CHAPTER XI
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.
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