The Black Poodle Part 9

And bustling up to the chariot, he a.s.sisted from it a maiden with a pale face, great, wild, roving eyes, and hair of tawny gold, and led her back to his wife.

'The Princess Ca.s.sandra of Troy--my wife, Queen Clytemnestra. They tell me this young lady can prophesy very prettily, my dear,' he remarked.

Clytemnestra bowed coldly, and said she was sure it would be vastly amusing. Did the Princess intend giving any public entertainments?

'She is our visitor,' Agamemnon put in warningly; while Ca.s.sandra smiled satirically, and said nothing at all.

Clytemnestra hoped she might be able to induce her to stay longer, a week was such a _very_ short time.

'She has kindly consented to stay on a little longer, my love,' said Agamemnon--'all her life,' in fact.'

The Queen was charmed to hear it; it was so very nice and kind of her, particularly as strangers were apt to find the neighbourhood an unhealthy one.

And as aegisthus joined them just then, she presented him to the King, with the remark that he had been the most faithful and devoted of courtiers during the whole period of the King's absence; to which Agamemnon replied, with the slightest of scowls, that he was delighted to make the acquaintance of Mr. aegisthus; and after that no one seemed to know exactly what to say for a minute or two.

At last aegisthus hazarded a supposition that the royal warrior had found it warm over at Troy.

'It varied, sir,' said the monarch, uncomfortably; 'the climate varied.

I used to get very warm fighting sometimes.'

aegisthus agreed that a battle must be hot work, and Clytemnestra suddenly exclaimed that her husband was wearing the very same dear shabby old uniform he had on when he went away.

'The very same,' said Agamemnon, smiling. 'I wore it all through the campaign. Your true warrior is no dandy!'

'We were given to understand you were wounded,' remarked aegisthus.

'Oh,' said the King, 'yes; I was considerably wounded--all over the chest and arms. But what cared I?'

'Exactly,' said aegisthus; 'and, curiously enough, the weapons don't seem to have pierced your coat at all. I observe there are no patches.'

'No,' the King replied; 'so you noticed that, eh? Well, the reason of that is that those fellows out there have a peculiar sort of way of cutting and slashing, so as to----'

And he explained this by some elaborate ill.u.s.trations with his sheathed sword, until aegisthus said that he thought he understood how it was done.

But Clytemnestra suddenly, with a kitten-like girlishness that sat but ill upon her, pounced playfully upon the weapon. 'I want to see it drawn,' she cried; 'I want to look upon the keen flashing blade which has penetrated the inmost recesses of so many of our country's foes. Oh, it won't come out,' she added, as she attempted to pull it out of the scabbard; '_do_ make it come out!'

The King tried, but the blade stuck half way, and what was visible of it seemed thickly coated with rust; but Agamemnon said it was gore, and his orderly must have forgotten to clean his accoutrements after the fall of Troy. He added that it was the effect of the sea air.

'Troy really has fallen then?' asked aegisthus. 'I suppose you stayed to see the thing out?'

'I did, sir,' answered the monarch proudly; 'I sacked the most fashionable quarters myself. I expect my booty will be forwarded--shortly. Didn't you _know_ Troy was taken?' he asked suspiciously. 'Couldn't you see the beacon I lighted just before I started?'

The courtier murmured that it was wonderful to find so long and tedious a journey accomplished in such capital time.

'What do you mean by that? How do you know how long it took?' demanded Agamemnon.

'Don't you see?' said Clytemnestra. 'Why, you say you had the fire lighted at Ida when you started; then, of course, they would see it directly over at Lemnos, and light theirs; and then at Athos, and then----'

'You are not a time-table, my love,' interrupted the monarch, coldly.

'I won't trouble you for all these details. Come to the point.'

'The point is,' she explained sweetly, 'that we have only just seen the beacon flame arrive here at Arachnaeus, after leaping from height to height across lake and plain; so that you, my dearest, must have made the distance with almost equal celerity!'

'I came _with_ the beacon,' said Agamemnon, coughing; 'perhaps that disposes of the difficulty?'

'Perhaps,' said the Queen; 'I mean _quite_. And now,' she continued, after a rapid exchange of glances with aegisthus, 'you will come indoors, and have a nice cup of coffee and a warm bath before you do anything else, won't you?'

He almost thought he would, he said; fighting for ten long years without intermission was a dusty, tiring occupation, and he was accordingly about to enter, when his eye fell on the awnings and flags and the red stair carpet, which had been prepared for the betrothal festivities, and he frowned.

'Now, my dear, this sort of thing is all very well, no doubt; but I don't care about it. I'm a plain, honest ruler of men, and I hate flummery and flattery--particularly when it all comes out of _my_ pocket! Why, you've laid down the drugget from the Throne-Room over all this gravel. Take it up directly; I decline to walk over it. Do you hear? This wasteful extravagance is positively sinful. Take it up!'

Clytemnestra a.s.sured him earnestly that they had had no intention of annoying him with it--which was literally true; and suggested meekly that for the King to stay out in the court-yard until all the decorations were removed might be a tedious and even a ridiculous proceeding. 'If,' she added, 'he was merely unwilling to spoil the drugget, he might easily remove his boots, which were extremely muddy--for a monarch's.'

'Well, well, my dear, be it so,' said the King; 'I did not intend to chide you. It is only that I have grown so accustomed to the frugal, hardy life of a camp, that I have imbibed a soldier's contempt for luxury.'

And, removing his boots, he followed the Queen into the Palace, as she led the way with a baleful expression upon her dark and inscrutable face.

As the pair pa.s.sed up the steps and between the lofty pillars, the hounds howled from the royal kennels at the back of the Palace, and--a stranger portent still--a meteor shot suddenly through the growing gloom and burst in a rain of coloured stars above the house-top, while, shortly after, a staff fell from above upon the head of one of the Chorus--and was shivered to fragments!

aegisthus had strolled away under the colonnade, and Ca.s.sandra was left alone with the Chorus. She stood apart, mystic, moody, and impenetrable, letting down her flowing back hair.

'You prophesy, do you not?' said the kind old men at length, wishing to make her feel at home; 'might we beg you to favour us with a prediction--just a little one?'

Ca.s.sandra made excuses at first, as was proper; she had a cold, and was feeling the effects of the journey. She was really not inspired just then, she protested, and besides, she had not touched a tripod for ages.

But, upon being pressed, she gave way at last, after declaring with a little giggle that she was perfectly certain n.o.body would believe a single word she said.

'I see before me,' she began, in a weird, sepulchral tone which she found it impossible to keep up for many sentences, 'a proud and stately pile--but enter not. See ye yon ghoul among the chimney-pots, yon amphisboena in the back garden? And the scent of gore pervades it!'

'It is no happy home that is thus described!' the Chorus threw in profesionally.

'But the Finger of Fate is slowly unwound, and the Hand of Destiny steps in to pace the marble halls with heavy tramp. And know, old men, that the Inevitable is not wholly unconnected with the Probable!'

At this even their politeness could not restrain a gesture of incredulity, but she heeded it not, and continued:

'Who is this that I see next--this regal warrior bounding over the blazing battlements in brazen panoply?'

('That must be Agamemnon,' cried the Chorus; 'the despatches mentioned him bounding like that. Wonderful!')

'I see him,' she resumed, 'pale and prostrate--a prey to the pangs within him, scanning the billows from his storm-tossed ship. Now he has reached his native city. Hark! how they greet him! And, behold, a stately matron meets him with a honeyed smile, inviting him to enter. He yields. And then----'

Here Ca.s.sandra stopped, with the remark that that was all--as there were limits even to the marvellous faculty of second-sight.

The Chorus were not unimpressed, for they had never seen a prediction and its literal fulfilment in quite such close conjunction before, and their own attempts always came wrong; but although they were agreed that the prophecy was charming as far as it went, they began to feel slightly afraid of the prophetess, and were secretly relieved when aegisthus happened to come up shortly afterwards with an offer to show her such places of interest as Argos boasted.

But they were great authorities upon all points of etiquette and morality, and they all remarked (when she had gone) that she displayed an unbecoming readiness in accepting the escort of a courtier who had not been formally introduced to her. 'That may be the custom in _Troy_,'

they said, wagging their beards, 'but if she means to behave like that here--_well_!'