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Page 37
"Insane asylum," said Elizabeth, shortly.
"Precisely. So in Paris with the rest of us," said Cassandra.
"How do you know all this?" asked Trilby, still unconvinced.
"I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna," said Cassandra.
"I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent
detachable hypnotizer you had. I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind into
the future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy,
and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I doubt not,
still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. �neas would not have
grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride on the
opening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by Virgil."
"I never heard about that," said Trilby. "It sounds like a very funny
story, though."
"Well, it wasn't so humorous for some as it was for others," said
Cassandra, with a sly glance at Helen. "The fact is, until you mentioned
it yourself, it never occurred to me that there was much fun in any
portion of the Trojan incident, excepting perhaps the delirium tremens of
old Laocoon, who got no more than he deserved for stealing my thunder. I
had warned Troy against the Greeks, and they all laughed at me, and said
my eye to the future was strabismatic; that the Greeks couldn't get into
Troy at all, even if they wanted to. And then the Greeks made a great
wooden horse as a gift for the Trojans, and when I turned my X-ray gaze
upon it I saw that it contained about six brigades of infantry, three
artillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score. It was a sort of
military Noah's Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was so
strong that nobody would believe what I told them. So I said nothing. My
prophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my warning
as to what would be was in itself the cause of their non-fulfilment. But
desiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told him all about it, and
he went out and announced it as his own private prophecy; and then, having
tried to drown his conscience in strong waters, he fell a victim to the
usual serpentine hallucination, and everybody said he wasn't sober, and
therefore unworthy of belief. The horse was accepted, hauled into the
city, and that night orders came from hindquarters to the regiments
concealed inside to march. They marched, and next morning Troy had been
removed from the map; ninety per cent. of the Trojans died suddenly, and
�neas, grabbing up his family in one hand and his gods in the other, went
yachting for several seasons, ultimately settling down in Italy. All of
this could have been avoided if the Trojans would have taken the hint from
my prophecies. They preferred, however, not to do it, with the result that
to-day no one but Helen and myself knows even where Troy was, and we'll
never tell."
"It is all true," said Helen, proudly. "I was the woman who was at the
bottom of it all, and I can testify that Cassandra always told the truth,
which is why she was always so unpopular. When anything that was
unpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say,
sweetly, 'I told you so.' She was the original 'I told you so' nuisance,
and of course she had the newspapyruses down on her, because she never
left them any sensation to spring upon the public. If she had only told a
fib once in a while, the public would have had more confidence in her."
"Thank you for your endorsement," said Cassandra, with a nod at Helen.
"With such testimony I cannot see how you can refrain from taking my
advice in this matter; and I tell you, ladies, that this man Kidd has made
his story up out of whole cloth; the men of Hades had no more to do with
our being here than we had; they were as much surprised as we are to find
us gone. Kidd himself was not aware of our presence, and his object in
taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits,
vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, and
nothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have no
sympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our continued
existence."
"But what, then, shall we do?" cried Ophelia, wringing her hands in
despair.
"It is a terrible problem," said Cleopatra, anxiously; "and yet it does
seem as if our woman's instinct ought to show us some way out of our
trouble."
"The Committee on Treachery," said Delilah, "has already suggested a
chafing-dish party, with Lucretia Borgia in charge of the lobster
Newberg."
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