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 kinship-- 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 ...