CHAPTER XV

The Pageant of the Good Destruction

While my intimacy with Captain Gavison was ripening, I had of course not forgotten one whose friendship meant more to me than that of any man. In the exhilarating moments of that first happy interview with Aelios, I had had visions of speaking with her often, visions of an Atlantis made bright by her very presence. But before long I began to feel that I had been too sanguine. Although I still caught glimpses of her when she came to give Stranahan his daily lesson, and although she would sometimes nod ingratiatingly to me, it was long before I had another opportunity to speak to her, since I could not detach her from the company of the other tutors. And so day after long uneasy day dragged by until they had piled up into a week, and slow, protracted weeks until they had accumulated into a month, before at last we had another conversation.

Then came a day when I observed her by chance in one of the great festooned courts at the base of a towering campanile. She saw me even before I saw her; and approaching of her own volition, she flashed upon me a smile that seemed to make the universe stand still with joy. “I am glad to see you, my friend,” she said, simply and with unaffected kindliness. “I have been wanting to tell you about our coming pageant. I know you will not want to miss it, for it will explain many things you have been wondering about.”

“What pageant do you mean?” I asked.

“The Festival of the Good Destruction,” she explained. “Every year, as I believe I’ve told you, we hold a celebration on the anniversary of the Submergence. This year it will take the form of a pageant. It will be the Three Thousand and Thirty-fifth anniversary.”

“In eight days. It will commence at noon in the Agripides Theatre, which you will very easily find, since it is in the center of town. I certainly hope to see you there.”

“I certainly hope to see you there,” I declared, quite truthfully. But at the same time a shadow crossed my thoughts. Hesitatingly, and possibly blushing in my embarrassment, I had to confess that, after all, I would not be able to go.

“Not be able to go?” she demanded, in manifest disappointment. “What other engagement can you possibly have?”

Since some definite excuse appeared to be necessary, I explained--very reluctantly to be sure--that I could not pay my admission.

“Pay your admission?” echoed Aelios, in such shrill surprise that I thought she had misunderstood me. “What on earth are you thinking of? Do you imagine we are barbarians?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t made myself clear,” I hastened to explain. “Where I come from it is customary to pay upon going to a theatre.”

“Really?” demanded Aelios, so incredulously that I thought her most naïve.

“Of course!” I assured her, in such a manner as to stamp all doubt from her mind.

“How queer!” she exclaimed. “How very queer! Still, I do remember hearing that people used to have to pay for everything before the Submergence. But that was so long ago, I thought the world had outgrown such crudity.”

“I don’t see anything wrong about paying for what you get,” I stated, thinking this the most topsy-turvy land in the world. “Don’t they really charge you for going to theatres down here?”

“Of course not! How could any one be so gross? Fancy being charged for beauty or ecstasy or dreams! Why, one would as soon think of paying for the air one breathes or the light that shines upon one! The State naturally recognizes the theatre as the birthright of every citizen, just as it recognizes poetry and music and education. We all take part in giving the performances, and of course every one is invited.”

“And do you yourself take part?” I queried, my personal interest in Aelios overshadowing my general interest in the native customs.

“Oh, yes, I try to do my share,” she acknowledged, with a faint blush that seemed only to accentuate her beauty. “I sometimes lead in the dances.”

“And a most exquisite dancer you make!” said I, recalling my first enchanting glimpse of Aelios on the colonnade outside the city.

But before I had had time for further compliments, she had whispered a light “Good-bye,” and had gone tripping toward the further end of the court and out of sight through a little half concealed door at the base of the campanile.

* * * * *

It hardly need be stated that I waited eagerly for the day of the Pageant. Not that I was looking forward to the entertainment itself; I remembered only that Aelios had seen fit to invite me, and that I should be able to see her again. So utterly out of my head was I that her bright face now appeared to me at all times of the day and night; her least smile, her slightest gesture, her most careless nod, was re-enacted a thousand times in my memory. And what if somewhere in the past there had been an Alma Huntley whom I had admired and fancied I had loved?--she was now no more than a ghost amid the shadows of a vanished world.

Certainly, I had no thought of Alma when at last the day of the pageant arrived. I was jubilant merely at the prospect of speaking with Aelios again; I could hardly restrain my impatience, but left for the festivities a full hour earlier than necessary. Such was my eagerness that I could not even walk at a normal pace, but unconsciously hastened my steps as when, in my native land, I had feared to miss a street car or be too late for an appointment with Alma.

But the day’s pleasure was to be unexpectedly varied. As I hastened through the streets, striding more rapidly than ever before in this land of leisure, I heard a well known voice shouting behind me, “Hey, wait a minute! Where are you going so fast?”

With a sinking heart I wheeled about--to face the grinning Stranahan.

“Great Jerusalem, you were racing so I could hardly catch up!” he panted, as he joined me. “Where you bound for, anyway?”

“Where are you bound for?” I countered.

“To the pageant, of course,” he informed me. And, amiably unconscious that he might be interfering with my plans, he suggested, “Well, we both seem to be going in the same direction, so what do you say to going together?”

“Yes, let’s go together,” I had to acquiesce; and so it happened that Stranahan and I reached the Agripides Theatre arm in arm.

As I might have known, we were much too early; the doors were open, but the audience had scarcely begun to arrive. Indeed, the whole enormous open-air theatre was occupied only by a few children who danced and played about the stage and romped from tier to tier of the seaweed-cushioned marble seats.

Upon entering, we paused for a view of the giant theatre, which seemed large enough to accommodate an entire community, and which was constructed with a simple and yet majestic art that I thought admirable. The seat arrangement was that of the typical Greek theatre, but the stage surprised me, not only by its size but by its general appearance, for it was not less than two or three acres in extent, and was completely enclosed by a ring of columns bearing a dome apparently inlaid with ebony and gold. But what particularly caught my attention was an object which was evidently not an integral part of the building--an amorphous mass many feet in height and covering more than half of the stage, but completely mantled in a linen-like white cloth that was like a garment of mystery.

But Stranahan would brook not more than a moment’s pause for viewing the building. Impetuously he started down the steeply sloping central aisle, and did not halt until he had reached the front row, where he appropriated the best seat as nonchalantly as though it had been reserved for him. Of course, I had no choice except to deposit myself at his side; but I could not help wishing that he had chosen a less conspicuous position.

It was not long before the theatre began to fill. Singly and in whole family groups the people were arriving, children and gray old men and bright-faced girls and youths; and all wore happy, expectant smiles, and all were clad in their pastel-tinted gowns that made them look like animated flowers. I had a chance now to observe the Atlanteans as never before; and, as never before, I was struck by the exceptional number of well formed and beautiful faces; by the fact that every one seemed tranquil and contented, and that there was little if any sign of tragedy or sorrow. Here was no evidence of the worn and withered, the distorted, the grotesque, the wolfish, the weasel and the bovine types so common on earth; even the old seemed to wear a sweet and placid and at times a beautiful look, which contrasted strangely with the sour and crochety expression I had regarded as natural; and most of the faces bore the imprint of something akin to poetry and music, an exalted something that I had first noted in Aelios and that set the Atlanteans apart from every other race I had ever known.

Even to be among these people seemed to produce a strange and uplifting effect upon me. I do not know what mysterious psychic currents were at work, and I cannot say that my imagination did not betray me; but I do distinctly remember that, as the theatre gradually filled, a singular sense of well-being and almost of thankfulness came upon me, a feeling of spiritual tranquility and repose, as though by some subtle transference of thought I had shared the mood of the multitude and become one with them in heart. Even Stranahan seemed to have been affected, for he had none of his usual boisterousness; he talked but little, and there was a rapt and almost devout look in his eyes, as though he too had caught the glimmer of some rare loveliness.

Yet there was still a shadow across my happiness--and possibly across his as well. As I scanned the faces that thronged down the aisles and along the tiers of seats, there was one smiling countenance for which I searched in vain. Surely, Aelios had not forgotten the day, nor had she forgotten her implied promise to see me here; yet till the last seat was filled by the expectant crowd, I scrutinized the faces of the newcomers, only to be assured that Aelios was not among them.

But after about an hour, my thoughts were forcibly recalled from Aelios to the spectacle in the great theatre. A sudden flickering of the great golden orbs attracted our attention; and we noted that those luminaries were being dimmed as though by unseen hands until they had less than half their usual brightness. At the same time, long shafts of light began to shoot out simultaneously from all points of the horizon,--multicolored shafts that included all the hues of the rainbow. In wide ambling curves they met the dark glass of the roof, splashing it with red and purple, orange and green, lavender and violet; and for many minutes the play and interplay of color continued, the searchlights seeming to work out all manner of patterns and arabesques which endured for a moment and vanished.

* * * * *

The one thing to which I could liken this pageant of light was the music that sometimes preceded theatrical performances in our own land. The flashing colors had all the ethereal loveliness of music; and like music they prepared one for a mood of rapture and contemplation. And when at length the original lights had faded out, to be replaced by others that shone directly down upon the open platform or stage, this mood was strengthened and intensified; and at the same time I felt that we had but beheld an introduction to the real exhibition.

Suddenly, in the illumination of the many-hued searchlights, a white-gowned woman appeared upon the stage. She was very young, scarcely more than a girl, I thought, and her face had something of that sweetness and radiance which distinguished Aelios; while in the colored glow of the everchanging lights she seemed some shimmering, ethereal thing, possibly a butterfly, possibly some apparition as unreal as rainbows or moonlit cloud.

I was surprised, accordingly, when the fairy-like creature began to speak. Or perhaps it would not be correct to say that she spoke; her words came in a soft, wonderfully melodious voice more than half like song; and merely to listen to her was to be lulled and soothed as though by music.

Yet, despite the spirit of exaltation and almost of worship she aroused in me, I did not miss the drift of what she was saying.

“Fellow citizens,” she declared, while a hush came over the assemblage, and all strained forward so as to lose not a syllable, “fellow citizens, for this year’s celebration we have decided to present a historical pageant. Imagine yourselves borne backward almost thirty-one hundred years, to those days when the Submergence was not yet an accomplished fact, and Agripides stood before the old National Assembly urging the Good Destruction. Agripides shall now appear before you, as he appeared to your forefathers in the lands above the sea; you shall be the National Assembly before which he speaks; and he shall present his views to you as he presented them to our ancestors, and depict for you, as he depicted for them, the reasons why Atlantis should become a sunken continent. Behold, here comes Agripides!”

With a wide-sweeping bow the speaker ceased, retreating from view through some unseen door; and at the same instant some invisible instrument sent forth a sound like a trumpet blast, and from the rear of the stage a tall figure appeared, walking slowly and with head bent low as though in thought.

“Agripides! Agripides!” came one or two indistinct murmurs from behind me, but there was no such tumult of applause as I might have expected. Yet all eyes were directed eagerly toward the newcomer, and I found myself a partner in the tense excitement of the multitude.

Even had I not heard the name Agripides, I should have recognized the advancing figure from the bust shown me by Aelios--there was the same bearded countenance, the same broad and noble brow, the same furrowed and sympathetic features. But one characteristic there was which the bust could not show, and which, while merely incidental, struck me with peculiar force. The garments of Agripides were not gay-hued, like those of modern Atlanteans, but were of a deep and somber brown; and they clung to his body so closely as apparently to interfere with his walking, and to make him look disquietingly like an animated corpse.

But I forgot all such irrelevant impressions the moment that Agripides--or, rather, his living representative--had uttered his first word. “Fellow members of the National Assembly,” said he, with a low bow, while in the audience an awed silence held sway, “for the hundredth time I address you on the subject of the proposed Submergence. And for the hundredth time I remind you that we have no choice in the matter: it is a question of the submergence either of the land of Atlantis or of its soul. Let me prove this to you, Members of the Assembly; let me show you how near the soul of Atlantis already is to submergence. Watch carefully as a stream of typical present-day men and women passes by.”

The speaker ceased, and from invisible corridors on both sides of the stage came a noise as of shuffled feet, chattering voices, horns and bells and clattering wheels. “By the Holy Father, if we’re not back in the old U. S. A.!” muttered Stranahan so loud that many of the audience could hear him; and he leaned so far forward that I feared he would fall over the railing into the stage.

But the spectacle before us was so engrossing as to make me forget even Stranahan’s absurd conduct. Very quickly I came to agree that Atlantis before the Submergence must indeed have been hideous; I had never known anything quite so ugly as the scene we now witnessed. From both sides of the stage a slow procession of men and women began to file, the two streams passing each other and trailing out in opposite directions; and the faces and figures of the people were the most repulsive I had ever seen. Some were so lean and scrawny as to remind me of walking skeletons; others, fat and bloated, waddled along like living caricatures with scarcely the power of self-locomotion; and the majority had an unnaturally sallow, flushed or mottled complexion that seemed to set them off as a species apart. And their clothes were in accord with their appearance; they were all clad in a drab brown or black, some with a peculiar steely color that encircled their chins and ears, some with strange metallic waist-bands that prevented them from turning in any direction, some with ornamental brass spikes that elevated the soles of their feet inches above their heels and converted their walking into a form of hobbling.

But what chiefly interested me were the faces of the people. Not a few, with heavy paunches, and baggy, feeble cheeks, reminded me of nothing so much as of a certain bristly domestic beast; not a few others had features grotesquely like those of baboons, bears, wolves, foxes, weasels, or tigers. And a majority looked like nothing so much as the prey of tigers, weasels, and foxes. Their eyes had a hunted expression, and their whole manner was one of timidity; they seemed continually confused and frightened and ready to run at any sound, and yet had something of the cowed look of creatures beaten into resigned despair.

All the while, as they proceeded across the stage, they produced a perfect pandemonium of squeaks, grunts, hoots, rumblings, howlings, and snarlings, some seeming quite familiar to me, others sounding like voices of the wilderness. The acting, I thought, was marvelous; it was executed so perfectly that for the time I had quite forgotten it was acting at all. Hearing the uproar and looking at the dark-robed, distorted multitude, I could not but think by contrast of Aelios and the grace and beauty that surrounded her; and I missed her even more keenly than before, and wondered impatiently if I should not yet see her at the pageant.

At length, to my relief, the last of the uncouth mob had gone trooping off the stage, and only the tall figure of Agripides remained. “Members of the Assembly,” resumed the statesman, after all had again become quiet, “you have now had a close view of our typical citizens. Do you not believe them more deeply submerged than if a thousand fathoms of water rolled above them? Or if you are not yet convinced, let me show you these people in their normal occupations.”

As though at a prearranged signal, three or four huge instruments, with long segmented oblong belts moving on wheels, were dragged to the center of the stage by half-invisible wires. I recognized these machines as curious forms of treadmills, for on each of the belts a man had been deposited, and each, man was forcing his legs back and forth at tremendous speed, as though running in a desperate hurry. But no matter how furiously they worked, all the men remained in exactly the same place, for the belts slid backward precisely as fast as their feet pressed forward.

“Saints in heaven,” opined Stranahan, with a puzzled frown, “they’d get there just as fast if they took their time!”

After a minute or two the treadmills were pulled off the stage and Agripides again briefly addressed the audience. “My friends,” said he, “I will now illustrate for you another of the leading occupations of our times.”

* * * * *

I do not know what rare art of stagecraft was then applied, for as if by magic a bright bed of flowers sprang to life before us, and long-stemmed purple and yellow blossoms resembling tulips and hollyhocks waved above some retiring white-budding plant reminding me of the violet. But I was to be disappointed if I expected anything beautiful to follow. From one side of the stage came a series of oaths, growls, curses, shrieks, hisses, and mutterings, gradually increasing in fierceness and volume; and soon an amorphous mass of squirming, twisting, embattled men writhed into view. I could not tell how many of them there were, except that they were numbered by the dozen; and I could not determine what they looked like, except that they were all soberly attired. But it was as if a storm had been let loose among them; they were literally tumbling over one another, wrestling with the ferocity of lions, snatching violently at one another’s arms, legs and necks, until they seemed little more than a blur of convulsive, wildly agitated trunks and limbs.

“Holy Methuselah, it’s a new kind of football!” cried Stranahan, excitedly, as he craned his long neck far forward for a better view of the contest.

But before I had time to chide Stranahan on this senseless outburst, I was occupied by a new observation. The struggling men were advancing across the stage, and slowly intruding upon the flower beds. But none seemed to notice, and the pandemonium continued until the actors were beating down the flowers on all sides and not a hollyhock or tulip or violet remained.

Then suddenly one of the men was thrust out of the wild multitude, and lay on the ground as if dead, his clothes ripped and torn, his body gashed and bleeding. But no one seemed to notice him, and his shrieks and howls rang forth until another had been flung aside with broken limbs, and then another, and then another. In the end only two remained standing, both grappling desperately for a little metallic disk that glittered a deep yellow. With bestial snarls and screeches they wrestled over this trinket; and at length, still wrestling, and with faces blood-red and distorted, they tumbled, moaning, off the stage.

After this exhibition there was silence for several minutes. I was glad when at length Agripides seemed to feel that his audience was ready for a change of mood, and again took the center of the stage.

“Members of the National Assembly,” he said, “you have now observed modern life in two of its more common phases. You will find something no less familiar in the third phase, which I am about to present to you.”

This time a gigantic clattering black machine was rolled on to the stage by some unseen power, its innumerable wheels and belts and chains in rapid motion, some of them moving so swiftly as to look like whirring shadows. But it was not the speed or smoothness of its

## action that made the mechanism remarkable: all about its side, in a

long, even row, stood scores of grime-faced and sooty men, their feet clamped to the ground by iron vises, their arms fastened by long rods to the wheels above. And all the while those rods were moving, moving with rhythmic, clock-like regularity, moving unceasingly up and down, pulling the arms of the men with them, first the right arm and then the left, then again the right and then the left, as though they had done so for all eternity and would continue to do so for all eternity.

“The devil take me,” muttered Stranahan, who had to have his way, “It ain’t the men that work the machines! It’s the machines that work the men!”

I am afraid that Stranahan’s remarks diverted my attention and made me miss part of the performance, for when next I turned my eyes to the stage, the scene was much changed. A great claw-like steel device was reaching out from the interior of the machine, seizing one of the men, wrenching him from his position as though he had been a misplaced screw, and casting him bleeding to the floor. And while he lay there moaning and helpless, a clamor of shouts was heard from off stage, and a score of tattered men came rushing in and threw themselves down before the machine as if in reverence. And, as though endowed with intelligence, the machine seemed to hear, for it reached out the same great claw-like hand, clutched one of the men at random, and thrust him into the place of the rejected one. And now the arms of the newcomer began to work up and down, up and down unremittingly, accompanying the steel rods in the same even and automatic fashion as the arms of his predecessor.

The next feature on the program was a long oration delivered in Agripides’ most celebrated words; following which the actor prepared the way for the climax by a few explanatory comments. “Members of the National Assembly,” said he, still using phrases first uttered three thousand years before, “I wish you to look carefully at Axios, which, as you know, is one of the leading commercial cities of our age. First gaze upon its domes and towers as they are now familiar to you; then behold them as they will be when the unleashed waters of the Atlantic come sweeping across them; then open your eyes wide for a foreglimpse of our land in the golden era after the Submergence.”

* * * * *

Even as the last words were uttered, my attention was drawn to the huge amorphous mass which lay cloaked in white linen at one side of the stage. Invisible hands seemed to take hold of the covering; slowly it was lifted into the air, then slowly pulled to one side and out of sight. At first I could only gape in astonishment--the strangest of all conceivable things was being unbared! Distinctly I was reminded of the paintings I had seen in various of the halls of Archeon--that which stared before me was a city in miniature, but a city such as I would have expected no Atlantean to conceive. Not the faintest resemblance did it bear to this undersea realm of statue-like temples and many-columned palaces; rather, it was like a city of the modern world. Row upon unbending row of box-like edifices, apparently of granite or brick, loomed at irregular heights and with flat, ungarnished roofs; tier after tier of little oblong windows looked out from the smoke-stained sides of the towers; slender defiles, so narrow that they reminded one of light-wells, separated the opposing ranks of masonry; and at the base of these dreary gray pits swarmed masses of dark-robed men and women, jammed together so compactly that one wondered if they were not standing on each other’s toes.

“By the Blessed Mother, if it ain’t little old New York!” stuttered Stranahan, nudging me knowingly in the side.

Even as he spoke, I was startled by a noise as of a thunder clap. And the next instant, the midget men and women scattered pellmell, vanishing through little openings in the walls. Meanwhile the thunder claps continued, loud-rumbling and resonant, one crash pealing and reverberating before the echoes of the last had died away; and miniature lightnings darted and flared from the great greenish vault above. As the display proceeded, it grew constantly brighter and more vivid; and I was wondering what the sequel would be, when suddenly there came a blast so loud that I clapped my hands to my ears in terror. Simultaneously a brilliant blade of light seemed to cut dagger-like through the buildings, wrapping them momentarily in a sheet of flame; the walls seemed to be heaving and trembling as though in an earthquake’s claws, and there came to my ears a rattling and crashing as of falling masonry.

Then, while the clamor increased and the buildings heaved and wavered with the motion of tossing ships at sea, the ground beneath them gave a sharp lunge downward; and like toy castles, the towers all at once collapsed, some falling over their neighbors in crashing confusion, some shaken into great dusty piles of mortar and stone, some stripped of their walls yet still standing with gaunt contorted ribs of steel, some bursting into flame that glared and crackled fiendishly and poured out dense, black spirals of smoke.

But scarcely had the thunder of the overthrown walls died down when a new and more ominous roaring came to my ears, a tumult as of Niagara or of sea-waves splashing the cliffs. Out of the great earthen basin into which the ruined city had subsided, there issued a foaming confusion of waters, as though a reservoir had burst its dam; and from all sides a white-flecked torrent came plunging down upon the wrecked towers, struggling and storming above their lower stories as if to wash them utterly away. And it seemed that they were to have their will, for the towers were sinking, visibly sinking beneath the waves. Heap after gigantic heap of debris dipped its head into the waters and was lost to view; edifice after looming edifice, dismantled and battered, was engulfed by the insatiable flood. And now the fires no longer burned and the smoke no longer soared; now only two or three tortured steel columns reached out of the indifferent sea; now only one was left, one lean and crooked metallic shaft like the agonized clutching hand of a drowning man. But soon even this had slipped from view, and the frothy-tongued, deep-blue waters gave no sign that a city had ever barred their path.

And as the last trace of old Atlantis vanished, a grayness as of twilight suffused the scene; the golden lights became dim, and dimmer still, until they had fluttered out altogether, and blackness blotted all things from our gaze.

But as we sat there spellbound in the dark, feeling like men who had beheld the end of all things, there came on airy change to break the dreariness of our mood. From far, far away, apparently whole worlds away, issued a faint tinkling music, more like the song of elves than of any mortal being. It was half like the loveliness that one hears in dreams, and more than half like the remote ghostly melodies borne to one across the wind; but gradually it grew nearer, gradually louder and more distinct, although its ethereal and fairy-like quality still remained. At length I recognized that it proceeded from a chorus of voices, a wonderfully sweet womanly chorus whose members may have been human but who seemed little less than angelic. For it was with a divine exaltation that they sang, and their tones were the tones of immortal sweetness and hope, and they seemed to assure me that all was well with the world and with life, and that beauty and happiness must triumph.

As the singing continued, the darkness was gradually dispersed; yet the great orb above did not resume the full brightness of the Atlantean day, but remained subdued to a rose-tinged twilight glow. And in that twilight a troop of shimmering-gowned dancing maidens appeared, swinging from side to side with superbly harmonious movements of arm and waist and ankle until they seemed not so much individual dancers as parts of the eternal rhythm of the universe. But whether the singing proceeded from them or from persons unseen was more than I could judge; for just then my eye was caught by the leader of the dancers, and my thoughts were as if paralyzed. As she glided from side to side with movements like music, she smiled a gloriously sweet smile; and that smile seemed to be bent full upon me, though here my imagination may have borne false reports. But with furiously thumping heart and a surging of something dangerously like tenderness, I realized that Aelios had kept her promise to see me at the pageant.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Then, while the clamor increased and the buildings heaved and wavered with the motion of tossing ships at sea, the ground beneath them gave a sharp lunge downward; and like toy castles, the towers all at once collapsed.... But scarcely had the thunder of the overthrown walls died down, when a new and more ominous roaring came to my ears, a tumult as of Niagara or of sea-waves splashing the cliffs...]

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