The Goddess of Atvatabar

by William Richard Bradshaw

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  THE SIN OF A TWIN-SOUL.

  "Your holiness," said the captain of the sacred guard, as he enteredthe apartment, "the twin-soul Ardsolus and Merga has sinned againstthe laws and religion of Egyplosis. I crave permission to bring theguilty pair before the goddess with the evidence of their guilt."

  The goddess, answering quickly, ordered the priest and priestess to beproduced.

  The captain thereupon commanded his wayleals to bring the prisonersinto the audience chamber.

  Shrinking between her guards, the priestess Merga appeared bearing inher arms a lovely babe, a rosy duplicate of herself. Following hercame the priest Ardsolus, also a prisoner.

  The priestess was the picture of petite girlish beauty. Her delicaterose complexion was flushed with a feeling of shame, and her handsomehazel eyes, dilated with vexation and sorrow, were filled with tears.

  Her lover was tall, straight and athletic, with a proud, fine-cutface. The down of manhood was just showing itself on his upper lip.

  "I feel sorry for you both," said the goddess; "did you weary of thejoys of Egyplosis?"

  Ardsolus threw back over his shoulder a falling fold of his whitebournous and, drawing himself proudly up, replied: "Yes, yourholiness, our life here is imprisonment. We have grown weary of itsrestraint and are eager to return to the outer world with all itscares and freedom."

  The chamberlain at this moment announced the arrival of the highpriest Hushnoly, the secular, as well as the sacred governor ofEgyplosis, and the high priestess Zooly-Soase, who both entered thepresence chamber. Hushnoly, saluting the goddess, announced that hehad come in search of the erring twin-soul. The high priest wasastonished beyond expression at finding sin and shame in so glorious aretreat.

  Addressing the weeping girl, he said: "Do you know, my child, howunfortunate you have been? You have committed the unpardonable sin inthe temple of hopeless love. Did you not think of your lifelong vowsof celibacy and of the deep and tender joy of romantic love?"

  Merga only replied by clasping her babe still closer to her breast andbathing it with her tears.

  "What excuse do you offer for your crime against yourself, yourreligion and your fellow-priests?" demanded the high, priest ofArdsolus.

  "Your highness," said the youth, "we have, after due experience of ourvows, arrived at the conclusion that such vows are a violation ofnature. Everything here bids us love, but the artificial system underwhich we have lived arbitrarily draws a line and says, thus far and nofurther. Your system may suit disembodied spirits, if such exist, butnot beings of flesh and blood. It is an outrage on nature. We desireto leave Egyplosis and return to the common ways of men. We may bethere unfortunate, but we will be free. This rarified atmospherestifles us."

  The high priest was horrified. Never before had a twin-soul been sosinful, so contumacious. It revealed a state of things too terrible tocontemplate! If such conduct became contagious, it meant the ruin ofEgyplosis.

  I could detect, however, in the sight of the goddess a certainsympathy for the prisoners which, perhaps, it would just then be veryimpolitic for her to reveal. It was clear that beneath all this idealjoy lay a slumbering volcano of passion that only awaited a favorablemoment for a fierce outbreak. The laws of this strange faith seemednot to have contemplated that to avoid temptation is the only securityof moral strength, and that to seek temptation is to paralyze themoral fibres of the soul. The high priest grew pale with excitement.

  "Are you aware of the enormity of your offence?" said he to thedefiant youth. "For a moment of sinful delight you destroy yourinterregnum of a hundred years of blessedness, and you, each of you,have delivered a blow at earthly immortality. The success of ourreligious system is proven by the fact that we have already lengthenedthe life of our hierophants one hundred years, or twice the durationof life in the outer world of Bilbimtesirol. This is the last of manyoutbreaks of _malfeasance_ to vows made in deliberation, and a freshexhibition of treason in the sacred college of souls."

  "I tell you this," said the youth in reply, "you are slumbering on theedge of a volcano. There are thousands of twin-souls ready to cast offthis yoke. They only await a leader to break out in open revolt!"

  "Then, sir, we will take care that you are not their leader; we shallsuppress you, as we have all similar cases, in the cells of thefortress. Neither Egyplosis nor Atvatabar will hear of your crime. Hismajesty the king will, I have no doubt, acquiesce in the wisdom ofsuch sentence."

  "The punishment is no greater than the crime," said the highpriestess. "I despair of Egyplosis if such crimes become frequent.What will our goddess think, what will Atvatabar think of our holytemple when its own priests, the sacred devotees of Harikar, theministers of the supreme goddess and teachers of the people in theirholy religion, are found traitors? Will the government supportrebellious and sinful souls in every luxury for the senses, with everypossible means for developing and achieving spiritual mastery over thephysical world, on the sole condition of hopeless love? It will not.Hence, I say, this disobedience must be quenched in the spark, or itwill break out in ruin to our whole religious institution."

  "Your punishment," said the high priest, "unless you will repent ofyour misdeed, give up possession of your offspring, and live everafterward as holy priests of hopeless love, will be separate andsolitary confinement for life in the fortress. You will both be simplyobliterated from the world."

  As the high priest uttered these words the mother-priestess gave a cryof terror, and, grasping her infant convulsively, gazed with anappealing glance at the goddess.

  "We refuse to live as hypocrites," said the youth; "we are no longertwin-souls--we are man and wife and demand to be set free."

  "Will you, each of you," said the goddess, "renounce that obediencethat makes you factors of deities? Will you dethrone ideal love? Willyou throw away palaces and gardens and flowers? Will you forswear thedelight of the companionship of twin-souls?"

  "We wish to be set free, your holiness," said the youth with firm, setlips.

  "Do you no longer value the secrets of magic and sorcery? Do yourenounce initiation into the secrets of nature to possess creativeforce to taste the elixir of life, the secret of the transformation ofmetals, and, above all, the blessedness of Nirvana? Knowing that lovedies in possession do you desire to step forth from paradise into ahard, cold, realistic world, where every experience is a spear driveninto the flesh?"

  "We dare our fate!" replied the youth. "We ask you, goddess, to set usfree."

  "I will bring you both before the spiritual council," said Hushnoly,"and, as you are aware, the sentence of the council as provided by theconstitution of Egyplosis will be that you, each of you, be imprisonedin separate cells for life, and the child removed and cared for in adistant part of the kingdom. You will henceforth be obliterated fromlife."

  The lovers convulsively embraced each other, the beautiful Mergaweeping bitterly.

  "We will accept the punishment," said Ardsolus, "because we will givecourage to the many twin-souls already imprisoned and also to thosewho as ardently desire freedom as ourselves. They will never forgetthat we are fighting their battle against a monstrous wrong."

  "Guards, remove the prisoners," said the high priest.

  "Can nothing that I may say mitigate their punishment?" said thegoddess.

  "Your holiness is aware," said Hushnoly, "that the laws of Egyplosisadmit of no other interpretation than that prescribed for such a caseas this. The foundation of the religion of Atvatabar must be preservedat any cost."

  "I urge for mercy," said the goddess, who honored the prisoners withher tears.