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 to-night.’
‘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.