ZARGA MAKES AMENDS
ZARGA had met her mistress, alone and unseen, immediately after the
breaking up of the high court of justice. The place was on the island, at
the spot where the pavilion had stood; but the pavilion was gone, and the
island was rocky and barren. The change reflected too clearly to be
disregarded the alteration which had been wrought in the girl’s ambitions
and hopes. Lamara was standing beside a thorn-tree. The birds and the
Nature people had departed. Zarga approached with lagging steps. A spring,
which had formerly been the fountain in the inner court, bubbled up from a
cavity in the rock and trickled away along a stony channel toward the sea.
“There is no labor more blessed than to bring back beauty and happiness
from banishment, and make them bloom and be fragrant again,” Lamara said
in a tender voice. “You can do work that will more than make good the
mischief; and out of all that might undertake it, I shall entrust it to
you.”
“You trust me still?” said the girl. “I don’t trust myself!”
“We learn self-trust by being trusted by others,” Lamara returned. “The
welfare of all our people is in your hands. It lies with you, also, to
give back happiness to the strangers whom you wronged, and perhaps to save
from destruction the planet from which your own ancestors came hither!”
The girl looked frightened and doubtful. “I loved him!” she muttered.
Lamara shook her head. “You were misled by a fantom shaped out of your own
vanity and curiosity, by an agent who sought thus to use you for purposes
of his own. When your wisdom reawakes you will recognize the trick. Call
upon the good and truth that I have always seen in you—I see them now,
struggling to be free again!—and you will win a victory that will wipe out
your shame and bring you love and honor!”
“What is it I must do?” asked the girl, paling and flushing by turns with
the conflict in her heart.
“Your kinsman, Torpeon, applying his deep penetration into the hidden
places of nature to ill ends, to satisfy and insane lust for power, has
for a long time past used every resource of science to devise a means to
unloose the ties that bind his planet to its orbit, and to set out upon a
career of universal conquest and dominion. He led himself to believe that
he would be able to control its course among other worlds, and to steer it
to other systems, and finally to draw in his train such a retinue of
subject planets as would empower him to create and control the fate of
starry organisms mighty as Orion and the Pleiades.
“His spiritual blindness, which is as great as his insight into material
conditions, prevented him from realizing that the laws which hold the
stars are only outwardly physical, and that their spiritual causes are
beyond human power to originate or modify. Yet power to destroy is given
to man; and so far as the first steps of his plan are concerned, he might
have succeeded had not agencies been found so humble as not to be
suspected which suddenly upset his preparations.
“This reverse took place but yesterday. But Torpeon had reserved a
desperate alternative, which he will now seek to put in operations. Rather
than surrender to her lawful betrothed husband the woman whom he stole
from him, he will violently tear apart his earth, with all its
inhabitants, from its moorings, and hurl it headlong and unguided through
space to what destiny he cares not; but its speedy annihilation is
certain, and may possibly involve others in its ruin. This monstrous
crime, unless a power greater than his can avert it, he has the means to
perpetrate. That greater power must be wielded by ourselves, and I have
chosen you, my trusted and loved companion, to arouse and set it in
motion.”
Zarga’s eyes began to sparkle, her bosom rose, and she lifted her body
erect. Lamara, steadfastly observing her, continued:
“You have studied with me the constitution of our realm, and know by what
methods we can, by united efforts, achieve results beyond the reach of any
individual compass, how exalted soever. Our present task is formidable;
perhaps none more arduous could be imposed upon us; and every member of
every society on our globe must cooperate in it. To insure this result, I
now appoint you, Zarga, my ambassador to our people. No function more
honorable is in my power to bestow; for, to discharge it involves energy
and faithfulness beyond the limits and development of all but few. Ask
your own soul whether you shall accept or decline it! It is an
opportunity, not a command.”
“Such forgiveness as yours is worthy of the heart that conceived it; I
pray the spirit that it may create in me power to fulfil the trust,” said
Zarga after a pause. “I see in my soul only ashes; but if you can believe
that in may bloom again, I will believe it, too. At least I will spend
what life I have in the attempt. What am I to say to the people?”
“Tell them that, at the signal of the ring, which will be visible to all
at once, each head is to marshal his society in the supreme Saturnian
order. The will of all is to be made one will, in harmony with the
recorded will of the spirit. Tell them that the strain will be great, but
constancy will prevail. Tell them that the hands of the little children
are to be laid, above all, upon the uniting cord; for innocence and love
hold the universe together. Let this be done, and Tor shall not be
unseated from its place.”
Lamara spoke with solemn emphasis, lifting up her arms and her face, as if
addressing not so much Zarga in person as the divine qualities of
helpfulness and devotion which were to be exemplified in her. Zarga knelt
before her, and the arms slowly descended with the gesture of benediction.
There was an interval of silence, and then the girl arose and turned to
begin her long pilgrimage. Lamara gazed thoughtfully after her, and smiled
to observe that violets and wood anemones unfolded their petals in the
path of her footsteps; a thrush broke into song, and one or two of the
small Nature people peeped out timidly from crevices of the rock.
That day there was the sound of a voice traveling over Saturn, from east
to west and from south to north. None had heard its like before, but its
meaning was comprehended by all; and the messenger, though unseen, was
recognized as the emissary of the highest. Men and women, youths and
maidens, and little children, lambent in snow-white flames, came forth
from their dwellings, and from the shadows of the groves; up from the
murmuring watercourses they came, and from the coolness of the moss-draped
ravines; they left their works and enjoyments, their meditations and their
worshiping; they stood upon the mountain-tops, and gathered upon the
seashore, and gazed skyward, listening and mute, while the flying voice
passed over them, leaving its words of warning and exhortation behind. The
songs of the birds were hushed as it went by, lest their careless music
cause the message to be missed; the animals stole into their coverts, and
the Nature people scurried in and out of the forest glades and caverns,
awed and excited, they knew not why.
As the voice swept on, region after region of the mighty planet, with
their multitudinous communities, caught the call to duty, and gathered in
their places, to be ranged by their leaders into rhythmical cohorts and
battalions, to subdue their myriad impulses into one impulse, to turn
their innumerable thoughts into one thought, to communicate through the
linked hands and measured footfalls, through long inter-weavings and
choral chantings, the gathering strength of one will welded of all wills
into a single flawless and irresistible chain.
And still the warning voice swept on, searching out the farthest valleys,
arresting the wayfarers across the plains, overtaking the voyagers upon
the boundless lakes, pausing not for tropic heats or arctic colds, never
pausing or faltering, resolute to bear the tidings to every creature, and
to keep faith to the last. Many there were that marveled who the messenger
might be, but there was no answer. Zarga’s face was veiled; she performed
her mission unknown and unsuspected; only her voice announced her. And
only her secret heart knew whence came the strength that enabled her to
persevere to the very end.
But when the long day was done she found herself among the sublime and icy
silences of the virgin north. No creature lived here; no plant grew;
enormous snowfields extended in smooth undulations; immemorial glaciers
sloped silently from the mountainsides; frozen peaks glittered aloft,
pointing to the unmoving stars. She alighted near the mouth of a great ice
cavern, very weary but content. The duty laid upon her had been
accomplished.
With the last strength remaining to her she crept into the cavern; to her
failing eyes it bore a likeness to the chamber in the crystal mountain
which her art had adorned for the festival of love, never to be
consummated. A dark splendor of colors glowed within, receding into
beautiful mysteries of gloom. Zarga dragged herself to the center of the
cavern, and lay down, pillowing her golden head on a lump of ice. She
might rest, at last!
“It was for him I did it!” she said to herself; “He will live and be happy
with her, and I, too, am happy. He will never know that I died for him;
but Lamara will understand, and she and the spirit will forgive me much,
because I did my best to make amends.” Her eyes closed, and there was
silence, never to be broken.