For several seconds I felt that I could not bear the strain and suspense
of this fresh test; already I had suffered so much I had grown weak and
nervous. I wanted to be quiet, to sit still for a few minutes, and to
think out all the extraordinary things I had heard and witnessed. Yet
here I was caught up in this weird kaleidoscope of sensation. I no
longer felt my feet on solid earth, but all at once I recognised that I
had become the prey of some elements that defied all the ordinary laws
of reason, and might, if I gave way to childish or unreasoning panic,
send me practically demented.
In vain I told myself that the whole movement about me was but the
insane jest of some crazy stage craftsman. In vain I held myself
tightly together, and with all the vigour I was capable of anathematised
Delganni for his preposterous notions of finding out the true metal of a
man and what, in apparently grave moments of physical distress, he might
be capable of. The hideousness of the scene afflicted me with a sense
of intolerable vertigo. First there were ear-piercing screams, then
long lurid intervals of silence in which some red light burned angrily
in the background, and I saw the walls about me and the ceiling above me
bend and crack and stoop; there appeared to be nothing--nothing to
prevent them falling with a crash upon me and dashing me to instant
annihilation.
The culminating horror of it all was reached when even the chair on
which I sat, the table against which I rested, began to slowly revolve.
The movements of the floor were steady, well ordered and rhythmical,
but, as loud sonorous sounds were struck, afar off, on some brazen
instruments, the framework seemed to rock and roll, as though the very
earth were shaken by some subterranean power.
I verily believe that the physical strain of saving myself from being
pitched forward kept me sane in these moments. I know I began by
extending my rage to all secret societies, and then I passed on to
swearing at myself for being so rash and foolish as to submit myself to
these indignities--I, a free-born Englishman, upon whom, if I had
confined myself to the ordinary walk of life, nobody dared lay a hand so
grim and preposterous as this was.
Finally, as the movement grew more erratic, I was content to hang on,
and I hung on so effectually that my tortures all at once ceased to
torture me, the movements in the hermit's cell stopped as though by
magic, the light grew larger, rounder, more luminous, and suddenly
Casteno appeared through the gloom in the doorway with a hand stretched
out in welcome.
"I congratulate you, Glynn," he said. "You have gone through all the
tests required with flying colours. Now, come with me and receive your
reward."
Stiff, sick, and sore, I rose unsteadily from the chair and grabbed his
arm. "I'll come with you all right," I panted, "but the kind of reward
I feel interested in just at this minute is to give somebody such a
thrashing that will relieve my feelings and teach my good friends at St
Bruno's the danger of banging and bewildering a man in the way I have
been."
"Well," conceded Jose, with a pleasant smile, "some of us do hold that
this ceremony of initiation into the Order is rather foolish; but, after
all, we don't quite know how we can get out of it. In the first place,
we see that Delganni was really a most wonderful man. Years before we
had all this babble and talk and political trickery about a wise
imperialism for England, and a Greater Britain, and the responsibilities
of empire and so forth, he saw the eternal mission of our country, and
he saw it clearly. More than that, he did, with all those fantastic
methods of his, manage to institute this brotherhood and to get a very
fine and reliable nucleus of workers together. That being so, who are
we, his disciples as it were, to judge him? We are glad enough to take
up his burden and his dream just when he laid them down. Then, if we
put away this ceremony of initiation of his, what ceremony could we
devise to take its place?"
"Anything," I snapped, "anything but the one you have." And with him I
began to walk down the corridor.
"I am not so sure about that," answered Casteno. "There will, I
suppose, be always adventurers attracted to a cause by loaves and
fishes, and it is highly necessary for the ideal we cherish that such
should be weeded out. Anything that stops these sharks is useful, very
useful. Why, we have had both Lord Cyril Cuthbertson and Lord
Fotheringay up before us for examination, and we played so well on their
weak points, as we tried to play on yours, over the place of curator at
Toledo, that we actually got them to say they would renounce their
nationality as Englishmen! No wonder, then, we won't trust them with
the deeds that would show the whereabouts of the Lake of Sacred
Treasure. In our opinion, they are nothing more than the most
pestilential parasites England has ever bred--I mean political
patriots!"
I halted in amazement. "Then," I stammered, "am I to take it that the
Order is so rich and so powerful that even His Majesty's Secretary for
Foreign Affairs tried to get within its ranks?"
"Indeed it is," answered Casteno earnestly. "Why, it is true Bruno
Delganni only left about a million, but that million he left was in land
near Leeds which had not at the time been exploited. Since his death it
has been opened up, developed, and sold with remarkable care and skill,
with the result that, aided by other benefactions, the Order to-day is
enormously wealthy. It was computed a short time ago that if we divided
the property amongst the members for any reason, say a terrific European
war with England where the cash might in a patriotic sense be useful, we
should each receive about seventy-five thousand pounds.
"And perhaps, what is more to the point just now, you will now become
entitled to a share of that amount. In fact, we St Bruno-ites boast
and know we shall never want money for any good purpose either for
ourselves or our friends. We have only to apply to the three rulers we
have, whom we call the Council of Three, to get it.
"For instance, when I am married I shall ask their assistance, and I am
sure they will yield it to me with great pleasure, and that they will
allot my bride and myself such a handsome wedding portion that neither
she nor I will ever want the means of keeping up a perfectly respectable
and well-balanced position in society. Why, there are to-day five or
six members of Parliament who are St Bruno-ites, and where do you think
they get the means from to win their different constituencies and to
keep up their seats? From the Order, of course; and yet they never set
foot inside these walls or write a line to the Council of Three from
year's end to year's end. The money they require is put to their credit
at their particular bank regularly every quarter, and all they do is to
send to the Council of Three every New Year's Day a small slip bearing
the words: `Ready, ay ready,' with the date, and their ordinary
signatures."
"And shall I be entitled to similar consideration?" I queried,
blundering into a foolish, selfish question out of sheer nervousness.
"Of course you will," answered Casteno, smilingly; "all are equal in
this house--there are no favourites. The idea is that everybody wants
everybody else to be perfectly happy and comfortable. You can come when
you like; you can go when you like. Once in the house, of course, as a
resident you have to submit yourself to the semi-monastic rule we
affect, but you will find even that very good and helpful to you--yes,
even the strikingly distinctive dress we wear--for it will serve to
recall to you the sacred duties of patriotism which you have undertaken.
It will accustom you, in a way, to your own ideal."
"But why is the place so unlike a monastery?" I asked, stopping
suddenly and pointing to some of the beautiful modern pictures which
adorned the walls. "Look at these lovely works of art! There is
nothing grim, nothing austere, nothing of self-sacrifice in these."
"Of course there isn't," returned Casteno gaily. "We want our men to be
as bright, as cheerful, and as ardent lovers of beauty and goodness as
we can. We never interfere with their religions. That is their affair.
Ours, we own, is a frankly worldly organisation, which, although it is
under divine favour, we hope, as witness our watchwords: `God' and
`England,' does really work to a worldly and an obvious conclusion.
Therefore we make use of all the best things of the world, and amongst
those we place beauty and things of beauty as of the highest therapeutic
importance!"
"Is that why you have that statue in the entrance hall?" I
questioned--"that wonderful figure of a woman, with the face of a Greek
goddess, which stands on a pedestal, and before which there seem to be
constant offerings of flowers and candles."
Jose stopped at the mere suggestion, and laughed quite loudly. "Good
gracious, no, man!" he replied so soon as he recovered his breath, "that
statue has nothing to do with the members--nothing at all. You must
know that poor old Bruno Delganni, although he really was a patriotic
genius, had also a strangely poetic and romantic vein in his
composition. Hence, when he found that the dream of his life, the Order
of St Bruno, did actually take form and substance and become a living
organism powerful for great historical ends and occasions, he bethought
himself of another vision of his youth--the woman who would not marry
him.
"Of course, this idol of his, like all women with these faces of perfect
beauty of form and expression, had no soul and no heart. In my opinion
all those women in history who inspired noble resolves were like the
idol of poor Bruno Delganni--Dante's Beatrice, I mean, Paolo's
Francesca, Werther's Charlotte, and so forth--mere mirrors in which
great men saw depicted their own great possibilities.
"At all events, the woman in question married Bruno's elder brother,
because he was the better off, but Bruno never forgot her, and on his
deathbed he ordered that her statue should be carved from an old
photograph of her that he had in his possession and that a replica of
that work of art should be placed in the refectory of each house
connected with the Order of St Bruno and duly and regularly adorned
with so many candles and flowers.
"Unfortunately, we graceless bachelors, when we feel particularly
irreverent, say that our founder had the image placed there as a fearful
warning to us against pretty women, as a dumb but forcible appeal to
each one of us to remember that `handsome is as handsome does,' that
`beauty is only skin deep,' and that as the flowers around the statue
fade so does woman's charm. But it means nothing beyond this--nothing
whatever." And he caught me by one arm and stayed my steps opposite to
one of the doors let into the wall.
"But here we are," he went on in a more restrained tone. "When I open
this you will find yourself in the presence of the brotherhood, all of
whom, absolutely without exception, are eager to welcome you as one of
themselves. Don't be frightened of them. You have got through all the
tests, and nothing but a joyous reception of you as a fine adherent to
Brunoism now remains to be gone through. They all of them know about
the manuscripts and the Lake of Sacred Treasure in Tangikano, and all
you have done to assist me, so you can talk to anyone with the utmost
freedom. When this is over I will get you to come with me and we will
tackle the translation of the deeds with the aid of the key to the
Jesuits' cipher which Miss Velasquon has brought from Mexico; but at
present your formal recognition as a Bruno-ite is the thing in hand, so
follow me."
He raised his hand to tap on the door, but I stopped him. "Just one
question," I muttered, "before I go in--only one. Why _Saint_ Bruno if
you have no religious object and significance? Why didn't you call
yourselves something less Catholic, more indicative of your real
object?"
"Oh! we had nothing to do with it," retorted Casteno lightly.
"Delganni, I'm told, was a Catholic, and he christened the Order after
his own notion. His institutes say that he had a great devotion to his
name saint, and so he called the Order after him to pay him honour, and
perhaps, what is more to the point to-day, to throw inquisitive persons
off the scent as to our real motive, for they jump at once to the idea
that we are some very wicked yet very religious brotherhood, and,
therefore, leave us severely alone."
I nodded. Almost in spite of my own subtle, suspicious self I was
satisfied. The next moment the door was flung open and Casteno marched
me through an avenue of black-habited brethren to a dais at the far end
of the room, on which the Prior stood with hand outstretched to greet
me.
"Welcome, brother Hugh, welcome!" he cried in those rich sonorous tones
of his. "My duty to-day is a very simple yet a very pleasant one; again
I bid you welcome. Here in this book I hand to you are the institutes
of the Order of St Bruno, the rules which govern our organisation, and
the explanation thereof as supplied by our founder, good Bruno Delganni,
on whom, we say, may the earth rest very lightly, for he has done
England much good! Take them; study them at your convenience. They
will prove to you we are not quite so black here as our habit would seem
to indicate. Here, also, is the scroll which testifies that this day
you have become a member with us and are entitled to all the rights,
privileges, and appurtenances of that distinguished and cherished
position. It is written in cypher numerals, as you will observe--
another idea and protection of our founder's--but if you take page one
of the institutes you will find that is the key to the riddle and that
the numbers stand as references to the particular letters of the first
few lines.
"Thus you will observe the first word on page one is `The.' Hence in
the cipher document the letter `t' will be marked by the number `one,'
the letter `h' by the number `two,' and the letter `e' by the number
`three.' Indeed, this is the cipher code we always make use of when we
write to our members and communicate with each other in confidence, so I
advise you, if you don't want to carry the institutes about with you
constantly, to learn by heart the first few lines of the handbook, and
then you will have in your mind the key to the cryptic language we make
use of.
"Here, also, is a small spring gold bracelet which I must ask you to
wear on your right arm above the elbow," he went on. "It serves various
purposes--for one, to remind you that you are a Bruno-ite, and of your
ceaseless duty of high and dignified patriotism. Its catch, also, is,
as you may observe, key shape, and can be used as a key to penetrate the
most secret archives of the Order, should you ever feel suspicious, or
fancy that you have any ground for discontent, or that you are not being
as fairly treated as your fellow-members, for in this Order we are all
equal, and only take personal favours from the Council of Three. Any
day or hour you are free to overhaul our records and to call the
brethren together should you find any ground of complaint. Should you
be away some time from the house and want to know whether the stranger
you meet is a Bruno-ite or not, take the bracelet off your forearm and
put it on your wrist. Then call the man's attention to the inscription
engraved on it: `For God and England.' If he be a Bruno-ite he will
answer immediately: `May we be worthy of both.' If he does not, pass it
off with some jest, and at the right moment return the bracelet to its
original place. Other tests you will find in the institutes. They
consist of phrases to learn and answers to give to them, but all these
must be disclosed with discretion. We in the Order have no fear of you,
your courage, or your zeal. On the contrary, we believe you will be a
shining light of patriotism, and so we receive you with open arms and
say:--"
"Welcome! Ten thousand welcomes!" cried the brethren in one united
voice.
"And now," said the Prior, beckoning to two assistants, who came forward
with the habit, "it only remains for me to garb you as becometh a good
and loyal follower of Bruno Delganni." And in a few moments I found
myself arrayed like my companions in the uniform of a black friar, and
monstrously comfortable, I own, I found it.
Then a bell rang, and we all trooped into the refectory to a banquet.
The place was certainly liberty hall, for, although I was placed in the
seat of honour to the right of the Prior, everybody insisted on talking
to me, and to my intense amazement I found gathered in this Order many
of the most distinguished men I knew in the literary, the artistic, and
the legal life of London.
Over all reigned a spirit of the uttermost joyousness, and not until the
meal was quite over did Jose, the Prior, and I make our way to a study
in a far part of the building and spread out before us those three
fateful manuscripts relating to the sacred treasures and the conflicting
claims of England and the Jesuits.