ANTONY'S JUDGMENT UPON SILENCIEUX
So the weeks and months went by for those two upon the hills, and the
soul of Antony grew stronger day by day, and his love with it--and the
face of Beatrice was like a bird singing. At last the spring came, and
the snow was no more needed to keep warm the flowers. With the flowers
came the snowdrop-soul of Wonder, and the thoughts of mother and father
turned to the place of kind old trees and tender country bells, where in
the unflowering November they had laid her. These dark months the chemic
earth had been busy with the little body they loved, and by this time
Wonder would be many violets.
"Let us go to Wonder," they said; "she is awake now."
So they went to Wonder, and found her surrounded, in her earth cradle,
by a great singing of birds, and blossoms and green leaves innumerable.
It was more like a palace than a graveyard, and they went away happy for
their little one.
There remained now to take leave of the valley, which indeed looked its
loveliest, as though to allure them to remain. Some days they must stay
to make the necessary preparations for their departure. Among these, in
Antony's mind, the first and most necessary was that destruction of
Silencieux which he had promised himself and his wife upon the hills.
The first afternoon Beatrice noted him take a great hammer, and set out
up the wood. She gave him a look of love and trust as he went--though
there was a secret tremor in her heart, for she knew, perhaps better
than he, how strong was the power of Silencieux.
But in Antony's heart was no misgiving, or backsliding. In those months
on the hills he had realised human love, in the love of a true and
tender and fairy-like woman, and he knew that no illusions, however
specious, were worth that reality--a reality with all the magic of an
illusion. He gripped the hammer in his hand joyfully, eager to smite
featureless the face which had so misled him, brought such tragic sorrow
to those he had loved.
Still, for all his unshaken purpose, it was strange to see again the
face that had meant so much to him, around which his thoughts had
circled consciously or unconsciously all these absent weeks.
Seldom has a face seen again after long separation seemed so
disenchanted as Silencieux's. Was this she whom he had worshipped, she
who had told him in that strange voice of her immortal lovers, she with
whom he had sung by the sea, she with whom he had danced those strange
dances in the town, she who had whispered low that awful command, she to
whom he had sacrificed his little child?
She was just a dusty, neglected cast--nothing more.
Wonder's voice came back to him: "No, Daddy, they tasted of dust"--and
at that thought he gripped the hammer ready to strike.
And yet, even thus, she was a beautiful work of man's hands, and Antony,
hating to destroy beauty, still forbore to strike--just as he would have
shrunk from breaking in pieces a shapely vase. Then, too, the
resemblance to Beatrice took him again. Crudely to smash features so
like hers seemed a sort of mimic murder. So he still hesitated. Was
there no other way? Then the thought came to him: "Bury her." It pleased
him. Yes, he would bury her.
So, having found a spade, he took her from the wall, and looked from
his door into the wood, pondering where her grave should be. A whitebeam
at a little distance made a vivid conflagration of green amid the sombre
boles of the pines. Pinewoods rely on their undergrowth--bracken and
whortleberry and occasional bushes--for their spring illuminations, and
the whitebeam shone as bright in that wood as a lamp in the dark.
"I will bury her beneath the whitebeam," said Antony, and he carried her
thither.
Soon the grave was dug amid the pushing fronds of the young ferns, and
taking one long look at her, Antony laid her in the earth, and covered
her up from sight. Was it only fancy that as he turned away a faint
music seemed to arise from the ground, forming into the word "Resurgam"
as it died away?
"It is done," said Antony to Beatrice. "But I could not break her, she
looked so like you; so I buried her in the wood."
Beatrice kissed him gratefully. But her heart would have been more
satisfied had Silencieux been broken.