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 on springs.
‘He’s of them,’ he continued, ‘but in a peculiar and particular sense. More than merely a possible recruit, his empty organism would provide the very link they need, the perfect conduit.’ He watched his companion’s face with careful keenness. ‘In the country where I first experienced this marvellous thing,’ he added significantly, ‘he would have been set apart as the offering, the sacrifice, as they call it there. The tribe would have chosen him with honour. He would have been the special bait to attract.’
‘Death?’ whispered the other.
But Leysin shook his head. ‘In the end, perhaps,’ he replied darkly, ‘for the vessel might be torn and shattered. But at first charged to the brim and crammed with energy—with transformed vitality they could draw into themselves through him. A monster, if you will, but to them a deity; and superhuman, in our little sense, most certainly.’
Then Hendricks faltered inwardly and turned away. No words came to him at the moment. In silence the minds of the two men, one a religious, the other a secular teacher, and each with a burden of responsibility to the race, kept pace together without speech. The religious, however, outstripped the pedagogue. What he next said seemed a little disconnected with what had preceded it, although Hendricks caught the drift easily enough—and shuddered.
‘An organism needing heat,’ observed Leysin calmly, ‘can absorb without danger what would destroy a normal person. Alcohol, again, neither injures nor intoxicates—up to a given point—the system that really requires it.’
The tutor, perplexed and sorely tempted, felt that he drifted with a tide he found it difficult to stem.
‘Up to a point,’ he repeated. ‘That’s true, of course.’
‘Up to a given point,’ echoed the other, with significance that made his voice sound solemn. ‘Then rescue—in the nick of time.’
He waited two full minutes and more for an answer; then, as none was audible, he said another thing. His eyes were so intent upon the tutor’s that the latter raised his own unwillingly, and understood thus all that lay behind the pregnant little sentence.
‘With a number it would not be possible, but with an individual it could be done. Brim the empty vessel first. Then rescue—in the nick of time! Regeneration!’
IV
In the Englishman’s mind there came a crash, as though something fell. There was dust, confusion, noise. Moral platitudes shouted at conventional admonitions. Warnings laughed and copy-book maxims shrivelled up. Above the lot, rising with a touch of grandeur, stood the pulpit figure of the little Pasteur, his big face shining clear through all the turmoil, strength and vision in the flaming eyes—a commanding outline with spiritual audacity in his heart. And Hendricks saw then that the man himself was standing erect in the centre of the room, one finger raised to command attention—listening. Some considerable interval must have passed while he struggled with his inner confusion.
Leysin stood, intently listening, his big head throwing a grotesque shadow on wall and ceiling.
‘Hark!’ he exclaimed, half whispering. ‘Do you hear that? Listen.’
A deep sound, confused and roaring, passed across the night, far away, and slightly booming. It entered the little room so that the air seemed to tremble a moment. To Hendricks it held something ominous.
‘The wind,’ he whispered, as the noise died off into the distance; ‘yet a moment ago the night was still enough. The stars were shining.’ There was tense excitement in the room just then. It showed in Leysin’s face, which had gone white as a cloth. Hendricks himself felt extraordinarily stirred.
‘Not wind, but human voices,’ the older man said quickly. ‘It’s shouting. Listen!’ and his eyes ran round the room, coming to rest finally in a corner where his hat and cloak hung from a nail. A gesture accompanied the look. He wanted to be out. The tutor half rose to take his leave. ‘You have duties to-night elsewhere,’ he stammered. ‘I’m forgetting.’ His own instinct was to get away himself with Bindy by the first early diligence. He was afraid of yielding.
‘Hush!’ whispered Leysin peremptorily. ‘Listen!’
He opened the window at the top, and through the crack, where the stars peeped brightly, there came, louder than
