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.