Some remnant of ghostly knowledge quickened. Behind the mind and brain,
in that region, perhaps, where thought ceases and intuition offers
her amazing pageant, there stirred--reality. Times and seasons, I
seemed to realise, have spiritual importance; there is a meaning in
months and hours; if noon is different from six o’clock, what happens
at noon varies in import from what happens at six o’clock, although
the happening itself at both moments be identical. An event holds its
minimum or its maximum of meaning according to the moment when it
happens. Its effectiveness varies with the context.
Power is poured out, or power is kept back. To ask a man for energetic
action when he is falling asleep is to court refusal; to expect life of
him when he is overflowing with vitality and joy is probably to obtain
it. The hand is stretched out to give, or the hand is withheld.
With the natural forces of the earth--it now dawned upon me--the method
was precisely similar. Nature and human-nature reacted differently
at different moments. At the moment of equilibrium called “equinox,”
there was a state of balance so perfect that this balance could be most
easily, most naturally--transcended.
And objects in the outer world around me changed. Their meaning,
ordinarily superficial, appeared of incalculable significance. The
innate activities of Nature, the elements, I realised indeed as
modes of life; the communication Julius foreshadowed, a possible and
_natural_ thing.
Someone, I believe, was speaking of these and similar things--words
came floating on the wind, it seemed--yet with meanings so remote
from all that my mind of To-day deemed possible, that I scarcely knew
whether it was the voice of my companion speaking, or a voice of
another kind, whispering in my very blood.
In Bâle a week ago, or in London six weeks ago, such theories would
have left me cold. Now, at this particular juncture, they came with a
solemn beauty I can only account for by the fact that I had changed
into almost another being. My mind seemed ready for anything and
everything. No modern creeds and dogmas could confine my imagination....
I had entered a different cycle of operation. I felt these ideas
all-over-me. The brain might repeat insistently “this is false,
this is superstition”; but something bigger than reason steadily
overrode the criticism. My point of view had changed. In some new way,
strangely exciting, I saw everything at once. My entire Self became the
percipient, rather than my five separate senses. In Nature all around
me another language uttered. It was the cosmic sense that stirred and
woke. It was another mode of consciousness.
We three, it came upon me, were acting out some omitted detail of a
great world-purpose. The fact that _she_ forgot, that I was ignorant,
that Julius LeVallon seemed guilty of unmoral things--these were but
ripples upon the deep tide that bore us forward. We were uttering a
great sentence we had left unfinished. I knew not exactly what was
coming, only that we had begun its utterance ages before the present,
and probably upon a planet nearer to the sun than our younger earth.
The verb had not yet made its appearance in this sentence, but it would
presently appear and explain the series of acts, and, meanwhile, I
must go on acting and wondering what it all could mean. I thought of
a language that first utters the nouns and adjectives, then adds the
verb at the end, explaining the whole series of unmeaning sounds. Our
“experiment” was the verb.
Then came the voice of Julius suddenly:
“Fate is the true complement of yourself; it completes your nature. By
doing it, you become one with your surroundings. Note attitude and
gesture--of yourself and of everything. They are signs. Our attitudes
must coincide with that of the earth to the heavens--possible only
at the Equinox. We must feel with her. We then act with her. Do not
resist. Let this valley say to you what it will. Regard it, and regard
our life here at the moment, as a symbol, clothed in a whole story of
information, the story varying with every hour of the day and with the
slightest change of the earth in relation to the universe.”
It seemed I watched the track of some unknown animal upon the ground,
and tried to reconstruct the entire creature. Such imprint is but a
trace of the invisible being that has made it. All about this valley
there were tracks offering a hint of Beings that had left them--that
any moment might reveal themselves. Julius talked on in his calm and
unimpassioned way. I both understood and could not understand. I
realised that there is a language for the mind, but no language for the
spirit. There are no words in which to express big cosmic meanings.
Action--a three-dimensional language--alone could be their vehicle.
The knowledge must be performed--acted out in ceremony. Comprehension
filtered into me, though how I cannot say.
“Symbols are merely the clues,” he went on. “It is a question of
stimulating your own imagination. Into the images created by your own
activities the meaning flows. You must play with them and let them play
with you. They depend for their meaning on history and happenings,
and vary according to their setting--the time of day or night, the
season of the year, the year itself, the exact relation of your Self
to every other Self, human _or otherwise_, in the universe. Let your
life and activities now arrange themselves in such a way that they
shall demonstrate the workings of the elemental powers you feel about
you. Every automatic activity of your body, every physiological process
in you, links you on to this great elemental side of things. Be open
now to the language of action. Think of the motion of all objects
here as connected with the language of symbols, a living, ever-moving
language, and do not allow your mind to mutilate the moods that come
upon you. Let your nerves, if they will, come into contact with the
Nature Powers, and so realise that the three kingdoms are alive. Watch
your own automatic activities--I mean what you do unconsciously without
deliberate thinking. For what you do consciously you are learning,
but what you do unconsciously you have learned before. We have to
_become_ the performance by acting it--instantaneous understanding.
All such attitudes are language, and the power to read it comes from a
synthetical, intuitive feeling of the entire being. The heart may get
one letter only, but that letter is a clue, an omen. A moth flies into
the room and everything immediately looks different; it remains the
same, yet means something different. It’s like the vowel in the ancient
languages--put in later, according to the meaning. You have, I know,
forgotten”--he paused a moment and put his hand on my shoulder--“but
every wind that blows across our valley here, and every change in
temperature that lowers or raises the heat and fire of your own
particular system”--he looked at me with a power in bearing and gesture
impossible to describe--“is a sign and hint of whether----”
He stopped, glancing suddenly down the steep grass slopes. A breeze
stirred the hair upon his forehead. It brushed my eyes and cheeks as
well. I felt as though a hand had touched me as it passed invisibly.
A momentary sensation of energy, of greater life swept over me, then
disappeared as though the wind had borne it off.
“Of whether your experiment will be successful?” I broke in.
Turning his eyes from the sunny valley to my face again, he said slowly:
“These Powers can only respond to the language they understand. My
deliverance must be experienced, acted out.”
“A ceremony?” I asked, wondering uneasily what “acts of language” he
might demand of me and of another.
“To restore them finally--where they rightfully belong,” he answered,
“I must become them. There is no other way.”
How little intelligible result issued from this conversation must
be apparent from the confused report here given, yet that something
deep and true was in _his_ mind lay beyond all question. At the back
of my own, whence no satisfactory sentences could draw it out into
clean description, floated this idea that the three of us were already
acting out some vast, strange ceremonial in which Nature, indeed the
very earth and heavens themselves, were acting with us. There was this
co-operation, this deep alliance. The “experiment” we approached would
reveal itself in natural happenings and circumstances. Action was to
take the place of words, conveying meaning as speech or handwriting
conveys a message. The attitude of ourselves, the very grouping of
inanimate objects, of trees and hills, the effects of light and shade,
the moods of day and night, above all, the time and season of the year
which is nothing but the attitude of the earth towards the rest of the
universe--all these, as modes of intelligent expression, would belong
to the strange performance. They were the conscious gestures of the
universe. If I could _feel-with_ them, interpretation would be mine.
And, that I understood even this proved memory. “You will gradually
become conscious,” he said, “of various signs about you. Analyse these
signs. But analyse them with a view to creating language. For language
does not create ideas; Ideas become language. Put the vowels in. When
communication begins to be established, the inanimate world here will
talk to you as in the fairy tales--seem alive. Play with it, as you
play with symbols in algebra before you rise to the higher mathematics.
So, notice and think about anything that”--he emphasised the verb
significantly--“_draws_ your attention. Do not point out at the moment;
that’s compulsion and rouses opposition; just be aware and accept by
noticing. And do not concentrate too much; what flows in must also
be able to flow out; otherwise there comes congestion, and so--fear.
In this valley the channels all are open, and wonder everywhere. The
more you wonder, the more your memory will come back and consciousness
extend. Great language has no words. The only way to grow in
consciousness is to be for ever changing your ideas and point of view.
Accept Nature here. Feel like a tree and then like a star. Be violent
with wind, and burn with fire. These things are forgotten To-day
because Wonder has left the world--and with it worship. So do not be
ashamed to wonder at anything you notice. It all lies in you--I know
that--and here it will rise to the surface.” He laughed. “If a woman,”
he went on, “wears embroidered lilies on her dress, all London seems
full of flower-sellers. They were there before, but she had nothing in
herself to make her conscious of them. Notice all the little things,
for you are a portion of the universe as much as Sirius or Vega, and
in living relation with every other atom. You can share Nature, and
here in our secret valley you may welcome her without alarm. The cosmic
organism, denied by civilisation, survives in you as it survives also
in myself and in--my wife. Through that, and through that alone, is the
experiment possible to us.”
And it flashed into me that my visit to this enchanted valley would
witness no concentrated, miniature “ceremonial,” reduced in form for
worship as in a church or temple, but that all we did and experienced
in the course of normal, every-day life would mark the outlines of this
vast performance. Understanding would come that way.
And then the mention of his “wife” brought me sharply back to emotions
of--another kind. My thought leaped back again--by what steps I cannot
say, it seemed so disconnected with what had just occupied my mind--to
his statement of ten minutes before.
“By becoming them,” I asked, “you mean that you must feel-with wind and
fire to the point of being them?”
“You think this might be done alone, without your help or hers?” he
asked, picking the thought straight out of my mind. “But only a group
could have done what we did--a group, moreover, in perfect sympathy.
For as love between the three of us was essential to success then, so
is love between us essential now. A group, combined by love into a
unit, exerts a power impossible to an individual. The secret of our
power lies in that--ideal love and perfect sympathy.”
I listened, sure of one thing only--that I would keep an open mind.
To deny, object, criticise, above all to ridicule would rob me of an
experience. I believe honestly this was my attitude: to miss no value
that might be in it by assuming it was nonsense merely because it
was so strange. Apart from the curious fact that something in me was
sympathetic to a whole world of deep ideas behind his language, I felt
the determined desire to see the matter through. There was no creed or
religious dogma in me to offend. I made myself receptive. For, out of
this singular exposition the conviction grew that I was entering almost
a new order of existence, and that an earlier mode of consciousness
revived.
In this lonely valley, untouched by the currents of modern thought
and feeling, companioned by Julius LeVallon and that old, recovered
soul, his wife, the conditions of our previous existence together
perhaps re-formed themselves. Behind his talk came ideas that wore an
aspect of familiarity, although my present brain, try as it might,
failed to mould them into any acceptable form. The increasing change
in myself was certainly significant. The crumbling of old shibboleths
continued. A relationship between my inner nature and the valley seemed
established in some way that was new, yet not entirely forgotten. The
very sunlight and the wind assisted. Closer to the natural things I
felt, the earth not alien to me....
We had neared the châlet again. I saw the peat smoke rising against
the background of the ridges. The “man” was whistling at his work in
the yard behind the building. The column of smoke, I remember, was
agitated by the wind towards the top; it turned, blew downwards. No
other sign of movement was anywhere visible, for in the bottom of the
hollow where we now stood, the wind did not even stir the isolated
larches or tall yellow gentians. Sunshine flooded everything. Out
of this peace and stillness then came a sudden cry and the sight of
something moving rapidly--both from the châlet.
“Julius!” called a shrill voice, as the figure of Mrs. LeVallon, with
flying hair and skirts, came running over the meadow towards us.
“Julius!--Professor! Quick!”
The voice and figure startled me; both came, it seemed, out of some
other place; a picture from my youth rose up--a larch grove in October
upon the Pentland Hills. I experienced a sense of deep and thrilling
beauty similar to what I had felt then. But as I watched the slim,
hurrying figure I was aware of another thing that left me breathless:
For with her, as she passed through chequered sun and shadow along
the fringe of forest, there moved something else enormously larger
than herself. It was in the air about her. Like that strange Pentland
memory, it whirled. It was formless, and owing to its huge proportions
gave the impression of moving slowly, yet its very formlessness was
singularly impressive and alive, so that the word “body” sprang
instantly into my mind. Actually it moved at a tremendous speed.
In my first confusion and bewilderment I remember saying aloud in sheer
amazement: “a fragment of the day has broken off; it’s clothed in wind
and sunlight!”
A phrase quite meaningless, of course, yet somehow accurately
descriptive, for it appealed to me as a fragment of conditionless,
universal activity that had seized upon available common elements to
furnish itself a visible appearance. I got the astounding suggestion
that it was heat and air moving under intelligent and conscious
direction. Combined with its airy lightness there was power, for in
its brief, indeed its instantaneous, appearance I felt persuaded of an
irresistible strength that no barrier of solid matter could possibly
withstand. At the same time it was transparent, for I saw the trees
upon its further side. It passed ahead of the human figure, so close it
seemed to touch her dress, rose with a kind of swift, driving plunge
into the air, slipped meltingly into the clean blue colour of the
atmosphere--and disappeared.
And so swift was the entire presentment of the thing, that even while
I tried to focus my sight upon it to make sure I was not deceived, it
had both come and gone. The same second Julius caught my arm. I heard
him utter a quick, low cry, stifled instantly. He gasped. He quivered.
I heard him whispering:
“Already! Your presence here--the additional forces that _you_
bring--are known and recognised! See, how complete we are--a unit--you,
she and I--a trinity!”
A coldness not of this world touched me as I heard. But that first
sense of joy and beauty followed. I felt it true--the three of us were
somehow one.
“You saw it too?” I asked, exhilaration still about me.
“They are everywhere and close,” he whispered quickly, as the running
figure came on toward us, “breaking out into visible manifestation
even. Hold yourself strong and steady. Remember, your attitude of mind
and feeling are important. Each detail of behaviour is significant.”
His anxiety, I realised, was for us, not for himself. Already, it
seemed, our souls were playing vital rôles in some great dramatic
ceremonial just beginning. What we did and felt and thought was
but a partial expression of something going forward with pregnant
completeness behind the visible appearances all round. Mrs. LeVallon
stood breathless in front of us. She was hatless, her hair becomingly
dishevelled; her arms bare to the elbow and white with flour. She
stopped, placed her hands upon her hips, and panted for a full minute
before she could get breath enough to speak. Her eyes, a deep, luminous
sea-green, looked into ours. Her face was pale, yet the emotion was
excitement rather than alarm. I was aware of a superb, nymph-like
grace and charm about her. I caught my breath. Julius made no movement,
spoke no word. I wondered. I made a step forward to catch her. But she
did not fall; she merely sank down upon the ground at our feet.
“Julius,” she panted, “that thing I’ve dreamed about so of_t_en----”
She stopped short, glancing up at me, the eyes, charged with a sweet
agitation, full upon my own. I turned to Julius with a gesture of
uncontrollable impatience.
He spoke calmly, sitting down on the slope beside her. “You felt it
again--the effect of your vivid dreaming? Or did you this time--see
anything?”
The swiftness and surprise of the little scene had been bewildering,
but the moment he spoke confusion and suspense both vanished. The sound
of his quiet voice restored the threatened balance. Peace came back
into the sunlight and the air. There was composure again.
“You certainly were not frightened!” he added, as she made no reply.
“You look too happy and exhilarated for that.” He put his hand on hers.
I sat down then beside her, and she turned and looked at me with a
pathetic mingling of laughter and agitation still in her wide-opened
eyes. The three of us were close together. He kept his hand on hers.
Her shoulder touched me. I was aware of something very wonderful there
between us. We comforted her, but it was more, far more, than that.
There was sheer, overflowing happiness in it.
“It came into the house,” she said, her breath recovered now, and her
voice gentle. “It follered me--out here. I ran.” She looked swiftly
round at me. The radiance in her face was quite astonishing, turning
her almost beautiful. Her eyelids quivered a moment and the corners of
her lips seemed trying to smile--or not to smile. She was happy there,
sitting between us two. Yet there was nothing light or foolish in her.
Something of worship rose in me as I watched her.
“Well,” urged Julius, “and then--what?” I saw him watching me as well
as her. “You remembered your dream, you felt something, and--you ran
out here to us. What else?”
She hesitated deliciously. But it was not that she wanted coaxing. She
evidently knew not how to tell the thing she had to say. She looked
hard into my face, her eyes keenly searching.
“It has something to do with _him_, you mean?” asked Julius, noting the
direction of her questioning gaze.
“Oh, I’m glad he’s here,” she answered quickly. “It’s the best thing
that could happen.” And she looked round again at Julius, moving her
hand upon his own.
“We need him,” said Julius simply with a smile. Then, suddenly, she
took my hand too, and held it tightly. “He’s a protection, I think, as
well,” she added quite gravely; “that’s how I feel him.” Her hand lay
warm and fast on mine.
There was a pause. I felt her fingers strongly clasp my own. The three
of us were curiously linked together somehow by those two hands of
hers. A great harmony united us. The day was glorious, the power of the
sun divine, there was power in the wind that touched our faces.
“Yes,” she continued slowly, “I think it had to do with him--with
_you_, Professor,” she repeated emphatically, fixing her bright gaze
upon me. “I think you brought it--brought my dream back--brought that
thing I dreamed about into--the house itself.” And in her excitement
she said distinctly “’ouse.”
I found no word to say at the moment. She kept her hand firmly upon
mine.
“I was making bread there, by the back winder as usual,” she went
on, “when suddenly I started thinking of that splendid dream I’ve
had so of_t_en--of you,” looking at her husband, “and me and another
man--that’s _you_ I’m sure,” she gazed at me--“all three of us doing
some awful thing together in a place underground somewhere, but dressed
quite different to what we are now, and standing round a lot of people
sleeping in a row--when something we expected, yet were frightened at,
used to come in--and give me such a start that I always woke up before
knowing what was really going to happen.”
She paused a second. She was confused. Her sentences ran into each
other.
“Well, I was making the bread there when the wind came in with a bang
and sent the flour in a cloud all over everything--look! You can see
it over my dress still--and with it, sort of behind it, so to speak,
something followed with a rush--oh, an enormous rush and scurry it
was--and I thought I was rising in the air, or going to burn to pieces
by the heat that came in with it. I felt big like--as the sea when
you get out of your depth and feel yourself being carried away. I
screamed--and the three of us were all together in a moment, just as in
the dream, you know--and we were glad, tremendously glad, because we’d
got something we wanted that made us feel as if we could do anything,
oh, anything in the world--a sort of ’eavenly power I think it was--and
then, just as we were going to use our power and do all kinds of things
with it, someone--I don’t know who it was, for I never can see the
face--a man, though--one of those sleeping figures--rose up and came at
us all in a fury, and--well, I don’t know exactly, but it all turned
out a failure somehow--It got terrible then----” She looked like a
flash of lightning into my face, then dropped her eyes again.
“You acted out your dream, as it were?” interrupted Julius a moment.
She looked at him with a touch of wonder. “I suppose so,” she said,
and let go both our hands. “Only this time someone really did come in
and caught me just as I seemed going out of myself--it may have been
fainting, but I don’t think so, for I’m never one to faint--more like
being carried off in a storm, a storm with wind and fire in it----”
“It was the ‘man’ caught you?” I asked quickly.
“The man, yes,” she continued. “I didn’t fall. He caught me just in
time; but my wind was gone--gone clean out of me as though someone had
knocked me down.”
“He said nothing?” Julius asked.
She looked sharply at him. “Nothing,” she answered, “not a single word.
I ran away. He frightened me. For a moment--I was that confused with
remembering my dream, I suppose; so I just pushed him off and ran out
here to find you both. I’d been watching you for a long time while I
was mixing the dough.”
“I’m glad he was close enough to help you,” put in Julius.
“Well,” she explained, “I’ve a sort of idea he was watching me and saw
the thing coming, for he’d been in and out of the kitchen for half an
hour before, asking me silly questions about whether I wanted this or
that, and fussing about”--she laughed at her own description--“just
like an old faithful dog or something.”
We all laughed together then.
“I’m glad I found you so quickly,” she concluded, “because while I was
running up here I felt that something was running with me--something
that was burning and rushing--like a bit of what was in the house.”
She stopped, and a shadow passed across her eyes, changing their colour
to that nondescript grey tint they sometimes wore. The wonderful
deep green went out of them. And for a moment there was silence that
seemed to fill the entire valley. Julius watched her steadily, strong
and comforting in his calmness. The valley, I felt, watched us too,
something protective in its perfect stillness. All signs of agitation
were gone; the wind sank down; the trees stood by in solemn rows; the
very clouds moved more slowly down the calm blue sky. I watched the
bosom of Mrs. LeVallon rise and fall as she recovered breath again.
She put her hands up to gather in the hair at the back of her head,
deftly tidying its disordered masses, and as she did so I felt her
gaze draw my own with a force I could not resist. We looked into each
other’s eyes for a full two minutes, no one speaking, no signs anywhere
exchanged, Julius watchfully observant close beside us; and though I
know not how to tell it quite, it is a fact that something passed from
those clear, discerning eyes into my heart, convincing me more than any
words of Julius ever could, that all he claimed about her and myself
was true. She was imperial somewhere.... She had once been mine....
The cloud passed slowly from her face. To my intense relief--for I
had the dread that the silent gaze would any moment express itself in
fateful words as well. The muscles of her firm, wide mouth relaxed. She
broke into happy laughter suddenly.
“It’s very silly of me to think and feel such things, or be troubled
by a dream,” she exclaimed, still holding my eyes, and her laughter
running over me like some message of forgiveness. “We shall frighten
him away,” she went on, turning now to Julius, “before he’s had time
to taste the new bread I’m making--for him.” Her manner was quiet
and composed again, natural, prettily gracious. I searched in vain
for something to say; the turmoil of emotion within offered too many
possible rejoinders; I could not choose. Julius, however, relieved me
of the necessity by taking her soothingly in both his arms and kissing
her. The next second, before I could move or speak, she leaned over
against my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek as well.
Yet nothing happened; there was no sign anywhere that an unusual thing
had occurred; I felt that the sun and wind had touched me. It was as
natural as shaking hands. Ah! but the sun and wind were magical with
life!
“There!” she laughed happily, “we’re all three together and
understanding, and nothing can go wrong. Isn’t it so, Julius?” And,
if there was archness in her voice and manner, there was certainly no
trace of that mischief which can give offence. “And you understand,
Professor, don’t you?”
I saw him take her hand and stroke it. He showed no more resentment
than if she had handed me a flower. And I tried to understand. I
struggled. I at least succeeded in keeping my attitude of thought and
feeling above destructive levels. We three were one; love made us so. A
devouring joy was in me, but with it the strange power of a new point
of view.
“We couldn’t be together like this,” she laughed naïvely, “in a city.
It’s only here. It’s this valley and the sun and wind what does it.”
She looked round her. “All this sun and air, and the flowers, and the
forest and the clear cold little stream. Why, _I_ believe, if we stay
here we shall never die at all. We’d turn into gods or something.”
She murmured on half to herself, the voice sinking towards a
whisper--leaning over upon her husband’s breast, she stretched out
her hand and quietly took my own again. “It’s got much stronger,” I
heard, “since _he’s_ come; it makes me feel closer to you too, Julius.
Only--he’s with us as well, just like--just as if we were all meant for
each other somehow.”
There was pressure, yet no suggestive pressure, in the hand that held
my own. It just took me firmly, with a slight gesture of drawing me
closer to herself and to Julius too. It united us all three. And,
strange as it all was, I, for my part, was aware of no uneasiness,
no discomfort, no awkwardness certainly. I only felt that what she
said was true: we were linked together by some deep sympathy of
feeling-with; we were at one; we were marvellously fused by some tie of
universal life that this enchanted valley made apparent. Nature fused
with human nature, raising us all to a diviner level.
There was a period of silence in which no one moved or spoke; and then,
to my relief, words came from Julius--natural and unforced, yet with a
meaning that I saw was meant for me:
“The presence of so distinguished a man,” he said lightly, looking down
into her face with almost a boyish smile, “is bound to make itself felt
anywhere.” He glanced across at me significantly. “Even the forces of
Nature in this peaceful valley, you see, are aware of his arrival, and
have sent out messengers to greet him. Only,” he added, “they need not
be in such a hurry about it, need they--or so violent?”
We all laughed together. It was the only reference he made in her
presence to what had happened. Nor did she ask a single question. We
lay a little longer, basking in the sunlight and breathing the fragrant
mountain air, and then Mrs. LeVallon sprang to her feet alertly, saying
that she must go and finish her bread. Julius went with her. I was left
alone--with the eerie feeling that more than these two had just been
with me....
Less than an hour later the horizon darkened suddenly. Out of a
harmless sky appeared masses of ominous cloud. Wild gusts of hot,
terrific wind rushed sideways over the swaying forest. The trees shook
to their roots, groaning; they shouted; loosened stones fell rattling
down the nearer gullies; and, following a minute of deep silence,
there blazed forth then a wild glory of lightning such as I have never
witnessed. It was a dancing sea of white and violet. It came from every
quarter of the sky at once with a dazzling fury as though the entire
atmosphere were set on fire. The wind and thunder shook the mountains.
From a cupful of still, sweet sunshine, our little valley changed into
a scene of violent pandemonium. The precipices tossed the echoing
thunder back and forth, the clear stream beside the châlet became a
torrent of foaming, muddy water, and the wind was of such convulsive
turbulence that it seemed to break with explosive detonations that
menaced the upheaval of all solid things. There was a magnificence in
it all as though the universe, and not a small section of the sky,
produced it.
It passed away again as swiftly as it came. At lunch time the sun
blazed down upon a drenched and laughing scene, washed as by magic,
brilliant and calm as though made over all afresh. The air was limpid;
the forest poured out perfume; the meadows shone and twinkled.
During the assault I saw neither Julius nor the Man, but in the
occasional deep pauses I heard the voice of Mrs. LeVallon singing gaily
while she kneaded bread at the kitchen “winder” just beneath my own.
She, at any rate, was not afraid. But, while it was in progress, I went
alone to my room and watched it, caught by a strange sensation of power
and delight its grandeur woke in me, and also by a sense of wonder that
was on the increase.