Part 5 (2/2)

I touched the under surface of my tongue with the tip of my thumb. The aged man was appeased. I pa.s.sed on, and examined the place.

'It was simply a vast circular hall, the arched roof of which was supported on colonnades of what I took to be pillars of porphyry. Down the middle and round the sides ran tables of the same material; the walls were clothed in hangings of sable velvet, on which, in infinite reproduction, was embroidered in cypher the motto of the society. The chairs were cus.h.i.+oned in the same stuff. Near the centre of the circle stood a huge statue, of what really seemed to me to be pure beaten gold. On the great ebon base was inscribed the word [Greek: LUKURGOS].

From the roof swung by brazen chains a single misty lamp.

'Having seen this much I reascended to the land of light, and being fully resolved on attending the meeting on the next day or night, and not knowing what my fate might then be, I wrote to inform you of the means by which my body might be traced. 'But on the next day a new thought occurred to me: I reasoned thus: ”these men are not common a.s.sa.s.sins; they wage a too rash warfare against diseased life, but not against life in general. In all probability they have a quite immoderate, quite morbid reverence for the sanct.i.ty of healthy life.

They will not therefore take mine, _unless_ they suppose me to be the only living outsider who has a knowledge of their secret, and therefore think it absolutely necessary for the carrying out of their beneficent designs that my life should be sacrificed. I will therefore prevent such a motive from occurring to them by communicating to another their whole secret, and--if the necessity should arise--_letting them know_ that I have done so, without telling them who that other is. Thus my life will be a.s.sured.” I therefore wrote to you on that day a full account of all I had discovered, giving you to understand, however, on the envelope, that you need not examine the contents for some little time.

'I waited in the subterranean vault during the greater part of the next day; but not till midnight did the confederates gather. What happened at that meeting I shall not disclose, even to you. All was sacred--solemn--full of awe. Of the choral hymns there sung, the hierophantic ritual, liturgies, paeans, the gorgeous symbolisms--of the wealth there represented, the culture, art, self-sacrifice--of the mingling of all the tongues of Europe--I shall not speak; nor shall I repeat names which you would at once recognise as familiar to you--though I may, perhaps, mention that the ”Morris,” whose name appears on the papyrus sent to me is a well-known _litterateur_ of that name. But this in confidence, for some years at least.

'Let me, however, hurry to a conclusion. My turn came to speak. I rose undaunted, and calmly disclosed myself; during the moment of hush, of wide-eyed paralysis that ensued, I declared that fully as I coincided with their views in general, I found myself unable to regard their methods with approval--these I could not but consider too rash, too harsh, too premature. My voice was suddenly drowned by one universal, earth-shaking roar of rage and contempt, during which I was surrounded on all sides, seized, pinioned, and dashed on the central table. All this time, in the hope and love of life, I pa.s.sionately shouted that I was not the only living being who shared in their secret. But my voice was drowned, and drowned again, in the whirling tumult. None heard me.

A powerful and little-known anaesthetic--the means by which all their murders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturated with the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.

Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.

How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist with language! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember, floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now perhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsied lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_ utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat, placed there by G.o.d knows whose hands. At all events, one thing was clear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strength remained to me I reached the place where I had left your _caleche_, and started on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me, for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence, after my long journey, I fainted on my pa.s.sage through the house, and in this condition you found me.

'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to others--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is not unlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'

THE END

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