The Worshipper of the Image - Richard Le Gallienne
About these ponds stole many a secret path, veined with clumsy roots,
shadowed with the thick bush of many a clustering parasite, and echoing
sometimes beneath from the hollowed shelter of coot or water-rat. Lilies
floated 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 morning
walk,--Wonder, though but a little girl of four, having grown more and
more 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 of
those little girls that seem to know all the meanings of life, while yet
struggling with the alphabet of its unimportant words.
The soul of such a child is, of all things, the most mysterious. There
was that in her face, as she clung on to her mother's hand, which seemed
to say: "O mother, I understand it all, and far more; if I might only
talk to you in the language of heaven,--but my words are like my little
legs, frail and uncertain of their footing, and, while I think all your
strange 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 you
both. 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 white
tail!"
And again: "O mother, what was that?"
"That was a water-hen, dear. She has a little house, a warm nest, close
to the water among the bushes yonder, and she calls like that to let her
little children know she's coming home with some dainty things for
lunch. She means 'Hush! Hush! Don't be frightened. I'm coming just as
fast as I can.'"
"Funny little mother! What pretty stories you tell me. But do the birds
really 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 no
flowers for ever so long."
"Flowers, little Wonder--they are nearly all gone away, gone to sleep
till next year--But see, I will gather you something prettier than
flowers."
And, hardly marking Beatrice, he led Wonder up and down among the
winding underwood. Fungi of exquisite yellows and browns were popping up
all about the wood. He gathered some of the most delicate, and put them
into 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 and
love them, like flowers."
"But they are not flowers, Daddy. They don't smell like flowers. I would
rather have flowers, Daddy."
"But there are no flowers till next year. You must learn to love these
too, 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 throw
them away. They are nasty, nasty things. Promise me never to gather
them, 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 them
in the wood.
CHAPTER VII
THE LOVERS OF SILENCIEUX
Silencieux often spoke to Antony now. Sometimes a sudden, startling word
when he was writing late at night; sometimes long tender talks; once a
terrible whisper. But all this time she never opened her eyes. The
lashes still lay wet upon her cheeks, and when she spoke her lips seemed
hardly to move, only to smile with a deeper meaning, an intenser life.
Indeed, at these times, her face shone with so great a brightness that
Antony's vision was dazzled, and to his gaze she seemed almost
featureless 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 you
will die. Some day, Antony, you shall see my eyes. But not yet. You
have much to do for me yet. There is yet much love for you and me before
the 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 have
been cruel, yes, but to die for me has seemed better than to live for
any other. And some of my lovers I have never forsaken. When they have
lost all in the world, they have had me. Lonely garrets have seemed
richly furnished because of my face, and men with foodless lips have
died blest because I was near them at the last. Sometimes I have kissed
their lips and died with them, and the world has missed my face for a
hundred unlovely years--for the world is only beautiful when I and my
lovers are in it. Antony, you are one of my lovers, one of my dearest
lovers; be great enough, be all mine, and perhaps I will die with you,
Antony--and leave the world in darkness for your sake, another hundred
years."
"Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux."
"Nearly three thousand years ago I loved a woman of Mitylene, very fair
and made of fire. But she loved another more than I, and for his sake
threw herself from a rock into the sea. As she fell, the rose we had
made together fell from her bosom, and was torn to pieces by the sea.
Fishermen gathered here and there a petal floating on the waters,--but
what were they?--and the world has never known how wonderful was that
rose 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 us
vainly from hand to hand of many lesser loves, to ease a little the
great ache; and at that time the world seemed full of my lovers. I have
forgotten none of them. They pass before me, a fair frieze of
unforgotten faces; but most I loved a Roman poet, because, perhaps, he
loved so well the memory of her I had loved, and knew so skilfully to
make bloom again among his own red roses those petals of passionate
ivory 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 face
of 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, his
baby-girl by his side, he sits in heaven, with a face of gold. In
Paris," she went on, "have I been wonderfully beloved, and in northern
lands 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 three
hundred years ago, and the other a little London boy with large eyes of
velvet, 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 giant
sitting by a country stream, holding a daffodil in his mighty hands and
whistling to the birds. He took and wore me like a flower. I was to him
as a nightingale that sang from his sleeve, for he loved so much
besides. Yet me he loved best, as those who can read his secret poems
understand. But my little London boy loved me only. For him the world
held nothing but my face, and it was of his great love for me that he
died."
"But these were all poets," said Antony.
"Yes, poets are the greatest of all lovers. Though all who since the
world began have been the makers of beautiful things have loved me, I
love my poets best. Sweeter than marble or many colours to my eyes is
the sound of a poet singing in my ears--"
"For whom, Silencieux, did you step down into the sad waters of the
Seine?"
"It was a young poet of Paris, beloved of many women, a drunkard of
strange dreams. He too died because he loved me, and when he died there
was none left whose voice seemed sweet after his. So I died with him. I
died with him," she repeated, "to come to life again with you. Many
lips have been pressed to mine, Antony, since the cold sleep of the
Seine fell over me, but none were warm and wild like yours. I loved my
sleep while the others kissed me, but with the touch of your lips the
dreams 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 will
die with you--and leave the world in darkness for your sake, another
hundred years."
Exalted above the earth with the joy of Silencieux's words, Antony
pressed his lips to hers in an ecstasy, and vowed his life and all
within it inviolably to her.
CHAPTER VIII
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 chalet 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 chalet 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 chalet. 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 chalet 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: