THE STRANGENESS OF ANTONY
From this moment Silencieux took possession of Antony as she had never
taken it before. Never had he been so inaccessibly withdrawn into his
fatal dream. Beatrice forgot her own bitter sorrow in her fear for him,
so wrought was he with the fires that consumed him. Some days she almost
feared for his reason, and she longed to watch over him, but his old
irritation at her presence had returned.
As the summer days came on, she would see him disappear through the
green door of the wood at morning and return by it at evening; but all
the day each had been alone, Beatrice alone with a solitude in which was
now no longer any Wonder. The summer beauty gave her courage, but she
knew that the end could not be very far away.
One day there had been that in Antony's manner which had more than
usually alarmed her, and when night fell and he had not returned, she
went up the wood in search of him, her heart full of forebodings. As she
neared the châlet she seemed to hear voices. No! there was only one
voice. Antony was talking to some one. Careful to make no noise, she
stole up to the window and looked in. The sight that met her eyes filled
her with a great dread. "O God, he is going mad," she cried to herself.
Antony was sitting in a big chair drawn up to the fire. Opposite to him,
lying back in her cushions, was the Image draped in a large black velvet
cloak. A table stood between them, and on it stood two glasses, and a
decanter nearly empty of wine, Silencieux's glass stood untasted, but
Antony had evidently been drinking deeply, for his cheeks were flushed
and his eyes wild.
He was speaking in angry, passionate, despairing tones. One of her
strange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back in
her pillows stonily unresponsive.
"For God's sake speak to me," Antony cried. "I love you with my whole
heart. I have sacrificed all I love for your sake. I would die for you
this instant--yes! a hundred thousand deaths. But you will not answer me
one little word--"
But there was no answer.
"Silencieux! Have you ceased to love me? Is the dream once more at an
end, the magic faded? Oh, speak--tell me--anything--only speak!" But
still Silencieux neither spoke nor smiled.
"Listen, Silencieux," at last cried Antony, beside himself, "unless you
answer me, I will die this night, and my blood shall be upon your cruel
altar for ever."
As he spoke he snatched a dagger from among some bibelots on his mantel,
and drew it from its sheath.
"You are proud of your martyrs," he laughed; "see, I will bleed to death
for your sake. In God's name speak."
But Silencieux spoke nothing at all.
Then Beatrice, watching in terror, seeing by his face that he would
really kill himself, ran round to the door and broke in, crying, "O my
poor Antony!" but already he had plunged the dagger amid the veins of
his left wrist, and was watching the blood gush out with a strange
delight.
As Beatrice burst in, he looked up at her, and mistook her for
Silencieux.
"Ah!" he said, "you speak at last. You love me now, when it is too
late--when I am dying."
As he said this his face grew white and he fainted away.
For many days Antony lay unconscious, racked by terrible delirium. The
doctor called it brain fever. It was not the common form, he said, but a
more dangerous form, to which only imaginative men were subject. It was
a form of madness all the more malignant because the sufferer, and
particularly his friends, might go for years without suspecting it. The
doctor gave the disease no name.
During his illness Antony spoke to Beatrice all the time as Silencieux,
but one day, when he was nearly well again, he suddenly turned upon her
in enraged disappointment, with a curious harshness he had never shown
before, as though the gentleness of his soul had died during his
illness, and exclaimed:--"Why, you are not Silencieux, after all!"
"I am Beatrice," said his wife gently; "Beatrice, who loves you with her
whole heart."
"But I love Silencieux--"
Beatrice hid her face and sobbed.
"Where is Silencieux? Bring me Silencieux. I see! You have taken her
away while I was ill--I will go and seek her myself," and he attempted
to rise.
"You are too weak. You must not get up, Antony. I will bring you
Silencieux."
And so, till he was well enough to leave his bed, Silencieux hung facing
Antony on his bedroom wall, and on his first walk out into the air, he
took her with him and set her once more in her old shrine in the wood.
Now, by this time, the heart of Beatrice was broken.