And at once the curious confusion of strong wind was upon them. Gusts
howled about the corners of the shuttered houses and tore noisily
across the open yards. Dust whirled with the rapidity as of some
spectral white machinery. A tile came clattering down about their feet,
while overhead the roofs had an air of shifting, toppling, bending.
The entire village seemed scooped up and shaken, then dropped upon the
earth again in tottering fashion.
‘This way,’ gasped the little Pasteur, blown sideways like a sail;
‘follow me closely.’ Almost arm-in-arm at first they hurried down the
deserted street, past lampless windows and tight-fastened doors, and
soon were beyond the cabaret in that open stretch between the village
and the forest where the wind had unobstructed way. Far above them ran
the fiery mountain ridge. They saw the glare reflected in the sky as
the tempest first swept them all three together, then separated them in
the same moment. They seemed to spin or whirl. ‘It’s far worse than I
expected,’ shouted their guide; ‘here! Give me your hand!’ then found,
once disentangled from his flapping cloak, that no one stood beside
him. For each of them it was a single fight to reach the shelter of the
woods, where the actual ascent began. An instant the Pasteur seemed to
hesitate. He glanced back at the lighted window of _la cure_ across the
fields, at the line of fire in the sky, at the figure disappearing in
the blackness immediately ahead. ‘Where’s the boy?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t
let him get too far in front. Keep close. Wait till I come!’ They
staggered back against each other. ‘Look how easily he’s slipped ahead
already!’
‘This howling wind----’ Hendricks shouted, as they advanced side by
side, pushing their shoulders against the storm.
The rest of the sentence vanished into space. Leysin shoved him
forward, pointing to where, some twenty yards in front, the figure of
Lord Ernie, head down, was battling eagerly with the hurricane. Already
he stood near to the shelter of the trees waving his arms with energy
towards the summits where the fire blazed. He was calling something at
the top of his voice, urging them to hurry. His voice rushed down upon
them with a pelt of wind.
‘Don’t let him get away from us,’ bawled Leysin, holding his hands
cup-wise to his mouth. ‘Keep him in reach. He may see, but must not
take part....’ A blow full in the face that smote him like the flat
of a great sword clapped the sentence short. ‘That’s _your_ part. He
won’t obey me!’ Hendricks heard it as they plunged across the windswept
reach, panting, struggling, forcing their bodies sideways like
two-legged crabs against the terrific force of the descending _joran_.
They reached the protection of the forest wall without further attempt
at speech. Here there was sudden peace and silence, for the tall, dense
trees received the tempest’s impact like a cushion, stopping it. They
paused a moment to recover breath.
But although the first exhaustion speedily passed, that original
confusion of strong wind remained--in Hendricks’ mind at least,--for
wind violent enough to be battled with has a scattering effect on
thought and blows the very blood about. Something in him snapped its
cables and blew out to sea. His breath drew in an impetuous quality
from the tempest each time he filled his lungs. There was agitation in
him that caused an odd exaggeration of the emotions. The boy, as they
came up, leaped down from a boulder he had climbed. He opened his arms,
making of his cloak a kind of sail that filled and flapped.
‘At last!’ he cried, impatient, almost vexed. ‘I thought you were never
coming. The wind blew me along. We shall be late----’
The tutor caught his arm with vigour. ‘You keep by us, Ernest; d’you
hear now? No rushing ahead like that. Leysin’s the guide, not you.’ He
even shook him. But as he did so he was aware that he himself resisted
something that he did not really want to resist, something that urged
him forcibly; a little more and he would yield to it with pleasure,
with abandon, finally with recklessness. A reaction of panic fear ran
over him.
‘It was the wind, I tell you,’ cried the boy, flinging himself free
with a hint of insolence in his voice, ‘for it’s alive. I mean to see
everything. The wind’s our leader and the fire’s our guide.’ He made a
movement to start on again.
‘You’ll obey me,’ thundered Hendricks, ‘or else you’ll go home. D’you
understand?’
With exasperation, yet with uneasy delight, he noted the words Bindy
made use of. It was in him that he might almost have uttered them
himself. He stepped already into an entirely new world. Exhilaration
caught him even now. Putting the brake on was mere pretence. He seized
the lad by both shoulders and pushed him to the rear, then placed
himself next, so that Leysin moved in front and led the way. The
procession started, diving into the comparative shelter of the forest.
‘Don’t let him pass you,’ he heard in rapid French; ‘guide him, that’s
all. The power’s already in his blood. Keep yourself in hand as well,
and follow me closely.’ The roar of the storm above them carried the
words clean off the world.
Here in the forest they moved, it seemed, along the floor of an
ocean whose surface raged with dreadful violence; any moment one or
other of them might be caught up to that surface and whirled off to
destruction. For the procession was not one with itself. The darkness,
the difficulty of hearing what each said, the feeling, too, that each
climbed for himself, made everything seem at sixes and sevens. And the
tutor, this secret exultation growing in his heart, denied the anxiety
that kept it pace, and battled with his turbulent emotions, a divided
personality. His power over the boy, he realised, had gravely weakened.
A little time ago they had seemed somehow equal. Now, however, a
complete reversal of their relative positions had taken place. The boy
was sure of himself. While Leysin led at a steady mountaineer’s pace
on his wiry, short, bowed legs, Hendricks, a yard or two behind him,
stumbled a good deal in the darkness, Lord Ernie forever on his heels,
eager to push past. But Bindy never stumbled. There was no flagging
in his muscles. He moved so lightly and with so sure a tread that he
almost seemed to dance, and often he stopped aside to leap a boulder or
to run along a fallen trunk. Path there was none. Occasional gusts of
wind rushed gustily down into these depths of forest where they moved,
and now, from time to time, as they rose nearer to the line of fire on
the ridge, an increasing glare lit up the knuckled roots or glimmered
on the bramble thickets and heavy beds of moss. It was astonishing
how the little Pasteur never missed his way. Periods of thick silence
alternated with moments when the storm swept down through gullies among
the trees, reverberating like thunder in the hollows.
Slowly they advanced, buffeted, driven, pushed, the wildness of some
Walpurgis night growing upon all three. In the tutor’s mind was this
strange lift of increasing recklessness, the old proportion gone, the
spiritual aspect of it troubling him to the point of sheer distress. He
followed Leysin as blindly with his body as he followed this new Bindy
eagerly with his mind. For this languid boy, now dancing to the tune
of flooding life at his very heels, seemed magical in the true sense:
energy created as by a wizard out of nothing. From lips that ordinarily
sighed in listless boredom poured now a ceaseless stream of questions
and ejaculations, ringing with enthusiasm. How long would it take to
reach the fiery ridge? Why did they go so slowly? Would they arrive
too late? Would their intrusion be welcomed or understood? Already one
great change was effected--accepted by Hendricks, too--that the rôle
of mere spectator was impossible. The answers Hendricks gave, indeed,
grew more and more encouraging and sympathetic. He, too, was impatient
with their leader’s crawling pace. Some elemental spell of wind and
fire urged him towards the open ridge. The pull became irresistible.
He despised the Pasteur’s caution, denied his wisdom, wholly rejected
now the spirit of compromise and prudence. And once, as the hurricane
brought down a flying burst of voices, he caught himself leaping upon a
big grey boulder in their path. He leaped at the very moment that the
boy behind him leaped, yet hardly realised that he did so; his feet
danced without a conscious order from his brain. They met together on
the rounded top, stumbled, clutched one another frantically, then slid
with waving arms and flying cloaks down the slippery surface of damp
moss--laughing wildly.
‘Fool!’ cried Hendricks, saving himself. ‘What in the world----?’
‘_You_ called,’ laughed Bindy, picking himself up and dropping back to
his place in the rear again. ‘It’s the wind, not me; it’s in our feet.
Half the time you’re shouting and jumping yourself!’
And it was a few minutes after this that Lord Ernie suddenly forged
ahead. He slipped in front as silently as a shadow before a moving
candle in a room. Passing the tutor at a moment when his feet were
entangled among roots and stones, he easily overtook the Pasteur and
found himself in the lead. He never stumbled; there seemed steel
springs in his legs.
From Leysin, too breathless to interfere, came a cry of warning. ‘Stop
him! Take his hand!’ his tired voice instantly smothered by the roaring
skies. He turned to catch Hendricks by the cloak. ‘You see _that_!’ he
shouted in alarm. ‘For the love of God, don’t lose sight of him! He
must see, but not take part--remember----!’
And Hendricks yelled after the vanishing figure, ‘Bindy, go slow, go
slow! Keep in touch with us.’ But he quickened his pace instantly, as
though to overtake the boy. He passed his companion the same minute,
and was out of sight. ‘I’ll wait for you,’ came back the boy’s shrill
answer through the thinning trees. And a flare of light fell with it
from the sky, for the final climb of a steep five hundred feet had now
begun, and overhead the naked ridge ran east and west with its line of
blazing fires. Boulders and rocky ground replaced the pines and spruces.
‘But you’ll never find the way,’ shouted Leysin, while a deep
trumpeting roar of the storm beyond muffled the remainder of the
sentence.
Hendricks heard the next words close beside him from a clump of
shadows. He was in touching distance of the excited boy.
‘The fires and the singing guide me. Only a fool could miss the way.’
‘But you _are_ a----’
He swallowed the unuttered word. A new, extraordinary respect was
suddenly in him. That tall, virile figure, instinct with life,
springing so cleverly through the choking darkness, guiding with
decision and intelligence, almost infallible--it was no fool that led
them thus. He hurried after till his very sinews ached. His eyes,
troubled and confused, strained through the trees to find him. But
these same trees now fled past him in a torrent.
‘Bindy, Bindy!’ he cried, at the top of his voice, yet not with
the imperious tone the situation called for. The sentence dropped
into a lull of wind. Instead of command there was entreaty, almost
supplication, in it. ‘Wait for me, I’m coming. We’ll see the glorious
thing together!’
And then suddenly the forest lay behind him, with a belt of open
pasture-land in front below the actual ridge. He felt the first great
draught of heat, as a line of furnaces burst their doors with a mighty
roar and turned the sky into a blaze of golden daylight. There was a
crackling as of musketry. The flare shot up and burned the air about
him, and the voices of a multitude, as yet invisible, drove through it
like projectiles on the wind. This was the first impression, wholesale
and terrific, that met him as he paused an instant on the edge of the
sheltering forest and looked forward. Leysin and Lord Ernie seemed
to leave his mind, forgotten in this first attack of splendour, but
forgotten, as it were, the first with contempt, the latter with an
overwhelming regret. For the Pasteur’s mistake in that instant seemed
obvious. In half measures lay the fatal error, and in compromise the
danger. Bindy all along had known the better way and followed it. The
lukewarm was the worthless.
‘Bindy, boy, where are you? I’m coming ...’ and stepping on to the
grassy strip of ground, soft to his feet, he met a wind that fell upon
his body with a shower of blows from all directions at once and beat
him to his knees. He dropped, it seemed, into the cover of a sheltering
rock, for there followed then a moment of sudden and delicious
stillness in which the weary muscles recovered themselves and thought
grew slightly steadier. Crouched thus close to the earth he no longer
offered a target to the hurricane’s attack. He peered upwards, making a
screen of his hands.
The ridge, some fifty feet above him, he saw, ran in a generous
platform along the mountain crest; it was wide and flat; between the
enormous fires of piled-up wood that stretched for half a mile coiled a
medley of dense smoke and tearing sparks. No human beings were visible,
and yet he was aware of crowding life quite near. On hands and knees,
crawling painfully, he then slowly retreated again into the shelter of
the forest he had sought to leave. He stood up. The awful blaze was
veiled by the roof of branches once more. But, as he rose, seizing a
sapling to steady himself by, two hands caught him with violence from
behind, and a familiar voice came shouting against his ear. Leysin,
panting, dishevelled and half broken with the speed, stood beside him.
‘The boy! Where is he? We’re just in time!’ He roared the words to
make them carry above the din. ‘Hurry, hurry! I’ll follow.... My older
legs.... See, for the love of God, that he is not taken.... I warned
you!’
And for a second, as he heard, Hendricks caught at the vanished sense
of responsibility again. He saw the face of the old Marquess watching
him among the tree trunks. He heard his voice, amazed, reproachful,
furious: ‘It was criminal of you, criminal----!’
‘Where is the boy--_your_ boy?’ again broke in the shout of the Pasteur
with a slap of hurricane, as he staggered against the tutor, half
collapsing, and trying to point the direction. ‘Watch him, find him for
the love of heaven before it is too late--before they see him...!’
The tutor’s normal and responsible self dived out of sight again as he
heard the cry of weakness and alarm. It seemed the wind got under him,
lifting him bodily from his feet. He did not pause to think. Like a man
midway in a whirling prize-fight, he felt dazed but confident, only
conscious of one thing--that he must hold out to the end, take part in
all the splendid fighting--_win_. The lust of the arena, the pride of
youth and battle, the impetuous recklessness of the charge in primitive
war caught at his heart, brimming it with headlong courage. To play
the game for all it might be worth seemed shouted everywhere about
him, as the abandon of wind and fire rushed through him like a storm.
He felt lifted above all possibility of little failure. The Marquess
with his conventional traditions, the Pasteur with his considerations
of half-way safety, both vanished utterly; safety, indeed, both for
himself and for the boy in his charge lay in unconditional surrender.
This was no time for little thought-out actions. It was all or nothing!
‘God bless the whirlwind and the fire!’ he shouted, opening wide his
arms.
But his voice was inaudible amid the uproar, and the forward movement
of his body remained at first only in the brain. He turned to push the
old man aside, even to strike him down if necessary. ‘Lukewarm yourself
and a coward!’ rose in his throat, yet found no utterance, for in that
moment a tall, slim figure, swift as a shadow, steady as a hawk, shot
hard across the open space between the forest and the ridge. In the
direction of the blazing platform it disappeared against a curtain of
thick smoke, emerged for one second in a storm of light, then vanished
finally behind a ruin of loose rocks. And Hendricks, his eyes wounded
by heat and wind, his muscles paralysed, understood that the boy
deliberately invited capture. The multitude that hid behind the smoke
and fire, feeding the blazing heaps with eager hands, had become aware
of him, and presently would appear to claim him. They would take him
to themselves. Already answering flares ran east and west along the
desolate ridge.
‘I’ll join you! I’m coming! Wait for me!’ he tried to cry. The uproar
smothered it.