VI

And next day broke as soft and brilliant as though October had stolen

it from June; the Alps gleamed through an almost summery haze across

the lake; the air held no hint of coming winter; and the Jura mountains

wore the true blue of memory in Hendricks’ mind. Patches of red and

yellow splashed the great pine-woods here and there where beech and ash

put autumn in the vast dark carpet.

The tutor woke clear-headed and refreshed. All that had happened the

night before seemed out of proportion and unreasonable. There had

been exaggerated emotion in it: in himself, because he returned to a

place still charged with potent memories of youth; and in Lord Ernie,

because the lad was overwrought by the electrical disturbance of the

atmosphere. The nearness of the ancestral halls, which they both

disliked, had emphasised it; the ominous, wild weather had favoured

it; and the coincidence of these pagan rites of superstitious peasants

had focused it all into a melodramatic form with an added touch of the

supernatural that was highly picturesque and--dangerously suggestive.

Hendricks recovered his common sense; judgment asserted itself again.

Yet, for all that, certain things remained authentic. The effect

upon the boy was not illusion, nor his words about fire and wind

mere meaningless invention. There hid some undivined and significant

correspondence between the gaps in his deficient nature and these two

turbulent elements. The talk with Leysin, as the conduct of his wife,

remained authentic; those facts were too steady to be dismissed, the

Pasteur too genuinely in earnest to be catalogued in dream. Neither

daylight nor common sense could dissipate their actuality. Truth lay

somewhere in it all.

Thus the day, for the tutor, was a battle that shifted with varying

fortune between doubt and certainty. In the morning his mind was

decided: the wild experiment was unjustifiable; in the afternoon,

as the sunshine grew faint and melancholy, it became ‘interesting,

for what harm could come of it?’ but towards evening, when shadows

lengthened across the purple forests and the trees stood motionless in

the calm and windless air, the adventure seemed, as it had seemed the

night before, not only justifiable, but right and necessary. It only

became inevitable, however, when, after tea together on the balcony,

Lord Ernie, mentioning the subject for the first time that day, asked

pointedly what time the Pasteur expected them to supper; then, noticing

the flash of hesitancy in his companion’s eyes, added in his strange

deep voice, ‘You promised we should go.’ Withdrawal after that was out

of the question. To retract would have meant, for one thing, final loss

of the boy’s confidence--a possibility not to be contemplated for a

moment.

Until this moment no word of the preceding night had passed the lips

of either. Lord Ernie had been quiet and preoccupied, silent rather,

but never listless. He was peaceful, perhaps subdued a little, yet with

a suppressed energy in his bearing that Hendricks watched with secret

satisfaction. The tutor, closely observant, detected nothing out of

gear; life stirred strongly in him; there was purpose, interest, will;

there was desire; but there was nothing to cause alarm.

Availing himself then of the lad’s absorption in his own affairs, he

wandered forth alone upon his sentimental tour of inspection. No ghost

of emotion rose to stalk beside him. That early tragedy, he now saw

clearly, had been no more than youthful explosion of mere physical

passion, wholesome and natural, but due chiefly to propinquity. His

thoughts ran idly on; and he was even congratulating himself upon

escape and freedom when, abruptly, he remembered a phrase Bindy had

used the night before, and stumbled suddenly upon a clue when least

expecting it.

He came to a sudden halt. The significance of it crashed through his

mind and startled him. ‘There are big rushing women ...’ It was the

first reference to the other sex, as evidence of their attraction

for him, Hendricks had ever known to pass his lips. Hitherto, though

twenty years of age, the lad had never spoken of women as though he was

aware of their terrible magic. He had not discovered them as females,

necessary to every healthy male. It was not purity, of course, but

ignorance: he had felt nothing. Something had now awakened sex in him,

so that he knew himself a man, and naked. And it had revolutionised the

world for him. This new life came from the roots, transforming listless

indifference into positive desire; the will woke out of sleep, and

all the currents of his system took aggressive form. For all energy,

intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, is fundamentally one: it is

primarily sexual.

Hendricks paused in his sentimental walk, marvelling that he had not

realised sooner this simple truth. It brought a certain logical meaning

even into the pagan rites upon the mountains, these ancient rites

which symbolised the marriage of the two tremendous elements of wind

and fire, heat and air. And the lad’s quiet, busy mood that morning

confirmed his simple discovery. It involved restraint and purpose. Lord

Ernie was alive. Hendricks would take home with him to those ancestral

halls a vessel bursting with energy--creative energy. It was admirable

that he should witness--from a safe distance--this primitive ceremony

of crude pagan origin. It was the very thing. And the tutor hurried

back to the house among the vineyards, aware that his responsibility

had increased, but persuaded more than ever that his course was

justified.

* * * * *

The sky held calm and cloudless through the day, the forests brooding

beneath the hazy autumn sunshine. Indications that the second hurricane

lay brewing among the heights were not wanting, however, to experienced

eyes. Almost a preternatural silence reigned; there was a warm

heaviness in the placid atmosphere; the surface of the lake was patched

and streaky; the extreme clarity of the air an ominous omen. Distant

objects were too close. Towards sunset, moreover, the streaks and

patches vanished as though sucked below, while thin strips of tenuous

cloud appeared from nowhere above the northern cliffs. They moved with

great rapidity at an enormous height, touched with a lurid brilliance

as the sun sank out of sight; and when Hendricks strolled over with

Lord Ernie to _la cure_ for supper there came a sudden rush of heated

wind that set the branches sharply rattling, then died away as abruptly

as it rose.

They seemed reflected, too, these disturbances, in the human

atmospheres about the supper table--there was suppression of various

emotions, emotions presaging violence. Lord Ernie was exhilarated,

Hendricks uneasy and preoccupied, the Pasteur grave and thoughtful. In

Hendricks was another feeling as well--that he had lightly summoned

a storm which might carry him off his feet. The boy’s excitement

increased it, as wind-puffs fan a starting fire. His own judgment

had somewhere played him false, betraying him into this incredible

adventure. And yet he could not stop it. The Pasteur’s influence was

over him perhaps. He was ashamed to turn back. He was committed. The

unusual circumstances found the weakness in his character.

For somewhere in the preposterous superstition there lay a big

forgotten truth. He could not believe it, and yet he did believe it.

The world had forgotten how to live truly close to Nature.

A desultory conversation was carried on, chiefly between the two men,

while the boy ate hungrily, and Mme. Leysin watched her husband with

anxiety as she served the simple meal.

‘So you are coming with us, and you like to come?’ the Pasteur observed

quietly, Hendricks translating.

Lord Ernie replied with a gesture of unmistakable enthusiasm.

‘A wild lot of men and women,’ Leysin went on, keeping his eye hard

upon him, ‘with an interesting worship of their own copied from very

ancient times. They live on the heights, and mix little with us valley

folk. You shall see their ceremonies to-night.’

‘They get the wind and fire into themselves, don’t they?’ asked the boy

keenly, and somewhat to the distress of the translator who rendered it,

‘They get into wind and fire.’

‘They worship wind and fire,’ Leysin replied, ‘and they do it by means

of a wonderful dance that somehow imitates the leap of flame and the

headlong rush of wind. If you copy the movements and gestures of a

person you discover the emotion that causes them. You share it. Their

idea is, apparently, that by imitating the movements they invite or

attract the force--draw these elemental powers into their systems, so

that in the end----’

He stopped suddenly, catching the tutor’s eye. Lord Ernie seemed

to understand without translation; he had laid down his knife and

fork, and was leaning forward across the table, listening with deep

absorption. His expression was alert with a new intelligence that was

almost cunning. An acute sensibility seemed to have awakened in him.

‘As with laughing, I suppose?’ he said in an undertone to Hendricks

quickly. ‘If you imitate a laugher, you laugh yourself in the end and

feel all the jolly excitement of laughter. Is that what he means?’

The tutor nodded with assumed indifference. ‘Imitation is always

infectious,’ he said lightly; ‘but, of course, you will not imitate

these wild people yourself, Bindy. We’ll just look on from a distance.’

‘From a distance!’ repeated the boy, obviously disappointed. ‘What’s

the good of that?’ A look of obstinacy passed across his altered face.

Hendricks met his eyes squarely. ‘At a circus,’ he said firmly, ‘you

just watch. You don’t imitate the clown, do you?’

‘If you look on long enough, you do,’ was the rather dogged reply.

‘Well, take the Russian dancers we saw in Moscow,’ the other insisted

patiently; ‘you felt the power and beauty without jumping up and

whirling in your stall?’

Bindy half glared at him. There was almost contempt in his quiet

answer: ‘But your mind whirled with them. And later your body would

too; otherwise it’s given you nothing.’ He paused a second. ‘I can

only get the fun of riding by being on a horse’s back and doing his

movements exactly with him--not by watching him.’

Hendricks smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He did not wish to

discourage the enthusiasm lying behind this analysis. The uneasiness in

him grew apace. He said something rapidly in French, using an undertone

and laughter to confuse the actual words.

‘Of course we must not interfere with their ceremonies,’ put in the

Pasteur with decision. ‘It’s sacred to them. We can hide among the

trees and watch. You would not leave your seat in church to imitate the

priest, would you?’ He glanced smilingly at the eager youth before him.

‘If he did something real, I would.’ It was said with a bright flash in

the eyes. ‘Anything real I’d copy like a shot. Only, I never find it.’

The reply was disconcerting rather: and Hendricks, as he hurriedly

translated, made a clatter with his knife and fork, for something in

him rose to meet the truth behind the curious words. From that moment,

as though catching a little of the boy’s exhilaration, he passed under

a kind of spell perhaps. It was, in spite of the exaggeration, oddly

stimulating. This dull little meal at the village _cure_ masked an

accumulating vehemence, eager to break loose. He heard the old father’s

voice: ‘Well done, Hendricks! You have accomplished wonders!’ He would

take back the boy--alive....

Yet all the time there were streaks and patches on his soul as upon

the surface of the lake that afternoon. There were signs of terror. He

felt himself letting go, an increasing recklessness, a yielding up more

and more of his own authority to that of this triumphant boy. Bindy

understood the meaning of it all and felt secure; Hendricks faltered,

hesitated, stood on the defensive. Yet, ever less and less. Already he

accepted the other’s guidance. Already Lord Ernie’s leadership was in

the ascendant. Conviction invariably holds dominion over doubt.

They ate little. It was near the end of the meal when the wind, falling

from a clear and starlit sky, struck its first violent blow, dropping

with the force of an explosion that shook the wooden house, and passing

with a roar towards the distant lake. The oil lamp, suspended from the

ceiling, trembled; the Pasteur looked apprehensively at the shuttered

windows; and Lord Ernie, with startling abruptness, stood up. His eyes

were shining. His voice was brisk, alert, and deep.

‘The wind, the wind!’ he cried. ‘Think what it’ll be up there! We

shall feel it on our bodies!’ His enthusiasm was like a rush of air

across the table. ‘And the fire!’ he went on. ‘The flames will lick all

over, and tear about the sky. I feel wild and full of them already!

How splendid!’ And the flame of the little lamp leaped higher in the

chimney as he said it.

‘The violence of the _coup de joran_ is extraordinary,’ explained

Leysin as he got up to turn down the wick, ‘and the second

outburst----’ The rest of his sentence was drowned by the noise of

Hendricks’ voice telling the boy to sit down and finish his supper.

And at the same moment the Pasteur’s wife came in as though a stroke

of wind drove behind her down the passage. The door slammed in the

draught. There was a momentary confusion in the room above which her

voice rose shrill and frightened.

‘The fires are alight, Jules,’ she whispered in her half-intelligible

_patois_, ‘the forest is burning all along the upper ridge.’ Her face

was pale and her speech came stumbling. She lowered her lips to her

husband’s ear. ‘They’ll be looking out for recruits to-night. Is it

necessary, is it right for you to go?’ She glanced uneasily at the

English visitors. ‘You know the danger----’

He stopped her with a gesture. ‘Those who look on at life accomplish

nothing,’ he answered impatiently. ‘One must act, always act. Chances

are sent to be taken, not stared at.’ He rose, pushing past her into

the passage, and as he did so she gave him one swift comprehensive

look of tenderness and admiration, then hurried after him to find his

hat and cloak. Willingly she would have kept him at home that night,

yet gladly, in another sense, she saw him go. She fumbled in her

movements, ready to laugh or cry or pray. Hendricks saw her pain and

understood. It was singular how the woman’s attitude intensified his

own misgivings; her behaviour, the mere expression of her face alone,

made the adventure so absolutely real.

Three minutes later they were in the village street. Hendricks and Lord

Ernie, the latter impatient in the road beyond, saw her tall figure

stoop to embrace him. ‘I shall pray all night: I shall watch from my

window for your return. God, who speaks from the whirlwind, and whose

pathway is the fire, will go with you. Remember the younger men; it is

ever the younger men that they seek to take...!’ Her words were half

hysterical. The kiss was given and taken; the open doorway framed her

outline a moment; then the buttress of the church blotted her out, and

they were off.