The wild hypothesis of the intrepid little missionary-pasteur swept him with an effect like hypnotism. Then, suddenly, something in him seemed to decide finally for itself. He flung himself, morality and all, upon this vigorous other personality. He leaned across the table, his face close to the lamp. His voice shook as he spoke.
‘Would you?’ he asked—then knew the question foolish, and that such a man would shrink from nothing where the redemption of a soul was at stake; knew also that the question was proof that his own decision was already made.
There was something grotesque almost in the torrent of colloquial French Leysin proceeded to pour forth, while the other sat listening in amazement, half ashamed and half exhilarated. He looked at the stalwart figure, the wiry bowed legs as he paced the floor, the shortness of the coat-sleeves and the absence of shirt-cuffs round the powerful lean wrists. It was a great fighting man he watched, a man afraid of nothing in heaven or earth, prepared to lead a forlorn hope into a hostile unknown land. And the sight, combined with what he heard, set the seal upon his half-hearted decision. He would take the risk and go.
‘Pfui!’ exclaimed the little Pasteur as though it might have been an oath, his loud whisper breaking through into a guttural sound, ‘pfui! Bah! Would that my people had machinery like that so that I could use it! I’ve no material to work on, no force to direct, nothing but heavy, sodden clay. Jelly!’ he cried, ‘negative, useless, lukewarm stuff at best.’ He lowered his voice suddenly, so as to listen at the same time. ‘I might as well be a baker kneading dough,’ he continued. ‘They drink and yield and drink again; they never attack and drive; they’re not worth labouring to save.’ He struck the wooden table with his fist, making the lamp rattle, while his listener started and drew back. ‘What good can weak souls, though spotless, be to God? The best have long ago gone up to them,’ and he jerked his leonine old head towards the mountains. ‘Where there’s life there’s hope,’ he stamped his foot as he said it, ‘but the lukewarm—pfui!—I will spue them out of my mouth!’
He paused by the window a moment, listened attentively, then resumed his pacing to and fro. Clearly, he longed for action. Indifference, half-heartedness had no place in his composition. And Hendricks felt his own slower blood take fire as he listened.
‘Ah!’ cried Leysin louder, ‘what a battle I could fight up there for God, could I but live among them, stem the flow of their dark strong vitality, then twist it round and up, up, up!’ And he jerked his finger skywards. ‘It’s the great sinners we want, not the meek-faced saints. There’s energy enough among those devils to bring a whole Canton to the great Footstool, could I but direct it.’ He paused a moment, standing over his astonished visitor. ‘Bring the boy up with you, and let him drink his fill. And pray, pray, I say, that he become a violent sinner first in order that later there shall be something worth offering to God. Over one sinner that repenteth——’
A rapid, nervous knocking interrupted the flow of words, and the figure of a woman stood upon the threshold. With the opening of the door came also again the roaring from the night outside. Hendricks saw the tall, somewhat dishevelled outline of the wife—he remembered her vaguely, though she could hardly see him now in his darker corner—and recalled the fact that she had been sent out to Leysin in his missionary days, a worthy, illiterate, but adoring woman. She wore a shawl, her hair was untidy, her eyes fixed and staring. Her husband’s sturdy little figure, as he rose, stood level with her chin.
‘You hear it, Jules?’ she whispered thickly. ‘The joran has brought them down. You’ll be needed in the village.’ She said it anxiously, though Hendricks understood the patois with difficulty. They talked excitedly together a moment in the doorway, their outlines blocked against the corridor where a single oil lamp flickered. She warned, urging something; he expostulated. Fragments reached Hendricks in his corner. Clearly the woman worshipped her husband like a king, yet feared for his safety. He, for his part, comforted her, scolded a little, argued, told her to ‘believe in God and go back to bed.’
‘They’ll take you too, and you’ll never return. It’s not your parish anyhow …’ a touch of anguish in her tone.
But Leysin was impatient to be off. He led her down the passage. ‘My parish is wherever I can help. I belong to God. Nothing can harm me but to leave undone the work He gives me.’ The steps went farther away as he guided her to the stairs. Outside the roar of voices rose and fell. Wind brought the drifting sound, wind carried it away. It was like the thunder of the sea.
And the Englishman, using the little scene as a flashlight upon his own attitude, saw it for an instant as God might have seen it. Leysin’s point of view was high, scanning a very wide horizon. His eye being single, the whole body was full of light. The risk, it suddenly seemed, was—nothing; to shirk it, indeed, the merest cowardice.
He went up and seized the Pasteur’s hand.
‘To-morrow,’ he said, a trifle shakily perhaps, yet looking straight into his eyes. ‘If we stay over—I’ll bring the lad with me—provided he comes willingly.’
‘You will stay over,’ interrupted the other with decision. ‘Come to supper at seven. Come in mountain boots. Use persuasion, but not force. He shall see it from a distance—without taking part.’
‘From a distance—yes,’ the tutor repeated, ‘but without taking part.’
‘I know the signs,’ the Pasteur broke in significantly. ‘We can rescue him in the nick of time—charged with energy and life, yet before the danger gets——’
A sudden clangour of bells drowned the whispering voice, cutting the sentence in the middle. It was like an alarm of fire. Leysin sprang sharply round.
‘The signal!’ he cried; ‘the signal from the church. Some one’s been taken. I must go at once—I shall be needed.’ He had his hat and cloak on in a moment, was through the passage and into the street, Hendricks following at his heels. The whole place seemed alive. Yet the roadway was deserted, and no lights showed at the windows of the houses. Only from the farther end of the village, where stood the cabaret, came a roar of voices, shouting, crying, singing. The impression was that the population was centred there. Far in the starry sky a line of fires blazed upon the heights, throwing a lurid reflection above the deep black valley. Excitement filled the night.
‘But how extraordinary!’ exclaimed Hendricks, hurrying to overtake his alert companion; ‘what life there is about! Everything’s on the rush.’ They went faster, almost running. ‘I feel the waves of it beating even here.’ He followed breathlessly.
‘A messenger has come—and gone,’ replied Leysin in a sharp, decided voice. ‘What you feel here is but the overflow. This is the aftermath. I must work down here with my people——’
‘I’ll work with you,’ began the other. But Leysin stopped him.
‘Keep yourself for to-morrow night—up there,’ he said with grave authority, pointing to the fiery line upon the heights, and at the same time quickening his pace along the street. ‘At the moment,’ he cried, looking back, ‘your place is yonder.’ He jerked his head towards the carpenter’s house among the vineyards. The next minute he was gone.
V
And Hendricks, accredited tutor to a sprig of nobility in the twentieth century, asked himself suddenly how such things could possibly be. The adventure took on abruptly a touch of nightmare. Only the light in the sky above the cabaret windows, and the roar of voices where men drank and sang, brought home the reality of it all. With a shudder of apprehension he glanced at the lurid glare upon the mountains. He