War and the Weird Part 3

Oh, it's big! It's a big G.o.d, 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 m.u.f.fins 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 ma.s.sive 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 m.u.f.fins ... there could be nothing like them, nor any hot-cakes to set above them in all Europe. The sinister look had now quite pa.s.sed from my host's face as he sat before me stirring tea and munching m.u.f.fins 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 _pave_ 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.'

"I paused, and Ombos prompted me half unconsciously: 'Yes?'

"'Now!' I said, meeting his eyes misting my own in doing so, 'it is the only thing I should like to see.'

"'Ah!' he said.... 'Well, I told you that he might come over you slowly; but the G.o.ds direct rightly whom they will. I tell you that such things as the Keys of Mercy and the Lamps of Wisdom are not gained in one swift breath. What's gained in a few moments is not worth having. All those who have through toil and pain entered into citizenship in the Celestial City will tell you that. G.o.ds do not grow in one night like mushrooms.

Every great masterpiece is an evolution, be it a statue, a poem, a painting, a man--or a G.o.d. If it is ever given to you to see my Albert of Cologne as I see him you will understand what I mean.' He turned round to me and I gave a start, I can tell you. Never have I seen such lurid gleams of light as those that danced from those two deep-set eyes!

I say 'lurid,' for at times, the colour of them took a blood red hue, and changed quickly again to a glittering green. As I stared at him--it was all over in a few seconds--the baleful glare seemed to grow in intensity, till I felt as though I were enduring the mocking gaze of Albert of Cologne himself; and verily, I half expected any moment to see Ombos change into a mighty bronze demon or some appalling, devilish shape from the under-world.

"'Er--shall we go and have a look at the statue?' I said, with a half-conscious determination to see whether it really ever had existed (I was beginning to think that Ombos had been using a kind of hypnotic influence on me, thus inducing me to see visions); and also, as I believe, with some vague wish to shut out the sight of those rolling, glittering eyes. For the first time I felt towards him a fierce anger, and I found myself making a resolution never to return to see him again when once I was free of the place.

"'Ah!' he said, 'I thought you'd want to come back and see Albertus Magnus; I want you to have a good look at him this time and tell me if he looks quite as commonplace as he did before. Such things can only trickle slowly into the soul, but presently, ah! they get right hold of one--they permeate one, and then there comes a time ...'

"Ombos s.n.a.t.c.hed at the heavy curtain, and the rings screeched on the bra.s.s rod. Clothed in his monkish garb, his face furrowed and seamed; the l.u.s.tre of his eyes dimmed by the tears of centuries--there stood Albertus. The sunken cheeks spoke of years of study and aspiration, but the swelling muscles of his arms, the deep chest, the wonderful hands--big, bony, horrible hands--spoke of one from whom age has taken little toll. Here was age, wisdom, mysticalness, a subtle sense of pensive melancholy, and a persistence that never tires.

"'Well, how do you like my statue this time?' asked Ombos.

"'Splendid!' I breathed.

"'Yes,' he said looking hard at me. 'The best of it is Albertus asks for nothing. You can neither bribe nor buy him; your flattery will not move him; your approbation or blame alike are vain ... he has the self-sufficiency of the Master of Masters.'

"'Yes,' I found myself saying eagerly. 'He is the Master of Masters.'

"Suddenly he turned and threw the curtain back and took me by the arm and led me away. 'My force is all going into Albertus--but I must not overdo it. If I stand too long before him he drains me of all my G.o.d-energy, you know ... that leaves me sick and exhausted. You've heard about how Michael Angelo put all his power into his marble statue of Moses? You've read about such things? You know the kind of gush. I met a poor, half-crazed, devil-driven poet-fellow in Paris some years ago who told me he had written a great poem; he had lured the crucified soul of a murderer into his verses. Confoundedly conceited about it, too, he was ... called it _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_. Bah! It would have taken him a lifetime to put a murderer's socks into a poem. He was a mountebank ... a posturer! And what is this winged thing men name the soul? And who did make the stars?' Ombos turned demon-like eyes on me, and his whole face seemed lit up with an appalling mirth.

"'Believe them not, for they are not miraculous ones. They will be lost for ever; they will die. Their books and statues may live, but they will die, as sure as the gra.s.s grows over graves. My force and body and soul is pa.s.sing into the Master of Masters.... I shall live and be a G.o.d, I shall stand oblivious and indifferent to the centuries as they stalk by.'

"'You don't mean to tell me ...'

"Ombos looked up, his red-green eyes gleaming as he answered,

"'Most certainly I do ... my soul will pa.s.s into that bronze statue when I am ready to give it up.'

"'The war, Mr. Ombos,' I thought as I looked at his shrivelled fearsome figure, 'has turned your head. There are certainly a few bats in your belfry. You will find your way into an asylum before many weeks have pa.s.sed.'

"You must understand, I didn't realize what kind of a chap I was dealing with then, I didn't know that he was all cold and calm and apart from life ... very clever and--philosophical, _but not human_.

"'Nonsense! How can a man's soul pa.s.s into a bronze statue?' I asked rather testily. 'Good heavens, man, do you realize that you're trying to make me believe that which is beyond the pale of all human possibility!'

"'Human possibility! What is human possibility? I tell you that all this is fact; simply.' Ombos rose and began to pace to and fro over the Persian rugs like a tiger. 'I'm not given to imagining things.'

"'Bah!' he grunted. 'Every child will tell you that the tendency of spirits to return to the old haunts of bodily life is almost universal.

The universal laws apply ... there is no escape from the great law, the attraction of environment.'

"'The rest is merely every-day knowledge. Have you ever heard of ancient formula by which the grosser factors of the body may be eliminated, leaving the ethereal portions to retain the spirit? Do you not understand that the body may be preserved from absolute disintegration?

The old alchemists all knew that death could be indefinitely deferred in this way. Professor Vaini left among his papers a work of two thousand pages in which he clearly demonstrated that it was possible for a spiritualized body to retain a modified life practically for ever. Any doctor will tell you the hair and nails of a dead person will often grow for years after....'

"Ombos turned his glittering eyes on me a moment inquisitively.

"'Oh, tell me all that kind of stuff if you like,' I protested good-humouredly. 'It makes no impression on me. I'm a normal man, Ombos, and I object to having my free imagination harrowed over things that don't count. Behind that curtain is a bronze statue, and it never can or will be anything else but a bronze statue, and that's about the sum and total of it all.'

"'I was merely telling you a few cold and scientific facts,' returned Ombos argumentatively.

"'Now, if I wished to impress you it would be easy enough. I would like to test that sensitiveness which you boast that you don't possess. I think I could give you a severe shaking-up! And I will begin by telling you that I will employ mere vulgar trickery ... the trickery of any mountebank who fools people at a country fair!'

"He looked at me with that slow smile of his--the smile of the mystic--mocking, mysterious.

"I answered him with a weak laugh. 'You may try some of your tricks, wizard; but you will fail to impress me, I think!'

"'I make it a habit not to fail.'

"His keen eyes flamed, and his brow was dark and hot. He started up and walked over to the small oak escritoire. Bending down he produced a small gla.s.s lamp, and put a light to it. It burnt with the imperceptible flame of pure spirit of wine. He took it and vanished a moment. When he returned, and set it before me, it gave out a keen white glare and heavily-scented smoke. He took me by the arm and pointed to the black velvet curtain which hid the bronze statue. 'See, there: behind--through the curtain. Who is that?'

"While I looked, Ombos gave a strange rasping sound. Then, in a tone of weird intensity: 'See! See!' and he laid his hand on mine ... the curtain was no longer there, and some vague thing gathered--the statue was dim behind it--the form of a man.

"'The veil is drawn,' said the voice of Ombos. 'Master, the veil is drawn. See, if you will. See!'

"In a fluid light the form darkened. I saw Ombos seated before a table with his head bowed down over a folio volume, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at, and I knew he was dead.... All grew misty and faded into light again.

"'The veil is drawn,' he droned. 'Look again!'

"Again a film gathered in the light and I saw the Albertus Magnus for a moment. Then it changed to Ombos, himself.... A lean and grim form with dim mocking features, and yellow eyes that glittered and flickered....

"And again the vision blurred and faded into light. Then Ombos dashed the lamp aside, and the room was in red darkness ... the silence and darkness seemed to endure for an eternity. I heard the hiss of a quick indrawn breath at last ... it was my own breathing.... I opened my eyes.