The Worshipper of the Image - Richard Le Gallienne
O God, if only she might come and ask again. Now when she was so far
away his fancy teemed with stories. Every roadside flower had its
fairy-tale which cried, "Tell me to little Wonder"--and once he tried
to make believe to himself that Wonder was holding his hand, and looking
up into his face with her big grave eyes, as he told some child's
nonsense 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 grass
and sobbed.
But a gentle hand was laid upon his shoulder and Beatrice's voice
said,--
"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 soothing
hand, "to think that I might have lived with a child--and I chose
instead to live with words. In all the mysterious ways of man, is there
anything quite so mysterious as that? Poor dream-led fool, poor lover of
coloured shadows!
"And yet, how proud I was of the madness! How I loved to say that words
were more beautiful than the things for which they stood, and that the
names of the world's beautiful women, Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere, were
more beautiful than Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere themselves; that the
names of the stars were lovelier than any star--who has ever found the
Pleiades so beautiful as their name, or any king so great as the sound
of Orion?--and what, anywhere in the Universe, is lovely enough to bear
Arcturus for its name?--Ah! you know how I used to talk--poor fool, poor
lover of coloured shadows!"
"Yes, dear," said Beatrice soothingly, "but that is passed now, and you
must not dwell too persistently in the sorrow of it, or in your grief
for little Wonder. That too is to dwell with shadows, and to dwell with
shadows either of grief or joy is dangerous for the soul."
"I know. But fear not, Beatrice. Perhaps there was the danger of my
passing from one cloudland to another--for I never knew how I loved our
Wonder till now, and I longed, if only by imagination, to follow her
where she has gone, and share with her the life together we have lost
here--"
"But that can never be," said Beatrice; "you must accept it, Antony. We
shall only meet her again by doing that. The sooner we can say from our
hearts 'She is lost here,' the nearer is she to being found in another
world. Yes, Antony dear, even Wonder's little shadow must be left
behind, if we are to mount together the hills of life."
"My wonderful Beatrice! Yes, the hills of life. No more its woods, but
its hills, bathed in a vast and open sunshine. Look around us--how nobly
simple is every line and shape! Far below the horizon nature is
elaborate, 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 shape
subtler 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 the
subject, "that is a great mystery--the seeming moral meaning of the
forms of things. Some shapes, however beautiful, suggest evil; others,
however ugly, suggest good. As we look at a snake, or a spider, we know
that evil is shaped like that; and not only animate things but
inanimate. Some aspects of nature are essentially evil. There are
landscapes that injure the soul to look at, there are sunsets that are
unholy, there are trees breathing spiritual pestilence as surely as some
men breathe it--"
"Do you remember," continued Antony with a smile, which died as he
realised he was committed to an allusion best forgotten, "that old
twisted tree that stood on the moor near our wood? I often wonder what
mysterious sin he had committed--"
"Yes," laughed Beatrice, "he looked a terribly depraved old tree, I must
admit--but don't you think that when we have arrived at the discussion
of the mysterious sins of trees it is time to start home?"
"Yes, indeed," said Antony gaily, "let us change the subject to the
vices of flowers."
From which conversation it will be seen that Antony's mind was still
revolving with unconscious attraction around the mystery of Art. Was it
some far-travelled sea-wind bringing faint strains from that sunken
harp, 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. She
was necessary to him once more. The old look was in his eyes, the old
sound in his voice. One day as they were out together she was so
conscious of this happiness returned that she could not forbear speaking
of 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 in
speaking of it? Happiness is such a frightened thing that it flies at
the sound of its own name. And yet of what shall we speak if not our
happiness? Of our sorrows we can keep silence, but our joys we long to
utter.
So Beatrice spoke of her great happiness to Antony, and told him too of
her old great unhappiness and her longing for death.
"What a strange and terrible dream it has been--but thank God, we are
out in the daylight at last," said Antony. "O my little Beatrice, to
think that I could have forsaken you like that! Surely if you had come
and taken me by the hands and looked deep into my eyes, and called me
out of the dream, I must have awakened, for, cruel as it was, the dream
was 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 you
remember saying that perhaps I had never loved anything but images all
my life? It was quite true. Since I can remember, when I thought I loved
something I was sure to find sooner or later that I loved less the
object itself than what I could say about it, and when I had said
something beautiful, something I could remember and say over and over to
myself, I cared little if the object were removed. The spiritual essence
of it seemed to have passed over into my words, and I loved the
reincarnation best. Only at last have I awakened to realities, and the
shadows flee away. The worshipper of the Image is dead within me. But
alas! that little Wonder had to die first--"
"I used to tell myself," he went on, "that human life, however
exquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering its
petals upon the ground. For so brief a space the rose stood perfect,
then fell in a ruin of perfume. Wonderful moments had human life, but
without 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, that
is everlasting. I will live in the image."
"But I know now," he once more resumed, "that there is a higher
immortality than art's,--the immortality of love. The immortality of art
indeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which a
moment's thought dispels. Art, who need be told, is as dependent for its
survival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--and
though the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a million
years, they must burn at last, burn with all the other accumulated
shadows of time. What we call immortality in art is but the shadow of
the soul's immortality; but the immortality of love is that of the soul
itself--"
"O Antony," interrupted Beatrice, "you really believe that now? You will
never 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, "never
seen 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 hardly
believe it."
"Listen, Beatrice; when we return to the Valley, return only to leave it
for ever, I will take the Image and smash it in a hundred pieces--for I
hate it now as much as I once loved it. Fear not; it will never trouble
our 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 the
soul of Antony grew stronger day by day, and his love with it--and the
face of Beatrice was like a bird singing. At last the spring came, and
the snow was no more needed to keep warm the flowers. With the flowers
came the snowdrop-soul of Wonder, and the thoughts of mother and father
turned to the place of kind old trees and tender country bells, where in
the unflowering November they had laid her. These dark months the chemic
earth had been busy with the little body they loved, and by this time
Wonder 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 for
their little one.
There remained now to take leave of the valley, which indeed looked its
loveliest, as though to allure them to remain. Some days they must stay
to make the necessary preparations for their departure. Among these, in
Antony's mind, the first and most necessary was that destruction of
Silencieux which he had promised himself and his wife upon the hills.
The first afternoon Beatrice noted him take a great hammer, and set out
up the wood. She gave him a look of love and trust as he went--though
there was a secret tremor in her heart, for she knew, perhaps better
than he, how strong was the power of Silencieux.
But in Antony's heart was no misgiving, or backsliding. In those months
on the hills he had realised human love, in the love of a true and
tender and fairy-like woman, and he knew that no illusions, however
specious, were worth that reality--a reality with all the magic of an
illusion. He gripped the hammer in his hand joyfully, eager to smite
featureless the face which had so misled him, brought such tragic sorrow
to those he had loved.
Still, for all his unshaken purpose, it was strange to see again the
face that had meant so much to him, around which his thoughts had
circled consciously or unconsciously all these absent weeks.
Seldom has a face seen again after long separation seemed so
disenchanted as Silencieux's. Was this she whom he had worshipped, she
who had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she with
whom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strange
dances in the town, she who had whispered low that awful command, she to
whom 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"--and
at 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 have
shrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase. Then, too, the
resemblance to Beatrice took him again. Crudely to smash features so
like hers seemed a sort of mimic murder. So he still hesitated. Was
there no other way? Then the thought came to him: "Bury her." It pleased
him. Yes, he would bury her.
So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from
his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be. A whitebeam
at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre
boles of the pines. Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth--bracken and
whortleberry and occasional bushes--for their spring illuminations, and
the 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 her
thither.
Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, and
taking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and covered
her up from sight. Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faint
music 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, she
looked so like you; so I buried her in the wood."
Beatrice kissed him gratefully. But her heart would have been more
satisfied had Silencieux been broken.
CHAPTER XXI
"RESURGAM!"
"Resurgam!"
Had his senses deceived him? They must have deceived him. And yet that
music at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as though
one should tread upon a harp in the grass. For the next day or two
Antony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wail
through the wood, he seemed to hear the word "Resurgam."
Was Silencieux a living spirit, after all,--no mere illusion, but one of
those 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 freshly
turned earth.
Was it the soul of Silencieux?
Cursing himself for a madman, he turned away, but had not gone many
yards, when once more--there was that sudden strain of music and the
word "Resurgam" somewhere on the wind.
This time he knew he was not mistaken, but to believe it true--O God, he
must not believe it true. Reality or fancy, it was an evil thing which
he 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 of
Beatrice's voice, deep in his heart he knew that the night would come
when he would take his lantern and spade, wearily, as one who at length
after hopeless striving obeys once more some imperious weakness--and
look on the face of Silencieux again.
Too surely that night came, and, as in a dream, Antony found himself in
the dark spring night hastening with lantern and spade to Silencieux's
grave. It was only just to look on her face again, to see if she really
lived like a vampire in the earth; and were she to be alive, he vowed to
kill her where she lay--for into his life again he knew she must not
come.
As he neared the whitebeam, a gust of wind blew out his lantern, and he
stood in the profound darkness of the trees. While he attempted to
relight it, he thought he saw a faint light at the foot of the
whitebeam, as of a radiance welling out of the earth; but he dismissed
it as fancy.
Then, having relit the lantern, he set the spade into the ground, and
speedily removed the soil from the white face below. As he uncovered it,
the wind again extinguished the lantern, and there, to his amazement and
terror, was the face of Silencieux shining radiantly in the darkness.
The hole in which she lay brimmed over with light, as a spring wells
out of the hillside. Her face was almost transparent with brightness,
and presently she spoke low, with a voice sweeter than Antony had ever
heard before. It was the voice of that magic harp at the bottom of the
sea, it was the voice that had told him of her lovers, the voice of
hidden 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 being
hers again, Antony carried her with him to the chalet, and setting her
in 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 this
beautiful evil face that drew him irresistibly as the moon, "you, who
took her from me!"
"Who but I should bid you sing of Wonder?" answered Silencieux. "I
loved her. That was why I took her from you, that by your grief she
should live for ever. There is no one but I who can give you back your
little Wonder--no one but I who can give you back anything you have
lost. If you love me faithfully, Antony--there is nothing you can lose
but in me you will find it again."
Antony bowed his head, his heart breaking for Beatrice--but who is not
powerless against his own soul?
"Listen," said Silencieux again. "Once on a time there was a beautiful
girl who died, and from her grave grew a wonderful flower, which all the
world came to see. 'Yet it seems a pity,' said one, 'that so beautiful a
girl should have died.' 'Ah,' said a poet standing by, 'there was no
other 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 put
seas and lands between us, you have denied me with bitter curses, you
have vowed to thrust me from your life, you have given your allegiance
to the warm and pretty humanity of a day, and reviled the august cold
marble of immortality. But it is all in vain. In your heart of hearts
you love no human thing, you love not even yourself, you love only the
eternal spirit of beauty in all things, you love only me. Me you may
sacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pity
for 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 the
end--at the end and too late. This is your own heart's voice; you know
if it be true."
"It is true," moaned Antony.
"Many men and many loves are there in this world," continued
Silencieux, "and each knows the way of his own love, nor shall anything
turn him from it in the end. Here he may go and thither he may turn, but
in the end there is only one way of joy for each, and in that way must
he go or perish. Many faces are fair upon the earth, but for each man is
a face fairest of all, for which, unless he win it, each must go
desolate forever--"
"Face of Eternal Beauty," said Antony, "there is but one face for me for
ever. It is yours."
* * * * *
On the morrow Beatrice saw once more that light in Antony's face which
made her afraid. He had brought with him some sheets of paper on which
were written the songs of little Wonder Silencieux had bidden him sing.
They were songs of grief so poignant and beautiful one grew happy in
listening to them, and Antony forgot all in the joy of having made
them. He read them to Beatrice in an ecstasy. Her face grew sadder and
sadder 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 I
cannot live without her."
CHAPTER XXII
THE STRANGENESS OF ANTONY
From this moment Silencieux took possession of Antony as she had never
taken it before. Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his
fatal 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 almost
feared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his old
irritation at her presence had returned.
As the summer days came on, she would see him disappear through the
green door of the wood at morning and return by it at evening; but all
the day each had been alone, Beatrice alone with a solitude in which was
now no longer any Wonder. The summer beauty gave her courage, but she
knew that the end could not be very far away.
One day there had been that in Antony's manner which had more than
usually alarmed her, and when night fell and he had not returned, she
went up the wood in search of him, her heart full of forebodings. As she
neared the chalet she seemed to hear voices. No! there was only one
voice. Antony was talking to some one. Careful to make no noise, she
stole up to the window and looked in. The sight that met her eyes filled
her 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 velvet
cloak. A table stood between them, and on it stood two glasses, and a
decanter nearly empty of wine, Silencieux's glass stood untasted, but
Antony had evidently been drinking deeply, for his cheeks were flushed
and his eyes wild.
He was speaking in angry, passionate, despairing tones. One of her
strange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back in
her pillows stonily unresponsive.
"For God's sake speak to me," Antony cried. "I love you with my whole
heart. I have sacrificed all I love for your sake. I would die for you
this instant--yes! a hundred thousand deaths. But you will not answer me
one little word--"
But there was no answer.
"Silencieux! Have you ceased to love me? Is the dream once more at an
end, the magic faded? Oh, speak--tell me--anything--only speak!" But
still Silencieux neither spoke nor smiled.
"Listen, Silencieux," at last cried Antony, beside himself, "unless you
answer me, I will die this night, and my blood shall be upon your cruel
altar 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 death
for your sake. In God's name speak."
But Silencieux spoke nothing at all.
Then Beatrice, watching in terror, seeing by his face that he would
really kill himself, ran round to the door and broke in, crying, "O my
poor Antony!" but already he had plunged the dagger amid the veins of
his left wrist, and was watching the blood gush out with a strange
delight.
As Beatrice burst in, he looked up at her, and mistook her for
Silencieux.
"Ah!" he said, "you speak at last. You love me now, when it is too
late--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. The
doctor called it brain fever. It was not the common form, he said, but a
more dangerous form, to which only imaginative men were subject. It was
a form of madness all the more malignant because the sufferer, and
particularly his friends, might go for years without suspecting it. The
doctor 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 her
in enraged disappointment, with a curious harshness he had never shown
before, as though the gentleness of his soul had died during his
illness, and exclaimed:--"Why, you are not Silencieux, after all!"
"I am Beatrice," said his wife gently; "Beatrice, who loves you with her
whole heart."
"But I love Silencieux--"
Beatrice hid her face and sobbed.
"Where is Silencieux? Bring me Silencieux. I see! You have taken her
away while I was ill--I will go and seek her myself," and he attempted
to rise.
"You are too weak. You must not get up, Antony. I will bring you
Silencieux."
And so, till he was well enough to leave his bed, Silencieux hung facing
Antony on his bedroom wall, and on his first walk out into the air, he
took 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 for
her in the world. Wonder was gone, and Antony was even further away. She
knew now that he would never come back to her. Never again could return
even the illusion of those happy weeks on the hills. Antony would be
hers no more for ever.
There but remained for her to fulfil her destiny, the destiny she had
vaguely known ever since Antony had brought home the Image, and shown
her 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 another
world. She had finally abandoned all her hopes of earthly joy--and to
Antony she was no longer any help or happiness. He had needed her again
for a few brief weeks, but now he needed her no more. His every look
told her how he wished her out of his life. And she had no one else in
the world.
But in another world she had her little Wonder. Lately she had begun to
meet her in the lanes. In the day she wore garlands of flowers round her
head, 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 drew
her cloak around her and stole up the wood, to look a last good-bye at
him as he sat laughing with his shadows.
"Good-bye, Antony, good-bye," she cried. "I had but human love to give
you. I surrender you to the love of the divine."