THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
The valley was an ill place even for the body, a lair of rheums and
agues; and disembodied fevers waited in wells for the sunk pail. For the
valley was very beautiful, beautiful with that green beauty that only
comes of damp and decay.
Late one October night, Antony, alone with Silencieux, as was now again
his custom, was surprised to hear footsteps coming hastily up the wood,
and even more surprised at the sudden unusual appearance of Beatrice.
"I am sorry to disturb you, Antony," she said, noting with a pang how
the lamp had been arranged to throw a vivid light upon Silencieux, "but
I want you to come down and look at Wonder. I'm afraid she is ill."
"Wonder, ill!" exclaimed Antony, rising with a start, "I will come at
once;" and they went together.
Wonder was lying in her bed, with flushed cheeks and bright yet heavy
eyes.
"Wonder, my little Wonder," said Antony caressingly, as he bent over
her. "Does little Wonder feel ill?"
"Yes, Daddy. I feel so sick, Daddy."
"Never mind; she will be better to-morrow." But he had noticed how
burning hot were her hands, and how dry were her fresh little lips.
"I must go for the doctor at once," he said to his wife, when they were
outside the room. The father, so long asleep, had sprung awake at the
first hint of danger to the little child that in his neglectful way he
loved deeply all the time; and, in spite of the danger to Wonder, a
faint joy stirred in Beatrice's heart to see him thus humanly aroused
once more.
"Kiss me, Beatrice," he said, as he set out upon his errand. "Don't be
anxious, it will be all right." It was the first time he had kissed his
wife for many days.
The doctor's was some three miles away across the moor. It was a bright
starlit night, and Antony, who knew the moor well, had no difficulty in
making his way at a good pace along the mossy tracks. Presently he gave
a little cry of pain and stood still.
"O God," he cried, "it cannot be that. Oh, it cannot."
At that moment for the first time a dreadful thought had crossed his
mind. Suddenly a memory of that afternoon when he had bade Wonder kiss
Silencieux flashed upon him; and once more he heard himself saying:
"Silencieux, I bring you my little child."
But he had never meant it so. It had all been a mad fancy. What was
Silencieux herself but a wilful, selfish dream? He saw it all now. How
could a lifeless image have power over the life of his child?
And yet again, was Silencieux a lifeless image? And still again, if she
were an image, was it not always to an image that humanity from the
beginning had been sacrificed? Yes; perhaps if Silencieux were only an
image there was all the more reason to fear her.
When he returned he would go to Silencieux, go on his knees and beg for
the life of his child. Silencieux had been cruel, but she could hardly
be so cruel as that.
He drove back across the moor by the doctor's side.
"I have always thought you unwise to live in that valley," said the
doctor. "It's pretty, but like most pretty places, it's unhealthy.
Nature can seldom be good and beautiful at the same time." The doctor
was somewhat of a philosopher.
"Your little girl needs the hills. In fact you all do. Your wife isn't
half the woman she was since you took her into the valley. You don't
look any better for it, either. No, sir, believe me, beauty's all very
well, but it's not good to live with--And, by the way, have you had your
well looked at lately? That valley is just a beautiful sewer for the
drainage of the hills; a very market-town for all the germs and bacilli
of the district."
And the doctor laughed, as, curiously enough, people always do at jests
about bacilli.
But when he looked at Wonder, he took a more serious view of bacilli.
"You must have your well looked to at once," he said. "Your little girl
is very ill. She must be kept very quiet, and on no account excited."
Beatrice and Antony took it in turns to watch by Wonder's bed that
night, and once while Beatrice was watching, Antony found time to steal
up the wood with his prayer to Silencieux.
Never had she looked more mask-like, more lifeless.
"Silencieux," he cried, "I wickedly brought you my little child. O give
her back to me again! I cannot bear it. I cannot give her to you,
Silencieux. Take me, if you will. I will gladly die for you. But spare
her. O give her back to me, Silencieux!"
But the image was impassive and made no sign.
"Silencieux," he implored, "speak, for I know you hear me. Are you a
devil, Silencieux; a devil I have worshipped all this time? God help me!
Have you no pity,--what is her little flower-life to you? Why should you
snatch it out of the sun--"
But Silencieux made no sign.
Then Antony grew angry in his remorse: "I hate you, Silencieux. Never
will I look on your face again. You are an evil dream that has stolen
from me the truth of life. I have broken a true heart that loved me,
that would have died for me--for your sake; just to watch your loveless
beauty, to hear the cold music of your voice. You are like the moon that
turns men mad, a hollow shell of silver drawing all your light from the
sun of life, a silver shadow of the golden sun."
But prayer and reproach were alike in vain. Silencieux remained
unheeding, and Antony returned to watch by Beatrice's side, with a heart
that had now no hope, and a soul weighed down with the sense of
irrevocable sin. There lay the little life he had murdered, delivered up
to the Moloch of Art. No sorrow, no agonies, were now of any avail for
ever. Little Wonder would surely die, and all the old lost opportunities
of loving her could never return. He had loved the shadow. This was a
part of the price.
Day after day the cruel fever consumed Wonder as fire consumes a flower.
Her tiny face seemed too small for the visitation of such suffering as
burned and hammered behind the high white brow, and yellowed and drew
tight the skin upon the cheeks. She had so recently known the strange
pain of being born. Already, for so little of life, she was to endure
the pain of death.
Day after day, hour after hour, Antony hung over her bed, with a
devotion and an unconsciousness of fatigue that made Beatrice look at
him with astonishment, and sometimes even for a moment forget Wonder in
the joy with which she saw him transfigured by simple human love. Now,
when it was too late, he had become a father indeed. And it brought some
ease to his fiercely tortured heart to notice that it was his
ministrations that the dying child seemed to welcome most. For the most
part she lay in a semi-conscious state, heeding nothing, and only
moaning now and again, a sad little moan, like an injured bird. She
seemed to say she was so little a thing to suffer so. Once, however,
when Antony had just placed some fresh ice around her head, she opened
her eyes and said, "Dear little Daddy," and the light on Antony's
face--poor victim of perverse instincts that too often drew his really
fine nature awry--was sanctifying to see.
As terrible was the look of torture that came over his face, one night
near the end, when Wonder in a sudden nightmare of delirium had seized
his hand and cried:--
"O Daddy, the white lady! See her there at the end of the bed. She is
smiling, Daddy--" Then lower, "You will not make me kiss her any more,
will you, Daddy?"--
Beatrice had gone to snatch an hour or two's sleep, so she never heard
this, and it was no mere cowardly consolation for Antony to think
afterwards that no one but he and his little child had known of that
fatal afternoon in the wood. The dead understand all,--yes, even the
dead we have murdered. But the living can never be told a secret such as
that which Antony and his little daughter, whose soul was really grown
up, though she spoke still in baby language, shared immortally between
them.
When Beatrice returned to the room Wonder was sleeping peacefully again,
but at the chill hour when watchers blow out the night-lights, and a
dreary greyness comes like a fog through the curtains, Antony and
Beatrice fell into each other's arms in anguish, for Wonder was dead.