should shut Your doors upon me, send no word to me, No word till now, not even let me know If you were ill or well? But no upbraiding. Tell me what is the trouble of your soul? AHAB. What do you think? JEZEBEL. I know not what to think, Living alone, shut from you, that should tell me. Men say that you are grieved because a farmer, One Naboth, would not sell his vineyard to you.
AHAB.
I, grieved, at that?
JEZEBEL.
I have no guide save rumour.
AHAB.
His vineyard? Why, I did not want the vineyard.
JEZEBEL.
Not want it, lord?
AHAB.
Why should I want it; think?
JEZEBEL.
I cannot think, indeed, why you should want it.
AHAB.
Jehu was wanting it, to bring it in Within the city wall, for in the siege The Syrian archers shot our people from it. Jehu demanded it.
JEZEBEL.
Jehu? Not you? Yet do you know that men are cursing you For wanting Naboth’s land; and feasting Naboth To-day, in public, for refusing you? And that our crowns and even our lives are threatened?
AHAB.
No, Queen, I do not know and cannot care. What is the raging of the fools to me Who ponder day and night upon a question, A question that goes down into the bone And burns like fire, till I cannot sleep Or eat or work, for it is always here. No, do not look like that, I am not mad, Not yet; I am not mad. But always night and day This question is about me and within me, Haunting and harsh: the question, “Am I wrong? Are these, my people who oppose my will, Right, after all, righter than I, the King? Righter throughout my twenty years of kingship?”
JEZEBEL.
How can these preys to every passionate flaw Be righter than an upright mind and conscience?
AHAB.
I cannot tell, and yet I think they are.
JEZEBEL.
You know they are not.
AHAB.
No, I do not know. I wonder, if the blunt and bawdy world Be not the worse for wisdom, not the better.
JEZEBEL.
It is a sin and cowardice to say so.
AHAB.
Is it, my Queen? I wonder if it be. Here have I striven twenty years, for peace With Syria, and for liberty of thought Within our borders, yet with what results? Almost continual war with Syria. Almost a civil war within this land. Such being the fruits, I think the seeds were wrong.
JEZEBEL.
The seeds were right, and if the fruit has failed, Blame the bad soil, the bitter weather, drought, Evil of many men hacking the plant, All things, but you who planted, and the seed.
AHAB.
Even if the seed were right, the ground was wrong. And then I sowed it out of season, lady. I could have smitten Syria to the dust, Yet granted terms. I risked a civil war To 

 Prev. P 5/200 next