On the return of the family, my host was met at the door with such
accounts of what had happened as led him at once to see and question
his daughter. It was not, therefore, till he had heard her story that
I saw him. More agitated than I should have expected from one under
ordinary circumstances so calm and self-possessed, he entered my room
with a face whose paleness and compressed lips indicated intense
emotion; and, laying his hand on my shoulder, expressed his feeling
rather in look and tone than in his few broken and not very
significant words. After a few moments, however, he recovered his
coolness, and asked me to supply the deficiencies of Eveena's story. I
told him briefly but exactly what had passed from the moment when I
missed her to that of her rescue. He listened without the slightest
symptom of surprise or anger to the tale of the Regent's indifference,
and seemed hardly to understand the disgust and indignation with which
I dwelt upon it. When I had finished—
"You have made," he said, "an enemy, and a dangerous one; but you have
also secured friends against whose support even the anger of a greater
than the Zamptâ might break as harmlessly as waves upon a rock. He
behaved only as any one else would have done; and it is useless to be
angry with men for being what they habitually and universally are.
What you did for Eveena, one of ourselves, perhaps, but no other,
might have risked for a first bride on the first day of her marriage.
Indeed, though I am most thankful to you, I should, perhaps, have
withheld my consent to my daughter's request had I supposed that you
felt so strongly for her."
"I think," I replied with some displeasure, "that I may positively
affirm that I have spoken no word to your daughter which I should not
have spoken in your presence. I am too unfamiliar with your ideas to
know whether your remark has the same force and meaning it would have
borne among my own people; but to me it conveys a grave reproach. When
I accepted the charge of your daughter during this day's excursion, I
thought of her only as every man thinks of a young, pretty, and gentle
girl of whom he has seen and knows scarcely anything. To avail myself
of what has since happened to make a deeper impression on her feelings
than you might approve would have seemed to me unpardonable
treachery."
"You do utterly misunderstand me," he answered. "It may be that Eveena
has received an impression which will not be effaced from her mind. It
may be that this morning, could I have foreseen it, I should have
decidedly wished to avoid anything that would so impress her. But that
feeling, if it exist, has been caused by your acts and not by your
words. That you should do your utmost, at any risk to yourself, to
save her, is consistent with what I know of your habit of mind, and
ought not much to surprise me. But, from your own account of what you
said to the Zamptâ, you were not merely willing to risk life for life.
When you deemed it impossible to return without her, you spoke as few
among us would seriously speak of a favourite bride."
"I spoke and felt," I replied, "as any man trained in the hereditary
thought of my race and rank would have spoken of any woman committed
to his care. All that I said and did for Eveena, I should have said
and done, I hope, for the least attractive or least amiable maiden in
this planet who had been similarly entrusted to my charge. How could
any but the vilest coward return and say to a father, 'You trusted
your daughter to me, and she has perished by my fault or neglect'?"
"Not so," he answered, "Eveena alone was to blame—and much to blame.
She says herself that you had told her to remain where you left her
till your return; and if she had not disobeyed, neither her life nor
yours would have been imperilled."
"One hardly expects a young lady to comply exactly with such
requests," I said. "At any rate, Terrestrial feelings of honour and
even of manhood would have made it easier to leap the precipice than
to face you and the world if, no matter by whose fault, my charge had
died in such a manner under my eyes and within my reach."
Esmo's eyes brightened and his cheek flushed a little as I spoke, with
more of earnestness or passion than any incident, however exciting, is
wont to provoke among his impassive race.
"Of one thing," he said, "you have assured me—that the proposal I was
about to make rather invites honour than confers it. I have been
obliged, in speaking of the manners and ideas of my countrymen, to let
you perceive not only that I differ from them, but that there are
others who think and act as I do. We have for ages formed a society
bound together by our peculiar tenets. That we individually differ in
conduct, and, therefore, probably in ideas, from our countrymen, they
necessarily know; that we form a body apart with laws and tenets of
our own, is at least suspected. But our organisation, its powers, its
methods, its rules of membership, and its doctrines are, and have
always been, a secret, and no man's connection with it is avowed or
provable. Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as
strongly as we do—the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul.
From these necessarily follow conceptions of life and principles of
conduct alien to those that have as necessarily grown up among a race
which repudiates, ignores, and hates our two fundamental premises.
After what has happened, I can promise you immediate and eager
acceptance among those invested with the fullest privileges of our
order. They will all admire your action and applaud your motives,
though, frankly speaking, I doubt whether any of us would carry your
views so far as you have done. The best among us would have flinched,
unless under the influence of the very strongest personal affection,
from the double peril of which you seemed to think so lightly. They
might indeed have defied the Regent but it would have been in reliance
on the protection of, a power superior to his of which you knew
nothing."
"Then," I said, "I suppose your engagement of to-day was a meeting of
this society?"
"Yes," he answered, "a meeting of the Chamber to which I and the elder
members of my household, including my son and his wife, belong."
"But," I said, "if you are more powerful than the rulers of your
people, what need of such careful secrecy?"
"You will understand the reason," he answered, "when you learn the
nature of our powers. Hundreds among millions, we are no match for the
fighting force of our unbelieving countrymen. Our safety lies in the
terror inspired by a tradition, verified by repeated and invariable
experience, that no one who injures one of us but has reason to rue
it, that no mortal enemy of _the Star_ has ever escaped signal
punishment, more terrible for the mystery attending it. Were we known,
were our organisation avowed, we might be hunted down and
exterminated, and should certainly suffer frightful havoc, even if in
the end we were able to frighten or overcome our enemies. But if you
are disposed to accept my offer—and enrolment among us gives you at
once your natural place in this planet and your best security against
the enmity you have incurred and will incur here—I should prefer to
make the rest of the explanation that must precede your admission in
presence of my family. The first step, the preliminary instruction in
our creed and our simpler mysteries, which is the work of the
Novitiate, is a solemn epoch in the lives of our children. They are
not trusted with our secret till we can rely on the maturity of their
intelligence and loyalty of their nature. Eveena would in any case
have been received as a novice within some dozen days. It will now be
easy for me, considering her education and intelligence and my own
position in the Order, to obtain, for her as for you, exemption from
the usual probation on proof that you both know all that is usually
taught therein, and admission on the same occasion; and it will add
solemnity and interest to her first initiation, that this chief lesson
of her life should be shared this evening with him to whom she owes it
that she lives to enter the society, to which her ancestors have
belonged since its institution."
We passed into the peristyle, where the ladies were as usual
assembled; but the children had been dismissed, and of the maidens
Eveena only was present. Fatigue and agitation had left her very pale,
and she was resting at full length on the cushions with her head
pillowed on her mother's knee. As we approached, however, they all
rose, the other ladies greeting me eagerly and warmly, Eveena rising
with difficulty and faltering the welcome which the rest had spoken
with enthusiastic earnestness. Forgetting for the moment the prudence
which ignorance of Martial customs had hitherto dictated, I lifted to
my lips the hand that she, following the example of the rest, but
shyly and half reluctantly, laid on my shoulder—a form very different
to the distant greeting I had heretofore received, and marking that I
was no longer to be treated as a stranger to the family. My unusual
salute brought the colour back to her cheeks, but no one else took
notice of it. I observed, however, that on this occasion, instead of
interposing himself between me and the ladies as usual, her father
left vacant the place next to her; and I seated myself at her feet.
She would have exchanged her reclining posture for that of the others,
but her mother gently drew her down to her former position.
"Eveena," said my host, "I have told our friend, what you know, that
there is in this world a society, of which I am a member, whose
principles are not those of our countrymen, but resemble rather those
which supplied the impulses on which he acted to-day. This much you
know. What you would have learned a few days hence, I mean that you
and he shall now hear at the same time."
"Before you enter on that subject," interposed Zulve timidly—for it
is most unusual for a lady to interfere in her husband's conversation,
much more to offer a suggestion or correction—but yet earnestly, "let
me say, on my own part, what I am sure you must have said already on
yours. If there be now, or ever shall be, anything we can do for our
guest, anything we can give that he would value, not in requital, but
in memory of what he has done for us—whatever it should cost us,
though he should ask the most precious thing we possess, it will be
our pride and pleasure—the greatest pleasure he can afford us—to
grant it."
The time and the surroundings were not perhaps exactly suitable to the
utterance of the wish suggested by these words; but I knew so little
what might be in store for me, and understood so well the difficulty
and uncertainty of finding future opportunities of intercourse with
the ladies at least of the family, that I dared not lose the present.
I spoke at once upon the impulse of the moment, with a sense of
reckless desperation not unlike that with which an artillerist fires
the train whose explosion may win for him the obsidional wreath or
blow him into atoms. "You and my host," I said, "have one treasure
that I have learned to covet, but it is exactly the most precious
thing you possess, and one which it would be presumptuous to ask as
reward; even had I not owed to Esmo the life I perilled for Eveena,
and if I had acted from choice and freely, instead of doing only what
only the vilest of cowards could have failed to attempt. In asking it
indeed, I feel that I cancel whatever claim your extravagant estimate
of that act can possibly ascribe to me."
"We don't waste words," answered Esmo, "in saying what we don't mean,
and I confirm fully what my wife has said. There is nothing we possess
that we shall not delight to give as token of regard and in
remembrance of this day to the saviour of our child."
"If," I said, "I find a neighbour's purse containing half his fortune,
and return it to him, he may offer me what reward I ask, but would
hardly think it reasonable if I asked for the purse and its contents.
But you have only one thing I care to possess—that which I have, by
God's help, been enabled to save to-day. If I must ask a gift, give me
Eveena herself."
Utilitarianism has extinguished in Mars the use of compliment and
circumlocution; and until I concluded, their looks of mild perplexity
showed that neither Zulve nor her husband caught my purpose. I
fancied—for, not daring to look them in the face, I had turned my
downcast glance on Eveena—that she had perhaps somewhat sooner
divined the object of my thoughts. However, a silence of surprise—was
it of reluctance?—followed, and then Zulve bent over her daughter and
looked into her half-averted face, while Esmo answered—
"What you should ask I promised to give; what you have asked I give,
in so far as it is mine to give, in willing fulfilment of my pledge.
But, of course, what I can give is but my free permission to my
daughter to answer for herself. You will be, I hope, within a few days
at furthest, one of those in whose possession alone a woman of my
house could be safe or content; and, free by the law of the land to
follow her own wish, she is freed by her father's voice from the rule
which the usage of ten thousand years imposes on the daughters of our
brotherhood."
Zulve then looked up, for Eveena had hidden her face in her mother's
robe, and said—
"If my child will not speak for herself I must speak for her, and in
my own name and in hers I fulfil her father's promise. And now let my
husband tell his story, for nothing can solemnise more appropriately
the betrothal of a daughter of the Star, than her admission to the
knowledge of the Order whose privileges are her heritage."
"At the time," Esmo began, "when material science had gained a decided
ascendant, and enforced the recognition of its methods as the only
ones whereby certain knowledge and legitimate belief could be
attained, those who clung most earnestly to convictions not acquired
or favoured by scientific logic were sorely dismayed. They were
confounded, not so much by the yet informal but irrevocable
majority-vote against them, as by an instinctive misgiving that
Science was right; and by irrepressible doubts whether that which
would not bear the application of scientific method could in any sense
be true or trustworthy knowledge. At the same time, to apply a
scientific method to the cherished beliefs threatened only to dissolve
them. Fortunately for them and their successors, there was living at
that time one of the most remarkable and original thinkers whom our
race has produced. From him came the suggestions that gave impulse to
our learning and birth to our Order. 'The reasonings, the processes of
Science,' he affirmed,'are beyond challenge. Their trustworthiness
depends not on their subject-matter, but on their own character; not
on their relation to outward Nature, but on their conformity to the
laws of thought. Their upholders are right in affirming that what will
not ultimately bear the test of their application cannot be knowledge,
and probably—for the practical purposes of human life we may say
certainly—cannot be truth. They are wrong in alleging that the ideas
for which they can find no foundation in the subjects to which
scientific method has hitherto been applied, are therefore
unscientific, or sure to disappear under scientific investigation. I
hold that the existence of a Creator and Ruler of the Universe can be
logically deduced from first principles, as well as justly inferred
from cumulative evidences of overwhelming weight. The existence of
something in Man that is not merely corporeal, of powers that can act
beyond the reach of any corporeal instruments at his command, or
without the range of their application, is not proven; it may be, only
because the facts that indicate without proving it have never yet been
subject to systematic verification or scientific analysis. But of such
facts there exists a vast accumulation; unsifted, untested, and
therefore as yet ineffective for proof, but capable, I can scarcely
doubt, of reduction to methodical order and scientific treatment.
There are records and traditions of every degree of value, from utter
worthlessness to the worth of the most authentic history, preserving
the evidences of powers which may be generally described as spiritual.
Through all ages, among all races, the living have alleged themselves
from time to time to have seen the forms and even heard the voices of
the dead. Scientific men have been forced by the actual and public
exercise of the power under the most crucial tests—for instance, to
produce insensibility in surgical operations—to admit that the will
of one man can control the brain, the senses, the physical frame of
another without material contact, perhaps at a distance. There are
narratives of marvels wrought by human will, chiefly in remote, but
occasionally in recent times, transcending and even contradicting or
overruling the known laws of Nature. All these evidences point to one
conclusion; all corroborate and confirm one another. The men of
science ridicule them because in so many cases the facts are
imperfectly authenticated, and because in others the action of the
powers is uncertain, dependent on conditions imperfectly ascertained,
and not of that material kind to which material science willingly
submits. But if they be facts, if they relate to any element of human
nature, all these things can be systematically investigated, the true
separated from the false, the proven from the unproven. The powers can
be investigated, their conditions of action laid down. Probably they
may be so developed as to be exercised with comparative certainty,
whether by every one or only by those special constitutions in which
they may inhere. Such investigations will at present only enlist the
attention and care of a few qualified persons, and, that they may be
carried on in peace and safety, should be carried on in secrecy. But
upon them may, I hope, be founded a certainty as regards the higher
side of man's nature not less complete than that which science, by
similar methods, has gradually acquired in regard to its purely
physical aspects.'
"For this end he instituted a secret society, which has subsisted in
constantly increasing strength and cohesion to the present hour. It
has collected evidence, conducted experiments, investigated records,
studied methodically the abnormal phenomena you call occult or
spiritual, and reduced them to something like the certainty of
science. Discoveries from the first curious and interesting have
become more and more complete, practical, and effective. Our results
have surpassed the hopes of our Founder, and transcend in importance,
while they equal in certainty, the contemporary achievements of
physical science,—some of the chief of which belong to us. All that
profound knowledge of human nature could suggest to bring its weakness
to the support of its strength, and enlist both in the work, was done
by our Founder, and by those who have carried out his scheme. The
corporate character of the society, its rites and formularies, its
grades and ranks, are matter of deep interest to all its members, have
linked them together by an inviolable bond, and given them a strength
infinitely greater than numbers without such cohesion could possibly
have afforded. The Founder left us no moral code, imposed on us none
of his own most cherished ethical convictions, as he pledged us to
none of the conclusions which his own occult studies had led him to
anticipate, nearly all of which have been verified by later
investigation. Such rules as he imposed were directed only to the
cohesion and efficiency of the Order. Our creed still consists only of
the two fundamental doctrines; two settled principles only are laid
down by our aboriginal law. We are taught to cultivate the closest
personal affection, the most intimate and binding ties among
ourselves; to defend the Order and one another, whether by strenuous
resistance or severe reprisals, against all who injure us individually
or collectively, and especially against persecutors of the Order. But
the few laws our Founder has left are given in the form of striking
precepts, brief, and often even paradoxical. For example, the law of
defence or reprisal is concentrated in one antithetic phrase:—_Gavart
dax Zveltâ, gavart gedex Zinta_ [Never let the member strike, never
let the Order spare]. As it is a rule with us to embody none of our
symbols, forms, or laws in writing, this manner of statement served to
impress them on the memory, as well as to leave the utmost freedom in
their application, by the gathered experience of ages, and the
prudence of those who had to deal with the circumstances of each
successive period. Another maxim says, 'Who kisses a brother's hand
may kick the Camptâ,' thus enforcing at once the value of ceremonial
courtesy, and the power conferred by union. We observe more ceremony
in family life than others in the most formal public relations. Their
theory of life being utterly utilitarian, no form is observed that
serves no distinct practical purpose. We wish to make life graceful
and elegant, as well as easy. Principles originally inculcated upon us
by the necessity of self-protection have been enforced and graven on
our very nature, by the reaction of our experience against the rough
and harsh relations, the jarring and often unfriendly intercourse, of
external society. Aliens to our Order—that is, ninety-nine hundredths
of our race—take delight in the infliction of petty personal
annoyance, at least never take care not to 'jar each other's
elbow-nerves,' or set on edge the teeth that never bit them. _We_ are
careful not to wound the feelings or even the weaknesses of a brother.
Punctilious courtesy, frank apology for unintentional wrong, is with
us a point of honour. Disputes, when by any chance they arise, are
referred to the arbitration of our chiefs, who never consider their
work done till the disputants are cordially reconciled. Envy, the most
dangerous source of ill-will among men, can hardly exist among us.
Rank has been well earned by its holder, or in a few cases by his
ancestors; and authority is a trust never to be used for its holder's
benefit. Wealth never provokes covetousness, since no member is ever
allowed to be poor. Not only the Order but each member is bound to
take every opportunity of assisting every other by every method within
his power. We employ them, we promote them, we give them the
preference in every kind of patronage at our command. But these
obligations are points of honour rather than of law. Only apostasy or
treason to the Order involve compulsory penalties; and the latter, if
it ever occurred in these days, would be visited with instant
death,—inflicted, as it is inflicted upon irreconcilable enemies, in
such a manner that none could know who passed the sentence, or by whom
it was executed."
"And have you," I asked, "no apostates, as you have no traitors?"
"No," he said. "In the first place, none who has lived among us could
endure to fall into the ordinary Martial life. Secondly, the
foundations of our simple creed are so clear, so capable of being made
apparent to every one, that none once familiar with the evidences can
well cease to believe them."
Here he paused, and I asked, "How is it possible that the means you
employ to punish those who have wronged you should not, in some cases
at least, indicate the person who has employed them?"
"Because," he said, "the means of vengeance are not corporeal; the
agency does not in the least resemble any with which our countrymen,
or apparently your race on Earth, are acquainted. A traitor would be
found dead with no sign of suffering or injury, and the physician
would pronounce that he had died of apoplexy or heart disease. A
persecutor, or one who had unpardonably wronged any of the Children of
the Star, might go mad, might fling himself from a precipice, might be
visited with the most terrible series of calamities, all natural in
their character, all distinctly traceable to natural causes, but
astonishing and even apparently supernatural in their accumulation,
and often in their immediate appropriateness to the character of his
offence. Our neighbours would, of course, destroy the avenger, if they
could find him out—would attempt to exterminate our society, could
they prove its agency."
"But surely your countrymen must either disbelieve in such agency, in
which case they can hardly fear your vengeance, or they must believe
it, and then would deem it just and necessary to retaliate."
"No," he said. "They disbelieve in the possibility while they are
forced to see the fact. It is impossible, they would say, that a man
should be injured in mind or body, reputation or estate, that the
forces of Nature or the feelings of men should be directed against
him, without the intervention of any material agent, by the mere will
of those who take no traceable means to give that will effect. At the
same time, tradition and even authentic history record, what
experience confirms, that every one who has wronged us deeply has come
to some terrible, awe-striking end. Each man would ridicule heartily a
neighbour who should allege such a ground for fearing to injure one of
us; but there is none who is so true to his own unbelief as to do that
which, in every instance, has been followed by signal and awful
disaster. Moreover, we do by visible symbols suggest a relation
between the vengeance and the crime. Over the heart of criminals who
have paid with their lives, no matter by what immediate agency, for
wrong to us, is found after death the image of a small blood-red star;
the only case in which any of our sacred symbols are exposed to
profane eyes."
"Surely," I said, "in the course of generations, and with your
numbers, you must be often watched and traced; and some one spy, on
one out of a million occasions, must have found access to your
meetings and heard and seen all that passed."
"Our meetings," he said, "are held where no human eye can possibly
see, no human ear hear what passes. The Chambers meet in apartments
concealed within the dwellings of individual members. When we meet the
doors are guarded, and can be passed only by those who give a token
and a password. And if these could become known to an enemy, the
appearance of a stranger would lead to questions that would at once
expose his ignorance of our simplest secrets. He would learn nothing,
and would never tell his story to the outer world." ...
Opening the door, or rather window, of his private chamber, Esmo
directed our eyes to a portrait sunk in the wall, and usually
concealed by a screen which fitted exactly the level and the patterns
of the general surface. It displayed, in a green vesture not unlike
his own, but with a gold ribbon and emerald symbol like the cross of
an European knighthood over the right shoulder, a spare soldierly
form, with the most striking countenance I have ever seen; one which,
once seen, none could forget. The white long hair and beard, the
former reaching the shoulders, the latter falling to the belt, were
not only unlike the fashion of this generation, but gave tokens of age
never discerned in Mars for the last three or four thousand years. The
form, though erect and even stately, was that of one who had felt the
long since abolished infirmity of advancing years. The countenance
alone bore no marks of old age. It was full, unwrinkled, firm in
physical as in moral character; calm in the unresisted power of
intellect and will over the passions, serene in a dignity too absolute
and self-contained for pride, but expressing a consciousness of
command over others as evident as the unconscious, effortless command
of self to which it owed its supreme and sublime quietude. The lips
were not set as with a habit of reserve or self-restraint, but close
and even as in the repose to which restraint had never been necessary.
The features were large, clearly defined, and perfect in shape,
proportion, and outline. The brow was massive and broad, but strangely
smooth and even; the head had no single marked development or
deficiency that could have enlightened a phrenologist, as the face
told no tale that a physiognomist could read. The dark deep eyes were
unescapable; while in presence of the portrait you could not for a
moment avoid or forget their living, fixed, direct look into your own.
Even in the painted representation of that gaze, almost too calm in
its absolute mastery to be called searching or scrutinising, yet
seeming to look through the eyes into the soul, there was an almost
mesmeric influence; as if, across the abyss of ten thousand years, the
Master could still control the wills and draw forth the inner thoughts
of the living, as he had dominated the spirits of their remotest
ancestors.