AT THE RISING OF THE MOON
But a week or two more, and Beatrice's prophecy had progressed so far
towards fulfilment, that Antony was going about the woods and the moors
saying over to himself the name he had found for the Image, as we saw in
the first chapter; and his love for Silencieux, begun more or less as a
determined self-illusion, grew more and more of a reality. Every day new
life welled into Silencieux's face, as every day life ebbed from the
face of Beatrice, surely foreseeing the coming on of what she had
feared. For the love he gave to Silencieux Antony must take away from
Beatrice, from whom as the days went by he grew more and more withdrawn.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 bore
fruit in a remarkable productiveness. Never had his imagination been so
enkindled, or his pen so winged. But this very industry, the proofs of
which he would each evening bring down the wood for that fine judgment
of Beatrice's, which, in spite of all, still remained more to him than
any other praise--this very industry was the secret confirmation for
Beatrice's sad heart. No longer the inspirer, she was yet, she bitterly
told 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, the
Beauty, the Music! Is it Beautiful? Is it Music? If it be that, no
matter how it has been made! Let us give thanks for creation, though it
involves the sacrifice of our own most tender and sacred feelings. To
set mere personal feelings against Beauty--human tears against an
immortal creation! Did he spare his own feelings? Indeed he did not.
On the night when we first met him bidding good-bye to Silencieux "until
the rising of the moon," he had sat through dinner eating but little,
feverishly and somewhat cruelly gay. Though he was as yet too kind to
admit it to himself, Beatrice was beginning to bore him, not merely by
her sadness, which his absorption prevented his realising except in
flashes, but by her very resemblance to the Image--of which, from having
been the beloved original, she was, in his eyes, becoming an indifferent
materialisation. The sweet flesh he had loved so tenderly became an
offence to him, as a medium too gross for the embodiment of so beautiful
a face. Such a face as Silencieux's demanded a more celestial porcelain.
Dinner at last finished, he made an excuse to Beatrice for leaving her
alone 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 the
conscious 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 being
quite simple even with Silencieux,--and the idea of his going out with
serious 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 is
loved is partly the creation of her lover's fancy. He consciously
siderealises her, and with open eyes magnifies her importance to his
life. Antony but made believe and magnified uncommonly--and his dream of
vivifying white plaster was perhaps less desperate than the dreams of
some, that would breathe the breath of life into the colder clay of some
beloved woman, who seems spontaneously to live but is dead all the
while.
Silencieux appeared to be dead, but beneath that eternal smile, as
Beatrice had divined, as Antony was learning, she was only too terribly
alive. Yes! Antony's was the easier dream.
The moon and Antony came up the wood together from opposite ends, and
when Antony entered his châlet Silencieux was already waiting for him,
her head crowned with a moonbeam. He kissed her softly and took her with
him out into the ferns.