The Worshipper of the Image - Richard Le Gallienne
Then noting how full of blossom were the lanes, and how sweet was the
night air, and smitten through all her senses with the song and perfume
of the world she was about to leave, she found her way, with a strange
gladness of release, to the Three Black Ponds.
It was moonlight, and the dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all along
the leafy galleries that overhung the pools. The pools themselves shone
with a startling silver--so hushed, so dreamy was all that surrounded
them that there seemed something of an unnatural wakefulness, a daylight
observation, in their brilliant surfaces,--and on them, as last year,
the lilies floated like the crowns of sunken queens. But the third pool
lay more in shadow, and by that, as it seemed to Beatrice, a light was
shining.
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 the
water-lilies we could not gather."
Beatrice, following the voice, stepped along the causeway and sank among
the lilies; and as she sank she seemed to see Antony bending over the
pond, saying: "How beautiful she looks, how beautiful, lying there among
the lilies!"
* * * * *
On the morrow, when they had drawn Beatrice from the pond, with lilies
in her hair, Antony bent over her and said:--
"It is very sad--Poor little Beatrice--but how beautiful! It must be
wonderful 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 lost
Wonder, but she lived again in his songs. He had lost Beatrice, but he
had her image--did she not live for ever in Silencieux?
So he went up the wood, whistling softly to himself--but lo! when he
opened his chalet door, there was a strange light in the room. The eyes
of Silencieux were wide open, and from her lips hung a dark moth with
the face of death between his wings.
THE END