Part 10 (2/2)

'What--when I tell you that there is a poet, a fellow called Homer or something, who has got a sort of reputation already by putting the campaign into verses, rather long, but quite readable (you must order them); well, there's a lot about _me_ in them.'

'Did Homer _see_ you there?'

'Now that's a most ridiculous question,' he protested, with a feeling that she was coming round, and that he should convince her directly; 'the poet's blind, Clytemnestra, quite blind. But I will not argue--you must be content with a warrior's a.s.surance.'

She laughed. 'I'm afraid,' she said, 'that even a warrior's a.s.surance will find it difficult to account satisfactorily for this--and this--and these!' And as she spoke, she handed him a variety of articles: a folding hat, a guide to Corinth, a conversation manual, several unused tourist tickets, one or two theatre programmes, a green veil, some supper bills, a correct card for the Olympian races, with the names of probable starters, and three little jointed wooden dolls.

Agamemnon took them all helplessly; all his virtuous indignation had evaporated, and he looked very red and foolish as he said with a kind of nervous laugh, 'You've been looking in my pockets!'

'I have,' she said, 'and now what have you to say for yourself? I don't believe there is any such place as Troy.'

'There is indeed,' he pleaded; 'I can show it to you on the map!'

'Well,' she said, 'if there is, _you_ never went near it!'

'Send those people away,' he said, 'and I will tell you all!'

And when they had gone, he confessed everything, explaining that he really had meant to go to Troy at first, and how, as he got nearer, he found himself less and less inclined for fighting--until at last he determined to travel about and see life instead, and, as he expressed it, 'pick up a little character.'

'Well,' said Clytemnestra, 'I will have no little characters in _my_ palace, Agamemnon.'

But he protested that she had not understood him. 'And if I have erred, my love,' he suggested humbly, 'excuse me, but I cannot help thinking that the means devised for my correction were unnecessarily severe!'

'They were nothing of the sort,' she said; 'you deserved it all--and worse!'

Upon this Agamemnon made haste to a.s.sure her that she had shown a very proper spirit, and he respected her the more for it. 'And now,' he put it to her, 'why not let bygones _be_ bygones?' But Clytemnestra's reply was that she would be quite willing to permit this when they _were_ bygones, which, at present, she added, they were very far from being.

The King was in despair, until beneficent nature came to his a.s.sistance; a faint chirrup was heard from a neighbouring bush, a circ.u.mstance which he turned to admirable account.

'You hear it?' he asked tenderly, 'the dulcet strain? Know ye the note?

Ah, Clytemnestra, 'tis the owl--the blithe and tuneful owl! Owls sang on our bridal night--can you hear their melody now and be unmoved? No, I did but wrong ye ... a tear trembles on that eyelash, a smile flickers upon that lip! I am pardoned. Clytemnestra--wife, embrace me ... we both have much to forgive!'

This speech (which was not unlike some he had heard in thrilling dramas at the 'Haemabronteion,' Corinth, where the prophetess Ca.s.sandra had been greatly admired in her impersonations of persecuted and distracted heroines) touched Clytemnestra's heart, in which, hard as it was, there was a strain of sentiment--and she fell sobbing into her husband's arms.

And so all was forgotten and forgiven in the most satisfactory manner, the Chorus (who had been considering themselves arrested until the intellectual strain had proved almost too much for them) were released, while it was found on inquiry that both aegisthus and Ca.s.sandra were missing, and no trace of either of them was ever found again; but it was generally understood that, with a delicate unselfishness, they had been unwilling to remain where their presence would lead to inevitable complications.

And from that night--until the fatal day, some six short weeks afterwards, when each, by an unfortunate oversight, partook of a mixture which had been carefully prepared for the other--there was not a happier royal couple in all Argos than Clytemnestra and Agamemnon.

_THE WRAITH OF BARNJUM._[1]

[Ill.u.s.tration: I]

I frankly admit, whatever may be the consequences of doing so, that I was not fond of Barnjum; in fact, I detested him. Everything that fellow said and did jarred upon me to an absolutely indescribable extent, although I did not discover for some time that he regarded me with a strange and unreasonable aversion.

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