The Ruinous Face | Page 2

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 Cassandra 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 Gods 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 Gods were offended with Troy, there was no help for it. Men must live first, before they can serve God.
* * * * *
Now the tenth year was come to the Spring, when young men and virgins worship 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, "God'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 man��ge of the ships 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 space of time. And nobody was by.
[Illustration: 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