“Very gladly,” agreed Banquo.
“Till then, enough,” said Macbeth. “Come, friends;” and away he went with Banquo and the other lords to receive his new honours from the King’s hands.
At the Castle of Macbeth
King Duncan received Macbeth and Banquo most graciously, and at the same time as he conferred the new dignity on Macbeth he took the opportunity of announcing that his own eldest son, Malcolm, should succeed himself as King of Scotland, and should be named hereafter Prince of Cumberland. In those days of strife and bloodshed it was by no means an assured fact that the crown should descend peaceably from father to son. When the rightful heir was young or feeble, some more powerful relative often stepped forward and seized the sceptre for himself. Macbeth’s wife was a near kinswoman of the King—according to some of the old chroniclers, she had even a better claim to the throne than Duncan himself. Macbeth may have been hoping that after the King’s death, if it came about by natural means, the crown might pass to himself. But this public proclamation of the young Prince as the heir was an obstacle in his path which would prove a stumbling-block to his ambition, unless he overleaped it. Once more, stronger than ever, rose the evil suggestion in his mind. He knew well the dark deed to which it was leading, but he was already almost determined to go through with it, cost what it might.
Macbeth’s character was well understood by his wife. He wished to be great, was not without ambition, but his nature was not yet sufficiently hardened to snatch what he wanted by the shortest way. The great things he wanted he would have been glad to get by rightful means; he did not wish to play falsely, but he was quite content to win wrongly. Accustomed to rely on the stern judgment of his wife, he now wrote to her a full account of the meeting with the witches, and left the matter to her firmer will to puzzle out.
If there were any hesitation in Macbeth’s mind, there was none at all in Lady Macbeth’s. Her husband was already Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor; well, he should reach the highest honour prophesied. So resolved was she on this point, and so swift was her mind to plot evil, that when a messenger arrived to say that King Duncan was then on his way to the castle, and would be there that night, she almost betrayed the treason in her heart by the startled exclamation, “Thou art mad to say it!” It seemed as though fate itself were delivering the unsuspecting victim straight into her hands.
“The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements,” she muttered to herself; and with terrible decision she began to stifle all thoughts of womanly weakness or pity, and to nerve herself with unflinching cruelty for the deed that lay before her.
A few minutes in advance of the King came Macbeth, and was received with the warmest greeting from his wife.
“My dearest love,” he said, “Duncan comes here to-night.”
“And when goes hence?” asked Lady Macbeth, in a voice of dreadful import.