Georgian Poetry 1913-15 Part 3

But women need not wed these men.

Hygd:

We are good human currency, like gold, For men to pa.s.s among them when they choose.

[A child's hands beat on the outside of the door beyond the bed.]

Cordeil's Voice (a child's voice, outside):

Father ... Father ... Father ... Are you here?

Merryn, ugly Merryn, let me in ...

I know my father is here ... I want him ... Now ...

Mother, chide Merryn, she is old and slow ...

Hygd (softly):

My little curse. Send her away--away ...

Cordeil's Voice:

Father... O, father, father... I want my father.

Goneril (opening the door a little way):

Hush; hush--you hurt your mother with your voice.

You cannot come in, Cordeil; you must go away: Your father is not here ...

Cordeil's Voice:

He must be here: He is not in his chamber or the hall, He is not in the stable or with Gormflaith: He promised I should ride with him at dawn And sit before his saddle and hold his hawk, And ride with him and ride to the heron-marsh; He said that he would give me the first heron, And hang the longest feathers in my hair.

Goneril:

Then you must haste to find him; He may be riding now ...

Cordeil's Voice:

But Gerda said she saw him enter here.

Goneril:

Indeed, he is not here ...

Cordeil's Voice:

Let me look ...

Goneril:

You are too noisy. Must I make you go?

Cordeil's Voice:

Mother, Goneril is unkind to me.

Hygd (raising herself in bed excitedly, and speaking so vehemently that her utterance strangles itself):

Go, go, thou evil child, thou ill-comer.

[GONERIL, with a sudden strong movement, shuts the resisting door and holds it rigidly. The little hands beat on it madly for a moment, then the child's voice is heard in a retreating wail.]

Goneril:

Though she is wilful, obeying only the King, She is a very little child, mother, To be so bitterly thought of.

Hygd:

Because a woman gives herself for ever Cordeil the useless had to be conceived (Like an after-thought that deceives n.o.body) To keep her father from another woman.

And I lie here.

Goneril (after a silence):

Hard and unjust my father has been to me; Yet that has knitted up within my mind A love of coldness and a love of him Who makes me firm, wary, swift and secret, Until I feel if I become a mother I shall at need be cruel to my children, And ever cold, to string their natures harder And make them able to endure men's deeds; But now I wonder if injustice Keeps house with baseness, taught by kins.h.i.+p-- I never thought a king could be untrue, I never thought my father was unclean ...

O mother, mother, what is it? Is this dying?

Hygd:

I think I am only faint ...

Give me the cup of whey ...