Ardvorlich's Wife
To JEAN TAYLOR SMITH AND FERN AND ELLIN FIRST WOMAN
Snow. What is snow?
It comes from nothing below,
And from nothing above that is ours.
It was not; and it is.
In its mysteries
It fosters life and death and peace:
It is of the Powers. THE WOMEN
Snow. We are snow.
We are not spirits of the air,
Though our beginning was there:
Where light and the aethers flow
Is not our country. Slow, slow,
There tákes béing a flake——
With no least flutter or shake
It starts; and another starts;
And the first slants in the waft of the second,
And a third appears, as if light had beckoned
And that were the one reply.
Hither and thither darts
Another, a feather, a petal, a wing:
And, as they fall and lie
Close and closer and cling,
A substance, a texture ensue,
And being assembles—a new
Being assembles, a thing
Here unexpectedly—— FIRST WOMAN
And that being is I. SECOND WOMAN
And I. THIRD WOMAN
And I. FOURTH WOMAN
And I. ALL
While snow endures, we are.
We are offspring of the earth,
For here our spirit assembled;
Though our flesh began in the sky.
This is our home: we have trembled
Already in its dearth
Of peace, of mercy—part
Of our light steps, of our touch.
Our minds hover and crouch
And would settle—as a frightened bird,
Had it not heard
Overmuch. FIRST SEMICHORUS
By the crags of Dundurn,
In the heart of Glen Gonan
We have seen the night burn.
On our robes that sweep round
The feet of Ben Fuath
Black shadows surge and bound
As flame-haired torches are swung
Upward by dark, wild, young,
Crowding fighters crying ALL
‘Gregarach!’ SECOND SEMICHORUS
The night has its dread; but the day
Has another dread—that is more,
Because it opens the heart
With cutting tenderness.
In every secret place
We lie, and with light we start
At another step than ours:
There's a wild woman afoot,
With no home but our bosom of whiteness.
She is alone, but not mute;
She speaks to Nothing; a lightness
Is in her mind and her gaze.
Alarm like a lifting haze
Fills her eyes; she is lost
In her body, her spirit, and her ways. FIRST SEMICHORUS
In the night we know her now.
The scent, in our nostrils, of snow
Is dulled by that of warm hair
Blown thick and turbid on air. ALL
And when our veils are tossed
By mountain wind and the layers
Of our being go up in white
Smoke to the mountain's height,
Like anguish of answerless prayer
Goes up a shriek of despair
‘There is blood in Glen Artney now’—
Though Glen Artney is smooth with snow.
The Women at the sides retire and turn inward until the eight form a circle. They then dance a brief, circling, interlacing dance suggestive of the motion of snow-flakes .
ALL , as they dance
Another—another is here.
This is she whom we fear.
Yet, yet how dear
She would be to us under the snow.
A STRANGE WOMAN'S VOICE , high above the others.
There is blood in Glen Artney now.
The dance ceases abruptly, the circle opening out backward and the eight Women stationing themselves at equidistant intervals, upright and motionless, against the semicircle of curtains .
As the circle opens, a single figure is seen within it—that of the STRANGE WOMAN . She is scarcely recognisable as human, being apparently wild and with no relationship to civilisation: her lean and weather-beaten figure is as much covered and protected by her masses of disordered hair as by ragged fragments of recognisable garments . THE STRANGE WOMAN
The blood is under the snow.
My life is under the snow,
With the things I know.
There is no more any being
In me: those who use seeing
To know themselves by, and their place
In space,
Have never seen my face
Since it became this face.
This is the next world: the next world is,
And it is white, and so is this.
I thought that purity was bliss:
How barren it is—yet light
Enough to teach me flight.
This is the next world: there are no deer in Heaven;
I knew seven,
Yet for a day now the doe
That has suckled me cannot find me for snow.
Turning aimlessly she sees the semicircle of motionless figures .
Are you the people of the sky——
Silent because speech
Is not the language of the sky?
If you are not, fly!
Women who use feet for moving,
As they use hearts for yearning and loving,
Have life for enemy here:
They should go away.
Wild things, fanged things, fear
And springing poisons grow here.
The plants that do not kill
Do not nourish—their will
Is evil and says Nay.
But the worst of its growing things
Are the children of women, the weed
That cannot be cut or burned,
The Gregarach.
Have you seen a severed head
Eating meat and bread?
Its shrunken eyeballs were turned
Upon me, as though to speak
Of the deed.
Why cannot a bodiless head
Make utterance? It has lips.
The sight killed me and I flew,
I went upon the tips
Of wings until I knew
The glens and the wind of height,
And Vorlich protected me
With veils that its clouds weave.
It was my brother's head: do you know?
Why do you not go?
The Gregarach did that: they believe
They dare not touch me, my brother
Has come into me; but another
Is something to strip and hack.
The Red Children come back;
And none knows where they may be.
Why do you not speak to me?
She turns from the Women .
FIRST WOMAN , gently .
Why do we not speak?
SECOND WOMAN , gently .
She can see,
But she cannot hear what we hear——
Or the end that is near.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , returning to the motionless figures.
What did you say?
Why do you stay?
I believe you are not here.
I believe you are no one.
She turns from them again .
If this pallor is unbroken
And no word is spoken,
If furry thing or bird
Is not heard,
And nothing is done,
I shall know this is eternity
Left open to me;
And I shall never learn
What to do, where to turn
In eternity.
THE WOMEN , gently.
Sleep.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting .
What did you say? Weep?
I cannot weep: I am wise:
That is no use for eyes.
She sinks to a sitting posture on the ground .
Eyes are desire for night;
Eyes are a passion for flight.
Dreamingly .
All about me is white
And I cannot feel what is under
Me or my body, and a wonder
Begins that floats me out
Over an airy deep.
Come! Empty me of doubt. . . . FIRST WOMAN
Sleep. SECOND WOMAN
Sleep. THIRD WOMAN
Sleep.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting to her feet .
They come! They come! They come!
They will make you into nothing.
I hear people with clothing:
Fly from them, hide you with me.
Be dumb.
She runs out through the curtains, left. Two bare-legged Farm-Girls enter right, with milking-pails .
FIRST GIRL , eagerly.
You see, there is no one here!
I tell you it is the ghost.
Between Dundurn and Ben Our, above the glens,
It goes. It nests in the heart of Meall nan Uamh,
The alarmed spirit of the Lady of Ardvorlich,
For ever fleeing, unwilling to haunt mankind. SECOND GIRL
It is not a ghost. Are you sure it is even a woman?
It was like a wild animal: if such a thing can be woman,
She is something forbidden and outside any mercy,
Kept for breeding by enemies of man,
By the violators, the Red Children, the Gregarach. . . .
My grief! My terror! This is not any ghost,
It has left foot-prints in the new-fallen snow.
Gregarach are in the caves, it has gone to them:
Come home, come quickly; and cry aloud as we go
The Red Slayers seek Glen Artney again! FIRST GIRL
It was the Lady's face: and she is dead:
So this must be her ghost—though day has risen.
Perhaps this unexpected snow disquiets her spirit more.
I know the footprints are strange, and I know not what they are:
Some are of little but toes, they may be an animal's. SECOND GIRL
Are you very sure it was the Lady's face?
I had not come here from Fernan when she died. FIRST GIRL
Am I very sure? I was in Ardvorlich hall
When an angry huntsman from Glen Artney came
And told that the Ranger's body, her brother's body,
Had been found headless on the Forest height;
And when the litter of Alpin followed him
And barked around her and forced her to bring food
While they should set the table. . . . Ah! Ah! My grief!
I watched them unwrap a bundle in a plaid——
Merely a plaid, such as a lover wraps
About your head when he takes you out in the moonlight——
And out of it lift the Ranger's dripping head
And set it in a dish. The Lady came,
She looked at it and shut her eyes and stood:
Then she opened her eyes, and they were changed,
They did not know me, I did not know that eyes
Could be so filled, and with such frightening things
They have no names in language. Then she shrieked,
And shrieked again. She went stiff in her body,
Her arms stiffened straight against her sides,
She put back her head like one who empties a cup,
And she shrieked as if her other shrieks had been
A whisper and a sigh. She ran out,
And up Glen Vorlich shrieking as if with breathing.
We followed her, but could not make her speed,
Or take her way—although it was well seen
By all the strips and pieces of her coats
That streamed from thorn and thistle and broken gorse.
That day Ardvorlich had gone down the Loch:
When he returned, he and the ghillies went out
And sought her a day and night, and a day and night
Again, and a day again. Nothing was there,
Except a shoe in a bog. She has never come home.
She carried a child in her body.
How can she be not dead for months? She is dead,
And her ghost will walk until she is found and buried. SECOND GIRL
Nevertheless, these are footprints: and I——
I am afraid of meeting Gregarach stragglers.
Let us hurry up to the shieling and get done milking.
This early unexpected snow has come
Like a good friend to us; for now the kye
Will be taken down from the hillside to the byre.
Our daily mountain toil will be sooner over.
We are getting strangely little milk up here:
Down there we cannot be blamed for spilling it. FIRST GIRL
The ghost went our way. We need not fear a ghost
That flies from us: but let us keep together.
They go out left, parting the curtains. The eight Women come forward abreast, as at first, but in a lower light . FIRST WOMAN
A day passes: and a day.
Upon a steel-edged wind
The clouds have passed away.
Frost makes ripe our mind;
We cannot believe we shall cease——
Not even by the force of light——
While frost like tense delight
Permeates us, and our knees
Makes firm for our upholding;
And the air of our enfolding
Is refreshed by recurrent night
And the tender deathly light
Of the kind, unburning moon.
The light alters to moonlight . FIRST SEMICHORUS
The falling darkness changes
On the mountains in their ranges;
Their summits are breathing out
A litten emanation——
A silver palpitation——
As of spirits relieved from doubt;
Our snow-fledged sisters are seeing
The light with which our being
Is in unearthly tune,
The coming of the moon. FIRST WOMAN
Entrancing and divine
Principle, whom we love
The most because the most
We understand and move
In heart with thy design,
Thy purpose amid the host
Of the intentions of space!
We await instantly
The sharpness of thy shining,
That was learnt in the same ways
Of instinct and divining
As the sharp coldness that dwells
In me—— FIFTH WOMAN
In me—— EIGHTH WOMAN
And in me, SECOND SEMICHORUS
And that comes from the deep wells
Of passion and desiring,
Piercing like our respiring
Keen air that hurts with thrills——
THE STRANGE WOMAN , unseen .
Aiah! The pain! The pain! ALL
The strange woman is here,
With her disquieting fear.
But something else goes on
Where she is lying alone——
For something else unknown
Takes form within the air. FIRST WOMAN
Is a dark sea-bird there?
Was the wailing cry its cry?
Far from the mountains of leaping water
Upon Sithchallion sea-birds breed
On a lochan's isles of reed,
Safe in the mountain's arm—and, O,
Does a sea-gull's spent and shelterless daughter
Float down here upon tired wings,
Dreaming her mountain nigh,
Aching to let her slow
Pinions drop and know
An end of wanderings?
THE STRANGE WOMAN , unseen .
Aiah! The pain! The gladness! FIRST WOMAN
The wailing cry again!
Hush thee, bird! But is it one?
This is something not yet done:
Hard, yet not of sadness . . .
What torment is her's and the hour's.
The snow everywhere quivers
With her: there might be rivers
Of nerves that branch and grow
Through the bosom of the snow.
Or are these tremors of the Powers
Of earth that is beneath her;
As though they would unsheath her
And make her essence bare?
What does she now embrace?
She has not changed her place,
Yet she is rent and is two.
Move quietly: let her alone:
She is again her own. ALL
She is not for the snow.
The Women at the sides move backward and inward to form the circle again: but it is no sooner formed than those in front open out, without dancing, and all take their former places against the semicircle of curtains .
As the circle opens the STRANGE WOMAN is seen, seated within and suckling a child .
ALL , as they go to their places.
Hidden dawn on the heights
Is rosy: the first lights
Illumine the snow's light traces
Of homeless marten and soundless thrush——
And at our feet two nestling faces. . . . FIRST WOMAN
Hush! EIGHTH WOMAN
Hush! ALL
Hush! THE STRANGE WOMAN
I have returned. I do not know whence I come.
Something is new: sometimes it seems this place,
Sometimes it is I, sometimes this portion of me
To which my arms are yet a little strange.
I do not know its name:
I know my name is Mairi. But is that all?
How did I get a name?
Where did I live before? Have I ever known?
O, little beautiful animal in my arms,
How wild are you? Have I not caught you, I?
You are mine. And I? For a while I shall be yours.
She sings. As she sings the dawn-light comes, first touching the heads of the eight Women, then descending little by little to the seated mother and child .
Out of nothing You come to me. I was your clothing:
Shall I not be Still the nest Where-in you dwell,
And my
new-filled breast Your daily well? Balaiu and
Balalayly, Milk is new in your mother daily.
The song is not new. Whence does it come to me?
‘New in your mother’ . . . Whose mother. . . . What have I done?
Am I the mother, I? FIRST WOMAN
Listen, listen! What feet
Whisper among the snow? SECOND SEMICHORUS
It is useless to warn her now.
Her mind has found its home,
The part of her beyond
Is veiled: she will grow fond
And earthly, and never come
Again to rarified being
Made sharp for feeling and seeing
By hunger, starlight and snow.
She will be clothed again, and now know
The things that her bare flesh knew. FIRST SEMICHORUS
Watch her: she sees us no more.
The form in her arms, that grew
By mystery in the hoar
Darkness, has taken from her
That which was her share
Of rootless life that we know,
Wild and still as snow. FIRST WOMAN
Speak to her, ALL
Beware,
Mortals are there. FIRST WOMAN
Listen. FIFTH WOMAN
Listen. EIGHTH WOMAN
Listen. THE STRANGE WOMAN
I cannot bear these silences that glisten
And tell me nothing of the way to go.
As she speaks, Ardvorlich and the two Farm-Girls enter from the right. They steal behind her as she is lost in ministering to the child .
SECOND GIRL , in an excited whisper .
Look there, Ardvorlich! I said she was no ghost.
FIRST GIRL , in vexation .
She's not the same: she's nursing a young child
That no one ever saw in the ghost's arms. ARDVORLICH
Yet she was heavy with child. Stand you there:
And, Dervail, steal behind her with no sound.
Are all the ghillies stationed? FIRST GIRL
Two at the shieling,
Two down the Glen, two more across the hill,
And two before the corrie in Ben Fuath. ARDVORLICH
All is well done. Now wait.
He steps in front of THE STRANGE WOMAN .
Come, Mairi, I have waited a long time:
Let us go home together. You must be cold:
I have brought your fine new cloak.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting up, the child pressed to her with one hand, the other hand clenched .
Who are you?
Let me go! If you touch me I will die.
I will bear no violation by wild men. ARDVORLICH
Listen then to my voice. I am no outlaw.
Speak to this girl, and bid her carry the child. THE STRANGE WOMAN
It is warm. I found a dead sheep on Ben Vorlich,
That not long since was such a lamb as mine.
I skinned it with a stone: I do not know
How I had learnt to do such things with a stone.
I wrapped the child in it.
What have I said? Did I say ‘Ben Vorlich’ to you?
Ben Vorlich? Is it here? ARDVORLICH
It is beyond the Glen. THE STRANGE WOMAN
You have a voice
That has Glen Vorlich somewhere in its sound.
I like you. If I trust you and go with you,
Will you take care of me? Will you be my husband? ARDVORLICH
But, Mairi, I am your husband.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , springing back .
No! Ah, no!
I do not know a husband. I am lost.
You will deceive me. ARDVORLICH
No; I will be your husband. THE STRANGE WOMAN
You would have promised without that afterthought
If the kind truth of love were in your instinct.
Now I must know you more.
This child. . . . I do not know whose child it is. . . .
What do you say to me now? ARDVORLICH
It is my child. THE STRANGE WOMAN
We know it is not, indeed. Will you not say
‘It shall be my child?’ ARDVORLICH
Yes; it shall be mine. THE STRANGE WOMAN
Then you may put the beautiful cloak around me. . . .
As he approaches her with it .
No, no; not so; put it on from behind.
And now, you know, as you bend to clasp it round me,
You kiss me over my shoulder. . . .
I seem to know you have done that before:
Is it because I have watched or felt it done?
O, Sir, you will be tender to me and care for me?
I do not know myself, I do not know
What I have done, or if I can be shamed:
But if shameful things are said they are not true,
And I can bear them all if I am sure
I have my husband's trust. ARDVORLICH
Come home with me.
The snow-packs gather in the North again;
The wind is with them, we shall have them on us.
I cannot tell how you have borne this cold:
Except that women can bear more than men.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , embracing ARDVORLICH , and speaking with sudden fierceness .
James, I remember. Are they dead? Are they all dead? ARDVORLICH
They are all dead.
She laughs .
As he speaks, the eight Women come down in two files, joining before him and THE STRANGE WOMAN and hiding them from view as they stand abreast in front of the space . THE WOMAN
Snow. We are the snow.
We have watched the mortal go,
With passions and anguishes
Among her unborn seed,
Away from our long ease.
Her life is like the snow,
A brief whirling and a need
For ever to lie still:
She knew our stillnesses,
And knew them not.
Already her small face,
Being not as ours, is forgot
As the last light pressure and trace
Of her feet and of birds' feet
Is lost in falling snow.
In remembrance we have no skill.
Cloudy flakes and slow
Cover our minds below
New snow.
They form their circle as before, dance again their interlacing dance briefly; then break the circle at one side, and dance out by their original entrance .
Snow. What is snow?
It comes from nothing below,
And from nothing above that is ours.
It was not; and it is.
In its mysteries
It fosters life and death and peace:
It is of the Powers. THE WOMEN
Snow. We are snow.
We are not spirits of the air,
Though our beginning was there:
Where light and the aethers flow
Is not our country. Slow, slow,
There tákes béing a flake——
With no least flutter or shake
It starts; and another starts;
And the first slants in the waft of the second,
And a third appears, as if light had beckoned
And that were the one reply.
Hither and thither darts
Another, a feather, a petal, a wing:
And, as they fall and lie
Close and closer and cling,
A substance, a texture ensue,
And being assembles—a new
Being assembles, a thing
Here unexpectedly—— FIRST WOMAN
And that being is I. SECOND WOMAN
And I. THIRD WOMAN
And I. FOURTH WOMAN
And I. ALL
While snow endures, we are.
We are offspring of the earth,
For here our spirit assembled;
Though our flesh began in the sky.
This is our home: we have trembled
Already in its dearth
Of peace, of mercy—part
Of our light steps, of our touch.
Our minds hover and crouch
And would settle—as a frightened bird,
Had it not heard
Overmuch. FIRST SEMICHORUS
By the crags of Dundurn,
In the heart of Glen Gonan
We have seen the night burn.
On our robes that sweep round
The feet of Ben Fuath
Black shadows surge and bound
As flame-haired torches are swung
Upward by dark, wild, young,
Crowding fighters crying ALL
‘Gregarach!’ SECOND SEMICHORUS
The night has its dread; but the day
Has another dread—that is more,
Because it opens the heart
With cutting tenderness.
In every secret place
We lie, and with light we start
At another step than ours:
There's a wild woman afoot,
With no home but our bosom of whiteness.
She is alone, but not mute;
She speaks to Nothing; a lightness
Is in her mind and her gaze.
Alarm like a lifting haze
Fills her eyes; she is lost
In her body, her spirit, and her ways. FIRST SEMICHORUS
In the night we know her now.
The scent, in our nostrils, of snow
Is dulled by that of warm hair
Blown thick and turbid on air. ALL
And when our veils are tossed
By mountain wind and the layers
Of our being go up in white
Smoke to the mountain's height,
Like anguish of answerless prayer
Goes up a shriek of despair
‘There is blood in Glen Artney now’—
Though Glen Artney is smooth with snow.
The Women at the sides retire and turn inward until the eight form a circle. They then dance a brief, circling, interlacing dance suggestive of the motion of snow-flakes .
ALL , as they dance
Another—another is here.
This is she whom we fear.
Yet, yet how dear
She would be to us under the snow.
A STRANGE WOMAN'S VOICE , high above the others.
There is blood in Glen Artney now.
The dance ceases abruptly, the circle opening out backward and the eight Women stationing themselves at equidistant intervals, upright and motionless, against the semicircle of curtains .
As the circle opens, a single figure is seen within it—that of the STRANGE WOMAN . She is scarcely recognisable as human, being apparently wild and with no relationship to civilisation: her lean and weather-beaten figure is as much covered and protected by her masses of disordered hair as by ragged fragments of recognisable garments . THE STRANGE WOMAN
The blood is under the snow.
My life is under the snow,
With the things I know.
There is no more any being
In me: those who use seeing
To know themselves by, and their place
In space,
Have never seen my face
Since it became this face.
This is the next world: the next world is,
And it is white, and so is this.
I thought that purity was bliss:
How barren it is—yet light
Enough to teach me flight.
This is the next world: there are no deer in Heaven;
I knew seven,
Yet for a day now the doe
That has suckled me cannot find me for snow.
Turning aimlessly she sees the semicircle of motionless figures .
Are you the people of the sky——
Silent because speech
Is not the language of the sky?
If you are not, fly!
Women who use feet for moving,
As they use hearts for yearning and loving,
Have life for enemy here:
They should go away.
Wild things, fanged things, fear
And springing poisons grow here.
The plants that do not kill
Do not nourish—their will
Is evil and says Nay.
But the worst of its growing things
Are the children of women, the weed
That cannot be cut or burned,
The Gregarach.
Have you seen a severed head
Eating meat and bread?
Its shrunken eyeballs were turned
Upon me, as though to speak
Of the deed.
Why cannot a bodiless head
Make utterance? It has lips.
The sight killed me and I flew,
I went upon the tips
Of wings until I knew
The glens and the wind of height,
And Vorlich protected me
With veils that its clouds weave.
It was my brother's head: do you know?
Why do you not go?
The Gregarach did that: they believe
They dare not touch me, my brother
Has come into me; but another
Is something to strip and hack.
The Red Children come back;
And none knows where they may be.
Why do you not speak to me?
She turns from the Women .
FIRST WOMAN , gently .
Why do we not speak?
SECOND WOMAN , gently .
She can see,
But she cannot hear what we hear——
Or the end that is near.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , returning to the motionless figures.
What did you say?
Why do you stay?
I believe you are not here.
I believe you are no one.
She turns from them again .
If this pallor is unbroken
And no word is spoken,
If furry thing or bird
Is not heard,
And nothing is done,
I shall know this is eternity
Left open to me;
And I shall never learn
What to do, where to turn
In eternity.
THE WOMEN , gently.
Sleep.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting .
What did you say? Weep?
I cannot weep: I am wise:
That is no use for eyes.
She sinks to a sitting posture on the ground .
Eyes are desire for night;
Eyes are a passion for flight.
Dreamingly .
All about me is white
And I cannot feel what is under
Me or my body, and a wonder
Begins that floats me out
Over an airy deep.
Come! Empty me of doubt. . . . FIRST WOMAN
Sleep. SECOND WOMAN
Sleep. THIRD WOMAN
Sleep.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting to her feet .
They come! They come! They come!
They will make you into nothing.
I hear people with clothing:
Fly from them, hide you with me.
Be dumb.
She runs out through the curtains, left. Two bare-legged Farm-Girls enter right, with milking-pails .
FIRST GIRL , eagerly.
You see, there is no one here!
I tell you it is the ghost.
Between Dundurn and Ben Our, above the glens,
It goes. It nests in the heart of Meall nan Uamh,
The alarmed spirit of the Lady of Ardvorlich,
For ever fleeing, unwilling to haunt mankind. SECOND GIRL
It is not a ghost. Are you sure it is even a woman?
It was like a wild animal: if such a thing can be woman,
She is something forbidden and outside any mercy,
Kept for breeding by enemies of man,
By the violators, the Red Children, the Gregarach. . . .
My grief! My terror! This is not any ghost,
It has left foot-prints in the new-fallen snow.
Gregarach are in the caves, it has gone to them:
Come home, come quickly; and cry aloud as we go
The Red Slayers seek Glen Artney again! FIRST GIRL
It was the Lady's face: and she is dead:
So this must be her ghost—though day has risen.
Perhaps this unexpected snow disquiets her spirit more.
I know the footprints are strange, and I know not what they are:
Some are of little but toes, they may be an animal's. SECOND GIRL
Are you very sure it was the Lady's face?
I had not come here from Fernan when she died. FIRST GIRL
Am I very sure? I was in Ardvorlich hall
When an angry huntsman from Glen Artney came
And told that the Ranger's body, her brother's body,
Had been found headless on the Forest height;
And when the litter of Alpin followed him
And barked around her and forced her to bring food
While they should set the table. . . . Ah! Ah! My grief!
I watched them unwrap a bundle in a plaid——
Merely a plaid, such as a lover wraps
About your head when he takes you out in the moonlight——
And out of it lift the Ranger's dripping head
And set it in a dish. The Lady came,
She looked at it and shut her eyes and stood:
Then she opened her eyes, and they were changed,
They did not know me, I did not know that eyes
Could be so filled, and with such frightening things
They have no names in language. Then she shrieked,
And shrieked again. She went stiff in her body,
Her arms stiffened straight against her sides,
She put back her head like one who empties a cup,
And she shrieked as if her other shrieks had been
A whisper and a sigh. She ran out,
And up Glen Vorlich shrieking as if with breathing.
We followed her, but could not make her speed,
Or take her way—although it was well seen
By all the strips and pieces of her coats
That streamed from thorn and thistle and broken gorse.
That day Ardvorlich had gone down the Loch:
When he returned, he and the ghillies went out
And sought her a day and night, and a day and night
Again, and a day again. Nothing was there,
Except a shoe in a bog. She has never come home.
She carried a child in her body.
How can she be not dead for months? She is dead,
And her ghost will walk until she is found and buried. SECOND GIRL
Nevertheless, these are footprints: and I——
I am afraid of meeting Gregarach stragglers.
Let us hurry up to the shieling and get done milking.
This early unexpected snow has come
Like a good friend to us; for now the kye
Will be taken down from the hillside to the byre.
Our daily mountain toil will be sooner over.
We are getting strangely little milk up here:
Down there we cannot be blamed for spilling it. FIRST GIRL
The ghost went our way. We need not fear a ghost
That flies from us: but let us keep together.
They go out left, parting the curtains. The eight Women come forward abreast, as at first, but in a lower light . FIRST WOMAN
A day passes: and a day.
Upon a steel-edged wind
The clouds have passed away.
Frost makes ripe our mind;
We cannot believe we shall cease——
Not even by the force of light——
While frost like tense delight
Permeates us, and our knees
Makes firm for our upholding;
And the air of our enfolding
Is refreshed by recurrent night
And the tender deathly light
Of the kind, unburning moon.
The light alters to moonlight . FIRST SEMICHORUS
The falling darkness changes
On the mountains in their ranges;
Their summits are breathing out
A litten emanation——
A silver palpitation——
As of spirits relieved from doubt;
Our snow-fledged sisters are seeing
The light with which our being
Is in unearthly tune,
The coming of the moon. FIRST WOMAN
Entrancing and divine
Principle, whom we love
The most because the most
We understand and move
In heart with thy design,
Thy purpose amid the host
Of the intentions of space!
We await instantly
The sharpness of thy shining,
That was learnt in the same ways
Of instinct and divining
As the sharp coldness that dwells
In me—— FIFTH WOMAN
In me—— EIGHTH WOMAN
And in me, SECOND SEMICHORUS
And that comes from the deep wells
Of passion and desiring,
Piercing like our respiring
Keen air that hurts with thrills——
THE STRANGE WOMAN , unseen .
Aiah! The pain! The pain! ALL
The strange woman is here,
With her disquieting fear.
But something else goes on
Where she is lying alone——
For something else unknown
Takes form within the air. FIRST WOMAN
Is a dark sea-bird there?
Was the wailing cry its cry?
Far from the mountains of leaping water
Upon Sithchallion sea-birds breed
On a lochan's isles of reed,
Safe in the mountain's arm—and, O,
Does a sea-gull's spent and shelterless daughter
Float down here upon tired wings,
Dreaming her mountain nigh,
Aching to let her slow
Pinions drop and know
An end of wanderings?
THE STRANGE WOMAN , unseen .
Aiah! The pain! The gladness! FIRST WOMAN
The wailing cry again!
Hush thee, bird! But is it one?
This is something not yet done:
Hard, yet not of sadness . . .
What torment is her's and the hour's.
The snow everywhere quivers
With her: there might be rivers
Of nerves that branch and grow
Through the bosom of the snow.
Or are these tremors of the Powers
Of earth that is beneath her;
As though they would unsheath her
And make her essence bare?
What does she now embrace?
She has not changed her place,
Yet she is rent and is two.
Move quietly: let her alone:
She is again her own. ALL
She is not for the snow.
The Women at the sides move backward and inward to form the circle again: but it is no sooner formed than those in front open out, without dancing, and all take their former places against the semicircle of curtains .
As the circle opens the STRANGE WOMAN is seen, seated within and suckling a child .
ALL , as they go to their places.
Hidden dawn on the heights
Is rosy: the first lights
Illumine the snow's light traces
Of homeless marten and soundless thrush——
And at our feet two nestling faces. . . . FIRST WOMAN
Hush! EIGHTH WOMAN
Hush! ALL
Hush! THE STRANGE WOMAN
I have returned. I do not know whence I come.
Something is new: sometimes it seems this place,
Sometimes it is I, sometimes this portion of me
To which my arms are yet a little strange.
I do not know its name:
I know my name is Mairi. But is that all?
How did I get a name?
Where did I live before? Have I ever known?
O, little beautiful animal in my arms,
How wild are you? Have I not caught you, I?
You are mine. And I? For a while I shall be yours.
She sings. As she sings the dawn-light comes, first touching the heads of the eight Women, then descending little by little to the seated mother and child .
Out of nothing You come to me. I was your clothing:
Shall I not be Still the nest Where-in you dwell,
And my
new-filled breast Your daily well? Balaiu and
Balalayly, Milk is new in your mother daily.
The song is not new. Whence does it come to me?
‘New in your mother’ . . . Whose mother. . . . What have I done?
Am I the mother, I? FIRST WOMAN
Listen, listen! What feet
Whisper among the snow? SECOND SEMICHORUS
It is useless to warn her now.
Her mind has found its home,
The part of her beyond
Is veiled: she will grow fond
And earthly, and never come
Again to rarified being
Made sharp for feeling and seeing
By hunger, starlight and snow.
She will be clothed again, and now know
The things that her bare flesh knew. FIRST SEMICHORUS
Watch her: she sees us no more.
The form in her arms, that grew
By mystery in the hoar
Darkness, has taken from her
That which was her share
Of rootless life that we know,
Wild and still as snow. FIRST WOMAN
Speak to her, ALL
Beware,
Mortals are there. FIRST WOMAN
Listen. FIFTH WOMAN
Listen. EIGHTH WOMAN
Listen. THE STRANGE WOMAN
I cannot bear these silences that glisten
And tell me nothing of the way to go.
As she speaks, Ardvorlich and the two Farm-Girls enter from the right. They steal behind her as she is lost in ministering to the child .
SECOND GIRL , in an excited whisper .
Look there, Ardvorlich! I said she was no ghost.
FIRST GIRL , in vexation .
She's not the same: she's nursing a young child
That no one ever saw in the ghost's arms. ARDVORLICH
Yet she was heavy with child. Stand you there:
And, Dervail, steal behind her with no sound.
Are all the ghillies stationed? FIRST GIRL
Two at the shieling,
Two down the Glen, two more across the hill,
And two before the corrie in Ben Fuath. ARDVORLICH
All is well done. Now wait.
He steps in front of THE STRANGE WOMAN .
Come, Mairi, I have waited a long time:
Let us go home together. You must be cold:
I have brought your fine new cloak.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , starting up, the child pressed to her with one hand, the other hand clenched .
Who are you?
Let me go! If you touch me I will die.
I will bear no violation by wild men. ARDVORLICH
Listen then to my voice. I am no outlaw.
Speak to this girl, and bid her carry the child. THE STRANGE WOMAN
It is warm. I found a dead sheep on Ben Vorlich,
That not long since was such a lamb as mine.
I skinned it with a stone: I do not know
How I had learnt to do such things with a stone.
I wrapped the child in it.
What have I said? Did I say ‘Ben Vorlich’ to you?
Ben Vorlich? Is it here? ARDVORLICH
It is beyond the Glen. THE STRANGE WOMAN
You have a voice
That has Glen Vorlich somewhere in its sound.
I like you. If I trust you and go with you,
Will you take care of me? Will you be my husband? ARDVORLICH
But, Mairi, I am your husband.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , springing back .
No! Ah, no!
I do not know a husband. I am lost.
You will deceive me. ARDVORLICH
No; I will be your husband. THE STRANGE WOMAN
You would have promised without that afterthought
If the kind truth of love were in your instinct.
Now I must know you more.
This child. . . . I do not know whose child it is. . . .
What do you say to me now? ARDVORLICH
It is my child. THE STRANGE WOMAN
We know it is not, indeed. Will you not say
‘It shall be my child?’ ARDVORLICH
Yes; it shall be mine. THE STRANGE WOMAN
Then you may put the beautiful cloak around me. . . .
As he approaches her with it .
No, no; not so; put it on from behind.
And now, you know, as you bend to clasp it round me,
You kiss me over my shoulder. . . .
I seem to know you have done that before:
Is it because I have watched or felt it done?
O, Sir, you will be tender to me and care for me?
I do not know myself, I do not know
What I have done, or if I can be shamed:
But if shameful things are said they are not true,
And I can bear them all if I am sure
I have my husband's trust. ARDVORLICH
Come home with me.
The snow-packs gather in the North again;
The wind is with them, we shall have them on us.
I cannot tell how you have borne this cold:
Except that women can bear more than men.
THE STRANGE WOMAN , embracing ARDVORLICH , and speaking with sudden fierceness .
James, I remember. Are they dead? Are they all dead? ARDVORLICH
They are all dead.
She laughs .
As he speaks, the eight Women come down in two files, joining before him and THE STRANGE WOMAN and hiding them from view as they stand abreast in front of the space . THE WOMAN
Snow. We are the snow.
We have watched the mortal go,
With passions and anguishes
Among her unborn seed,
Away from our long ease.
Her life is like the snow,
A brief whirling and a need
For ever to lie still:
She knew our stillnesses,
And knew them not.
Already her small face,
Being not as ours, is forgot
As the last light pressure and trace
Of her feet and of birds' feet
Is lost in falling snow.
In remembrance we have no skill.
Cloudy flakes and slow
Cover our minds below
New snow.
They form their circle as before, dance again their interlacing dance briefly; then break the circle at one side, and dance out by their original entrance .
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