King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 28

There's nought I want to do when I am dead ...

_She is silent a moment, then seems startled into sobbing._

O, Ursel, Ursel, I cannot let me die....

URSEL.

Folk say a fetch is seen at its departing From a cold house whence it shall lead a soul; But this comes like a child-birth closing in, And so perchance it does but signify The consciousness of death that breaks in all.

We stand outside the process of the earth And watch it as immortals; and consider Death, which we think a deeply moving thing (Observing eagerly its fine emotions, The impressive strangeness of its mean romance, Its strong-tanged character and accidents, And all the keen new chances it affords For sympathy and for imagination), But think not to connect it with ourselves-- So sure we are all's possible to us.

Then a near comprehension that is love Of trees or sheep, songs or some man or woman, Shakes us one day and nothing is the same, Because we grow aware that we must leave The very joy that lights ourselves for us And shows where we may greaten for its sake.

'Tis life's beginning; we perceive the earth And go down into it and nestle to it Defeatedly before its larger thought: Numbly we measure ourselves by all we see, We feel uneasily yet willingly Each thing that happens may happen to us too, And we are cheated by each grief unsuffered-- Yea, ever we interrogate decay To know our own duration; we must touch Each lovesome thing lest it or we should fade, Until the searching quiver of contact reaches And makes us conscious where we can be lovesome; We find ourselves in others and thus learn How others are in us, and so we creep To large experiences we could not think-- Effectual perfection of ripe life; The earth and all the darling ways of it Are ours by love, for all that we must leave Comes into us and makes us live it swiftly Lest we should miss some thing. So that one love Insists that every love in earth shall feed it, To keep it from the unsafety of ignorance And let our brief days yield their sweetness up.

Such is the consciousness of death--ah, such Must be made yours; mayhap this is the way.

NAN.

The consciousness of death.... Though that be all, It is too much: even if this fetch abides Unnumbered years ere I see it depart, Yet all is made unsure and I may sink Before I have felt half I need to feel.

I must make every pa.s.sion in myself, Have each emotion of my wilful sowing-- The pain of sap, the pain of bud and bloom, Of hard green fruit sun-bruised to thick gold juice, The pain of the sharp kernel in the pulp (Trans.m.u.ter of sweet to inmost bitterness), The pain of orderly corruption too-- Of the withdrawing sap, of the sick falling Into long gra.s.s beneath the rain-soaked boughs, Of gentle decomposing for small roots; So that if death's the end, the true completion, I could believe myself fulfilled and ripe, A sufferer of the topmost joy and grief, And past the need of any eternity ...

O, I desire old age, because old age Has more capacity, more ways of joy....

_Her sobs hide her words. URSEL leads her to the hay and seats her among it again and herself by her, putting her arms about her and drawing her head down upon her bosom._

URSEL.

Old age must sit and wait as we must wait ...

We can grow old so quickly in our souls....

One utters a love-call and no answer comes, One suffers motherhood within one's heart Of cold unconscious children who can render A tolerance of affection more remote Than strait denial; and such maternity Waits not for any bearing through the body-- When love has come maternity must follow, And if the body may not be made fruitful The spirit chooses its own fruitfulness: All that we miss is happening in others, Others are feeling all we yearn to feel, And if we will not let ourselves forget How love has wrung us we pa.s.s through it with them....

Ah, wonder, joy, of contact that enlarges Our bodies' possibilities and times, And gathers life for us to nourish....

_A stifled cry from BET is heard from the neat-house._

BET. Aa--h....

NAN, _sinking back faintly in_ URSEL'S _arms._ Does ... it return and ... call?...

URSEL. Hush, 'tis Bet's voice....

_After a brief interval filled with slight sounds,_ BET _appears in the neat-house doorway; she peeps before her until she sees the two women in the hay._

BET, _in a low eager tone._ Ursel, Ursel....

URSEL _rises and goes toward her._ The cow has died ... in the dark....

When I returned but now by the yard door I missed the boust and groped into her stall-- And did not know until I heaved and spread Up a flat softness that went sick beneath me With long stiff shakings, while her unearned wind Broke far within, then slid against my cheek ...

I could have borne it if she had been cold; But she was nearly cold, so that I felt A thread-thin warmth I could not stay nor make ...

NAN, _approaching_ BET _swiftly from behind and grasping her shoulder._ Is the cow dead?

BET, _shrinking from her touch._ Nannie, the cow is dead.

NAN.

I milked her last of all, and now my fetch Has milked her too; will ... it ... take all from me I own through love?

(_To_ BET.) Why did you shrink from me?

BET.

I did not shrink from you; what need is there?

NAN _holds out her arms to her; again she draws away from_ NAN.

Nannie, I cannot help it ... I cannot help it....

There's more than this world in you, and I know not What you might do to me past your own will: You have seen your fetch and are not one of us, For we know not your being's dim half-conditions ...

And maybe if you touch ought that has life You make it that your fetch can take it too-- So died the heifer.... Or maybe your least touch Draws life from others to win you a few hours; Or you are of the dead, and call folk to them Through sympathy of the senses' understanding....

Poor Nannie ... O, poor Nannie ... O, poor Nannie....

_She sobs loudly, stooping to wipe her eyes with her petticoat-hem._

URSEL, _while seeking to still her._ Let us turn home to bed: we shall not sleep; But once we're stripped we can relax our bodies, Lying past thought for misery till insight Returns again and brings us the proportion Of all ... and us....

NAN. I shall bide here till dawn To see if ... I return and go out ... out....

(_To_ BET.) Have you left Lib and Maudlin hiding somewhere; Or do they home by now?

BET, _overcoming her tears gradually._ We fled from here When ... when ... and reached the neat-yard ere we knew; We climbed the knoll and pa.s.sed behind the barn; Then through the corn land, dew-wet to our hearts, We beat the thick rye down that choked our feet Amid its s.h.a.ggy sighing stilly weight, Until the cottages at Damson-Closes Hung o'er us like a dark broody-winged hen We shunned the watcher's light where the old woman Waits for her death, and dripped into the lane Soft as cast shadows.... Ever all feared to speak: Yet I went with the others through lost fields, Straining to see the thing we prayed to miss, Because I knew I dared not near the homestead; Until I felt that neither should I dare A more remote returning by myself-- When, loitering unnoticed by those trances, I sought even you rather than be alone.

NAN, _rigidly, her head having been long averted to the barn's doorway._ I hear my feet.

URSEL, _in alarm._ Nan, do not go....

NAN. I must.

BET, _wildly._ Again.... Wherever shall I go alone?...

_She tugs her cap-strings loose and her cap over her eyes; she breathes so deeply that her trembling is heard by her breath as she fumbles her way into the mistal. The quiet steps are heard again; as_ NAN _approaches the threshold the woman reappears to the right and pa.s.ses down the lane to the left, always holding out her arms to_ NAN, _whose arms hang tensely at her sides while her fingers twitch at her petticoat as she holds back and back from meeting the embrace._ URSEL _tries to go to_ NAN, _but she cannot trail her feet after her nor draw down her hands that cover her face._

NAN.

How have I parted?... Where am I in deed?...

What of me is unseen?... Go....

_The woman having disappeared to the left, still opening her arms to_ NAN, NAN _turns and totters to the door's edge on that side; thence she feels her way supportedly along the door, but when she comes to its end she slides to her knees; after moving a little farther so, she sinks forward on her face and crawls blindly toward_ URSEL'S _feet. At the fall_ URSEL'S _hands drop; she reaches to_ NAN, _kneels by her, feels her heart and hands, holds her own hand before_ NAN'S _mouth and nostrils; then with one swift movement she loosens her own raiment nearly to her waist, and, lying against_ NAN, _clasps her in her arms and gathers her into her bosom._

URSEL. Nan.... O, Nan....

_The two lie quite still; the stirred dust settles on them slowly and greyly in the moonlight._

CURTAIN.

LAODICE AND DANAe

_"And, O, perchance it is the fairest lot At once to be a queen and be forgot; For queens are oft remembered by the weighed Wild dusky peac.o.c.k-flas.h.i.+ng sins they played, But queens clean-hearted leave us and grow less, Lost in the common light of righteousness."_ From KING RENe'S HONEYMOON: A MASQUE, Scene vii.