CHAPTER XXX
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.