The lumbering yellow diligence brought them up from the Lake shore, a
long two hours, deposited them at the opening of the village street,
and went its grinding, toiling way towards the frontier. They arrived
in a blur of rain. It was evening. Lowering clouds drew night before
her time upon the world, obscuring the distant summits of the Oberland,
but lights twinkled here and there in the nearer landscape, mapping
the gloom with signals. The village was very still. Above and below
it, however, two big winds were at work, with curious results. For a
lower wind from the east in gusty draughts drove the body of the lake
into quick white horses which shone like wings against the deep _basses
Alpes_, while a westerly current swept the heights immediately above
the village. There was this odd division of two weathers, presaging a
change. A narrow line of clear bright sky showed up the Jura outline
finely towards the north, stars peeping sharply through the pale moist
spaces. Hurrying vapours, driven by the upper westerly wind, concealed
them thinly. They flashed and vanished. The entire ridge, five thousand
feet in the air, had an appearance of moving through the sky. Between
these opposing winds at different levels the village itself lay
motionless, while the world slid past, as it were, in two directions.
‘The earth seems turning round,’ remarked Lord Ernie. He had been
reading a novel all day in train and steamer, and smoking endless
cigarettes in the diligence, his companion and himself its only
occupants. He seemed suddenly to have waked up. ‘What is it?’ he asked
with interest.
Hendricks explained the queer effect of the two contrary winds. Columns
of peat smoke rose in thin straight lines from the blur of houses,
untouched by the careering currents above and below. The winds whirled
round them.
Lord Ernie listened attentively to the explanation.
‘I feel as if I were spinning with it--like a top,’ he observed,
putting his hand to his head a moment. ‘And what are those lights up
there?’
He pointed to the distant ridge, where fires were blazing as though
stars had fallen and set fire to the trees. Several were visible, at
regular intervals. The sharp summits of the limestone mountains cut
hard into the clear spaces of northern sky thousands of feet above.
‘Oh, the peasants burning wood and stuff, I suppose,’ the tutor told
him.
The youth turned an instant, standing still to examine them with a
shading hand.
‘People live up there?’ he asked. There was surprise in his voice, and
his body stiffened oddly as he spoke.
‘In mountain châlets, yes,’ replied the other a trifle impatiently,
noticing his attitude. ‘Come along now,’ he added, ‘let’s get to our
rooms in the carpenter’s house before the rain comes down. You can
see the windows twinkling over there,’ and he pointed to a building
near the church. ‘The storm will catch us.’ They moved quickly down
the deserted street together in the deepening gloom, passing little
gardens, doors of open barns, straggling manure heaps, and courtyards
of cobbled stones where the occasional figure of a man was seen. But
Lord Ernie lingered behind, half loitering. Once or twice, to the
other’s increasing annoyance, he paused, standing still to watch the
heights through openings between the tumble-down old houses. Half a
dozen big drops of rain splashed heavily on the road.
‘Hurry up!’ cried Hendricks, looking back, ‘or we shall be caught.
It’s the mountain wind--the _coup de joran_. You can hear it coming!’
For the lad was peering across a low wall in an attitude of fixed
attention. He made a gesture with one hand, as though he signalled
towards the ridges where the fires blazed. Hendricks called pretty
sharply to him then. It was possible, of course, that he misinterpreted
the movement; it _may_ merely have been that he passed his fingers
through his hair, across his eyes, or used the palm to focus sight, for
his hat was off and the light was quite uncertain. Only Hendricks did
not like the lingering or the gesture. He put authority into his tone
at once. ‘Come along, will you; come along, Bindy!’ he called.
The answer filled him with amazement.
‘All right, all right. I’ll follow in a moment. I like this.’
The tutor went back a few steps towards him. The tone startled him.
‘Like what?’ he asked.
And Lord Ernie turned towards him with another face. There was
fighting in it. There was resolution.
‘This, of course,’ the boy answered steadily, but with excitement shut
down behind, as he waved one arm towards the mountains. ‘I’ve dreamed
this sort of thing; I’ve known it somewhere. We’ve seen nothing like it
all our stupid trip.’ The flash in his brown eyes passed then, as he
added more quietly, but with firmness: ‘Don’t wait for me; I’ll follow.’
Hendricks stood still in his tracks. There was a decision in the voice
and manner that arrested him. The confidence, the positive statement,
the eager desire, the hint of energy--all this was new. He had never
encouraged the boy’s habit of vivid dreaming, deeming the narration
unwise. It flashed across him suddenly now that the ‘deficiency’ might
be only on the surface. Energy and life hid, perhaps, subconsciously in
him. Did the dreams betray an activity he knew not how to carry through
and correlate with his everyday, external world? And were these dreams
evidence of deep, hidden desire--a clue, possibly, to the energy he
sought and needed, the exact kind of energy that might set the inert
machinery in motion and drive it?
He hesitated an instant, waiting in the road. He was on the verge of
understanding something that yet just evaded him. Bindy’s childish,
instinctive love of fire, his passion for air, for rushing wind, for
oceans of limitless----
There came at that moment a deep roaring in the mountains. Far away,
but rapidly approaching, the ominous booming of it filled the air.
The westerly wind descended by the deep gorges, shaking the forests,
shouting as it came. Clouds of white dust spiralled into the sky off
the upper roads, spread into sheets like snow, and swept downwards
with incredible velocity. The air turned suddenly cooler. More big
drops of rain splashed and thudded on the roofs and road. There was a
feeling of something violent and instantaneous about to happen, a sense
almost of attack. The _joran_ tore headlong down into the valley.
‘Come on, man,’ he cried at the top of his voice. ‘That’s the _joran_!
I know it of old! It’s terrific. Run!’ And he caught the lad, still
lingering, by the arm.
But Lord Ernie shook himself free with an excitement almost violent.
‘I’ve been up there with those great fires,’ he shouted. ‘I know the
whole blessed thing. But where was it? Where?’ His face was white, eyes
shining, manner strangely agitated. ‘Big, naked fellows who dance like
wind, and rushing women of fire, and----’
Two things happened then, interrupting the boy’s wild language. The
_joran_ reached the village and struck it; the houses shook, the trees
bent double, and the cloud of limestone dust, painting the darkness
white, swept on between Hendricks and the boy with extraordinary force,
even separating them. There was a clatter of falling tiles, of banging
doors and windows, and then a burst of icy rain that fell like iron
shot on everything, raising actual spray. The air was in an instant
thick. Everything drove past, roared, trembled. And, secondly--just
in that brief instant when man and boy were separated--there shot
between them with shadowy swiftness the figure of a man, hatless,
with flying hair, who vanished with running strides into the darkness
of the village street beyond--all so rapidly that sight could focus
the manner neither of his coming nor of his going. Hendricks caught
a glimpse of a swarthy, elemental type of face, the swing of great
shoulders, the leap of big loose limbs--something rushing and elastic
in the whole appearance--but nothing he could claim for definite
detail. The figure swept through the dust and wind like an animal--and
was gone. It was, indeed, only the contrast of Lord Ernie’s whitened
skin, of his graceful, half-elegant outline, that enabled him to recall
the details that he did. The weather-beaten visage seemed to storm
away. Bindy’s delicate aristocratic face shone so pale and eager.
But that a real man had passed was indubitable, for the boy made a
flurried movement as though to follow. Hendricks caught his arm with a
determined grip and pulled him back.
‘Who was that? Who was it?’ Lord Ernie cried breathlessly, resisting
with all his strength, but vainly.
‘Some mountain fellow, of course. Nothing to do with us.’ And he
dragged the boy after him down the road. For a second both seemed to
have lost their heads. Hendricks certainly felt a gust of something
strike him into momentary consternation that was half alarm.
‘From up there, where the fires are?’ asked the boy, shouting above the
wind and rain.
‘Yes, yes, I suppose so. Come along. We shall be soused. Are you mad?’
For Bindy still held back with all his weight, trying to turn round and
see. Hendricks used more force. There was almost a scuffle in the road.
‘All right, I’m coming. I only wanted to look a second. You needn’t
drag my arm out.’ He ceased resistance, and they lurched forward
together. ‘But what a chap he was! He went like the wind. Did you see
the light streaming out of him--like fire?’
‘Like what?’ shouted Hendricks, as they dashed now through the driving
tempest.
‘Fire!’ bawled the boy. ‘It lit me up as he passed--fire that lights
but does not burn, and wind that blows the world along----’
‘Button your coat and run!’ interrupted the other, hurrying his pace,
and pulling the lad forcibly after him.
‘Don’t twist! You’re hurting! I can run as well as you!’ came back,
with an energy Bindy had never shown before in his life. He was
breathless, panting, charged with excitement still. ‘It touched me as
he passed--fire that lights but doesn’t burn, and wind that blows the
heart to flame--let me go, will you? Let go my hand.’
He dashed free and away. The torrential rain came down in sheets now
from a windless sky, for the _joran_ was already miles beyond them,
tearing across the angry lake. They reached the carpenter’s house,
where their lodging was, soaked to the skin. They dried themselves, and
ate the light supper of soup and omelette prepared for them--ate it in
their dressing-gowns. Lord Ernie went to bed with a hot-water bottle
of rough stone. He declared with decision that he felt no chill. His
excitement had somewhat passed.
‘But, I say, Mr. Hendricks,’ he remarked, as he settled down with his
novel and a cigarette, calmed and normal again, ‘this _is_ a place and
a half, isn’t it? It stirs me all up. I suppose it’s the storm. What do
_you_ think?’
‘Electrical state of the air, yes,’ replied the tutor briefly.
Soon afterwards he closed the shutters on the weather side, said
good-night, and went into his own room to unpack. The singular phrase
Bindy had used kept singing through his head: ‘Fire that lights but
doesn’t burn, and wind that blows the heart to flame’--the first
time he had said ‘blows the world along.’ Where on earth had the boy
got hold of such queer words? He still saw the figure of that wild
mountain fellow who had passed between them with the dust and wind
and rain. There was confusion in the picture, or rather in his memory
of it, perhaps. But it seemed to him, looking back now, that the man
in passing had paused a second--the briefest second merely--and had
spoken, or, at any rate, had stared closely a moment into Bindy’s face,
and that some communication had been between them in that moment of
elemental violence.