‘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.
VII
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