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![C]
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.