You err. But that’s all one: I have your word.
Mar.
You say that once again? You—impious!
Oh what an uprush of night-spawnéd thoughts
And what mistrust you wake within my breast!
You speak such words as though I had been chosen
For altar-beast and you for altar-priest—
By Herod’s very self. Is’t so? At parting
There fell from him—I think thereon with horror—
A word of darkness. Answer!
Joseph.
This I give,
Soon as the need shall come, soon as I know
That he——
Mar.
No more can give you level lie,
If you, poltroon and vile, charged him with what
Numbs thought with fear, unmeasured and unnamed,
To sweep your own name sweet in my esteem?
I tell you, I but listen to you now
Since now, perhaps, before I make an end,
He may step through the door and strike you down.
Be silent then for aye or speak at once.
Joseph.
And if ’twere so? I say not it is so,
But if it were? What other would it be
Than confirmation of the thing you feel,
Than noble proof he loves as ne’er before
A man has loved his wife?
Mar.
What is’t you say?
Methinks my ears have heard that word before!
Joseph.
Why, I’d have thought ’twould please your quick of pride
To know he felt not death was half so bitter
As this, the thought he’d——
Mar.
Come, what will you stake
Myself can bring it for you to an end?
—As this, the thought he’d leave me here behind him
Amid a world where lives an Antony.
Joseph.
Well—yes then! But I say not that he’s said it—
Mar.
He’s said it? He has—Oh, what has he not?
Oh, that he came to end it!
Joseph.
Mariamne!
(Aside.) My feet are in the gin! True, I did naught
But what I must; and yet a horror grips me
That he—before my eyes comes Aristobulus.
Accurséd be the dead that flings a shadow
Ere it steps into life!
Mar.
Like to a crazy blister of the brain
Whose swollen puffiness at times will split,
So was it—From this hour my life begins.
Until to-day I dreamed!
Scene 6
The Same. Salome.
[Enter a Servant, followed by Salome.
Salome (to the Servant).
Were you forbidden
To grant to any entry unannounced?
I take the blame.
Joseph.
Salome, you?
Salome.
Who else?
No evil ghost! Your wife, your hapless wife
Whom once you wooed as Jacob wooed his Rachel
And whom you now——(To Mariamne.) Accurséd, was’t not even
Enough for you to turn away from me
My brother’s heart? And must you now go further
And rob me of my husband? Day and night
He thinks of you as though you were a widow
Even now, and I still less than that. By day
He dogs your goings step by step; by night
He dreams of you, calls out your name in anguish
And starts up from his slumber—(To Joseph.) Did I not
Chide you this morning for’t? And now to-day;
When all Jerusalem is in an uproar,
To-day he’s not with me, not at the market,
Where I bade seek him, since he never came.
He is with you, and ye—ye are alone!
Mar.
Then sure it is not she; it is himself!
If any remnant-doubt still gave me pause
’Tis choked by this insensate jealousy.
I was a thing to him and nothing more.
Joseph (to Salome).
I swear——
Salome.
That I am blind? No, no—I see!
Mar.
The dying man whose will decreed his fig-tree
Be hewn to earth because he grudged its fruits
After his death to any other man,
The dying man were execrate, and had,
It may be, sown the tree himself and knew
That any thief, that even any murderer
Who shook its boughs must share its quickening gift—
But neither fits my case. And yet, and yet
That is an outrage Time has yet not known.
Salome (to Joseph).
You speak in vain. Commission? What commission?
Mar.
Commission? Ah, that seals it! If it could be,
Now surely, now if never it could be.
Ah, but it cannot be! There is no impulse
Of baser sort that spots my innermost
For all my stormy-ridden breast. I would
Now at this moment give to Antony
The answer, yea the very self-same answer
I would have given him on our wedding-day.
It wounds me as it wounds because I feel it,
Else were I bound to suffer, yea, to pardon.
Salome (to Mariamne).
It seems for you I am not!
Mar.
Nay, far from it!
Indeed you have bestowed on me the greatest
That kindness could. I, who was blind, now see;
I see full clear and that through you alone.
Salome.
You void your scorn on me? That too I’ll penance
If but my brother come again. I will
Relate him all——
Mar.
What? Ay, ’tis well! Do so!
If he give ear—why not? Why do I laugh?
Is that too past belief? If he give ear
Then hear my word—I will gainsay you not.
I love myself no more enough to do it.
[Enter hastily Alexandra.
Alex.
The King!
Joseph.
Within the town?
Alex.
By now i’ the castle!