Questions and Answers
The chief effect of the discovery of the books was to make me doubly
anxious to speak the native tongue. Not one of the score of volumes
cast any light on the problems that bewildered me, and least of all
on the mystery of Homer’s “Telegonus”; and it was apparent that I
should remain in ignorance until I could converse with the natives.
Accordingly, I had need of that rarest of all qualities, a virtue in
which I am almost wholly lacking--patience. Stifling my eagerness
and curiosity as best I could, I had to plod away for days and days
in acquiring new native words and phrases and in practicing speaking
in the solitude of my own rooms. The task was far from pleasant, and
the suspense and the waiting were harrying; but I was like a traveler
following a trail through an unfamiliar jungle; and, feverish as I was
to escape, I had no choice except to persist on the one visible course.
But had I not been so eager to batter down the mystery, I would have
found abundant cause for encouragement. I was still progressing,
progressing rapidly, attaining a speaking knowledge of the language
with a speed possible only for one long trained as a linguist. And,
as the result of many a secret conversation, which I held with myself
by way of practice, I advanced swiftly to the point of being able to
exchange ideas with the natives. At least, I felt that I had advanced
to that point, and awaited only opportunity to test my new-won powers.
The obvious course would have been to address myself to my tutor, and
several times I was on the point of doing so, but on each occasion he
seemed so absorbed in the day’s exercises, that I decided to postpone
the experiment. In the end, however, I should no doubt have opened my
mind to him--had not chance intervened and sent me a more charming
informant.
I had of course not forgotten that entrancing Madonna-like woman who
was Stranahan’s tutor. Indeed, I could not easily have forgotten
her, for her exquisite features and bright eyes kept flashing before
me at all hours of the day and night; and already I felt myself as
completely subject to her spell as Dante to the spell of a Beatrice.
Under the witchery of her influence, Alma Huntley was becoming no more
than the figment of a remote and misty past--and yet I was not even
acquainted with the fair unknown, I had never exchanged more than a
formal greeting with her. I scarcely knew how to sow the seeds even for
a casual friendship, and what she was like at heart and how she would
react to my advances, were matters of pure conjecture.
But the time was to come when she would be more to me than one to be
admired at a distance. She was, in fact, to serve in a double rôle: for
not only was she to fascinate me with her companionship, but she was to
cast light upon those problems which were tantalizing me.
Although I caught glimpses of her almost every morning when she came
as Stranahan’s instructor, yet I would have had little chance to speak
with her even had I chosen, since (as I have already related) she
ordinarily arrived and left in the company of the other tutors. But one
day--perhaps because she had some particularly difficult bit of grammar
to explain--she lingered over her work much longer than usual, and was
so absorbed in it that she did not appear to notice that her fellow
teachers had left. At the moment I did not perceive that this was my
opportunity; but good fortune was to be with me, and when she emerged
from the marble doors of our home, I happened to be strolling along the
colonnade not a hundred yards away.
At first it was almost a shock to me to see her come unaccompanied
toward me--a shock in which intense pleasure was mingled with something
akin to dread. For a moment I had an impulse to hide behind one of the
great stone columns; fortunately, I thrust this foolish desire from me,
and, after a few seconds, had almost regained my composure.
As she approached, I could scarcely take my gaze from her. Upon her
face was a serene, placid expression, such as she almost always wore;
but the shadow of a smile flickered about her lips, and her great blue
eyes were withdrawn as if they saw not the world wherein she walked but
only some calm and perfect inner vision.
Slowly I advanced; and diffidently placed myself in her path. At first
she did not seem to see me, but in an instant, almost as though she
had been expecting some one, her gaze was lifted to meet mine; and
no surprise was marked there, nor any trace of annoyance, only an
unlooked-for pleasure. In low, musical tones, and with grace that to me
seemed goddess-like, she murmured “Good morning,” while such a lovely
and unmatched light shone in her eyes and such transfiguring inner
radiance illumined her features, that I felt that I had encountered an
immortal.
“Good morning,” I replied, in the native dialect, and at the cost
of greater effort than I would have cared to admit; and I shuddered
inwardly lest I give her cause for laughter.
She smiled charmingly, and was about to pass on, when in desperation I
strove to detain her. “I beg your pardon,” said I, stiffly, speaking
almost by rote in phrases I had memorized days before. “I beg your
pardon, but have you a minute to spare? There are one or two questions
I should like very much to ask you.”
* * * * *
For an instant she stared at me in transparent surprise. But a smile
played lightly about the corners of her mouth, and apparently she was
not offended. “Why, of course, you may ask any question you want,” she
replied, more puzzled than annoyed. And, pointing down the colonnade
to a circular marble bench enclosed by a ring of slender columns, she
continued, “Let us go over there. Then we can talk, if you wish.”
In silence we traversed the intervening two or three hundred yards. My
heart was so full that I could not have spoken had I desired; I could
scarcely credit my double good fortune in having won this lady’s good
will and in speaking well enough to be understood by her.
And when at length I found myself seated at her side, her vivid blue
eyes looking inquiringly and yet kindly into my own, I felt as one
who enters the land of dreams come true. It was with difficulty that
I answered when, in low, sweet tones, she asked me what it was that I
desired to know; and when the first words came to me, they were forced
out only by an effort of the will, for I should much have preferred to
sit there in silence, staring and staring at her animated lovely face,
her sharp-cut classic profile and symmetrically modelled features.
But, unfortunately, the laws of human intercourse demanded that
I do more than gaze at her in speechless rapture. And I answered
her question, therefore, with one or two commonplace remarks which
expressed nothing of the exaltation within me, and which could have
conveyed no high opinion of my intelligence. “I am a stranger in this
land,” said I, picking my words with a translator’s care, “and so
find many things here which perplex me. I was wondering whether you
would not be good enough to help me. Am I imposing too much upon your
kindness?”
“Oh, no, of course not,” she murmured; and as she spoke I noted that
her upper lip trembled slightly, as though from extreme sensitiveness
and sympathy. “Do you not know that it would be a pleasure to be of
aid?”
I was enchanted by this reply, for there could be no doubting the utter
candor and sincerity in her earnest blue eyes, which were glowing with
a softness equal to the magnetism they sometimes displayed.
Encouraged to the point of boldness, I decided upon a daring step.
“Before I ask any other question,” I ventured, “might it not be well
for us to know each other’s names?”
“Why, of course,” she agreed. “My name is Aelios.”
“Aelios!” I repeated, charmed by the sound. “What a delightful name!
And what is your other name, may I ask?”
“My other name?” she echoed, astonished. “What other name do you mean?”
I saw that somehow I had made a mistake. “Why, haven’t you another
name?” I inquired, with distinct loss of confidence.
“Another name?” She tittered delightedly, as though enjoying a rare
joke. “Well, if that isn’t the most outlandish idea! What do you think
I’d do with another name?”
“Why, that--that’s not for me to say,” I stammered. “Only, where I come
from, every one has at least two or three names.”
“Oh, how perfectly ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Just as if we haven’t
enough to remember one name apiece!”
She paused momentarily, and I was too much embarrassed to resume the
conversation. Fortunately, she continued without my aid. “How many
names have you?” she inquired; and the playful light in her eyes told
me that she could not have been more amused if asking how many hands or
feet I had.
“Only two,” I admitted, glad that I had not to confess to three or
four. “I am called Anson Harkness.”
“Anson Harkness,” she repeated, slowly, as if savoring the peculiar
sound. “Why, if that isn’t the strangest name I ever heard!”
“Where I come from it isn’t considered strange,” I assured her. “Of
course, in my country everything is very different--”
“Yes, I know,” she interposed. “You come from above the sea.”
“How do you know?” I cried, astonished.
Again she peered at me in surprise, and almost, I thought, with
something of that puzzled air with which one regards a child who
persists in asking the ridiculous. “Why, of course you must come from
above the sea,” she explained. “Where else is there to come from?”
“And do the people here all know we come from above the sea?”
“Yes, indeed,” declared Aelios, a naïve seriousness replacing the
frolicsome air of the moment before. “That’s what we’ve all been
worrying about. We thought we were proof against invasions from above,
and we simply can’t understand how you got here. Why, for three
thousand years the upper world doesn’t seem even to have suspected our
existence.”
“Three thousand years?” I burst forth. “Three thousand years? Then, for
God’s sake, how old is this land of yours? And, in heaven’s name, what
country is this, anyway?”
“Why, I thought you knew,” murmured Aelios, with a look of surprise.
“This is Atlantis, of course.”
“Atlantis!” I ejaculated, in overpowering amazement. “Atlantis!” And
confused visions of a lost continent swarmed through my mind, and I
wondered whether this could be the sunken world described by Plato.
But before I could utter another word, my attention was diverted by
an unpardonable intrusion. “Great shades of Alexander, having a nice
little tête-a-tête, are you?” came a familiar voice from the rear; and
Stranahan, stalking up uninvited, deposited himself on a seat just to
the left of Aelios, and grinningly requested us not to heed him, but to
go right on with our little talk.