Countless other improvements and aggrandisements were related to me, but for the most part they fell on deaf ears at the time.
I had at last realised that I was bereft of everybody and everything I had ever held dear, and must henceforth consider myself alone in the world, an alien in a strange land, without the possibility of ever again exchanging a word or look of affection with those whom I had loved well and truly.
No wonder my fortitude gave way. No wonder I returned to the college in a mood bordering on despair.
CHAPTER XVII.
My earnest consideration for the next few days was devoted to the question of ways and means. Knowing it to be the custom of the country to entertain strangers hospitably, I had hitherto accepted the attentions offered me in the frank, cordial spirit in which they were given. But this could not continue beyond a reasonable term, and now that my stay in the country seemed likely to be permanent, my self-respect demanded that I should at once take steps to prove my capability of assuming an active part in the battle of life.
As before hinted, I was not likely to encounter many difficulties in the way of earning a livelihood, for my own experiences were a subject of such interest to New Amazonians, that sketches of them would easily find a market in the native journals. In fact, even while debating the point with myself, Principal Grey came to me as the bearer of a message from the Mother.
She was deputed to ask me if I purposed making Andersonia my permanent abiding place, and I was also requested to state my views for the future in any case. She was somewhat surprised to find me full of grief at the conviction that I had indeed parted for ever from all and everything which I had ever loved, and she did her utmost to console me, some of her utterances dwelling in my memory yet.
“It has certainly struck us as a great wonder,” she said, “that you should have appeared so strangely in our midst. Some of our savants have had discussions on the subject, but can come to no rational solution of the questions mooted. To believe that you were magically transported hither, is revolting to our twenty-fifth century common sense, especially as we can locate no country which is in the condition described by you as that of your native land. To believe that you have been in a state of torpidity for six hundred years seems more likely. But if we accept this hypothesis, we are confronted with the problem of accounting for your whereabouts prior to your resuscitation. There has been found not a single trace of your resting place. Had you been borne hither on the wings of the wind, your advent could not have been more mysterious, nor more bereft of all clue as to your former place of abode. Your own utterances, and those of your odd compatriot, only seem to leave one opinion open to us, and that is, that you have been in a state of trance. The descriptions you have given of your own country and its state of civilisation, as known to you, tally exactly with what is known of Teuto-Scotland as it existed in the nineteenth century. The fact that you call it England puts us, of course, on the right track at once. But whatever may account for your arrival here, it is an undoubted fact that you are of as real flesh and blood as we are, and that you are now leading as commonplace a life as any of us. This being so, it is expedient that some plans should be laid for your future, and I, as the Mother’s representative, am deputed to elicit your views and intentions on the subject. That you should only just have realised the impossibility of finding England or its inhabitants as you left them possibly makes my errand appear somewhat in-apropos and precipitate to you. I have, however, my instructions to carry out, and you must forgive me, if it should strike you as rather unfeeling to enquire what you intend to do for a livelihood?”
“I could not possibly take offence where all have shown me so much kindness and consideration,” was my reply. “I was, in fact, just deliberating the same subject when you came. I have been encouraged to think that I may hope to get on in the vocation to which I have already devoted some years of apprenticeship—that of an author.”
“Yes, that is the opinion we have also formed, and it is in connection therewith that I have a proposal to make to you. Will you write a book descriptive of your former life, associates, and customs? The Literary Bureau will publish it for you, and as there is sure to be a huge demand for it, your profits will be large enough to justify the State in at once presenting you with advance Letters of Credit. These Letters of Credit, as you know, represent money with us, and if you undertake to write this work, considering it a State commission, you will at once find yourself in a position of independence.”