The Comrade in White | Page 3

happier at that moment than ever I remember to have been in all my life before. I can't explain it, but it seemed as if all my days I had been waiting for this without knowing it. As long as that hand touched me and those eyes pitied me, I did not seem to care any more about sickness or health, about life or death. And while he swiftly removed every trace of blood and mire I felt as if my whole nature were being washed, as if all the grime and soil of sin were going, and as if I were once more a little child.
I suppose I slept, for when I awoke this feeling was gone. I was a man, and I wanted to know what I could do for my friend to help him or to serve him. He was looking towards the stream, and his hands were clasped in prayer; and then I saw that he too had been wounded. I could see, as it were, a shot-wound in his hand, and as he prayed a drop of blood gathered and fell to the ground. I cried out. I could not help it, for that wound of his seemed to me a more awful thing than any that bitter war had shown me. "You are wounded too," I said faintly. Perhaps he heard me, perhaps it was the look on my face, but he answered gently, "This is an old wound, but it has troubled me of late." And then I noticed sorrowfully that the same cruel mark was on his feet. You will wonder that I did not know sooner. I wonder myself. But it was only when I saw His feet that I knew Him.
"The Living Christ"--I had heard the Chaplain speak of Him a few weeks before, but now I knew that He had come to me--to me who had put Him out of my life in the hot fever of my youth. I was longing to speak and to thank Him, but no words came. And then He rose swiftly and said, "Lie here to-day by the water. I will come for you tomorrow. I have work for you to do, and you will do it for me."
In a moment He was gone. And while I wait for Him I write this down that I may not lose the memory of it. I feel weak and lonely and my pain increases, but I have His promise. I know that He will come for me to-morrow.

II
THE MESSENGER
"And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you."
--THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, chap. xxiv: 36.
"The War has powerfully changed the 'psychological atmosphere,' and the thoughts of a great multitude are turned towards the spiritual aspect of existence. In this vast but connected universe we are not the only self-conscious beings. Life is working here as elsewhere, for some sublime purpose. The day is at hand when we shall turn from the child-like amusements and excitements of physical science to the unimaginable adventures of super-physical discovery; and in that day we shall not only flash our messages to the stars, but hold communion with our dead."
--HAROLD BEGBIE.

II
THE MESSENGER
The Parish Church stood high perched in the Glen, and through its clear windows we could see the white, winding road that was our one link with the great world beyond the mountains. Perhaps our eyes strayed from the preacher's face more than was seemly, and in spring time we had this excuse, that the fresh green of the larches against the dark rocks made a picture fairer to the eye than our plain old Church and its high pulpit.
But that Sunday in the spring of the Great War the minister had us all, even the young and thoughtless, in the hollow of his hand. It was the 18th chapter of Second Samuel that he had read earlier in the Service, and now he was opening its meaning to us with deep-felt realisation of those great dramatic episodes.
We saw the young man Absalom die. We saw Cushi start to bear his tidings to the king. We watched Ahimaaz swift on his track. We marked the king's anxious waiting, and the fixed gaze of the watchman on the city walls. We strained in the long strain of the runners. We fainted with the fears of a father's heart. We saw Ahimaaz outrun his rival yet falter in his message. And we heard the blow upon David's heart of Cushi's stroke. "And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is."
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