Across the Zodiac (56 page)

"Do you know," asked the last inquirer again, "no name, and nothing
that can enable us to trace those with whom you spoke or those who
employed them?"

"Only this," was the answer, "that one of them has an especial hatred
to one Initiate present," pointing to myself; "and seeks his life, not
only as a child of the Star, not only as husband of the daughter of
Clavelta, but for a reason that is not known to me."

"And," asked another Chief, "do you know what instrument that enemy
seeks to use?"

"One who has over her intended victim such influence as few of her sex
ever have over their lords; one of whom his love will learn no
distrust, against whom his heart has no guard and his manhood no
wisdom."

A shiver of horror passed over the forms of the Chiefs and of many who
sat near them, incomprehensible to me till a sudden light was afforded
by the indignant interruption of Kevimâ, who sat not far from myself.

"It cannot be," he cried, "or you can name her whom you accuse."

"Be silent!" Esmo said, in the cold, grave tone of a president
rebuking disorder, mingled with the deeper displeasure of a priest
repressing irreverence in the midst of the most solemn religious rite.
"None may speak here till the Chiefs have ceased to speak."

None of the latter, however, seemed disposed to ask another question.
The guilt of the accused was confessed. All that he could tell to
guide their further inquiries had been told. To doubt that what was
forced from him was to the best of his knowledge true, was to them,
who understood the mysterious power that had compelled the spirit and
the lips to an unwilling confession, impossible. And if it had seemed
that further information might have been extracted relative to my own
personal danger, a stronger tie, a deeper obligation, bound them to
the supposed object of the last obscure imputation, and none was
willing to elicit further charges or clearer evidence. Probably also
they anticipated that, when the word was extended to the Initiates, I
should take up my own cause.

"Would any brother speak?" asked Esmo, when the silence of the Chiefs
had lasted for a few moments.

But his rebuke had silenced Kevimâ, and no one else cared to
interpose. The eyes of the assembly turned upon me so generally and so
pointedly, that at last I felt myself forced, though against my own
judgment, to rise.

"I have no question to ask the accused," I said.

"Then," replied Esmo calmly, "you have nothing now to say. Give to the
brother accused before us the cup of rest."

A small goblet was handed by one of the sentries to the miserable
creature, now half-insensible, who awaited our judgment. In a very few
moments he had sunk into a slumber in which his face was comparatively
calm, and his limbs had ceased to tremble. His fate was to be debated
in the presence indeed of his body, but in the absence of
consciousness and knowledge.

"Has any elder brother," inquired Esmo, "counsel to afford?"

No word was spoken.

"Has any brother counsel to afford?"

Again all were silent, till the glance which the Chief cast in order
along the ranks of the assembly fell upon myself.

"One word," I said. "I claim permission to speak, because the matter
touches closely and cruelly my own honour."

There was that inaudible, invisible, motionless "movement," as some
French reporters call it, of surprise throughout the assembly which
communicates itself instinctively to a speaker.

"My own honour," I continued, "in the honour dearer and nearer to me
even than my own. What the accused has spoken may or may not be true."

"It is true," interposed a Chief, probably pitying my ignorance.

"May be true," I continued, "though I will not believe it, to
whomsoever his words may apply. That no such treason as they have
suggested ever for one moment entered, or could enter, the heart of
her who knelt with me, in presence of many now here, before that
Throne, I will vouch by all the symbols we revere in common, and with
the life which it seems is alone threatened by the feminine domestic
treason alleged, from whomsoever that treason may proceed. I will
accuse none, as I suspect none; but I will say that the charge might
be true to the letter, and yet not touch, as I know it does not justly
touch, the daughter of our Chief."

A deep relief was visible in the faces which had so lately been
clouded by a suspicion terrible to all. Esmo's alone remained
impassive throughout my vindication, as throughout the apparent
accusation and silent condemnation of his daughter.

"Has any brother," he said, "counsel to speak respecting the question
actually before us?"

One and all were silent, till Esmo again put the formal question:—

"Has he who was our brother betrayed the brotherhood?"

From every member of the assembly came a clear unmistakable assent.

"Is he outcast?"

Silence rather than any distinct sign answered in the affirmative.

"Is it needful that his lips be sealed for ever?"

One or two of the Chiefs expressed in a single sentence an affirmative
conviction, which was evidently shared by all present except myself.
Appealing by a look to Esmo, and encouraged by his eye, I spoke—

"The outcast has confessed treason worthy of death. That I cannot
deny. But he has sinned from fear rather than from greed or malice;
and to fear, courage should be indulgent. The coward is but what Allah
has made him, and to punish cowardice is to punish the child for the
heritage his parents have inflicted. Moreover, no example of
punishment will make cowards brave. It seems to me, then, that there
is neither justice nor wisdom in taking vengeance upon the crime of
weakness."

In but two faces, those of Esmo and of his next colleague on the left,
could I see the slightest sign of approval. One of the other chiefs
answered briefly and decisively my plea for mercy.

"If," he said, "treason proceed from fear, the more cause that a
greater fear should prevent the treason of cowardice for the future.
The same motives that have led the offender to betray so much would
assuredly lead him to betray more were he released; and to attempt
lifelong confinement is to make the lives of all dependent on a chance
in order to spare one unworthy life. The excuse which our brother has
pleaded may, we hope, avail with a tribunal which can regard the
conscience apart from the consequences. It ought not to avail with
us."

But the law of the Zinta, as I now learned, will not allow sentence of
death to be passed save by an absolutely unanimous vote. It is held
that if one judge educated in the ideas of the Order, appreciating to
the full the priceless importance of its teaching and the guilt of
treason against it, is unpersuaded that there exists sufficient cause
for the supreme penalty, the doubt is such as should preclude the
infliction of that penalty. It is, however, permitted and expected
that the dissentients, if few in number, much more a single
dissentient, shall listen attentively and give the most respectful and
impartial consideration to the arguments of brethren, and especially
of seniors. If a single mind remains unmoved, its dissent is decisive.
But it would be the gravest dereliction of duty to persist from
wilfulness, obstinacy, or pride, in adhesion to a view perhaps hastily
expressed in opposition to authority and argument. The debate to which
my speech gave rise lasted for two hours. Each speaker spoke but a few
terse expressive sentences; and after each speech came a pause
allowing full time for the consideration of its reasoning. Two points
were very soon made clear to all. The offender had justly forfeited
his life; and if his death were necessary or greatly conducive to the
safety of the rest, the mercy which for his sake imperilled worthier
men and sacred truths would have been no less than a crime. The
thought, however, that weighed most with me against my natural feeling
was an experience to which none present could appeal. I had sat on
many courts-martial where cowardice was the only charge imputed; and
in every case in which that charge was proved, sentence of death had
been passed and carried out on a ground I could not refuse to consider
sufficient:—namely, that the infection of terror can best be
repressed by an example inspiring deeper terror than that to which the
prisoner has yielded. Compelled by these precedents, though with
intense reluctance, I submitted at last to the universal judgment.
Esmo having collected the will, I cannot say the voices, of the
assembly, paused for a minute in silence.

"The Present has pronounced," he said at last. "Are the voices of the
Past assentient?"

He looked around as if to see whether, under real or supposed
inspiration, any of those before him would give in another name a
judgment opposite to that in which all had concurred. Instinctively I
glanced towards the Throne, but it remained vacant as ever. Then,
fixing his eyes for a few moments upon the culprit, who started and
woke to full consciousness under his gaze—and receiving from the
Chief nearest to him on the left a chain of small golden circles
similar to that of the canopy, represented also on the Signet, while
he on the right held a small roll, on the golden surface of which a
long list of names was inscribed—our Superior pronounced, amid
deepest stillness, in a low clear tone, the form of excommunication;
breaking at the appropriate moment one link from the chain, and, at a
later point, drawing a broad crimson bar through one cipher on the
roll:—

"Conscience-convict, tried in truth,
Judged in justice, doomed in ruth;
Ours no more—once ours in vain—
Falls the Veil and snaps the Chain,
Drops the link and lies alone:—
Traitor to the Emerald Throne,
Alien from the troth we plight,
Kature native to the night;
Trained in Light the Light to scorn,
Soul apostate and forsworn,
False to symbol, sense, and sign,
To the Serpent's pledge divine,
To the Wings that reach afar,
To the Circle and the Star;
Recreant to the mystic rule,
Outlaw from the sacred school—
Backward is the Threshold crossed;
Lost the Light, the Life is lost.
Go; the golden page we blot:
Go; forgetting and forgot!
Go—by final sentence shriven,
Be thy crime absolved in Heaven!"

Once more the Throne and the Emblems behind and above it had been
veiled in impenetrable darkness. Instinctively, as it seemed, every
one present had risen to his feet, and stood with bent head and
downcast eyes as the Condemned, rising mechanically, turned without a
word and passed away.

I was, perhaps, the only member of the assembly to whom the doomed man
was not personally known, and to all of us the tie which had been
severed was one at least as close as that of natural brotherhood on
Earth.

How long the pause lasted—how, or why, or when we resumed our seats,
even I knew not. The Shrine was unveiled, and Esmo's next colleague
spoke again—

"A seat among the elders has been three days vacant by the departure
of one well known and dear to all. His colleagues have considered how
best it may be filled. The member they have selected is of the
youngest in experience here; but from the first moment of his
initiation it was evident to us that more than half the learning of
the Starlight had been his before. Nothing could so deeply confirm our
joy and confidence in that lore, as to find that in another world the
truths we hold dearest are held with equal faith, that many of our
deepest secrets have there been sought and discovered by societies not
unlike our own. For that reason, and because of that House, whereof
now but two members are left us, he is by wedlock and adoption the
third, the elder brethren have unanimously resolved to recommend to
Clavelta, and to the Children of the Star, that this seat," and he
pointed to the vacant place, "shall be filled by him who has but now
expressed, with a warmth seldom shown in this place, his love and
trust for the daughter of our Chief, the descendant of our Founder."

Certainly not on my own account, but from the earnest attachment and
devotion they felt for Esmo, both personally as a long-tried and
deservedly revered Chief, and as almost the last representative of a
lineage so profoundly loved and honoured, the approval of all present
was expressed with a sudden and eager warmth which deeply affected me;
the more that it expressed an hereditary regard and esteem, not for
myself but for Eveena, rarely or never, even among the Zveltau, paid
to a woman. Esmo bent his head in assent, and then, addressing me by
name, called me to the foot of the platform.

He held in his hand the golden sash and rose-coloured wand which
marked the rank about to be bestowed on me. I felt very deeply my own
incompetence and ignorance; and even had I valued more the proffered
honour, I should have been bound to decline it. But at the third word
I spoke, I was silenced with a stern though perfectly calm severity.
Flinging back the fold of his robe that covered his left arm, with a
gesture that placed the Signet full before my eyes, he said—

"You have sworn obedience."

A soldier's instinct or habit, the mesmeric command of Esmo's glance,
and the awe, due less to my own feeling than to the infectious
reverence of others, which the symbols and the oaths of the Order
extorted, left me no further will to resist. At the foot of the Throne
I received the investiture of my new rank; and as I rose and faced my
brethren, every hand was lifted to the lips, every head bent in
salutation of their new leader. Then, as I passed to the extreme place
on the right, they came forward to grasp my hand and utter a few words
of sympathy and kindness, in which a frank spirit of affectionate
comradeship, that reminded me forcibly of the mess-tent and the
bivouac fire, was mingled with the sense of a deeper and more sacred
tie.