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Fenris, the Wolf: A Tragedy

Chapter 7: ACT II
By Percy MacKaye
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About This Book

A poetic tragedy drawn from Norse myth stages the clash between a chained, wolf-born figure and the gods who fear and claim him, examining filial conflict and the burden of culpability. The drama alternates cosmic, ritualized prologue scenes—where deities debate fate and responsibility—with human-level episodes featuring priests, hunters, and a priestess who confront the creature’s impact on their community. Recurring motifs include the attempt to bind elemental chaos with law, the cost of knowledge and sacrifice, and the ambivalence of divine power. Lyric invocations and stark set pieces build toward tragic reckonings that interrogate inevitability and moral consequence.

ACT II

Scene I: A prison chamber, dim, built of stone

On the right stands a high, framed tapestry, the design partly worked; beside it, on a table, several harps and instruments of music. On the left, extending centre, the half-completed model of a structure resembling the temple in Act I, Scene I; beside it, wooden blocks and miniature beams; in front of it a stone tablet, upon which Egil—stooped, with an instrument in his hand—is laboriously carving runes. Behind him stands Arfi, at times guiding the hand of his brother, who is evidently being overcome by weariness, against which he struggles for concentration. Finally Egil’s head droops, his hand falls, and his body sinks prone. At the door, Thordis enters.
THORDIS Asleep?
ARFI Quite, quite outworn.
THORDIS The task is done? The runes?
ARFI He has mastered them.
THORDIS [Sighs unconsciously.] How swift he learns!
ARFI Yes, hourly he hath grown through the strange months Since Ingimund entrusted him to us To dispossess the beast that plagues him.
THORDIS Look Now where he lies and dreams.
ARFI There lies a block Of chaos, for our wills to fuse and kindle Into a world, glowing with vital forms Of law and loveliness. Yea, Thordis, we— We are his being’s seasons, you and I; The sun and moon, the starshine and the dew, Of this stark heath and breeding moor of passion, And the large jurisdiction of our love Must ripen there the temperate growths of reason, And stablish the mind’s palaces.
THORDIS You speak In sadness.
ARFI Nay, in awe. The thought grows vast And awful.
THORDIS So? I do not feel it, I! I feel as elemental as the air, That holds secure within its crystal veins As many thousand summers and their blooms As the earth may yearn for.
ARFI ’Tis because you are Bounteous as the air, that from your presence all Take breath and power. Since you elected me Beside the altar stone, even I, that was A warped and ailing mannikin of woe, Prickling with sensibilities and pangs, Have felt myself exalted and at peace With this poor twisted mask of torse and limb, So simple it seems, so sane, so actual, That what I am was your immortal friend Elsewhere.
THORDIS And have you felt the same? We two Have walked eternal mountains hand in hand, And watched the morning of our little lives Break over our birth-hour, and we shall stand Together at the sundown, and behold The passion clouds of death grow pale.
ARFI And then We shall pass on together.
[In his sleep, Egil moans.]
THORDIS We forget; We must not leave him as we found him, love.
ARFI The wolf torments him still in sleep.
THORDIS Poor dreamer! And have you told him yet we are to wed To-morrow?
ARFI No; I dreaded to rouse up The old, jealous hate; for since my wound has healed, He seems to have forgotten that old feud, And looks on you and me no more, methinks, As keepers of his prison-house, but rather As his accomplices, that smuggle in Subtle devices for his liberation, To comprehend the use of which he expends All of his time and powers.
THORDIS Accomplices: It may be so; for he, that used to hang With looks of fire upon my merest motion, Will gaze beyond me now with eyes that gloat Blank as a miser’s on some buried hoard.
ARFI The gold he hoards is knowledge, and ’tis well, For that preoccupation may assuage The pain he else might feel, when he shall learn Our joy to-morrow.
[Egil cries out again.]
THORDIS Yearning heart! how deep It labours still in pain! Let us take care To acquaint him gently with our happiness. We must divert him.—Why, what’s here?
ARFI [Smiling.] A temple; We’re architects.
THORDIS He helped you build it?
ARFI I Am helping him.
THORDIS But how shall this avail To tame the wolf?
ARFI His genius is destruction; His breath and bondage—to annihilate; And therefore Egil must be shown to build And not destroy; of mean, chaotic things— These blocks—to make admired harmony, And shape, however rude, some tangible Earnest of his constructive will.
THORDIS I see; Who would have thought of it but you? Not I! [Egil moans.] Hark!
EGIL [Low, in his sleep.] Freyja!
THORDIS Did he call?
EGIL Freyja!
THORDIS That name! You heard?
ARFI The goddess Spring’s.
THORDIS You taught him, then, To pray?
ARFI Not I.
EGIL [Starting to his feet.] Freyja!
THORDIS Can this be Egil?
EGIL [Crouched, pacing to and fro.] Free me, Freyja! Frore am I, frost-bit; Go we together into greenwood glad! Mirk under moon-mist mad will meet thee, Hunt thee from hiding, thy heart-beats hear.
ARFI It is the wolf that wakes, while Egil slumbers.
EGIL [Looking, with closed eyes, as toward a height.] Free me, Freyja! Fair art thou, froward; Go we together into greenwood glad! Burns thine eyebeam bright as the bitch-wolf’s; Longeth Fenris in thy lair to lie.
THORDIS What other name spake he?
ARFI I could not hear.
EGIL [In sudden terror, seeking to fly.] Ai! anarch! anarch! Ulfr!
THORDIS Wake him.
ARFI Wait; What this reveals to us may prove of help To him.
EGIL [Defiantly.] Oathless am I!
THORDIS But see! he suffers.
EGIL I—I am Allfather! [Swaying with anguish, as under the blows of a scourge, he sinks upon the floor, overwhelmed and quivering.] Oathless—am—I—
THORDIS Egil, awake! awake! ’Tis nothing.
EGIL [Gradually waking, rises to his knees.] Freyja!
THORDIS No goddess I, poor Egil, but your friend Thordis, the maiden.
EGIL She thou art—the same Even now that saved me. [Starting.] What is that?
ARFI Your brother.
EGIL My brother he is tall and beautiful, Happy and glorious, and I hate him for’t.
ARFI Nay, you have hated me, but not for that. Look on me, Egil.
EGIL Arfi!
THORDIS ’Twas a dream.
EGIL What’s that—a dream? Is it a mist that steals Between the eyelids, filling them with shap Begot of its own vapour,—shadows? lies? If so, which shapes are dreams—your forms, or those, Those even now that beheld me, where I crouched Among the crater’s hoar crusts, numb with cold, Yet writhing in the brassy flames, that eat And crawled into my vitals? Mine? No, no! That was not I, that nameless thing, not I! Say “No.”
ARFI It was the wolf. You fell asleep, Wearied, and dreamed of him.
EGIL If that be sleep, Then let me sleep no more. O friends, sweet friends, You that have weaned and reared me from this thing, Promise I nevermore may droop mine eyes But you will prod them open.
THORDIS You forget How you have grown. Soon you will be once more— But oh! how milder, mightier, than before— Egil, the hunter.
EGIL Till then, Egil the hunted! O Thordis, could I meet—as many a time I’ve met within the forest, face to face, My quarry, and destroyed it—could I so Confront this inward beast and grapple him To the death-struggle,—ha! but with a dream! A spectral wolf, that lurks ever in the dusk And tangled thickets of my brain and will, A wraith invulnerable, that makes his lair In my bosom, that, when I would strike, I lacerate myself, draw life—myself The beast, the bait, the hunter and the hunted!
THORDIS Nay, you are still the hunter, he the quarry, Only to track him hath grown harder, for He hath grown duskier as your mind hath dawned, And can no more take shape, as he was wont, In tangible horror to the eyes of all. Yet we will track him—you and I.
EGIL But how?
THORDIS With flaming torches we will set ablaze His ancient wilderness, till through the gap Of sundering boughs the quiet stars shall mock him, Naked and overwhelmed.
EGIL But where? What boughs? What fire?
THORDIS [Taking up, among the instruments, a reed-pipe.] The way is wild; this pipe shall lead us. Play, Arfi!
[Sitting beside the block temple, Arfi begins to play upon the reed.]
EGIL But this pipe—
THORDIS Do you not hear Her voice alluring us? It is a wood-sprite, The elf-child Harmony.
EGIL Where can she lead us? This is a prison.
THORDIS She can lead us forth Into the beauteous world. Hark! even now— Do you not see?—the walls are crumbling, bright With ivy-dew and morning.—Don’t you hear? The birds! the birds!—Now, Egil, now your hand! Now on the dance with me! We’ll follow her On—to the chase!
[Taking hands, they dance whilst Arfi blows the mellow pipe. Eager, impetuous, Egil becomes kindled by the sound and motion till, in the midst, dropping Thordis’s hand, he gropes toward the wall.]
EGIL The chase! the chase! the chase! Ho, torches for the chase!
ARFI [Stops playing, and rises.] A metaphor Transforms him.
EGIL Torches! [Stumbling against the blocks.] What is this?
ARFI Our temple; We’ve left it uncompleted.
EGIL This!—the chase! To sit block-building like a little child? To ask vague questions that await strange answers? No! do not mock me! Summon the great hunt. Hand me a torch into my gripping palm, Point where to leap, and let the whirlwinds sing And the great jungles crash in conflagration. The wolf! reveal the wolf! that I may rend The demon limb from limb.
ARFI He rages blind Now in your eyes.
EGIL [Controlling himself, shudders.] Emancipate me!
ARFI Come; Here let us sit, as we were boys again, And pile our blocks.
THORDIS Go, Egil! Build with him. The forest-sprite has led you to her temple.
[Going to the tapestry frame, while Egil joins Arfi, she begins to work upon the embroidery, observing from time to time their block-building.]
EGIL A temple! Still they mock me.—’Tis a toy.
ARFI Why, true, a toy, and yet a temple, if The mind bring incense here, and the bow’d heart Make sacrifice.
EGIL We are not pigmies, we, To creep under this gable.
ARFI Are we not? Are we so great? Who hath not stood beneath A sparrow’s egg-shell, speckled o’er with stars, And dwindled there with wonder? Who so small But hath, to quench desire, drunk of the sun Or set his parch’d lips to the moon’s pale rim? So great, so small, neither and both, our stature Waxes and wanes, inconstant as a shadow ’Twixt night and noon and night. This temple, lad, Will be as cramped or spacious as the spirit Which consecrates it.
EGIL Dark! Thou speakest darkness.
ARFI Listen! This house of toy-wood is the altar Where you must supplicate the immortal gods For freedom.
EGIL So; the immortal gods! What, then, Are they that I should sue to them for freedom?
ARFI They are the powers of the inevitable To whom we mortals must submit our wills Or perish.
[Egil’s structure falls.]
EGIL Ah! it breaks. What made it fall?
ARFI A god: the same that holds these prison walls Stone upon stone; the same that mortises The rock-seams of the solid hills, and hangs Aloft the glittering roof-tree of the world.— You builded weak, and the god chided you.
EGIL Are then the gods so near?
ARFI In all our acts We feel the might of their invisible hands, But only in prayer behold them face to face.
EGIL In prayer?
ARFI The abnegation of our wills For theirs, the affirmation of their laws, Which to the god’s “Thou must” answers “I will.”
EGIL And that is freedom?
ARFI That alone is freedom.
EGIL I will be free then, Arfi. Why, ’tis simpler Than playing with these blocks. I will be free! Teach me to pray.
ARFI I cannot.
EGIL Teach me, Thordis. [She shakes her head and smiles.] Alas! who will?
ARFI Yourself alone.
EGIL But how? How may I know when I have learned to pray?
ARFI When, in the full sight of your goal of yearning, Your spirit, pausing, cries out to the gods— “This is my heart’s desire—take it—’tis yours!” That instant of renunciation will Be prayer and freedom both and the wolf’s passing-bell. [Enter Wuldor; he goes to Arfi and speaks aside.] Admit him.
WULDOR But—
ARFI Why not?
WULDOR His looks are wild, His words were bitter. When he spoke of thee, He laughed and scowled.
ARFI Say we will come to him. [Exit Wuldor.]
THORDIS [Whom Arfi approaches, with a warning gesture.] Who is it?
ARFI [Aside.] Yorul; he has asked to speak With Egil.
THORDIS Ought we to admit him?
ARFI It is wise, For so may Egil measure what he is By what he was. Look; he has knelt to pray. The time is fitting; we will leave him so.
THORDIS [Leaving the tapestry.] How noble he looks! Shall we not tell him now About to-morrow?
ARFI We will tell him all When he has prayed. [Exeunt.]
EGIL [Solus.] To pray—to pray is simple: “This is my heart’s desire—take it—’tis yours!” And so—emancipation. O you gods, If through these prison walls you may behold The mock rites of this childish temple, hear me! Knowledge—knowledge, that is my heart’s desire. That is the soul-inebriating cup Which hath transformed me half unto your image And still hath drugg’d the other brutish half To lethargy and dreams. To know, to learn, And evermore to learn! To watch new worlds Kindling from out the dark of consciousness, Fresh firmaments gathering from drop to drop Of common morning dew; to be upborne On the light-trailing wings of understanding And scan far off the former crawling-place And wolf-haunt of the spirit, to spread those wings At one’s own will and mount into the sun, Searing the mind with ecstasy—you gods! That is my heart’s desire: take it from me! Take it, ’tis yours, for it hath come from you, But when of that you have bereft me, leave Freedom instead, and innocence. [Enter Yorul.] What’s there? Speak.
YORUL [As Egil starts up, bows himself at his feet.] Thy betrayer.
EGIL Oh, art thou a god? And art thou come in answer to my prayer?
YORUL Master—
EGIL I know thy voice.
YORUL [Turning upward his face.] Destroy me.
EGIL [Dreamily.] Yorul! Yorul, my liegeman!
YORUL Once thou named me so; Once and the world was sweet—once and ’twas sweet.
EGIL Why have they sent thee, Yorul?
YORUL Who, my lord?
EGIL Thou art their messenger; be swift; declare Their grace, or doom.—Shall I go free?
YORUL Destroy me With blows of steel, not of remorse. None sent me. Myself hath driven me here, here to the cell Wherein my treachery consigned my master. Hear me!
EGIL I hear thee, Yorul.
YORUL Since that night, That bitter sunset when she—since that night Till now, I have not left the forest, nor Spoken with friend or foe; but I have stopped My heart in the deep silentness of trees Till it hath burst for pain. My wrong and thine, Thy wrong and mine—I dared to balance them, To let my woe condone my treachery And prove it justified, as if my heart Were not itself thy vassal, and its pangs Feudal to thy desires. And so I sinned Until to-day.
EGIL These are enigmas. Speak! How have the gods made answer to my prayer?
YORUL To-day I met with peasants in the wood Who drove their herds of swine all garlanded With green arbutus. Hailing me, they cried, “Why come ye not with us to Odin’s stone Against to-morrow’s wedding-day?” “Who weds?” Quoth I. “Our priestess Thordis weds the dwarf; Come with us!” Then I bit my arm and vowed That I would come to thee and speak my shame, And say, “Destroy me, lord, or let me serve thee.”
EGIL Peasants they were; they said—what was’t they said?
YORUL “To-morrow our priestess Thordis”—
EGIL “Weds the dwarf!” Those were thy words; thou shalt not change them now.
YORUL I would not change them.
EGIL Wouldst thou not? Well said! “To-morrow the maiden Thordis”—nay, not so; “To-morrow our priestess Thordis—weds the dwarf.” And all their swine were garlanded.—Was it so?
YORUL Even so, and I—
EGIL Even so!
YORUL I vowed to come—
EGIL [Laughing.] Knowledge—knowledge—that was my heart’s desire!
YORUL And make confession—
EGIL Why, here have I sat And licked the crumbs of knowledge from his hand As I had been his beagle; and for what? To grow! to be transmuted from a wolf Into my brother’s ape! To evolve a mind That knows at last the rapture it must lose. Oh, noble!
YORUL And make confession of my crime As of my love.
EGIL [Beginning to pace back and forth.] Ha!
YORUL For I loved her well, More than I dreamed. Love leads us from the truth And blinds us to ourselves.
EGIL Ah!
YORUL So when I Beheld that deed—forgive me!
EGIL Ah!
YORUL I spake Those traitor’s words that damned thee to this cell; For I was mad. O God! the memory Maddens me now.
EGIL Ha!
YORUL Look not on me so, For I am weak and passionate. Take care! The truth deserts me!—Nay, forgive me, master, ’Tis love is falsehood.
EGIL Ah!
YORUL I am thy liegeman, And what was mine was thine to take, unquestioned.
EGIL Ah!
YORUL Yet my soul would question, and I claimed her In spite of thee, for that same night— [Draws nearer and whispers.] I killed her. Mine! She is mine! Thou canst not touch her now. She lies out yonder with the virgin stars White and inviolable. Dead, she is mine Whom, living, ’twas thy title not to spare. Master, pity my triumph! Leave me yet This foible of my arrogance, for which Henceforth I am thy loyal slave, to do Or die for thee.
EGIL Wouldst serve me—ah?
YORUL Say how!
EGIL Seems thou canst kill.
YORUL Speak but that word.
[They look long at each other.]
EGIL ’Tis spoken. Go!—Stay!
YORUL What more?
EGIL Thine oath!—for sometimes, Yorul, The resolute grow sick with afterthought, And hot will cool—thine oath, to shun my sight, To speak not nor be spoken with, until ’Tis done.
YORUL [Raising his right arm.] By Frida’s cold and virgin hand, To shun my master’s sight, to speak not, nor Be spoken with, until ’tis done.
EGIL ’Tis sworn; Go now. [Yorul covers his face, and exit.] To-morrow she shall wed—not him. O dupe of lovers! Bond-slave to a dwarf! O gods, your fool! your fool!
[Throwing himself down beside the temple of blocks, he destroys it, insensate, and crouches, laughing, amid the ruins.]

Scene II

[The curtain rises presently upon the same: a taper burns low. Thordis, seated with a harp, is playing; near her Egil stands amid the block ruins. Ceasing to play, Thordis rises, looks at Egil (who stands oblivious), passes silently to the window and looks out.]
THORDIS The moon has set.
EGIL [Stirs as from a trance.] Can, then, the eternal cease? That perfect architecture pale in air? You built again my temple of sweet sounds And peopled it with deathless visitants, And shed around their forms a nameless grace Medicinal as moonlight, and as calm. I walked with them, and they discoursed with me. Almost it seemed myself was one of them.— And then you ceased.
THORDIS ’Tis beauty’s paradox To prove itself immortal—and to die.
EGIL Die? Must this godlike transmutation lapse Into the lurking wolf again? Ah, no! That music died in labour, and its yearning Hath borne a man-child, that lives after it Here in my soul. Henceforth I nevermore May be that groping hypocrite of prayer Whom you uplifted from this ruined altar, With passion-sealèd eyes seeking the light Of freedom. No, henceforth I shall be strong, Clear-eyed, serene, and dauntless. See! I take Your hand and bid you go from me.—Thou only, Thou art my heart’s desire. See! I renounce thee. Go from me, for I love you. Leave me! Yet You leave me not alone; that passionate presence Which the blind wrath and hunger for possession Cries out for from my clay—of that I am Bereft indeed; but losing that, I gain The stellar part of you, the exceeding light Of fellowship and human sympathy.— Leave me! I love you.
THORDIS Is this Egil speaks?
EGIL Egil, your lover, I!
THORDIS The gods are mighty, And music is the lordliest. O Egil, Thou art emancipated, and to-morrow They will fling wide thy prison doors.—Good night! [Giving him the harp.] Keep here thy god with thee. [At the door, as they clasp hands.] Brother!—Good night. [Exit.]
EGIL Sister!—Emancipated! Mine at last Freedom and innocence! The occult beast That crouched beside the sweet wells of my spirit Is exorcised at last.—To-morrow dawn I shall go forth and taste the wild, spring air, And gather the hamlet children in the woods To pluck arbutus for her wedding-day, Her wedding-day—and his. I have renounced her. Emancipated—but I have renounced her Even for that, for freedom. What were freedom Without—his! his! forever his own! And I Am happy, rapt, triumphant? His! What power Hath wrought in me this ignominy? [Lifting the harp.] Thou! Wast thou, imperious instrument! Wast thou, Delirious god! [Fiercely he plucks out several strings.] Thou hast decoyed me! [Pausing.] Still, There’s Yorul; Yorul’s true. [Wrenching with both hands the harp’s frame, he breaks it in halves, and exultant, raises them above his head, with a great breath.] Emancipated!