Incredible Adventures. Algernon Blackwood
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to act. And some one from the heights—a messenger perhaps—will be down later, this very evening probably, on the hunt——’
‘On the hunt?’ Hendricks asked it half below his breath. He felt a touch of awe as he heard this experienced, genuinely religious man speak with conviction of such curious things. ‘On the hunt?’ he repeated more eagerly.
‘Messengers do come down,’ was the reply. ‘A living belief always seeks to increase, to grow, to add to itself. Where there’s conviction there’s always propaganda.’
‘Ah, converts——?’
Leysin shrugged his big black shoulders. ‘Desire to add to their number—desire to save,’ he said. ‘The energy they absorb overflows, that’s all.’
The Englishman debated several questions vaguely in his mind; only his mind, being disturbed, could not hold the balance exactly true. Leysin’s influence, as of old, was upon him. A possibility, remote, seductive, dangerous, began to beckon to him, but from somewhere just outside his reasoning mind.
‘And they always know when one of their kind is near,’ the voice slipped in between his tumbling thoughts, ‘as though they get it instinctively from these universal elements they worship. They select their recruits with marvellous judgment and precision. No messenger ever goes back alone; nor has a recruit ever been known to return to the lazy squalor of the conditions whence he escaped.’
The younger man sat upright in his chair, suddenly alert, and the gesture that he made unconsciously might have been read by a keen psychiatrist as evidence of mental self-defence. He felt the forbidden impulse in him gathering force, and tried to call a halt. At any rate, he called upon the other man to be explicit. He enquired point-blank what this religion of the heights might be. What were these elements these people worshipped? In what did their wild ceremonies consist?
And Leysin, breaking bounds, let his speech burst forth in a stream of explanation, learned of actual knowledge, as he claimed, and uttered with a vehement conviction that produced an undeniable effect upon his astonished listener. Told by no dreamer, but by a righteous man who lived, not merely preached his certain faith, Hendricks, before the half was heard, forgot what age and land he dwelt in. Whole blocks of conventional belief crumbled and fell away. Brick walls erected by routine to mark narrow paths of proper conduct—safe, moral, advisable conduct—thawed and vanished. Through the ruins, scrambling at him from huge horizons never recognised before, came all manner of marvellous possibilities. The little confinement of modern thought appalled him suddenly. Leysin spoke slowly, said little, was not even speculative. It was no mere magic of words that made the dim-lit study swim these deep waters beyond the ripple of pert creeds, but rather the overwhelming sense of sure conviction driving behind the statements. The little man had witnessed curious things, yes, in his missionary days, and that he had found truth in them in place of ignorant nonsense was remarkable enough. That silly superstitions prevalent among older nations could be signs really of their former greatness, linked mightily close to natural forces, was a startling notion, but it paved the way in Hendricks’ receptive mind just then for the belief that certain so-called elements might be worshipped—known intimately, that is—to the uplifting advantage of the worshippers. And what elements more suitable for adoring imitation than wind and fire? For in a human body the first signs of what men term life are heat which is combustion, and breath which is a measure of wind. Life means fire, drawn first from the sun, and breathing, borrowed from the omnipresent air; there might credibly be ways of assaulting these elements and taking heaven by storm; of seizing from their inexhaustible stores an abnormal measure, of straining this huge raw supply into effective energy for human use—vitality. Living with fire and wind in their most active moments; closely imitating their movements, following in their footsteps, understanding their ‘laws of being,’ going identically with them—there lay a hint of the method. It was once, when men were primitively close to Nature, instinctual knowledge. The ceremony was the teaching. The Powers of fire, the Principalities of air, existed; and humanity could know their qualities by the ritual of imitation, could actually absorb the fierce enthusiasm of flame and the tireless energy of wind. Such transference was conceivable.
Leysin, at any rate, somehow made it so. His description of what he had personally witnessed, both in wilder lands and here in this little mountain range of middle Europe, had a reality in it that was upsetting to the last degree. ‘There is nothing more difficult to believe,’ he said, ‘yet more certainly true, than the effect of these singular elemental rites.’ He laughed a short dry laugh. ‘The mediaeval superstition that a witch could raise a storm is but a remnant of a once completely efficacious system,’ he concluded, ‘though how that strange being, the Valais priest, rediscovered the process and introduced it here, I have never been able to ascertain. That he did so results have proved. At any rate, it lets in life, life moreover in astonishing abundance; though, whether for destruction or regeneration, depends, obviously, upon the use the recipient puts it to. That’s where direction comes in.’
The beckoning impulse in the tutor’s bewildered thoughts drew closer. The moment for communicating it had come at last. Without more ado he took the opening. He told his companion the incident in the village street, the boy’s abrupt excitement, his new-found energy, the curious words he used, the independence and vitality of his attitude. He told also of his parentage, of his mother’s disabilities, his craving for rushing air in abundance, his love of fire for its own sake, of his magnificent physical machinery, yet of his uselessness.
And Leysin, as he listened, seemed built on wires. Searching questions shot forth like blows into the other’s mind. The Pasteur’s sudden increase of enthusiasm was infectious. He leaped intuitively to the thing in Hendricks’ thought. He understood the beckoning.
The tutor answered the questions as best he could, aware of the end in view with trepidation and a kind of mental breathlessness. Yes, unquestionably, Bindy had exchanged communication of some sort with the man, though his excitement had been evident even sooner.
‘And you saw this man yourself?’ Leysin pressed him.
‘Indubitably—a tall and hurrying figure in the dusk.’
‘He brought energy with him? The boy felt it and responded?’
Hendricks nodded. ‘Became quite unmanageable for some minutes,’ he replied.
‘He assimilated it though? There was no distress exactly?’ Leysin asked sharply.
‘None—that I could see. Pleasurable excitement, something aggressive, a rather wild enthusiasm. His will began to act. He used that curious phrase about wind and fire. He turned alive. He wanted to follow the man——’
‘And the face—how would you describe it? Did it bring terror, I mean, or confidence?’
‘Dark and splendid,’ answered the other as truthfully as he could. ‘In a certain sense, rushing, tempestuous, yet stern rather.’
‘A face like the heights,’ suggested Leysin impatiently, ‘a windy, fiery aspect in it, eh?’
‘The man swept past like the spirit of a storm in imaginative poetry——’ began the tutor, hunting through his thoughts for adequate description, then stopped as he saw that his companion had risen from his chair and begun to pace the floor.
The Pasteur paused a moment beside him, hands thrust deep into his pockets, head bent down, and shoulders forward. For twenty seconds he stared into his visitor’s face intently, as though he would force into him the thought in his own mind. His features seemed working visibly, yet behind a mask of strong control.
‘Don’t you see what it is? Don’t you see?’ he said in a lower, deeper tone. ‘They knew. Even from a distance they were aware of his coming. He is one of themselves.’ And he straightened up again. ‘He belongs to them.’
‘One of them? One of the wind-and-fire lot?’ the tutor stammered.
The restless little man returned to his chair opposite, full of suppressed and vigorous movement, as though he were strung