"He hath honored me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon."
He discusses the project of murdering Banquo in the same way:—
"Though I could
With bare-fac'd power sweep him from my sight,
And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,
For certain friends that are both his and mine,
Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall,
Whom I myself struck down."
His wife must needs have sore dealings with such a non-committal spirit:—
"Thou'd'st have, great Glamis,
That which cries, 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
Thou wishest should be undone.'"
He wants to win a game to which his hand does not entitle him; and the desire to win is as great as the dread of cheating.
This tainted mood of her beloved husband makes her almost frantic. Dreams satisfy her thirst as the mirage quenches the craving of a caravan. Here comes my Macbeth and—"thou'rt mad to say it"—Duncan with him,—a lifetime's opportunity: 'twill never come again. Heaven drives Duncan "under my battlements,"—yes, mine, for this night only; Macbeth's at every other time, but mine this once, to hold out with against my husband's mood. The raven himself is hoarse with chiding his delay. What need the tone of my language be, when the bird croaks Duncan's fatal entrance? Let it be unsexed. Here I tear every rag of woman's garments from it, in this my frenzy of dread lest Macbeth elude Fate's purpose:—
"Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on Nature's mischief."
For love's sake her tongue becomes unlovely; and the delicate woman, with blue eyes sparkling like an electric firmament, and that little hand, snatched out of its old dalliance and clenched as if to drive a weapon, is transformed by the spirit of some ruthless Medea who has lent herself to contrive and enjoy another murder.
It has been said that Lady Macbeth did not reflect upon consequences as Macbeth did, because that is not the way of her sex. But the sex varies in this respect. The average woman is less selfish than we are, not from a feebler gift for calculation, but from a stronger capacity of love; for sex was invented before arithmetic. Macbeth reflected, not merely because he was male, but a selfish male, eager to be great, yet admiring to be popular: he would drive the sharpest bargain with Destiny. His wife's impetuous movement of love oversets and spills out her calculation. Many a woman is capable of regarding all the consequences of an act, but she must not love too deeply: if she does, she will stick at nothing. If there be motive enough, she can turn a lover into a criminal, and then, with perjury, deceit, unblushing cheek, will screen him: they twain are one, for better, for worse. They are too deeply compromised to haggle about salvation. The very intercourse of sex devotes a woman: she has become flesh and blood of another. This complicity of nature engages the most imperious nerve-centres of her life. Were she aware of this beforehand, as she is not, it would not be evaded nor entitled bondage. If her lover has been always above her suspicion, the discovery on his part of some ill-doing is seldom violent enough to tear this bond: her revulsion is against a prying world that is no better than it should be; and she will help to secrete what she is too proud to have attributed to him. It is one article in the creed of a detective that a man's wife is more baffling than circumstance, more loyal than conscience. She is chaste clear through and single-hearted. Only when love itself is wounded and disgraced will she resign the culprit lover to the scorn of men; but not always even then, for it is her concern, and earth and heaven may keep out of it. But let him forge, she will secrete him, smuggle him out of the country, join him afterward to comfort him. Let him counterfeit any thing but love, and she will help to put the spurious values on the town. Let him come home with murder on his cheek and blood upon his garments, she, fainting, will cleanse the stain that falls athwart her vision like a lurid sunset of her peace. Selfishness would turn informer, but perfect love casts out the fear of becoming that! Do you say this, too, is criminal? I say nothing, because it is my concern only to refer you to the facts. She is a partner, for better, for worse,—married and interpenetrated by the husband's fate. For love is charity: it rejoiceth not in iniquity, and yet it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."