Bet, Lib, and Maudlin hurry and crowd into the mistal unheedingly. Meanwhile the woman has passed from left to right along the road, turning always to Nan and holding out her arms to her.
Nan, leaning out toward her with her hands pressed over her heart.
Her unapparent features make me feel
How others must feel my face.... The droop of her skirt
Is creeping on my hips.... I have watched my feet
Draw sideways so.... Her shadow is long like mine
About the bosom ... I wish I could touch her hair—
I know so well the tingle and smell of my hair ...
Is this a fetch?
She reaches forward as if she would follow, until she is in the middle of the road; the woman passes from, sight to the right. Nan's body loosens; she turns confusedly to the barn and sees Ursel's face pale in the shade.
Nan, continuing. O, Ursly, where have I gone?
I have lost myself, for I was here but now....
She remembers and shakes.
Dear soul, what did you see?
Ursel, taking her in her arms.
I saw what you saw.
Nan.
Was it my fetch?
Ursel. I think it was a fetch.
Nan, numbly.
I must be going to die.... I cannot feel so ...
There's nought I want to do when I am dead ...
She is silent a moment, then seems startled into sobbing.
O, Ursel, Ursel, I cannot let me die....
Ursel.
Folk say a fetch is seen at its departing
From a cold house whence it shall lead a soul;
But this comes like a child-birth closing in,
And so perchance it does but signify
The consciousness of death that breaks in all.
We stand outside the process of the earth
And watch it as immortals; and consider
Death, which we think a deeply moving thing
(Observing eagerly its fine emotions,
The impressive strangeness of its mean romance,
Its strong-tanged character and accidents,
And all the keen new chances it affords
For sympathy and for imagination),
But think not to connect it with ourselves—
So sure we are all's possible to us.
Then a near comprehension that is love
Of trees or sheep, songs or some man or woman,
Shakes us one day and nothing is the same,
Because we grow aware that we must leave
The very joy that lights ourselves for us
And shows where we may greaten for its sake.
'Tis life's beginning; we perceive the earth
And go down into it and nestle to it
Defeatedly before its larger thought:
Numbly we measure ourselves by all we see,
We feel uneasily yet willingly
Each thing that happens may happen to us too,
And we are cheated by each grief unsuffered—
Yea, ever we interrogate decay
To know our own duration; we must touch
Each lovesome thing lest it or we should fade,
Until the searching quiver of contact reaches
And makes us conscious where we can be lovesome;
We find ourselves in others and thus learn
How others are in us, and so we creep
To large experiences we could not think—
Effectual perfection of ripe life;
The earth and all the darling ways of it
Are ours by love, for all that we must leave
Comes into us and makes us live it swiftly
Lest we should miss some thing. So that one love
Insists that every love in earth shall feed it,
To keep it from the unsafety of ignorance
And let our brief days yield their sweetness up.
Such is the consciousness of death—ah, such
Must be made yours; mayhap this is the way.
Nan.
The consciousness of death.... Though that be all,
It is too much: even if this fetch abides
Unnumbered years ere I see it depart,
Yet all is made unsure and I may sink
Before I have felt half I need to feel.
I must make every passion in myself,
Have each emotion of my wilful sowing—
The pain of sap, the pain of bud and bloom,
Of hard green fruit sun-bruised to thick gold juice,
The pain of the sharp kernel in the pulp
(Transmuter of sweet to inmost bitterness),
The pain of orderly corruption too—
Of the withdrawing sap, of the sick falling
Into long grass beneath the rain-soaked boughs,
Of gentle decomposing for small roots;
So that if death's the end, the true completion,
I could believe myself fulfilled and ripe,
A sufferer of the topmost joy and grief,
And past the need of any eternity ...
O, I desire old age, because old age
Has more capacity, more ways of joy....
Her sobs hide her words. Ursel leads her to the hay and seats her among it again and herself by her, putting her arms about her and drawing her head down upon her bosom.
Ursel.
Old age must sit and wait as we must wait ...
We can grow old so quickly in our souls....
One utters a love-call and no answer comes,
One suffers motherhood within one's heart
Of cold unconscious children who can render
A tolerance of affection more remote
Than strait denial; and such maternity
Waits not for any bearing through the body—
When love has come maternity must follow,
And if the body may not be made fruitful
The spirit chooses its own fruitfulness:
All that we miss is happening in others,
Others are feeling all we yearn to feel,
And if we will not let ourselves forget
How love has wrung us we pass through it with them....
Ah, wonder, joy, of contact that enlarges
Our bodies' possibilities and times,
And gathers life for us to nourish....
A stifled cry from Bet is heard from the neat-house.
Bet. Aa—h....
Nan, sinking back faintly in Ursel's arms.
Does ... it return and ... call?...
Ursel. Hush, 'tis Bet's voice....