The First Algernon Blackwood Megapack

  Yet, for all that, certain things remained authentic. the effect upon the boy was not illusion, nor his words about fire and wind mere meaningless invention. There hid some undivined and significant correspondence between the gaps in his deficient nature and these two turbulent elements. the talk with Leysin, as the conduct of his wife, remained authentic; those facts were too steady to be dismissed, the Pasteur too genuinely in earnest to be catalogued in dream. Neither daylight nor common sense could dissipate their actuality. Truth lay somewhere in it all.

  Thus the day, for the tutor, was a battle that shifted with varying fortune between doubt and certainty. In the morning his mind was decided: the wild experiment was unjustifiable; in the afternoon, as the sunshine grew faint and melancholy, it became “interesting, for what harm could come of it?” but towards evening, when shadows lengthened across the purple forests and the trees stood motionless in the calm and windless air, the adventure seemed, as it had seemed the night before, not only justifiable, but right and necessary. It only became inevitable, however, when, after tea together on the balcony, Lord Ernie, mentioning the subject for the first time that day, asked pointedly what time the Pasteur expected them to supper; then, noticing the flash of hesitancy in his companion’s eyes, added in his strange deep voice, “You promised we should go.” Withdrawal after that was out of the question. To retract would have meant, for one thing, final loss of the boy’s confidence—a possibility not to be contemplated for a moment.

  Until this moment no word of the preceding night had passed the lips of either. Lord Ernie had been quiet and preoccupied, silent rather, but never listless. He was peaceful, perhaps subdued a little, yet with a suppressed energy in his bearing that Hendricks watched with secret satisfaction. the tutor, closely observant, detected nothing out of gear; life stirred strongly in him; there was purpose, interest, will; there was desire; but there was nothing to cause alarm.

  Availing himself then of the lad’s absorption in his own affairs, he wandered forth alone upon his sentimental tour of inspection. No ghost of emotion rose to stalk beside him. That early tragedy, he now saw clearly, had been no more than youthful explosion of mere physical passion, wholesome and natural, but due chiefly to propinquity. His thoughts ran idly on; and he was even congratulating himself upon escape and freedom when, abruptly, he remembered a phrase Bindy had used the night before, and stumbled suddenly upon a clue when least expecting it.

  He came to a sudden halt. the significance of it crashed through his mind and startled him. “There are big rushing women…” It was the first reference to the other sex, as evidence of their attraction for him, Hendricks had ever known to pass his lips. Hitherto, though twenty years of age, the lad had never spoken of women as though he was aware of their terrible magic. He had not discovered them as females, necessary to every healthy male. It was not purity, of course, but ignorance: he had felt nothing. Something had now awakened sex in him, so that he knew himself a man, and naked. And it had revolutionised the world for him. This new life came from the roots, transforming listless indifference into positive desire; the will woke out of sleep, and all the currents of his system took aggressive form. For all energy, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual, is fundamentally one: it is primarily sexual.

  Hendricks paused in his sentimental walk, marvelling that he had not realised sooner this simple truth. It brought a certain logical meaning even into the pagan rites upon the mountains, these ancient rites which symbolised the marriage of the two tremendous elements of wind and fire, heat and air. And the lad’s quiet, busy mood that morning confirmed his simple discovery. It involved restraint and purpose. Lord Ernie was alive. Hendricks would take home with him to those ancestral halls a vessel bursting with energy—creative energy. It was admirable that he should witness—from a safe distance—this primitive ceremony of crude pagan origin. It was the very thing. And the tutor hurried back to the house among the vineyards, aware that his responsibility had increased, but persuaded more than ever that his course was justified.

  * * * *

  The sky held calm and cloudless through the day, the forests brooding beneath the hazy autumn sunshine. Indications that the second hurricane lay brewing among the heights were not wanting, however, to experienced eyes. Almost a preternatural silence reigned; there was a warm heaviness in the placid atmosphere; the surface of the lake was patched and streaky; the extreme clarity of the air an ominous omen. Distant objects were too close. Towards sunset, moreover, the streaks and patches vanished as though sucked below, while thin strips of tenuous cloud appeared from nowhere above the northern cliffs. They moved with great rapidity at an enormous height, touched with a lurid brilliance as the sun sank out of sight; and when Hendricks strolled over with Lord Ernie to la cure for supper there came a sudden rush of heated wind that set the branches sharply rattling, then died away as abruptly as it rose.

  They seemed reflected, too, these disturbances, in the human atmospheres about the supper table—there was suppression of various emotions, emotions presaging violence. Lord Ernie was exhilarated, Hendricks uneasy and preoccupied, the Pasteur grave and thoughtful. In Hendricks was another feeling as well—that he had lightly summoned a storm which might carry him off his feet. the boy’s excitement increased it, as wind-puffs fan a starting fire. His own judgment had somewhere played him false, betraying him into this incredible adventure. And yet he could not stop it. the Pasteur’s influence was over him perhaps. He was ashamed to turn back. He was committed. the unusual circumstances found the weakness in his character.

  For somewhere in the preposterous superstition there lay a big forgotten truth. He could not believe it, and yet he did believe it. the world had forgotten how to live truly close to Nature.

  A desultory conversation was carried on, chiefly between the two men, while the boy ate hungrily, and Mme. Leysin watched her husband with anxiety as she served the simple meal.

  “So you are coming with us, and you like to come?” the Pasteur observed quietly, Hendricks translating.

  Lord Ernie replied with a gesture of unmistakable enthusiasm.

  “A wild lot of men and women,” Leysin went on, keeping his eye hard upon him, “with an interesting worship of their own copied from very ancient times. They live on the heights, and mix little with us valley folk. You shall see their ceremonies tonight.”

  “They get the wind and fire into themselves, don’t they?” asked the boy keenly, and somewhat to the distress of the translator who rendered it, “They get into wind and fire.”

  “They worship wind and fire,” Leysin replied, “and they do it by means of a wonderful dance that somehow imitates the leap of flame and the headlong rush of wind. If you copy the movements and gestures of a person you discover the emotion that causes them. You share it. Their idea is, apparently, that by imitating the movements they invite or attract the force—draw these elemental powers into their systems, so that in the end—”

  He stopped suddenly, catching the tutor’s eye. Lord Ernie seemed to understand without translation; he had laid down his knife and fork, and was leaning forward across the table, listening with deep absorption. His expression was alert with a new intelligence that was almost cunning. An acute sensibility seemed to have awakened in him.

  “As with laughing, I suppose?” he said in an undertone to Hendricks quickly. “If you imitate a laugher, you laugh yourself in the end and feel all the jolly excitement of laughter. Is that what he means?”

  The tutor nodded with assumed indifference. “Imitation is always infectious,” he said lightly; “but, of course, you will not imitate these wild people yourself, Bindy. We’ll just look on from a distance.”

  “From a distance!” repeated the boy, obviously disappointed. “What’s the good of that?” A look of obstinacy passed across his altered face.

  Hendricks met his eyes squarely. “At a circus,” he said firmly, “you just watch. You don’t imitate the clown, do you?”

  “If you look on lon
g enough, you do,” was the rather dogged reply.

  “Well, take the Russian dancers we saw in Moscow,” the other insisted patiently; “you felt the power and beauty without jumping up and whirling in your stall?”

  Bindy half glared at him. There was almost contempt in his quiet answer: “But your mind whirled with them. And later your body would too; otherwise it’s given you nothing.” He paused a second. “I can only get the fun of riding by being on a horse’s back and doing his movements exactly with him—not by watching him.”

  Hendricks smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He did not wish to discourage the enthusiasm lying behind this analysis. the uneasiness in him grew apace. He said something rapidly in French, using an undertone and laughter to confuse the actual words.

  “Of course we must not interfere with their ceremonies,” put in the Pasteur with decision. “It’s sacred to them. We can hide among the trees and watch. You would not leave your seat in church to imitate the priest, would you?” He glanced smilingly at the eager youth before him.

  “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 tonight. 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 behavior, 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 e
nough 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 vigor. “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.