Scene 3
Alexandra. Mariamne.
Alexandra (aside).
She comes! Ah, could she be decoyed from him
And yield consent to follow me to Rome,
Then—but she hates and loves him at a breath!
Dare I arouse a last storm? To the deed!
[Hastening towards Mariamne.
You seek for comfort where it may be found!
Come to my heart!
Mar.
Comfort?
Alex.
You need it not?
Then I have known you ill! Yet I had grounds
To judge you for the woman you are not.
You have been slandered to me!
Mar.
I? to you?
Alex.
I have been told of arms enlinked and kisses
Bestowed upon a brother-murdering consort
Hot on the deed by—Pardon! I had no right
To give it credence.
Mar.
None?
Alex.
No! ever No!
And No, on more than one ground. Could you even
Begrudge the bloody shadow of your brother,
All heartless, the atonement of revenge
Sisters should sacrifice, revenge that not
Through Judith’s sword and not through Rahab’s[B] nail,
No, merely through a notion of the mouth
And merely through still folding of the arms
Were better wreaked and to the Dead devoted,
Then he, the very murderer, had not dared
To come anear you, for you’re like the Dead One:
And you could hurt his sight as ’twere the corse
Of Aristobulus tricked in woman’s paint;
He would have turned him from you shuddering.
Mar.
He did not do the one, nor I the other.
Alex.
Then be——But no, perchance a doubt still lingers
Touching his guilt. Will you then have the proof?
Mar.
I need it not.
Alex.
You need——
Mar.
’Twere bootless to me.
Alex.
Then—but I hold the curse even now in check,
I see another one has lighted on you!
You still walk in the fetters of a love
That never shed a lustre——
Mar.
Yet I thought
I had not picked a consort for myself,
I had but yoked my neck beneath the doom
That you and Hyrcan with a pious care
Had hung above a daughter and a grandchild.
Alex.
Not I! My coward father sealed the bond.
Mar.
And by that deed he pleased you ill?
Alex.
Not that!
Or else I had outstripped him with our flight.
I had a refuge open down in Egypt.
I only say the thing was clinched by him,
By him, the first High Priest without a spine!
And I but battled down the first repugnance
With which I took his meaning. Yet I did it
Because I found the coward’s tradesman-traffic
Good in the main, and gave for Edom’s sword
The Pearl of Zion, when he pressed me hard.
Yea, had the serpent had a poisoned fang
When it was dug that time in Cleopatra,
Or had a lucky chance brought Antony
Toward these regions when upon his march,
I had said no! but, as it was, said yes!
Mar.
Yet in despite of that——
Alex.
I hoped of you
That you’d not fritter off the bargain-price,
And touching Herod, that you——
Mar.
Ah, I know!
It was my part, for every kiss I gave
To haggle in advance for any head
That had mispleased you, and at last when none
Was left to cross you but his own, to spur him
To his self-slaughter; or if that should fail,
To couch and spy a chance in the still night
And subtly second Judith’s catlike deed.
Then would you have been proud to call me child!
Alex.
Prouder than now, I give it no denial.
Mar.
I chose to be a wife unto the husband
To whom your hands had led me, and for him
Forget the Maccabean to the measure
In which he should forget the King for me.
Alex.
And yet it seems in Jericho that she
Caused you a second thought: at all events
You were the first to break in lamentation
When I myself still held my wailings back
To prove you. Was’t not so?
Mar.
In Jericho
The hideous hap had dizzied all my mind.
It came too swift—From board to bath, from bath
To grave—a brother! Whirlwinds swept my brain!
But if against my sovereign and my husband
I barred the door, slant-thoughted and stone-hearted,
I rue it now, and only can condone it
Because ’twas done as though in fever’s heat.
Alex.
In fever’s heat?
Mar. (in a semi-aside).
I’d not have done it either
Were he not come to me in mourning-garments!
In red, dark red, I could have borne to see him,
But——
Alex.
Ha! He found them quick! Before the deed
He had them ordered, just as other murderers,
Where possible, draw water ere they murder—
Mar.
Mother, forget not!
Alex.
What? That you are wife
Unto the murderer? You’re but late become
This creature; only while you will you are so;
Yea, and you are so maybe now no more.
But you have ever been the Dead One’s sister
And will remain so—yea, you will remain so
Even when you call—thither, it seems, you tend—
Into his grave—“You had but justice done you!”
Mar.
I owe you debt of reverence, and I shrink
From violence on it; therefore hold your peace.
Or else I could——
Alex.
What could you?
Mar.
Ask myself
On whom this deed lays guilty onus—him
That took it through because he must, or her
Who wrung it from him! Let the Dead One rest!
Alex.
Speak thus to one who did not give him birth!
I bore him underneath my heart, and must
Avenge him since I cannot waken him
To wreak his own revenge.
Mar.
Avenge him then,
Avenge him on yourself! You know right well
It was the High Priest whom the shouting folk
Ringed on his giddy pinnacle with joyance
And that ’twas not the youngling Aristobulus
Who brought upon himself the Thing that happened.
Who was it drove the youngling, tell me that!
Out of his old unthinking self-content?
Surely he lacked not coats of many colours
Wherewith to charm the eyes of pretty maids,
And more he needed not for happiness.
What should he do with Aaron’s priestly mantle
You still must hang about him to his surfeit?
And of himself he had no other thought
Than “Does it suit me well?” But others deemed him
Straight from the very moment it was donned
The second Head of Israel; and you
Had swift success himself so to befool
That his puffed mind must think him first and sole.
Alex.
’Tis blasphemy ’gainst him and me!
Mar.
’Tis none!
For if this youngling, who it seemed had birth
To show the world her first-born happy man,
If he so swift, so dark an end has found,
And if the man who, when his sword’s once drawn
Shames every other man into a woman,
If he—I know not if ’twas he, but fear it,—
Then, true, ambition, lust for power are cause,
But not ambition that the Dead One hugged
And not the lust for power that plagues the King.
I’ll not accuse you—’twould beseem me ill—
But, to requite your sending of a ghost,
A bloody ghost, into our marriage-chamber,
I will not see you shed the tear of rue
Though now we twain no more are side by side
And, for the Third, it wilders so my sense
That I am dumb when it were well to speak
And speak when it were better to be dumb.
Nay, nay, I will not quench your vengeful thirst
Nor ask what you avenge—your plans or son.
Do what you will! go further, check your foot—
Only, be well assured of this—the barb
That reaches Herod reaches Mariamne!
The oath that I withheld and he demanded
In leaving me, I swear it now! I perish
If he should perish! Act then, speak no more!
Alex.
Then perish! Now! For——
Mar.
Yes, I understand!
And this was why you thought I needed comfort?
Oh no! You err. It frights me not
That the men-slugs o’ the world, who only suffer
The Elect because they owe man’s debt to death,
Have with their mouths already struck him dead.
What has the slave for solace when the King
In gorgeousness and glory sweeps him by
Than this—to say, “He gets his turn like me!
I grudge it not! And when he mounts his throne
Fresh from a field o’erstrewn with graves in thousands
I’ll praise him for’t: it chokes his covetous mood!”
Ah, but my Herod lives and he will live!
So says my heart to me. Death flings a shadow
And that falls on me here! (pointing to her heart).