Chapter 3 THE NORTHERN SPHINX

Antony had not written a poem to his wife since their little girl Wonder had been born, now some four years ago. Surely it was from no lack of love, this silence, but merely due to the working of what would seem to be a law of the artistic temperament: that to turn a muse into a wife, however long and faithfully loved, is to bid good-bye to the muse. But a day or two after the coming of Silencieux, Antony found himself suddenly inspired once more to sing of his wife.

It was the best poem he had written for a long time, and when it was finished, he came down the wood impatient to read it to Beatrice. This was the poem, which he called "The Northern Sphinx":-

Sphinx of the North, with subtler smile

Than hers who in the yellow South,

With make-believe mysterious mouth,

Deepens the ennui of the Nile;

And, with no secret left to tell,

A worn and withered old coquette,

Dreams sadly that she draws us yet,

With antiquated charm and spell:

Tell me your secret, Sphinx,-for mine!-

What means the colour of your eyes,

Half innocent and all so wise,

Blue as the smoke whose wavering line

Curls upward from the sacred pyre

Of sacrifice or holy death,

Pale twisting wreaths of opal breath,

From fire mounting into fire.

What is the meaning of your hair?

That little fairy palace wrought

With many a grave fantastic thought;

I send a kiss to wander there,

To climb from golden stair to stair,

Wind in and out its cunning bowers,-

O garden gold with golden flowers,

O little palace built of hair!

The meaning of your mouth, who knows?

O mouth, where many meanings meet-

Death kissed it stern, Love kissed it sweet,

And each has shaped its mystic rose.

Mouth of all sweets, whose sweetness sips

Its tribute honey from all hives,

The sweetest of the sweetest lives,

Soft flowers and little children's lips;

Yet rather learnt its heavenly smile

From sorrow, God's divinest art,

Sorrow that breaks and breaks the heart,

Yet makes a music all the while.

Ah! what is that within your eyes,

Upon your lips, within your hair,

The sacred art that makes you fair,

The wisdom that hath made you wise?

Tell me your secret, Sphinx,-for mine!-

The mystic word that from afar

God spake and made you rose and star,

The fiat lux that bade you shine.

While Antony read, Beatrice's face grew sadder and sadder. When he had finished she said:-

"It is very beautiful, Antony-but it is not written for me."

"What can you mean, Beatrice? Who else can it be written for?"

"To the Image of me that you have set up in my place."

"Beatrice, are you going mad?"

"It is quite true, all the same. Time will show. Perhaps you don't know it yourself as yet, but you will before long."

"But, Beatrice, the poem shows its own origin. Has your image blue eyes, or curiously coiled hair-"

"Oh, yes, of course, you thought of me. You filled in from me. But the inspiration, the wish to write it, came from the image-"

"It is certainly true that I love to look at it, as I love to look at a picture of you-because it is you-"

"As yet, no doubt, but you will soon love it for its own sake. You are already beginning."

"I love an image! You are too ridiculous, Beatrice."

"Does it really seem so strange, dear? I sometimes think you have never loved anything else."

Antony had laughed down Beatrice's fancies, yet all the time she had been talking he was conscious that the idea she had suggested was appealing to him with a perverse fascination.

To love, not the literal beloved, but the purified stainless image of her,-surely this would be to ascend into the region of spiritual love, a love unhampered and untainted by the earth.

As he said this to himself, his mind, ever pitilessly self-conscious, knew it was but a subterfuge, a fine euphemism for a strange desire which he had known was already growing within him; for when Beatrice had spoken of his loving an image, it was no abstract passion he had conceived, but some fanciful variation of earthly love-a love of beauty centring itself upon some form midway between life and death, inanimate and yet alive, human and yet removed from the accidents of humanity.

To love an image with one's whole heart! If only one could achieve that-and never come out of the dream.

These thoughts gave him a new desire to look again at the image. He felt that in some way she would be changed, and he hastened up the wood in a strange expectancy.