AUTUMN IN THE VALLEY
Autumn in the valley was autumn, melancholy and sinister, as you find
her only in such low-lying immemorial drifting places of leaves, and
oozy sinks of dank water. For the moors autumn is the spring come back
in purple, and in golden woods and many another place where the year
dies happily, she smiles like a widow so young and fair that one thinks
rather of life than death in her presence.
But in the valley Autumn was a fearsome hag, a little crazy, two-double,
gathering sticks in a scarlet cloak. When she turned her wicked old eyes
upon you, the life died within you, and wherever you walked she was
always somewhere in the bushes muttering evil spells. All the year
round under the green cloud of summer, you might meet Autumn creeping
somewhere in the valley, like foul mists that creep from pool to pool;
for here all the year was decay to feed upon and dead leaves for her to
sleep on. Always the year round in the valley, if you listened close,
you would hear something sighing, something dying. To the happiest
walking there would come strange sinkings of the heart, unaccountable
premonitions of overhanging doom. There the least superstitious would
start at the sight of a toad, and come upon three magpies at once not
without fear. Over all was a breath of imminent disaster, a look of
sorrow from which there was no escape. It was not many yards away from a
merry high-road, but once in the shade of its lanes, it seemed as though
you had been shut away from the world of living men. Black slopes of
pine and melancholy bars of sunset walled you in, as in some funeral
hall of judgment.
Alas! Beatrice's was not the happiest of hearts, and all day long this
autumn, as the mornings came later and darker and the evenings earlier,
always voices in the valley, voices of low-hanging mist and dripping
rain, kept saying: "Death is coming! Death is coming!"
Tapped at the windows, ticking and crying in the rooms, was the same
message; till, in a terror of the walls, she would flee into the wider
prison of the woods, and oppressed by them in turn, would escape with a
beating heart into the honest daylight of the high-road. So one flies
from a haunted house, or comes out of an evil dream.
Sometimes it seemed as if the white face of Silencieux looked out from
the woodside, and mocked her with the same cry: "Death is coming! Death
is coming!"
Silencieux! Ah, how happy they had been before the coming of
Silencieux! How frail is our happiness, how suddenly it can die! One
moment it seems built for eternity, marble-based and glittering with
towers,--the next, where it stood is lonely grass and dew, not a stone
left. Ah, yes, how happy they had been; and then Antony by a heartless
chance had seen Silencieux, and in an instant their happiness had been
at an end for ever. Only a glance of the eyes and love is born, only a
glance of the eyes, and alas! love must die.
A glance of the eyes and all the old kindness is gone, a glance of the
eyes, and from the face you love the look you seek has died out for
everlasting.
"O Antony! Antony!" moaned Beatrice, as she wandered alone in those dank
autumn lanes, "if you would only come back to me for one short day, come
back with the old look on your face, be to me for a little while as you
once were, I think I could gladly die--"
Die! A tattered flower caught her glance, shaking chilly in the damp
wind, and once more she heard the whisper, "Death is coming!"
Near where she walked, stood, in the midst of a small meadow overgrown
with nettles, the blackened ruin of a cottage long since destroyed by
fire. On the edge of the little sandy lane, perilously near the feet of
the passer-by, was its forgotten well, the mouth choked with weeds and
briers.
In her absorption Beatrice had almost walked into it. Now she parted the
bushes and looked down. A stone fell as she looked, making a sepulchral
echo. What a place to hide one's sorrow in! No one would think of
looking there. Antony might think she had gone away, or he might drag
the three black ponds, but here it was unlikely any one would come. And
in a little while--a very little while--Antony would forget, or
sometimes make himself happy with his unhappiness.
Ah! but Wonder! No, if Antony needed her no more, Wonder did. She must
stay for Wonder's sake. And perhaps, who could say, Antony might yet
need her, might come to her some day and say "Beatrice," with the old
voice. To be really necessary to Antony again, if only for one little
hour,--yes! she could wait and suffer for that.