Part 1 (1/2)
The Ruinous Face.
by Maurice Hewlett.
When the siege of Troy had been ten years doing, and most of the chieftains were dead, both of those afield and those who held the walls; and some had departed in their s.h.i.+ps, and all who remained were leaden-hearted; there was one who felt the rage of war insatiate in his bowels: Menelaus, yellow-haired King of the Argives. He, indeed, rested not day or night, but knew the fever fretting at his members, and the burning in his heart. And when he scanned the windy plain about the city, and the desolation of it; and when he saw the huts of the Achaeans, and the furrows where the chariots ploughed along the lines, and the charred places of camp-fires, smoke-blackened trees, and puddled waters of Scamander, and corn-lands and pastures which for ten years had known neither plough nor deep-breathed cattle, nor querulous sheep; even then in the heart of Menelaus was no pity for Dardan nor Greek, but only for himself and what he had lost--white-bosomed Helen, darling of G.o.ds and men, and golden treasure of the house.
The vision of her glowing face and veiled eyes came to him in the night-season to make him mad, and in dreams he saw her, as once and many times he had seen her, lie supine. There as she lay in his dream, all white and gold, thinner than the mist-wreath upon a mountain, he would cry aloud for his loss, and throw his arms out over the empty bed, and feel his eye-sockets smart for lack of tears; for tears came not to him, but his fever made his skin quite dry, and so were his eyes dry.
Therefore, when the chiefs of the Achaeans in Council, seeing how their strength was wearing down like a s...o...b..nk under the sun, looked reproachfully upon him, and thought of Hector slain, and of dead Achilles who slew him, of Priam, and of Diomede, and of tall Patroclus, he, Menelaus, took no heed at all, but sat in his place, and said, ”There is no mercy for robbers of the house. Starve whom we cannot put to the sword. Lay closer leaguer. So shall I win my wife again and have honor among the Kings, my fellows.” So he spake, for it was so he thought day and night; and Agamemnon, King of Men, bore with him, and carried the voices of all the Achaeans. For since the death of Achilles there was no man stout enough to gainsay him, or deny him anything.
In those days there was little war, since every man outside the walls was sick of strife, and consumed with longing for his home, and wife and children there. And one told another, ”My son will be a grown man in his first beard,” and one, ”My daughter will be a wife.” As for the men of Troy, it was well for them that their foes were spent; for Hector was dead, and Agenor, and Troilus; and King Priam, the old, was fallen into dotage, which deprived him of counsel. He loved Alexandros only, whom men called Paris. On which account aeneas, the wise prince, stood apart, and kept himself within the walls of his house. There remained only that beauteous Paris, the ravisher. Him Helen held fast enchained by her white arms and slow, sweet smile, and by the shafts of light from her kind eyes. All the compliance of a fair woman made for love lay in her; she could refuse nothing that was asked of her by him who had her. And she was gentle and very modest, and never dejected or low of heart; but when comfort was asked of her she gave it, and when solace, solace; and when he cried, ”Oh for a deep draught of thee!” she gave him his desire.
In these days he seldom left his hall, where she sat at the loom with her maids, or had them comb and braid her long hair. But of other women, wives and widows of heroes, Andromache mourned Hector dead and outraged, and Ca.s.sandra the wrath to come. Through the halls of the King's house came little sound but of women weeping loss; therefore, if love made Helen laugh sometimes, she laughed low and softly, lest some other should be offended. The streets were all silent, and the dogs ate one another. In the temples of the G.o.ds they neglected the sacrifice, and what little might be offered was eaten by clouds of birds.
Anniversaries and feasts were like common days. If the G.o.ds were offended with Troy, there was no help for it. Men must live first, before they can serve G.o.d.
Now the tenth year was come to the Spring, when young men and virgins wors.h.i.+p Artemis the Bright; and abroad on the plains the crocus was aflower, and the anemone; and the blades of the iris were like swords stuck hilt downward in the earth. A green veil spread lightly over the land, and men might see a tree scorched black upon one side and budded with gold upon the other. Melted snow brimmed Simois and Scamander; cranes and storks built their nests, and one stood sentinel while his mate sat close, watchful in the reeds. On the mild, westerly airs came tenderness to bedew the hearts of men war-weary. They stepped carefully lest they should crush young flowers, thinking in their minds, ”G.o.d's pity must restrain me. If so fair a thing can thrive in place so foul, who am I to mar it?” But upon Menelaus, the King, the season worked like a ferment, so that he could never stay long in one place. All night long he turned and stretched himself out; but in the gray of the morning he would rise, and walk abroad by himself over the silent land, and about the sleeping walls of the city. So found he balm for his ache, and so he did every day.
The house of Paris stood by the wall, and the garden upon the roof of the women's side was there upon it, and stretched far along the ramparts of Troy. King Menelaus knew it very well, for he had often seen Helen there with her maids when, with a veil to cover her face up to the eyes, she had stood there to watch the fighting, or the games about the pyre of some chieftain dead, or the manege of the s.h.i.+ps lying off Tenedos.
Indeed, when he had been there in his chariot, urging an attack upon the gate, he had seen Paris come out of the house to Helen where she stood in the garden; and he saw that deceiver take the lovely woman in his arm, and with his hand withdraw the veil from her mouth that he might look at it. The maids were all about her, and below raged a battle among men; but he cared nothing for these. No, but he lifted up her face by the chin, and stooped his head, and kissed her twice; and would have kissed her a third time, but that by chance he saw King Menelaus below him, who stood up in his chariot and watched. Then he turned lightly and left her, and went in, and so presently she too, with her veil in her hand, not yet over her mouth, looked down from the wall and saw the King, her husband. Long and deeply looked she; and he looked up at her; and so they stood, gazing each at the other. Then came women from the house and veiled her mouth, and took her away. Other times, too, he had seen her there, but she not him; and now, at this turn of the year, the memory of her came bright and hard before him; and he walked under the wall of the house in the gray of the morning. And as he walked there fiercely on a day, behold she stood above him on the wall, veiled, and in a brown robe, looking down at him. And they looked at each other for a s.p.a.ce of time. And n.o.body was by.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ABDUCTION OF HELEN FROM THE PAINTING BY RUDOLPH VON DEUTSCH]
Shaking, he said, ”O Ruinous Face, art thou so early from the wicked bed?”
She said low, ”Yea, my lord, I am so early.”
”These ten long years,” he said then, ”I have walked here at this hour, but never yet saw I thee.”
She answered, ”But I have seen my lord, for at this hour my lord Alexandros is accustomed to sleep and I to wake. And so I take the air, and am by myself.”
”O G.o.d!” he said, ”would that I could come at thee, lady.” She replied him nothing. So, after a little while of looking, he spoke to her again, saying, ”Is this true which thou makest me to think, that thou walkest here in order that thou mayst be by thyself? Is it true, O thou G.o.d-begotten?”
She said, smiling a little, ”Is it so wonderful a thing that I should desire to be alone?”
”By my fathers,” he said, ”I think it wonderful. And more wonderful is it to me that it should be allowed thee.” And then he looked earnestly at her, and asked her this: ”Dost thou, therefore, desire that I should leave thee?”
”Nay,” said she slowly, ”I said not so.”
”Ask me to stay, and I stay,” he said. But she made no answer to that; but looked down to the earth at her feet. ”Behold,” said the King presently, ”ten years and more since I have known my wife. Now if I were to cast my spear at thee and rive open thy golden side, what wonder were it? Answer me that.”
She looked long at him, that he saw the deep gray of her eyes. And he heard the low voice answer him, ”I know that my lord would never do it.”
And he knew it better than she, and the reason as well as she.