The Ruinous Face | Page 8

* * * * *
Now Paris, fighting, came backwards into the hall where Helen was;
and Menelaus came fiercely after him, and in the doorway drove a
spear at him that went through the leather of his shield, through all the
folds of it and ran deep into the flesh of his throat where it fastens to
the shoulder. Then Paris groaned and bent his knees, and fell, calling
Helen by her name. Then came she in her bright harness, with a
burning face, and stood over the body of Paris, and held out her arms to
the King, saying, "Husband, lord, behold, here am I, by your side!"
Eutyches came after her, armed also.
Then Menelaus, with the bloody spear in his hand newly plucked from
the neck of Paris, gazed at his wife, not knowing her. So presently he
said, weak-voiced, "What is this, O loveliest in the world?" But he
knew Eutyches again, who had been with him and her in Sparta, and
said to him, "Disarm her, but with care, lest the bronze bruise her fair
flesh." So Eutyches, trembling, disarmed her, that she stood a lovely
woman before the King. And Menelaus, with a shout, took her in his
arms and cried out above the fire and dust and shrieking in the street,
"Come, come, my treasure and desire! Love me now or I die!"
But she clung to him, imploring. "Not here," she said, "not here,
Menelaus. Take me hence; let me fare by thy side this night."

But he pressed her the closer, saying, "Come, thou must love me now,"
and lifted her in his arms and ran up the stair and through the gallery of
the house to the great chamber where of late she had lain. And he called
her women to disrobe her; and Helen fell to crying bitterly, and said,
"Oh, I am a slave, I am a slave: I am bought and sold and handed
about." And she could not be comforted or stayed from weeping. But
nothing recked King Menelaus for that.
* * * * *
When the walls of wide-wayed Troy were cast down, and of the towers
and houses of the chiefs nothing stood but staring walls and rafters
charred by fire; and when the temples of the Dardan Gods had been
sacked, and scorn done to the body of Priam the Old; and Cassandra in
the tent of King Agamemnon shuddered and rocked herself about; and
when dogs had eaten the fair body of Paris, then the Achæans turned
their eyes with longing to their homesteads. So there was a great
ship-building and launching of keels; and at last King Menelaus
embarked for peopled Lacedæmon, and took his lovely wife with him
in the ship, and stayed his course at Rhodes for certain days, resting
there with Helen. There he set a close guard about her all day; and as
Paris had loved her, so loved he. But she was wretched, and spent her
days in weeping; and grew pale and thin, and was for ever scheming
shifts how she might be delivered from such a life as she led. Ever by
the door of the chamber stood Eutyches, and watched her closely,
marking her distress. And she knew that he knew it; for what woman
does not know the secret mind of a man with regard to her?
* * * * *
So, on a day, sat Helen by the window with her needlework in her lap,
and looked out over the sea. Eutyches came into the room where she
was, silently, through the hangings of the door, and kneeling to her,
kissed her knee. She turned to him her sad face, saying, "What wouldst
thou of me, Eutyches?"
"Lady," he said, "thy pardon first of all."

She smiled upon him. "Thou hast it," she said; "what then?"
He said to her, "Lady, I have served thee these many years, and no man
knows thy mind better than I do, who know it only from thy face. For I
have been but a house-dog in thy sight. But I have never read it
wrongly; and now I know that thou art unhappy...."
"Yes," she said, "it is true. I am very unhappy, and with reason."
Eutyches drew from his bosom a sharp sword and laid it upon her knee.
"Take this sovereign remedy from thy servant," he said. "No ills can
withstand it, so sharp it is." And he left her with the bare sword upon
her knees. She hid it in the coverings of the bed.
Now, when King Menelaus had feasted in the hall, he came
immediately after into the Queen's chamber. And he said to her, "Hail,
loveliest of women born!" and again, "Hail, thou Rose of the World!"