King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 5

Sundown is soon to-day: it is cold and dark.

Now ten steps more, and much will have been done.

One. Two. Three. Four. Ten.

Eleven. Twelve. Sixteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

Twenty-one. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Thirty. Thirty-one.

At last the turn. Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty.

Now only once again. Two. Three.

What do the voices say? I hear too many.

The door: but here there is no garden.... Ah!

_She holds herself up an instant by the door-curtains; then she reels and falls, her body in the room, her head and shoulders beyond the curtains._

_GONERIL enters by the door beyond the bed, carrying the filled cup carefully in both hands._

GONERIL.

Where are you? What have you done? Speak to me.

_Turning and seeing HYGD, she lets the cup fall and leaps to the open door by the bed._

Merryn, hither, hither.... Mother, O mother!

_She goes to HYGD. MERRYN enters._

MERRYN.

Princess, what has she done? Who has left her?

She must have been alone.

GONERIL. Where is Gormflaith?

MERRYN.

Mercy o' mercies, everybody asks me For Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, And I ask everybody else for her; But she is nowhere, and the King will foam.

Send me no more; I am old with running about After a bodiless name.

GONERIL. She has been here, And she has left the Queen. This is her deed.

MERRYN.

Ah, cruel, cruel! The shame, the pity--

GONERIL. Lift.

_Together they raise HYGD, and carry her to bed._

She breathes, but something flitters under her flesh: Wynoc the leech must help us now. Go, run, Seek him, and come back quickly, and do not dare To come without him.

MERRYN. It is useless, lady: There's fever at the cowherd's in the marsh, And Wynoc broods above it twice a day, And I have lately seen him hobble thither.

GONERIL.

I never heard such scornful wickedness As that a king's physician so should choose To watch and even heal base men and poor-- And, more than all, when there's a queen a-dying....

HYGD, _recovering consciousness._ Whence come you, dearest daughter? What have I done?

Are you a dream? I thought I was alone.

Have you been hunting on the Windy Height?

Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting.

Or have I heard you singing through my sleep?

Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not.

Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown?

I am falling, falling! Lift me: hold me up.

_GONERIL climbs on the bed and supports HYGD against her shoulder._

It is the bed that breaks, for still I sink.

Grip harder: I am slipping!

GONERIL. Woman, help!

_MERRYN hurries round to the front of the bed and supports HYGD on her other side._

_HYGD points at the far corner of the room._

HYGD.

Why is the King's mother standing there?

She should not wear her crown before me now.

Send her away, she had a savage mind.

Will you not hang a shawl across the corner So that she cannot stare at me again?

_With a rending sob she buries her face in GONERIL'S bosom._

Ah, she is coming! Do not let her touch me!

Brave splendid daughter, how easily you save me: But soon will Gormflaith come, she stays for ever.

O, will she bring my crown to me once more?

Yes, Gormflaith, yes.... Daughter, pay Gormflaith well.

GONERIL.

Gormflaith has left you lonely: 'Tis Gormflaith who shall pay.

HYGD.

No, Gormflaith; Gormflaith.... Not my loneliness....

Everything.... Pay Gormflaith....

_Her head falls back over GONERIL'S shoulder and she dies._

GONERIL, _laying HYGD down in bed again._ Send hors.e.m.e.n to the marshes for the leech, And let them bind him on a horse's back And bring him swiftlier than an old man rides.

MERRYN.

This is no leech's work: she's a dead woman.

I'd best be finding if the wisdom-women Have come from Brita's child-bed to their drinking By the cook's fire, for soon she'll be past handling.

GONERIL.

This is not death: death could not be like this.

She is quite warm--though nothing moves in her.