that oldtwisted tree that stood on the moor near our wood? I often wonder whatmysterious sin he had committed--"

"Yes, " laughed Beatrice, "he looked a terribly depraved old tree, I mustadmit--but don't you think that when we have arrived at the discussionof the mysterious sins of trees it is time to start home?"

"Yes, indeed, " said Antony gaily, "let us change the subject to thevices of flowers. "

From which conversation it will be seen that Antony's mind was stillrevolving with unconscious attraction around the mystery of Art. Was itsome far-travelled sea-wind bringing faint strains from that sunkenharp, strains too subtle for the ear, and even unrecognised by the mind?

CHAPTER XIX

LAST TALK ON THE HILLS

Beatrice's prayer had been answered. Antony had come back to her. Shewas necessary to him once more. The old look was in his eyes, the oldsound in his voice. One day as they were out together she was soconscious of this happiness returned that she could not forbear speakingof it--with an inner feeling that it was better to be happy in silence. 

What is that instinct in us which tells us that we risk our happiness inspeaking of it? Happiness is such a frightened thing that it flies atthe sound of its own name. And yet of what shall we speak if not ourhappiness? Of our sorrows we can keep silence, but our joys we long toutter. 

So Beatrice spoke of her great happiness to Antony, and told him too ofher old great unhappiness and her longing for death. 

"What a strange and terrible dream it has been--but thank God, we areout in the daylight at last, " said Antony. "O my little Beatrice, tothink that I could have forsaken you like that! Surely if you had comeand taken me by the hands and looked deep into my eyes, and called meout of the dream, I must have awakened, for, cruel as it was, the dreamwas but part of a greater dream, the dream of my love for you--"

"But I understand it all now, " he continued, "see it all. Do youremember saying that perhaps I had never loved anything but images allmy life? It was quite true. Since I can remember, when I thought I lovedsomething I was sure to find sooner or later that I loved less theobject itself than what I could say about it, and when I had saidsomething beautiful, something I could remember and say over and over tomyself, I cared little if the object were removed. The spiritual essenceof it seemed to have passed over into my words, and I loved thereincarnation best. Only at last have I awakened to realities, and theshadows flee away. The worshipper of the Image is dead within me. Butalas! that little Wonder had to die first--"

"I used to tell myself, " he went on, "that human life, howeverexquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering itspetals upon the ground. For so brief a space the rose stood perfect, then fell in a ruin of perfume. Wonderful moments had human life, butwithout art were they not like pearls falling into a gulf? So I said:there is nothing real but art. The material of art passes--human love, human beauty--but art remains. It is the image, not the reality, thatis everlasting. I will live in the image. "

"But I know now, " he once more resumed, "that there is a higherimmortality than art's, --the immortality of love. The immortality of artindeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which amoment's thought dispels. Art, who need be told, is as dependent for itssurvival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--andthough the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a millionyears, they must burn at last, burn with all the other accumulatedshadows of time. What we call immortality in art is but the shadow ofthe soul's immortality; but the immortality of love is that of the soulitself--"

"O Antony, " interrupted Beatrice, "you really believe that now? You willnever doubt it again?"

"We never doubt what we have really seen, and I had never seen before, "answered Antony, taking her hand and looking deep into her eyes, "neverseen it as I see it now. "

"And you will never doubt it again?"

"Never. "

"Whatever that voice should say to you?"

"I shall never hear that voice again. "

"O Antony, is it really true? You have come back to me. I can hardlybelieve it. "

"Listen, Beatrice; when we return to the Valley, return only to leave itfor ever, I will take the Image and smash it in a hundred pieces--for Ihate it now as much as I once loved it. Fear not; it will never troubleour peace again. "

The mention of the valley was a momentary cloud on Beatrice's happiness, but as she looked into Antony's resolute love-lit face, it melted away. 

CHAPTER XX

ANTONY'S JUDGMENT UPON SILENCIEUX

So the weeks and months went by for those two upon the hills, and thesoul of Antony grew stronger day by day, and his love with it--and theface of Beatrice was like a bird singing. At last the spring came, andthe snow was no more needed to keep warm the flowers. With the flowerscame the snowdrop-soul of Wonder, and the thoughts of mother and fatherturned to the place of kind old trees and tender country bells, where inthe unflowering November they had laid her. These dark months the chemicearth had been busy with the little body they loved, and by this timeWonder would be many violets. 

"Let us go to Wonder, " they said; "she is awake now. "

So they went to Wonder, and found her surrounded, in her earth cradle, by a great singing of birds, and blossoms and green leaves innumerable. It was more like a palace than a graveyard, and they went away happy fortheir little one. 

There remained now to take leave of the valley, which indeed looked itsloveliest, as though to allure them to remain. Some days they must stayto make the necessary preparations for their departure. Among these, inAntony's mind, the first and most necessary was that destruction ofSilencieux which he had promised himself and his wife upon the hills. 

The first afternoon Beatrice noted him take a great hammer, and set outup the wood. She gave him a look of love and trust as he went--thoughthere was a secret tremor in her heart, for she knew, perhaps betterthan he, how strong was the power of Silencieux. 

But in Antony's heart was no misgiving, or backsliding. In those monthson the hills he had realised human love, in the love of a true andtender and fairy-like woman, and he knew that no illusions, howeverspecious, were worth that reality--a reality with all the magic of anillusion. He gripped the hammer in his hand joyfully, eager to smitefeatureless the face which had so misled him, brought such tragic sorrowto those he had loved. 

Still, for all his unshaken purpose, it was strange to see again theface that had meant so much to him, around which his thoughts hadcircled consciously or unconsciously all these absent weeks. 

Seldom has a face seen again after long separation seemed sodisenchanted as Silencieux's. Was this she whom he had worshipped, shewho had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she withwhom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strangedances in the town, she who had whispered low that awful command, she towhom he had sacrificed his little child?

She was just a dusty, neglected cast--nothing more. 

Wonder's voice came back to him: "No, Daddy, they tasted of dust"--andat that thought he gripped the hammer ready to strike. 

And yet, even thus, she was a beautiful work of man's hands, and Antony, hating to destroy beauty, still forbore to strike--just as he would haveshrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase. Then, too, theresemblance to Beatrice took him again. Crudely to smash features solike hers seemed a sort of mimic murder. So he still hesitated. Wasthere no other way? Then the thought came to him: "Bury her. " It pleasedhim. Yes, he would bury her. 

So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked fromhis door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be. A whitebeamat a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombreboles of the pines. Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth--bracken andwhortleberry and occasional bushes--for their spring illuminations, andthe whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a lamp in the dark. 

"I will bury her beneath the whitebeam, " said Antony, and he carried herthither. 

Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, andtaking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and coveredher up from sight. Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faintmusic seemed to arise from the ground, forming into the word "Resurgam"as it died away?

"It is done, " said Antony to Beatrice. "But I could not break her, shelooked so like you; so I buried her in the wood. "

Beatrice kissed him gratefully. But her heart would have been moresatisfied had Silencieux been broken. 

CHAPTER XXI

"RESURGAM!"

"Resurgam!"

Had his senses deceived him? They must have deceived him. And yet thatmusic at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as thoughone should tread upon a harp in the grass. For the next day or twoAntony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wailthrough the wood, he seemed to hear the word "Resurgam. "

Was Silencieux a living spirit, after all, --no mere illusion, but one ofthose beautiful demons of evil that do possess the souls of men?

He went and stood by Silencieux's grave. It was just as he had left it. Only an early yellow butterfly stood fanning itself on the freshlyturned earth. 

Was it the soul of Silencieux?

Cursing himself for a madman, he turned away, but had not gone manyyards, when once more--there was that sudden strain of music and theword "Resurgam" somewhere on the wind. 

This time he knew he was not mistaken, but to believe it true--O God, hemust not believe it true. Reality or fancy, it was an evil thing whichhe had cast out of his life--and he closed his ears and fled. 

Yet, though he loyally strove to quench that music in the sound ofBeatrice's voice, deep in his heart he knew that the night would comewhen he would take his lantern and spade, wearily, as one who at lengthafter hopeless striving obeys once more some imperious weakness--andlook on the face of Silencieux again. 

Too surely that night came, and, as in a dream, Antony found himself inthe dark spring night hastening with lantern and spade to Silencieux'sgrave. It was only just to look on her face again, to see if she reallylived like a vampire in the earth; and were she to be alive, he vowed tokill her where she lay--for into his life again he knew she must notcome. 

As he neared the whitebeam, a gust of wind blew out his lantern, and hestood in the profound darkness of the trees. While he attempted torelight it, he thought he saw a faint light at the foot of thewhitebeam, as of a radiance welling out of the earth; but he dismissedit as fancy. 

Then, having relit the lantern, he set the spade into the ground, andspeedily removed the soil from the white face below. As he uncovered it, the wind again extinguished the lantern, and there, to his amazement andterror, was the face of Silencieux shining radiantly in the darkness. The hole in which she lay brimmed over with light, as a spring wellsout of the hillside. Her face was almost transparent with brightness, and presently she spoke low, with a voice sweeter than Antony had everheard before. It was the voice of that magic harp at the bottom of thesea, it was the voice that had told him of her lovers, the voice ofhidden music that had cried "Resurgam" through the wood. 

"Antony, " she said, "sing me songs of little Wonder. "

And, forgetting all but the magic of her voice, the ecstasy of beinghers again, Antony carried her with him to the châlet, and setting herin her accustomed place, gazed at her with his whole soul. 

"Sing me songs of little Wonder, " she repeated. 

"You bid me sing of little Wonder!" cried Antony, half in terror of thisbeautiful evil face that drew him irresistibly as the moon, "you, whotook her from me!"

"Who but I should bid you sing of Wonder?" answered Silencieux. "Iloved her. That was why I took her from you, that by your grief sheshould live for ever. There is no one but I who can give you back yourlittle Wonder--no one but I who can give you back anything you havelost. If you love me faithfully, Antony--there is nothing you can losebut in me you will find it again. "

Antony bowed his head, his heart breaking for Beatrice--but who is notpowerless against his own soul?

"Listen, " said Silencieux again. "Once on a time there was a beautifulgirl who died, and from her grave grew a wonderful flower, which all theworld came to see. 'Yet it seems a pity, ' said one, 'that so beautiful agirl should have died. ' 'Ah, ' said a poet standing by, 'there was noother way of making the flower!'"

And again, as Antony still kept silence in his agony, Silencieux said, "Listen. "

"Listen, Antony. You have hidden yourself away from me, you have putseas and lands between us, you have denied me with bitter curses, youhave vowed to thrust me from your life, you have given your allegianceto the warm and pretty humanity of a day, and reviled the august coldmarble of immortality. But it is all in vain. In your heart of heartsyou love no human thing, you love not even yourself, you love only theeternal spirit of beauty in all things, you love only me. Me you maysacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pityfor human love; but, should this be, your life will be in secret broken, purposeless, and haunted, and to me at last you will come, at theend--at the end and too late. This is your own heart's voice; you knowif it be true. "

"It is true, " moaned Antony. 

"Many men and many loves are there in this world, " continuedSilencieux, "and each knows the way of his own love, nor shall anythingturn him from it in the end. Here he may go and thither he may turn, butin the end there is only one way of joy for each, and in that way musthe go or perish. Many faces are fair upon the earth, but for each man isa face fairest of all, for which, unless he win it, each must godesolate forever--"

"Face of Eternal Beauty, " said Antony, "there is but one face for me forever. It is yours. "

 * * * * *

On the morrow Beatrice saw once more that light in Antony's face whichmade her afraid. He had brought with him some sheets of paper on whichwere written the songs of little Wonder Silencieux had bidden him sing. They were songs of grief so poignant and beautiful one grew happy inlistening to them, and Antony forgot all in the joy of having madethem. He read them to Beatrice in an ecstasy. Her face grew sadder andsadder as he read. When he had finished she said:--

"Antony!--Silencieux has risen again. "

"O Beatrice, Beatrice--I would do anything in the world for you--but Icannot live without her. "

CHAPTER XXII

THE STRANGENESS OF ANTONY

From this moment Silencieux took possession of Antony as she had nevertaken it before. Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into hisfatal dream. Beatrice forgot her own bitter sorrow in her fear for him, so wrought was he with the fires that consumed him. Some days she almostfeared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his oldirritation at her presence had returned. 

As the summer days came on, she would see him disappear through thegreen door of the wood at morning and return by it at evening; but allthe day each had been alone, Beatrice alone with a solitude in which wasnow no longer any Wonder. The summer beauty gave her courage, but sheknew that the end could not be very far away. 

One day there had been that in Antony's manner which had more thanusually alarmed her, and when night fell and he had not returned, shewent up the wood in search of him, her heart full of forebodings. As sheneared the châlet she seemed to hear voices. No! there was only onevoice. Antony was talking to some one. Careful to make no noise, shestole up to the window and looked in. The sight that met her eyes filledher with a great dread. "O God, he is going mad, " she cried to herself. 

Antony was sitting in a big chair drawn up to the fire. Opposite to him, lying back in her cushions, was the Image draped in a large black velvetcloak. A table stood between them, and on it stood two glasses, and adecanter nearly empty of wine, Silencieux's glass stood untasted, butAntony had evidently been drinking deeply, for his cheeks were flushedand his eyes wild. 

He was speaking in angry, passionate, despairing tones. One of herstrange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back inher pillows stonily unresponsive. 

"For God's sake speak to me, " Antony cried. "I love you with my wholeheart. I have sacrificed all I love for your sake. I would die for youthis instant--yes! a hundred thousand deaths. But you will not answer meone little word--"

But there was no answer. 

"Silencieux! Have you ceased to love me? Is the dream once more at anend, the magic faded? Oh, speak--tell me--anything--only speak!" Butstill Silencieux neither spoke nor smiled. 

"Listen, Silencieux, " at last cried Antony, beside himself, "unless youanswer me, I will die this night, and my blood shall be upon your cruelaltar for ever. "

As he spoke he snatched a dagger from among some bibelots on his mantel, and drew it from its sheath. 

"You are proud of your martyrs, " he laughed; "see, I will bleed to deathfor your sake. In God's name speak. "

But Silencieux spoke nothing at all. 

Then Beatrice, watching in terror, seeing by his face that he wouldreally kill himself, ran round to the door and broke in, crying, "O mypoor Antony!" but already he had plunged the dagger amid the veins ofhis left wrist, and was watching the blood gush out with a strangedelight. 

As Beatrice burst in, he looked up at her, and mistook her forSilencieux. 

"Ah!" he said, "you speak at last. You love me now, when it is toolate--when I am dying. "

As he said this his face grew white and he fainted away. 

For many days Antony lay unconscious, racked by terrible delirium. Thedoctor called it brain fever. It was not the common form, he said, but amore dangerous form, to which only imaginative men were subject. It wasa form of madness all the more malignant because the sufferer, andparticularly his friends, might go for years without suspecting it. Thedoctor gave the disease no name. 

During his illness Antony spoke to Beatrice all the time as Silencieux, but one day, when he was nearly well again, he suddenly turned upon herin enraged disappointment, with a curious harshness he had never shownbefore, as though the gentleness of his soul had died during hisillness, and exclaimed:--"Why, you are not Silencieux, after all!"

"I am Beatrice, " said his wife gently; "Beatrice, who loves you with herwhole heart. "

"But I love Silencieux--"

Beatrice hid her face and sobbed. 

"Where is Silencieux? Bring me Silencieux. I see! You have taken heraway while I was ill--I will go and seek her myself, " and he attemptedto rise. 

"You are too weak. You must not get up, Antony. I will bring youSilencieux. "

And so, till he was well enough to leave his bed, Silencieux hung facingAntony on his bedroom wall, and on his first walk out into the air, hetook her with him and set her once more in her old shrine in the wood. 

Now, by this time, the heart of Beatrice was broken. 

CHAPTER XXIII

BEATRICE FULFILS HER DESTINY

The heart of Beatrice was broken, and there was now no use or place forher in the world. Wonder was gone, and Antony was even further away. Sheknew now that he would never come back to her. Never again could returneven the illusion of those happy weeks on the hills. Antony would behers no more for ever. 

There but remained for her to fulfil her destiny, the destiny she hadvaguely known ever since Antony had brought home the Image, and shownher how the Seine water had moulded the hair and made wet the eyelashes. 

For some weeks now Beatrice had been living on the border of anotherworld. She had finally abandoned all her hopes of earthly joy--and toAntony she was no longer any help or happiness. He had needed her againfor a few brief weeks, but now he needed her no more. His every looktold her how he wished her out of his life. And she had no one else inthe world. 

But in another world she had her little Wonder. Lately she had begun tomeet her in the lanes. In the day she wore garlands of flowers round herhead, and in the night a great light. She would go to meet her at night, that the light might lead her steps. 

So one night while Antony banqueted strangely with Silencieux, she drewher cloak around her and stole up the wood, to look a last good-bye athim as he sat laughing with his shadows. 

"Good-bye, Antony, good-bye, " she cried. "I had but human love to giveyou. I surrender you to the love of the divine. "

Then noting how full of blossom were the lanes, and how sweet was thenight air, and smitten through all her senses with the song and perfumeof the world she was about to leave, she found her way, with a strangegladness of release, to the Three Black Ponds. 

It was moonlight, and the dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all alongthe leafy galleries that overhung the pools. The pools themselves shonewith a startling silver--so hushed, so dreamy was all that surroundedthem that there seemed something of an unnatural wakefulness, a daylightobservation, in their brilliant surfaces, --and on them, as last year, the lilies floated like the crowns of sunken queens. But the third poollay more in shadow, and by that, as it seemed to Beatrice, a light wasshining. 

Yes, a light was shining and a voice was calling. "Mother, " it called, "little Mother. I am waiting for you. Here, little Mother. Here by thewater-lilies we could not gather. "

Beatrice, following the voice, stepped along the causeway and sank amongthe lilies; and as she sank she seemed to see Antony bending over thepond, saying: "How beautiful she looks, how beautiful, lying there amongthe lilies!"

 * * * * *

On the morrow, when they had drawn Beatrice from the pond, with liliesin her hair, Antony bent over her and said:--

"It is very sad--Poor little Beatrice--but how beautiful! It must bewonderful to die like that. "

And then again he said: "She is strangely like Silencieux. "

Then he walked up the wood, in a great serenity of mind. He had lostWonder, but she lived again in his songs. He had lost Beatrice, but hehad her image--did she not live for ever in Silencieux?

So he went up the wood, whistling softly to himself--but lo! when heopened his châlet door, there was a strange light in the room. The eyesof Silencieux were wide open, and from her lips hung a dark moth withthe face of death between his wings. 

THE END