Part 7

HALLGERD. Heroes, what deeds ye compass, what great deeds-- One man has held ye from an open door: Heroes, heroes, are ye undefeated?

GIZUR, _an old white-bearded man, to the other riders._ We have laid low to earth a mighty chief: We have laboured harder than on greater deeds, And maybe won remembrance by the deeds Of Gunnar when no deed of ours should live; For this defence of his shall outlast kingdoms And gather him fame till there are no more men.

MORD. Come down and splinter those old birds his gods That perch upon the carven high-seat pillars; Wreck every place his shadow fell upon, Rive out his gear, drive off his forfeit beasts.

SECOND MAN. It shall not be.

MANY MEN. Never.

GIZUR. We'll never do it: Let no man lift a blade or finger a clout-- Is not this Gunnar, Gunnar, whom we have slain? Home, home, before the dawn shows all our deed.

_The riders go down quickly over the wall-top, and disappear._

HALLGERD. Now I shall close his nostrils and his eyes, And thereby take his blood-feud into my hands.

RANNVEIG. If you do stir I'll choke you with your hair. I will not let your murderous mind be near him When he no more can choose and does not know.

HALLGERD. His wife I was, and yet he never judged me: He did not set your motherhood between us. Let me alone--I stand here for my sons.

RANNVEIG. The wolf, the carrion bird, and the fair woman Hurry upon a corpse, as if they think That all is left for them the grey gods need not.

_She twines her hands in HALLGERD'S hair and draws her down to the floor._

O, I will comb your hair with bones and thumbs, Array these locks in my right widow's way, And deck you like the bed-mate of the dead. Lie down upon the earth as Gunnar lies, Or I can never match him in your looks And whiten you and make your heart as cold.

HALLGERD. Mother, what will you do? Unloose me now-- Your eyes would not look so at me alone.

RANNVEIG. Be still, my daughter....

HALLGERD. And then?

RANNVEIG. Ah, do not fear-- I see a peril nigh and all its blitheness. Order your limbs--stretch out your length of beauty, Let down your hands and close those deepening eyes, Or you can never stiffen as you should. A murdered man should have a murdered wife When all his fate is treasured in her mouth. This wifely hair-pin will be sharp enough.

HALLGERD, _starting up as_ RANNVEIG _half loosens her to take a hair-pin from her own head._

She is mad, mad.... O, the bower is barred-- Hallgerd, come out, let mountains cover you.... _She rushes out to the left._

RANNVEIG, _following her._ The night take you indeed....

_GIZUR enters from the left._

GIZUR. Ay, drive her out; For no man's house was ever better by her.

RANNVEIG. Is an old woman's life desired as well?

GIZUR. We ask that you will grant us earth hereby Of Gunnar's earth, for two men dead to-night To lie beneath a cairn that we shall raise.

RANNVEIG. Only for two? Take it: ask more of me. I wish the measure were for all of you.

GIZUR. Your words must be forgiven you, old mother, For none has had a greater loss than yours. Why would he set himself against us all.... _He goes out._

RANNVEIG. Gunnar, my son, we are alone again.

_She goes up the hall, mounts to the loft and stoops beside him._

O, they have hurt you ... but that is forgot. Boy, it is bedtime; though I am too changed, And cannot lift you up and lay you in, You shall go warm to bed--I'll put you there. There is no comfort in my breast to-night: But close your eyes beneath my fingers' touch, Slip your feet down, and let me smooth your hands; Then sleep and sleep. Ay, all the world's asleep; But some will waken. _She rises._ You had a rare toy when you were awake-- I'll wipe it with my hair ... Nay, keep it so, The colour on it now has gladdened you. It shall lie near you. _She raises the bill: the deep hum follows._ No; it remembers him, And other men shall fall by it through Gunnar: The bill, the bill is singing.... The bill sings!

_She kisses the weapon, then shakes it on high._

CURTAIN.

MIDSUMMER EVE

_TO CLINTON BALMER AND THE DEAR MEMORY OF JAMES HAMILTON HAY FOR THE SUMMER OF 1900 AT CARTMEL_

_IN the lost Valley all is still To-day: upon the stony hill The heat of the late afternoon Settles in coppery haze: and soon A voice not known to me will call Silent obedient cows to stall, In the same immemorial cry From century to century Changing but by the uttering voice. And in a while a little noise (Hou! Hou!) far off near Newton Head Will tell that at another stead The browsing cattle pause and turn Unwilling heads to seem to learn That which they know, and move in train Now milking-time has come again.

In Well Knowe garden now, I know, Where the pale larkspur used to grow In the far nook, a sound is heard (If any is there to hear save bird And field-mouse in the strawberries Stirring like a local breeze-- Here, there--the low leaves soundlessly); A glistening slender wasp-like fly Is using will and wing to stand Upon the air as though it spanned A chasm with trembling outstretched arms, And in the silence of heat-stilled farms And heat-veiled wood that seems to shake Dim clotted leaves yet does not break By sigh or rustle the hush so dear Its tiny sting of sound sings clear._

_Oft have I heard that elfin horn Sound suddenly, as cobweb torn Must sound in startled elfin ears Pricked and on edge with elfin fears; And as I upward watched those spare Twin shreds of silver like slit air, Beating and shining, straight and tense, Simulating impotence Of motion, enviously I thought "Had my half useless flesh been caught, Upborn, and for all limit bound Between such gossamers of sound, Not thus, not thus would I deny My spirit's reach and endlessly Use all conception and all force To limit my short vital course. Had I such wings of urgent light Insistent not alone on height But stretched for sweep and latitude I would not evade flight, I would Employ my heat and power and sense In realising difference, And see my world's variety, Restricted but by energy."_

_But Well Knowe garden only shines In memory now, and its dear signs Only persist and gleam again In a shut chamber of my brain: While in a distant place I brood Upon lost things, and in a mood Of longing and remembrance feel The wisdom of that immobile And senseless mote, and think "Were I Carnate in a slim glistening fly, I would flash back upon that fair Laurel-walled rood, then drop in air Till no translucent nerve should stir From strained precision, nor wing should whir But to maintain one changeless height, Nor move nor waver from that sight; And think the years have not gone by When James and Clinton harboured nigh And, working in another art Than mine, yet peopled for my heart The Valley with the very core Of vital beauty for evermore-- So that when the air is still I hear below the meadow-rill Clinton singing softlier still Entranced by his own moving brush Among the stream-side bracken and rush-- Or James repeats with his long hand The distant line of hills that stand Between the Valley and the lake And yet seem lovelier for his sake."_

_How many generations past Should I be dead had I been cast In that small rapid shape of light? Though wings may stand, years move in flight; And, while I dream, I know, I know That it is useless I should go To Well Knowe garden again to see Things that cannot return to me-- James dead and Clinton gone away, And one whose name I cannot say Who built in Cyclopean sound Other magic heights around That little place, then turned apart, Untrue to friendship and to art, A man of nothing--vanished things, Dead friends, dead hopes, that must remain In a shut chamber of my brain; While only Clinton far away Will in these verses and this play See that country of our youth And our dead friend and our old troth Of friendship fixed in amber light, A timeless hour that holds no night._

Summer 1921--Spring 1922.

PERSONS:

NAN } BET } URSEL } Kitchen and Dairy Girls. MAUDLIN } LIB } ROGER, a Carter. MEASE, a Cowherd.

MIDSUMMER EVE

_The scene is the interior of an old barn on a knoll, a long time ago. At the back the barn's doors are opened widely; outside, a road rises slightly from left to right in front of the barn; beyond this the knoll sinks softly yet swiftly to a great meadow, and thence to a wide rich valley of more meadows and ever more meadows with ancient large cherry and crab and sloe and bullace and damson trees in their hedges whence the white and pink thorn-blossom clots are not quite gone, and of pastures shaded by tall clustering trees. Afar the valley ceases in low, densely wooded hills._

_A late June twilight is deepening; a faint moist heat-haze hides nothing, only distinguishing the planes of the distant trees with a cloudy delicacy. There is no wind, nor any movement; one blackbird sings somewhere for a little while, then it ceases and there is no sound in the fields._

_The whole prospect is of a solitary, fruitfully overgrown valley shut in from everywhere._

_Within the barn, to the left, is a high hay-mow with a ladder leaning against it; much hay has been tumbled at its foot in forking from the carts. To the right is a space of floor where the corn is to be heaped in the ending of summer: as yet, however, it is empty, save for a wooden plough, a homely rough wooden roller, wooden harrows, an uptilted, pleasantly shaped cart whence the hay-shelvings have not yet been removed. In the far corner of the bare walls of undressed stone at this side is an open door leading into a mistal. Presently a cow is heard moaning sickly beyond this door._

_The barn is still more dim than the land, so that a stretch of soft brown darkness is all that is known of the far-off roof. Nearing footfalls are heard in the road, and a woman's singing grows clearer._

"HOU, Hou," went the neatherd moaning Down along by the pasture's side; He turned the cows at the midden-yard loaning, The loitering cows in the brown owl-tide: Pale rose the last one, munching, droning, With wet grass stains on her udder and hide.

My lantern's rings to the low balks floated As Whitey's tail shook the mistal-sneck; When I laid my cheek to her belly spotted I felt her honey-strong breath i' my neck, For she turns her head does the curd-dark throated To watch my mouth start her teats with a peck.

_NAN, BET and URSEL ascend the road to the left and enter the barn as NAN ceases singing._

_They are white-hooded, clumsily shod, gownless; in the right hand NAN carries a willow frail, the others stoneware greybeards; each holds several hay-rakes on her left shoulder._

URSEL. September, O, September's in the song-- I will not have September in my heart, The ending of so much deliciousness, The year's sad luscious over-ripening. Yet here's the haysel done with: how it hurt To rake behind the last dim cart; and now My soul creeps in me like the low pale night-mist To know that in a moment past this moment We shall not hear it slowly any more Down in the lane where, wisping the close trees, It follows us like a mournful sound of change. Although the Summer is but newly kindled, Tiptoe I over-reach the joy of it (Ah, little perfect weeks of fruitfulness) Because I tremble lest it be slipping past me Before my eagerness will let me feel it. Must joy for me be ever in things gone?...

NAN, _as they set down their burdens to lean the rakes against the wall, where four flails are hung, on the left of the door._ Nay, there is comfort in the rainy nights, The long moist twilights of the cider time When girls hold fitful talk sat in the press-spot Among the hid sweet apple heaps that gleam In firelight to a humming out of doors Of soddening water oozing down the soil; And there is comfort too at Candlemas From looking through the casement in the dark, The last thing ere you chafe your toes in bed, On the crisp quiet of the woods and fields, Wondering if 'tis snow or all the moonlight, Peering so anxiously along the wall That shades still ewes and whiter first-dropped lambs.... Ay, but I'm tired, lasses, tired now Because the haysel's over and 'twas fair And the land's savour wears me with delight. I'm for indoors and resting--and, beside, I'm fainest of my supper o' baking days.

BET. Let all times slip to haste the barley week, For then our nearest dancing-time will ripen ... But I'm for bed to get me doffed and stripped To pick much grass seed from my smock and coats.

URSEL. Listen, Bet; no cool sheets are yours to-night. The milk-eyed goodies with grey loose-skinned throats, Who maunder of rarer girlhoods none can prove, Tell that at midnight on Midsummer-Eves They waked in some lone shade far from all sleepers To feel which should be wedded within the year; For the year's unknown husbands' images Come then like swoons from some where ... ay, from some where.... Thoughts shaping for their women's heedless souls, And if a maid will watch she sees her own And knows her own, seeing her own alone, Peering unseen as breath is in June nights. Surely such dainties rilled no cow-slow eyes; But Nan and I mean watching and have bid Maudlin at Grassgarth, Lib at Appletoft Under our breath, and hither they steal this eve. We knew we must not tell you ere the hour, Or ... or ... too many hinds might creep to be Their own drowsed leering loutish prophecies.

BET. Am I so old or wistful to be ringed That I must feign to be content with one? Where is this moon-swayed peeping, then, to be, This blest eavesdropping on a mood of fate?

NAN. Here in the barn, where we may crouch un-thought-of By moon-estranged eyes in gradual darkness. And lest we startle at o'er-expected footfalls Or with night-carried voices rouse the farm, Maudlin and Lib will warn us by dove-cooings-- Sometimes I hear a cooing up warm nights From dove pairs far too wise to be asleep, But mistress bides awake for no such music.

BET. Dove-cooing Lib will be a thing to brood on-- I'll miss nought here, although you count me least.

NAN. All works with us; for at the forenoon drinking I heard dame Stir-Wench mutter "These kesh-pithed lasses Shall sleep no longer three-a-bed beneath The dark damp closeness of the garret thatch, That nigh their heads leans low upon the floor, Until this heat is past; or they will grow Yet more slob-cheeked and sodden and dough-limbed I never saw maids look more like green sickness." And then she bade Giles carry our gear and bedding Into the empty meal-webbed granary. Nought could have fallen better; now we have No moaning ladder's and open doors' groped passing, No stocking feet need pad the dairy flags; Only a silverly weathered latchless board Keeps out the bats that flap toward pale shapes, And waits to let us into the large night Throughout the holiest of the mothering year.

BET. She said green sickness but she meant green apples. The codlin tree that o'er each moonset stretches A creeping spider-shadow on the gable Fills out its fruit weeks earlier this year, And the one bough with apples onion-roped Is one the mended ladder will not reach; It is weight-arched against our garret window, So that the curled leaves finger on the panes When midnight winds are sturdy enough to lift it; Mam Pantry knows and fears bare orchard-shelves And herds us to an outhouse. Girls, those apples Will all be basketed before their time, Ere threshing heaps the granary once more And sharp nights make her yield our loft again Because she finds us cuddled on its threshold.

URSEL. Mam Patch-Waist counts more eggs than four--she knows Spring wenches' whifts let loose to sniff the night; So straightway to the granary Mease she sped To oil the lock and drive a staple in. Small is our chance of watching now....

NAN. Quick-Pattens Even ere she rounded must have been a likely, A very likely maid for her to know Our scapemell moods howe'er we prim our mouths.

BET. Mease for two kisses left the staple loose.

URSEL, _laughing with_ NAN. Ay, Bet's the market woman, to be sure.

BET. Mouths, even as eyes, were made to earn our wills.

NAN. But how came Bet near Mease up in the corn-spot? And if she knows the need o' the staple loose Why will she care to watch with us to-night?

BET. To learn which one it is, Nanikin sly.

NAN. Had it been Mease he'd not have chaffered kisses.... You know more now than you will learn to-night, You will wed more than all we see to-night-- We shall win nought beyond a secret spice Of unclipt gossip in a tasty hour....

_A loitering dull sound is heard of cart-wheels and horse-hooves out in the lane._

URSEL. Hush, Nan--here come the lads....

_They lift their burdens, and stand aside for the cart to enter the barn; but as it comes in sight it passes along the road from the left to the right. It is piled with a roped load of hay; ROGER and MEASE, in long smocks and flapping hats, knee-breeches and ribbed stockings, accompany it, ROGER leading the horse, MEASE holding to the shelvings behind with one hand and with the other slanting several hay-forks and a scythe against his shoulder._

URSEL, _continuing._ What, Roger, Mease.... Why bring you not the cart and top the mow, To feel in each limb's ebb hay harvest's spent?

ROGER, _halting._ As we trailed up from Pear-tree Dale past Sheep-mires Under a thick dew-breath we seemed to steal As 'tween chill bed-clothes in December nights; Into the load it soaked two fingers' length, So now we needs must throw it off and spread it To wait to-morrow's sun out in the yard Ere it is ripe to top the sweating stack.

MEASE. Moreover, we are wetter than the crop; Wherefore be homing, russet-apple-faces, To take our smocks and dry them off while we Drink the mulled cider you are going to make.

_ROGER and MEASE go forward with the horse and cart up the road to the right._

URSEL. Come, maids, we'd best get in ere mistress seeks us-- Beside, the longer we do loiter here The longer shall we hold the house from sleep; There's bowl and bucket rinsing to be done, And supper to set out if we would eat it. Be neither meek nor eager in your toil, Or Mother Dish-Clout in our gust will read Some deed afoot; we'll wrangle sluggishly Until she drives us off to bed unwashed. Then, though we hear the lock shoot and her steps Sink down the out-stair as she dips the key Down the long pocket of her petticoat, Do nought but cast your shoes--there's but one wall Between her chamber and the granary-- Lie dim along the bed, and never whisper; But, when we hear her bed-stocks creak and know Her ears are well tied up beneath her night-cap, Out slip Bet's staple and ourselves as well. Seek the pale hollyhocks across the garden (They glimmer a little in all Summer darkness), And touch behind the hive-house shadow-hung....

NAN. And in the barn make happiness till dawn.

BET. Dare we lie still, inside the dark, and wait In such suppression for such unknown things?

_As BET speaks they leave the barn to the right; NAN resumes her song faintly and more faintly._

NAN. Dusked seemed the eve as the cows trod in Under the roof-drip each to her stalling; Full udders crusht shagged thighs between Were warm to my hands in the chill air's palling; And through the wind's drifting of leaves yet green "Hou, hou," neared the neatherd's calling.... _The song ceases in the distance._

ROGER _turns into the barn with_ MEASE'S _bundle of hay-forks, and lays them in the empty cart as he sings._

I get no sleep in lambing nights, My woman gets no sleep; We fold the ewes if we sniff a thaw, And when they yean as we crouch i' their straw She takes the lambs by our horn-fogged lights While I do handle the sheep. _Footsteps are heard within the neat-house._

ROGER, _calling through the neat-house door._ Is the sick beast grown easier by now?

MEASE, _entering from the neat-house._ Poor Dapple-Back, milk fever's bad on her. 'Twas her first calf and though 'twas smoothly dropped She could not gather, but heaped a shapeless flank Like a maid swooning; when the farrier came "She'll die, she'll die," he said. "She'll not," said I: But nothing served at first--her slackened fell Dried hard and never any sweat would stir, The udder turned a dull and shivering white; Yet now her ears twitch up to greet my voice, The hide-hair moistens and the udder shrinks. There'll be no need to wake with her to-night-- I'll not unwrap her till an hour ere dawn. Come through and look at her as we wend in.... When you got up the cider for the meadows Was there a butt still left?

ROGER, _as they go into the mistal together._ Surely there was; But the girls say she'll make it wait till harvest. I never hired to any stead before Where last year's cider trickled into June....

_All is soundless again save for the cow's moaning. The twilight deepens no farther, and presently its dead gold brownness becomes cooler in tone; the mist, which had been merged in the nightfall's dimness, imperceptibly becomes apparent again, being suffused by an oozing of silveriness through the pervading brownness; moon-rise is evident, although the moon is hidden by the permeating mist which it fills. Perhaps a crying of bats is heard, but this is not certain. An owl cries somewhere--probably from one of the gable-holes, for it sounds both inside and outside at once; after many tentative Tu-whits it launches a full Tu-whoo and swings out far and low across the valley: a chirping of frogs begins in the nearest ditches._

_A closer sound stills all these, being evidently that of a woman's voice feigning dove-notes; it ceases, light cautious hurried steps are heard; it sounds again, Maudlin slips round the door corner to the left and enters the barn. She is white-capped, her gown skirt is bunched about her waist, her bodice sleeves are turned back beyond her elbows._