I
The situation at this point of his amazing adventure seems to have been
that the fear Spinrobin felt about the nature of the final Experiment was
met and equalized by his passionate curiosity regarding it. Had these
been the only two forces at work, the lightest pressure in either
direction would have brought him to a decision. He would have accepted
the challenge and stayed; or he would have hesitated, shirked, and left.
There was, however, another force at work upon which he had hardly
calculated at the beginning, and that force now came into full
operation and controlled his decision with margin and to spare. He
loved Miriam; and even had he not loved her, it is probable that her
own calm courage would have put him to shame and made him "face the
music." He could no more have deserted her than he could have deserted
himself. The die was cast.
Moreover, if the certainty that Mr. Skale was trafficking in dangerous
and unlawful knowledge was formidable enough to terrify him, for Miriam,
at least, it held nothing alarming. She had no qualms, knew no
uneasiness. She looked forward to the end with calmness, even with joy,
just as ordinary good folk look forward to a heaven beyond death. For she
had never known any other ideal. Mr. Skale to her was father, mother and
God. He had brought her up during all the twenty years of her life in
this solitude among the mountains, choosing her reading, providing her
companionship, training her with the one end in view of carrying out his
immense and fire-stealing purpose.
She had never dreamed of any other end, and had been so drilled with the
idea that this life was but a tedious training-place for a worthier state
to come, that she looked forward, naturally enough, with confidence and
relief to the great Experiment that should bring her release. She knew
vaguely that there was a certain awful danger involved, but it never for
one instant occurred to her that Mr. Skale could fail. And, so far,
Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attempted
ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experiment
might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces
that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed,
was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it.
Skale was tempting the Olympian powers to crush him.
It was about this time, however, as has been seen from a slight incident
in the last chapter, that a change began to steal, at first
imperceptibly, then obviously, over their relations together. Spinrobin
had been in the house three weeks--far longer, no doubt, than any of the
other candidates. There only remained now the final big tests. The
preliminary ones were successfully passed. Miriam knew that very soon the
moment would come for him to stay--or go. And it was in all probability
this reflection that helped her to make certain discoveries in herself
that at first she did not in the least understand.
Spinrobin, however, understood perfectly. His own heart made him
intuitive enough for that. And the first signs thrilled and moved him
prodigiously. His account of it all is like no love story that has ever
been heard, for in the first place this singular girl hardly breathed
about her the reality of an actual world. She had known nothing beyond
the simple life in this hollow of the hills on the one hand, and on the
other the portentous conceptions that peopled the region of dream
revealed by the clergyman. And in the second place she had no standards
but her own instincts to judge by, for Mrs. Mawle, in spite of her
devotion to the girl, suffered under too great disabilities to fill the
place of a mother, while Mr. Skale was too lost in his vast speculations
to guide her except in a few general matters, and too sure of her at the
same time to reflect that she might ever need detailed guidance. Her
exceedingly natural and wholesome bringing-up on the one hand, and her
own native purity and good sense on the other, however, led her fairly
straight; while the fact that Spinrobin, with his modesty and his fine
aspirations, was a "little gentleman" into the bargain, ensured that no
unlawful temptation should be placed in her way, or undue pressure, based
upon her ignorance, employed.
II
They were coming down one afternoon from the mountains soon after the
test of calling his name, and they were alone, the clergyman being
engaged upon some mysterious business that had kept him out of sight all
day. They did not talk much, but they were happy in each other's company,
Spinrobin more than happy. Much of the time, when the ground allowed,
they went along hand in hand like children.
"Miriam," he had asked on the top of the moors, "did I ever tell you
about Winky--my little friend Winky?" And she had looked up with a smile
and shaken her head. "But I like the name," she added; "I should like to
hear, please." And he told her how as a boy he had invoked various folk
to tease his sister, of whom Winky was chief, but in telling the story he
somehow or other always referred to the little person by name, and never
once revealed his sex. He told, too, how he sat all night on the lawn
outside his sister's window to intercept the expected visit.
"Winky," she said, speaking rather low, "is a true name, of course.
You really created Winky--called Winky into being." For to her now
this seemed as true and possible as it had seemed to himself at the
age of ten.
"Oh, I really loved Winky," he replied enthusiastically, and was at the
same moment surprised to feel her draw away her hand. "Winky lived for
years in my very heart."
And the next thing he knew, after a brief silence between them, was
that he heard a sob, and no attempt to smother it either. In less than
a second he was beside her and had both her hands in his. He understood
in a flash.
"You precious baby," he cried, "but Winky was a little man. He
wasn't a girl!"
She looked up through her tears--oh, but how wonderful her grey eyes were
through tears!--and made him stand still before her and repeat his
sentence. And she said, "I know it's true, but I like to hear you say it,
and that's why I asked you to repeat it."
"Miriam," he said to her softly, kneeling down on the heather at her
feet, "there's only one name in my heart, I can tell you that. I heard it
sing and sing the moment I came into this house, the very instant I first
saw you in that dark passage. I knew perfectly well, ages and ages ago,
that one day a girl with your name would come singing into my life to
make me complete and happy, but I never believed that she would look as
beautiful as you are." He kissed the two hands he held. "Or that
she--would--would think of me as you do," he stammered in his passion.
And then Miriam, smiling down on him through her tears, bent and kissed
his feathery hair, and immediately after was on her knees in front of him
among the heather.
"I own you," she said quite simply. "I know your name, and you know mine.
Whatever happens--" But Spinrobin was too happy to hear any more, and
putting both arms round her neck, he kissed the rest of her words away
into silence.
And in the very middle of this it was that the girl gently, but very
firmly, pushed him from her, and Spinrobin in the delicacy of his mind
understood that for the first time in her curious, buried life the
primitive instincts had awakened, so that she knew herself a woman, and a
woman, moreover, who loved.
* * * * *
Thus caught in a bewildering network of curiosity, fear, wonder,
and--love, Spinrobin stayed on, and decided further that should the
clergyman approve him he would not leave. Yet his intimate relations now
with Miriam, instead of making it easier for him to learn the facts, made
it on the other hand more difficult. For he could not, of course, make
use of her affection to learn secrets that Mr. Skale did not yet wish him
to know. And, further, he had no desire to be disloyal either to him.
None the less he was sorely tempted to ask her what the final experiment
was, and what the 'empty' rooms contained. And most of all what the great
name was they were finally to utter by means of the human chord.
The emotions playing about him at this time, however, were too
complicated and too violent to enable him to form a proper judgment of
the whole affair. It seems, indeed, that this calmer adjudication never
came to him at all, for even to this day the mere mention of the
clergyman's name brings to his round cheeks a flush of that enthusiasm
and wonder which are the enemies of all sober discrimination. Skale still
remains the great battering force of his life that carried him off his
feet towards the stars, and sent his imagination with wings of fire
tearing through the Unknown to a goal that once attained should make them
all four as gods.