LAST TALK ON THE HILLS
Beatrice's prayer had been answered. Antony had come back to her. She
was necessary to him once more. The old look was in his eyes, the old
sound in his voice. One day as they were out together she was so
conscious of this happiness returned that she could not forbear speaking
of it--with an inner feeling that it was better to be happy in silence.
What is that instinct in us which tells us that we risk our happiness in
speaking of it? Happiness is such a frightened thing that it flies at
the sound of its own name. And yet of what shall we speak if not our
happiness? Of our sorrows we can keep silence, but our joys we long to
utter.
So Beatrice spoke of her great happiness to Antony, and told him too of
her old great unhappiness and her longing for death.
"What a strange and terrible dream it has been--but thank God, we are
out in the daylight at last," said Antony. "O my little Beatrice, to
think that I could have forsaken you like that! Surely if you had come
and taken me by the hands and looked deep into my eyes, and called me
out of the dream, I must have awakened, for, cruel as it was, the dream
was but part of a greater dream, the dream of my love for you--"
"But I understand it all now," he continued, "see it all. Do you
remember saying that perhaps I had never loved anything but images all
my life? It was quite true. Since I can remember, when I thought I loved
something I was sure to find sooner or later that I loved less the
object itself than what I could say about it, and when I had said
something beautiful, something I could remember and say over and over to
myself, I cared little if the object were removed. The spiritual essence
of it seemed to have passed over into my words, and I loved the
reincarnation best. Only at last have I awakened to realities, and the
shadows flee away. The worshipper of the Image is dead within me. But
alas! that little Wonder had to die first--"
"I used to tell myself," he went on, "that human life, however
exquisite, without art to eternalise it, was like a rose showering its
petals upon the ground. For so brief a space the rose stood perfect,
then fell in a ruin of perfume. Wonderful moments had human life, but
without art were they not like pearls falling into a gulf? So I said:
there is nothing real but art. The material of art passes--human love,
human beauty--but art remains. It is the image, not the reality, that
is everlasting. I will live in the image."
"But I know now," he once more resumed, "that there is a higher
immortality than art's,--the immortality of love. The immortality of art
indeed is one of those curious illusions of man's self-love which a
moment's thought dispels. Art, who need be told, is as dependent for its
survival on the survival of its physical media as man's body itself--and
though the epic and the great canvas escape combustion for a million
years, they must burn at last, burn with all the other accumulated
shadows of time. What we call immortality in art is but the shadow of
the soul's immortality; but the immortality of love is that of the soul
itself--"
"O Antony," interrupted Beatrice, "you really believe that now? You will
never doubt it again?"
"We never doubt what we have really seen, and I had never seen before,"
answered Antony, taking her hand and looking deep into her eyes, "never
seen it as I see it now."
"And you will never doubt it again?"
"Never."
"Whatever that voice should say to you?"
"I shall never hear that voice again."
"O Antony, is it really true? You have come back to me. I can hardly
believe it."
"Listen, Beatrice; when we return to the Valley, return only to leave it
for ever, I will take the Image and smash it in a hundred pieces--for I
hate it now as much as I once loved it. Fear not; it will never trouble
our peace again."
The mention of the valley was a momentary cloud on Beatrice's happiness,
but as she looked into Antony's resolute love-lit face, it melted away.