Atlantis (31 page)

“It is the Dryad
and
her tree, O king,” replied the betrothed of Nisos’ brother; and she spoke with less timidity and shyness now that she was delivering, or being delivered of, her chief news. “Yes, both the Dryad and her tree together, that the Son of Kronos has destroyed with a thunderbolt. The Dryad told them that the thunderbolt he was going to use was a little one and the last he had where he then was. But they told me to tell you that they know why the son of Kronos was angry with the Dryad.” At this point Leipephile paused in her tale and surveyed her audience with the self-satisfied expression that implies the presence of news in the wind that can’t be blurted out in a few words, and can’t possibly be divined or guessed at, even by the cleverest listener. Her three hearers, not missing this expression, patiently imitated Eurycleia who had now resumed her seat at the table.

“It was,” Leipephile went on, with obviously deep satisfaction at having such an important tale to relate to headquarters, “it
was the goat-foot god Pan who began it all by consorting with the girl Eione—though I don’t think he meddled with her maidenhead. The god Pan and the girl Eione were riding on Pegasos and Arion. And when the Dryad saw this she
persuaded
the goddesses Eurybia and Echidna who have for so long ruled over that place—” and Leipephile made a vague gesture with her hand in the general direction of Arima—“that place—you know—where everybody’s scared of going—and what the Dryad told them to do was this. She told them, that is she told Eurybia and Echidna and Eione and Pan, all four mounted on Pegasos and Arion, to intercept the Monster Typhon and by a little bribing and petting and cozening and cosseting and coaxing—and a few terrifying threats too perhaps!—to make use of him as a savage hunting-dog; and, thus well-
prepared
for any event, to approach the Garden of the Hesperides.”

There was a long silence when the girl had finished. Then Odysseus enquired: “Could you tell me, dear child, could any of you tell me, do you think, where the daughter of Teiresias has got to this afternoon while all these unexpected events have been occurring?” Leipephile stared at him with her mouth open, while Eurycleia and Zeuks exchanged a look by which the former said to the latter:

“Here’s a typical monarch! Having made all this fuss to get hold of this damned girl, he now has let her escape!” while the latter said to the former: “We had better find out exactly from the woman in that weird cloak what kind of trouble this
Pontopereia
has fallen into on a fine afternoon.”

But before they ceased to look at each other there were more light steps outside the door and Pontopereia herself appeared.

“Where’s Eione?” she asked; and then seeing Odysseus she added: “Pardon me, great King, but they told me down there such a mad story that I had to come and see for myself! They said Eione had gone off with the goat-foot god and with two mysterious goddesses who for twenty years or more have been arguing together in a haunted place near here you call Arima.”

“They seem to have told you the truth, child,” replied
Odysseus. “But now that you’re here the best thing you and I can do is to arrange a definite plan of campaign for ourselves at the ‘agora’ tomorrow. So sit you down here and have a sip of my wine. This is our Eurycleia. Yes, give her one of those cups you like using best yourself, Nurse.”

Unlike many men of genius, whether in thought or in action, Odysseus was always vividly aware of the feelings of women; and he now glanced from Pontopereia to Leipephile and back again to Pontopereia.

“This lady,” he explained to the latter, “is the betrothed of our young friend Nisos’ elder brother, who, quite naturally, takes the side of their father Krateros Naubolides in our little
island-feud
. The pleasantest thing for you, my dear child”—he was addressing Leipephile now—“will be to have a quiet supper by yourself tonight and to go to bed early; for in this way you’ll escape being torn between your loyalty to us and your affection for our opponents.”

The tall simple girl didn’t appear to object in the very least to being thus lightly dismissed from so momentous a Council of War; and after a nod from Eurycleia had confirmed the king’s word, and after the kindly-natured Zeuks had muttered
something
about her being sure not to forget to have a good supper, she went off at once.

Then at last the party round the old Nurse gathered closely together to plan, as Odysseus had declared it was essential they should do, the general outline of his appeal to the people. But Odysseus had still got at the back of his consciousness a rooted feeling that there was something in Eurycleia’s mind with regard to all that had happened and all that was happening which it was important for him to know.

But it was not until he and Zeuks had mapped out pretty definitely their plan of campaign for to-morrow’s meeting in the “agora”, and had decided to send the heralds at early dawn round the whole island to announce it, that in a single hurriedly pronounced word the old Nurse revealed what it was.
Telemachos
! Yes, it was his son; his son, who like a wooden dagger,
with a handle at one end and a point at the other end, had got himself caught fast in the consciousness of the old nurse. Yes, it was the “eidolon” of his son Telemachos she had in her mind, teasing and perplexing her with misgivings of every sort.

It must have been approaching the hour for supper when Odysseus discovered what Eurycleia had in her mind. “One thing seems certain,” he said, “and that is that this appalling Enorches hasn’t made the faintest, no! not the very faintest impression on him! What
does
he think of that retreat of his, which this devil of a priest has certainly curtailed to pretty small quarters?”

“Another thing seems certain too,” added the old Nurse; and going to the door at the back of her room she opened it and called down the passage. Then with the servant who answered her call she held a brief conversation, in the middle of which, telling the girl to wait a moment, she returned to Odysseus. “It seems certain to me,” she told him gravely, “that your son really must, for all his philosophizing, feel lonely sometimes and want to get a glimpse of his Dad. I know I want to get a glimpse of
him
; and I think the Lady Penelope would feel that old Nurse Eurycleia ought to have this wish gratified. Do you mind if I send somebody—Tis, if he’s about just now—to bid him come to supper tonight? There’ll be
as
it
is
two
women-guests
and only one man-guest, so he will make up the table; and you at the head and your own Nurse at the foot will behold the board complete. So may I send Tis or somebody to bid him to come?”

Across Odysseus’ countenance flapped like the wings of a black crow a momentary shadow of serious discomfort; but he had the strength to blot it out so completely that it was as if it had never been there. He nodded with the crushing acceptance and finality of Zeus. “Send anyone you wish and tell them in the Kitchen to prepare supper for two men and two women in addition to thee and me.”

The old lady went back to the waiting serving-girl with this message. “She says Tis
is
there and she will tell him to go,”
she reported to the King on her return; and so it was settled, and that very evening Telemachos came. Nor among those sitting round the table in the throne-room at the end of the corridor of Pillars was there one who regretted this sudden resolve of the old Nurse to see her last Infant of the House as a noble-looking middle-aged man of fifty, sitting side by side with Zeuks, and opposite Okyrhöe and Pontopereia.

And the best of it was that the routine of custom in that royal dwelling made the whole thing easy. For the people in the Kitchen were always wont to bring the dishes up to a table just behind the royal throne and leave them there: from which position Leipephile and Arsinöe and Tis himself carried them round and then stood behind the throne of Odysseus while all the guests ate and drank at their leisure.

As might have been expected Okyrhöe was deeply impressed by the handsomeness and dignity of Telemachos; and as for Pontopereia she couldn’t resist permitting a passionate prayer to Athene to embody itself in words in her mind: a prayer that if she should be called upon to utter words of prophetic insight in the presence of this silent, austere, good-looking man, with such broad-shoulders and such an intensely abstracted look on his stern face, she might be true to herself, true to her inspiration, and true to the great goddess who would use her as a reed through which to pour forth the rhythmic waves of her message to the world.

Their meal that night was indeed only half through when, constrained by a sudden urge whose origin was wholly obscure to her, Pontopereia asked Telemachos a plain direct unequivocal question.

“What would you say, My Lord Telemachos, was the real heart of your teaching? I mean the sort of thing you would have to explain to any student of philosophy, whether a boy or a girl, who wished to be considered as your proper disciple?”

Telemachos glanced quickly and a little uneasily at his father as if to assure himself that the old man would not mind his launching out upon such a topic at such a time; but as he received no warning against it, and, in place of that, saw
something resembling the flicker of a benevolent smile cross his progenitor’s face, he addressed himself to Pontopereia with sincere pleasure.

And the truth was that the longer she listened to him the more did Pontopereia feel drawn to the man and thankful she had risked her question. “He’s lonely;” she told herself, “he’s lonely and unhappy. He’s invented this philosophy of his to fill a void. His philosophy is his kingdom, his wife, his children, his weapons, his ships, his ploughs, his horses, his granaries.” And indeed his words, when he spoke, almost humorously fulfilled her prediction.

“I would tell this imaginary disciple of mine, lady‚” he said, “to make philosophy a substitute for every kind of success he can possibly want—no! more than a substitute, a fulfilment! I would say: ‘What do you really want from life?’ You’ve probably never asked yourself! Few of us do when we’re young. But anyone who has watched you will know you’ve wanted the satisfaction of your hunger, your thirst, your lust, your hunting spirit, your fighting spirit, your collecting mania, your athletic mania, your building mania, your passion to be beautiful, to be a great artist, to be desired by many. Well, and what have you already attained in regard to this desire of yours? You’ve got the rudiments, the embryonic beginnings of all of them. You’ve got a body and a soul. You are a human being. You are living on the earth with the ocean around the earth, and the sun and the moon above the earth, and the stars above the sun and the moon, and the eternal ether above the stars.

“Well! consider your situation. You are a separate individual. You are a lonely individual. And though you may have got parents and brothers and sisters your happiness depends upon your own feelings for life, not upon their feelings for life nor upon their feelings for you. Well! you are surrounded by things that are made of the four elements, made of earth, made of fire, made of water, made of air. Very good. You have the power of embracing these things: of seizing upon them and embracing them so closely that you become one with each one of them.

“But these things, although like yourself they are separate and individual, are made up, just as you are yourself, of the four elements. Very well then! It is clear that when you, a human being, embrace the earth, you are embracing something made of the same material that you are made of. That is to say that a person made of air, water, earth, fire, is embracing other objects or entities or beings, also made of earth, fire, water, air. Thus with your mind and all your senses, thus with your body and all your soul you become one with the whole earth and with the ocean that surrounds the earth, one with the sun and moon, and one with the stars, and one with the immeasurable divine ether that surrounds the stars. Your body and your soul by this embrace become one with the body and the soul of the divine ether and with all that it surrounds. Earth, ocean, sun, moon, stars, ether, they are now one living thing; and to this one living thing, you, a separate living thing, are now joined in an inseparable embrace.

“You, and these things, now become one, have now become a larger one, an immeasurable one, but you still have the power in yourself, the terrific inexhaustible power in yourself, to work upon; to influence, to direct, to drive, to move this New Enormity, this vast new world, this world which you have created by embracing what you have embraced. In one sense therefore you have thus created a new world by joining the old world. Yes, you have created a new earth and ocean and sun and moon and a new immeasurable divine ether.

“Nor do you stop with this; for you go on working upon, and driving, and forcing, and moving, and directing, and re-creating, this immeasurable earth-ocean-sun-moon-ether, moulding it nearer and nearer to the secret desire of your heart; that is to say moulding this newly created earth-ocean-sun-moon-ether, and compelling it to obey your will.

“Now you may naturally say that you are only one of the
innumerable
separate individual lives who are working and willing and re-creating and re-moulding this existent one or super-one made of earth-ocean-sun-moon-stars and immeasurable depths
of divine ether; and you will be perfectly right in saying this. You
are
only one of the many wills who are driving this
earth-ocean
-sun-moon-stars and immeasurable depths of ether
forward
upon its way.
Its
way
whither?

“Ah! that is the impenetrable secret of which you are
yourself
a living part and a partial creator. You, a secret agent, have an obscure purpose in your mind; and so have your
innumerable
fellow-agents driving the universe
on
its
way
;
but on its way
to
what
—ah!
that
remains an impenetrable secret!”