Part 4

"The Great Supreme Mind has priests, leaders, prophets, in all departments of knowledge, music, mathematics, chemistry, navigation or engineering--why should He not have chosen instruments to reveal theological truth?"

He lay some time quiet, then he said, "It is good; now I feel I can tell you, for you will not smile. For years, ever since I could think, I have been an atheist. I went into this war an atheist. A few days ago a shell burst near me and I was wounded in twenty-nine places." (This statement was subsequently substantiated by the doctor and a nursing sister of mercy.) "Monsieur, I was in great pain: then suddenly a kind face was looking into mine, something touched my brow, the awful pain ceased. 'You called me,' a soft voice said. Then I remembered that when I was wounded I had cried, 'Oh, my God!' and I laughed, monsieur, for I was an atheist. Then I lost consciousness with that kind face still bending over me. Now I lie and think of that kind face. The doctors say maybe I shall recover, and the sisters here say to me that it is all in the Good God's hands and I am content. I say it is all in the Good God's hands. When that kind face was looking into mine I cried out 'I am an atheist,' and he just smiled and said 'But you called me.'"

I offered to get a priest for the poor fellow, but he shook his head. "No, monsieur. I have been an enemy of priests all my life--an enemy of religion--the Church. To offer the remaining days of my wreckage to God--no--I have but a few hours to live, and I would think of that kind face, and when I think of it the pain ceases. Ah, monsieur, I had wonderful arguments to show that there was no God, and that the clerics are the people's enemies--yet when I was struck down I called 'Oh, my God!' It is comical. That is why the kind face smiled."

Another wounded French soldier said to me: "When I go back to Toulon I shall have something to say to my comrades. I always thought priests were only half men, but my God! I have seen them fight. It is magnificent. A priest led us when we hesitated, I got my two wounds following him--a priest. Oh! it is truly unbelievable to think that I should follow a priest. He led us to triumph. He led me to something more. That day I knew religion was true. I saw something in his face. I saw it again when he fell wounded, and I was wounded but I could only think of him. Ah, life is droll--Now I go back to Toulon with two bad wounds and a religion. Priests--I have seen them fight, and I lie and laugh at myself and my comrades as fools for we thought of them as mere amusements for women and children. I saw priests go forward where my noble comrades held back--my noble comrades who sneer at priests. It is droll."

FIVE SKETCHES

BY R. THURSTON HOPKINS

OMBOS

We were talking at the club about spirit manifestations, and retailing the usual second or third-hand accounts of family spooks and deceased aunts showing themselves to their sorrowing relatives.

"It is strange the tricks which our brains will sometimes play us," said Barton. "I remember once seeing a ghost myself, and I can tell you that the sensation is a very curious one. It was a good many years ago, when I was out in Bombay in the National Indian Bank, and I had been sitting up until the early hours trying to trace some fraudulent entries in the bank's books by one of our clerks who had absconded with a considerable sum of money.

"Everybody in the bank building had long since gone home or to bed, where I ought to have been myself, so I was vastly astonished when I looked up from the ledger to see somebody sitting at the desk where I myself had been writing a few moments before. I felt quite upset for a moment, until I recognised the intruder. He was nebulous, but I could see plainly enough who it was."

"A member of your family in England?" asked Duckford, who was a firm believer in the good old-fashioned second sight of the Scotch Highlanders. Barton answered in his peculiarly quiet way.

"No, it was myself. The appearance of seeing an image of one's self is not altogether unusual, I believe. But, of course, such a thing is really all nonsense ... a matter of nerves."

"Now, I do not think it is fair of you to put all such things down to nerves," said Captain Crabbe, who had returned wounded from France after being in the field since the outbreak of the Great War. "If one cannot always explain, one need not therefore ridicule." Crabbe made this remark with a gravity that was somewhat unusual with him.

"Bless my soul, boy, you haven't been seeing the Angels of Mons or the Agincourt Bowmen over there in Flanders, have you?" asked Duckford, regarding Crabbe with a keen eye, and scenting something savouring of the mysterious, the super-natural. "Do you believe in these stories? I mean--superstitions?"

Captain Crabbe shook his head. "Not greatly," he said smiling. "But I am not one of those who thoughtlessly laugh at that which is out of the common, merely because it cannot be explained on ordinary grounds. Not since I have spent nearly twelve months over in France, at any rate. Are you interested in the weird?"

"I'd be a fool if I wasn't," said Duckford, selecting a cigar from his case. "What's your story about--I see you have one to tell. I am not inquisitive as a rule; but, somehow your manner has warned me that you have something singularly interesting to tell."

Crabbe remained silent a short time. Then, looking at Duckford very earnestly, he answered:

"Well, perhaps I may tell you my story, though I would not tell it to all these heretics around me. Indeed, only two or three other people have ever heard it. I hate--ah! more than I can convey to any living soul--even to think about it. But to you it may be of special interest."

"You know that I look upon all such things from the point of a simple, unbiassed inquirer," returned Duckford. "Come along, Crabbe."

"A good cigar in front of the card room fire, and your story, eh?" Duckford led the way up to the snug card room where a cheerful fire was blazing. "Sit down. Where is that dashed waiter? Oh, you there, Griggs. Come along with some whisky and soda."

Crabbe sat down in a deep chair by the fire, and stretched his feet to the flame. Duckford said nothing; only pulled at his cigar and patiently waited for what he knew was soon coming.

"Do you know--but, no, of course you don't," he began presently. "But can you imagine how it can be that a man could pass all his force into a bronze statue and make it live.... You've heard these literary men and artists talk about putting their souls into their work, Duckford?" Duckford pursed his lips. "Everything lives--even a bronze statue," he said seriously. "If it was not so it would atrophy, it would crumble and disappear. Look at the case of----"

"That's just what old Ombos said. And if he didn't understand all about those things, I should jolly well like to be led to the man who did. Ombos told me hundreds of times that a man walked about this earth throwing his force into everything he came in contact with--scattering some kind of power; and of course that power is picked up by stones and houses and ... statues, or anything. Ombos misused it; that was disastrous. It seems to me that it is safe to use this god-energy only in its own proper sphere. You have very likely heard of men who have tried to pass themselves into inanimate objects? Well, what would you say if I tell you that I even I--who sit now so soberly before you, whom before the war you knew to be ordinarily, a quiet, peaceably-disposed, sport-loving English fellow--had once been under the spell of a bronze statue that somebody had passed clean into?"

"You were under the hypnotic influence of your friend Ombos, probably," I suggested.

"You may think so, now; but you just wait till I have told you all about Ombos, and the bronze statue. Then you'll be able to decide if it was trickery.... It would be different if you could have seen the statue."

Then Crabbe proceeded to unfold his strange tale.

"You know that when the war first broke out I was attached to the Loamshires, and we were one of the first British Regiments to start for the land across the water. After six months' fighting, during which every day was crowded with enough incident to provide a three-reel thriller for a cinema-man, I found myself quartered at Ypres. Have you ever been to Ypres? If you have, it will act as a kind of antidote to those wretched picture post-cards which show it in its last phase--a heap of senseless wreckage. The 'Coal Boxes,' 'Jack Johnsons' and other varied presents from Krupp's had not fallen on the town with such lavishness at the time my regiment found shelter there. It was a June afternoon when I first found my way there. A mellow drowsiness hung over the Cloth Hall and Cathedral. It was indeed a very pleasant little town. The old houses of the square, the Prior's Gate, the noble trees, the stretch of green turf, all shared in the dream-like repose. In the Rue Bar-le-Duc, as everybody knows, just where it winds around to the fine gateway of the Cathedral, there is a row of little shops with bulging leaded windows, dusty and delightful. The one that took my eye was an antique shop. I had a whole regiment of aunts and uncles at home who in every letter demanded souvenirs, and here was the chance to lodge a shipping order, with about a hundred labels, and leave the old antiquarian fogey to send 'em off. It was inside that I met Ombos for the first time. I selected the souvenirs, and wrote labels; but old Ombos made a devil of a muddle over sending them off, and a very prim maiden aunt received a snuff box adorned with a young French lady in very scanty attire.... By the way, you don't know my aunt Sylvia, do you?"

Crabbe laughed heartily for the first time that evening.