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Read Ebook: Judith a Play in Three Acts; Founded on the Apocryphal Book of Judith by Bennett Arnold
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Ebook has 748 lines and 19088 words, and 15 pages
CHABRIS. Why! Because plainly war cannot continue on such a scale. Or if it does, mankind is destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar has rendered war ridiculous.
CHABRIS . It remains that I cannot eat pulse without water to drink. And surely Bethulia has more wells than any other city of Judea.
OZIAS. The wells are at the foot of the hills, and Holofernes has seized them all.
CHABRIS. That is not fighting.
OZIAS. It is war.
CHABRIS. No, no! In my time soldiers fought fairly.
OZIAS. And killed each other. Why should Holofernes sacrifice thousands of lives to take the heights when he can reach the same result by letting his men sit still and watch?
CHABRIS. I say this is not war. Once I travelled many days to Nineveh. It is a city of extravagance, and when I beheld its mad, new-fangled ways, I knew that the last day was nigh. I was right. Three thousand and five hundred years since Jehovah created Adam, and Eve from his rib ... Too long! Too long! And what is pulse without water? I must have water.
OZIAS. It is thirty-four days since Holofernes took the wells. If you have received water up to yesterday your great-grandchild must indeed have thirsted that you might drink. I have distributed water by measure, but now the cisterns are empty, and women and young men fall down in the streets, and there is no water in Bethulia. We are all in like case, the high and the lowly.
CHABRIS. Then give me your bottle.
OZIAS. What bottle?
CHABRIS. I saw you put it from your lips as I came.
OZIAS. It behoves you to understand, old man, that my solemn duty as governor is to maintain my own strength, for if I fell the city would fall. Without me to inspire them the populace would yield in a moment. What is the populace? Poltroons, animals, sheep, rabbits, insects, lice!
CHABRIS. Give me the bottle.
OZIAS. It is as empty as the cisterns.
CHABRIS. Give it to me, or I will cry through the streets that you are concealing water. Ah!
CHABRIS. What is that up yonder?
OZIAS. Nothing.
CHABRIS. Whose house is this?
OZIAS. It is the house of Judith, the daughter of Merari.
OZIAS. Old man, your memory is terrible. Have pity!
CHABRIS. The draught has revived me. So Merari married and had a daughter. What manner of woman is she?
OZIAS. She is the widow of Manasses, who died of the heat in the barley harvest. And she is childless. And she is very rich; for Manasses left her gold and silver and menservants and maid-servants and cattle and lands. And she has remained a widow in her house three years and four months, and never has she come forth. And there is none to give her an ill word, for she fears the Lord greatly.
OZIAS. She is beautiful to behold.
OZIAS. And she has fasted all the days of her widowhood, except the eves of the Sabbaths and the Sabbaths, and the eves of the new moons and the new moons, and the feasts and solemn days of the House of Israel.
CHABRIS. You are most deeply versed in her life. Is she exceeding beautiful?
OZIAS. She is exceeding beautiful.
OZIAS. Old man, you have eyes.
CHABRIS. It is the draught of water.
OZIAS. She is said to take the air in her tent daily at this hour.
CHABRIS . And that is why you are here, Ozias.
OZIAS. No! I come here to reflect upon my plans for the saving of the city, and because of this vantage-point, to view the army of the Assyrians.
CHABRIS. This vantage-point is new since my day. You have built it here, not to see the Assyrians, but to see Judith. And that is why you have set a guard to keep the street empty.
OZIAS. And if it be so, what then? Old man, you are so old that to confess in your ear is sweet, like murmuring secrets into the grave. If I do come to this place to watch for the marvellous vision of Judith, what then?
CHABRIS. What then? And the populace of Bethulia dying of thirst?
OZIAS. The populace!... Mice! Rats! Beetles!
CHABRIS. Yet the city is doomed. You can have no hope.
OZIAS. No hope? Am I then a dead body? Am I a rotting corpse? True, the city will be taken, and when the city is taken I may be killed. But in your meditations, old man, has it not occurred to you that death must be highly interesting? Or I may be seized for a slave. But either I should cease speedily to be a slave, or I should become the most powerful slave in Babylon. We might be enslaved together.
CHABRIS. Who?
CHABRIS. I feel I can eat my pulse now.
OZIAS. There is still woman.
RAHEL . Why did you go forth alone, grandad, frightening me when I looked and could not find you? At your age! Come back with me this moment.
CHABRIS. Ay! There is still woman!
OZIAS . Did I not give an order to bar the street?
RAHEL . This moment!
CHABRIS . Let her lie. She will come to of herself--or not, as God wills.
OZIAS . Get back to your places.
CHARMIS . She is the fourteenth I have seen faint from thirst in the streets this day.
OZIAS . Alas! And you or I may be the next. We are all in like case. But what is to be done?
OZIAS . Who among you will be the spokesman?
CHARMIS. We are all spokesmen.
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