The Mystics | Page 5

his uncle--long since supposed to be sleeping tranquilly in his own room--showed tall and angular in the aperture.
[Illustration: "THE FIGURE OF HIS UNCLE ... SHOWED TALL AND ANGULAR IN THE APERTURE"]
From John's position, the open door and the lighted interior of the little edifice were distinctly visible; and in one glance he saw his uncle's silhouetted figure and behind it a bare space some dozen feet square, lined on floor and walls with sections of marble alternately black and white. From the ceiling of this chamber depended an octagonal symbol in polished metal, and close by the door eight wax candles flickered slightly in the faint stir of air. But his astonished and inquisitive eyes had barely become aware of these details when Andrew Henderson turned towards the circular sconce in which the candles were set and began to extinguish them one by one. As the light died, he stepped forward and John drew back sharply; but at his movement a stone, loosened by his heel, went rolling down into the hollow. And a moment later his uncle, glancing up, saw his figure outlined against the luminous sky.
What the outcome of the incident would have been on any other occasion, it is difficult to say. As it was, the moment was propitious. Old Henderson, surprised in an instant of exaltation, was pleased to put his own narrow, superstitious construction on the boy's appearance. Laboring under an abnormal excitement, he showed no resentment at the fact of being spied upon; but calling John to him, ordered him to walk home beside him across the cliff.
Never was walk so strange--never were companions so ill-matched as the two who threaded their way back over the headland. Andrew Henderson walked first, talking all the time in a jargon addressed partly to the boy, partly to himself, in which mysticism was oddly tangled with a confusion of crazy theories and beliefs; behind came John, half fascinated and wholly bewildered by the medley of words that poured out upon the night.
On reaching the house, the old man became suddenly silent again, falling back as if by habit into the morose absorption that marked his daily life; but as he turned to mount the stairs to his own room, he paused and his curious light-blue eyes travelled over his nephew's face.
"Good-night!" he said. "You make a good listener."
And John--still confused and silent--retired to bed, to lie awake for many hours, partly thrilled and partly elated by the awesome thought that there was a madman in the house.
* * * * *
But all that had happened seven years ago, and now Andrew Henderson lay waiting for his end. In those seven years John had passed through the mill of deadly monotony that saps even youth, and lulls every instinct save hope. The first enthusiasm of romance that had wrapped the discovery of his uncle's secret had faded out with time. By slow degrees he had learned--partly from his own observation, partly from the old man's occasional fanatic outbursts--that the strange chapel with its metal symbol and marble floor was not the outcome of a private whim, but the manifestation of a creed that boasted a small but ardent band of followers. He had learned that--to themselves, if not to the world--these devotees were known as the Mystics; that their articles of faith were preserved in a secret book designated the Scitsym, which passed in rotation each year from one to another of the six Arch-Mystics, remaining in the care of each for two months out of the twelve. He had discovered that London was the Centre of this sect; and that its fundamental belief was the anticipation of a mysterious prophet--human, and yet divinely inspired--by whose coming the light was to extend from the small and previously unknown band across the whole benighted world.
He had learned all these things. He had been stirred to a passing awe by the discovery that his uncle was, in his own person, actually one of the profound Six who formed the Council of the sect and to whom alone the secrets of its creed were known; and for three successive years his interest and curiosity had been kindled when Andrew Henderson travelled to England and returned with the Arch-Councillor--an old blind man of seventy--who invariably spent one day and night mysteriously closeted with his host and then left, having deposited the sacred Scitsym with his own hands in the tall iron safe that stood in Henderson's study. But that annual excitement had lessened with time. Even a madman may become monotonous when we live with him, day in, day out, for seven long years; and gradually the attitude of John's mind had changed with the passage of time. The sense of adventure and triumphant enterprise had steadily receded; the knowledge that he