VIII

And this uproar, he now perceived, was composed entirely of wind and

fire. Here, on the roof of the hills beneath a starry sky, these two

great elements expressed their nature with unhampered freedom, for

there was neither rain to modify the one, nor solid obstacle to check

the other. Their voices merged in a single sound--the hollow boom of

wind and the deep, resounding clap of flame. The splitting crackle

of burning branches imitated the high, shrill whistle of the tearing

gusts that, javelin-like, flew to and fro in darts of swifter sound.

But one shout rose from the summit, no human cry distinguishable in it,

nor amid the thousand lines of skeleton wood that pierced the golden

background was any human outline visible. Fire and wind encouraged one

another to madness, manifesting in prodigious splendour by themselves.

Then, suddenly, before a gigantic canter of the wind, the driving smoke

rolled upwards like a curtain, and the flames, ceasing their wild

flapping, soared steadily in gothic windows of living gold towards the

stars. In towering rows between columns of black night they transformed

the empty space between them into a colossal temple aisle. They

tapered aloft symmetrically into vanishing crests. And Hendricks stood

upright. Rising so that his shoulders topped the edge of the boulder,

and utterly contemptuous of Leysin’s hand that sought with violence to

drag him into shelter, he gazed as one who sees a vision. For at first

he could only stand and stare, aware of sensation but not of thought.

An enormous, overpowering conviction blew his whole being to white

heat. Here was a supply of elemental power that human beings--empty,

needy, starved, deficient human beings--could use. His love for the boy

leaped headlong at the skirts of this terrific salvation. A majestic

possibility stormed through him.

Yet it was no nightmare wonder that met his staring and half-shielded

eyes, although some touch of awful dream seemed in it, set, moreover,

to a scale that scantier minds might deem distortion. The heat from

some thirty fires, placed at regular intervals, made midnight quiver

with immense vibrations. Of varying, yet calculated size, these

towering heaps emitted notes of measured and alternating depth, until

the roar along the entire line produced a definite scale almost of

melody, the near ones shrilly singing, those more distant booming with

mountainous pedal notes. The consonance was monstrous, yet conformed to

some magnificent diapason. This chord of fire-music paced the starlit

sky, directed, but never overmastered, by the wind that measured it

somehow into meaning. Repeated in quick succession, the notes now

crashing in a mass, now singing alone in solitary beauty, the effect

suggested an idea of ordered sequence, of gigantic rhythm. It seemed,

indeed, as though some controlling agency, mastering excess, coerced

both raging elements to express through this stupendous dance some

definite idea. Here, as it were, was the alphabet of some natural,

undifferentiated language, a language of sight and sound, predating

speech, symbolical in the ultimate, deific sense. Some Lord of Fire

and some Lord of Air were in command. Harnessed and regulated, these

formless cohorts of energy that men call stupidly mere flame and wind,

obeyed a higher power that had invoked them, yet a power that, by

understanding their laws of being, held them most admirably in control.

This, at least, seems a hint of the explanation that flashed into

Hendricks as he stared in amazed bewilderment from the shelter of the

nearest boulder. He read a sentence in some natural, forgotten script.

He watched a primitive ritual that once invoked the gods. He was aware

of rhythm, and he was aware of system, though as yet he did not see the

hand that wrote this marvellous sentence on the night. For still the

human element remained invisible. He only realised--in dim, blundering

fashion--that he witnessed a revelation of those two powers which, in

large, lie at the foundations of the Universe, and, in little, are the

basic essentials of human existence--the powers behind heat and air.

Fragments of that talk with Leysin stammered back across his mind, like

letters in some stupendous word he dared not reconstruct entire. He

shuddered and grew wise. Realms of forgotten being opened their doors

before his dazzled sight. Vision fluttered into far, piercing vistas

of ancient wonder, haunting and half-remembered, then lost its way

in blindness that was pain. For a moment, it seemed, he was aware of

majestic Presences behind the turmoil, shadowy but mighty, charged with

a vague potentiality as of immense algebraical formulae, symbolical

and beyond full comprehension, yet willing and able to be used for

practical results. He _felt_ the elements as nerves of a living

Universe.... Yet thinking was not really in him anywhere; feeling was

all he knew. The world he moved in, as the script he read, belonged

to conditions too utterly remote for reason to recover a single clue

to their intelligible reconstruction. Glory, clean and strong as of

primitive star-worship, passed between what he saw and all that he

had ever known before. The curtain of conventional belief was rent in

twain. The terrific thing was true....

For an unmeasured interval the tutor, oblivious of time and actual

place, stood on the brink of this majestic pageant, staring with

breathless awe, while the swaying of the entire scenery increased, like

the sway of an ocean lifted to the sky by many winds. Then, suddenly,

in one of those temporary lulls that passed between the beat of the

great notes, his searching eyes discovered a new thing. The focus

of his sight was altered, and he realised at last the source of the

directing and the controlling power. Behind the fires and beyond the

smoke he recognised the disc-like, shining ovals that upon this little

earth stand in the image of the one, eternal Likeness. He saw the human

faces, symbols of spiritual dominion over all lesser orders, each one

possessed of belief, intelligence and will. Singly so feeble, together

so invincible, this assemblage, unscorched by the fire and by the wind

unmoved, seemed to him impressive beyond all possible words. And a

further inkling of the truth flashed on him as he stared: that a group

of humans, a crowd, combining upon a given object with concentrated

purpose, possessed of that terrific power, certain faith, may know

in themselves the energy to move great mountains, and therefore that

lesser energy to guide the fluid forces of the elements. And a sense

of cosmic exultation leaped into his being. For a moment he knew a

touch of almost frenzy. Proud joy rose in him like a splendour of

omnipotence. Humanity, it seemed to him, here came into a grand but

long neglected corner of its kingdom as originally planned by Heaven.

Into the hands of a weakling and deficient boy the guidance had been

given.

Motionless beneath the stars, lit by the glare till they shone

like idols of yellow stone, and magnified by the sheets of flying,

intolerable light the wind chased to and fro, these rows of faces

appeared at first as a single line of undifferentiated fire against the

background of the night. The eyes were all cast down in prayer, each

mind focused steadily upon one clear idea--the control and assimilation

of two elemental powers. The crowd was one; feeling was one; desire,

command and certain faith were one. The controlling power that resulted

was irresistible.

Then came a remarkable, concerted movement. With one accord the eyes

all opened, blazing with reflected fire. A hundred human countenances

rose in a single shining line. The men stood upright. Swarthy faces,

tanned by sun and wind, heads uncovered, hair and beards tossing in

the air, turned all one way. Mouths opened too. There came a roar that

even the hurricane could not drown--a word of command, it seemed,

that sprang into the pulses of the dancing elements and reduced their

turmoil to a wave of steadier movement. And at the same moment a

hundred bodies, naked above the waist, arms outstretched and hands with

the palms held upwards, swayed forwards through the smoke and fire.

They came towards the spot where, half concealed from view, the tutor

crouched and watched.

And Hendricks, thinking himself discovered, first quailed, then rose

to meet them. No power to resist was in him. It was, rather, willing

response that he experienced. He stepped out from the shelter of the

boulder and entered the brilliant glare. Hatless himself, shoulders

squared, cloak, flying in the wind, he took three strides towards the

advancing battalion--then, undecided, paused. For the line, he saw,

disregarded him as though he were not there at all. It was not _him_

the worshippers sought. The entire troop swept past to a point some

fifty feet below where the end of the ridge broke out of the thinning

trees. Beautiful as a curving wave of flame, the figures streamed

across the narrow, open space with a drilled precision as of some

battle line, and Hendricks, with a sense of wild, secret triumph, saw

them pause at the brink of the platformed ridge, form up their serried

ranks yet closer, then open two hundred arms to welcome some one whom

the darkness should immediately deliver. Simultaneously, from the

covering trees, the tall, slim shadow of Lord Ernie darted out into the

light.

‘Magnificent!’ cried Hendricks, but his voice was smothered instantly

in a mightier sound, and his movement forward seemed ineffective

stumbling. The hundred voices thundered out a single note. Like a

deer the boy leaped; like a tongue of flame he flew to join his own;

and instantly was surrounded, borne shoulder-high upon those upturned

palms, swept back in triumph towards the procession of enormous fires.

Wrapped by smoke and sparks, lifted by wind, he became part of the

monstrous rhythm that turned that mountain ridge alive. He stood

upright upon the platform of interlacing arms; he swayed with their

movements as a thing of wind and fire that flew. The shining faces

vanished then, turned all towards the blazing piles so that the boy had

the appearance of standing on a wall of living black. His outline was

visible a moment against the sky, firelight between his wide-stretched

legs, streaming from his hair and horizontal arms, issuing almost, as

it seemed, from his very body. The next second he leaped to the ground,

ran forward--appallingly close--between two heaped-up fires, flung both

hands heavenwards, and--knelt.

And Hendricks, sympathetically following the boy’s performance as

though his own mind and body took part in it, experienced then a

singular result: it seemed the heart in him began to roar. This

was no rustle of excited blood that the little cavern of his skull

increased, but a deeper sound that proclaimed the kinship of his

entire being with the ritual. His own nature had begun to answer. From

that moment he perceived the spectacle, not with the senses of sight

and hearing, separately, but with his entire body--synthetically. He

became a part of this assembly that was itself one single instrument:

a cosmic sounding-board for the rhythmical expression of impersonal

Nature Powers. Leysin, he dimly realised, fixed in his churchy tenets,

remained outside, apart, and compromising; Hendricks accepted and went

with. All little customary feelings dipped utterly away, lost, false,

denied, even as a unit in a crowd loses its normal characteristics

in the greater mood that sways the whole. The fire no longer burned

him, for he was the fire; nor did he stagger against the furious wind,

because the wind was in his heart. He moved all over, alive in every

point and corner. With his skin he breathed, his bones and tissue ran

with glorious heat. He cried aloud. He praised. ‘I am the whirlwind and

I am the fire! Fire that lights but does not burn, and wind that blows

the heart to flame!’ His body sang it, or rather the elements sang it

through his body; for the sound of his voice was not audible, and it

was wind and fire that thundered forth his feeling in their crashing

rhythm.