Once ensconced, regardless of hard, narrow seats, heights, crowds, his
passion of adoration and excitement took him, shook him, tore him so
that it was wonder his frail body did not split in two, render up the
soul coming forth as Lazarus from the sepulchre. It was indeed, if you
knew little Ben Cohen, him, _himself_, difficult to realise that his
body had anything more to do with him than the yellow-drab water-proof
which is a sort of uniform--a species of charity, covering a multitude
of sins of poverty, shabbiness, thread-bareness--had to do with the
real Jenny Bligh.
And yet, Ben Cohen's body was more completely his than one might have
imagined. Jenny could, and indeed did, slough off her disguise on
Sundays or rare summer days; but Ben and that self which was apart from
music--that wildly-beating heart, pulsing blood, flooding warmth,
grateful as the watchman's fire in the fog-sodden yard, that little
fire over which he used to hang, warming his stiffened hands--were,
after all, amazingly one.
The thing surprised him even more than it surprised any one else; above
all, when it refused to be separated from his holy of holies, crept,
danced, smiled its way through the most portentous scores--a thrilling
sense of Jenny Bligh, all crotchets and quavers, smiles and thrills,
quaint homeliness, sudden dignity.
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