Part 9 (2/2)

'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 s.h.i.+vered 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p. 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_!'

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