Across the Zodiac (55 page)

In this balloon journey I had a specially advantageous opportunity of
observing the two moons—velnaa, as they are called.
Cavelna
, or
Caulna, the nearer, in diameter about 8' or a little more than
one-fourth that of our Moon, is a tolerably brilliant object, about
5000 miles from the surface. Moving, like all planets and satellites,
from west to east, it completes its stellar revolution and its phases
in less than seven and a half hours; the contrary revolution of the
skies prolongs its circuit around the planet to a period of ten hours.
Zeelna (
Zevelna
) returns to the same celestial meridian in thirty
hours; but as in this time the starry vault has completed about a
rotation and a quarter in the opposite direction, it takes nearly five
days to reappear on the same horizon. It is about 3' in diameter, and
about 12,000 miles from the surface. The result of the combined
motions is that the two moons, to the eye, seem to move in opposite
directions. When we rose above the mists, Caulna was visible as a very
fine crescent in the west; Zeelna was rising in the east, and almost
full; but hardly a more brilliant object than Venus when seen to most
advantage from Earth. Both moved so rapidly among the stars that their
celestial change of place was apparent from minute to minute. But, as
regarded our own position, the appearance was as opposite as their
direction. Zeelna, traversing in twelve hours only one-fifth of the
visible hemisphere, while crossing in the same time 144° on the
zodiac—twelve degrees per hour, or our Moon's diameter in two minutes
and a half—was left behind by the stars; and fixing what I may call
the ocular attention on her, she seemed to stand still while they
slowly passed her; thus making their revolution perceptible to sense
as it never is on Earth, for lack of a similar standard. Caulna,
rising in the west and moving eastwards, crossed the visible sky in
five hours, and passed through the stars at the rate of 48° per hour,
so that she seemed to sail past them like a golden cloudlet or
celestial vessel driven by a slow wind. It happened this night that
she passed over the star Fomalhaut—an occultation which I watched
with great interest through an excellent field-glass, but which lasted
only for about half a minute. About an hour before midnight the two
moons passed each other in the Eastern sky; both gibbous at the
moment, like our Moon in her last quarter. The difference in size and
motion was then most striking; Caulna seeming to rush past her
companion, and the latter looking like a stationary star in the slowly
moving sky.

We were received on landing by our former host and conducted to his
house. On this occasion, however, I was not detained in the hall, but
permitted at once to enter the chamber allotted to us. Eveena, who had
exacted from me all that I knew, and much that I meant to conceal,
respecting the occasion of our journey, was much agitated and not a
little alarmed. My own humble rank in the Zinta rendered so sudden and
imperative a summons the more difficult to understand, and though by
this time well versed in the learning, neither of us was familiar with
the administration of the Brotherhood. I was glad therefore on her
account, even more than on my own, when, a scratch at the door having
obtained admission for an ambâ, it placed before me a message from
Esmo requesting a private conference. Her father's presence set
Eveena's mind at rest; since she had learned, strangely enough from
myself, what she had never known before, the rank he held among the
brethren.

"I have summoned you," he said as soon as I joined him, "for more than
one reason. There is but one, however, that I need now explain.
Important questions, are as a rule either settled by the Chiefs alone
in Council, or submitted to a general meeting of the Order. In this
case neither course can be adopted. It would not have occurred to
myself that, under present circumstances, you could render material
service in either of the two directions in which it may be required.
But those by whom the cause has been prepared have asked that you
should be one of the Convent, and such a request is never refused.
Indeed, its refusal would imply either such injustice as would render
the whole proceeding utterly incompatible with the first principles of
our cohesion, or such distrust of the person summoned as is never felt
for a member of the Brotherhood. I would rather say no more on the
subject now. Your nerve and judgment will be sufficiently tried
to-night; and it is a valuable maxim of our science that, in the hours
immediately preceding either an important decision or a severe trial,
the spirit should be left as far as possible calm and unvexed by vague
shadows of that which is to come."

The maxim thus expressed, if rendered into the language of material
medicine, is among those which every man of experience holds and
practically acts upon. I turned the conversation, then, by inviting
Esmo into my own apartment; and I was touched indeed by the eager
delight, even stronger than I had expected, with which Eveena welcomed
her father, and inquired into the minutest details of the home life
from which she had been, as it seemed to her, so long separated. What
was, however, specially characteristic was the delicate care with
which, even in this first meeting with one of her own family, she
contrived still to give the paramount place in her attention to her
husband, and never for a moment to let him feel excluded from a
conversation with whose topics he was imperfectly acquainted, and in
which he might have been supposed uninterested. The hours thus passed
pleasantly away; and, except when Kevimâ, joined us at the evening
meal, adding a new and unexpected pleasure to Eveena's natural delight
in this sudden reunion, we remained undisturbed until a very low
electric signal, sounding apparently through several chambers at once,
recalled Esmo's mind to the duties before him.

"You will not," he said, "return till late, and I wish you would
induce Eveena to ensure, by composing herself to sleep before your
return, that you shall not be asked to converse until the morning."

He withdrew with Kevimâ, and, as instructed, I proceeded to change my
dress for one of pure white adapted to the occasion, with only a band
of crimson around the waist and throat, and to invest myself in the
badge of the Order. The turban which I wore, without attracting
attention, in the Asiatic rather than in the Martial form, was of
white mingled with red; a novelty which seemed to Eveena's eyes
painfully ominous. In Martial language, as in Zveltic symbolism,
crimson generally takes the place of black as the emblem of guilt and
peril. When Esmo re-entered our chamber for a moment to summon me, he
was invested, as in the Shrine itself, in the full attire of his
office, and I was recalled to a recollection of the reverence due to
the head of the Brotherhood by the sudden change in Eveena's manner.
To her father, though a most respectful, she was a fearlessly
affectionate child. For Clavelta she had only the reverence, deeply
intermingled with awe, with which a devout Catholic convert from the
East may approach for the first time some more than usually imposing
occupant of the Chair of St. Peter. Before the arm that bore the
Signet, and the sash of gold, we bent knee and head in the deference
prescribed by our rules—a homage which the youngest child in the
public Nurseries would not dream of offering to the Camptâ himself. At
a sign from his hand I followed Esmo, hoping rather than expecting
that Eveena would obey the counsel indirectly addressed to her.
Traversing the same passages as before, save that a slight turn
avoided the symbolic bridge, and formally challenged at each point as
usual by the sentries, who saluted with profoundest reverence the
Signet of the Order, we passed at last into the Hall of Initiation.

But on this occasion its aspect was completely changed. A space
immediately in front of what I may call the veil of the Shrine was
closed in by drapery of white bordered with crimson. The Chiefs
occupied, as before, their seats on the platform. Some fifty members
of the Order sat to right and left immediately below; but Esmo, on
this occasion, seated himself on the second leftward step of the
Throne, which, with the silver light and the other mystic emblems, was
unveiled in the same strange manner as before at his approach. Near
the lower end of the small chamber thus formed, crossing the passage
between the seats on either hand, was a barrier of the bright red
metal I have more than once mentioned, and behind it a seat of some
sable material. Behind this, to right and left, stood silent and erect
two sentries robed in green, and armed with the usual spear. A deep
intense absolute silence prevailed, from the moment when the last of
the party had taken his place, for the space of some ten minutes. In
the faces of the Chiefs and of some of the elder Initiates, who were
probably aware of the nature of the scene to follow, was an expression
of calm but deep pain and regret; crossed now and then by a shade of
anxiety, such as rarely appeared in that abode of assured peace and
profound security. On no countenance was visible the slightest shadow
of restlessness or curiosity. In the changed aspect of the place, the
changed tone of its associations and of the feelings habitual to its
frequenters, there was something which impressed and overawed the
petulance of youth, and even the indifference of an experience like my
own. At last, stretching forth the ivory-like staff of mingled white
and red, which on this occasion each of the Chiefs had substituted for
their usual crystal wand, Esmo spoke, not raising his voice a single
semitone above its usual pitch, but with even unwonted gravity—

"Come forward, Asco Zvelta!" he said.

The sight I now witnessed, no description could represent to one who
had not seen the same. Parting the drapery at the lower end, there
came forward a figure in which the most absolutely inexperienced eye
could not fail to recognise a culprit called to trial. "Came forward,"
I have said, because I can use no other words. But such was not the
term which would have occurred to any one who witnessed the movement.
"Was dragged forward," I should say, did I attempt to convey the
impression produced;—save that no compulsion, no physical force was
used, nor were there any to use it. And yet the miserable man
approached slowly, reluctantly, shrinking back as one who strives with
superior corporeal power exerted to force him onward, as if physically
dragged on step by step by invisible bonds held by hands unseen. So
with white face and shaking form he reached the barrier, and knelt as
Esmo rose from his place, honouring instinctively, though his eyes
seemed incapable of discerning them, the symbols of supreme authority.
Then, at a silent gesture, he rose and fell back into the chair placed
for him, apparently unable to stand and scarcely able to sustain
himself on his seat.

"Brother," said the junior of the Chiefs, or he who occupied the place
farthest to the right;—and now I noticed that eleven were present,
the last seat on the right of him who spoke being vacant—"you have
unveiled to strangers the secrets of the Shrine."

He paused for an answer; and, in a tone strangely unnatural and
expressionless, came from the scarcely parted lips of the culprit the
reply—"

"It is true."

"You have," said the next of the Chiefs, "accepted reward to place the
lives of your brethren at the mercy of their enemies."

"It is true."

"You have," said he who occupied the lowest seat upon the left,
"forsworn in heart and deed, if not in word, the vows by which you
willingly bound yourself, and the law whose boons you had accepted."

Again the same confession, forced evidently by some overwhelming power
from one who would, if he could, have denied or remained silent.

"And to whom," said Esmo, interposing for the first time, "have you
thus betrayed us?"

"I know not," was the reply.

"Explain," said the Chief immediately to the left of the Throne, who,
if there were a difference in the expression of the calm sad faces,
seemed to entertain more of compassion and less of disgust and
repulsion towards the offender than any other.

"Those with whom I spoke," replied the culprit, in the same strange
tone, "were not known to me, but gave token of authority next to that
of the Camptâ. They told me that the existence of the Order had long
been known, that many of its members were clearly indicated by their
household practices, that their destruction was determined; that I was
known as a member of the Order, and might choose between perishing
first of their victims and receiving reward such as I should name
myself for the information I could give."

"What have you told?" asked another of the Chiefs.

"I have not named one of the symbols. I have not betrayed the Shrine
or the passwords. I have told that the Zinta
is
. I have told the
meaning of the Serpent, the Circle, and the Star, though I have not
named them."

"And," said he on the left of the Throne, "naming the hope that is
more than all hope, recalling the power that is above all power, could
you dare to renounce the one and draw on your own head the justice of
the other? What reward could induce a child of the Light to turn back
into darkness? What authority could protect the traitor from the fate
he imprecated and accepted when he first knelt before the Throne?"
"The hope was distant and the light was dim," the offender answered.
"I was threatened and I was tempted. I knew that death, speedy and
painless, was the penalty of treason to the Order, that a death of
prolonged torture might be the vengeance of the power that menaced me.
I hoped little in the far and dim future of the Serpent's promise, and
I hoped and feared much in the life on this side of death."