Scene 2
The Same. Sameas.
Sameas.
The Lord is great!
Mar.
He is.
Alex.
You free, and yet
In fetters? Yet one riddle more!
Sameas.
These fetters
I lay not by again. Jerusalem
Shall day by day have brought to its remembrance
That Jonah’s progeny in prison sat.
Alex.
How came you out, then? Did you bribe the gaolers?
Sameas.
What, I? the gaolers?
Alex.
True, with what I know not.
You still have on your shirt of camel’s hair,
And that they freed you for a wild bees’ nest
Which you, with every hollow tree familiar,
Could have betrayed to them for ransom-price—
That I misdoubt, for there’s enough of honey.
Sameas.
Why, what a question! ’Twas Soemus’ self
That oped the gates for me.
Mar.
How could he dare that?
Sameas.
How then? And was’t not you that gave him orders?
Mar.
I?
Sameas.
No? And yet I thought ’twas what he said.
I may have erred, for I was just then saying
The last psalm backwards-way when he came in
And slackly gave him only half my ear.
Well, good! It seems the Lord has done’t, and I
Must go unto the Temple there to thank Him,
For I have naught to do in David’s castle.
Mar.
The Lord!
Sameas.
The Lord. Was I endungeoned justly?
Mar.
The times are now no more in which the Lord
Spoke with the naked word unto His People.
We have instead the Law; that speaks for Him.
Extinguished is the Pillar of Fire and Cloud
Through which our Fathers in the Wilderness
Were shown the paths he led them, and the Prophets
Are dumb as He.
Alex.
Nay, not yet wholly so!
Only a short time since there was a fire
Foretold by one—a fire that came to pass.
Mar.
Granted; but ’twas himself at mid of night
Applied the kindling flame.
Sameas.
Woman, blaspheme not!
Mar.
And I blaspheme not! No, I say what happened.
The man’s a Pharisee like you yourself.
He speaks like you, he raves like you. The fire
Was meant to prove to us that he was truly
A prophet, and could see into the future.
But still a soldier caught him in the act.
Sameas.
A Roman?
Mar.
Yes.
Sameas.
He lied! He was perhaps
Suborned. He was suborned thereto by Herod,
Suborned by you yourself.
Mar.
Sirrah, your place!
Sameas.
You are his wife, you are the wife o’ the miscreant
Who overweens him into the Messiah.
If you can lock him in your arms and kiss him
You can do other things for him as well.
Alex.
He overweens him now into Messiah?
Sameas.
He does! He flung the words into my teeth
When to the dungeon he had ordered me.
I shrieked to God. I cried—“Look on thy folk
And send Messiah unto us, whom Thou
Hast promised for the time of direst need!
The direst need’s upon us!” Then replied he
With a proud curl o’ the lip—“He’s long since here;
But ye—ye know it not! ’Tis I myself!”
Alex.
Now, Mariamne?
Sameas.
Then, with godless wit
He proved that we’re a Folk of scatter-brains
And he alone has got an uncracked pate.
We did not dwell for naught on the Dead Sea
That is devoid of motion—ebb and flood—
And therefore poisons all the world with pest.
It was a trusty mirror of ourselves!
And he was bent to pang us into living
Were he compelled e’en Moses’ numskull book—
So unabashed his words—with force to tatter.
It was for that sole cause our river Jordan,
Whose clear wave laughed and leapt throughout our land,
Symbolled us not instead of a dull bog.
Alex.
He flung the mask so wholly from him?
Sameas.
Ay!
And yet perchance he deemed me, when he did it,
As good as dead by then, for straight thereon
He gave the word of death.
Mar.
He had been goaded.
He found revolt for greeting.
Sameas.
Now I warn you
What is your duty. Be renounced from him
As he has now renounced his God. Thereby
You can chastise him, for he loves you dear.
My only notion, when Soemus freed me,
Was that you’d done it. If you do it not
Chide not the shaft that from the welkin falls
As undeserved when it strikes you with him.
I go to sacrifice.
Alex.
Take then the victims
From out my stall.
Sameas.
I take them where they’re missed,
The widow-woman’s lamb, the poor man’s sheep.
What is your ox to God?
[Exit. Enter Soemus.