Chapter 3

"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.

"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.'

"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 gods 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. Gods 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 god. 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 snatched at the heavy curtain, and the rings screeched on the brass rod. Clothed in his monkish garb, his face furrowed and seamed; the lustre 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 god-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 grass grows over graves. My force and body and soul is passing into the Master of Masters.... I shall live and be a god, 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 pass 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 passed.'

"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 pass 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 glass 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.

"I was in the small room where I had taken tea with Ombos and Margot some weeks before. Supper was laid on a superb octagon table. 'They were good tricks, were they not?' said Ombos, with an easy laugh. His keen eyes smote keen into mine. 'Now you will in truth be able to go away and tell people how I tricked you, how it was plainly all a cheat.'

"At that moment Margot came in with a big apron tied about her. She greeted me pleasantly, setting a tray down on the table.

"'We do our own work here, Captain Crabbe,' she said. 'Do you want to make yourself useful?'

"I rose promptly. My little adventure into the occult world with Ombos had been rather exhilarating. I was glad when she told me to follow her out, through a long corridor into the kitchen, where she gave me a can-opener and a tin of sardines.

"'Open those up and turn them into this little dish, please. And if you have any hygienic aversion to tinned things, please forget it. Otherwise you will have to eat some of my hot teacakes.'

"Margot was standing at the table, cleaning a crisp head of celery. The position showed me her profile, with a little wisp of black hair escaping near one ear.

"We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals three people have ever enjoyed. We sat chatting there for nearly an hour. All the while I was trying to reconcile this man Ombos who sat talking boyishly with the student of occultism and black magic I had talked with an hour or so before. If I had felt any resentment of the tricks he had played on me it would have vanished utterly. Afterwards Margot made real Turkish coffee over a dainty spirit lamp ... once--in a critical stage in the coffee-making, too--she looked up and her eyes sought mine; then her red lips parted in a smile. She poured out the coffee deftly, blowing out the lamp, and put the little copper pot on a plate.

"Ombos surveyed his coffee with the air of a connoisseur, his head turned on one side.

"Margot produced the bowls of cigarettes and reached over my shoulder to offer me one. 'You want Egyptian?' she said smiling. 'You see I have a good memory--you smoked them last time.'

"A warm faint perfume came from her hair.

"It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, Ombos and Margot came out to the front to say good night: my last glimpse, as I walked down the _pavé_ street, was of Margot--a bare-headed figure, with wistful grey eyes, calm with the mysterious wisdom of pure womanhood. She waved her dainty lace handkerchief to me.