‘Merely watch, yes; look on; let him see,’ interrupted the other with eagerness. ‘We must be very careful. It’s worth trying — a last resort.’
They still stood close together. Hendricks felt the little man’s breath on his face as he peered up at him.
‘I admit the chance,’ he began weakly.
‘There is no chance,’ was the vigorous reply, ‘there is only Providence. You have been guided.’
‘But as to risk and failure, what of them? What’s involved?’ he asked, recklessness increasing in him.
‘New wine in old bottles,’ was the answer. ‘But here, you tell me, the vessel is not damaged, but merely empty. The machinery is all right. If he merely watches, as from a little distance — —’
‘Yes, yes, the machinery is there, I agree. The boy has breeding, health, and all the physical qualities — good blood and nerves and muscles. It’s only that life refuses to stay and drive them.’ His heart beat with violence even as he said it; he felt the energy and zeal from the older man pour into him. He was realising in himself on a smaller scale what might take place with the boy in large. But still he shrank. Leysin for the moment said no more. His spiritual discernment was equal to his boldness. Having planted the seed, he left it to grow or die. The decision was not for him.
* * *
In the light of the single lamp the two men sat facing each other, listening, waiting, while Leysin talked occasionally, but in the main kept silence. Some time passed, though how long the tutor could not say. In his mind was wild confusion. How could he justify such a mad proposal? Yet how could he refuse the opening, preposterous though it seemed? The enticement was very great; temptation rushed upon him. Striving to recall his normal world, he found it difficult. The face of the old Marquess seemed a mere lifeless picture on a wall — it watched but could not interfere. Here was an opportunity to take or leave. He fought the battle in terms of naked souls, while the ordinary four-cornered morality hid its face awhile. He heard himself explaining, delaying, hedging, half-toying with the problem. But the redemption of a soul was at stake, and he tried to forget the environment and conditions of modern thought and belief. Sentences flashed at him out of the battle: ‘I must take him back worse than when I started, or — what? A violent being like Marston, or a redeemed, converted system with new energy? It’s a chance, and my last.’ Moreover, odd, half-comic detail — there was the support of the Church, of a protestant clergyman whose fundamental beliefs were similar to the evangelical persuasions of the boy’s family. Conversion, as demoniacal possession, were both traditions of the blood. After all, the old Marquess might understand and approve. ‘You took the opening God set in your way in His wisdom. You showed faith and courage. Far be it from me to condemn you.’ The picture on the wall looked down at him and spoke the words.
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 moun
tain 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 was committed now; not because he had merely promised, but because he had definitely made up his mind.
Lighting a match, he saw by his watch that the visit had lasted over two hours. It was after eleven. He hurried, letting himself in with the big house-key, and going on tiptoe up the granite stairs. In his mind rose a picture of the boy as he had known him all these weary, sight-seeing months — the mild brown eyes, the facile indolence, the pliant, watery emotions of the listless creature, but behind him now, like storm clouds, the hopes, desires, fears the Pasteur’s talk had conjured up. The yearning to save stirred strongly in his heart, and more and more of the little man’s reckless spiritual audacity came with it. His own affection for the lad was genuine, but impatience and adventure pushed eagerly through the tenderness. If only, oh, if only he could put life into that great six-foot, big-boned frame! Some energy as of fire and wind into that inert machinery of mind and body! The idea was utterly incredible, but surely no harm could come of trying the experiment. There were the huge and elemental forces, of course, in Nature, and if ... A sound in the bedroom, as he crept softly past the door, caught his attention, and he paused a moment to listen. Lord Ernie was not asleep, then, after all. He wondered why the sound got somehow at his heart. There was shuffling behind the door; there was a voice, too — or was it voices? He knocked.
‘Who is it?’ came at once, in a tone he hardly recognised. And, as he answered, ‘It’s I, Mr. Hendricks; let me in,’ there followed a renewal of the shuffling, but without the sound of voices, and the door flew open — it was not even locked. Lord Ernie stood before him, dressed to go out. In the faint starlight the tall ungainly figure filled the doorway, erect and huge, the shoulders squared, the trunk no longer drooping. The listlessness was gone. He stood upright, limbs straight and alert; the sagging limp had vanished from the knees. He looked, in this semi-darkness, like another person, almost monstrous. And the tutor drew back instinctively, catching an instant at his breath.
‘But, my dear boy! why aren’t you asleep?’ he stammered. He glanced half nervously about him. ‘I heard you talking, surely?’ He fumbled for a match; but, before he found it, the other had turned on the electric switch. The light flared out. There was no one else in the room. ‘Is anything wrong with you? What’s the matter?’
But the boy answered quietly, though in a deeper voice than Hendricks had ever known in him before:
‘I’m all right; only I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been watching those fires on the mountains. I — I wanted to go out and see.’
He still held the field-glasses in his hand, swinging them vigorously by the strap. The room was littered with clothes, just unpacked, the heavy shooting boots in the middle of the floor; and Hendricks, noticing these signs, felt a wave of excitement sweep through him, caught somehow from the presence of the boy. There was a sense of vitality in the room — as though a rush of active movement had just passed through it. Both windows stood wide open, and the roar of voices was clearly audible. Lord Ernie turned his head to listen.
‘That’s only the village people drinking and shouting,’ said Hendricks, closely watching each movement that he made. ‘It’s perfectly natural, Bindy, that you feel too excited to sleep. We’re in the mountains. The air stimulates tremendously — it makes the heart beat faster.’ He decided not to press the lad with questions.
‘But I never felt like this in the Rockies or the Himalayas,’ came the swift rejoinder, as he moved to the window and looked out. ‘There was nothing in India or Japan like that!’ He swept his hand towards the wooded heights that towered above the village so close. He talked volubly. ‘All those things we saw out there were sham — done on purpose for tourists. Up there it’s real. I’ve been watching through the glasses till — I felt I simply must go out and join it. You can see men dancing round the fires, and big, rushing women. Oh, Mr. Hendricks, isn’t it all glorious — all too glorious and ripping for words!’ And his brown eyes shone like lamps.
‘You mean that it’s spontaneous, natural?’ the other guided him, welcoming the new enthusiasm, yet still bewildered by the startling change. It was not mere nerves he saw. There was nothing morbid in it.
‘They’re doing it, I mean, because they have to,’ came the decided answer, ‘and because they feel it. They’re not just copying the world.’ He put his hand upon the other’s arm. There was dry heat in it that Hendricks felt even through his clothes. ‘And that’s what I want,’ the boy went on, raising his voice; ‘what I’ve always wanted without knowing it — real things that can make me alive. I’ve often had it in my dreams, you know, but now I’ve found it.’
‘But I didn’t know. You never told me of those dreams.’
The boy’s cheeks flushed, so that the colour and the fire in his eyes made him positively splendid. He answered slowly, as out of some part he had hitherto kept deliberately concealed.
‘Because I never could get hold of it in words. It sounded so silly even to myself, and I thought Father would train it all away and laugh at it. It’s awfully far down in me, but it’s so real I knew it must come out one day, and that I should find it. Oh, I say, Mr. Hendricks,’ and he lowered his voice, leaning out across the window-sill suddenly, ‘that fills me up and feeds me’ — he pointed to the heights— ‘and gives me life. The life I’ve seen till now was only a kind of show. It starved me. I want to go up there and feel it pouring through my blood.’ He filled his lungs with the strong mountain air, and paused while he exhaled it slowly, as though tasting it with delight and understanding. Then he burst out again, ‘I vote we go. Will you come with me? What d’you say. Eh?’<
br />
They stared at each other hard a moment. Something as primitive and irresistible as love passed through the air between them. With a great effort the older man kept the balance true.
‘Not to-night, not now,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s too late. To-morrow, if you like — with pleasure.’
‘But to-morrow night,’ cried the boy with a rush, ‘when the fires are blazing and the wind is loose. Not in the stupid daylight.’
‘All right. To-morrow night. And my old friend, Monsieur Leysin, shall be our guide. He knows the way, and he knows the people too.’
Lord Ernie seized his hands with enthusiasm. His vigour was so disconcerting that it seemed to affect his physical appearance. The body grew almost visibly; his very clothes hung on him differently; he was no longer a nonentity yawning beneath an ancient pedigree and title; he was an aggressive personality. The boy in him rushed into manhood, as it were, while still retaining boyish speech and gesture. It was uncanny. ‘We’ll go more than once, I vote; go again and again. This is a place and a half. It’s my place with a vengeance —— !’
‘Not exactly the kind of place your father would wish you to linger in,’ his tutor interrupted. ‘But we might stay a day or two — especially as you like it so.’
‘It’s far better than the towns and the rotten embassies; better than fifty Simlas and Bombays and filthy Cairos,’ cried the other eagerly. ‘It’s just the thing I need, and when I get home I’ll show ’em something. I’ll prove it. Why, they simply won’t know me!’ He laughed, and his face shone with a kind of vivid radiance in the glare of the electric light. The transformation was more than curious. Waiting a moment to see if more would follow, Hendricks moved slowly then towards the door, with the remark that it was advisable now to go to bed since they would be up late the following night — when he noticed for the first time that the pillow and sheets were crumpled and that the bed had already been lain in. The first suspicion flashed back upon him with new certainty.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 483