Across the Zodiac (33 page)

Rising from his seat and standing immediately before and to the left
of the Throne, Esmo replied. But before he had spoken half-a-dozen
words, a pressure on my arm drew my eyes from him to Eveena. She stood
fixed as if turned to stone, in an attitude which for one fleeting
instant recalled that of the sculptured figures undergoing sudden
petrifaction at the sight of the Gorgon's head. This remembered
resemblance, or an instinctive sympathy, at once conveyed to me the
consciousness that the absolute stillness of her attitude expressed a
horror or an awe too deep for trembling. Looking into her eyes, which
alone were visible, their gaze fixed intently on the Throne, at once
caught and controlled my own; and raising my eyes again to the same
point, I stood almost equally petrified by consternation and
amazement. I need not say how many marvels of no common character I
have seen on Earth; how many visions that, if I told them, none who
have not shared them would believe; wonders that the few who have seen
them can never forget, nor—despite all experience and all theoretical
explanation—recall without renewing the thrill of awe-stricken dismay
with which the sight was first beheld. But no marvel of the Mystic
Schools, no spectral scene, objective or subjective, ever evoked by
the rarest of occult powers, so startled, so impressed me as what I
now saw, or thought I saw. The Throne, on which but a few moments
before my eyes had been steadily fixed, and which had then assuredly
been vacant, was now occupied; and occupied by a Presence which,
though not seen in the flesh for ages, none who had ever looked on the
portrait that represented it could forget or mistake. The form, the
dress, the long white hair and beard, the grave, dignified
countenance, above all the deep, scrutinising, piercing eyes of the
Founder—as I had seen them on a single occasion in Esmo's house—were
now as clearly, as forcibly, presented to my sight as any figure in
the flesh I ever beheld. The eyes were turned on me with a calm,
searching, steady gaze, whose effect was such as Southey ascribes to
Indra's:—

"The look he gave was solemn, not severe;
No hope to Kailyal it conveyed,
And yet it struck no fear."

For a moment they rested on Eveena's veiled and drooping figure with a
widely different expression. That look, as I thought, spoke a grave
but passionless regret or pity, as of one who sees a child
unconsciously on the verge of peril or sorrow that admits neither of
warning nor rescue. That look happily she did not read; but we both
saw the same object and in the same instant; we both stood amazed and
appalled long enough to render our hesitation not only apparent, but
striking to all around, many of whom, following the direction of my
gaze, turned their eyes upon the Throne. What they saw or did not see
I know not, and did not then care to think. The following formula,
pronounced by Esmo, had fallen not unheard, but almost unheeded on my
ears, though one passage harmonised strangely with the sight before
me:—

"Passing sign and fleeting breath
Bind the Soul for life and death!
Lifted hand and plighted word
Eyes have seen and ears have heard;
Eyes have seen—nor ours alone;
Fell the sound on ears unknown.
Age-long labour, strand by strand,
Forged the immemorial band;
Never thread hath known decay,
Never link hath dropped away."

Here he paused and beckoned us to advance. The sign, twice repeated
before I could obey it, at last broke the spell that enthralled me.
Under the most astounding or awe-striking circumstances, instinct
moves our limbs almost in our own despite, and leads us to do with
paralysed will what has been intended or is expected of us. This
instinct, and no conscious resolve to overcome the influence that held
me spell-bound, enabled me to proceed; and I led Eveena forward by
actual if gentle force, till we reached the lower step of the
platform. Here, at a sign from her father, we knelt, while, laying his
hands on our heads, and stooping to kiss each upon the brow—Eveena
raising her veil for one moment and dropping it again—he continued—

"So we greet you evermore,
Brethren of the deathless Lore;
So your vows our own renew,
Sworn to all as each to you.
Yours at once the secrets won
Age by age, from sire to son;
Yours the fruit through countless years
Grown by thought and toil and tears.
He who guards you guards his own,
He who fails you fails the Throne."

The last two lines were repeated, as by a simultaneous impulse, in a
low but audible tone by the whole assembly. In the meantime Esmo had
invested each of us with the symbol of our enrolment in the Zinta, the
silver sash and Star of the Initiates. The ceremonial seemed to me to
afford that sort of religious sanction and benediction which had been
so signally wanting to the original form of our union. As we rose I
turned my eyes for a moment upon the Throne, now vacant as at first.
Another Chief, followed by the voices of the assembly, repeated, in a
low deep tone, which fell on our ears as distinctly as the loudest
trumpet-note in the midst of absolute silence, the solemn
imprecation—

"Who denies a brother's need,
Who in will, or word, or deed,
Breaks the Circle's bounded line,
Rends the Veil that guards the Shrine,
Lifts the hand to lips that lie,
Fronts the Star with soothless eye:—.
Dreams of horror haunt his rest,
Storms of madness vex his breast,
Snares surround him, Death beset,
Man forsake—and God forget!"

It was probably rather the tone of profound conviction and almost
tremulous awe with which these words were slowly enunciated by the
entire assemblage, than their actual sense, though the latter is
greatly weakened by my translation, that gave them an effect on my own
mind such as no oath and no rite, however solemn, no religious
ceremonial, no forms of the most secret mysteries, had ever produced.
I was not surprised that Eveena was far more deeply affected. Even the
earlier words of the imprecation had caused her to shudder; and ere it
closed she would have sunk to the ground, but for the support of my
arm. Disengaging the bracelet, Esmo held out to our lips the signet,
which, as I now perceived, reproduced in miniature the symbols that
formed the canopy above the throne. A few moments of deep and solemn
silence had elapsed, when one of the Chiefs, who, except Esmo, had now
resumed their seats, rose, and addressing himself to the latter,
said—

"The Initiate has shown in the Hall of the Vision a knowledge of the
sense embodied in our symbols, of the creed and thoughts drawn from
them, which he can hardly have learned in the few hours that have
elapsed since you first spoke to him of their existence. If there be
not in his world those who have wrought out for themselves similar
truths in not dissimilar forms, he must possess a rare and almost
instinctive power to appreciate the lessons we can teach. I will ask
your permission, therefore, to put to him but one question, and that
the deepest and most difficult of all."

Esmo merely bent his head in reply.

"Can you," said the speaker, turning to me with marked courtesy, "draw
meaning or lesson from the self-entwined coil of the Serpent?"

I need not repeat an answer which, to those familiar with the oldest
language of Terrestrial symbolism, would have occurred as readily as
to myself; and which, if they could understand it, it would not be
well to explain to others. The three principal elements of thought
represented by the doubly-coiled serpent are the same in Mars as on
Earth, confirming in so far the doctrine of the Zinta, that their
symbolic language is not arbitrary, but natural, formed on principles
inherent in the correspondence between things spiritual and physical.
Some similar but trivial query, whose purport I have now forgotten,
was addressed by the junior of the Chiefs to Eveena; and I was struck
by the patient courtesy with which he waited till, after two or three
efforts, she sufficiently recovered her self-possession to understand
and her voice to answer. We then retired, taking our place on seats
remote from the platform, and at some distance from any of our
neighbours.

On a formal invitation, one after another of the brethren rose and
read a brief account of some experiment or discovery in the science of
the Order. The principles taken for granted as fundamental and
notorious truths far transcend the extremest speculations of
Terrestrial mysticism. The powers claimed as of course so infinitely
exceed anything alleged by the most ardent believers in mesmerism,
clairvoyance, or spiritualism, that it would be useless to relate the
few among these experiments which I remember and might be permitted to
repeat. I observed that a phonographic apparatus of a peculiarly
elaborate character wrote down every word of these accounts without
obliging the speakers to approach it; and I was informed that this
automatic reporting is employed in every Martial assembly, scientific,
political, or judicial.

I listened with extreme interest, and was more than satisfied that
Esmo had even underrated the powers claimed by and for the lowest and
least intelligent of his brethren, when he said that these, and these
alone, could give efficient protection or signal vengeance against all
the tremendous physical forces at command of those State authorities,
one of the greatest of whom I had made my personal enemy. One
battalion of Martial guards or police, accompanied by a single battery
of what I may call their artillery, might, even without the aid of a
balloon-squadron, in half-an-hour annihilate or scatter to the winds
the mightiest and bravest army that Europe could send forth. Yet the
Martial State had deliberately, and, I think, with only a due
prudence, shrunk during ages from an open conflict of power with the
few thousand members of this secret but inevitably suspected
organisation.

Esmo called on me in my turn to give such account as I might choose of
my own world, and my journey thence. I frankly avowed my indisposition
to explain the generation and action of the apergic force. The power
which a concurrent knowledge of two separate kinds of science had
given to a very few Terrestrials, and which all the science of a far
more enlightened race had failed to attain, was in my conscientious
conviction a Providential trust; withheld from those in whose hands it
might be a fearful temptation and an instrument of unbounded evil. My
reserve was perfectly intelligible to the Children of the Star, and
evidently raised me in their estimation. I was much impressed by the
simple and unaffected reliance placed on my statements, as on those of
every other member of the Order. As a rule, Martialists are both, and
not without reason, to believe any unsupported statement that might be
prompted by interest or vanity. But the
Zveltau
can trust one
another's word more fully than the followers of Mahomet that of his
strictest disciples, or the most honest nations of the West the most
solemn oaths of their citizens; while that bigotry of scientific
unbelief, that narrowness of thought which prevails among their
countrymen, has been dispelled by their wider studies and loftier
interests. They have a saying, whose purport might be rendered in the
proverbial language of the Aryans by saying that the liar "kills the
goose that lays the golden eggs." Again, "The liar is like an
opiatised tunneller" (miner), i.e., more likely to blow himself to
pieces than to effect his purpose. Again, "The liar drives the point
into a friend's heart, and puts the hilt into a foe's hand." The maxim
that "a lie is a shield in sore need, but the spear of a scoundrel,"
affirms the right in extremity to preserve a secret from impertinent
inquisitiveness. Rarely, but on some peculiarly important occasions,
the Zveltau avouch their sincerity by an appeal to their own symbols;
and it is affirmed that an oath attested by the Circle and the Star
has never, in the lapse of ages, been broken or evaded.

Before midnight Esmo dismissed the assembly by a formula which dimly
recalled to memory one heard in my boyhood. It is not in the power of
my translation to preserve the impressive solemnity of the immemorial
ritual of the Zinta, deepened alike by the earnestness of its
delivery, and the reverence of the hearers. There was something
majestic in the mere antiquity of a liturgy whereof no word has ever
been committed to writing. Five hundred generations have, it is
alleged, gathered four times in each year in the Hall of Initiation;
and every meeting has been concluded by the utterance from the same
spot and in the same words of the solemn but simple
Zulvakalfe
(word
of peace)
:—

"Peace be with you, near and far,
Children of the Silver Star;
Lore undoubting, conscience clean,
Hope assured, and life serene.
By the Light that knows no flaw,
By the Circle's perfect law,
By the Serpent's life renewed,
By the Wings' similitude—
Peace be yours no force can break;
Peace not death hath power to shake;
Peace from passion, sin, and gloom,
Peace of spirit, heart, and home;
Peace from peril, fear, and pain;
Peace, until we meet again—
Meet—before yon sculptured stone,
Or the All-Commander's Throne."

Before we finally parted, Esmo gave me two or three articles to which
he attached especial value. The most important of these was a small
cube of translucent stone, in which a multitude of diversely coloured
fragments were combined; so set in a tiny swivel or swing of gold that
it might be conveniently attached to the watch-chain, the only
Terrestrial article that I still wore. "This," he said, "will test
nearly every poison known to our science; each poison discolouring for
a time one or another of the various substances of which it is
composed; and poison is perhaps the weapon least unlikely to be
employed against you when known to be connected with myself, and, I
will hope, to possess the favour of the Sovereign. If you are curious
to verify its powers, the contents of the tiny medicine-chest I have
given you will enable you to do so. There is scarcely one of those
medicines which is not a single or a combined poison of great power. I
need not warn you to be careful lest you give to any one the means of
reaching them. I have shown you the combination of magnets which will
open each of your cases; that demanded by the chest is the most
complicated of all, and one which can hardly be hit upon by accident.
Nor can any one force or pick open a case locked by our electric
apparatus, save by cutting to pieces the metal of the case itself, and
this only special tools will accomplish; and, unless peculiarly
skilful, the intruder would 'probably be maimed or paralysed, if not
killed by ...