[Illustration: THE SOUTH WIND]
It is impossible to say through which sense, or combination of senses,
I knew that Someone was approaching--was already near; but most
probably it was the deep underlying ‘mother-sense’ including them all
that conveyed the delicate warning. At any rate, the scene-shifters of
my moods knew it too, for very swiftly they prepared the stage; then,
ever soft-footed and invisible, stood aside to wait.
As I went down the village street on my way to bed after midnight,
the high Alpine valley lay silent in its frozen stillness. For days
it had now lain thus, even the mouths of its cataracts stopped with
ice; and for days, too, the dry, tight cold had drawn up the nerves of
the humans in it to a sharp, thin pitch of exhilaration that at last
began to call for the gentler comfort of relaxation. The key had been a
little too high, the inner tautness too prolonged. The tension of that
implacable north-east wind, the _bise noire_, had drawn its twisted
wires too long through our very entrails. We all sighed for some
loosening of the bands--the comforting touch of something damp, soft,
less penetratingly acute.
And now, as I turned, midway in the little journey from the inn to my
room above La Poste, this sudden warning that Someone was approaching
repeated its silent wireless message, and I paused to listen and to
watch.
Yet at first I searched in vain. The village street lay empty--a white
ribbon between the black walls of the big-roofed châlets; there were
no lights in any of the houses; the hotels stood gaunt and ugly with
their myriad shuttered windows; and the church, topped by the Crown of
Savoy in stone, was so engulfed by the shadows of the mountains that it
seemed almost a part of them.
Beyond, reared the immense buttresses of the Dent du Midi, terrible
and stalwart against the sky, their feet resting among the crowding
pines, their streaked precipices tilting up at violent angles towards
the stars. The bands of snow, belting their enormous flanks, stretched
for miles, faintly gleaming, like Saturn’s rings. To the right I could
just make out the pinnacles of the Dents Blanches, cruelly pointed;
and, still farther, the Dent de Bonnaveau, as of iron and crystal,
running up its gaunt and dreadful pyramid into relentless depths of
night. Everywhere in the hard, black-sparkling air was the rigid spell
of winter. It seemed as if this valley could never melt again, never
know currents of warm wind, never taste the sun, nor yield its million
flowers.
And now, dipping down behind me out of the reaches of the darkness,
the New Comer moved close, heralded by this subtle yet compelling
admonition that had arrested me in my very tracks. For, just as I
turned in at the door, kicking the crunched snow from my boots against
the granite step, I _knew_ that, from the heart of all this tightly
frozen winter’s night, the ‘Someone’ whose message had travelled so
delicately in advance was now, quite suddenly, at my very heels.
And while my eyes lifted to sift their way between the darkness and
the snow I became aware that It was already coming down the village
street. It ran on feathered feet, pressing close against the enclosing
walls, yet at the same time spreading from side to side, brushing
the window-panes, rustling against the doors, and even including the
shingled roofs in its enveloping advent. It came, too--_against the
wind_....
It flew up close and passed me, very faintly singing, running down
between the châlets and the church, very swift, very soft, neither
man nor animal, neither woman, girl, nor child, turning the corner of
the snowy road beyond the _Curé’s_ house with a rushing, cantering
motion, that made me think of a Body of water--something of fluid and
generous shape, too mighty to be confined in common forms. And, as it
passed, it touched me--touched me through all skin and flesh upon the
naked nerves, loosening, relieving, setting free the congealed sources
of life which the _bise_ so long had mercilessly bound, so that magic
currents, flowing and released, washed down all the secret byways of
the spirit and flooded again with full tide into a thousand dried-up
cisterns of the heart.
The thrill I experienced is quite incommunicable in words. I ran
upstairs and opened all my windows wide, knowing that soon the
Messenger would return with a million others--only to find that already
it had been there before me. Its taste was in the air, fragrant and
alive; in my very mouth--and all the currents of the inner life ran
sweet again, and full. Nothing in the whole village was quite the same
as it had been before. The deeply slumbering peasants, even behind
their shuttered windows and barred doors; the _Curé_, the servants at
the inn, the consumptive man opposite, the children in the house behind
the church, the horde of tourists in the caravanserai--all knew--more
or less, according to the delicacy of their receiving apparatus--that
Something charged with fresh and living force had swept on viewless
feet down the village street, passed noiselessly between the cracks
of doors and windows, touched nerves and eyelids, and--set them free.
In response to the great Order of Release that the messenger had left
everywhere behind her, even the dreams of the sleepers had shifted into
softer and more flowing keys....
And the Valley--the Valley also knew! For, as I watched from my
window, something loosened about the trees and stones and boulders;
about the massed snows on the great slopes; about the roots of the
hanging icicles that fringed and sheeted the dark cliffs; and down
in the deepest beds of the killed and silent streams. Far overhead,
across those desolate bleak shoulders of the mountains, ran some
sudden softness like the rush of awakening life ... and was gone. A
touch, lithe yet dewy, as of silk and water mixed, dropped softly over
all ... and, silently, without resistance, the _bise noire_, utterly
routed, went back to the icy caverns of the north and east, where it
sleeps, hated of men, and dreams its keen black dreams of death and
desolation....
... And some five hours later, when I woke and looked towards the
sunrise, I saw those strips of pearly grey, just tinged with red, the
Messenger had been to summon ... charged with the warm moisture that
brings relief. On the wings of a rising South Wind they came down
hurriedly to cap the mountains and to unbind the captive forces of
life; then moved with flying streamers up our own valley, sponging from
the thirsty woods their richest perfume....
And farther down, in soft, wet fields, stood the leafless poplars,
with little pools of water gemming the grass between and pouring their
musical overflow through runnels of dark and sodden leaves to join the
rapidly increasing torrents descending from the mountains. For across
the entire valley ran magically that sweet and welcome message of
relief which Job knew when he put the whole delicious tenderness and
passion of it into less than a dozen words: ‘_He comforteth the earth
with the south wind._’