Worshipper of the Image — Chapters VIII-XIII

A STRANGE KISS FOR SILENCIEUX

One hot August afternoon Antony took Silencieux with him to a bramble-covered corner of the dark moor which bounded his little wood.

A

ruined bank soaked with sunshine, a haunt of lizards, a catacomb of little lives that creep and run and whisper, made their seat.

Silencieux's face, out there under the open sky and in the full blaze of the sun, at once lost and gained in reality; gained by force of a contrast which accentuated while it limited her, lost by opposition to the great faces of earth and sky.

Her life, so concentrated, so self-absorbed, seemed more of an essence, potently distilled, compared with this abounding ichor of existence, that audibly sang in brimming circulation through the veins of this carelessly immortal earth.

For some moments of self-conscious thought she shrank into a symbol,--a symbol of but one of the elements of the mighty world.

Yet to this element did not all the others, more brutal in force, more extended in space, conspire?

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

Thus in like manner for Antony did Silencieux alternate between reality and dream that afternoon, though all the time he knew that, however now and 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, Antony caught the peer of two bright little eyes fixed on the white face of Silencieux.

A tiny wedge-shaped head, with dashes of white across the brows, reared itself out of a crevice in the bank.

A forked tongue came and went like black lightning through its eager little lips, and a handsomely marked adder began to glide, like molten metal, along the bank to Silencieux.

The brilliant whiteness of the image had fascinated the little creature.

Antony kept very still.

Darting its head from side to side, venomously alert against the smallest sound, the adder reached Silencieux.

Then to Antony's delight it coiled itself round the white throat, still restlessly moving its head wonderingly beneath the chin.

With a grace to which all movement from the beginning of time seemed to have led up, it clasped Silencieux's neck and softly reared its lips to hers.

Its black tongue darted to and fro along that strange smile.

"He has kissed her!"

Antony exclaimed, and in an instant the adder was nothing more than a terrified rustle in the brushwood.

He took Silencieux into his hands.

There was poison on her lips.

For another moment his fancy made him self-conscious, and turned Silencieux again 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, poor Beatrice, though she had been the first occasion of their love, and little as she now demanded, seldom as Antony spoke to her, seldom as he smiled upon her, distant as were the lonely walks she took, infrequent as was her sad footfall in the little wood,--poor Beatrice, though indeed, so far from active intrusion upon their loves, and as if only by her breathing with them the heavy air of that green unwholesome valley, was becoming an irksome presence of the imagination.

They longed to be somewhere together where Beatrice had never been, where her sad face could 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 land meets the loneliest sea."

On the morrow evening the High Muses had once more made Antony late for dinner.

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 the uncurtained glass of the window, she was able to irradiate the emptiness of its interior.

Antony was not there.

But she noticed, with a shudder, that the space usually filled by the Image was vacant.

Then she understood, and with a hopeless sigh went down the wood again.

Already Antony and Silencieux had found the place where the loneliest land meets the loneliest sea.

Side by side they were sitting on a moonlit margin of the world, and Antony was singing low to the murmur of the 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 loved it together in all its changes, in sun and rain, in wild wind and dreamy calm; at morning when it shone like a spirit, at evening when it flickered like a ghost, at noon when it lay asleep curled up like a woman in the arms of the land.

Sometimes at evening they sat in the little fishing harbour, watching the incoming boats, till the sky grew sad with rigging and old men's faces.

Then at last Silencieux said: "I am weary of the sea.

Let us go to the town--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 the window 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, so close to him.

"Let us be little children," he said.

"Let us do anything that comes into our heads."

So they ran in and out among pleasures together, joined strange dances and sang strange songs.

They clapped their hands to jugglers and acrobats, and animals tortured into talent.

And sometimes, as the gaudy theatre resounded about them, they looked so still at each other that all the rest faded away, and they were left alone with each other's eyes and 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 in the wardrobe of her past.

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

Or: "To-night you shall be a little shepherd-boy, with a leopard-skin across 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 the noblest face that had ever been seen in the world.

"Is it true that that noble face is mine?"

he would ask; "I cannot believe it."

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

* * * * * Then on a sudden, what was this change in Silencieux!

So cold, so silent, 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, the magic faded."

"Silencieux!"

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

CHAPTER X SILENCIEUX WHISPERS

So Antony first knew how cruel could be Silencieux to those who loved her.

Her sudden silences he had grown to understand, even to love.

Always they had been broken again by some wonderful word, which he had known 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 was between them, but terrible speech.

As with a knife she had stabbed their love 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 simple earth-warm affection, after the star-cold transcendentalism in which he had been living!

How full of comfort was her unselfish humanity, after the pitiless egoism of the divine!

And yet, while it momentarily soothed him, he realised, with a heart sad for Beatrice as for himself, that it could never satisfy him again.

For days he left Silencieux alone in the wood, and Beatrice's face brightened with their renewed companionship; but all the time he seemed to hear Silencieux calling him, and he knew that he would have to go back.

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

The moonlight fell through it mysteriously, as on that night when he had stolen up there to meet Silencieux--"at the rising of the moon."

He could hesitate no longer.

Leaving Beatrice asleep, he was soon making his way once more through the moonlit trees.

The little châlet looked very still and solemn, like a temple of Chaldean mysteries, and an unwonted chill of fear passed through Antony as he stood in the circle of moonlight outside.

His spirit seemed aware of some dread menace to the future in that moment, and a voice was crying within him to go back.

But the longing that had brought him so far was too strong for such undefined warnings.

Once more he turned the key in the lock, and looked on Silencieux once more.

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

Her face was alive again, alive too with a softness of womanhood he had never 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.

I

could 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 moment your thoughts had forsaken me and gone to pity Beatrice.

I saw it in your eyes."

"Poor Beatrice!"

said Antony.

"It is little indeed I give her.

Could you not spare her so little, Silencieux?"

"I can spare her nothing.

You must be all mine, Antony--your every thought and hope and dream.

So long as there is another woman in the world 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 be perfect, until--" "Until when?"

"Until, Antony,"--and Silencieux lowered her voice to an awful whisper,--"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 really mine till then.

Some have brought me many such offerings.

Antony, when will you bring me the human sacrifice?"

"O Silencieux!"

Antony's heart chilled with terror at Silencieux's words.

It was against this that the voices had warned him as he came up the wood.

O that he had never seen Silencieux more, never heard her poisonous voice again!

As one fleeing before the shadow of uncommitted sin that gains upon him at each stride, Antony fled from the place, and sought the moors.

The moon was near its setting, and soon the dawn would throw open the eastern 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, and faint sounds of returning consciousness from distant farms, it came.

High over a lake of ethereal silver welling up out of space, hung the morning star, shining as though its heart would break, bright as a tear that 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 dark thought, and such an exaltation had come with the quickening light, that it seemed as though the body, with little more than pure aspiration to wing 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 mated only with the infinite universe.

In no marriage less than that shall it find lasting fulfilment of itself.

No single face, however beautiful, no single human soul, however vast, can absorb it.

Silencieux, Beatrice, Wonder, himself, all faded away, in a trance-like sense of a stupendous passion, an august possession.

He felt that within him which rose up gigantic from the earth, and towered into eyries of space, from whence that morning star seemed like a dewdrop glittering low down upon the earth.

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

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

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

Her face was bathed in the delicate early sunlight and looked very pure and 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 love me--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 went out into the wood.

CHAPTER XI WONDER IN THE WOOD

A few days after this, little Wonder, playing about the garden, had slipped away from her nurse, and, pleased in her little soul at her cleverness, had found her way up to her father's châlet.

Antony was sitting 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 way up the wood by herself."

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

Then presently: "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 she understood nothing of the meaning, the music charmed her, and she nestled close to her father, with wide eyes.

"Say some more, Daddy."

The sobbing cadences of the greatest of Irish songs came to Antony's mind, 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 suddenly the 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 so white.

She makes me frightened.

Hold me, Daddy--" and she crouched in his arms.

"You mustn't be frightened of her, Wonder.

She loves little girls.

See how she is smiling at you.

She wants to be friends with you.

She wants you 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, stroking its white cheek to reassure her.

"See, how kind she is, little Wonder!

See how she smiles--how she loves you.

She loves little girls, and she never sees any up here in the lonely 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 find her only in such low-lying immemorial drifting places of leaves, and oozy sinks of dank water.

For the moors autumn is the spring come back in purple, and in golden woods and many another place where the year dies happily, she smiles like a widow so young and fair that one thinks rather 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 eyes upon you, the life died within you, and wherever you walked she was always somewhere in the bushes muttering evil spells.

All the year round under the green cloud of summer, you might meet Autumn creeping somewhere 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 to sleep on.

Always the year round in the valley, if you listened close, you would hear something sighing, something dying.

To the happiest walking there would come strange sinkings of the heart, unaccountable premonitions of overhanging doom.

There the least superstitious would start at the sight of a toad, and come upon three magpies at once not without fear.

Over all was a breath of imminent disaster, a look of sorrow from which there was no escape.

It was not many yards away from a merry high-road, but once in the shade of its lanes, it seemed as though you had been shut away from the world of living men.

Black slopes of pine and melancholy bars of sunset walled you in, as in some funeral hall of judgment.

Alas!

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

Death is coming!"

Tapped at the windows, ticking and crying in the rooms, was the same message; till, in a terror of the walls, she would flee into the wider prison of the woods, and oppressed by them in turn, would escape with a beating heart into the honest daylight of the high-road.

So one flies from a haunted house, or comes out of an evil dream.

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

Death is coming!"

Silencieux!

Ah, how happy they had been before the coming of Silencieux!

How frail is our happiness, how suddenly it can die!

One moment it seems built for eternity, marble-based and glittering with towers,--the next, where it stood is lonely grass and dew, not a stone left.

Ah, yes, how happy they had been; and then Antony by a heartless chance had seen Silencieux, and in an instant their happiness had been at an end for ever.

Only a glance of the eyes and love is born, only a glance of the eyes, and alas!

love must die.

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

"O Antony!

Antony!"

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

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

Near where she walked, stood, in the midst of a small meadow overgrown with nettles, the blackened ruin of a cottage long since destroyed by fire.

On the edge of the little sandy lane, perilously near the feet of the passer-by, was its forgotten well, the mouth choked with weeds and briers.

In her absorption Beatrice had almost walked into it.

Now she parted the bushes and looked down.

A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral echo.

What a place to hide one's sorrow in!

No one would think of looking there.

Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come.

And in a little while--a very little while--Antony would forget, or sometimes make himself happy with his unhappiness.

Ah!

but Wonder!

No, if Antony needed her no more, Wonder did.

She must stay for Wonder's sake.

And perhaps, who could say, Antony might yet need her, might come to her some day and say "Beatrice," with the old voice.

To be really necessary to Antony again, if only for one little hour,--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 and agues; and disembodied fevers waited in wells for the sunk pail.

For the valley was very beautiful, beautiful with that green beauty that only comes of damp and decay.

Late one October night, Antony, alone with Silencieux, as was now again his 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 how the lamp had been arranged to throw a vivid light upon Silencieux, "but I 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 at once;" and they went together.

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

"Wonder, my little Wonder," said Antony caressingly, as he bent over her.

"Does little Wonder feel ill?"

"Yes, Daddy.

I feel so sick, Daddy."