Chapter IX: Act III: Scene 1

_The Castle on Zion._ ALEXANDRA’S _Apartments_. ALEXANDRA. JOSEPH. SALOME.

_Enter_ HEROD, SOEMUS, _and Retinue_.

HEROD.

I’m home again. (_To_ SOEMUS.) Does it stil bleed? The stone,
Though meant for me, hit you because in just
That nick of time you came to tell me something.
Your head for this time made your King a shield,
But had you stayed at post----

SOEMUS.

I had not then
Received the wound nor rendered you the service,
If it be worth the name. In Galilee
That man is stoned at least who’s so foolhardy
To get at loggerheads with you and me,
Since I’m your shadow or your speaking-trumpet
Or what you will.

HEROD.

Yes, there the men are true--
That is, to ends of theirs; and since these ends
With mine go hand in hand, to mine as well.

SOEMUS.

How true this token shows you--that you find
Myself in your chief city.

HEROD.

Ay, indeed
I had not thought that I would meet you here,
For when the King is far there’s double need
Among the stiff-necked provinces for watchers.
What was it then that drove you from your post?
’Twas sure some other impulse than the wish
To prove me that it might unjeopardised
Lie tenantless; or thought’s instinctive feel
That a flung stone was here to intercept.

SOEMUS.

I was come here to advertise the viceroy
Touching disclosures of a wondrous kind,
And tell them orally in all due haste.
I would apprise him that the Pharisees
Seek even the stubborn soil of Galilee,
Although their work is vain, to underburrow.
But all too late my warning came; I found
Jerusalem in flames by then, and could
But help extinguish them.

HEROD (_giving him his hand_).

And that you did
With blood of yours!--Ah, Joseph! you? Good-day!
I thought to find you other here; but good;
Yet, for the nonce, go bring me Sameas
The Pharisee, who’s held by Captain Titus
A prisoner in the mode the Scythians use.
The ironside Roman drags him, fastly bounden
Unto the tail of the war-horse he rides,
Hither and thither, since the holy zealot
Spat after him i’ the open market-place.
Now he must run as he may ne’er before
Have run if he’s no mind to have a tumble
And go a-draggling. Then and there ’twere better
That I had rescued him as I went past.
I’ faith, ’tis sure I owe him thanks alone
That all the serpents who until to-day
Crawled stilly from my foot, are known to me.
Now I can stamp them piecemeal when I will.

[_Exit_ JOSEPH.

(_To_ ALEXANDRA.) I give you greeting, and from Antony
I am to make announcement that a river
Cannot be brought to judgment; and a King
Within whose land it flows with less of right
Because he did not earth it in. (_To_ SOEMUS.) I were
Long since again come hither, but when friends
Together meet who seldom see each other,
They hold them fast. And so ’twill be with you
(I treat you with a foretaste) now I’m host
And have you at the longed-for last again.
And you with me must set the figs a-shaking
Just as, perforce, I aided Antony,
Pah, gluttony! in stream of old Falernian
To smother lampreys and call many a prank
From out our bygone times to jog remembrance
With freshening fillip. So, resolve your mind
To do like service. If I scarce may have
Enough of the triumphant hero in me
To have you so commanded to my presence
As he commanded me to his, with show
Of hearing me on some insipid charge,
His brow like Cæsar’s wrinkled and his arm
With lightning and with thunderbolt beweaponed,
And all to be assured--this was the ground
On which he did it--that I came for certain,
If such be so, at least to-day’s good chance
That puts you in my hands I’ll use to profit
And say, as he, when speeches on your office
Begin--“If you conduct it as you should
It does not need your every wink o’ the eye.
You come so seldom that it seems you’re loath
To be here!”

SOEMUS.

Lord, you do me an injustice;
And yet I have no cause to come too often.

HEROD (_to_ SALOME).

And you here too? So you have learnt at last
To trick your wits, when you meet Mariamne,
With fancy-thoughts that you look in a mirror
And spy your own reflected counterpart?
’Twas oft my counsel when you eyed her sourly;
It never pleased. Take not the jest amiss.
There is no evil doing in the hour
When friends are come a-meeting. But where is she?
I heard it said that she was with her mother
And so came here.

SALOME.

She went when she had learnt
That you were nearing.

HEROD.

Went? Impossible!
But good. She did it since ’tis solitude
Befits reunion. (_Aside._) Heart, will you bear her anger
Nor rather make amends? (_Aloud._) I follow her;
Her delicate feeling’s right.

SALOME.

Go, self-deceiver!
The fright of seeing you recalled to life,
The shame of having credited your death,
The greater shame of her spoiled widowhood--
O’ersmooth it all with fondling gloss of shyness
The maiden feels who ne’er has known a man
Nor seen the shivering woman taken in sin!
She went from fear!

HEROD.

From fear? Look round about you,
We are not here alone.

SALOME.

That’s opportune!
If before witnesses I bring my plaint
It will be guaranteed your surer ear
And crushed the harder underfoot.

HEROD.

You place
Yourself twixt her and me? Have then a care!
You may be trampled piecemeal.

SALOME.

This time, not!
Although I know how small the sister counts
When you are dealing with the Maccabean,
This time----

HEROD.

I tell you one thing! If, the day
On which she first was given to my sight,
A man were risen in accusation ’gainst her,
He had not easily obtained my hearing,
But yet more easily than now. Take that for warning.
I am so heavy in her debt that she
Can owe no debt to me. I feel that deep.

SALOME.

Ah, so she has free charter?

HEROD.

Any mask
To wear that she thinks well for your hoodwinking
If she would kill the drive of time with you.

SALOME.

Then--then I must be mute. What use in speaking?
For whatsoe’er I chose to tell you, ever
Your answer would be ready--mummery!
At least this mummery has had good luck.
Not me alone but all the world with me
It’s taken by the ear; it costs you honour
And me my rest, however you may swear
That Joseph’s only done what duty bade
When he--see to’t if any man believe you!

HEROD.

When he--what underdrift is lurking? End it!
But no--not yet----(_To a servant._) I bid the Queen be craved
To grant to us her presence. Is it not
As though the whole o’ the world were spider-clean
And all had nested them within my house,
That when for once I see the blue of Heaven
They forthwith might o’erhang it with their webs
And do the work of clouds? True, strange it is
That she comes not. She should, sheer-forced, have kissed me
Caught in the ungoverned all-compelling moment,
And then she might have vexed her lips with biting
When even at that the Ghost refused its quittance.
(_To_ SALOME.) Know you what you have ventured? Know you, woman?
I was rejoiced! D’you understand? And now--
Once on a day the Earth when I was thirsty
Spilled from my hand a goblet filled with wine
Because it fell to quaking ere my lips
Could drain it; I forgave it since I must;
On you I could avenge me.

[_Enter_ MARIAMNE.

SCENE 2

HEROD. MARIAMNE. ALEXANDRA. SALOME.

HEROD.

Fling you down
Before her, who in all these witness-eyes
Have put the offending tarnish on her name,
And I’ll not do it!

SALOME.

Ha!

ALEX.

What may that mean?

HEROD.

Well, Mariamne?

MAR.

What commands the King?
I have been summoned and I have appeared.

ALEX.

Is this the wife who swore to kill herself
If he returned not hither?

HEROD.

This your greeting?

MAR.

The King bade summon me that I should greet him?
I greet him; and thereby the work is done.

ALEX.

You’re sore in error. Here you stand arraigned.

HEROD.

There was a charge preferred. Before I gave
The charge a hearing I sent word to beg you
Come hither, but in truth with no desire
That you should counter it with your defence,
Only because I think that of itself
’Twill lose its breath and die before your presence.

MAR.

To hinder that I should again begone.

HEROD.

What, Mariamne? You were never ranked
Among those souls of despicable kind
Who, when their foeman’s countenance or back
Comes to first gaze, forgive and fresh their grudging
Because they are too weak for genuine hate,
Too tiny for the fuller, greater mood.
By what then is your deepest so transformed
That now so late you should companion them?
What? When I left you had for me farewell
And I had thought that this a claim would give me
Upon your welcome. You deny me that?
And you stand here as though the berg and vale
Still lay between that kept us so long sundered?
You step aback when I would come anear?
Is’t then that my return is hateful to you?

MAR.

How should it be? Indeed it gives my life
Again to me.

HEROD.

Your life? What word is this?

MAR.

You’ll not deny you understand the word.

HEROD (_aside_).

Can she then know it? (_To_ MARIAMNE.) Come!

[MARIAMNE _does not follow_.

Leave us alone!
(_To_ ALEXANDRA.) You’ll pardon?

ALEX.

Ay!

[_Exit, followed by the others._

MAR.

So craven, then!

HEROD.

So craven?

MAR.

And also--how’s it nameable?

HEROD.

And also?
(_Aside._) ’Twere horrible! I’d never quench it in her!

MAR.

His wife, free-willed, may grave-ward follow him,
The headsman’s hand may thrust her under earth--
All’s one if he make sure she dies. He leaves her
No time even for self-sacrificial death.

HEROD.

She knows it!

MAR.

And is Antony a man
As I till now believed, a man like you,
Or else a demon, as you must believe
Since you’re in desperate doubt if in my bosom
Some last lorn duty-sense, some remnant pride
Would make a stand against him when, all dripping
With blood of yours, he faced me as a wooer
And made assault of storm to pass the time
Which the Egyptian Woman leaves him free?

HEROD (_aside_).

But how? but how?

MAR.

At least he were compelled
To have you dead before he came a-wooing,
And if you feel yourself--I were not able
To think it, but I see’t--so null a nithing
That you despair his scale to counterpoise
With the pure metal of your manhood’s worth
In your wife’s heart, what justifies you then
To hold my worth so light that you could fear
Myself would never spurn the murderer back?
O double insult!

HEROD (_breaking out_).

Tell me for what price
You learnt this secret! ’Twas not lightly venal!
A head was pledged me for it!

MAR.

O Salome,
How well you knew your brother!--Question him
Whose treachery told me what he had received.
From me expect to hear no answer more.

[_She turns away._

HEROD.

I’ll show you quickly how I’ll question him!
Soemus!

[_Enter_ SOEMUS.

SCENE 3

HEROD. MARIAMNE. SOEMUS.

HEROD.

Is my kinsman Joseph here?

SOEMUS.

He’s tarrying with Sameas.

HEROD.

Lead him hence!
I gave a letter to him. Have the letter
Forthwith delivered. You afford him escort
And see that all be loyally fulfilled
Whatever this letter orders.

SOEMUS.

’Twill be done.

[_Exit._

HEROD.

Whate’er you may suspect or think or know,
You have misprised me.

MAR.

On a brother’s murder
The seal you’ve planted of necessity
To which the neck must bow though sharp the shudder,
But you’ll ne’er have the plausible success
To stamp this seal upon my murder too;
That murder must remain the thing it is,
An outrage that at most may be repeated
But never, never can be overgone.

HEROD.

I would not have the courage for an answer
Unless, whatever the deed I may have ventured,
I had not been assured of the event;
But then I was assured and was so only
Because I set my all upon the hazard.
I did what on the field of fight the soldier
Is wont to do when all his last’s at stake.
He flings the standard which has led him onward,
On which his fortunes and his honour hang,
Determined in the mellay of the foemen
But not because he thinks to give’t for spoil.
He brings the wreath, which now no more by courage
Only by hope forlorn was to be reached,
The victory-wreath, albeit tattered, with him.
You called me craven. If the man is so
Who fears a seated demon in himself,
Then I at times am craven, but alone
When I must reach my goal on crooked by-paths,
When I must duck my head and make a show
As though I were no more the man I am.
Then anguish takes me that I might too soon
Erect my bearing, and to tame my pride,
Which, lightly strung, might spur me on thereto,
I knit into me what is more than Self
And which with me must stand or suffer fall.
Know you what waited on me as I went?
No dual fight, and less by far a court;
A tyrant whimsy-willed to whom I must
Forswear myself, and yet I surely had
Forsworn no tittle if--I thought of you
And gnashed my teeth not once--and whatsoe’er
He may have bid the Man and King within me,
Haling me on from gorge to gorge, yet holding
My teasing quittance back in sinister silence
--I took it all as patient as a slave.

MAR.

You speak in vain. In me humanity
Is shamed by you. My pain each soul must share.
Who’s human is like me, nor has he need
To be my kin, or woman as I am.
When you with murder secret-still had robbed
My brother, only they could share my weeping
Who might have brothers; and the rest might all
With eyes still dry of tears, step from me sidewards
Refusing me their pity. But a life
Has every man, and none allows his life
Be taken from him but by God alone
Who was the Giver of it. Such an outrage
Is damned by mankind’s universal race,
Is damned by Fate who suffered it begin,
’Tis true, but not succeed; is damned by you.
And if the Human in me is through you
So deeply hurt, what must the woman feel?
How stand I now to you and you to me?

SCENE 4

HEROD. MARIAMNE. SALOME.

SALOME (_entering hastily_).

What plan you, Man of Horror? Ah, I see
My husband led away; and he conjures me
Beseech you for your mercy--but I wavered
Because I bear him grudge nor understand him,
And now--and now I hear things gruesome whispered.
They say--they lie! Say so!

HEROD.

Your husband dies!

SALOME.

Before he is condemned? Ah, never, never!

HEROD.

Himself is his condemner; for the letter
That forfeits him to death was in his hands
Before he played me traitor, and he knew
What penalty it was awaited him
If done; he put him ’neath that penalty
And in its spite he did it.

SALOME.

Herod, hear me!
Do you know that for sure? I did accuse him
And felt beneath my charge the base of right;
I had my grounds therefor--and that he loved her
Was open fact; he had indeed for me
No single further glance, no press of hand--
He was by day about her when he could be.
And in the night his dreams betrayed to me
How firm she held his thought in grip; all that
Is true and more; but, for all that, it follows
Not yet that she must love him in requital
And less than all that she--ah no, ah no!
’Twas jealousy that tore me on--forgive!
(_To_ MARIAMNE.) You too forgive!
O God, and time flies fast! They said--shall I
Then love you as I hated you? Then be
No longer dumb! Speak! Say that he is guiltless
And plead for his reprieve even as myself.

MAR.

He is!

HEROD.

In her construction, not in mine.

MAR.

In yours as well.

HEROD.

You must then have known nothing;
And now a nothing can be his excuse.
And if I make him now a gift to death
Without foretrial, ’tis because my will
Is bent to show you that my thought of you
Is nowise base and mean, and that I rue
The rash-born word that fell from my first wrath,
And more because I know that he can have
Nothing to say to me.

[_Enter_ SOEMUS.

SCENE 5

THE SAME. SOEMUS.

SOEMUS.

The bloody work
Is brought to end; but all Jerusalem
Stands stock-still asking why the man whom you
Ordained to represent your person when you
Made journey hence, now at your coming back
Should be compelled to lose his head.

SALOME (_collapsing_).

Woe’s me!

[MARIAMNE _goes to catch her_.

SALOME.

Away, away! (_To_ HEROD.) And she?

HEROD.

Content you, sister!
Your husband has most heinously deceived me--

SALOME.

And she?

HEROD.

What you think is not so.

SALOME.

Not so?
How then? Your will’s to save her? If my husband
Deceived you heinously she did it too;
For what I said is true, and every man
Shall know it though he not yet know. And you
Shall wash yourself in her blood as in his,
Else ne’er be clean again. At least that’s so![10]

HEROD.

By all that I hold sacred----

SALOME.

Nay then, name
His misdeed to me if it were not such.

HEROD.

Were I to name it I would make it greater.
There was a secret I’d entrusted to him
On which my All was hanging, and this secret
He has betrayed; shall I then do the same?

SALOME.

Pitiful shuffling for my scare contrived!
You think you can outwit me? You believe
In all that I have said, and yet you are
Too strengthless-willed your love to understifle
And rather choose the shrine to overcloak
That you’ll not stamp to nothing. But unless
You murder me, your sister, with my husband,
It will miscarry with you. (_To_ MARIAMNE.) He is dead!
Now you can swear what pleases you; he will
Not contradict you!

[_Exit._

HEROD.

Follow her, Soemus,
And seek to win her to a calm! You know her
And she ere now has given you willing ear.

SOEMUS.

Those times are now no longer; but I go!

[_Exit._

MAR. (_aside_).

For him who meant my murder I might well
Be loath to supplicate; and yet I shudder
That not the respite even for that was left me.

HEROD (_aside_).

’Twas soon or late with him! In the next war
He had been stationed in Uriah’s place!
And yet I rue this hasty hotness now.

[_Enter_ A COURIER.

SCENE 6

HEROD. MARIAMNE. A COURIER.

COURIER.

I’m sent by Antony!

HEROD.

Ah, then I know
What you are bringing me. I must make ready!
The final feud of which he spoke begins.

COURIER.

Octavian, making course for Africa,
Has taken ship; to meet him Antony
Sets out in haste with Cleopatra joined
Intending instant close at Actium----

HEROD.

And I, I, Herod, am to make the third!
’Tis good! I make the march to-day. Soemus,
For all this sorry plight of things, supplies me.
Good that he came!

MAR.

Once more he marches forth!
Eternal One, my thanks!

HEROD (_observing her_).

Ha!

COURIER.

Great King, no!
He needs you not at Actium; he wills
That the Arabians, who have raised rebellion,
Be blocked by you from coupling with the foemen.
This is the service he would have of you.

HEROD.

It lies with him that place to delegate
Where I shall profit him.

MAR.

Once more! Then all
Is fresh unravelled!

HEROD (_as before_).

How my wife is glad!
(_To the_ COURIER.) Tell him--you know’t already--
(_Aside._) Brow unwrinkled
And hands as though for thankful prayer enfolded--
That is her heart!

COURIER.

Have you naught else for me?

MAR.

Now will I know if it were but a fever,
The fever of a passion frenzy-fired
That madded his poised mind, or if I saw
His innermost in clear sane deed betrayed.
Now will I know!

HEROD (_to the_ COURIER).

Naught, naught!

[_Exit_ COURIER.

(_To_ MARIAMNE.) Your countenance
Has taken gladder glow! But do not hope
Too much. One does not always die in war.
I’ve cheated many a one ere now.

MAR. (_about to speak, but interrupting herself_).

No, no!

HEROD.

The issue now involves a hotter fight
Than then, I grant you. Every fight beside
Was waged for something in the world, but this
Is waged for the world’s self; it makes decisive
Who’s destinied world-master--Antony,
Wencher and trencherman, or else Octavian
Who’s empty of his merit when he swears
That he was never drunken in his life.
There’ll be a pretty buffet-bout, and yet
It may be that your wish be not fulfilled,
That Death may pass me with unbloodied sword.

MAR.

My wish! ’Tis well! My wish--then it is good.
O Heart, be quelled! Betray you not! The proving
Is none if he should sense what quicks your throb.
If he stand proof how you will be rewarded!
And how you can reward him! Let him then
Misprise you. Prove him. Think upon the end,
And on the garland you dare reach to him--
When he has trod the Demon underfoot.

HEROD.

I give you thanks; you now have brought my heart
A lightening. Though on the human in you
I may have done no outrage, this is clear--
That I have done no outrage on your love;
And, for this reason, by your love I beg you
Not for one final sacrifice, yet hope
That you will yield to me one final duty.
And this I hope not for my sake alone,
I hope it for your own sake even more,
You will not wish that, at this latest hour,
I see you mistily; you will for this--
That I myself the dead man’s mouth have locked,
Open your own and clear my wondering
How it has come he made his head your gift.
And you will do it for the human in you,
You’ll do it, too, because you honour Self.

MAR.

Because I honour Self I’ll do it not.

HEROD.

So you yourself refuse the fair and fitting?

MAR.

The fair and fitting! So ’twere fair and fitting
That I, on knees before you in abjection,
Swear “Lord, your villein came me not anigh!
And that you may believe--for to your faith
I have no right, albeit I am your wife--
Hear this thing yet and that!” O fie, O fie![11]
No Herod! If your itching later ask
I answer you--perhaps. Now I am dumb.

HEROD.

But if you had been large enough of loving
To grant me grace for all that, out of loving,
I did, I never would have asked you thus.
Now that I know how small your love is, now
I must re-ask the question; for whate’er
Your love vouchsafe me as a bond of surety
Cannot be greater than your love itself.
And Love to which Life is a treasure higher
Than the Beloved, is to me a nothing.

MAR.

Yet am I silent!

HEROD.

Then I damn myself
The mouth whose overpride disdains to swear
No other one has kissed it, nevermore
Myself to kiss till such it lowly do.
Yea, if there were a means could give me potence
Your memory within my heart t’ extinguish,
And if the drastic stab that pierced my eyes,
Oblivioning the mirror of your beauty,
Could also give your image to oblivion,
Now at this very hour I’d stab them through.

MAR.

Be your mood’s master, Herod! For perhaps
Even in this Now you’ve Fate within your hands
And you can guide it wheresoe’er you will.
To every man there comes the point of time
When to himself the steerer of his star
Gives o’er the reins. And this alone is ill--
That he knows not the point of time; it may be
Each one that past him rolls. I have monition
For you ’tis this one; therefore keep a check!
The track of life your chart is now designing,
That track, perchance, unto the end you wander.
Will you do that in the wild rush of wrath?

HEROD.

I fear but half the truth’s in your monition.
The turning-point is there, but ’tis for you.
For I, what wish I then? why this--naught further,
A means wherewith to frighten bogy-dreams.[12]

MAR.

I’ll understand you not! I’ve borne you children,
Have thought of them! Then you may ask yourself
What’s possible.

HEROD.

Who’s silent, even as you,
Wakes the misthought he has no heart that dares
To say the truth, yet has no will to lie.

MAR.

No further!

HEROD.

Nay, no further; and farewell!
And if I come again misgrudge it me
Not all too sorely.

MAR.

Herod!

HEROD.

Be assured
I take no more the thing I took to-day,
A greeting wrested.

MAR.

Nay, ’twill be no more
A needful thing. (_To Heaven._) Eternal, guide his heart!
I gave him pardon for a brother’s murder,
I was prepared his deathward way to follow,
I am so still; and can a mortal more?
Thou didst what ne’er before thou didst--Thou rolledst
The wheel of time aback; it stands once more
Even as it erewhile stood. Then let him now
Take other course, and I forget what’s happened.
Forget it even as if in heat of fever
He’d dealt me with his sword the stroke of death
And bound himself my wound that I grew whole.
(_To_ HEROD.) You’ll come again?

HEROD.

If you should see me coming
Then call for fetters. Let it be your proof
That I have gotten crazy wits.

MAR.

You will
Repent that word--oh, Heart, be quelled!--you will!

[_Exit._

SCENE 7

HEROD _alone_.

HEROD.

’Tis true I went too far. When half-way launched
I told myself the same. But not less true
If she loved me the offence she would condone.
If she loved me! Has she loved, truth to truth?
I think it. Ay, but now--oh, how the Dead One
Is skilled to vengeance even in the grave!
I made away with him my crown t’ assure,
He took what dipped the heavier scale--her heart.
For she has shown me since her brother died
Strange alteration; though my nice regard
Has never found between her and her mother
The tiniest tell-tale vestige of resemblance,
To-day showed more than once the linking touches;
Thus I can give no more the old-time faith.
That is a surety; must it therefore be
An equal surety that she has deceived?
The guarantee that in her love had lain
Is fallen away, but still there is a second
Lies in that pride of hers; will not a pride,
Superb-disdainful of its self-defence,
Even more disdain the sullying of self?
Ay, but she knows it! Joseph! Why can man
But kill and nevermore the dead awaken?
He should be able both to do or neither.
He takes his vengeance too! He comes not! Yet
I see him there! “My Lord commanded?” Monstrous!
I’ll not believe ’t! Salome, keep you silent
Howe’er it came it came not so! Perchance
The eating secret like embowelled fire
Forced way through him; or he perchance betrayed it
Because he deemed me as one lost, and now
Was fain to be atoned with Alexandra
Before the tidings came. Well, we shall see!
For she must stand the proof. Had I but guessed
That she could come by knowledge of it, never
Had I so far been gone. Now that she knows,
From her revenge I now will need to fear
The thing that from her soul’s unstableness
Perchance I feared unjustly. I must fear
That on my grave she’ll make my wedding-mirth.
Soemus came at nick of time. He is
A man who, if I were not in the world,
Had stood where I now stand. How true he thinks,
How zealously he serves, he proves by coming.
I give him now the charge. I know from him
She lures naught out of lock if she essay
The man in him to tempt. If he betray me
She pays me such a price as--Then, Salome,
Then you were in the right!--Now to probation!

[_Exit._