BEATRICE FULFILS HER DESTINY
The heart of Beatrice was broken, and there was now no use or place for
her in the world. Wonder was gone, and Antony was even further away. She
knew now that he would never come back to her. Never again could return
even the illusion of those happy weeks on the hills. Antony would be
hers no more for ever.
There but remained for her to fulfil her destiny, the destiny she had
vaguely known ever since Antony had brought home the Image, and shown
her how the Seine water had moulded the hair and made wet the eyelashes.
For some weeks now Beatrice had been living on the border of another
world. She had finally abandoned all her hopes of earthly joy--and to
Antony she was no longer any help or happiness. He had needed her again
for a few brief weeks, but now he needed her no more. His every look
told her how he wished her out of his life. And she had no one else in
the world.
But in another world she had her little Wonder. Lately she had begun to
meet her in the lanes. In the day she wore garlands of flowers round her
head, and in the night a great light. She would go to meet her at night,
that the light might lead her steps.
So one night while Antony banqueted strangely with Silencieux, she drew
her cloak around her and stole up the wood, to look a last good-bye at
him as he sat laughing with his shadows.
"Good-bye, Antony, good-bye," she cried. "I had but human love to give
you. I surrender you to the love of the divine."
Then noting how full of blossom were the lanes, and how sweet was the
night air, and smitten through all her senses with the song and perfume
of the world she was about to leave, she found her way, with a strange
gladness of release, to the Three Black Ponds.
It was moonlight, and the dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all along
the leafy galleries that overhung the pools. The pools themselves shone
with a startling silver--so hushed, so dreamy was all that surrounded
them that there seemed something of an unnatural wakefulness, a daylight
observation, in their brilliant surfaces,--and on them, as last year,
the lilies floated like the crowns of sunken queens. But the third pool
lay more in shadow, and by that, as it seemed to Beatrice, a light was
shining.
Yes, a light was shining and a voice was calling. "Mother," it called,
"little Mother. I am waiting for you. Here, little Mother. Here by the
water-lilies we could not gather."
Beatrice, following the voice, stepped along the causeway and sank among
the lilies; and as she sank she seemed to see Antony bending over the
pond, saying: "How beautiful she looks, how beautiful, lying there among
the lilies!"
* * * * *
On the morrow, when they had drawn Beatrice from the pond, with lilies
in her hair, Antony bent over her and said:--
"It is very sad--Poor little Beatrice--but how beautiful! It must be
wonderful to die like that."
And then again he said: "She is strangely like Silencieux."
Then he walked up the wood, in a great serenity of mind. He had lost
Wonder, but she lived again in his songs. He had lost Beatrice, but he
had her image--did she not live for ever in Silencieux?
So he went up the wood, whistling softly to himself--but lo! when he
opened his châlet door, there was a strange light in the room. The eyes
of Silencieux were wide open, and from her lips hung a dark moth with
the face of death between his wings.
THE END