CHAPTER XIX

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And meanwhile, as he removed himself more completely from the girl by resolve, they came closer to each other in spirit. At the piano against the window, looking out upon a poultry-run and the profile of three meagre swing-boats, the Spawer sat down and made music, and the music--even from this cracked, tin-plate, pot-house piano--seemed to sum up all the goodness, all the charity, all the kindness, all the happiness of the day; give it a pure and hallowed expression, as the night's thanksgiving prayer gives blessed articulation to the hidden processes of the soul. It was a mantle, this music that the Spawer made, enfolded about them both. Their two lives, at this moment, were silver streams of content, that met in melodious estuary, and flowed henceforth with one broad current towards the infinite.

Ah! Dangerous state of exaltation this, when souls seem severed from the body, and feel no clog of their fleshy burthens binding them to sordid earth. When spirits are so emancipated from the material that a breath can almost blow them; when life seems to have lost all root in worldly soil, but is merely the blessed sweet odor, hovering above the blossom of existence. While the Spawer played the sky deepened. It seemed to descend like a beneficent angel from heaven and clasp the swing-boats in a celestial embrace, so that they slumbered with the deep peace that comes from above. Pallid harvest stars opened places for themselves in the curtain of blue dusk and peeped down upon the scene. Night threw down her lawny veil of mist, that wound the world dreamily in its filmy folds and hid the realities of existence. The life of toil and labor, the life of matter and the life of fact--these lives were no more, they were merged in a delightful life of dreams. To think was to do. Activity was merely a beautiful unfolding of the soul, delivered of all gross physical exertion, like the expansion of a cloud or the dreamy convolution of a puff of white steam. Pam and the Spawer were no longer flesh and blood; they were the disembodied souls of themselves. They were their own thoughts, disencumbered of the flesh, merged delightfully into each other, and moving by volition amid a world of dreams. Everything that lay about them was symbolised into sublime moral truths, into doctrines of love and charity. All the world, all their doings, were dreams.

They dreamed they left the piano and bought more tea-biscuits at six a penny, and wandered forth (without any consciousness of legs) to redeem their promise to the donkeys. After much wandering, they dreamed they found them and fed them. Divine symbolism of love. And the girl dreamed she kissed their noses and said many good-bys. Kissed the donkeys' noses? Did she really kiss _their_ noses? Or were these kisses, cashed upon the donkeys' noses, but the kisses of love and happiness drawn upon the bank of universal love about them, and paid into the treasury of their joint content? And she wound her soft dream arms about the donkeys' necks. But in this nebulous state of bliss, where all thoughts, all actions, all love, and all happiness seemed shared in common, and indivisible, like the particles of gases that shift and move and change their relative positions, but do not alter their substantial bulk, it might have been that her dream arms wound about the Spawer's dream neck. They dreamed their way to the cliff edge to take farewell of the sea, that lay out with a silver-grey sheen upon its blue depth. On the same seat they sat again, with their backs to the contracting shapelessness of the Royal Arms and the west, whose dusky cheek the setting sun tinged to crimson like the blush of a beautiful Creole. The penetrating eye of Farnborough looked out at them from across the water, took stock of them and closed itself once more. Anon it looked this way again, to see if they were still there, and there they were. Many strange scenes of love, in all love's aspects, has the far-seeing eye of Farnborough witnessed in its day, by the side of the water along this coast. What it does not know of these emotions--as well as of the comedies and tragedies of death--is not worth knowing.

They dreamed, these two did, that they rose again and wandered a little along the cliff line. They dreamed they saw a faint phosphorescent pallor away over the water, and the Spawer dreamed he said:

"It is the moon. Let's see it rise."

So they dreamed themselves on to another seat, and sat together and watched the moon push its red rim, like the edge of a new penny, above the misty horizon. And they watched it turn to gilt as it rose and threw aside its veil of mist, and mount up at last like a beautiful goddess with a fair white body. They dreamed themselves back to the old bench once more, at the head of the zigzag steps, cut in the face of the cliff for descent to the beach.

"Let us sit down here a bit," the Spawer said; and they dreamed they seated themselves.

The eye of Farnborough looked out searchingly for the bench, and found it at last, with this twain on it, and said "Aha!" and winked itself out again. In the growing light of the moon the girl's silvery face shone forth from the shimmering mist like a planet. Was he going to tell her here what he had to say? ...

Or was he going to wind his arms about her and kiss her, kiss her, kiss her? Would she resent? or would she melt into his embrace like a drop of water in strong wine? Ah, torture of temptation. St. Anthony scarce suffered by comparison with this. The moon, the sea, the vastness of the night, the stars, the winding mist, the exaltation--rising up like fumes from their communion of this day--were all commingled in his soul, making his emotions infinite. He was a poor weak mortal, suffering the Olympian passion of a god. One moment his arms were almost about her--though he never stirred. The next he was holding up his purpose like a burning crucifix before his passion's eyes ... and all the while the girl sat with her face to the moon, and he with his face sideways upon hers.

Then the prolonged silence woke the girl to a sense of something impending--that sense, so fine and subtle in her sex, that tells it, by one quick touch, as of an antenna, what man must exercise all the processes of his reason to discover.

"Shall we ... be going back?" she suggested, part rising, with a tentative hand upon the seat, for she felt the silence as the dangerous filaments of a web that was being woven about her for some sort of captivity.

"Oh ... if you are tired of this..." he responded.

"I am not tired of it," she said.

"Let 's stay a little longer, then," he proposed. "Shall we?"

"If you like..." the girl said.

The submissive rustle of her sinking back sounded like a sigh. They were very dreamy the two of them.

And again the temptation of St. Anthony commenced. What devils were struggling for possession of him? Why was he delaying matters? Every moment threw the girl more upon his hands. He had only to drop his voice, to whisper, to put out his dream arms, to enfold her, to stifle her lips under dream kisses.... And with what object this?

Ah!

Love is no analyst; does not profess to be; does not want to be. Pure love and love unworthy are one and the same at the crisis. Whether the flame is the flame of an evil incendiary or the spontaneous flame of pure affinity ... it is all one when it burns. She was there; there by his side. There to be taken ... or there to be left. Should he take her? Should he leave her? And while he temporised thus with the devils, before ceding the keys of his inner soul ... the girl was on her feet again.

"Perhaps we ought to be going ... don't you think?"

Fool that he was. The moment was by again. This was no time for his arm.

"Plainly ... you are in a hurry to be rid of me." His laugh was infectiously frank and free. "Am I such poor company?"

"It 's growing late," the girl said, evading the dangerous quicksand of his question. "I 'm afraid ... they 'll be wondering what's got me, at home."

"Ah, is it such a naughty girl as that? Don't they trust her?"

"They don't know where I am. I did n't tell them."

"Do you always tell them?"

"Not always...."

"Good girl. She shall have a white mark for telling the truth."

"But ... this afternoon I did n't know ... that I was coming here. They may be anxious."

"Suppose we walk as far as the other seat before going back. Would that make them very, very anxious?"

"Perhaps we might walk as far as that ... if you wish."

And they walked--a whole legion of devils in attendance upon the man. The searching eye, gazing keenly along the cliff from seat to seat, found them once more at the second, and blinked knowingly. "The old, old comedy," it told itself. But for all that, it was not quite the old, old comedy of the true Shippus sort. The devils were practically in possession of the dream-Spawer's soul, but the dream-Spawer was so completely detached from the real Spawer's body that no physical manifestation took place. The dream-Spawer, floating to and fro above the small, pitiful, carnal presentment, like a balloon in oscillation, wound dream arms about the girl, pressed dream kisses upon her lips, felt her own dream arms wind celestially about his neck; suffocated all remorse, all scruples, all purpose, all resolution, beneath kisses soft and seductive as the roseate clouds of a July sunset ... but there was no contact with the earthly Spawer. All this the vast dream-Spawer did, but the small earthly Spawer beneath stood still and looked at the sea.

And a little later the searching eye from Farnborough, stealing a sly glimpse at the second seat, said a sudden "Hello!" and gazed in unconcealed, wide-open surprise. "H'm!" it reflected, in a tone of considerable disappointment. "So they 've gone at last. Sorry I could n't see the end of that business. Wonder where they are now."

But it had other little episodes to keep its eye upon--Merensea, Farnborough, and even Spathorpe way--and could not afford to waste time in useless regrets.

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