NORTH.
Lenox says to the other Lord—
"My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,
Which can interpret further; only, I say,
Things have been strangely borne: the gracious Duncan
Was pitied of Macbeth—marry he was dead.
And the right valiant Banquo walked too late;
Whom, you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed,
For Fleance fled."
Who told him all this about Banquo and Fleance? He speaks of it quite familiarly to the "other lord," as a thing well known in all its bearings. But not a soul but Macbeth, and the Three Murderers themselves, could possibly have known anything about it! As for Banquo, "Safe in a ditch he bides,"—and Fleance had fled. The body may, perhaps in a few days, be found, and, though "with twenty trenched gashes on its head," identified as Banquo's, and, in a few weeks, Fleance may turn up in Wales. Nay, the Three Murderers may confess. But now all is hush; and Lenox, unless endowed with second sight, or clairvoyance, could know nothing of the murder. Yet, from his way of speaking of it, one might imagine crowner's 'quest had sitten on the body—and the report been in the Times between supper and that after-supper confab! I am overthrown—everted—subverted—the contradiction is flagrant—the impossibility monstrous—I swoon.
BULLER.
Water—water.
NORTH.
Thank you, Buller. That's revivifying—I see now all objects distinctly. Where was I? O, ay. The "other Lord" seems as warlock-wise as Lenox—for he looks forward to times when
"We may again
Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights;
Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives."
An allusion, beyond doubt, to the murder of Banquo! A sudden thought strikes me. Why, not only must the real, actual, spiritual, corporeal Ghost of Banquo sate on the stool, but "Lenox and the other Lord," as well as Macbeth, saw him.