The way is easy: and it is to be used.
How could this need have been conceived slowly?
In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt:
What I have done would have been better done
When my sad mother lived and could feel joy.
This striking without thought is better than hunting;
She showed more terror than an animal,
She was more shiftless....
A little blood is lightly washed away,
A common stain that need not be remembered;
And a hot spasm of rightness quickly born
Can guide me to kill justly and shall guide.
_LEAR enters by the door near the bed._
LEAR.
Goneril, Gormflaith, Gormflaith.... Have you seen Gormflaith?
GONERIL.
I led her to her chamber lately, Sir.
LEAR.
Ay, she is in her chamber. She is there.
GONERIL.
Have you been there already? Could you not wait?
LEAR.
Daughter, she is bleeding: she is slain.
GONERIL, _rising from the cauldron with dripping hands._
Yes, she is slain: I did it with a knife:
And in this water is dissolved her blood,
_(Raising her arms and sprinkling the Queen's body)_
That now I scatter on the Queen of death
For signal to her spirit that I can slake
Her long corrosion of misery with such balm--
Blood for weeping, terror for woe, death for death,
A broken body for a broken heart.
What will you say against me and my deed?
LEAR.
That now you cannot save yourself from me.
While your blind virgin power still stood apart
In an unused, unviolated life,
You judged me in my weakness, and because
I felt you unflawed I could not answer you;
But you have mingled in mortality
And violently begun the common life
By fault against your fellows; and the state,
The state of Britain that inheres in me
Not touched by my humanity or sin,
Passions or privy acts, shall be as hard
And savage to you as to a murderess.
GONERIL, _taking a letter from her girdle._
I found a warrant in her favoured bosom, King:
She wore this on her heart when you were crowning her.
LEAR, _opening the letter._
But this is not my hand:
_(Looking about him on the floor)_
Where is the other letter?
GONERIL.
Is there another letter? What should it say?
LEAR.
There is no other letter if you have none.
_(Reading)_
"Open your window when the moon is dead,
And I will come again.
The men say everywhere that you are faithless....
And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you, Gormflaith...."
This is not hers: she'd not receive such words.
GONERIL.
Her name stands twice therein: her perfume fills it:
My knife went through it ere I found it on her.
LEAR.
The filth is suitably dead. You are my true daughter.
GONERIL.
I do not understand how men can govern,
Use craft and exercise the duty of cunning,
Anticipate treason, treachery meet with treachery,
And yet believe a woman because she looks
Straight in their eyes with mournful, trustful gaze,
And lisps like innocence, all gentleness.
Your Gormflaith could not answer a woman's eyes.
I did not need to read her in a letter;
I am not woman yet, but I can feel
What untruths are instinctive in my kind,
And how some men desire deceit from us.
Come; let these washers do what they must do:
Or shall your Queen be wrapped and coffined awry?
_She goes out by the garden doorway._
LEAR.
I thought she had been broken long ago:
She must be wedded and broken, I cannot do it.
_He follows GONERIL out._
_The two women return to the bedside._
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Poor, masterful King, he is no easier,
Although his tearful wife is gone at last:
A wilful girl shall prick and thwart him now.
Old gossip, we must hasten; the Queen is setting.
Lend me a pair of pennies to weight her eyes.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
Find your own pennies: then you can steal them safely.
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Praise you the gods of Britain, as I do praise them,
That I have been sweet-natured from my birth,
And that I lack your unforgiving mind.
Friend of the worms, help me to lift her clear
And draw away the under sheet for you;
Then go and spread the shroud by the hall fire--
I never could put damp linen on a corpse.
_She sings._
The louse made off unhappy and wet;--
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee--
He's looking for us, the little pet;
So haste, for her chin's to tie up yet,
And let us be gone with what we can get--
Her ring for thee, her gown for Bet,
Her pocket turned out for me.
CURTAIN.
THE CRIER BY NIGHT
_TO
MY DEAR SCRIBE_
PERSONS:
HIALTI, a Northman.
THORGERD, His Wife.
BLANID, an Irish Bondmaid.
AN OLD STRANGE MAN.
THE CRIER BY NIGHT
_The scene is the interior of a cottage near a misty mere and among
unseen mountains on a wild night of late Autumn. In the back wall area
door to the left and a long low window in the middle; the latter is
shuttered on the outside, and on door and window the wind-driven rain
rattles. In the middle of the left-hand wall a door leads into an
outhouse; near it is a loom: toward the front of the right-hand wall
another door leads to a sleeping-chamber; a settle extends along this
wall and in front of it a long table is set. Two rushlights burn on the
table. A round hearth is in the middle of the house; its smoke rises
into a luffer which hangs from the thatched roof between two beams. The
floor is thickly strewn with rushes. There are several wooden stools
about the hearth, on one of which HIALTI is sitting mending harness.
THORGERD is standing near the loom, spinning with a distaff._
HIALTI.
THE lass is late about; where is she now?
THORGERD.
Let the lass be. What is the lass to you?
She is my lass to handle as I will--
My father gave her to me for my own,
And so I use her as I use my gear....
"She will not last" say you? Well, what of that?
I know gear must wear out, being well used;
Shoes must be trodden under-foot all day,
Though in the mire they go and to the mire;
The hearth-fire wastes the irons used to tend it:
I am the huswife--leave the house to me
And buy me new gear when the old is rotten.
HIALTI.
You drive her over hard. In the cold dark,
Hours ere the thin late dawn, she was afoot,
And she has been afoot each moment since:
The butter will not come now without fire,
But I was wakened in the frosty night
By the slow moaning of her weary churn,
And when I rose she stood here without shoes--
She said you took them from her; so I sought,
And gave her them again, and lit the fire.
She dare not sleep with half your tasks undone,
But you slept and your sleep was all her rest;
Yet in her land 'tis you would be the thrall.
You shut the hens in from the storm all day,
But she must trudge with peat-mull in a swill
Up from the water-side and down all day....
THORGERD
Spare her and have my firing spoilt? Not I.
Had it been sodden, how could you light her fires?
HIALTI.
You drive her over hard.
THORGERD. What is it to you?
Fodder and yoke your neats, see to your swine,
Put them to breed, and leave my stock to me.
If this is over hard, what will it be--
Last week she still could smile sometimes, so yet
She smiles too often for my happiness.
What money did the calves fetch at the fair?
HIALTI.
Where is she now?
THORGERD. What money did the calves
Fetch at the fair last week?
HIALTI. Where is she now?
THORGERD.
I spilt the water; she must needs draw more.
HIALTI.
The roof-drip at the door would fill her pails.
THORGERD.
What money did the calves fetch at the fair?
HIALTI.
You need not ask; you had it all to hoard.
THORGERD.
You kept some back; who bought them?
HIALTI. He who paid.
_The outside door opens and, as the rain drives in, BLANID enters
carrying two pails of water by a yoke. Her short-sleeved, frayed,
hempen smock is dripping-wet; an old cart-strap is buckled about her
middle; her ankles are bare, but her feet are covered by shapeless
brogues; her matted hair is cut short, and she has an iron collar about
her neck. She sets down her pails, and with difficulty shuts and bolts
the door against the wind. Then she carries her pails into the outhouse;
as she moves about within she is heard to sing to a tired, monotonous
tune._
BLANID.
The bird in my heart's a-calling through a far-fled, tear-grey sea
To the soft slow hills that cherish dim waters weary for me,
Where the folk of rath and dun trail homeward silently
In the mist of the early night-fall that drips from their hair like
rain.
The bird in my heart's a-flutter, for the bitter wind of the sea
Shivers with thyme and woodbine as my body with memory;
I feel their perfumes ooze in my ears like melody--
The scent of the mead at the harping I shall not hear again.
The bird in my heart's a-sinking to a hushed vale hid in the sea,
Where the moonlit dew o'er dead fighters is stirred by the feet of
the Shee,
Who are lovely and old as the earth but younger than I can be
Who have known the forgetting of dying to a life one lonely pain ...
_She returns from the outhouse._
THORGERD.
Come here; give me your shoes; quickly, I say.
Why must you go shod softly? Give me your shoes.
_She takes them and puts them on the fire._
Is there some joy so deep within you still
That I have missed it though 'tis bright for singing?
It shall not be so long; sing while you can.
BLANID.
No joy ever sank deep enough for singing;
Trouble and all the sorrowful ways of men
Must stir the sad unrest that ends in song.
Joy seeks but peace and silence and still thought;
But those who cannot weep must sing for ease,
And in the sound forget the thought that smote it.
THORGERD.
I am made glad, hearing your misery;
Yet all the shapeless, creeping, shivering sounds
You wail about the house will make me share it.
Your songs of faery and nameless kings
And things that never happened long ago
And an unknown, impossible, shadowy land
Are useless as the starlight after moonset
That will not light men homeward from the fair--
Nay, useless as its melting down thin water:
If you must sing, sing truth to gut-strong tunes
Of Gunnar or of Freya or Andvari,
Vineland the Good and the old Western sea.
BLANID.
Things need not happen that they may be true;
Although impossible, they may be true--
The things that matter happen in the heart.
All earthly truth is true but for a time,
Whilst ages may be altered by one dream--
The things that matter happen in the heart ...
THORGERD.
Useless as starlight or the aimless wind.
BLANID.
The wind is all the souls of those sad dead
Who will not stay in Heaven for love of earth;
Hither and thither they surge to find the gate
They see and know not on its new, strange side,
For they have learned too much to be let back.
Ah, some have learned too much before they die.
_As she crosses the house at the back HIALTI turns and, catching her
hands in his, draws her toward him._
HIALTI.
Is it too hard, the thought of that lost vale?
BLANID.
It is too hard, because I must so love it
That were I free I should go there no more,
Lest I should hate it. I must always suffer,
I only suffer this way rather than that--
'Tis the eternal suffering of love
Must search me somehow with love's pitilessness
To make me know all souls; what matter how?
O, I am but a troubled dream of God's,
And even His will can alter not His dreams;
Yea, He is dreaming me a little while--
I must be dreamed out to the hardest end,
Returning then to be unknown in Him;
I shall be Him again when He awakes.
Ah, God, awake, and so forget me soon.
_THORGERD, swinging her aside by the collar on her neck._
Set on the water for the porridge; go.
_BLANID goes into the outhouse; THORGERD continues to HIALTI._
Why must you hold her hands and hold her eyes?
HIALTI.
Under each dark grey lash a long tear slid,
Like rain in a wild rose's shadowy curve
Bowed in the wind about the morning twilight.
THORGERD.
Have done; I know; you left the fair at noon
To reach the copse just at the young moon's setting--
I could not find her till i' the night-hid copse
A woman's voice sobbed "If he would but come..."
HIALTI.
It is not true; you know it is not true.
Let her alone; you know that I must love you,
And if she loves me she will know it too
And hurt herself far more than you can hurt her.
THORGERD.
I hear you say it: and afterward?... Perhaps
My little shears are sharp as any knife.
HIALTI.
You would not kill her?
THORGERD. When have I grown kind-hearted?
_She lays her hand on his shoulder and, leaning her mouth to his ear,
speaks in a low, distinct voice._
Slit nose and lip and where's her beauty then?
_He starts from his stool._
Nay, are my kinsfolk as far off as hers?
_He turns away as BLANID enters with an iron pot which she hangs from a
hook over the fire, and a pitcher of milk which she sets on the table._
_THORGERD takes the pot from the fire._
Here's too much water; it will never boil,
And if it did the mess would be too thin.
_She pours water from the pot upon the floor, then hangs the pot over
the fire again._
Set out the bowls, and finger not their lips.
_BLANID goes again to the outhouse, and, returning, sets three bowls
with spoons on the table, and a jar of meal by the hearth._
Though porridge needs meal you shall not think for me;
Do nought until I bid you--once. The grain.
_BLANID goes yet again to the outhouse and returns with a bag of
grain._
You know what grain is for; why do you stand?
Your feet are mine. Down to the quern. Get down.
BLANID.
There's meal in plenty for to-morrow.
THORGERD, _laying down her distaff to make porridge._
Ay,
But is there meal in plenty for next month?
You may be dead then; therefore you must toil,
That I may need to do no aching tasks
Until my man can buy another drudge
From the next herd; for so we shall forget you.
BLANID, _kneeling by the quern between the window and the door,
and commencing to grind grain._
You hate me far too subtly to forget me;
There is not enough kindness in your heart
To let you thus forego your joy of hate.
Then, too, despite the accident of death,
I cannot go from here against my will.
THORGERD.
You shall not die ere I have done with you;
And death shall only come by suffering
Until you are too feeble even to suffer.
BLANID.
The sound of death is ever in mine ears,
Monotonous as the night's infinity
Wherein I was once born where salt winds sweep
The wailing of the waters of the West.
I die, but you can ne'er have done with me.
THORGERD, _the porridge being made._
Come, drudge, lift off the pot and fill the bowls.
BLANID, _having filled two bowls._
The pot is empty.
THORGERD. But the bowls are full.
HIALTI.
Now give the lass some supper; fill her bowl.
THORGERD, _pouring milk over the porridge._
There's but enough for two; I'll make no more.
Here, take the pot and scrape it at the quern.
_HIALTI and THORGERD draw stools to the table; BLANID carries the pot to
the outhouse and returns to the quern; supper proceeds in silence for a
few moments, then HIALTI rises and offers his bowl to BLANID._
HIALTI.
Share with me, lass; I need no more to-night.
_Before BLANID can taste the porridge THORGERD strikes the bowl from her
hand._
HIALTI, _indignantly, as he reaches to THORGERD'S bowl._
She shall have yours; go you and make us more ...
_He is interrupted by a distant wailing which is heard through the
storm._
THE VOICE.
Ohey! Ohey! Ohohey!
BLANID.
Master, I hear one calling in the night.
HIALTI, _in a subdued voice._
It is the wind across the chimney-slates.
THE VOICE.
Ohey! Ohohey!
BLANID.
Master, a man is calling in the night.
HIALTI.
An owl, storm-beaten, drowns down the long mere.
THE VOICE, _sounding nearer on a gust of wind._
Ohohey! Ohohey!
BLANID.
Master, one lost is helpless in the night.
THORGERD, _gently and with an eager smile._
Ay, lass, good lass; go, lass, and seek for him--
Maybe he sinks amid the marshy reeds;
Bring him to warmth and supper and a bed.
I'll shut the door; the light will only daze you.
HIALTI, _leaping to the door in front of BLANID, and setting his
back to it._
No, no; back, girl, get back. (_To THORGERD._)
You murderess,
You know it is the Crier of the Ford,
Who wakens when the clashing waters rise
And the thick night is choked with level rain.
He is not seen; he was not born; he gathers
His bodiless being from the treacherous tarn.
His aged crying gropes about the storm
To snare the spent wayfarer to the ford,
Or draw some pitiful helper to the ford,
And drown them where the unknown water swirls
And strangle them with long brown water-weed:
He seeks their souls for his old soul to feed on,
Because it has no body to nourish it.
THORGERD, _hastily yet sullenly._
How should I know?
_She grips BLANID'S shoulder and hurries her to the outhouse._
Get in with you to your straw.
_She thrusts her into the outhouse and shuts the door upon her; then she
turns to HIALTI._
Fool, now I know you love her behind your heart.
HIALTI.
I have no mind to waste a half-spent thrall
To prove I love you; and to buy another
Would need more money than eight red-polled stirks.
THORGERD.
Choose between her and me; if you take her,
I take the land.
HIALTI. I love you overmuch
To set you equally against a thrall.
THORGERD.
What, do I touch you when I touch your fields?
HIALTI.
To-morrow I must drive the sold ewes home
And lead more bedding from the bracken-fell
If the storm clears--it is well stacked and dry;
So we must be a-stirring by lantern-light,
Since now you will not have the lass go with me
To milk, but go yourself although three cows
Will not let down their milk to you at all,
You drag their teats so: waking-time comes soon--
Best get to bed.
THORGERD.
And leave you to go to your straw's wench?
HIALTI, _taking a rushlight in his hand._
Here are enough of your unfaithful words;
I'll alter this to-morrow.
THORGERD. Ay, to-morrow.
_HIALTI enters the sleeping-chamber; after watching the door close upon
him, THORGERD, her hands clenched and her arms rigid, swiftly steps half
way toward the outhouse; then, suddenly relaxing into a pause and
smiling with tight lips as she shakes her head slightly and sharply, she
turns to the table again, doffs her coif and draws her hair down, blows
out the remaining rushlight, and follows HIALTI into the
sleeping-chamber._
_Henceforth the cottage is only lit by the ever-dying fire. A long,
empty silence ensues, broken only by the tumult of the storm and the
tinkle of the sinking embers._
_Then the outhouse door opens slowly and from it BLANID steps
listeningly across the house, in front of the hearth, to the door of the
sleeping-chamber, remaining there for a little time with her ear against
the door-boards; then she returns noiselessly across the house, behind
the hearth, pausing near the house door._
BLANID, _in a hushed voice._
If day were only darkness melting down
From darkness into darkness like this rain,
Lost ere 'tis known, then I might always sleep
And sleep and dream I was a queen once more--
She does not know I was a jewelled queen,
For so I spoil her of new heights of joy
In which she might for haughtiness fondle me.
O, I would sleep in that old Crier's arms,
Enduring silence harder than all else,
A mote shut into one cold, kneaded eyelid
Of the dead mere; and dream into the wind,
And cling to stars lest I should slip through space;
And dream I am the body of him I love,
Who yields me only kindness, never love--
O me, that misery of hopeless kindness.
But I'll not die and leave him to her lips;
Though I can never have him she shall not;
For I can use this body worn to a soul
To barter with that Crier of hidden things
That, if he tangles him in his chill hair,
Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow,
Past where the imaged stars ebb past their light
And turn to water under the dark world.
_She goes out into the storm, leaving the door open behind her.
Presently she is heard singing to a chant-like, ever-falling melody._
I stand in the sick night, whose hid shape is my own shape,
As dazed life in the flickering hearts of old men;
I think like a lean heron with bald head and frayed nape
Motionlessly moulting in a flat pool of a grey fen,
Whose sleep-blinked horny eyes know it can ne'er moult again.
My age-long cry droops in the hoar unseen stars that shake
Until their discordant rays make darkness inside the sky;
My bare cry shivers along the slimy rushes of the drowned lake--
Weariful waters, do you hear a soul's hair tingling your veiled
feet nigh?
I stand outside my keen body, yearning into you as I cry.
HIALTI, _within._
Is that the lass sobbing a song in sleep?
THORGERD, _within._
The wind, the wind, and so as much as she.
BLANID, _still out of doors, singing._
Old father of many waters, can you feel my soul touching yours?
I know that to greet your calling leaves me no more any yea or nay;
Yet I too am of kin with lost woods and sedgy shores,
So come secret as your black wind and take the dark core of my
heart away,
Ere you beget me on death to be still-born to an unlit day.
Ohey! Ohey! Ohohey!
THE VOICE. Ohohey! Ohey!
HIALTI, _within._
Is there a woman's voice inside the wind?
THORGERD, _within._
... the unclean Crier croaking ... cover your ears ...
_BLANID re-enters the house hurriedly; she shuts and bolts the door,
hardly knowing what she does; she falls on her knees with her back to
the door, breathing quickly and hard, and swaying backward and forward,
her face hid in her hands._
_Again and again a terrible blast of wind strains at the unyielding
door._
THE VOICE, _close at hand._
Open, open; I cannot open; open.
I cannot come to you unless you open.
BLANID, _muttering behind her hands._
I will not go ... I can do nothing else ...
It shall not enter ... O, it is in my heart ...
_She totters fearfully to the door, after many hesitant backward
glances, and opens it slowly and as if she had never known how to open
it. She reels against the wall and stands there motionlessly, clutching
it with flat hands and outspread arms, as a stooping figure swathed in a
rain-coloured, rain-soaked cloak and deep hood enters. Wisps of white
hair flutter in the mouth of the hood, and one flicker of the fire-light
shows in its depths a soft, shrunken, beardless face with an almost
lipless, sunken mouth._
THIS OLD STRANGE MAN, _speaking always in a low, even, mournful
voice._
A spirit calling in an old, old tongue
Forgotten in lost graves in lonesome places;
A spirit huddled in an old, old heart
Like a blind crone crouched o'er a long-dead fire;
A spirit shrinking in the old, old hills,
Dreading to step down water or hollow night:
Some seek me dreaming one last hope of joy;
Some have been made too wise by too much joy
And seek me longing for deeper misery,
Knowing that joy is weary in unending,
Changeless and one and easy in low perfection,
While misery has as many shapes as evil
That all must learn, and is made new for ever
By fear of pain desired for love of passion;
But feel, O you who call me through the night,
I bring you neither joy nor misery
But only rest so slow and sad and sodden
You will not know of it--you shall only rest
And lose your soul in my soul evermore.
_Sounds of heavy breathing are heard from the sleeping-chamber during
his speaking. He is continually reaching to BLANID with his muffled,
unseen hands, but she holds them from her as continually._
BLANID, _always in an eager, suppressed voice._
I have known joy--I know not what it was,
Mead-fumes that filled me cooling to one drop;
I have known misery--a self-numbed sting
That showed me but another joy to lose;
These were too small, I will have only rest,
And lose my soul in your soul evermore.
But if I die into your drooping limbs
I must be mingled there with him I love;
You may not reach him by your hoary crying,
But raise some human wail for help and light
And he will come and I must follow him
Past where the imaged moon shakes like a soul
Pausing in death between two unknown worlds.
THE OLD MAN.
A sign, a plighting, and I do your will.
BLANID, _winding her arms about his arms from one side, so that
he cannot touch her, and burying her face in his hood._
Kisses. 'Hast drained my soul's blood in each kiss.
THE OLD MAN.
I go, I go; make me not come again,
For I am in you, you must melt to me
Past where the imaged dark shuts bending lovers'
Close, unseen-imaged faces within life....
_Keeping his face turned toward BLANID, he recedes to the door, where he
ceases to be seen in the wind that scurries past._
THE VOICE, _immediately and far away._
Help; help; the marsh-lights 'wilder us! A light!
_BLANID shuts the door. The fire has now sunk so low that as she crosses
the house she is only visible in the half-dark as a dim shape. She
pauses by the hearth._
BLANID.
Nay, but I touch toward my joy at last,
And Christ and all His Saints go out like candles
When mass is said and the priest's cup is wiped....
THE VOICE.
The water laps our waists! Help, help! A light!
BLANID, _running to the sleeping-chamber door._
Master, I hear a calling....
_After an interval she strikes the door, crying loudly._
Master! Master!
HIALTI, _within._
Has the flood washed into the shippon?
BLANID. Nay;
There is a pitiful shrieking in the dark.
HIALTI, _within._
It is the Crier; break sleep no more for that.