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.