Ardath by Marie Corelli (best books to read in life .TXT) 📕

cause the dead to feel, . . would that it were possible! Then might the glorious and god like thirst of vengeance in our great High Priestess be somewhat more appeased in this matter. For the unlawful communion of love between a vestal virgin and an anointed priest cannot be too utterly abhorred and condemned,—and these twain, who thus did foully violate their vows, have perished far too easily. The sanctity of the Temple has been outraged, . . Lysia will not be satisfied, . . and how shall we pacify her righteous wrath, concerning this too tranquil death of the undeserving and impure?”

 

Drawing all together in a close group they held a whispered consultation, and finally, appearing to have come to some sort of decision, they took up the dead bodies one after another, and flung them carelessly into the dark aperture lately unclosed. As they did this, a stealthy, rustling sound was heard, as of some great creature moving to and fro in the far interior, but they soon locked and barred the iron portal once more, and then took their departure rather hurriedly, leaving the vault by the way Theos had entered it—namely, up the stone stairway that led into Lysia’s palace-gardens. As the last echo of their retreating steps died away and the last glimmer of their lurid torches vanished, Theos sprang out from his hiding-place,—his venerable companion slowly followed.

 

“Oh, God! Can such things be!” he cried loudly, reckless of all possible risk for himself as his voice rang penetratingly through the deep silence—“Were these brute-murderers actual men?—or but the wandering, grim shadows of some long past crime? … Nay,—

surely I do but dream!—and ghouls and demons born out of nightmare-sleep do vex my troubled spirit! Justice! … justice for the innocent! … Is there none in all Al-Kyris?”

 

“None!” replied the old man who stood beside him, lamp in hand, fixing his dark, melancholy eyes upon him as he spoke—“None! …

neither in Al-Kyris nor in any other great city on the peopled earth! Justice? … I who am named Zuriel the Mystic, because of my tireless searching into things that are hidden from the unstudious and unthinking,—I know that Justice is an idle name,—

an empty braggart-word forever on the mouths of kings and judges, but never in their hearts! Moreover,—what is guilt? … What is innocence? Both must be defined according to the law of the realm wherein we dwell,—and from that law there can be no appeal. These men we lately saw were the chief priests and executioners of the Sacred Temple,—they have done no wrong—they have simply fulfilled their duty. The culprits slain deserved their fate,—

they loved where loving was forbidden,—torture and death was the strictly ordained punishment, and herein was justice,—justice as portioned out by the Penal Code of the High Court of Council.”

 

Theos heard, and gave an expressive gesture of loathing and contempt.

 

“O narrow jurisdiction! … O short-sighted, false equity!” he exclaimed passionately. “Are there different laws for high and low? … Must the weak and defenceless be condemned to death for the self-same sin committed openly by their more powerful brethren who yet escape scot-free? What of the High Priestess then? … If these poor lover-victims merited their doom, why is not Lysia slain? … Is not SHE a willingly violated vestal? … doth SHE

not count her lovers by the score? … are not her vows long since broken? … is not her life a life of wanton luxury and open shame? … Why doth the Law, beholding these things, remain in her case dumb and ineffectual?”

 

“Hush, hush, my son!” said the aged Zuriel anxiously—“These stone walls hear thee far too loudly,—who knows but they may echo forth thy words to unsuspected listeners! Peace—peace! … Lysia is as much Queen, as Zephoranim is King of Al-Kyris; and surely thou knowest that the sins of tyrants are accounted virtues, so long as they retain their ruling powers? The public voice pronounces Lysia chaste, and Zephoranim faithful; who then shall dare to disprove the verdict?—‘Tis the same in all countries, near and far,—the law serves the strong, while professing to defend the weak. The rich man gains his cause,—the beggar loses it,—how can it be otherwise, while lust of gold prevails? Gold is the moving-force of this our era,—without it kings and ministers are impotent, and armies starve, . . with it, all things can be accomplished even to the concealment of the foulest crimes. Come, come! …” and he laid one hand kindly on Theos’s arm, “Thou hast a generous and fiery spirit, but thou shouldst never have been born into this planet if thou seekest such a thing as Justice! No man will ever deal true justice to his fellow man on earth, unless perhaps in ages to come, when the old creeds are swept away for a new, and a grander, wider, purer form of faith is accepted by the people. For religion in Al-Kyris to-day is a hollow mockery,—a sham, kept up partly from fear,—partly from motives of policy,—but every thinker is an atheist at heart, . . our splendid civilization is tottering towards its fall, . . and should the fore-doomed destruction of this city come to pass, vast ages of progress, discovery, and invention will be swept away as though they had never been!”

 

He paused and sighed,—then continued sorrowfully—“There is, there must be something wrong in the mechanism of life,—some little hitch that stops the even wheels,—some curious perpetual mischance that crosses us at every turn,—but I doubt not all is for the best, and will prove most truly so hereafter!”

 

“Hereafter!” echoes Theos bitterly … “Thinkest thou that even God, repenting of the evil He hath done, will ever be able to compensate us by any future bliss, for all the needless anguish of the Present?”

 

Zuriel looked at him with a strange, almost spectral expression of mingled pity, fear, and misgiving, but he offered no reply to this home-thrust of a question. In grave silence and with slow, majestic tread he began to lead the way along through the dismal labyrinth of black, winding arches, holding his blue lamp aloft as he went, the better to lighten the dense gloom.

 

Theos followed him, silent also, and wrapped in stern, and mournful musings of his own, . . musings through which faint threads of pale recollection connected with his past glimmered hazily from time to time, perplexing rather than enlightening his bewildered brain.

 

Presently he found himself in a low, narrow vestibule illumined by the bright yet soft radiance of a suspended Star,—and here, coming close up with his guide and observing his dress and manner more attentively, he suddenly perceived a shining SOMETHING which the old man wore hanging from his neck and which flashed against the sable hue of his garment like a wandering moonbeam.

 

Stopping abruptly, he examined this ornament with straining, wistful gaze, . . and slowly, very slowly, recognized its fashion of construction,—it was a plain silver Cross—nothing more. Yet at sight of the sacred, strange, yet familiar Symbol, a chord seemed to snap in his brain,—tears rushed to his tired eyes, and with a sharp cry he fell on his knees, grasping his companion’s robe wildly, as a drowning man grasps at a floating spar,—while the venerable Zuriel, startled at his action, stared down upon him in evident amazement and terror.

 

“Rescue! … rescue!” he cried, … “O thou blessed among men!—

thou dost wear the Sign of Eternal Safety! … the Sign of the Way, the Truth, and the Life! … ‘without the Way, there is no going, without the Truth there is no knowing, without the Life there is no living’! Now do I know thee for a saint in Al-Kyris,—

for thou dost openly avow thyself a follower of the Divine Faith that fools despise, and selfish souls repudiate, . . ah, I do beseech thee, thou good and holy man, absolve me of my sin of Unbelief! Teach me! … help me! … and I will hear thy counsels with the meekness of a listening child! ..See you, I kneel! … I pray! … I, even I, am humiliated to the very dust of shame! I have no pride, . . I seek no glory, … I do entreat, even as I once rejected the blessing of the Cross, whereby I shall regain my lost love,—my despised pardon,—my vanished peace!”

 

And, with pathetic earnestness, he raised his hands toward the silver emblem, and touched it tenderly, reverently, … then as though unworthy, he bent his head low, and waited eagerly for a Name, . . a Name that he himself could not remember, . . a Name suggested by the Cross, but not declared. If that Name were once spoken in the form of a benediction, he felt instinctively that he would straightway be released from the mysterious spell of misery that bound his intelligence in such a grievous thrall. But not a word of consolation did his companion utter, . . on the contrary, he seemed agitated by the strangest surprise and alarm.

 

“Now may all the gods in Heaven defend thee, thou unhappy, desperate, distracted soul!” he said in trembling, affrighted accents. “Thou dost implore the blessing of a Faith unknown! … a Mystery predicted but not yet fulfilled…a Creed that shall not be declared to men for full FIVE THOUSAND YEARS!”

 

CHAPTER XXI.

 

THE CRIMSON RIVER.

 

At these unexpected words Theos sprang wildly to his feet. An awful darkness seemed to close in upon him,—and a chaotic confusion of memories began to whirl and drift through his mind like flotsam and jetsam tossed upon a storm-swept sea. The aged and shadowy-looking Zuriel stood motionless, watching him with something of timid pity and mild patience.

 

“FIVE THOUSAND YEARS!” he muttered hoarsely, pressing his hands into his aching brows, while his eyes again fixed themselves yearningly on the Cross.. “Five thousand years before. … before WHAT?”

 

He caught the old man’s arm, and in spite of himself, a laugh, wild, discordant, and out of all keeping with his inward emotions, broke from his parched lips,—“Thou doting fool!” he cried almost furiously,—“Why dost thou mock me then with this false image of a hope unrealized? … Who gave thee leave to add more fuel to my flame of torment? … What means this symbol to thine eyes?

Speak.. speak! What admonition does it hold for thee? … what promise? … what menace? … what warning? … what love? …

Speak.. speak! O, shall I force confession from thy throat, or must I die unsatisfied and slain by speechless longing! What didst thou say? … FIVE THOUSAND YEARS? … Nay, by the gods, thou liest!”—and he pointed excitedly to the sacred Emblem,—“I tell thee that Holy Sign is as familiar to my suffering soul as the chiming of bells at sunset! … as well known to my sight as the unfolding of flowers in the fields of spring! … What shall be done or said of it, in. five thousand years, that has not already been said and done?”

 

Zuriel regarded him more compassionately than ever, with a penetrating, mournful expression in his serious dark eyes.

 

“Alas, alas, my son! thou art most grievously distraught!” he said in troubled tones. “Thy words but prove the dark disorder of thy wits,—may Heaven soon heal thee of thy mental wound! Restrain thy wild and wandering fancies? … for surely thou canst not be familiar, as thou sayest with this silver Symbol, seeing that it is but the Talisman [Footnote: The Cross was held in singular veneration in the Temple of Serapis, and by many tribes in the East, ages before the coming of Christ] or Badge of the Mystic Brethren of Al-Kyris, and has no