Deirdre

“ And Deirdre grew up tall and stately as the sapling [204] of the forest, and lithe as the green moorland rush that bows before the wind. Of all the women of the world was Deirdre the gentlest and best, lovely of form and lovely in her mind; light as the hind that leaps upon the hill, and white and shapely as the snowy swan. But though they tended her, and fed her with the best, the maiden drooped and pined. And on a day Levarcam said, “What ails thee, girl? Why is thy face so pale, thy step so slow? Why dost thou sigh and mope?” ”

“ But for Deirdre a night went by which to the end of her days she would not care to remember.
She had seen the king at last: that being, all memory and dream, half monster and half baby, whom she remembered from Lavarcham’s endless tale. She had seen the grave brow, the graver eyes, the bushy, reddish-yellow hair looped back to the slope of his poll, and the yellow beard cleft at the centre and foaming in two points to the breast. She could not have thought that a man might be so huge, so steady, so masterful. ”

“ NAISI.
Then we’ll go away. It isn’t I will give your like to Conchubor, not if the grave was dug to be my lodging when a week was by. (He looks out.) The stars are out, Deirdre, and let you come with me quickly, for it is the stars will be our lamps many nights and we abroad in Alban, and taking our journeys among the little islands in the sea. There has never been the like of the joy we’ll have, Deirdre, you and I, having our fill of love at the evening and the morning till the sun is high. ”

“ When the king saw the woman that was before him that he had been in quest of, he thought he never saw in the course of the day nor in the dream of night a creature so fair as Deirdre and he gave his full heart's weight of love to her. Deirdre was raised on the topmost of the heroes' shoulders and she and her foster-mother were brought to the Court of King Connachar of Ulster. ”

“ DEIRDRE.
— made a little defiant by his tone. — I have no wish to be a queen.
CONCHUBOR.
— almost sneeringly. — You’d wish to be dressing in your duns and grey, and you herding your geese or driving your calves to their shed — like the common lot scattered in the glens.
DEIRDRE.
— very defiant. — I would not, Conchubor. (She goes to tapestry and begins to work.) A girl born the way I’m born is more likely to wish for a mate who’d be her likeness. . . . A man with his hair like the raven, maybe, and his skin like the snow and his lips like blood spilt on it. ”

“ Pain tightened his throat when he looked at Deirdre's delicate profile and copper-colored hair, intensified when he lowered his eyes to the remembered blueness of her graduation dress. The diamond brooch that he had given her as a graduation present, and which she had proudly pinned upon her bodice for the whole wide world to see, made him want to cry. His self-image of two weeks ago shocked him. There were lines on the face that did not as yet exist, and the brown hair was shot with streaks of gray that had yet to come into being. ”

“ There might be incongruity, if one were writing of any other than Synge, in speaking of Deirdre in such a company. Incongruity, however, is of the very texture of Synge's art, which has reconciled qualities, as I have said, never before reconciled in English literature. It is on Deirdre that Synge has lavished all the ideality that was in him, not because he had a dream of woman he wished to fulfill, but because to him Deirdre was all that was queenly. And yet even Deirdre is a "variation," as nobility and beauty must ever be. ”

“ LAVARCHAM.
— to Old Woman. — She doesn’t heed us at all. We’ll be hard set to rouse her.
OLD WOMAN.
If we don’t the High King will rouse her, coming down beside her with the rage of battle in his blood, for how could Fergus stand against him?
LAVARCHAM.
— touching Deirdre with her hand. — There’s a score of woman’s years in store for you, and you’d best choose will you start living them beside the man you hate, or being your own mistress in the west or south?
DEIRDRE.
It is not I will go on living after Ainnle and after Ardan. After Naisi I will not have a lifetime in the world. ”

“ Above the hunting-lodge, on the grassy slope that is at the foot of the cascade, they built a sunny summer home for Deirdre, and they called it the ‘Grianan,’ or sunny bower of Deirdre. It was thatched on the outside with the long-stalked fern of the dells and the red clay of the pools, and lined within with the pine of the mountains and the downy feathers of the wild birds; and round it was the apple-garden of Clan Usna, with the apple-tree of Deirdre in its midst and the apple-trees of Naisi and Ainle and Arden encircling it. ”

“ Deirdre and her lover, as Synge tells the tale, returned to Ireland, though it was nearly certain they would die there, because death was better than broken love, and at the side of the open grave that had been dug for one and would serve for both, quarrelled, losing all they had given their life to keep. ‘Is it not a hard thing that we should miss the safety of the grave and we trampling its edge?’ That is Deirdre’s cry at the outset of a reverie of passion that mounts and mounts till grief itself has carried her beyond grief into pure contemplation. ”

“ NAISI—I will not leave Emain Macha until the head of this false king is apart from his shoulders. A spear can pass as swiftly through his Druid as through one of his slaves. Oh, Cathvah, the old mumbler of spells and of false prophecies, who caused Deirdre to be taken from her mother's breast! Truly, I owe a deep debt to Cathvah, and I Will repay it.
LAVARCAM—If you love Deirdre, do not let pride and wrath stay your flight. You have but an instant to fly. You can return with Fergus and a host of warriors in the dawn. You do not know the power of Cathvah. ”

“ As Lavarcham detailed Maeve, Deirdre interpreted her, and at the close of the statement the judgement of each was so different, so opposed, that a third person might have marvelled at the tricks the understanding can play; for what was black to the one was not only white to the other, but it was crimson and purple and gold; and what [Pg 53] was treachery to Lavarcham gleamed on Deirdre like a candid sunrise.
We assimilate knowledge less through our intellects than through our temperaments; and a young person can by no effort look through the eyes of an older. ”

“ In the great tragic tale of ancient Ireland, the Fate of the Sons of Usnech, Deirdre—born like Helen or Gudrun, to be a cause of strife among men, of sorrow and ruin to whomsoever she loves—Deirdre takes her fate into her own hands, and woos Noisi with outspoken passionate frankness. ”

“ Deirdre's sobs were her only answer.
"God doesn't love you, and I don't, and Mrs. Cameron and Davey don't love you either. Nobody loves bad, wicked, naughty little girls," Jess said solemnly.
She put her head on the pillow and was sleeping, sweetly, peacefully, in a few minutes.
Deirdre crept to the open window. She gazed out of it at the dark heave of the forest that cut her off from the being she loved and the hut in the clearing behind the school. The blue night sky that spread over her was spread over the hut in the clearing and the school too, she knew. ”

“ She returned then, and, still simulating ill-temper, she dismissed Deirdre to her own room.
“You have not properly trimmed your finger-nails,” she scolded; “there is a black spot under one of them. You are not seemly. Go to your room at once, little blossom, and when you come back come so that your fosterer need not be ashamed of her charge.”
Saying so, she marched Deirdre to her room and thrust her in. Then she returned, and, seating herself at the embroidery from which she had driven her ward, she prepared to receive the king. ”

“ At fourteen years of age Deirdre was not the untameable little savage she had been at twelve, and at the age of sixteen she had begun to long for some one to whom she might submit her will and from whom she could receive the guidance and wisdom and refreshment which she divined to be in herself, but which she could not reach. ”

“ It is Synge himself who puts the just phrase on what his life was to him, and it is, as it could not else be, from the lips of his Deirdre that it falls. "It should be a sweet thing to have what is best and richest, if it's for a short space only." It is Deirdre alone of his men and women that is introspective at all, Deirdre—and Naisi when he is mastered by thoughts of home that will not down. Synge wrote the play of her triumph over death as he himself was dying, and he wrote it with high heart, and, what is higher, gladness, despite his foreknowledge of his doom. ”

“ And Deirdre arose and drew the bolt from the leaf of the door, and she let in the hunter. She placed a seat in the place for sitting, food in the place for eating, and drink in the place for drinking for the man who came to the house. "Oh, for this life and raiment, you man that came in, keep restraint on your tongue!" said the old woman. "It is not a great thing for you to keep your mouth shut and your tongue quiet when you get a home and shelter of a hearth on a gloomy winter's night." ”

“ And yet this last while I’m saying out, when I see the furze breaking and the daws sitting two and two on ash-trees by the duns of Emain, Deirdre’s a year nearer her full age when she’ll be my mate and comrade and then I’m glad surely.
DEIRDRE.
— almost to herself. — I will not be your mate in Emain.
CONCHUBOR.
— not heeding her. — It’s there you’ll be proud and happy and you’ll learn that, if young men are great hunters, yet it’s with the like of myself you’ll find a knowledge of what is priceless in your own like. ”

“ But Naisi answered:—"We cannot follow thy advice, beloved Deirdre, for it would be a mark of fear: and we have no fear."
And as they came nigh the palace Deirdre said to them:—"I will now give you a sign if Concobar meditates good or evil. If you are brought into his own mansion where he sits surrounded by his nobles, to eat and drink with him, this is a token that he means no ill; for no man will injure a guest that has partaken of food at his table: but if you are sent to the house of the Red Branch, be sure he is bent on treachery." ”

“ CONCHUBOR.
— looking at her for a moment. — That’s the first friendly word I’ve heard you speaking, Deirdre. A game the like of yours should be the proper thing for softening the heart and putting sweetness in the tongue; and yet this night when I hear you I’ve small blame left for Naisi that he stole you off from Ulster. ”

“ It’s easy being fearful and you alone in the woods, yet it would be a poor thing if a timid woman (taunting her a little) could turn away the Sons of Usna from the life of kings. Let you be thinking on the years to come, Deirdre, and the way you’d have a right to see Naisi a high and white-haired justice beside some king of Emain. Wouldn’t it be a poor story if a queen the like of you should have no thought but to be scraping up her hours dallying in the sunshine with the sons of kings? ”

“ At last,” he explained to Deirdre, “there wouldn’t be any head at all, no face at all, only a mat of hair as long as a woman’s, and it in knots, and a shiny grin among the knots.”
“You are all wrong,” said Ainnle. “A dead man’s hair grows lank and long like a drink of water.”
“Pooh!” said Ardan. “You remember everything! You are the great man of the world! The wind knots them and twists them and wobbles them all in and out like a doormat.”
“Yonder is Conachúr’s house, the Royal Branch,” said Naoise.
“We will give a good thundering knock at the door and make them jump,” said Ainnle gleefully. ”

“ He will attack before morning. Oh, Deirdre, Deirdre, that you could have come here knowing Conachúr as I taught him to you! What madness brought you from Scotland, child? Are you glad to see me? Do you love your mother still, little one? I have [Pg 229] told the king that you would be ruined with hardship and sorrow; alas! you are more beautiful than ever. I shall tell him that you are one-eyed and lame, I shall tell him anything to quieten him for this night. To-morrow Naoise’s people will get news of your return and he may fear to attack. ”

“ Said Naois:—
It is nought but the fear of woman's heart,
And a dream of the night, Deirdre.
"The day that Connachar sent the invitation to his feast will be unlucky for us if we don't go, O Deirdre."
"You will go there," said Ferchar Mac Ro; "and if Connachar show kindness to you, show ye kindness to him; and if he will display wrath towards you display ye wrath towards him, and I and my three sons will be with you."
"We will," said Daring Drop. "We will," said Hardy Holly. "We will," said Fiallan the Fair. ”

“ When she saw Steve in the doorway, she ran to him and threw her arms around him.
"Oh, it's good to be here again, Uncle Stevie," she-cried.
He chuckled delightedly.
"There's a woman you are, Deirdre. A woman y've grown!"
"What else would I grow?" she asked gaily.
"It's good to be anywhere you are, Deirdre!" Conal said, coming up and standing beside them, all his love in his eyes.
She laughed, glancing up at him, and Steve laughed to see the way the wind blew. Davey by the open door, watched them; but Deirdre did not see him. ”

“ This was the lark sustained at the top of flight, and the others the mazy pattern of the swallows’ wings. Listening she could collect herself; and, in a while, daring to [Pg 70] hear, she dared to see, and then she heard no more; for when the eye is filled the ear is no more attended, and all that may be of beauty is there englobed, radiant, sufficient, excessive.
How should I paint Naoise [7] as Deirdre saw him, or show Deirdre as she appeared to the son of Uisneac? For than Deirdre there was no girl so beautiful unless it might be Emer the daughter of Forgall, soon to be wooed by Cúchulinn ”