SIMON. I say, dear, do dry up. I can’t help listening to you when I ought to be getting this fire out.
MARY ROSE. I won’t say another word.
SIMON. Just as it seems to be out, sparks come again. Do you think if I were to get some stones——?
(He looks up and she signs that she has promised not to talk. They laugh to each other. He is then occupied for a little time in dumping wet stones from the loch upon the fire. CAMERON is in the boat with his Euripides. MARY ROSE is sitting demure but gay, holding her tongue with her fingers like a child.
Something else is happening; the call has come to MARY ROSE. It is at first as soft and furtive as whisperings from holes in the ground, Mary Rose, Mary Rose. Then in a fury as of storm and whistling winds that might be an unholy organ it rushes upon the island, raking every bush for her. These sounds increase rapidly in volume till the mere loudness of them is horrible. They are not without an opponent. Struggling through them, and also calling her name, is to be heard music of an unearthly sweetness that is seeking perhaps to beat them back and put a girdle of safety round her. Once MARY ROSE’S arms go out to her husband for help, but thereafter she is oblivious of his existence. Her face is rapt, but there is neither fear nor joy in it. Thus she passes from view. The island immediately resumes its stillness. The sun has gone down. SIMON by the fire and CAMERON in the boat have heard nothing.)
SIMON (on his knees). I think the fire is done for at last, and that we can go now. How cold and grey it has become. (Smiling, but without looking up.) You needn’t grip your tongue any longer, you know. (He rises.) Mary Rose, where have you got to? Please don’t hide. Dearest, don’t. Cameron, where is my wife?
(CAMERON rises in the boat, and he is afraid to land. His face alarms SIMON, who runs this way and that and is lost to sight calling her by name again and again. He returns livid.)
Cameron, I can’t find her. Mary Rose! Mary Rose! Mary Rose!
ACT III
ACT III