Hilaire O'Hagan ob. 1696 aetat 35.Parva domus, magna quies.
Hilaire O'Hagan ob. 1696 aetat 35.Parva domus, magna quies.
He sank down on his knees with a childish sob. Sometimes the old church seemed absolutely still, and the only sound to be heard was the sighing of the night breeze below him in the pines, but sometimes the place seemed full of muffled movements, and once O'Hagan could have sworn that the large carved handle of the door turned. Even as he stood there he heard steps just outside, and with a sudden horror, he saw the heavy door slowly open. A priest stood in the open doorway with an inscrutable smile on his lips—the same clean-shaven man with a long aquiline nose and singularly square chin, that he had seen before in his dreams.
"Brother," he said, in a moved voice. "You must go back and help your comrades. There is no peace for you yet. Yes, brother, I know it is written that we shall rest from our labours—but the beginning of our rest is not yet.Wemust go and help them in the firing line yonder——"
"No, no, holy man!" O'Hagan pleaded. "I have had enough.... There is hell over there."
"They are calling us, don't you hear them—the living and the dead——"
O'Hagan could see those great green flashes that burst in the sky so near to him. He could almost hear the angry zipping of highexplosive shrapnel close over his head. God! how he hated it all!
"How hard it is, Father, to make these children understand!" came softly from the priest's lips.
O'Hagan's regiment had retired to their trenches in good order. They were some of those trenches round about Ypres, and all the world has read how the Germans battered and delivered terrific infantry attacks on this part of our line without cessation. A certain morning, about six o'clock, the Huns decided to deliver a sharp attack, and there was "considerable artillery activity" on the part of the German guns. Such activity was spoken of in the trenches as "raising the lid off Hell." There was a lull after about an hour's rain of every kind of missile that man has invented to batter his brother with. Then the Huns came on in earnest. Some reached the trenches only to be met with a murderous fire: they fell in little huddled heaps in the blood and the mud and the slime of the trenches. But the whole German race seemed to be flowing in on the British, and they fairly got into the trenches, though they were twice driven out. Yard by yard the battalion retired. The next moment an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and flooded along the trenches. The troops gasped for a moment, and then started back. Standing on a traverse in full view of Germans and Englishmen was a tall man with yellow hair,in a priest's cassock. He was brandishing a sword that flashed like a tongue of flame, and crying "Turn back! turn back! advance!"
Private Hilaire O'Hagan, the deserter, stood beside him holding a massive brass altar cross above his head. From that moment O'Hagan behaved like one possessed. He hurled himself over the traverse into the "green" of the German regiment, and started hacking and stabbing with the pointed end of the cross. The Huns did not like the look of such a wild apparition and refused to face him. Bit by bit they retired and O'Hagan took advantage of a moment to take a green silk Irish flag, with a crownless harp, from his pocket, and attach it to the spike of the cross. Then, roaring like a lion and brandishing his strange weapon, he fell on them once more—and as they broke he saw the hooded priest driving them before him with his flaming sword. A great joy seemed to burn up in his soul. Men who watched him said he ran amok. His great voice rose high above the chattering machine guns in a beautiful Franciscan chant and the voice of the priest joined in. What O'Hagan, bearing his mighty cross, must have looked like in the eerie dawn mist, Heaven knows. But seeing such an apparition and hearing the strange chant, it is possible the Huns thought the devil had joined in the fight. Then a man in the rear trench pointed to the west,where a great image of the cross was shining against a blood red sky, and a voice cried "Forward." It passed from man to man, and the regiment advanced, howling, with O'Hagan. They drove the Germans before them like chaff before a fan, and fell back, in triumph, to their lost trenches. They saw O'Hagan stagger a little and then turn round to where the regiment boiled with joy in the trenches.
"You are back, my children," he shouted. "It is well, for my poor soul desires rest.... Aye, rest indeed!"
A great peace settled on O'Hagan's face, as he slowly collapsed and lay very still.
Not long after this a country parson received a letter from a hare-brained member of his flock, who for many years had been good enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a volunteer regiment, and was in the thick of the fighting around Ypres. The letter was written in pencil on leaves torn from a note-book. The portion that will interest the reader of this story most is here quoted.
"On Monday I came across an old friend (?) of ours—Hilaire O'Hagan. We had a brush with about five thousand Huns, and we had under-estimated their strength. They rushed us in the dawning—a living, greenish-grey wave rolled over our trenches, shootingand hacking at the heart of what had once been a regiment of British Infantry. When the second wave lapped over, our men were overborne but they were trying, by common instinct, to reach the second line trenches where they could re-form. Then I saw O'Hagan who had dropped from God knows where, standing silhouetted against the red of dawn on the front line trench. He was waving a brass cross and the bullets were pattering around him and making a noise like rats skipping about an empty house. My God! Pluck! I never thought O'Hagan had it in him. I tell you, he hurled himself down on the rifles of a thousand Huns, and 'drove them hence' with his mighty brass cross. Our men were soon rallying on the lost trench. The stragglers clutched at each other, and pointed to where the cross flashed and reeled in the seething mass. Under cover of night our bearer party brought in O'Hagan stone dead with over twenty bullet wounds in him. I know, vicar, when you read this, it will flash into your mind that poor O'Hagan had been drinking again. You may banish any such thought ... there was a different look in O'Hagan's eyes. He had seen the 'immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-coloured, as on the first morning.' We carried him and his cross over to an old monastery where we found one of those quaint lead coffins—like the one in the crypt inourold church—and laid him at restbeneath the cool blue flagstones outside the chancel door. One of our men, a stone-mason in times of peace, roughly graved his name on the slab above him. As I walked back to the trenches I turned back to have a last look at the grave. A priest was standing over it with hands outstretched to bless...."
THE END
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