The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950
Page 29
But what you feel. You attach yourself to loathing
As others do to loving: an infatuation
That’s wrong, a good that’s misdirected. You deceive yourself
Like the man convinced that he is paralysed
Or like the man who believes that he is blind
While he still sees the sunlight. I know that this is true.
HARRY. I have spent many years in useless travel;
You have staid in England, yet you seem
Like someone who comes from a very long distance,
Or the distant waterfall in the forest,
Inaccessible, half-heard.
And I hear your voice as in the silence
Between two storms, one hears the moderate usual noises
In the grass and leaves, of life persisting,
Which ordinarily pass unnoticed.
Perhaps you are right, though I do not know
How you should know it. Is the cold spring
Is the spring not an evil time, that excites us with lying voices?
MARY. The cold spring now is the time
For the ache in the moving root
The agony in the dark
The slow flow throbbing the trunk
The pain of the breaking bud.
These are the ones that suffer least:
The aconite under the snow
And the snowdrop crying for a moment in the wood.
HARRY. Spring is an issue of blood
A season of sacrifice
And the wail of the new full tide
Returning the ghosts of the dead
Those whom the winter drowned
Do not the ghosts of the drowned
Return to land in the spring?
Do the dead want to return?
MARY. Pain is the opposite of joy
But joy is a kind of pain
I believe the moment of birth
Is when we have knowledge of death
I believe the season of birth
Is the season of sacrifice
For the tree and the beast, and the fish
Thrashing itself upstream:
And what of the terrified spirit
Compelled to be reborn
To rise toward the violent sun
Wet wings into the rain cloud
Harefoot over the moon?
HARRY. What have we been saying? I think I was saying
That it seemed as if I had been always here
And you were someone who had come from a long distance.
Whether I know what I am saying, or why I say it,
That does not matter. You bring me news
Of a door that opens at the end of a corridor,
Sunlight and singing; when I had felt sure
That every corridor only led to another,
Or to a blank wall; that I kept moving
Only so as not to stay still. Singing and light.
Stop!
What is that? do you feel it?
MARY. What, Harry?
HARRY. That apprehension deeper than all sense,
Deeper than the sense of smell, but like a smell
In that it is indescribable, a sweet and bitter smell
From another world. I know it, I know it!
More potent than ever before, a vapour dissolving
All other worlds, and me into it. O Mary!
Don’t look at me like that! Stop! Try to stop it!
I am going. Oh why, now? Come out!
Come out! Where are you? Let me see you,
Since I know you are there, I know you are spying on me.
Why do you play with me, why do you let me go,
Only to surround me? — When I remember them
They leave me alone: when I forget them
Only for an instant of inattention
They are roused again, the sleepless hunters
That will not let me sleep. At the moment before sleep
I always see their claws distended
Quietly, as if they had never stirred.
It was only a moment, it was only one moment
That I stood in sunlight, and thought I might stay there.
MARY. Look at me. You can depend on me.
Harry! Harry! It’s all right, I tell you.
If you will depend on me, it will be all right.
HARRY. Come out!
[The curtains part, revealing the Eumenides in the window embrasure.]
Why do you show yourselves now for the first time?
When I knew her, I was not the same person.
I was not any person. Nothing that I did
Has to do with me. The accident of a dreaming moment,
Of a dreaming age, when I was someone else
Thinking of something else, puts me among you.
I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,
Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks
Incriminate, but that other person, if person
You thought I was: let your necrophily
Feed upon that carcase. They will not go.
MARY. Harry! There is no one here.
[She goes to the window and pulls the curtains across]
HARRY. They were here, I tell you. They are here.
Are you so imperceptive, have you such dull senses
That you could not see them? If I had realised
That you were so obtuse, I would not have listened
To your nonsense. Can’t you help me?
You’re of no use to me. I must face them.
I must fight them. But they are stupid.
How can one fight with stupidity?
Yet I must speak to them.
[He rushes forward and tears apart the curtains: but the embrasure is empty.]
MARY. Oh, Harry!
Scene III
HARRY, MARY, IVY, VIOLET, GERALD, CHARLES
VIOLET. Good evening, Mary: aren’t you dressed yet?
How do you think that Harry is looking?
Why, who could have pulled those curtains apart?
[Pulls them together]
Very well, I think, after such a long journey;
You know what a rush he had to be here in time
For his mother’s birthday.
IVY. Mary, my dear,
Did you arrange these flowers? Just let me change them.
You don’t mind, do you? I know so much about flowers;
Flowers have always been my passion.
You know I had my own garden once, in Cornwall,
When I could afford a garden; and I took several prizes
With my delphiniums. I was rather an authority.
GERALD. Good evening, Mary. You’ve seen Harry, I see.
It’s good to have him back again, isn’t it?
We must make him feel at home. And most auspicious
That he could be here for his mother’s birthday.
MARY. I must go and change. I came in very late.
[Exit]
CHARLES. Now we only want Arthur and John
I’m glad that you’ll all be together, Harry;
They need the influence of their elder brother.
Arthur’s a bit irresponsible, you know;
You should have a sobering effect upon him.
After all, you’re the head of the family.
AMY’S VOICE. Violet! Has Arthur or John come yet?
VIOLET. Neither of them is here yet, Amy.
[Enter AMY, with DR. WARBURTON]
AMY. It is most vexing. What can have happened?
I suppose it’s the fog that is holding them up,
So it’s no use to telephone anywhere. Harry!
Haven’t you seen Dr. Warburton?
You know he’s the oldest friend of the family,
And he’s known you longer than anybody, Harry.
When he heard that you were going to be here for dinner
He broke an important engagement to come.
; WARBURTON. I dare say we’ve both changed a good deal, Harry.
A country practitioner doesn’t get younger.
It takes me back longer than you can remember
To see you again. But you can’t have forgotten
The day when you came back from school with measles
And we had such a time to keep you in bed.
You didn’t like being ill in the holidays.
IVY. It was unpleasant, coming home to have an illness.
VIOLET. It was always the same with your minor ailments
And children’s epidemics: you would never stay in bed
Because you were convinced that you would never get well.
HARRY. Not, I think, without some justification:
For what you call restoration to health
Is only incubation of another malady.
WARBURTON. You mustn’t take such a pessimistic view
Which is hardly complimentary to my profession.
But I remember, when I was a student at Cambridge,
I used to dream of making some great discovery
To do away with one disease or another.
Now I’ve had forty years’ experience
I’ve left off thinking in terms of the laboratory.
We’re all of us ill in one way or another:
We call it health when we find no symptom
Of illness. Health is a relative term.
IVY. You must have had a very rich experience, Doctor,
In forty years.
WARBURTON. Indeed, yes.
Even in a country practice. My first patient, now —
You wouldn’t believe it, ladies — was a murderer,
Who suffered from an incurable cancer.
How he fought against it! I never saw a man
More anxious to live.
HARRY. Not at all extraordinary.
It is really harder to believe in murder
Than to believe in cancer. Cancer is here:
The lump, the dull pain, the occasional sickness:
Murder a reversal of sleep and waking.
Murder was there. Your ordinary murderer
Regards himself as an innocent victim.
To himself he is still what he used to be
Or what he would be. He cannot realise
That everything is irrevocable,
The past unredeemable. But cancer, now,
That is something real.
WARBURTON. Well, let’s not talk of such matters.
How did we get onto the subject of cancer?
I really don’t know. — But now you’re all grown up
I haven’t a patient left at Wishwood.
Wishwood was always a cold place, but healthy.
It’s only when I get an invitation to dinner
That I ever see your mother.
VIOLET. Yes, look at your mother!
Except that she can’t get about now in winter
You wouldn’t think that she was a day older
Than on her birthday ten years ago.
GERALD. Is there any use in waiting for Arthur and John?
AMY. We might as well go in to dinner.
They may come before we finish. Will you take me in, Doctor?
I think we are very much the oldest present —
In fact we are the oldest inhabitants.
As we came first, we will go first, in to dinner.
WARBURTON. With pleasure, Lady Monchensey,
And I hope that next year will bring me the same honour.
[Exeunt AMY, DR. WARBURTON, HARRY]
CHORUS. I am afraid of all that has happened, and of all that is to come;
Of the things to come that sit at the door, as if they had been there always.
And the past is about to happen, and the future was long since settled.
And the wings of the future darken the past, the beak and claws have desecrated
History. Shamed
The first cry in the bedroom, the noise in the nursery, mutilated
The family album, rendered ludicrous
The tenants’ dinner, the family picnic on the moors. Have torn
The roof from the house, or perhaps it was never there.
And the bird sits on the broken chimney. I am afraid.
IVY. This is a most undignified terror, and I must struggle against it.
GERALD. I am used to tangible danger, but only to what I can understand.
VIOLET. It is the obtuseness of Gerald and Charles and that doctor, that gets on my nerves.
CHARLES. If the matter were left in my hands, I think I could manage the situation.
[Exeunt]
[Enter MARY, and passes through to dinner. Enter AGATHA]
AGATHA. The eye is on this house
The eye covers it
There are three together
May the three be separated
May the knot that was tied
Become unknotted
May the crossed bones
In the filled-up well
Be at last straightened
May the weasel and the otter
Be about their proper business
The eye of the day time
And the eye of the night time
Be diverted from this house
Till the knot is unknotted
The crossed is uncrossed
And the crooked is made straight.
[Exit to dinner]
END OF PART I
PART II
The library, after dinner.
Scene I
HARRY, WARBURTON
WARBURTON. I’m glad of a few minutes alone with you, Harry.
In fact, I had another reason for coming this evening
Than simply in honour of your mother’s birthday.
I wanted a private conversation with you
On a confidential matter.
HARRY. I can imagine —
Though I think it is probably going to be useless,
Or if anything, make matters rather more difficult.
But talk about it, if you like.
WARBURTON. You don’t understand me.
I’m sure you cannot know what is on my mind;
And as for making matters more difficult —
It is much more difficult not to be prepared
For something that is very likely to happen.
HARRY. O God, man, the things that are going to happen
Have already happened.
WARBURTON. That is in a sense true,
But without your knowing it, and what you know
Or do not know, at any moment
May make an endless difference to the future.
It’s about your mother …
HARRY. What about my mother?
Everything has always been referred back to mother.
When we were children, before we went to school,
The rule of conduct was simply pleasing mother;
Misconduct was simply being unkind to mother;
What was wrong was whatever made her suffer,
And whatever made her happy was what was virtuous —
Though never very happy, I remember. That was why
We all felt like failures, before we had begun.
When we came back, for the school holidays,
They were not holidays, but simply a time
In which we were supposed to make up to mother