The First Algernon Blackwood Megapack

by Algernon Blackwood

  “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 clangor 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. Someone’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 centerd 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 tomorrow 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 color 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?”

  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 tonight, not now,” he said firmly. “It’s too late. Tomorrow, if you like—with pleasure.”

  “But tomorrow night,” cried the boy with a rush, “when the fires are blazing and the wind is loose. Not in the stupid daylight.”

  “All right. Tomorrow 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 vigor 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.

  Lord Ernie was already taking off his heavy coat, preparatory to undressing. He looked up quickly at the altered tone of voice.

  “Bindy,” the tutor said with a touch of gravity, “you were alone just now—weren’t you—of course?”

  The other sat up from stooping over his boots. With his hands resting on the bed behind him, he looked straight into his companion’s eyes. Lying was not among his faults. He answered slowly after a decided interval.

  “I—I was asleep,” he whispered, evidently trying to be accurate, yet hesitating how to describe the thing he had to say, “and had a dream—one of my real, vivid dreams when something happens. Only, this time, it was more real than ever before. It was”—he paused, searching for words, then added—“sweet and awful.”

  And Hendricks repeated the surprising sentence. “Sweet and awful, Bindy! What in the world do you mean, boy?”

  Lord Ernie seemed puzzled himself by the choice of words he used.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he went on honestly, “only I mean that it was awfully real and splendid, a bit of my own life somewhere—somewhere else—where it lies hidden away behind a lot of days and months that choke it up. I can never get at it except in woods and places, quite alone, hearing the wind or making fires, or—in sleep.” He hid his face in his hands a moment, then looked up with a hint of censure in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me that such things were done? You never told me,” he repeated.

  “I didn’t know it myself until this evening. Leysin—”

  “I thought you knew everything,” Lord Ernie broke in in that same half-chiding tone.

  “Monsieur Leysin told me tonight for the first time,” said Hendricks firmly, “that such people and such practices existed. Till now I had never dreamed that such superstitions survived anywhere in the world at all.” He resented the reproach. But he was also aware that the boy resented his authority. For the first time his ascendency seemed in question; his voice, his eye, his manner did not quell as formerly. “So you mean, when you say @sweet and awful,@ that it was very real to you?” he asked. He insisted now with purpose. “Is that it, Bindy?”

  The other replied eagerly enough. “Yes, that’s it, I think—partly. This time it was more than dreaming. It was real. I got there. I remembered. That’s what I meant. And after I woke up the thing still went on. the man seemed still in the room beside the bed, calling me to get up and go with him—”

  “Man! What man?” the tutor leant upon the back of a chair to steady himself. the wind just then went past the open windows with a singing rush.

  “The dark man who passed us in the village, and who pointed to the fires on the heights. He came with the wind, you remember. He pulled my coat.”

  The boy stood up as he said it. He came across the naked boarding, his step light and dancing. “Fire that heats but does not burn, and wind that blows the heart alight, or something—I forget now exactly. You heard it too.” He whispered the words with excitement, raising his arms and knees as in the opening movements of a dance.

  Hendricks kept his own excitement down, but with a distinctly conscious effort.

  “I heard nothing of the kind,” he said calmly. “I was only thinking of getting home dry. You say,” he asked with decision, “that you heard those words?”

  Lord Ernie stood back a little. It was not that he wished to conceal, but that he felt uncertain how to express himself. “In the street,” he said, “I heard nothing; the words rose up in my own head, as it were. But in the dream, and afterwards too, when I was wide awake, I heard them out loud, clearly: Fire that heats but does not burn, and wind that blows the heart to flame—that’s how it was.”

  “In French, Bindy? You heard it in French?”

  “Oh, it was no language at all. the eyes said it—both times.” He spoke as naturally as though it was the Durbah he described again. Only this new aggressive certainty was in his voice and manner. “Mr. Hendricks,” he went on eagerly, “you understand what I mean, don’t you? When certain people look at one, words start up in the mind as though one heard them spoken. I heard the words in my head, I suppose; only they seemed so familiar, as though I’d known them before—always—”

  “Of course, Bindy, I understand. But this man—tell me—did he stay on after you woke up? And how did he go?” He looked round at the barely furnished room for hiding-places. “It was really the dream you carried on after waking, wasn’t it?”

  Then Bindy laughed, but inwardly, as to himself. There was the faintest possible hint of derision in his voice. “No doubt,” he said; “only it was one of my big, real dreams. And how he went I can’t explain at all, for I didn’t see. You knocked at the door; I turned, and found myself standing in the room, dressed to go out. There was a rush of wind outside the window—and when I looked he was no longer there. the same minute you came in. It was all as quick as that. I suppose I dressed—in my sleep.”

  They stood for several minutes, staring at each other without speaking. the tutor hesitated between several courses of action, unable, for the life of him, to decide upon any particular one. His instinct on the whole was to stop nothing, but to encourage all possible expression, while keeping rigorous watch and guard. Repression, it seemed to him just then, was the least desirable line to take. Somewhere there was truth in the affair. He felt out of his depth, his authority impaired, and under these temporary disadvantages he might so easily make a grave mistake, injuring instead of helping. While Lord Ernie finished his undressing he leaned out of the window, taking great draughts of the keen night air, watching the blazing fires and listening to the roar of voices, now dying down into the distance.

  And the voice of his thinking whispered to him, “Let it all come out. Repress nothing. Let him have the entire adventure. If it’s nonsense it can’t injure, and if it’s true it’s inevitable.” He drew his head in and moved towards the door. “Then it’s settled,” he said quietly, as though nothing unusual had happened;
“we’ll go up there tomorrow night—with Monsieur Leysin to show us the way. And you’ll go to sleep now, won’t you? For tomorrow we may be up very late. Promise me, Bindy.”

  “I’m dead tired,” came the answer from the sheets. “I certainly shan’t dream any more, if that’s what you mean. I promise.”

  Hendricks turned the light out and went softly from the room. He could always trust the boy.

  “Good-night, Bindy,” he said.

  “Good-night,” came the drowsy reply.

  Upstairs he lingered a long time over his own undressing, listening, waiting, watching for the least sound below. But nothing happened. Once, for his own peace of mind, he stole stealthily downstairs to the boy’s door; then, reassured by the heavy breathing that was distinctly audible, he went up finally and got into bed himself. the night was very still now. It was cool, and the stars were brilliant over lake and forest and mountain. No voices broke the silence. He only heard the tinkle of the little streams beyond the vineyards. And by midnight he was sound asleep.

  VI

  And next day broke as soft and brilliant as though October had stolen it from June; the Alps gleamed through an almost summery haze across the lake; the air held no hint of coming winter; and the Jura mountains wore the true blue of memory in Hendricks’ mind. Patches of red and yellow splashed the great pine-woods here and there where beech and ash put autumn in the vast dark carpet.

  The tutor woke clear-headed and refreshed. All that had happened the night before seemed out of proportion and unreasonable. There had been exaggerated emotion in it: in himself, because he returned to a place still charged with potent memories of youth; and in Lord Ernie, because the lad was overwrought by the electrical disturbance of the atmosphere. the nearness of the ancestral halls, which they both disliked, had emphasised it; the ominous, wild weather had favored it; and the coincidence of these pagan rites of superstitious peasants had focused it all into a melodramatic form with an added touch of the supernatural that was highly picturesque and—dangerously suggestive. Hendricks recovered his common sense; judgment asserted itself again.