Part 5

"I spent some hours in the bulging window of that old shop examining the wonderful collection of beautiful old things, and staggering about on piles of andirons and copper warming pans, old Ombos watching me all the time with an amused smile.

"I can still see Ombos standing like a figure carved in old ivory, with one skinny yellow hand resting on the edge of a black oak table.

"'I call all this stuff here rubbish; not worth looking at. But people do not understand real good stuff if I show it to 'em,' he said, and smiled a remotely contemptuous smile. 'Now if you really want to see some choice antiques ...'

"He motioned me to follow, and taking a lighted taper, led the way into a room at the back of his shop. Ombos pottered about with the taper on the end of a rod; suddenly a big overhead chandelier burst into light and I stood blinking in amazement.

"It was one of the most gorgeously furnished oak-panelled rooms I have ever seen. The floor was of black polished ebony, and strewn on the floor were priceless leopard skins and Persian rugs. There were heavy Chinese tapestries worked in crimson and gold, Tibetan devil-masks, gold candelabra, armour richly inlaid with precious stones, wondrous black oak furniture.... But I can assure you, I could continue indefinitely describing the contents of that room without giving you any adequate idea of what it was like!

"'Hardly what you expected to see, eh?' Ombos said, and there was a faint trace of mockery in his tone.

"I looked around me helplessly.

"'No!' I said, sinking into a most luxurious silk-cushioned divan. 'Trenches, and this! I suppose I'll wake up soon.'

"'Would you like to see my bronze statue of Albert of Cologne? It's the gem of my collection, and has a world-wide reputation!'

"'It's rather different, you may say.' He looked full over my head as I spoke, and following the direction of his eyes, I turned. In a dark recess in that part of the room stood a bronze statue, some six feet in height. It portrayed the great mystic in a long habit fashioned after a monkish cowl, and his hair and face reminded me of a bust of Nero I had once seen in the gallery of the Louvre. Ombos told me that the life of Albert Magnus had been written by Dr. Sighart. This Dominican, magnus in magia, major in philosophia, maximus in theologia, was distinguished alike for his knowledge of the black art and his great virtue, for austerity of regimen, and dislike of any form of society. For other details of this philosopher I must refer you to Sighart's excellent monograph and Mr. James Mew's work on The Black Art from which we learn that Albert of Cologne was accused by the vulgar of holding illicit commerce with the devil. They believed as a matter of course that he was aided by Beelzebub. And legends grew about him in wild luxuriance. In particular he is credited with the creation of an android, homunculus, or, as some say, a fair maiden--an idea which Goethe may have copied in his celebrated play--able, according to some, to say only 'Salve,' but, according to others, to predict with the unerring accuracy of a Zadkiel a change of government, or the advent of a pestilence, a royal marriage or a royal death. But all agree that this automaton was smashed by his pupil Thomas Aquinas, who ought to have known better than to believe it a device of the Evil One. This story of the speaking statue may go with those other marvels of his vision of the Holy Virgin to encourage him in theological study, and his stupendous garden of flowers and birds and fountains in mid-winter for William of Holland, and that gracious scent which arose after a longer time than four days out of his sacred sepulchre, and his vision of St. Dominic, who himself revealed to him the secret of the stone, whereby he discharged all the debts of his bishopric.

"These bald facts about our friend Magnus must suffice. Old Ombos had a splendid edition of his works, lately published in Paris under the direction of a certain August Borguet; twenty large folios on all imaginable subjects. They included chapters on hawks and adhering to God, on meteors and the mystery of the Mass, on the healing of the leper and the eau de vie.

"I was a gross Philistine in those days--still am, as a matter of fact--and I could not appreciate the statue. A strenuous life with my Regiment had stifled what little appreciation for such things a more leisured existence might have fostered. I could not appreciate nor understand the things that Ombos was saying about the bronze statue and the strange Master of the Masters it portrayed.

"Old Ombos--you could not help but think that he had grown very much like the statue himself; or had the statue grown like him?--held up a candelabra which threw the details of the bronze figure into relief and cast flickering reflections on the dark oak panelling of the recess.

"'It's an exquisite thing,' said Ombos. 'See how he rears himself on his black granite plinth. A noble pile of mellow bronze, irregular yet graceful.' Ombos regarded it smilingly, yet with one of his queer, sinister looks. It would have been hard to know what he was thinking. He was one of those tall, emaciated chaps, that make us men of ordinary stature feel dwarfish; and as I looked at his skull-like face I wondered at first where his eyes were hidden ... they seemed so far back in the dark hollows on each side of his nose.

"I placed myself before Albert of Cologne--to try and appreciate it, you know. Well, I didn't think a great deal of it, but of course I was a Philistine. I had seen many great, heavy bronzes in the British Museum, and they hadn't even stirred my heart, so it is not surprising that this one failed to affect me. I told Ombos, merely to please him, that I thought it was an extraordinary piece of work. But he very soon saw that I was not able to appreciate old Magnus, and he drew a heavy plush curtain back in front of him.

"'Come back! Come away!' he said. 'You have not yet the understanding. Oh, it's big! It's a big god, I tell you.'

"Ombos was very patient with me, but as he walked up and down the room kicking the leopard skin rugs I knew he was thinking what an idiot I was, and I just waited.

"'You have not yet the understanding,' he muttered. 'It may come to you one day ... the doors of life and death are left ajar from time to time, and the light of Al Tughrai's lamp of wisdom shines out upon us for a moment between the opening and closing.' The carved ivory face of old Ombos seemed softer when he said that.

"'Did my brother care for the old bronze? Did he love it as I do, every curve in the lean and corded neck ...'

"And then all of a sudden he walked over to me! 'Come!' he said, putting his hand on my shoulder and speaking in a voice which he had the trick of making wonderfully amiable. 'Dear me, dear me! How I must bore you with my old relics. You want some tea and muffins or something of the kind, eh? Will you do me the honour of taking tea with me?' he said, leading me through a door in a recess and a wilderness of corridors to a small room, where a charming French girl presided over a steaming tea-pot of massive silver.

"'This is Captain Crabbe,' said Ombos introducing me to her. He turned to me. 'This is Margot, my niece,' he said with a smile.

"I made a step forward and bowed slightly; she was very pretty, this girl, as she stood there with the rich red light from the silk lamp shades behind her. She was one of those dark, seductive women that look their best in a warm light; and that evening her face and figure seemed instinct with the joy of youth.

"Never before have I tasted such hot-cakes and sandwiches, and muffins ... there could be nothing like them, nor any hot-cakes to set above them in all Europe. The sinister look had now quite passed from my host's face as he sat before me stirring tea and munching muffins comfortably; he seemed goodheartedness embodied. On the table were some wonderful lucid china bowls filled with cigarettes, Parascho and caporal ordinaire, Egyptian and every imaginable kind. After tea we pushed back our chairs and smoked. His conversation was delightful, and showed me at once that he was a man of brilliant gifts, yet an eccentric. I felt much as Mark Twain must have felt when he first met Rudyard Kipling; Twain has summed up, in that inimitable way of his, the feeling of being in the presence of an overwhelming personality. 'I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before--though he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.'... That was exactly how I felt when I was talking tea with Ombos ... his conversation was as exhilarating as wine; his presence diffused a stimulating atmosphere; I felt exalted by his joyous enthusiasm.

"Well (to get on), after I left him at the door of his old shop (which was such a dingy entrance to all the luxury of the interior of the place), and I think we were loth to part, it was agreed between us that, should I remain in the town, we were to meet again. As I walked down the little pavé street something I couldn't account for began to sweep over me; it was not merely that the presence of Ombos had fascinated me; there was something else. There was something that stirred in my heart--a thing which you will not understand. If you had known Ombos you might have understood. I wanted to go back and have another look at that bronze statue; I was becoming desperately afraid that I had been too hasty in my inspection of it--that I had under-estimated it. I was very young, heedless, self-esteemed and smug, and had hardly paused to pay a moment's tribute to it. I felt that Albert of Cologne was standing there, absorbed, proud, erect, and defiant, waiting for me to find my true eyes.

* * * * *

"Of course, I did see the bronze statue again, or I shouldn't be sitting here wasting your time and patience. Within a few days I went round again to the old shop, and old Ombos was standing there amid his Queen Anne candlesticks and piles of books just as if he had been waiting for me.

"'Come in, come in!' he said, speaking in a voice that made me feel honestly welcome. 'Dear me, dear me! I am very glad you have not forgotten me.'

"'No,' I said. 'Not forgotten you or the bronze statue. It was the only thing in your place that did not interest me when I first walked in.'