Scene 1
Castle on Zion. A large Audience-Chamber, as in Act I. Throne and tribunal.
Herod. Salome.
Herod.
An end, an end to this! The Inquisition
I’ve ordered and will execute its sentence.
I, I whom once each fever set a-shaking
E’en though her maid-in-waiting it befel,
’Tis I myself that weapons death against her.
Be that enough! and if your zeal not yet
Allow you rest, it will o’ershoot its target.
I shall be thinking that ’tis hate alone
Speaks from your mouth, and you will meet as witness
Rejection, though I shall admit as such
Each several candle that has cast its flame,
Each several flower that has shed its scent.
Salome.
Herod, I’ll not deny the truth. I have
Ere now spied on her faults and painted them
With heightened hue as you enhanced the virtues
That you discovered in her. Was the pride
Flaunted upon your mother and me whenever
She crossed our path, was this a ground for love?
As being of a loftier race she bore her
That never had awaked another thought
Within my mind than this—“Wherefore exists
The bulky book that tells the hero-deeds
The Maccabeans wrought unto our folk?
She bears the chronicle upon her face.”
Herod.
Your will is to refute me, and you seal
The sentence I have passed.
Salome.
Nay, hear me out!
’Twas so, I’ll not deny it. But if now
I’ve said more than I know and think and feel,
Yea, if I am not moved by sister’s pity
To lock the half of what I could have told you
Even now within my breast, then may my child—
You’ll grant I love it well—as many years
Live out as hairs are counted on his skull
And every day as much of sorrow bring him
As it shall have of minutes, yea, of seconds.
Herod.
A fearsome oath!
Salome.
And yet it falls from me
More lightly than this word—“The night is black.”
E’en though the eye were jaundiced, ’tis past credence
That jaundiced eye were paired by jaundiced ear,
Yea, and by instinct, heart, and every manner
Of organ that is buttress to the senses.
And this time all are tuned so fine together
That they could never clash in contradiction,
Yea, and had God upon that festal night
Called unto me from out the heights of Heaven,
“Say from what evil I shall give your earth
Deliverance—you have the choice!” I would not
Have named the pest, nay, but your wicked wife.
I shuddered at her; she would taint my mood
As though I’d reached a demon out of Hell
Amid the pitchy black by human hand
And he had met me with derision, stepping
Before me in his proper shape of fright
From out the stolen frame of flesh and blood
And grinned and mowed at me through twisting flames.
Nor did I shudder thus alone. The Roman,
Yea, even the ironside Titus felt recoil.
Herod.
True, true, and he weighs heavier than yourself,
For just as he loves no one, he hates no one,
And just he is like ghosts devoid of blood.
Now leave me, for I am awaiting him.
Salome.
I vow this dance shall never be forgotten
In which, responsive to the music’s beat,
She trod the floor as though she knew for sure
That you lay underneath. By God, I would
I were not forced to say it, for I know
How inly you, who gave her mother, sister,
And what not for her victims, must rebel.
And yet it was so.
[Exit.