THE SIN OF A TWIN-SOUL.
"Your holiness," said the captain of the sacred guard, as he entered
the apartment, "the twin-soul Ardsolus and Merga has sinned against
the laws and religion of Egyplosis. I crave permission to bring the
guilty pair before the goddess with the evidence of their guilt."
The goddess, answering quickly, ordered the priest and priestess to be
produced.
The captain thereupon commanded his wayleals to bring the prisoners
into the audience chamber.
Shrinking between her guards, the priestess Merga appeared bearing in
her arms a lovely babe, a rosy duplicate of herself. Following her
came the priest Ardsolus, also a prisoner.
The priestess was the picture of petite girlish beauty. Her delicate
rose complexion was flushed with a feeling of shame, and her handsome
hazel eyes, dilated with vexation and sorrow, were filled with tears.
Her lover was tall, straight and athletic, with a proud, fine-cut
face. 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 the
joys of Egyplosis?"
Ardsolus threw back over his shoulder a falling fold of his white
bournous and, drawing himself proudly up, replied: "Yes, your
holiness, our life here is imprisonment. We have grown weary of its
restraint and are eager to return to the outer world with all its
cares and freedom."
The chamberlain at this moment announced the arrival of the high
priest Hushnoly, the secular, as well as the sacred governor of
Egyplosis, and the high priestess Zooly-Soase, who both entered the
presence chamber. Hushnoly, saluting the goddess, announced that he
had come in search of the erring twin-soul. The high priest was
astonished beyond expression at finding sin and shame in so glorious a
retreat.
Addressing the weeping girl, he said: "Do you know, my child, how
unfortunate you have been? You have committed the unpardonable sin in
the temple of hopeless love. Did you not think of your lifelong vows
of celibacy and of the deep and tender joy of romantic love?"
Merga only replied by clasping her babe still closer to her breast and
bathing it with her tears.
"What excuse do you offer for your crime against yourself, your
religion and your fellow-priests?" demanded the high, priest of
Ardsolus.
"Your highness," said the youth, "we have, after due experience of our
vows, arrived at the conclusion that such vows are a violation of
nature. Everything here bids us love, but the artificial system under
which we have lived arbitrarily draws a line and says, thus far and no
further. Your system may suit disembodied spirits, if such exist, but
not beings of flesh and blood. It is an outrage on nature. We desire
to leave Egyplosis and return to the common ways of men. We may be
there unfortunate, but we will be free. This rarified atmosphere
stifles us."
The high priest was horrified. Never before had a twin-soul been so
sinful, so contumacious. It revealed a state of things too terrible to
contemplate! If such conduct became contagious, it meant the ruin of
Egyplosis.
I could detect, however, in the sight of the goddess a certain
sympathy for the prisoners which, perhaps, it would just then be very
impolitic for her to reveal. It was clear that beneath all this ideal
joy lay a slumbering volcano of passion that only awaited a favorable
moment for a fierce outbreak. The laws of this strange faith seemed
not to have contemplated that to avoid temptation is the only security
of moral strength, and that to seek temptation is to paralyze the
moral fibres of the soul. The high priest grew pale with excitement.
"Are you aware of the enormity of your offence?" said he to the
defiant youth. "For a moment of sinful delight you destroy your
interregnum of a hundred years of blessedness, and you, each of you,
have delivered a blow at earthly immortality. The success of our
religious system is proven by the fact that we have already lengthened
the life of our hierophants one hundred years, or twice the duration
of life in the outer world of Bilbimtesirol. This is the last of many
outbreaks of _malfeasance_ to vows made in deliberation, and a fresh
exhibition of treason in the sacred college of souls."
"I tell you this," said the youth in reply, "you are slumbering on the
edge of a volcano. There are thousands of twin-souls ready to cast off
this 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 shall
suppress you, as we have all similar cases, in the cells of the
fortress. Neither Egyplosis nor Atvatabar will hear of your crime. His
majesty the king will, I have no doubt, acquiesce in the wisdom of
such sentence."
"The punishment is no greater than the crime," said the high
priestess. "I despair of Egyplosis if such crimes become frequent.
What will our goddess think, what will Atvatabar think of our holy
temple when its own priests, the sacred devotees of Harikar, the
ministers of the supreme goddess and teachers of the people in their
holy religion, are found traitors? Will the government support
rebellious and sinful souls in every luxury for the senses, with every
possible means for developing and achieving spiritual mastery over the
physical world, on the sole condition of hopeless love? It will not.
Hence, I say, this disobedience must be quenched in the spark, or it
will break out in ruin to our whole religious institution."
"Your punishment," said the high priest, "unless you will repent of
your misdeed, give up possession of your offspring, and live ever
afterward as holy priests of hopeless love, will be separate and
solitary confinement for life in the fortress. You will both be simply
obliterated from the world."
As the high priest uttered these words the mother-priestess gave a cry
of terror, and, grasping her infant convulsively, gazed with an
appealing glance at the goddess.
"We refuse to live as hypocrites," said the youth; "we are no longer
twin-souls--we are man and wife and demand to be set free."
"Will you, each of you," said the goddess, "renounce that obedience
that makes you factors of deities? Will you dethrone ideal love? Will
you throw away palaces and gardens and flowers? Will you forswear the
delight of the companionship of twin-souls?"
"We wish to be set free, your holiness," said the youth with firm, set
lips.
"Do you no longer value the secrets of magic and sorcery? Do you
renounce initiation into the secrets of nature to possess creative
force to taste the elixir of life, the secret of the transformation of
metals, and, above all, the blessedness of Nirvana? Knowing that love
dies in possession do you desire to step forth from paradise into a
hard, cold, realistic world, where every experience is a spear driven
into the flesh?"
"We dare our fate!" replied the youth. "We ask you, goddess, to set us
free."
"I will bring you both before the spiritual council," said Hushnoly,
"and, as you are aware, the sentence of the council as provided by the
constitution of Egyplosis will be that you, each of you, be imprisoned
in separate cells for life, and the child removed and cared for in a
distant part of the kingdom. You will henceforth be obliterated from
life."
The lovers convulsively embraced each other, the beautiful Merga
weeping bitterly.
"We will accept the punishment," said Ardsolus, "because we will give
courage to the many twin-souls already imprisoned and also to those
who as ardently desire freedom as ourselves. They will never forget
that 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 the
goddess.
"Your holiness is aware," said Hushnoly, "that the laws of Egyplosis
admit of no other interpretation than that prescribed for such a case
as this. The foundation of the religion of Atvatabar must be preserved
at any cost."
"I urge for mercy," said the goddess, who honored the prisoners with
her tears.