I thank you.
[Exit Alexandra.
Aaron (to the other Judges).
Can we not even now attempt
To soften him? This fills me o’er with horror.
She is the last of Maccabean daughters.
If we could only gain the briefest respite!
Now ’twere not feasible that we withstood him.
Soon will he be his former self again
And then it’s possible he’ll punish us
Because to-day we made him no resistance.
Follow him!
[Exit.
Joab (approaching Mariamne).
You forgive? I must obey.
Mar.
Do what your Lord commands and do it swift.
I shall be ready soon as you yourself,
And queens, you know, are never wont to wait.
[Exit Joab.
Scene 6
Mariamne. Titus. Afterwards, Joab.
Mariamne. (approaching Titus).
Yet one more word before I sleep, the while
My latest chamberlain prepares my bed.
I see you are astounded that this word
Directs itself on you and not my mother,
But she is far and foreign to my heart.
Titus.
Astounded that the woman thus should teach me
How hearted I, the man, should meet my death.
Yes, Queen, it prickles sense, this thing you’ve done,
Nor less, I hide it not, your Being’s self;
Yet, this despite, the hero-soul I honour
Which lets you take your leave of life as though
You left this fair world at your journey’s end
No longer worth a fleeting backward glance.
And this brave mood half reconciles me to you.
Mar.
’Tis no brave mood.
Titus.
I’ faith I have been told
Your black-look Pharisees give out the notion
That death is but the proper birth of life.
And who believes them sets the world at nothing
In which the sun alone gives light eternal
And all beside is puffed into the night.
Mar.
I ne’er would hear them and believe it not.
Nay, nay, I know from what I am to part.
Titus.
Then you stand thus as scarce could Caesar’s self
When Brutus’ hand had dealt the dagger-thrust.
For he, too proud to bare his pain of heart
And yet not strong enough to choke it under,
In falling covered up his countenance.
But you can hold it back within your breast.
Mar.
No more, no more! It is not as you think.
I feel no longer pain of heart, for pain
Demands the nerve of life, and life in me
Is a quenched fire. I long have been no more
Than middle thing between the Man and Shadow
And scarcely grasp the thought I still can die.
Hear now a thing I will confide in you,
But first give oath to me as man and Roman
That you’ll be dumb till I am under earth,
And that you bear me escort when I go.
You hesitate? I ask too much of you?
My slip to sin is not the cause, and if
You later speak or if you hold your peace
Decide yourself; I’ll bind you not in aught,
And more, I hold that wish of mine in check
Since you have ever, like a bronzen god
Above a brawl of fire, self-mastered, cold,
Cast the strong fretless eye upon our hell.
You may command belief in giving witness.
We are for you a race of other breed
No bond can knit to you; you speak of us
As we would speak of foreign plants and stones,
Impartial, void of love and void of hate.
Titus.
You go too far.
Mar.
If you refuse me now
Your overstubborn word, I take my secret
With me into the grave; my latest solace
I then must lack this—that one human breast
Will keep mine image pure and undefiled,
Which then when Fate has dared its ugliest
Can lift the veil that shrouds it from the feel
Of duty and of reverence for the truth.
Titus.
Good. I will swear the oath to you.
Mar.
Then know
I put deceit on Herod, but ’twas other,
Far other than he weens; nay, I was true
As he to self. Why shame me thus—much truer,
For he has long been other than he was.
What, am I to protest it? Sooner far
I were resolved to swear an oath I have
My eyes and hands and feet. Them I would lose
And I would still remain that which I am;
But not my heart and soul.
Titus.
I do believe you
And I will——
Mar.
Keep the promise you have made.
I doubt it not. Now ask yourself my feeling
When for the second time (for once already
I’d pardoned him) he put me under sword
And I must say to me:—“Your shadow’s liker
Your proper self than that wry twisted image
He bears of you far in his inmost depths.”
’Twas that I would not bear, and could I so?
I made to grasp my dagger, and prevented
From rash-essayed self-murder, I then swore—
“It is your will in death to be my headsman?
You shall become my headsman, but in life.
The woman you have gazed on you shall slaughter
And not till death shall see me as I am;”
You came unto my feast; well then, a mask
Was dancing there.
Titus.
Ha!
Mar.
’Twas a mask that stood
To-day before the Judges; for a mask
The axe is whetted, but it strikes myself.
Titus.
I stand dumbfounded, Queen, and yet I charge you
With no injustice when perforce I say
That you had duped my very self, had filled me
With horror and recoil before your feast
As now with shudders and admiring wonder.
If thus with me, how could this show for him
Have failed to dim your Being in a darkness,
For him, whose heart all passion-fluctuous
As little as a turbid-troubled stream
Could image things reflected as they are.
Therefore I give his hurt my answering feel
And find that your revenge is overstern.
Mar.
But that revenge I take at my own cost;
And proof it was not for the sake of life
That death like any altar-beast incensed me
I give you, for I cast that life away.
Titus.
Give me my word again!
Mar.
And if you broke it
You’d alter not a tittle; for to die,
There man commands his fellow, but to live,
In that the mightiest forces not the weakest.
And I’m aweary! Yea, I envy now
The stone, and if the end of life is this
That man should learn to hate it and to death,
Eternal death, give preference, it is
Achieved in me. And may they quarry granite,
Uncrumbling rock, to hollow out my coffin,
May it be sunken in abysmal ocean
That so my dust escape the elements
Oblivioned for all eternity.
Titus.
And yet we all live in the world of show.
Mar.
I see that now and therefore I go out.
Titus.
I have myself against you testified.
Mar.
To gain that end I had you at the feast.
Titus.
Should I say to him what to me you’ve said—
Mar.
Then he would call me back, I doubt it not.
And if I followed, this were my reward,
That now before each one that comes anear me
Henceforward I must shudder and inly say—
“Take care, for this perchance is your third headsman!”
No, Titus, no, I played no pettish game;
For me there’s no return; if such there were
Think you I had not found it out when I
Took everlasting farewell from my children?
Naught but defiance drove me, as he thinks;
If so my guiltless smart had broke defiance
And now ’twould only mean a bitterer death.
Titus.
Oh, if he felt that, came himself and flung him
Down at your feet!
Mar.
Yes, then indeed he had
The Demon overmastered, and I could
Say all to him. For it is not my part
To chaffer with him meanly for a life
That through the price alone at which ’tis bought
Must lose for me the paltriest patch of worth.
It were my part, to crown him for self-conquest
And, oh believe, I could!
Titus.
Have you no boding,
O Herod?
[Joab enters noiselessly and remains standing in silence.
Mar.
No! You see, he sends me—him! (pointing to Joab.)
Titus.
Let me——
Mar.
Have you not understood me, Titus?
And in your eyes is still the cause defiance
That put my mouth in lock? Can I still live?
Can I still live with him, the man who now
In me God’s image venerates no more?
And if by keeping silence I had power
To necromance old Death and give him weapons
Were it my duty then to break my silence
Only to change one dagger for the other?
And were it more to do so?
Titus.
She is right.
Mar. (to Joab).
Are you prepared?
[Joab bows.
(Turning towards Herod’s apartments.) Then, Herod, fare you well!
(To Earth.) Thou, Aristobulus, oh receive my greeting!
Soon I am with thee in eternal night.
[She moves towards the door. Joab opens it. Armed men are seen who form their ranks in homage. She goes out. Titus follows her. Joab joins them. Solemn pause.
Scene 7
Salome alone.
Salome.
She’s gone! And yet I feel no throb of heart,
A further sign that she deserves her fate.
And so I have at last my brother back,
My mother also has her son. ’Tis well;
I would not budge from him. Else had the Judges
E’en then his judgment jarred. Nay, Aaron, nay,
No word of prison! She’d remain endungeoned
Not for a moon. The grave alone holds fast,
For to the grave alone he has no key.16
[Enter a Servant.
Scene 8
Salome, The Three Kings from the East, Herod, Titus, Joab, Alexandra.
Servant.
Three kings from out the Eastern lands are here,
They are with costly presents richly laden
And at this very moment have arrived.
Never were seen more strangely striking figures
Nor garments of more wondrous kind than these.
Salome.
Conduct them in.
[Exit Servant.
I’ll tell him this at once.
So long as they’re with him he will not think
On her; and all is over soon with her.
[She goes after Herod.
[The Servant conducts in the Three Kings From the East. They are dressed in strange and curious raiment in such a way that they differ from each other in every particular. A rich retinue follows them, of like characteristics. Gold, incense, and myrrh. Enter Herod, and Salome shortly after him.
First King.
O King, all hail!
Second King.
A blessing on thy House!
Third King.
A benison to all eternity!
Herod.
I thank you. But methinks for such an hour
The salutation’s strange.
First King.
Was not a son
Born to you?
Herod.
Me? Oh no! My wife has died.
First King.
We have no call to tarry here.
Second King.
So there’s
A second King then here?
Herod.
Then there would be
None here at all.
Third King.
There’s here, beside your own,
A second stem, it seems, of Kingly blood.
Herod.
And why?
First King.
It is so.
Second King.
Yes, it must be so.
Herod.
Of that too I know naught.
Salome (to Herod).
In Bethlehem
The stem of David still has left a shoot
Remaining.
Third King.
David was a King?
Herod.
’Tis so.
First King.
Let us now go even unto Bethlehem!
Salome (continuing, to Herod).
But now it plants its seed alone in beggars.
Herod.
I think it, else——
Salome.
I spoke once with a virgin
Of David’s house, Mary, I think, her name.
I found her fair enough for such a lineage,
But she was to a carpenter betrothed
And scarcely lifted eyes upon my face
When I made question of her name.
Herod.
You hear it?
Second King.
’Tis naught! We go.
Herod.
You will then, ere you go,
Acquaint me what has brought you hither.
First King.
Reverence
Before the King above all Kings.
Second King.
The wish
Ere yet we die to view his countenance.
Third King.
The holy duty at His feet in homage
To lay whatever on earth is costly-rare.
Herod.
Who gave you tidings of Him then?
First King.
His star!
We journeyed not together and we knew
Naught of each other, for our kingdoms lie
To furthest East and furthest West, seas flow
Between them, lofty mountains sunder them——
Second King.
And yet it was the self-same star we saw,
The self-same impulse that had seized our hearts;
We wandered on the self-same way and met us
At last together at the self-same goal——
Third King.
Whether a King’s son or a beggar’s son
The Child this star has lighted into life
Will be uplifted high, and on the Earth
No man shall breathe that will not bow to Him.
Herod (aside).
So speaks the Ancient Book as well! (Aloud.) May I
Make offer of a guide to Bethlehem?
First King
(pointing to Heaven). We have a guide!
Herod.
Then good. And if the Child
Be found, I prithee send to me the tidings
That I with you may do Him reverence.
First King.
It shall be done. Now forth to Bethlehem!
[The Three Kings with their retinue leave the stage.
Herod.
It never will be done!
[Enter Joab and Titus, followed by Alexandra.
Ha!
Joab.
It is finished!
[Herod covers up his face.
Titus.
She died, yes, died! But as for me, I have
A still more fearful office to perform
Than he who brought your word of blood to pass,
For I must tell you she was innocent.
Herod.
No, Titus, no!
[Titus is about to speak.
(Stepping close up to him.) For were that so, you could not
Have let her go to death.
Titus.
No one was able
To hinder that but you. It gives me pain
To be against my will your worse than headsman,
But if a holy duty yields the dead one,
Whoever he may be, the rite of burial,
Still holier is the duty from a shame
To wash him clean if he deserve it not.
This duty now lays law on me alone.
Herod.
I see from all you say one only thing—
Her spell in death itself was true to her.
Why eats Soemus still my heart? How could he
Resist this blinding woman in her life?
Even in the dying flash she kindled you.
Titus.
Goes jealousy the very grave beyond?
Herod.
If I have duped me, if from out your mouth
Some other thing than pity now were speaking
Too deep by far not to be more than such,
Then I must give you warning that your witness
Helped to condemn her, that the duty-bond
For you had then been this—to give me warning
As soon as e’er the tiniest doubt had come.
Titus.
But my word held me back, and, more than that,
The unimplorable Necessity.
Had I relaxed from her one pace, no further,
Upon herself the deathly thrust were given.
I saw the dagger hidden in her breast
And more than once the twitching of her hand.
[Pause.
She wished to die; she must have done so, too.
As much she suffered and as much she pardoned
As she had power to pardon and to suffer.
I have beheld her very innermost,
Who more demands should quarrel not with her,
Should quarrel only with the elements
Which, willed or not, had been so mixed in her
That she could go no further. Yes, but let him
Show me a woman further gone than she!
[Herod makes a gesture.
She wished to have her death from you, and called
The unshapen dream-child of your jealousy
Into illusive being at her feast,
Juggling her soul to death and all deceiving.
I found that stern but not unjust. She stepped
As mask before your eyes; the mask was destined
To sting you till you pierced it with a sword-thrust.
[He points to Joab.
And that you did and killed her very self.
Herod.
So spoke she, but she spoke from vengeance so.
Titus.
So was it. I have testified against her.
How gladly would I doubt it!
Herod.
And Soemus?
Titus.
Upon the way that leads to death I met him,
He entered on his own as soon as hers
Had been accomplished, and he felt it balm
To think his blood with hers should be commingled
E’en though upon the block by headsman-hand.
Herod.
Aha! You see?
Titus.