Lester's face was "all bashed in," but Lester himself didn't know it.
The last thing he remembered was the queer, soft, mushy feeling as his
bayonet pierced the Bavarian's uniform and entered his body. His next
sensation was that of an emotion, a confused emotion, of sorrow, pity,
or disgust.
At first it seemed all that had survived. He himself was
safe--somewhere--and the Bavarian had died. He didn't try to move, or
open his eyes, or seek to find out to what place they had carried him;
he was too comfortable for that. But--a man toward whom he had no
enmity on his own account, who was also perhaps a husband, with a
little wife waiting for a baby in an apartment with a kitchenette, that
man lay dead, with his, Lester's, bayonet wound in his heart. He was
sorry. He remembered his hate; he remembered his passion to kill; he
knew it as a blend of all the vengeances that had been stirring in his
blood since Belgium had been invaded, and the _Lusitania_ had been
sunk, and the awful things had begun to pile upon the awful things; but
it was a vengeance that began to seem to him beside the mark. It was
the kind of revenge man didn't know how to take; the kind of justice he
didn't know how to mete out. The innocent were being punished for the
guilty, as if a child were hanged because a man had committed a crime.
He couldn't say that he reproached himself for his part in that; he
knew he had been acting on orders from above; but he was conscious of a
deep regret that the world should have grown so stupid that such things
had to be.
Otherwise he was resting. He supposed that he must have been wounded,
though he could feel no pain. Oddly enough, when he tested himself for
pain he didn't know where to begin. But it was his own immunity, his
sense of well-being and security, that sent his thought the more
persistently toward the man he had kept from ever returning home.
Trying to fancy what that home was like, he found himself, suddenly but
naturally, in a village street, of which the bordering houses, of
plaster and timber, had low roofs and picturesque eaves. All round
there were mountains.
"This is Oberammergau," he heard in a language he understood. "Here is
my home. Let us go in."
They entered without the opening of doors, coming into a room with
rafters, small windows, and an air of antiquity. A woman was kneeling
beside a bed above which hung a carved wooden crucifix. On each side of
her knelt a quaintly dressed child, with hands stiffly pressed together.
"That is my wife," said the voice. "Those are my children. They're
praying for me and asking that I shall come home."
"Should you have liked to go home?"
It seemed natural to Lester to ask this question. Everything seemed so
natural that he had not yet reached the point of inquiring how it had
come about. The Bavarian reflected.
"I should have liked it before knowing what this is. I should like it
even now, for their sakes. But since death has to be destroyed in us
one at a time it's better for us to be here, don't you think?"
Lester began to be startled. "Here? Where?"
"Wherever it is we are. I don't quite know where that is. Do you? I'm
speaking," he continued, "in the old terms of place in the sense of
locality, because I don't know what else to do; but locality, of
course, is gone. We're in the universal, which makes it difficult for
us, after being used to so many limitations, to understand ourselves."
Lester was aware of fear, awe, and irritation all struggling in him
together.
"You may be in the universal, as you call it; but--but I've come
through."
"We've both come through. The marvel is that we've done it so easily.
It's as I expected--only more so."
"As you expected--in what way?"
"Every way; all my life. When your barrage fire began I prayed--"
"Do you fellows _pray_?" Lester asked, in astonishment.
"Oh, some of us--what we used to call prayer--the sort of thing my poor
wife and children are doing now--begging--pleading that this or that
shall be done--instead of resting in strength, as you and I are."
"I'm not--I'm not--resting in strength."
"Oh yes, you are! You are, without knowing it. It's what human beings
are always doing. They get every kind of good in their lives, and don't
know the source from which it comes. You won't know to what your
present actual comfort is due till--"
But the woman rose from her knees, and so did the children. Wiping away
their tears, they began the preparations for a frugal breakfast. As
Lester felt the presence that had accompanied him moving from his side
and enveloping all three in tenderness, he found himself alone with his
thought again.
There was no shock to him in the fact that, as Molly had expressed it,
the mortal had put on immortality; he had faced the possibility for too
long. Ever since the first entraining he had accepted it as an
eventuality of war. On sailing for France he knew there were increased
chances against his ever coming home. In the months that followed he
grew accustomed to death and more or less obtuse to it. He smoked and
chaffed is the morning with fellows who by noon had gone--who could
tell where? They used the euphemism of "going west"--into the sunset,
into the glory, into the great repose. It was the easiest thing to say,
and many a time he had said it of himself. "By this time next year I
may have gone west." Then it became: "By this time next month I may
have gone west." Later it was: "By this time tomorrow--" "Within an
hour--" "Within half an hour--" "Within ten minutes--" as the seconds
slipped away.
Well, he had gone west! The odd thing was that he had done it so
easily, so painlessly. The tedious hours in the trenches faded more or
less from recollection. The going over the top and all that followed
after it became nothing but a blur. Even the months in camp, in Texas,
behind the lines in France, dissolved like vapors when they mount into
the air. What was present to him most forcibly was the thought of the
dear ones he had left behind.
His own conditions were entirely a matter of course; he was perfectly
at home in them. Though he could not have described them, nor have
given an account of them, he knew that they were pleasant and that they
were profoundly rooted in nature. He was neither surprised at them nor
unduly curious.
Neither was he lonely. His sufficiency was such that companionship as
he had always conceived of it was not a consideration. The condition in
itself was companionship to a degree he could not understand. It was
vibrant with life; there was speech in it. Had he been forced to make
explanations, he would have said there was intelligence in it, and
comprehension. He let himself sink into the enjoyment of it as a baby
rests without questioning in the love by which it is enlapped. No; he
wasn't lonely; he didn't know what loneliness was.
But he felt care--the care for Molly, the fear of the blow that would
fall on his father and mother and sisters. Now that he knew what had
happened, his thought fixed itself on finding some way by which he
could help them.
On this point he wondered why, if the Bavarian could return to his home
and whisper something of comfort, he could not return to his. Distance
was not a factor, since it was no part of the universal. Even the gulf
between the material and the non-material could in a measure be
crossed. Why, then, could he not cross it?
"Is it because I've been such a bad fellow?" he asked himself.
"Not entirely," the Bavarian answered, as if the words had been
addressed to him. "It isn't a question of what we've done so much as it
is of what we know. It's a matter of thought, of consciousness. When
we've learned that everything exists in a great mind, that mind itself
becomes the medium of intercourse. Give up the idea that the people you
love live in one sphere and you in another. We all live together in one
great intelligence that understands all our needs. Meet your needs not
by your own efforts, but by co-operation with that intelligence, and
what you want will be done."
Lester reflected on that. "What do you mean by co-operation?"
"Trust, in the first place--till trust becomes knowledge."
"But if this intelligence knows already what I need--?"
"It will do the wise thing, only you won't be associated with it. What
you want is the association, to have your part. You don't get your
part, you don't have the association, because you isolate yourself.
Your mind is closed to the powers and activities that are all about
you. When you understand what they are you will have your share in
them."
"But why should my mind be closed if yours is open?"
"It's a matter of habit. We go on here from the very point at which we
left off there. I had the habit already. Our life at Oberammergau bred
it into one. You didn't have it. Your thoughts were limited to a
physical world and a physical body and a physical way of doing
everything. Now you have it all to learn, very much as you had in your
physical childhood."
"Then I'm not being punished for my sins?"
He asked the question in some uneasiness.
"You are. Don't you see? The punishment is that you're not more
advanced. You've been like the idle boy in school; and now you find it
hard to catch up. If it were not for the great thing you've done you'd
be farther behind than you are."
"The great thing I've done? I don't understand you."
"Every good act helps us onward; and among things that are good love is
the greatest. Of that you've given the highest proof there is."
Lester was astounded.
"I?"
"You gave the most precious things you had--your business, your
happiness, your family, your wife, your life. You held nothing back.
You not only gave without reserve, but you gave without complaining.
You didn't do it for yourself, but for a great cause--as men conceive
of causes--and you did it of your own free will."
"And so did you."
"No; I waited to be taken. If I hadn't been taken I shouldn't have
gone. I didn't offer myself up; I was seized against my will. You were
the more like Jesus of Nazareth, Who laid down His life for His
friends, and so, as He said Himself, losing your life you have found
it."
"Oh, but I didn't do it in that way at all," Lester protested.
"It doesn't take anything away from right that we do it as a matter of
course. We don't have to know the infinite intelligence to have the
infinite intelligence know us. Isn't it a case of 'He that doeth the
Will'? If we do the Will instinctively we can't fail of the protection
of Him whose Will is done; and if we don't know Him already we can be
sure He will make Himself known."
Communication once more came to an end, not abruptly, but by natural
cessation, because the thought had been expressed.
But Lester was left with a clue to follow, and little by little he
followed it. The immediate gain was a new kind of perception. It was as
if some faculty already possessed, but paralyzed within him, had been
freed. He could not have said that this endowment existed in hearing,
or sight, or any of the senses, or in all of them together, or in none
of them. All he could say was that it gave him a new use of power, of
power to which he had a right, but of which, for a reason that escaped
him, he had hitherto been deprived.