Krindlesyke

by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

BOOK II

BELL HAGGARD

---

PART I

Midsummer morning. Ezra Barrasford sits crouched over the fire. Eliza Barrasford, looking old and worn, and as if dazed by a shock, comes from the ben, or inner room, with a piece of paper in her hand. As she sinks to a chair to recover her breath, the paper flutters to the floor, where she lets it lie, and sits staring before her.

Eliza:

So that’s the last.

Ezra:

The last? The last of what?

Eliza:

The last of your sons to leave you. Jim’s gone now.

Ezra:

Gone where, the tyke? After his wife, I’ll warrant.
’Twill take him all his time to catch her up:
She’s three months’ start of him. The gonneril,
To be forsaken on his wedding-day:
And the ninneyhammer let her go—he let her!
Do you reckon I’d let a woman I’d fetched home
Go gallivanting off at her own sweet will?
No wench I’d ringed, and had a mind to hold,
Should quit the steading till she was carried, feet-first
And shoulder-high, packed snug in a varnished box.
The noodle couldn’t stand up to a woman’s tongue:
And so, lightheels picked up her skirts, and flitted,
Before he’d even bedded her—skelped off
Like a ewe turned lowpy-dyke; and left the nowt,
The laughing-stock of the countryside. He should
Have used his fist to teach her manners. She seemed
To have the fondy flummoxed, till his wits
Were fozy as a frosted swede. Do you reckon
I’d let a lass ...

Eliza:

And yet, six lads have left you,
Without a by-your-leave.

Ezra:

Six lads?

Eliza:

Your sons.

Ezra:

Ay ... but they’d not the spunk to scoot till I
Was blind and crippled. The scurvy rats skidaddled
As the old barn-roof fell in. While I’d my sight,
They’d scarce the nerve to look me in the eye,
The blinking, slinking squealers!

Eliza:

Ay, we’re old.
The heat this morning seems to suffocate me,
My head’s a skep of buzzing bees; and I pant
Like an old ewe under a dyke, when the sun gives scarce
An inch of shade. You harp on sight: but eyes
Aren’t everything: my sight’s a girl’s: and yet
I’m old and broken: you’ve broken me, among you.
I’d count the pens of a hanging hawk: yet my eyes
Have saved me little: they’ve never seen to the bottom
Of the blackness of men’s hearts. The very sons
Of my body, I reckoned to ken through and through,
As every mother thinks she knows her sons,
Have been pitch night to me. We never learn.
I thought I’d got by heart each turn and twist
Of all Jim’s stupid cunning: but even he’s
Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left;
All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling:
Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve:
And now Jim ends ...

Ezra:

You mean Jim’s gone for good?

Eliza:

For good and all: he’s taken Peter’s road.

Ezra:

And who’s to tend the ewes? He couldn’t go—
No herd could leave his sheep to an old wife’s care:
For this old carcase, once counted the best herd’s
In the countryside, is a useless bag of bones now.
Jim couldn’t leave ...

Eliza:

For all I ken or care,
He’s taken them with him too.

Ezra:

You’re havering!
Your sons aren’t common thieves, I trust. And Jim
Would scarce have pluck to sneak a swede from the mulls
Of a hobbled ewe, much less make off with a flock—
Though his forbears lifted a wheen Scots’ beasts in their time—
And Steel would have him by the heels before
He’d travelled a donkey’s gallop, though he skelped along
Like Willie Pigg’s dick-ass. But how do you ken
The gawky’s gone for good? He couldn’t leave ...

Eliza:

I found a paper in the empty chest,
Scrawled with a bit of writing in his hand:
“Tell dad I’ve gone to look for his lost wits:
And he’ll not see me till he gets new eyes
To seek me himself.”

Ezra:

Eyes or no eyes, I’ll break
The foumart’s back, in this world or the next:
He’ll not escape. He thinks he’s the laugh of me;
But I’ve never let another man laugh last.
Though he should take the short cut to the gallows,
I’ll have him, bibbering on his bended knees
Before me yet, even if I have to wait
Till I find him, brizzling on the coals of hell.
But, what do you say—the empty chest—what chest?

Eliza:

The kist beneath the bed.

Ezra:

But, that’s not empty!
How could you open it, when I’d the key
Strung safely on a bootlace next my skin?

Eliza:

The key—you should have chained the kist, itself,
As a locket round your neck, if you’d have kept
Your precious hoard from your own flesh and blood.

Ezra:

To think a man begets the thieves to rob him!
But, how ...

Eliza:

I had no call to open it.
I caught my foot against the splintered lid,
When I went to make the bed.

Ezra:

The splintered lid!
And the kist—the kist! You say ’twas empty?

Eliza:

Not quite:
The paper was in.

Ezra:

But the money, you dam of thieves—
Where was the money?

Eliza:

It wasn’t in the box—
Not a brass farthing.

Ezra:

The money gone—all gone?
Why didn’t you tell me about it right away?

Eliza:

I wasn’t minding money: I’d lost a son.

Ezra:

A son—a thief! I’ll have the law of him:
I’ll sprag his wheel: for all his pretty pace,
He’ll come a cropper yet, the scrunty wastrel.
This comes of marrying into a coper’s family:
I might have kenned: thieving runs in their blood.

Eliza:

I’ve seen the day that lie’d have roused ... But now,
It’s not worth while ... worth while. I’ve never felt
Such heat: it smothers me: it’s like a nightmare,
When you wake with your head in the blankets, all asweat:
Only, I cannot wake ... It snowed the night
That Peter went ...

Ezra:

Blabbering of heat and snow:
And all that money gone—my hard-earned savings!
We’re beggared, woman—beggared by your son:
And then, to sit and yammer like a yieldewe:
Come, stir your stumps; and clap your bonnet on:
Up and away!

Eliza:

And where should I away to?

Ezra:

I’ll have the law of him: I’ll have him gaoled,
And you must fetch the peeler.

Eliza:

Policemen throng
Round Krindlesyke, as bees about a thistle!
And I’m to set the peelers on my son?
If he’d gone with Peter, they’d have tracked his hobnails ...
It snowed that night ... The snowflakes buzz like bees
About the prickling thistles in my head—
Big bumblebees ... I never felt such heat.

Ezra:

And I must sit, tied to a chair, and hearken
To an old wife, havering of bumblebees,
While my hard-earned sovereigns lie snug and warm
In the breeches’ pocket of a rascal thief—
Fifty gold sovereigns!

Eliza:

Fifty golden bees—
Golden Italian queens ... My father spent
A sight of money on Italian queens:
For he’d a way with bees. He’d handle them
With naked hands. They swarmed on his beard, and hung,
Buzzing like fury: but he never blinked—
Just wagged his head, swaying them, till they dropped,
All of a bunch, into an upturned skep....
My head’s a hive of buzzing bees—bees buzzing
In the hot, crowded darkness, dripping honey ...

Ezra:

You’re wandering, woman—maffling like a madpash.
Jim’s stolen your senses, when he took my gold.

Eliza:

Don’t talk of money now: I want to think.
Six sons, I had. My sons, you say. You’re right:
For menfolk have no children: only women
Carry them: only women are brought to bed:
And only women labour: and, when they go,
Only the mothers lose them: and all for nothing,
The coil and cumber! If I could have left one son,
Wedded, and settled down at Krindlesyke,
To do his parents credit, and carry on ...
First Peter came: it snowed the night he came—
A feeding-storm of fisselling dry snow.
I lay and watched flakes fleetering out of the dark
In the candleshine against the wet black glass,
Like moths about a lanthorn ... I lay and watched,
Till the pains were on me ... And they buzzed like bees,
The snowflakes in my head—hot, stinging bees ...
It snowed again, the night he went.... In the smother
I lost him, in a drift down Bloodysyke ...
I couldn’t follow further: the snow closed in—
Dry flakes that stung my face like swarming bees,
And blinded me ... and buzzing, till my head
Was all ahum; and I was fair betwattled ...
I’ve not set eyes ...

Ezra:

Gather your wits together.
There’s no one else; and you must go to Rawridge—
No daundering on the road; and tell John Steel
Jim’s gone: and so, there’s none to look to the sheep.
He must send someone ... Though my money melt
In the hot pocket of a vagabond,
They must be minded: sheep can’t tend themselves.

Eliza:

I’ll go. ’Twas cruel to leave them in this heat,
With none to water them. This heat’s a judgment.
They were my sons: I bore and suckled them.
This heat’s a judgment on me, pressing down
On my brain like a redhot iron ...

(She rises with difficulty, and goes, bareheaded, into the sunshine. In a few moments she staggers back, and stumbles, with unseeing eyes, towards the inner room. She pauses a second at the door, and turns, as if to speak to Ezra; but goes in, without a word. Presently a soft thud is heard within: then a low moan.)

Ezra:

Who’s there? Not you,
Eliza? You can’t be back already, woman?
Why don’t you speak? You yammered enough, just now—
Such havers! Haven’t you gone? What’s keeping you?
I told you to step out. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
You’re wambling like a wallydraigling waywand.
The old ewe’s got the staggers. Boodyankers!
If I wasn’t so crocked and groggy, I’d make a fend
To go myself—ay, blind bat as I am.
Come, pull yourself together; and step lively.
What’s that? What’s that? I can’t hear anything now.
Where are you, woman? Speak! There’s no one here—
Though I’d have sworn I heard the old wife waigling,
As if she carried a hoggerel on her shoulders.
I heard a foot: yet, she couldn’t come so soon.
I’m going watty. My mind’s so set on dogging
The heels of that damned thief, hot-foot for the gallows,
I hear his footsteps echoing in my head.
He’d hirple it barefoot on the coals of hell,
With a red-hot prong at his hurdies to prog him on,
If I’d my way with him: de’il scart the hanniel!

(He sits, brooding: and some time has passed, when the head of a tramp, shaggy and unkempt, is thrust in at the door; and is followed by the body of Peter Barrasford, who steps cautiously in, and stealing up to the old man’s chair, stands looking down upon him with a grin.)

Ezra (stirring uneasily):

A step, for sure! You’re back? Though how you’ve travelled
So quickly, Eliza, I can’t think. And when’s
John Steel to turn us out, to follow Jim
And the other vagabonds? And who’s he sending?
He’s not a man to spare ... But, sheep are sheep:
Someone must tend them, though all else go smash.
I’ve given my life to sheep, spent myself for them:
And now, I’m not the value of a dead sheep
To any farmer—a rackle of bones for the midden!
A bitter day, ’twill be, when I turn my back
On Krindlesyke. I little reckoned to go,
A blind old cripple, hobbling on two sticks.
Pride has a fall, they say: and I was proud—
Proud as a thistle; and a donkey’s cropt
The thistle’s prickly pride. Why don’t you speak?
I’m not mistaken this time: I heard you come:
I feel you standing over me.

(He pokes round with his stick, catching Peter on the shin with it.)

Peter (wresting the stick from Ezra’s grasp):

Easy on!
Peter’s no lad to take a leathering, now.
Your time’s come round for breeches down, old boy:
But don’t be scared; for I’m no walloper—
Too like hard work! My son’s a clean white skin:
He’s never skirled, as you made me. By gox,
You gave me gip: my back still bears the stripes
Of the loundering I got the night I left.
But I bear no malice, you old bag-of-bones:
And where’s the satisfaction in committing
Assault and battery on a blasted scarecrow?
’Twas basting hot young flesh that you enjoyed:
I still can hear you smack your lips with relish,
To see the blue weals rising, as you laid on,
Until the tawse was bloody. Not juice enough
In your geyzened carcase to raise one weal: and I never
Could bear the sound of cracking bones: and you’re
All nobs and knuckles, like the parson’s pig.
To think I feared you once, old spindleshanks!
But I’m not here for paying compliments:
I’ve other pressing business on that brings me
To the God-forsaken gaol where I was born.
If I make sense of your doting, mother’s out:
And that’s as well: it makes things easier.
She’d flufter me: and I like to take things easy,
Though I’m no sneak: I come in, bold as brass,
By the front, when there’s no back door. I’ll do the trick
While she’s gone: and borrow a trifle on account.
I trust that cuddy hasn’t cropt your cashbox,
Before your eldest son has got his portion.

(He starts to go towards the inner room, but stops half-way as he hears a step on the threshold.)

Peter:

The devil!

Bell Haggard, a tall young tinker-woman, with an orange-coloured kerchief about her head, appears in the doorway with her young son, Michael.

Peter:

You, Bell? Lass, but you startled me.

Ezra (muttering to himself):

This must be death: the crows are gathering in.
I don’t feel like cold carrion, but corbies will gather,
And flesh their bloody beaks on an old ram’s carcase,
Before the life’s quite out.

Peter (to Bell):

I feared ’twas mother.
Lucky, she’s out; it’s easier to do—
Well, you ken what, when she’s ... But didn’t I bid
You keep well out of sight, you and the lad?

Bell:

You did. What then?

Peter:

I thought ’twas better the bairn ...

Bell:

You think too much for a man with a small head:
You’ll split the scalp, some day. I’ve not been used
To doing any man’s bidding, as you should ken:
And I’d a mind to see the marble halls
You dreamt you dwelt in.

Peter:

Hearken, how she gammons!

Bell:

She—the cat’s mother? You’ve no manners, Peter:
You haven’t introduced us.

Peter:

Only hark!
Well, dad, she’s Bell—Bell Haggard, tinker-born—
She’ll tell you she’s blood-royal, likely as not—
And this lad happens to be hers and mine,
Somehow, though we’re not married.

Bell:

What a fashion
To introduce a boy to his grandfather—
And such a dear, respectable old sheep’s head!

(to Michael)

Look well on granddad, son, and see what comes
Of minding sheep.

Michael:

I mean to be a shepherd.

Bell:

Well, you’ve a knack of getting your own way:
But, tripe and trotters, you can look on him,
And still say that? Ay, you’re his grandson, surely—
All Barrasford, with not a dash of Haggard,
No drop of the wild colt’s blood. Ewe’s milk you’d bleed
If your nose were tapped. Who’d ever guess my dugs
Had suckled you? Even your dad’s no more
Than three-parts mutton, with a strain of reynard—
A fox’s heart, for all his weak sheep’s head.
Lad, look well round on your ancestral halls:
You’ll likely not clap eyes on them again.
I’m eager to be off: we don’t seem welcome.
Your venerable grandsire is asleep,
Or else he’s a deaf mute; though, likely enough,
That’s how folk look, awake, at Krindlesyke.
I’d fancied we were bound for the Happy Return:
But we’ve landed at the Undertaker’s Arms—
And after closing time, and all. You’ve done
That little business, Peter—though it’s not bulged
Your pockets overmuch, that I can see?

Peter:

Just setting about it, when you interrupted ...

Bell:

Step lively, then. I find this welcome too warm
On such a sultry day: I’m choked for air.
These whitewashed walls, they’re too like—well, you ken
Where you’ll find yourself, if you get nobbled ...

Peter:

It seems
There’s no one here to nab us; Jim’s gone off:
But I’d as lief be through with it, and away,
Before my mother’s back.

Bell:

You’re safe enough:
There’s none but sheep in sight for three miles round:
And they’re all huddled up against the dykes,
With lollering tongues too baked to bleat “Stop thief!”
Look slippy! I’m half-scumfished by these walls—
A weak flame, easily snuffed out: the stink
Of whitewash makes me queasy—sets me listening
To catch the click of the cell-door behind me:
I feel cold bracelets round my wrists, already.
Is thon the strong-room?

Peter:

Ay.

Bell:

Then sharp’s the word:
It’s time that we were stepping, Deadwood Dick.

(As Peter goes into the other room, Ezra tries to rise from his chair.)

Ezra:

Help! Murder! Thieves!

Bell (thrusting him easily back with one hand):

The oracle has spoken.
And so, old image, you’ve found your tongue at last:
Small wonder you mislaid it, in such a mug.
Help, say you? But, you needn’t bleat so loud:
There’s none within three miles to listen to you,
But me and Peter and Michael; and we’re not deaf:
So don’t go straining your voice, old nightingale,
Or splitting your wheezy bellows. And “thieves,” no less!
Tastes differ: but it isn’t just the word
I’d choose for welcoming my son and heir,
When he comes home; and brings with him his—well,
His son, and his son’s mother, shall we say,
So’s not to scandalize your innocence?
And, come to think, it’s none too nice a word
For grandson’s ears: and me, his tender mammy,
Doing all I can to keep the lamb’s heart pure.
And as for “murder”—how could there be murder?
Murder’s full-blooded—no mean word like “thieves”:
And who could murder a bundle of dried peas-sticks?
Flung on the fire, happen they’d crackle and blaze:
But I’m hot enough, to-day, without you frizzling.
Still, “thieves” sticks in my gullet, old heel-of-the-loaf.
Yet I’m not particular, myself, at times:
And I’ve always gathered from your dutiful son
Manners were taken for granted at Krindlesyke,
And never missed: so I’ll overlook the word.
You’ve not been used to talking with a lady,
Old scrag-end: still, I’m truly honoured, sir,
In making your acquaintance: for I’ve heard
Some pretty things about you from your son.

(Ezra, who has shrunk back, gasping, into his chair, suddenly starts chuckling to himself.)

Bell:

You’re merry, sir! Will you not share the jest?
Aren’t you the sparky blade, the daffing callant,
Naffing and nickering like a three-year-old?
Come, none-so-pretty, cough the old wheeze up,
Before it chokes you. Let me clap your back.
You’re, surely, never laughing at a lady?

(Seizing him by the collar, and shaking him.)

You deafy nut—you gibbet—you rusty corncrake!
Tell me what’s kittling you, old skeleton,
Or I’ll joggle your bones till they rattle like castanets.

(Suddenly releasing him.)

Come, Peter: let’s away from this mouldy gaol,
Before old heeltaps takes a fit. Your son
Will be a full-grown shepherd before we leave—
And his old mother, trapped between four walls—
If you don’t put a jerk in it.

(Peter comes slowly from the inner room, empty-handed; and stands, dazed, in the doorway.)

Bell:

Well, fumble-fingers?
What’s kept you this half-year? I could have burgled
The Bank of England in the time. What’s up?
Have you gone gite, now?

Ezra (still chuckling):

Thieves cheated by a thief!

Bell:

But, where’s the box?

Peter:

I didn’t see the box.

Bell:

You didn’t see it?

Peter:

No; I didn’t see it:
The valance hangs too low.

Bell:

And you’re too proud—
Too proud a prig to stoop? Did you expect
The box to bounce itself into your arms,
The moment it heard your step?

Peter:

I dared not stoop:
For there was someone lying on the bed,
Asleep, I think.

Bell:

You think?

Peter:

I only saw
A hunched-up shoulder, poking through the curtain.

Bell:

A woman?

Peter:

Ay, my mother, or her fetch.
I couldn’t take my eyes from that hunched shoulder—
It looked so queer—till you called my name.

Bell:

You said
Your mother was out. But, we’ve no time to potter.
To think I’ve borne a son to a calf that’s fleyed
Of a sleeping woman’s back—his minney’s, and all!
Collops and chitterlings, if she’s asleep,
The job’s the easier done. There’s not a woman,
Or a woman’s fetch, would scare me from good gold.
I’ll get the box.

(She steals softly into the other room, and is gone for some time. The others await her expectantly in silence. Presently she comes out bareheaded and empty-handed. Without a word, she goes to the window, and pulls down the blind; then closes the outer door: Peter and Michael watching her in amazement.)

Ezra:

So Jim, the fox, has cheated Peter, the fox—
And vixen and cub, to boot! But, he made off
Only this morning: and the scent’s still fresh.
You’ll ken the road he’d take, the fox’s track—
A thief to catch a thief! He’s lifted all:
But, if you cop him, I’ll give you half, although
’Twill scarcely leave enough to bury us
With decency, when we have starved to death,
Your mother and I. Run, lad: there’s fifty-sovereign!
And mind you clout and clapperclaw the cull:
Spanghew his jacket, when you’ve riped his pockets—
The scurvy scrunt!

Bell:

Silence, old misery:
There’s a dead woman lying in the house—
And you can prate of money!

Peter:

Dead!

Ezra:

Eliza!

Bell:

I found the body, huddled on the bed,
Already cold and stiffening.

Ezra:

I thought I heard ...
Yet, she set out for Rawridge, to fetch a man ...
I felt her passing, in my very bones.
I knew her foot: you cannot hear a step
For forty-year, and mistake it, though the spring’s
Gone out of it, and it’s turned to a shuffle, it’s still
The same footfall. Why didn’t she answer me?
She chattered enough, before she went—such havers!
Words tumbling from her lips in a witless jumble.
Contrary, to the last, she wouldn’t answer:
But crept away, like a wounded pheasant, to die
Alone. She’s gone before me, after all—
And she, so hale; while I was crutched and crippled.
I haven’t looked on her face for eleven-year:
But she was bonnie, when I saw her first,
That morning at the fair—so fresh and pink.

Bell:

She must have died alone. It’s an ill thing
To die alone, folk say; but I don’t know.
She’d hardly die more lonely than she lived:
For every woman’s lonely in her heart.
I never looked on a lonelier face.

Peter:

Come, Bell:
We’d best be making tracks: there’s nothing here:
So let’s be going.

Bell:

Going, Peter, where?

Peter:

There’s nothing to bide here for: we’re too late.
Jim’s stolen a march on us: there’s no loot left.

Bell:

And you would leave a woman, lying dead;
And an old blind cripple who cannot do a hand’s-turn,
With no one to look after them—and they,
Your father and mother?

Peter:

Little enough I owe them:
What can we do for them, anyway? We can’t
Bring back the dead to life: and, sooner or later,
Someone will come from Rawridge to see to the sheep:
And dad won’t hurt, meanwhile: he’s gey and tough.

Bell:

And you would leave your mother, lying dead,
With none but strangers’ hands to lay her out—
No soul of her kin to tend her at the last?

(She goes to the dresser and looks in the drawers, taking out an apron and tying it round her waist.)

Ezra:

I never guessed she’d go, and leave me alone.
How did she think I could get along without her?
She kenned I could do nothing for myself:
And yet she’s left me alone, to starve to death—
Just sit in my chair, and starve. It wasn’t like her.
And the breath’s scarce out of her body, before the place
Is overrun with a plague of thieving rats.
They’ll eat me out of house and home: my God,
I’ve come to this—an old blind crippled dobby,
Forsaken of wife and bairns; and left to die—
To be nibbled to death by rats: de’il scart the vermin!

Bell:

Time’s drawn your teeth, but hasn’t dulled your tongue’s edge.

Peter:

Come, woman: what the devil are you up to?
What’s this new game?

Bell:

Peter, I’m biding here.

Peter:

You’re biding here?

Bell:

And you are staying, too.

Peter:

By crikey, no! You’ll not catch me: I cannot—
With thon in the other room. I never could bear ...

Bell:

You’ll stop, till Michael’s old enough to manage
The sheep without your aid: then you may spurt
To overtake Jim on the road to the gallows;
And race, the pair of you, neck and neck, for hell:
But not till I’m done with you.

Peter:

Nay, I’ll be jiggered ...

Bell:

Truth slips out.

Peter:

I’ve a mind ...

Bell:

She’s gone to earth.

Peter:

Just hold your gob, you ...

Bell:

Does the daft beast fancy
That just because he’s in his own calfyard
He can turn his horns on me? Michael, my son,
You’ve got your way: and you’re to be a herd.
You never took to horseflesh like a Haggard:
Yet your mother must do her best for you. A mattress
Under a roof; and sheep to keep you busy—
That’s what you’re fashioned for—not bracken-beds
In fellside ditches underneath the stars;
And sharing potluck by the roadside fire.
Well, every man must follow his own bent,
Even though some woman’s wried to let him do it:
So, I must bide within this whitewashed gaol,
For ever scrubbing flagstones, and washing dishes,
And darning hose, and making meals for men,
Half-suffocated by the stink of sheep,
Till you find a lass to your mind; and set me free
To take the road again—if I’m not too doddery
For gallivanting; as most folk are by the time
They’ve done their duty by others. Who’d have dreamt
I’d make the model mother, after all?
It seems as though a woman can’t escape,
Once she has any truck with men. But, carties!
Something’s gone topsy-turvy with creation,
When the cuckoo’s turned domestic, and starts to rear
The young housesparrow. Granddad, Peter’s home
To mind the sheep: and you’ll not be turned out,
If you behave yourself: and when you’re lifted,
There’ll be a grandson still at Krindlesyke:
For Michael is a Barrasford, blood and bone:
And till the day he fetches home a bride,
I’m to be mistress here. But hark, old bones,
You’ve got to mend your manners: for I’m used
To having my own way.

Peter:

By gox, she is!

Bell:

And there’s not room for two such in one house.
Where I am mistress, there can be no master:
So, don’t try on your pretty tricks with me.
I’ve always taken the whiphand with men.

Peter:

You’ll smart yet, dad.

Bell:

You go about your business,
Before your feet get frozen to the flagstones:
Winter’s but six months off, you ken. It’s time
You were watering those sheep, before their tongues
Are baked as black as your heart. You’d better take
The lad along with you: he cannot learn
The job too soon; so I’ll get shot of the sight
Of your mug, and have one lout the less to do for.
Come, frisk your feet, the pair of you; and go:
I’ve that to do which I must do alone.

(As soon as Peter and Michael are gone, Bell fills a basin with water from a bucket, and carries it into the other room, shutting the door behind her.)

Ezra:

To think she should go first, when I have had
One foot in the grave for hard on eleven-year!
I little looked to taste her funeral ham.

PART II

An October afternoon, fifteen years later. There is no one in the room: and the door stands open, showing a wide expanse of fell, golden in the low sunshine. A figure is seen approaching along the cart-track: and Judith Ellershaw, neatly dressed in black, appears at the door; and stands, undecided, on the threshold. She knocks several times, but no one answers: so she steps in, and seats herself an a chair near the door. Presently a sound of singing is heard without: and Bell Haggard is seen, coming over the bent, an orange-coloured kerchief about her head, her skirt kilted to the knee, and her arms full of withered bracken. She enters, humming: but stops, with a start, on seeing Judith; drops the bracken; whips off her kerchief; and lets down her skirt; and so appears as an ordinary cottage-wife.

Judith:

You’re Mistress Barrasford?

Bell:

Ay; so they call me.

Judith:

I knocked; but no one answered; so, I’ve taken
The liberty of stepping in to rest.
I’m Judith Ellershaw.

Bell:

I’ve heard the name;
But can’t just mind ... Ay! You’re the hard-mouthed wench
That took the bit in her teeth, and bolted: although
You scarcely look it, either. Old Ezra used
To mumble your name, when he was raiming on
About the sovereigns Jim made off with: he missed
The money more than the son—small blame to him:
Though why grudge travelling-expenses to good-riddance?
And still, ’twas shabby to pinch the lot: a case
Of pot and kettle, but I’d have scorned to bag
The lot, and leave the old folk penniless.
’Twas hundreds Peter blabbed of—said our share
Wouldn’t be missed—or I’d have never set foot
In Krindlesyke; to think I walked into this trap
For fifty-pound, that wasn’t even here!
I might have kenned—Peter never told the truth,
Except by accident. I did ... and yet,
I came. I had to come: the old witch drew me.
But, Jim was greedy ...

Judith:

Doesn’t Jim live here, now?

Bell:

You’re not sent back by the penitent, then, to pay
The interest on the loan he took that morning
In an absent-minded fit—and pretty tales
Are tarradiddles? Jim’s not mucked that step
In my time: Ezra thought he’d followed you.

Judith:

Me?

Bell:

You’re Jim’s wife—though you’ve not taken his name—
Stuck to your own, and rightly: I’d not swap mine
For any man’s: but, you’re the bride the bridegroom
Lost before bedtime?

Judith:

No, ’twas Phœbe Martin:
And dead, this fifteen-year: she didn’t last
A twelvemonth after—it proved too much for her,
The shock; for all her heart was set on Jim.

Bell:

Poor fool: though I’ve no cause to call her so;
For women are mostly fools, where men come in.
You’re not the vanished bride? Then who’ve I blabbed
The family-secrets to, unsnecking the cupboard,
And setting the skeleton rattling his bones? I took you
For one of us, who’d ken our pretty ways;
And reckoned naught I could tell of Jim to Jim’s wife
Could startle her, though she’d no notion of it.

Judith:

I took you for Jim’s wife.

Bell:

Me! I’m a fool—
But never fool enough to wear a ring
For any man.

Judith:

Yet, Mistress Barrasford?

Bell:

They call me that: but I’m Bell Haggard still;
And will be to the day I die, and after:
Though, happen, there’ll be marriage and giving in marriage
In hell; for old Nick’s ever been matchmaker.
In that particular, heaven would suit me better:
But I’ve travelled the wrong road too far to turn now.

Judith:

Then you’re not the mother of Michael Barrasford?

Bell:

And who’s the brass to say he’s not my son?
I’m no man’s wife: but what’s to hinder me
From being a mother?

Judith:

Then Jim is his father?

Bell:

And what’s it got to do with you, the man
I chose for my son’s father? Chose—God help us!
That’s how we women gammon ourselves. Deuce kens
The almighty lot choice has to do with it!

Judith:

It wasn’t Jim, then?

Bell:

Crikey! You’re not blate
Of asking questions: I’ve not been so riddled
Since that old egg-with-whiskers committed me.
Why harp on Jim? I’ve not clapped eyes on Jim,
Your worship; though I fear I must plead guilty
To some acquaintance with the family,
As you might put it; seeing that Jim’s brother
Is my son’s father; though how it came to happen,
The devil only kenned; and he’s forgotten.

Judith:

Thank God, it wasn’t Jim.

Bell:

And so say I:
Though, kenning only Peter, I’m inclined
To fancy Jim may be the better man.
What licks me is, what it’s to do with you?
And why I answer your delicate questions, woman?
Even old hard-boiled drew the line somewhere.

Judith:

I’m the mother of Jim’s daughter.

Bell:

You’re the wench
The bride found here—and the mother of a daughter;
And live ...

Judith:

At Bellingham.

Bell:

Where Michael finds
So often he’s pressing business, must be seen to—
Something to do with sheep. I see ... To think
I didn’t guess! Why is it, any man
Can put the blinkers on us? But, was I blind,
Or only wanting not to see—afraid
Of what I’ve been itching after all these years?
Can a hawk be caged so long, it’s scared to watch
The cage door opening? More to it than that:
After all, there’s something of the mother in me.
Ay: you’ve found Michael’s minney! As for his dad,
It’s eight-year since he quitted Krindlesyke,
The second time, for good.

Judith:

He left you?

Bell:

Hooked it:
But, shed no tears for me: he only left me,
As a sobering lout will quit the bramble-bush
He’s tumbled in, blind-drunk—or was it an anthill
He’d pillowed his fuddled head on? Anyway,
He went, sore-skinned; and gay to go; escaped
From Krindlesyke—he always had the luck—
Before the bitter winter that finished Ezra:
But, I’d to stay on, listening all day long
To that old dotard, counting the fifty sovereigns
Your fancy man made off with, when he cleaned out
The coffers of Krindlesyke, the very day
Ananias and I came for our share, too late:
And so, got stuck at Back-o’-Beyont, like wasps
In a treacle-trap—the gold all gone: naught left
But the chink of coins in an old man’s noddle, that age
Had emptied of wits. He’d count them, over and over—
Just stopping to curse Jim, when he called to mind
The box was empty: and, often, in the night,
I’d hear him counting, counting in the dark,
Till the night he stopped at forty-nine, stopped dead,
With a rattle—not a breath to whisper fifty.
A crookt corpse, yellow as his lost gold, I found him,
When I fetched my candle.

Judith:

Dead?

Bell:

Ay, guttered out—
A dip burned to the socket. May chance puff out
My flame, while it still burns steady, and not sowse it
In a sweel of melted tallow.

Judith:

Ay, but it’s sad
When the wits go first.

Bell:

And he, so wried and geyzened,
The undertakers couldn’t strake him rightly.
Even when they’d nailed him down, and we were watching
By candle-light, the night before the funeral,
Nid-nodding, Michael and I, just as the clock
Struck twelve, there was a crack that brought us to,
Bolt-upright, as the coffin lid flew off:
And old granddaddy sat up in his shroud.

Judith:

God save us, woman! Whatever did ...

Bell:

I fancied
He’d popped up to say fifty: but he dropped back
With knees to chin. They’d got to screw him down:
And they’d sore work to get him underground—
Snow overnight had reached the window-sill:
And when, at length, the cart got on the road,
The coffin was jolted twice into the drifts,
Before they’d travelled the twelve-mile to the church-yard:
And the hole they’d howked for him, chockful of slush:
And the coffin slipt with a splash into the sluther.
Ay—we see life at Krindlesyke, God help us!

Judith:

A fearsome end.

Bell:

Little to choose, ’twixt ends.
So, Michael’s granddad, and your girl’s, went home
To his forefathers, and theirs—both Barrasfords:
Though I’d guess your bairn’s a gentler strain: yet mine’s
No streak of me. All Barrasford, I judged him:
But, though he’s Ezra’s stubbornness, he’s naught
Of foxy Peter: and grows more like Eliza,
I’d fancy: though I never kenned her, living:
I only saw her, dead.

Judith:

Eliza, too?

Bell:

I was the first to look on her dead face,
The morn I came: if she’d but lived a day—
Just one day longer, she’d have let me go.
No living woman could have held me here:
But she was dead; and so, I had to stay—
A fly, caught in the web of a dead spider.
It must be her he favours: and he’s got
A dogged patience well-nigh crazes me:
A husband, born, as I was never born
For wife. But, happen, you ken him, well as I,
Leastways, his company-side, since he does business
At Bellingham? A happy ending, eh!
For our mischances, they should make a match:
Though naught that ever happens is an ending;
A wedding, least of all.

Judith:

I’ve never seen him.
Ruth keeps her counsel. I’d not even heard
His name, till late last night; and then by chance:
But, I’ve not slept a wink since, you may guess.
When I heard “Barrasford of Krindlesyke,”
My heart went cold within me, thinking of Jim,
And what he’d been to me. I’d had no news
Of all that’s happened since I left the day
Jim wedded; and ...

Bell:

The nowt felt like a poacher,
When keeper’s sneaked his bunny, and broken his snare?

Judith:

I fancied he, perhaps ...

Bell:

Ay, likely enough.
Jim’s wasted a sight of matches, since that day
He burnt his fingers so badly: but he’s not kindled
A hearthfire yet at Krindlesyke. Anyway,
For Michael to be his son, I’d need to be
Even an older flame of his than you:
For Michael’s twenty-one.

Judith:

As old as that?
But I could never rest, till I’d made sure.
Knowing myself, I did not question Ruth ...

Bell:

What’s worth the kenning’s seldom learned by speiring.

Judith:

Though, knowing myself, I dreaded what might chance,
What might already ...

Bell:

You’d no cause to worrit
Michael’s not that sort: he’s respectable—
Too staid and sober for his tinker-mother:
He’ll waste no matches, lighting wayside fires.

Judith:

Like me, Ruth’s easy kindled; hard to quench—
A flying spark, and the heather’s afire in a gale;
And the fell’s burned to the rock—naught but black ash,
When the downpour comes, too late.

Bell:

Ay—but the flare,
And crackle, and tossing flames, and golden smoke;
And the sting of the reek in the nostrils!

Judith:

Ruth’ll love
Once and for all: like me, she’s born for marriage:
Though, in my eager trustfulness, I missed it.
You’ll scorn me, as I often scorn myself:
But, kenning the worst, in my heart of hearts, I hanker ...
Jim meant so much to me once: I can’t forget,
Or keep from dwelling on the might-have-been.
Snow on the felltop, now: but underground
Fire smoulders still: and still might burst to flame.
Deceived and broken ...

Bell:

What’s this jackadandy,
That you and Phœbe, both—and kenning him!

Judith:

What’s kenning got to do with love? It makes
No difference, once you’ve given ...

Bell:

If I’ve a heart,
And it’s broken, it’s a broken stone, sunk deep
In bottomless mosshags, where no heat can touch it,
Till the whole world grills, at last, on hell’s gridiron.

Judith:

Nothing you ken of broken hearts, or hell,
To talk so lightly. I have come through hell:
But you have never loved. What’s given in love,
Is given. It’s something to have loved, at least:
And I have Ruth.

Bell:

Ay, the green bracken-shoots,
Soon push through the black litter of charred heath:
And you have Ruth.

Judith:

Or, had her, till last night:
I’ve lost her, now, it seems.

Bell:

You let life hurt you:
You shy at shadows; and shrink from the crack of the whip,
Before the lash stings: and life loves no sport
Like yarking a shivering hide: you ask for it.

Judith:

I’ve been through much.

Bell:

And so, you should ken better
Than to hang yourself, before the judge gives sentence:
His honour can put the black cap on for himself,
Without your aid. You’ll die a thousand deaths,
Before your end comes, peacefully in bed.
Why should you go half-way to meet your funeral?

Judith:

Though there’s a joy in giving recklessly,
In flinging all your faggots on the blaze,
In losing all for love—a crazy joy
Long years of suffering cannot quench, I’d have
Ruth spared that madness: and kenning she’s just myself
Born over, how could I sleep with the dread upon me?
She’d throw herself away; would burn to waste,
Suffering as I have ...

Bell:

Anyway, you burned:
And who’s to say what burns to waste, even when
The kindled peatstack fires the steading? Far better
To perish in a flare, than smoulder away
Your life in smother: and what are faggots for,
If not for firing? But, you’ve suffered, woman,
More than need be, because you were ashamed.
The lurcher that slinks with drooping tail and lugs
Just asks for pelting. It’s shame makes life bad travelling—
The stone in the shoe that lames you. Other folk
Might be ashamed to do the things I’ve done:
That’s their look-out; they’ve got no call to do them:
I’ve never done what I would blush to own to:
I’ve got my self-respect. For all my talk,
I’m proud of Michael: and you’re proud of Ruth,
I take it?

Judith:

Ay.

Bell:

Then, where’s the need for shame,
Because they were come-by-chances? A mean thief
That snivels, because the fruit he relishes
Is stolen; and keeps munching it to the core.
Married, and so lived happily ever after?
A deal of virtue in a wedding-ring:
And marriage-lines make all the difference, don’t they?
Your man and mine were born in lawful wedlock:
And sober, honest, dutiful sons they’ve proved:
While our two bastards, Ruth and ...

Judith:

Never been
A better daughter!

Bell:

Then, what would you have?
You’ve had her to yourself, without the worrit
Of a man to wear your soul out, all these years.
If I’d been married, before a week was through,
I’d have picked my husband’s pocket, to buy rats’ bane:
Envying the spiders who can gobble up
Husbands they’ve no more use for between meals.
But I wasn’t born to kick my heels in air
For a plaguey husband: and if I’m to dangle,
’Twon’t be for that, but something worth putting myself
Out of the way for. You say I’ll scorn you, woman.
Who ’m I, to scorn? You’re not my sort: but I ken
Too much of life for easy scorn: I’ve learnt
The lessons of the road.

Judith:

I’ve known the road, too;
And learned its bitter ...

Bell:

You didn’t relish it?
It’s meat to me; but then, I like mixed pickles—
Life, with an edge, and a free hand with the pepper.
You can’t make a good hotchpotch with only ’taties:
And a good hotchpotch I’m fairly famished for:
I’ve starved on the lean fare of Krindlesyke:
My mouth is watering for the old savoury mess—
Life, piping hot: for I’m no man-in-the-moon,
To sup off cold peaseporridge: and it’s the wash
Of bitters over the tongue gives bite to the pepper:
But you’ve no taste for bitters, or devilled collops—
Roast scrag on Sunday: cold mutton and boiled ’taties
The rest of the week, is the most you’d ask of life—
Nay, a cup of milky tea by a white hearth—
And you’re in heaven!

Judith:

You’re not far out.

Bell:

I take
Mine, laced with rum, by a camp-fire under the stars;
And not too dainty to mind the smatch of smoke.

Judith:

Tastes differ.

Bell:

Yet, for all my appetite,
At Krindlesyke, I’m a ewe overhead in a drift
That’s cropped the grass round its feet, and mumbles its wool
For nourishment: and that’s what you call life!
You’re you: I’m I. It takes all turns for a circus:
And it’s just the change and chances of the ring
Make the old game worth the candle: variety
At all costs: hurly-burly, razzle-dazzle—
Life, cowping creels through endless flaming hoops,
A breakneck business, ending with a crash,
If only in the big drum. The devil’s to pay
For what we have, or haven’t; and I believe
In value for my money.

Judith:

Peace and quiet
And a good home are worth ...

Bell:

But, you’ve no turn
For circuses: your heart’s a pipeclayed hearthstone—
No ring for hoofs to trample to the clang
Of cymbals, blare of trumpets, rattle of drums:
No dash of brandy in your stirabout:
Porridge in peace, with a door ’twixt you and the weather;
A sanded floor; and the glow and smother of peat:
But I’d rather be a lean pig, running free,
Than the fattest flitch of bacon on the rafters.

Judith:

And yet, you’ve kept ...

Bell:

Ay: but my fingers have itched
Sorely to fire the peatstack in a west wind,
That flames might swarm walls and rooftree, and Krindlesyke,
Perishing in a crackle and golden flare-up,
Tumble a smoking ruin of blackened stone.

Judith:

Yet, you’ve kept house ...

Bell:

Ay, true enough; I’ve been
Cook, slut, and butler here this fifteen-year,
As thrang as Throp’s wife when she hanged herself
With her own dishclout. Needs must, the fire will burn,
Barred in the grate: burn—nay, I’ve only smouldered
Like sodden peat. Ay, true, I’ve drudged; and yet,
What could I do against that old dead witch,
Lying in wait for me the day I came?
Her very patience was a kind of cunning
That challenged me, hinting I’d not have grit
To stand her life, even for a dozen years.
What could I do, but prove I could stick it out?
If I’d turned tail, she’d have bared her toothless gums
To grin at me: and how could I go through life,
Haunted by her dead smile? But now the spell
Is snapt: I’ve proved her wrong: she cannot hold me.
I’ve served my sentence: the cell-door opens: and yet,
You would have done that fifteen-years-hard willingly?
Some folk can only thrive in gaol—no nerve
To face the risks outside; and never happy
Till lagged for life: meals punctual and no cares:
And the king for landlord. While I’ve eaten my head off,
You’ve been a galled jade, fretting for the stable.
Tastes differ: but it’s just that you’re not my sort
Puzzles me why you gave yourself to Jim.

Judith:

There are no whys and wherefores, when you love.

Bell:

I gave myself to Peter, with a difference.
You’d have wed Jim: I just let Peter travel
With me, to keep the others from pestering;
And scooted him when Michael could manage the sheep.

Judith:

You never loved him. I loved Jim ...

Bell:

A deal
Of difference that’s made!

Judith:

More than you can guess.

Bell:

Peter stuck longer, tangled in the brambles.

Judith:

I loved Jim; so, I trusted him.

Bell:

But when
You found him out?

Judith:

If you had loved, you’d ken
That finding out makes little difference.
There are things in this life you don’t understand,
For all your ready tongue.

Bell:

Ay: men and women
I’ve given up—just senseless marionettes,
Jigging and bobbing to the twitching strings:
Though I like to fancy I pick my steps, and choose
The tunes I dance to; happen, that’s my pride;
But, choose or not, we’ve got to pay the piper.

Judith:

Ay: in your pride, you think you’ve the best of life.
You’re missing more than you reckon, the best of all.

Bell:

Well, I’ve no turn for penal servitude.
But, have you never gabbed to keep your heart up?
What are hats for, if not for talking through?
Pride—we’ve both pride; yours, hot and fierce, and mine
Careless and cold: yet, both came the same cropper—
Not quite ... for you were hurt to death almost:
While I picked myself up, scatheless; not a scratch;
Only my skirt torn; and it always draggled.

Judith:

You never cared: I couldn’t have borne myself,
If I’d not cared: I’d hate myself as much
As I’ve hated Jim, whiles, when I thought of all.
They’re mixter-maxter, hate and love: and, often,
I’ve wondered if I loathed, or loved, Jim most.
I understand as little as you, it seems:
Yet, it’s only caring counts for anything
In this life; though it’s caring’s broken me.

Bell:

It stiffens some. But, why take accidents
So bitterly? It’s all a rough-and-tumble
Of accidents, from the accident of birth
To the last accident that lays us out—
A go-as-you-please, and the devil take the hindmost.
It’s pluck that counts, and an easy seat in the saddle:
Better to break your neck at the first ditch,
Than waste the day in seeking gates to slip through:
Cold-blooded crawlers I’ve no sort of use for.
You took the leap, and landed in the quickset:
But, at least, you leapt sky-high, before you tumbled:
And it’s silly to lie moaning in the prickles:
Best pick yourself up sharp, and shake the thorns out,
Else the following hoofs will bash you. Give life leave
To break your heart, ’twill trample you ...

Judith:

Leave, say you?
Life takes French-leave: your heart’s beneath the hoofs
Before ...

Bell:

But grin, and keep yourself heartwhole;
And you’ll find the fun of the fair’s in taking chances:
It’s the uncertainty makes the race—no sport
In putting money on dead-certainties.
I back the dark horse; stake my soul against
The odds: and I’ll not grouse if life should prove
A welsher in the end: I’ll have had my fling,
At least: and yet talk’s cheap ...

Judith:

Ay, cheap.

Bell:

Dirt-cheap:
Three-shots-a-penny; and it’s not every time
You hit Aunt Sally and get a good cigar,
Or even pot a milky coconut:
And, all this while, life’s had the upper hand:
I slipt, the day I came; and lost my grip:
Life got me by the scruff of the neck, and held
My proud nose to the grindstone. My turn, now—
I’ll be upsides with life, and teach it manners,
Before death gets the stranglehold: I’ll have
The last laugh, though it choke me. And what’s death,
To set us twittering? I’ll be no frightened squirrel:
Scarting and scolding never yet scared death:
When he’s a mind to crack me like a nut,
I’d be no husk: still ripe and milky, I’d have him
Swallow the kernel, and spit out the shell,
Before all’s shrivelled to black dust. But, tombstones,
What’s turned my thoughts to death? It’s these white walls,
After a day in the open. When I came,
At first, these four walls seemed to close in on me,
As though they’d crush the life out: and I felt
I’d die between them: but, after all ... And yet,
Who kens what green sod’s to be broken for him?
Queer, that I’ll lie, like any innocent
Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait.
Sore-punished, I’m not yet knocked out: life’s had
My head in chancery; but I’ll soon be free
To spar another round or so with him,
Before he sends me spinning to the ropes.
And life would not be life, without the hazards.

Judith:

Too many hazards for me.

Bell:

Ay: so it seems:
But you’re too honest for the tricky game.
I’ve a sort of honesty—a liar and thief
In little things—I’m honesty itself
In the things that matter—few enough, deuce kens:
But your heart’s open to the day; while mine’s
A pitchy night, with just a star or so
To light me to cover at the keeper’s step.
You’re honest, to your hurt: your honesty’s
A knife that cuts through all; and will be cutting—
Hacking and jabbing, and thirsting to draw blood;
And turning in the wound it makes—a gulley,
To cut your heart out, if you doubted it:
And so, you’re faithful, even to a fool;
While I would just be faithful to myself.
You thrive on misery.

Judith:

Nay: I’ve only asked
A little happiness of life: I’ve starved
For happiness, God kens.

Bell:

What’s happiness?
You’ve got a sweet-tooth; and don’t relish life:
You want run-honey, when it’s the honeycomb
That gives the crunch and flavour. Would you be
As happy as a maggot in a medlar,
Swelling yourself in sweet deliciousness,
Till the blackbird nips you? None escapes his crop.
You’d quarrel with the juiciest plum, because
Your teeth grit on the stone, instead of cracking
The shell, and savouring the bitter kernel.
Nigh all the jests life cracks have bitter kernels.

Judith:

Ay, bitter enough to set my teeth on edge.

Bell:

What are teeth for, if we must live on pap?
The sweetest marrow’s in the hardest bone,
As you’ve found with Ruth, I take it.

Judith:

Ay: and still,
You have been faithful, Bell.

Bell:

A faithful fool,
Against the grain, this fifteen-year: my son
And that dead woman were too strong for me:
They turned me false to my nature; broke me in
Like a flea in harness, that draws a nutshell-coach.
Till then I’d jumped, and bit, at my own sweet will.
Oh! amn’t I the wiseacre, the downy owl,
Fancying myself as knowing as a signpost?
And yet, there’s always some new twist to learn.
Life’s an old thimblerigger; and, it seems,
Can still get on the silly side of me,
Can still bamboozle me with his hanky-panky:
He always kens a trick worth two of mine;
Though he lets me spot the pea beneath the thimble
Just often enough to keep me in good conceit.
And he’s kept you going, too, with Ruth to live for.

Judith:

If it hadn’t been for Ruth ...

Bell:

He kens, he kens:
As canny as he’s cute, for his own ends,
He’s a wise showman; and doesn’t overfeed
The living skeleton or let the fat lady starve:
And so, we’re each kept going, in our own kind,
Till we’ve served our turn. Mine’s talking, you’ll have gathered!

Judith:

Ay, you’ve a tongue.

Bell:

It rattles in my head
Like crocks in a mugger’s cart: but I’ve had few
To talk with here; and too much time for brooding,
Turning things over and over in my own mind,
These fifteen years.

Judith:

True: neighbours, hereabouts,
Are few, and far to seek.

Bell:

The devil a chance
I’ve ever had of a gossip: and, as for news,
I’ve had to fall back on the wormy Bible
That props the broken looking-glass: so, now
I’ve got the chance of a crack, my tongue goes randy;
And patters like a cheapjack’s, or a bookie’s
Offering you odds against the favourite, life:
Or, wasn’t life the dark horse? I have talked
My wits out, till I’m like a drunken tipster,
Too milled to ken the dark horse from the favourite.
My sharp tongue’s minced my very wits to words.

Judith:

Ay, it’s been rattling round.

Bell:

A slick tongue spares
The owner the fag of thinking: it’s the listeners
Who get the headache. And yet, I could talk
At one time to some purpose—didn’t dribble
Like a tap that needs a washer: and, by carties,
It’s talking I’ve missed most: I’ve always been
Like an urchin with a withy—must be slashing—
Thistles for choice: and not once, since I came,
Have I had a real good shindy to warm my blood.

Judith:

I’d have thought Ezra ...

Bell:

Ay: we fratched, at first;
For he’d a tongue of his own; and could use it, too,
Better than most menfolk—a bonnie sparrer,
I warrant, in his time; but past his best
Before I kenned him; little fight left in him:
And when his wits went cranky, he just havered—
Ground out his two tunes like a hurdygurdy,
With most notes missing and a creaky handle.

Judith:

And Michael?

Bell:

Michael! The lad will sit mumchance
The evening through: he’s got a powerful gift
Of saying nothing: no sparks to strike off him;
Though he’s had to serve as a whetstone, this long while,
To keep an edge on my tongue.

Judith:

He’s quiet?

Bell:

Quiet!
A husband born. No need to fear for Ruth:
She’s safe with Michael, safe for life.

Judith:

He’s steady?

Bell:

He’s not his mother’s son: he banks his money;
And takes no hazards; never risks his shirt:
As canny as I’m spendthrift, he’s the sort
Can pouch his cutty, half-smoked, ten minutes after
I’ve puffed away my pipeful. Ay: Ruth’s safe.
His peatstacks never fire: he’ll never lose
A lamb, or let a ewe slip through his hands,
For want of watching; though he go for nights
Without a nap. The day of Ezra’s funeral,
A score of gimmers perished in the snow,
But not a ewe of Michael’s: his were folded
Before the wind began to pile the drifts:
He takes no risks.

Judith:

Ruth needs a careful man:
For she’s the sort that’s steady with the steady,
And a featherhead with featherheads. She’s sense:
And Michael ...

Bell:

Michael’s sense itself—a cob
Too steady to shy even at the crack of doom:
He’ll keep the beaten track, the road that leads
To four walls, and the same bed every night.
Talk of the devil—but he’s coming now
Up Bloodysyke: ay, and there’s someone with him—
A petticoat, no less!

Judith:

Mercy! It’s Ruth:
Yet I didn’t leave, till she was safely off
To work ...

Bell:

Work? Michael, too, had business
In Bellingham this morning, oddly enough.
Doubtless, they helped each other; and got through
The job the quicker, working well together:
And a parson took a hand in it for certain,
If I ken Michael: likes things proper, he does;
And always had a weakness for black lambs.
But, who’d have guessed he’d ... Surely, there’s a strain
Of Haggard in the young limb, after all:
No Haggard stops to ask a parent’s leave,
Even should they happen to ken the old folk by sight:
My own I knew by hearsay. But, what luck
You’re here to welcome the young pair.

Judith:

No! They’ll wonder ...
I bring no luck to weddings ... I must go ...

Bell:

You can’t, without being spotted: but you can hide
Behind the door, till I speak with them.

Judith:

No! No!
Not that door ... I can’t hide behind that door
Again.

Bell:

That door? Well, you ken best what’s been
Between that door and you. It’s crazy and old,
But, it looks innocent, wooden-faced humbug: yet
I don’t trust doors myself; they’ve got a knack
Of shutting me in. But you’ll be snug enough
In the other room: I’d advise you to lie down,
And rest; you’re looking trashed: and, come to think,
I’ve a deal to say to the bridegroom, before I go.

Judith:

Go?

Bell:

Quick, this way: step lively, or they’ll catch
Your skirt-tail whisking round the doorcheek.

(Bell hustles Judith into the inner room; closing the door behind her. She then thrusts the orange-coloured kerchief into her pocket; picks up the bracken, and flings it on the fire; seats herself on the settle, with her back to the door; and gazes at the blaze: not even glancing up, as Michael and Ruth enter.)

Michael:

Mother!

Bell:

Is that you, Prodigal son? You’re late, to-day,
As always when you’ve business in Bellingham.
That’s through, I trust: those ewes have taken a deal
Of seeing to: and I’m lonely as a milestone,
When you’re away.

Michael:

I’ve taken the last trip, mother:
That job’s through: and I’ve made the best of bargains.
You’ll not be lonely, now, when I’m not here:
I’ve brought you a daughter to keep you company.

Bell (turning sharply):

I might have known you were no Prodigal son:
He didn’t bring home even a single sausage,
For all his keeping company with swine.
But, what should I do with a daughter, lad?
Do you fancy, if I’d had a mind for daughters,
I couldn’t have had a dozen of my own?
One petticoat’s enough in any house:
And who are you, to bring your mother a daughter?

Michael:

Her husband. Ruth’s my bride. Ruth Ellershaw
She was till ten o’clock: Ruth Barrasford,
Till doomsday, now.

Bell:

When did I give you leave
To bring strange lasses to disturb my peace,
Just as I’m getting used to Krindlesyke?
To think you’d wed, without a word!

Michael:

Leave, say you?
You’ll always have your jest. I said no word:
For words breed words: and I’d not have a swarm
Of stinging ants bumming about my lugs
For days beforehand.

Bell:

Ants? They’d need be kaids,
To burrow through your fleece, and prog your skin.

Michael:

I’d as lief ask leave of the tricky wind as you:
And, leave or not, I’d see you damned, if you tried
To part us. None of your games! I’m no young wether,
To be let keep his old dam company;
Trotting beside her ...

Bell:

Cock-a-whoop, my lad!
Well done, for you, Ruth, lass; you’ve kindled him,
As I could never do, for all my chaff.
I little dreamt he’d ever turn lobstroplous:
I hardly ken him, with his dander up,
Swelling and bridling like a bubblyjock.
If I pricked him now, he’d bleed red blood—not ewe’s milk:
The flick of my tongue can nettle him at last:
His haunches quiver, for all his woolly coat;
He’ll prove a Haggard, yet. Nay—he said “husband”:
No Haggard I’ve heard tell on’s been a husband:
But, if your taste’s for husbands, lass, you’re suited,
Till doomsday, as he says. He kens his mind:
When barely breeched, he chose to bide with sheep;
Though he might have travelled with horses: and it’s sheep
His heart is set on still. But, I’ve no turn
For certainties myself: no sheep for me:
Life, with a tossing mane, and clattering hoofs,
The chancy life for me—not certain death,
With the stink of tar and sheepdip in my nostrils.

Michael:

Life, with a clattering tongue, you mean to say.

Bell:

Well: you’re a bonnie lass, I must admit:
And, if I’d fancied daughters, I might have done
Much worse than let young Michael pick them for me:
He’s not gone poseying in the kitchen garden.
I never guessed he’d an eye for aught but ewes:
As, blind as other mothers, I’d have sworn
I’d kenned him, inside-out, since he was—nay!
But he was never a rapscallion ripstitch—
Always a prim and proper little man,
A butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth young sobersides,
Since he found his own feet. Yet, the blade that’s wed—
The jack-knife, turned into a pair of scissors—
Without a word, is not the son I thought him.
There’s something of his mammy, after all,
In Michael: and as for you, my lass, you’re just
Your minney’s very spit.

Ruth:

You ken my mother?

Bell:

Ken Judith Ellershaw? You’ll ask me, next,
If I’m acquainted with Bell Haggard. Well,
Gaping for turnips, Michael?

Michael:

I never heard ...

Bell:

What have you heard this fifteen-year, except
The bleat of sheep, till Ruth’s voice kittled your ear?
But, Judith sent some message by her daughter?

Ruth:

She doesn’t ken I’ve come: nay, doesn’t dream
I’m married even; though I meant to tell her
This morning; but I couldn’t: she started so,
When I let slip Michael’s name; and turned so pale.
I don’t know why; but I feared some word of hers
Might come between us: and I couldn’t let
Even my mother come between us now:
So, I pretended to set out for work
As usual: then, when we were married, went back
With Michael, to break the news. But the door was locked:
And neighbours said she was out—been gone some time:
And Michael was impatient to be home:
So, I had to come. I can’t think what has happened.
I hated leaving her like that: I’ve never
In all my life done such a thing.

Bell:

Well, Michael
Should be relieved to learn it’s a first offence.

Ruth:

She’d gone without a word ...

Bell:

A family failing—
And, happen, on like errand to your own.

Ruth:

Mother? Nay, she’s too old: you said you knew her.

Bell:

Ay, well enough to reckon I’m her elder:
And who’s to tell me I’m too old to marry?
A woman is never too old for anything:
It’s only men grow sober and faint-hearted:
And Judith’s just the sort whose soul is set
On a husband and a hearthstone: I ken that.

Ruth:

Nay: mother’ll never marry.

Bell:

You can speak
With all the cock-a-whoop of ignorance:
For you’re too young to dare to doubt your wisdom.
It’s a wise man, or a fool, can speak for himself,
Let alone for others, in this haphazard life.
But give me a young fool, rather than an old—
A plucky plunger, than a canny crone
Who’s old enough to ken she doesn’t ken.
You’re right: for doubting is a kind of dotage:
Experience ages and decays; while folk
Who never doubt themselves die young—at ninety.
Age never yet brought gumption to a ninny:
And you cannot reckon up a stranger’s wits
By counting his bare patches and grey hairs:
It’s seldom sense that makes a bald head shine:
And I’m not partial to Methuselahs.
Keep your cocksureness, while you can: too soon,
Time plucks the feathers off you; and you lie,
Naked and skewered, with not a cock-a-doodle,
Or flap of the wings to warm your heart again.
And so, you quitted your mammy, without a word,
When the jockey whistled?

Ruth:

Nay: I left a letter:
’Twas all I could do.

Bell:

She’s lost a daughter; and got
A bit of paper, instead: and what have I,
For my lost son?

Michael:

You’ve lost no son; but gained
A daughter. You’ll always live with us.

Bell:

Just so.
I’ve waited for you to say that: and it comes pat.
You’ll think his thoughts; and mutter them in your mind,
Before he can give them tongue, Ruth. He’s not said
An unexpected thing since he grew out
Of his first breeches: and, like the most of men,
He speaks so slowly, you can almost catch
The creaking of his wits between the words.

Ruth:

Well: I’ve a tongue for two: and you, yourself,
Don’t lack for ...

Bell:

So, all’s settled: you’ve arranged
The world for your convenience; and have planned
Your mothers’ lives between you? I’m to be
The dear old grannie in the ingleneuk;
And hide my grizzled wisps in a mutch with frills?
Nay, God forbid! I’m no tame pussycat,
To snuggle on the corner of a settle,
With one eye open for the chance-thrown titbit,
While the good housewife goes about her duties:
Me! lapping with blinking eyes and possing paws,
The saucer of skim-milk that young skinflint spares me,
And purring, when her darlings pull my tail—
Great-grandchildren, too, to Ezra, on both sides.
Ay: you may gape like a brace of guddled brandling:
But that old bull-trout’s grandsire to you both;
And a double dose of his blue blood will run
In the veins of your small fry—if fish have veins.

Michael:

You surely never mean to say ...

Bell:

I do.
More than a little for you young know-alls to learn,
When you meet Judith Ellershaw: for havers
As it sounds to your young lugs, the world went round,
And one or two things happened, before you were born.
Yet, none of us kens what life’s got up his sleeve:
He’s played so long: and had a deal of practice,
Since he sat down with Adam: he’s always got
A trump tucked out of sight, that takes the trick.
But, son, you’ve lived with me for all these years;
And yet ken me so little? Grannie’s mutch-frills!
I’d as lief rig myself in widow’s weeds
For my fancy man, who may have departed this life,
For all I ken or care.

Michael:

Come, hold your tongue:
Enough of shameless talk. I’m master, now:
And I’ll not have Ruth hear this radgy slack.
If you’ve no shame yourself, I’ll find a way
To bridle your loose tongue: so mind yourself:
I’ll have no tinker’s tattle.

Bell:

The tinker’s brat
Rides the high-horse now, mounted on prime mutton.
Ruth, lass, you’re safe, you’re safe—if safety’s all:
He’ll never guess your heart, unless you blab.
I’ve never told him mine: I’ve kept him easy,
Till he’d found someone else to victual him,
And make his bed, and darn his hose; and you
Seem born to take the job out of my hands.

Ruth:

But I’d not come between you ...

Bell:

Think not, lass?
I bear you no ill-will: you set me free.
I’m a wildcat, all bristling fur and claws:
At Krindlesyke, I’ve been a wildcat, caged:
And Michael never twigged! Son, don’t you mind
The day we came—was I a tabby then?
The day we came here, with no thought to bide,
Once we had got the plunder; and were trapped
Between these four white walls by a dead woman?
She held me—forced my feet into her shoes—
Held me for your sake. Ay: there seemed some link
’Twixt your dead grannie and you, too strong for me
To break; though it’s been strained to the snapping-point,
Times out of mind, whenever a hoolet’s screech
Sang through my blood; or poaching foxes barked
On a shiny night to the cackle of wild geese,
Travelling from sea to sea far overhead:
Or whenever, waking in the quiet dark,
The ghosts of horses whinneyed in my heart.
Ghosts! Nay, I’ve been the mare between the limmers
Who hears the hunters gallop gaily by;
Or, rather, the hunter, bogged in a quaking moss,
Fankit in sluthery strothers, belly-deep,
With the tune of the horn tally-hoing through her blood,
As the field sweeps out of sight.

Michael:

Wildcats and hunters—
A mongrel breed, eh, Ruth?

Bell:

But, now it seems,
I can draw my hocks out of the clungy sump
I’ve floundered in so long; and, snuffing the wind,
Shew a clean pair of heels to Krindlesyke.
A mongrel breed, say you? And who but a man
Could have a wildcat-hunter making his bed
For him for fifteen-year, and never know it?
But, the old wife’s satisfied, at last: she should be:
She’s had my best years: I’ve grown old and grizzled,
And full of useless wisdom, in her service.
She’s taught me much: for I’ve had time and to spare,
Brooding among these God-forsaken fells,
To turn life inside-out in my own mind;
And study every thread of it, warp and weft.
I’m far from the same woman who came here:
And I’ll take up my old life with a difference,
Now she and you’ve got no more use for me:
You’ve squeezed me dry betwixt you.

Michael:

Dry, do you say?
The Tyne’s in spate; and we must swim for life,
Eh, Ruth? But, you’ll soon get used ...

Bell:

She’s done with me.
She’ll not be sorry to lose me: I fancy, at times,
She felt she’d got more than she’d bargained for—
A wasp, rampaging in her spider’s web.
“Far above rubies” has never been my line,
Though I could wag a tongue with Solomon,
Like the Queen of Sheba herself: I doubt if she
Rose in the night to give meat to her household.
She must have been an ancestor of mine:
For she’d traik any distance for a crack,
The gipsy-hearted ganwife that she was.

Michael:

Wildcats and hunters and the Queen of Sheba—
A royal family, Ruth, you’ve married into!

Bell:

But now I can kick Eliza’s shoes sky-high:
Nay—I must shuffle them quietly off; and lay
The old wife’s shoes decently by the hearth,
As I found them when I came—a slattern stopgap—
Ready for the young wife to step into.
They’ll fit her, as they never fitted me:
For all her youth, they will not gall her heels,
Or give her corns: she’s the true Cinderella:
The clock has struck for her; and the dancing’s done;
And the Prince has brought her home—to wash the dishes.
But now I’m free: and I’ll away to-night.
My bones have been restless in me all day long:
They felt their freedom coming, before I kenned.
I’ve little time to lose: I’m getting old—
Stiff-jointed in my wits, that once were nimble
As a ferret among the bobtails, old and dull.
A night or so may seem to matter little,
When I’ve already lost full fifteen-year:
But I hear the owls call: and my fur’s a-tingle:
The Haggard blood is pricking in my veins.

(She loosens the string of her apron, which slips to the ground, kilts her skirt to her knee, takes the orange-coloured kerchief from her pocket, and twists it about her head; while Michael and Ruth watch the transformation in amazement.)

Michael:

But you don’t mean to leave us?

Bell:

Pat it comes:
You’ve just to twitch the wire and the bell rings:
You’ll learn the trick, soon, Ruth. (To Michael) Bat, don’t you see
I’ve just put on my nightcap, ready for bed—
Grannie’s frilled mutch? I leave you, Michael? Son,
The time came, as it comes to every man,
When you’d to make a choice betwixt two women.
You’ve made your choice: and chosen well: but I,
Who’ve always done the choosing, and never yet
Tripped to the beck of any man, or bobbed
To any living woman—I’m free to follow
My own bent, now that that old witch’s fingers
Have slackened their cold clutch; and your dead grannie
Has gained her ends, and seen you settled down
At Krindlesyke: and from this on I, too,
Am dead to you. You’ll soon enough forget me:
The world would end if a man could not forget
His mother’s deathbed in his young wife’s arms—
I’m far from corpse-cold yet; and it may be years
Before they pluck Bell Haggard’s kerchief off,
To tie her chin up with, and ripe her pockets
Of her last pennies to shut up her eyes.
Even then, they’ll have to tug the chin-clout tight,
To keep her tongue from wagging. Well, my son,
So, it’s good-bye till doomsday.

Michael:

You’re not going?
I thought you only havered. You can’t go.
Do you think I’d let you go, and ...

Bell:

Hearken, Ruth:
That’s the true husband’s voice: for husbands think,
If only they are headstrong and high-handed,
They’re getting their own way: they charge, head-down,
At their own image in the window-glass;
And don’t come to their senses till their carcase
Is spiked with smarting splinters. But I’m your mother,
Not your tame wife, lad: and I’ll go my gait.

Michael:

You shall not go, for all your crazy cackle—
My mother, on the road, a tinker’s baggage,
While I’ve a roof to shelter her!

Bell:

You pull
The handle downwards towards you, and the beer
Spouts out. No hope for you, Ruth: lass, you’re safe—
Safe as a linnet in a cage, for life:
No need to read your hand, to tell your fortune:
No gallivanting with the dark-eyed stranger,
Calleevering over all the countryside,
When the owls are hooting to the hunter’s moon,
For the wife of Michael Barrasford. Well, boy,
What if I choose to be a tinker’s baggage?
It was a tinker’s baggage mothered you—
For tying a white apron round the waist
Has never made a housewife of a gipsy—
And a tinker’s baggage went out of her way
To set you well on yours: and now she turns.

Michael:

You shall not go, I say. I’m master here:
And I won’t let you shame me. I’ve been decent;
And have always done my duty by the sheep,
Working to keep a decent home together
To bring a wife to: and, for all your jeers,
There are worse things for a woman than a home
And husband and a lawful family.
You shall not go. You say I ken my mind ...

Bell:

Ay: but not mine. What should a tinker’s trollop
Do in the house of Michael Barrasford,
But bring a blush to his children’s cheeks? God help them,
If they take after me, if they’ve a dash
Of Haggard blood—for ewe’s milk laced with brandy
Is like to curdle: or, happen, I should say,
God help their father!

Michael:

Mother, why should you go?
Why should you want to travel the ditch-bottom,
When you’ve a hearth to sit by, snug and clean?

Bell:

The fatted calf’s to be killed for the prodigal mother?
You’ve not the hard heart of the young cockrobin
That’s got no use for parents, once he’s mated:
But I’m, somehow, out of place within four walls,
Tied to one spot—that never wander the world.
I long for the rumble of wheels beneath me; to hear
The clatter and creak of the lurching caravan;
And the daylong patter of raindrops on the roof:
Ay, and the gossip of nights about the campfire—
The give-and-take of tongues: mine’s getting stiff
For want of use, and spoiling for a fight.

Michael:

Nay: still as nimble and nippy as a flea!

Bell:

But, I could talk, at one time! There are days
When the whole world’s hoddendoon and draggletailed,
Drooked through and through; and blury, gurly days
When the wind blows snell: but it’s something to be stirring,
And not shut up between four glowering walls,
Like blind white faces; and you never ken
What traveller your wayside fire will draw
Out of the night, to tell outlandish tales,
Or crack a jest, or start quarrel with you,
Till the words bite hot as ginger on the tongue.
Anger’s the stuff to loose a tongue grown rusty:
And keep it in good fettle for all chances.
I’m sick of dozing by a dumb hearthstone—
And the peat, with never a click or crackle in it—
Famished for news.

Michael:

For scandal.

Bell:

There’s no scandal
For those who can’t be scandalized—just news:
All’s fish that comes to their net. I was made
For company.

Michael:

And you’d go back again
To that tag-rag-and-bobtail? What’s the use
Of a man’s working to keep a decent home,
When his own mother tries to drag him down?

Bell:

Nay: my pernicketty, fine gentleman,
But I’ll not drag you down: you’re free of me:
I’ve slipt my apron off; and you’re tied now
To your wife’s apron-strings: for menfolk seem
Uneasy on the loose, and never happy
Unless they’re clinging to some woman’s skirt.
I’m out of place in any decent house,
As a kestrel in a hencoop. Ay, you’re decent:
But, son, remember a man’s decency
Depends on his braces; and it’s I who’ve sewn
Your trouser-buttons on; so, when you fasten
Your galluses, give the tinker’s baggage credit.
She’s done her best for you; and scrubbed and scoured,
Against the grain, for all these years, to keep
Your home respectable; though, in her heart,
Thank God, she’s never been respectable—
No dry-rot in her bones, while she’s alive:
Time and to spare for decency in the grave.
So, you can do your duty by the sheep,
While I go hunting with the jinneyhoolets—
Birds of a feather—ay, and fleece with fleece:
And when I’m a toothless, mumbling crone, you’ll be
So proper a gentleman, ’twill be hard to tell
The shepherd from the sheep. Someone must rear
The mutton and wool, to keep us warm and fed;
But that’s not my line: please to step this way
For the fancy goods and fakish faldalals,
Trinkets and toys and fairings. Son, you say,
You’re master here: well, that’s for Ruth to settle:
I’ll be elsewhere. I’ve never knuckled down
To any man: and I’ll be coffin-cold
Before I brook a master; so, good-night,
And pleasant dreams; and a long family
Of curly lambkins, bleating round the board.

Ruth:

Michael, you’ll never let her go alone?
She’s only talking wild, because she’s jealous.
Mothers are always jealous, when their sons
Bring home a bride: though she needn’t be uneasy:
I’d never interfere ...

Bell:

Too wise to put
Your fingers ’twixt the cleaver and the block?
Jealous—I wonder? Anyhow, it seems,
I’ve got a daughter, too. Alone, you say?
However long I stayed, I’d have to go
Alone, at last: and I’d as lief be gone,
While I can carry myself on my two pins.
Being buried with the Barrasfords is a chance
I’ve little mind to risk a second time:
I’m too much of a Haggard, to want to rise,
At the last trump, among a flock of bleaters.
If I’ve my way, there’ll be stampeding hoofs
About me, startled at the crack of doom.

Michael:

When you’ve done play-acting ...

Bell:

Play-acting? Ay: I’m through:
Exit the villain: ring the curtain down
On the happy ending—bride and bridegroom seated
On either side the poor, but pious, hearth.

Michael:

I’d as soon argue with a weathercock
As with a woman ...

Bell:

Yet the weathervanes
Are always cocks, not hens.

Michael:

You shall not go.

Bell:

Your naked hurdles cannot hold the wind.

Michael:

Wind? Ay, I’m fairly tewed and hattered with words:
And yet, for all your wind, you shall not go.

Bell:

While you’ve a roof to shelter me, eh, son?
You mean so well; and understand so little.
Yours is a good thick fleece—no skin that twitches
When a breath tickles it. Sheep will be sheep,
And horses, horses, till the day of judgment.

Michael:

Better a sound tup than a spavined nag.

Bell:

Ay, Ruth, you’ve kindled him! Good luck to you:
And may your hearthfire warm you to the end.

(To Michael.)

You’ve been a good son to me, in your way:
Only, our ways are different; and here they part.
For all my blether, there’s no bitterness
On my side: I’ve long kenned ’twas bound to come:
And, in your heart, you know it’s for the best,
For your sake, and for Ruth’s sake, and for mine.
I couldn’t obey, where I have bid; nor risk
My own son’s fathering me in second childhood:
And you’d not care to have me like old Ezra,
A dothering haiveril in your chimney corner,
Babbling of vanished gold? I read my fortune
In the flames just now: and I’ll not rot to death:
It’s time enough to moulder, underground.
My death’ll come quick and chancy, as I’d have had
Each instant of life: but still there are risky years
Before me, and a sudden, unlooked-for ending.
And I’ll not haunt you: ghosts enough, with Ezra,
Counting his ghostly sovereigns all night long,
And old Eliza, darning ghostly stockings.
My ghost will ride a broomstick....

(As she speaks, the inner door opens, and Ruth and Michael, turning sharply at the click of the latch, gaze, dumbfounded, at Judith Ellershaw, standing in the doorway.)

Bell:

Fee-fo-fum!
The barguest bays; and boggles, brags, and bo-los
Follow the hunt. How’s that for witchcraft, think you?
Hark, how the lych-owl screeches!

Ruth (running to her mother’s arms):

Mother, you!

Bell:

Now there’s a sweet, domestic picture for you!
My cue’s to vanish in a puff of smoke
And reek of brimstone, like the witch I am.
I’m coming, hoolet, my old cat with wings!
It’s time I was away: there never yet
Was room for two grandmothers in one house.
I’m through with Krindlesyke. Good-bye, old gaol!

(While Michael still gazes at Ruth and her mother in amazement, Bell Haggard slips out of the door, unnoticed, and away through the bracken in the gathering dusk. An owl hoots.)

PART III

A wet afternoon in May, six years later. The table is already set for tea. Judith Ellershaw sits, knitting, by the hearth; a cradle with a young baby in it by her side. The outer door is closed, but unlatched. Presently the unkempt head of a man appears furtively at the window; then vanishes. The door is pushed stealthily open: and Jim Barrasford, ragged and disreputable (and some twenty years older than when he married Phœbe Martin) stands on the threshold a moment, eyeing Judith’s unconscious back in silence: then he speaks, limping towards her chair.

Jim:

While the cat calleevers the hills of Back-o’-Beyont,
The rats make free of the rick: and so, you doubled,
As soon as my hurdies were turned on Krindlesyke,
And settled yourself in the ingle?

Judith (starting up, and facing him):

Jim!

Jim:

Ay, Jim—
No other, Judith. I’ll be bound you weren’t
Just looking to see me: you seem overcome
By the unexpected pleasure. Your pardon, mistress,
If I intrude. By crikes! But I’m no ghost
To set you adither: you don’t see anything wrong—
No, no! What should you see? I startled you.
Happen I look a wee bit muggerishlike—
A ragtag hipplety-clinch: but I’ve been travelling
Mischancy roads; and I’m fair muggert-up.
Yet, why should that stagnate you? Where’s the sense
Of expecting a mislucket man like me
To be as snod and spruce as a young shaver?
But I’m all right: there’s naught amiss with Jim,
Except too much of nothing in his belly.
A good square meal, and a pipe, and a decent night’s rest,
And I’ll be fit as a fiddle. I’ve hardly slept ...
Well, now I’m home, I’ll make myself at home.

(He seizes the loaf of bread from the table; hacks off a hunch with his jack-knife; and wolfs it ravenously.)

Judith:

Home? You’ve come home, Jim?

Jim:

Nay, I’m my own fetch!
God’s truth! there’s little else but skin and bone
Beneath these tatters: just a two-legged boggart,
With naught but wind to fill my waim—small wonder
You’re maiselt, to see a scarecrow stottering in—
For plover’s eggs and heather-broth don’t sleek
A wrinkled hide or swell a scrankit belly.
But still, what should there be to flabbergast you
About a man’s returning to his home?
Naught wrong in coming home, I hope? By gox,
A poor lad can’t come home, but he’s cross-questioned,
And stared at like ... Why do you stare like that?
It’s I should be agape, to find you here:
But no, I’m not surprised: you can’t surprise me:
I’m a travelled man: I’ve seen the world; and so,
Don’t look for gratitude. My eyes were opened,
Once and for all, by Phœbe and you, that day—
Nigh twenty-year since: and they’ve not been shut ...
By gum, that’s so! it seems like twenty-year
Since I’d a wink of sleep ... And, anyway,
I’ve heard the story, all the goings-on;
And a pretty tale it is: for I’d a drink,
A sappy-crack with that old windywallops,
Sep Shanks, in a bar at Bellingham: and he let out
How you’d crawled back to Krindlesyke with your daughter—
Our daughter, I should say: and she, no less,
Married to Peter’s son: though how the deuce
You picked him up, is more that I can fashion.
Sep had already had his fill of cheerers,
Before I met him; and that last rum-hot
Was just the drop too much: and he got fuddled.
Ay, Sep was mortal-clay, the addled egg:
And I couldn’t make head or tail of his hiccuping,
Though he tried to make himself plain: he did his best,
Did Sep: I’ll say that for him—tried so hard
To make himself plain, he got us both chucked out:
And I left him in the gutter, trying still.

Judith:

You’ve come from Bellingham hiring?

Jim:

I couldn’t stand
The dindum: felt fair-clumpered in that cluther—
Such a hubblyshew of gowks and flirtigigs,
Craking and cackling like a gabble of geese:
And folk kept looking: I might have been a bizen,
The way they gaped: so I thought I’d just win home
For a little peace and quiet. Where’s my daughter,
And this young cuckoo, calls himself my nephew,
And has made himself free and easy of my nest?
Ay, but you’ve fettled things nicely, the lot of you,
While I tramped the hungry roads. He’s pinched my job:
But I bear no grudge: it’s not a job I’m after,
Since I’ve a married daughter I can live with.
I’ve seen the world, a sight too much: and I mean
To settle down, and end my days in peace
In my old home.

Judith:

Your home? But you can’t stay here.

Jim:

You’ll see! Now that I’m home, I mean to clag
Like a cleaver to a flagstone: they’ll have to lift
The hearth, to get me out of Krindlesyke.
I’ve had enough of travelling the turnpike,
Houffling and hirpling like a cadging faa:
And, but for you and your brat, I’d settled down,
A respectable married man, this twenty-year.
But you shan’t drive me from my home again.

Judith:

We drove you?

Jim:

You began it, anyway—
Made me an April-gowk and laughing-stock,
Till I couldn’t face the neighbours’ fleers. By joes!
You diddled me out of house and home, among you:
And settled yourselves couthily in my calfyard,
Like maggots in a muckheap, while I went cawdrife.
But I’ve had my fill of it, Judith, Hexham-measure:
I’m home for good: and isn’t she my daughter?
You stole her from me once, when you made off
With hoity-toity Phœbe—ay, I ken
She died: I learned it at the time—you sneaked
My only bairn: I cannot mind her name,
If ever I heard it: you kept even that
From me, her dad. But, anyway, she’s mine:
I’ve only her and you to turn to now:
A poor, lone widower I’ve been any time
This twenty-year: that’s what’s been wrong with me,
Though it hadn’t entered my noddle till this minute.
But where’s the canny couple?

Judith:

Ruth and Michael
Are at the hiring.

Jim:

Well, I’ll not deny
That suits my book. I’d a notion, Judith lass,
I’d find you alone, and make my peace with you,
Before I tackled the young folk. Poor relations
Aren’t made too welcome in this ungrateful world—
Least so, by those who’ve taken the bread from their mouths,
And beggared them of bit and brat: and so
I thought ’twould be more couthy-like with you,
Just having a crack and talking old times over,
Till I was more myself. I don’t like strangers,
Not even when they’re my own flesh and blood:
They’ve got a trick of staring at a man:
And all I want is to be let alone—
Just let alone ... By God, why can’t they let me
Alone! But you are kind and comfortable:
And you won’t heckle me and stare at me:
For I’m not quite myself: I’ll own to that—
I’m not myself ... Though who the devil I am
I hardly ken ... I’ve been that hunted and harried.

Judith:

Hunted?

Jim:

Ay, Judith—in a manner of speaking,
Hunted’s the word: and I’m too old for the sport.
I’m getting on in years: and you’re no younger
Than when I saw you last—you mind the day,
My wedding-day? A fine fligarishon
You made of it between you, you and Phœbe:
And wasn’t she the high and mighty madam,
The niffy-naffy don’t-come-nigh-me nonesuch?
But I’ve forgiven her: I bear no malice.

Judith:

You bear no malice: and she died of it!

Jim:

Ay, ay: she showed some sense of decency
In that, at least: though she got her sting in first
Like an angry bee. But, Judith, doesn’t it seem
We two are tokened to end our days together?
Nothing can keep us parted, seemingly:
So let bygones be bygones.

(Catching sight of the cradle.)

What, another!
Have you always got a brat about you, Judith?
Last time you sprang a daughter on me, and now ...
But I’m forgetting how the years have flitted.
Don’t tell me I’m a grandfather?

Judith:

The boy
Is Ruth’s.

Jim:

Well, I’ve come into a family,
And no mistake—a happy family:
And I was born to be a family-man.
They’ll never turn against their bairn’s granddad:
And I’m in luck.

Judith:

You cannot bide here, Jim.

Jim:

And who the hell are you, to say me nay?

Judith:

The boy’s grandmother.

Jim:

Ay: and so the grandam’s
To sit in the ingleneuk, while granddad hoofs it?

Judith:

When you left Krindlesyke, you quitted it
For good and all.

Jim:

And yet, I’m here again,
Unless I’m dreaming. It seems we all come back
To Krindlesyke, like martins to the byre-baulks:
It draws us back—can’t keep away, nohow.
Ay, first and last, the old gaol is my home.
You’re surely forgetting ...

Judith:

I’m forgetting nothing.
It’s you’ve the knack of only recollecting
What you’ve a mind to. How could you have come
If you remembered all these walls have seen?

Jim:

So walls have eyes as well as ears? I can’t
Get away from eyes ... But they’ll not freeze my blood,
Or stare me out of countenance: they’ve no tongues
To tittle-tattle: they’re no tell-tale-tits,
No slinking skeadlicks, nosing and sniffing round,
To wink and nod when I turn my back, colloguing,
With heads together, to lay me by the heels.
Nay: I’m not fleyed of a bit of whitewashed plaister.
But you’re a nice one to welcome home a traveller
With “cannots” and clavers of eyes. Why can’t you let
Things rest, and not hark back, routing things out,
And casting them in my teeth? Why must you lug
The dead to light—dead days? ... I’m not afraid
Of corpses: the dead are dead: their eyes are shut:
Leastways, they cannot glower when once the mould’s
Atop of them: though they follow a chap round the room,
Seeking the coppers to clap them to ... dead eyes
Can’t wink: and twopence shuts their bravest stare.
So, ghosts won’t trouble my rest at Krindlesyke.
I vowed that I’d sleep sound at Krindlesyke,
When I ...

Judith:

You cannot bide.

Jim:

I bear no malice.
Why can’t you let bygones be bygones? But that’s
A woman all over; must be raking up
The ashes into a glow, and puffing them red,
To roast a man for what he did, or didn’t,
Twenty-year syne. Why should you still bear malice?

Judith:

I bear no malice: but you cannot bide.

Jim:

Why do you keep cuckooing “cannot, cannot”?
And who’s to turn me out of Krindlesyke,
Where I was born and bred, I’d like to ken?
You can’t gainsay it’s my home.

Judith:

Not your home now.

Jim:

Then who the devil’s home ...

Judith:

It’s Ruth’s and Michael’s.

Jim:

My daughter’s and her man’s: their home’s my home.

Judith:

You shall not stay.

Jim:

It’s got to “shall not” now?
The cuckoo’s changed his tune; but I can’t say
I like the new note better: it’s too harsh:
The gowk’s grown croupy. But, lass, I never thought
You’d be harsh with me: yet even you’ve turned raspy ...
First “cannot,” then ...

Judith:

Nay! I’ll not have their home
Pulled down about their ears by any man;
And least of all by you—the home they’ve made ...

Jim:

Stolen, I’d say.

Judith:

Together, for themselves
And their three boys.

Jim:

Jim, granddad three times over?
It’s well you broke it piecemeal: the old callant’s
A waffly heart; and any sudden joy
Just sets it twittering: but the more the merrier!

Judith:

You shall not wreck their happiness. I’d not dreamed
Such happiness as theirs could be in this world.
Since it was built, there’s not been such a home
At Krindlesyke: it’s only been a house ...

Jim:

’Twas just about as homely as a hearse
In my young days: but my luck’s turned, it seems.

Judith:

It takes more than four walls to make a home,
And such a home as Michael’s made for Ruth.
Though she’s a fendy lass; she’s too like me,
And needs a helpmate, or she’ll waste herself;
And, with another man, she might have wrecked,
Instead of building. She’s got her man, her mate:
Husband and father, born, day in, day out,
He works to keep a home for wife and weans.
There’s never been a luckier lass than Ruth:
Though she deserves it, too; and it’s but seldom
Good lasses are the lucky ones; and few
Get their deserts in this life.

Jim:

True, egox!

Judith:

Few, good or bad. But Ruth has everything—
A home, a steady husband, and her boys.
There never were such boys.

Jim:

A pretty picture:
It takes my fancy: and the dear old grannie,
Why do you leave her out? And there’s a corner
For granddad in it, surely—an armchair
On the other side of the ingle, with a pipe
And packet of twist, and a pot of nappy beer,
Hot-fettled four-ale, handy on the hob?
Ay: there’s the chair: I’d best secure it now.

(As he seats himself, with his back to the door, the head of Bell Haggard, in her orange-coloured kerchief, peeps round the jamb: then slowly withdraws, unseen of Jim or Judith.)

Jim:

Fetch up the swipes and shag. I can reach the cutty ...

(He takes down Michael’s pipe from the mantel-shelf; and sticks it between his teeth: but Judith snatches at it, breaking the stem, and flings the bowl on the fire.)

Judith:

And you, to touch his pipe!

(Jim stares at her, startled, as she stands before him, with drawn face and set teeth: then, still eyeing her uneasily, begins to bluster.)

Jim:

You scarting randy!
I’ll teach you manners. That’s a good three-halfpence
Smashed into smithereens: and all for nothing.
I’ve lammed a wench for less. I’ve half a mind
To snap you like the stopple, you yackey-yaa!
De’il rive your sark! It’s long since I’ve had the price
Of a clay in my pouch: and I’m half-dead for a puff.
What’s taken you? What’s set you agee with me?
You used to like me; and you always seemed
A menseful body: and I lippened to you.
But you’re just a wheepie-leekie weathercock
Like the lave of women, when a man’s mislucket,
Moidart and mismeaved and beside himself.
I fancied I’d be in clover at Krindlesyke,
With you and all: but, sink me, if I haven’t
Just stuck my silly head into a bee-bike!
What’s turned you vicious? I only want to smoke
A cutty in peace: and you go on the rampage.
I mustn’t smoke young master’s pipe, it seems—
His pipe, no less! Young cock-a-ride-a-roosie
Is on the muckheap now; and all the hens
Are clucking round him. I ken what it is:
The cockmadendy’s been too easy with you.
It doesn’t do to let you womenfolk
Get out of hand. It’s time I came, i’ faiks,
To pull you up, and keep you in your place.
I’ll have no naggers, narr-narring all day long:
I’ll stand no fantigues. If the cull’s too soft ...

Judith:

Soft, did you say? I’ve seen him hike a man,
And a heftier man than you, over a dyke,
For yarking a lame beast. That drover’ll mind—
Ay, to his dying day, he’ll not forget
He once ran into something hard.

Jim:

Ay—ay ...
He’s that sort, is he? My luck is out again.
I want a quiet life, to be let alone:
And Krindlesyke won’t be a bed of roses,
With that sort ramping round. (Starting uneasily.)

What’s that? I thought ...
There’s no one in the other room, is there?
I’ve a feeling in my bones somebody’s listening.
You’ve not deceived me, Judith? You’ve not trapped ...
I’m all a-swither, sweating like a brock.
I little dreamt you’d turn against me, Judith:
But even here I don’t feel safe now.

Judith:

Safe?

Jim:

So you don’t know? I fancied everyone kenned.
Else why the devil should they stare like that?
And when you, too, looked ... Nay, how could you learn?
I’m davered, surely: Seppy Shank’s rum
Has gone to my noddle: drink’s the very devil
On an empty waim: and I never had a head.
What have I done? Ay, wouldn’t you like to ken,
To holler on the hounds?

Judith:

Jim!

Jim:

But what matter
Whether you ken or not? You’ve done for me
Already, dang you, with your hettle-tongue:
You’ve put the notion in my head, the curs
Are on my scent: and now, I cannot rest.
Happen, they’re slinking now up Bloodysyke,
Like adders through the bent ... Nay, they don’t yelp,
The hounds that sleuth me: it’s only in my head
I hear the yapping: they’re too cunning to yelp.
The sleichers slither after me on their bellies,
As dumb and slick as adders ... But I’m doitered,
And doting like a dobby. I want to sleep ...
A good night’s rest would pull my wits together.
I swore I’d sleep ... but I couldn’t close an eye, now
Since ...

Judith:

Jim, what ails you? Tell me what you’ve done.
I’m sorry, Jim ...

Jim:

I swear I never set out
To do it, Judith; and the thing was done,
Before I came to my senses: that’s God’s truth:
And may hell blast ... You’re sorry? Nay, but Jim’s
Too old a bird to be caught with chaff. You’re fly:
But, Jim’s fly, too. No: mum’s the word.

Judith:

O Jim,
You, surely, never think I’d ...

Jim:

I don’t know.
A man in my case can’t tell who to trust,
When every mongrel’s yowling for his carcase.
Mum’s my best friend, the only one ... though, whiles,
It’s seemed even he had blabbered out my secrets,
And hollered them to rouse the countryside,
And draw all eyes on me. But, I must mizzle.

Judith:

You’re going, Jim?

Jim:

I’ll not be taken here,
Like a brock in his earth: I’ll not be trapped and torn ...
Yet, I don’t know. Why should I go? No worse
To be taken here than elsewhere: and I’m dead beat:
I’m all to rovers, my wit’s all gone agate:
And how can I travel in these boots? A week since
The soles bid a fond farewell to the uppers: I’ve been
Hirpling it, barefoot—ay, kind lady, barefoot.
You’d hardly care to be in my shoes, Judith?
While you’ve been sitting doose ...

Judith:

I’ve known the road:
I’ve trudged it, too, lad: and your feet are bleeding.
I’ll bathe them for you, Jim, before you go:
And you shall have a pair of Michael’s boots.

Jim:

So, I may have young master’s cast-off boots,
Since he’s stepped into my shoes—a fair swap!
And tug my forelock, like a lousy tinker;
And whine God bless the master of this house,
Likewise the mistress, too ... By gox, I’ve come
To charity—Jim Barrasford’s come to mooch
For charity at Krindlesyke! Shanks’s mare’s
A sorry nag at best; and lets you down,
Sooner or later, for certain—the last straw,
When a man can’t trust his feet, and his own legs
Give under him, in his need, and bring him down
A devasher in the ditch as the dogs are on him!
You’re sorry? I don’t know. How can I tell?
You’re sly, you faggit; but don’t get over Jim
With jookery-pawkry, Judith: I may be maiselt,
But I’ve a little rummelgumption left:
I still ken a bran from a brimmer—bless your heart!
It suits you to get rid of me; and you judge
It’s cheaply done at the price of a pair of tackities.
Nay: I’ll be taken here.

Judith:

You cannot stay.

Jim:

Do you take me for a cangling cadger, to haggle ...
Forgimety! I cannot ... God’s truth, I dare not!
You’ve got me on the hop; and I must hirple;
But if I go, I will not go alone:
I’ve a mind to have a partner for this polka.

Judith:

Alone? And who do you think that ...

Jim:

Who but you?

Judith:

I!

Jim:

If I’ve got to take the road again,
You’ve got to pad it with me: for I’m tired
Of travelling lonesome: I’ve a mind to have
My doxy with me. By crikes! I’m fleyed to face
The road again, alone. You’ll come ...

Judith:

I cannot.
How could I leave ...

Jim:

Then I’ll be taken here:
You’ll be to blame.

Judith:

But, Jim, how could I leave ...

Jim:

The sooner it’s over, the better I’ll be pleased.

Judith:

You mustn’t stop: and yet, I cannot go.
How could I leave the bairn?

Jim:

The brat’s asleep.

Judith:

It won’t sleep long.

Jim:

Its mammy’ll soon be home.

Judith:

Not for three hours, at earliest.

Jim:

Then I’ll wait
Till then: they can’t be on my track so soon:
And when its dad and mammy come back ...

Judith:

Nay, nay:
They mustn’t find you here.

Jim:

Judith, you’re right:
For they might blab. I’d best be hooking it.
I’ll go: but, mind, you’re not yet shot of me.

(As he is speaking, Bell Haggard appears in the doorway, and stands, with arms akimbo, watching them; but Jim has his back to the door, and Judith, gazing into the fire, doesn’t see her either.)

Jim:

I’ll wait for you beneath the Gallows Rigg,
Where the burn skirts the planting, in the slack
We trysted in, in the old days—do you mind?

Judith:

I mind.

Jim:

Trust you for that! And I’ll lie low:
It’s a dry bottom: and when the family’s snoring
You’ll come to me. Just whicker like a peesweep
Three times, and I’ll be with you in a jiffy.
We’ll take the road together, bonnie lass;
For we were always marrows, you and I.
If only that flirtigig, Phœbe, hadn’t come
Between me and my senses, we’d have wed,
And settled down at Krindlesyke for life:
But now we’ve got to hoof it to the end.
My sang! ’twill be a honeymoon for me,
After the rig I’ve run. But, hearken, Judith:
If you don’t turn up by ten o’clock, I’ll come
And batter on that door to wake the dead:
I’ll make such a rumpus, such a Bob-’s-adying,
Would rouse you, if you were straked. I’ll have you with me,
If I’ve got to carry you, chested: sink my soul!
And for all I care, that luggish slubberdegullion
May lounder my hurdies; and go to Hecklebarney!
I’m desperate, Judith ... and I don’t mind much ...
But, you’ll come, lass?

Judith:

I’ll come.

Jim:

Well, if you fail,
They’ll take me here, as sure as death.

Bell (stepping forward):

That’s so.

Jim (wheeling round):

The devil!

Bell:

Nay: not yet: all in good time.
But I question they’ll wait till ten o’clock: they seemed
Impatient for your company, deuce kens why:
But then, what’s one man’s meat ...

Jim:

What’s that you say?

Bell:

They seemed dead-set ... You needn’t jump like that:
I haven’t got the bracelets in my pocket.

Jim:

And who the hell are you? and what do you mean?

Bell:

You’ve seen my face before.

Jim:

Ay—ay ... I’ve seen it:
But I don’t ken your name. You dog my heels:
I’ve seen your face ... I saw it on that night—
That night ... and sink me, but I saw it last
In the bar at Bellingham: your eyes were on me.
Ay, and I’ve seen that phisgog many times:
And it always brought ill-luck.

Bell:

It hasn’t served
Its owner so much better: yet it’s my fortune,
Though I’m no peachy milkmaid. Ay: I fancied
’Twas you they meant.

Jim:

Who meant?

Bell:

How should I know?
You should ken best who’s after you, and what
You’re wanted for? They might be friends of yours,
For all I ken: though I’ve never taken, myself,
To the little boy-blues. But, carties, I’d have fancied
’Twould make your lugs burn—such a gillaber about you.
They talked.

Jim:

Who talked?

Bell:

Your friends.

Jim:

Friends? I’ve no friends.

Bell:

Well: they were none of mine. Last night I slept
’Neath Winter’s Stob ...

Jim:

What’s that to do with me?

Bell:

I slept till midnight, when a clank of chains
Awakened me: and, looking up, I saw
A body on the gibbet ...

Jim:

A body, woman?
No man’s hung there this hundred-year.

Bell:

I saw
A tattered corpse against the hagging moon,
Above me black.

Jim:

You didn’t see the face?

Bell:

I saw its face—before it disappeared,
And left the gibbet bare.

Jim:

You kenned the face?

Bell:

I kenned the face.

Jim:

Whose face? ...

Bell:

Best not to ask.

Jim:

O Christ!

Bell:

But we were talking of your friends:
Quite anxious about you, they seemed.

Jim (limping towards Bell Haggard with lifted arm):

You cadger-quean!
You’ve set them on. I’ll crack you over the cruntle—
You rummel-dusty ... You muckhut ... You windyhash!
I’ll slit your weazen for you: I’ll break your jaw—
I’ll stop your gob, if I’ve to do you in!
You’ll not sleep under Winter’s Stob to-night.

Bell (regarding him, unmoved):

As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb?

Jim (stopping short):

Hanged?

Bell:

To be hanged by the neck till you are dead.
That bleaches you? But you’ll look whiter yet,
When you lie cold and stiffening, my pretty bleater.

Jim (shrinking back):

You witch ... You witch! You’ve got the evil eye.
Don’t look at me like that ... Come, let me go!

Bell:

A witch? Ay, wise men always carry witch-bane
When they’ve to do with women. Witch, say you?
Eh, lad, but you’ve been walking widdershins:
You’d best turn deazil, crook your thumbs, my callant,
And gather cowgrass, if you’d break the spell,
And send the old witch skiting on her broomstick.
They said that you’d make tracks for Krindlesyke:
And they’d cop you here, for certain—dig you out
Like a badger from his earth. I left them talking.

Jim:

Where, you hell-hag?

Bell:

Ah, where? You’d like to learn?
It’s well to keep a civil tongue with witches,
If you’ve no sliver of rowan in your pocket:
Though it won’t need any witch, my jackadandy,
To clap the clicking jimmies round your wrists.
To think I fashed myself to give you warning:
And this is all the thanks I get! Well, well—
They’ll soon be here. As I came up Bloodysyke ...

Jim:

Up Bloodysyke: and they were following?
I’d best cut over Gallows Rigg. My God,
The hunt’s afoot ... But it may be a trap—
And you ... And you ...

Bell:

Nay: but I’m no ratcatcher.
You’d best turn tail, before the terriers sight you.

(As Jim bolts past her and through the open door)

Rats! Rats! Good dog! ... And now we’re rid of vermin.

Judith:

Oh, Bell, what has he done? What has he done?

Bell:

How should I ken?

Judith:

And yet you said ...

Bell:

I said?
You’ve surely not forgotten Bell Haggard’s tongue,
After the taste you had of it the last time?

Judith:

What did you hear?

Bell:

A drunken blether-breeks
In a bar at Bellingham: and I recognized
Peter’s own brother, too; and guessed ’twas Jim:
And when they gossiped of Krindlesyke ... Oh, I ken
Ladies don’t listen: but not being a lady
Whiles has advantages: and when he left
His crony sprawling, splurging in the gutter,
I followed him, full-pelt, hot on his heel,
Guessing the hanniel was up to little good.
But he got here before me: so I waited
Outside, until I heard him blustering;
And judged it time to choke his cracking-croose.
I couldn’t have that wastrel making mischief
In Michael’s house: I didn’t quit Krindlesyke
That it might be turned into a tinker’s dosshouse,
Hotching with maggots like a reesty gowdy,
For any hammy, halfnabs, and hang-gallows
To stretch his lousy carcase in at ease,
After I’d slutted to keep it respectable
For fifteen-year.

Judith:

But what do you think he’s done—
Not murder?

Bell:

Murder? Nay: it takes a man
To murder.

Judith:

Ay ... But when you spoke of hanging,
He turned like death: and when he threatened you,
I saw blue-murder in his eyes.

Bell:

At most,
’Twould be manslaughter with the likes of him.
I’ve some respect for murderers: they, at least,
Take things into their own hands, and don’t wait
On lucky chances, like the rest of us—
Murderers and suicides ...

Judith:

But Jim?

Bell:

I’d back
Cain against Abel, ay, and hairy Esau
Against that smooth sneak Jacob. Jim? He’s likely
Done in some doxy in a drunken sleep:
’Twould be about his measure.

Judith:

Jim—O Jim!

Bell:

Nay: he’ll not dangle in a hempen noose.

Judith:

And yet you saw his body ...

Bell:

Dead men’s knuckles!
You didn’t swallow that gammon? Why should I
Be sleeping under Winter’s Stob? But Jim—
I doubt if he’d the guts to stick a porker:
You needn’t fear for him. But I must go.

Judith:

Go? You’ll not go without a sup of tea,
After you’ve traiked so far? Michael and Ruth ...

Bell:

Ay, Judith: I just caught a squint of them
Among the cluther outside the circus-tent:
But I was full-tilt on Jim’s track, then: and so,
I couldn’t daunder: or I’d have stopped to have
A closer look: yet I saw that each was carrying
A little image of a Barrasford:

(Looking into the cradle.)

And here’s the reckling image, seemingly—
The sleeping spit of Michael at the age.

Judith:

You never saw such laleeking lads: and they
All fashion after their father.

Bell:

I’m glad I came.
Even if I’d not struck Jim, I’d meant to come,
And have a prowl round the old gaol, and see
How Michael throve: although I hadn’t ettled
To cross the doorstone—just to come and go,
And not a soul the wiser. But it turns out
I was fated to get here in the nick of time:
It seems the old witch drew me here once more
To serve her turn and save the happy home.
I judged you’d lost your hold on me, Eliza:
But, once a ghost has got a grip of you,
It won’t let go its clutch on your life until
It’s dragged you into the grave with it: even then ...
Although my ghost should prove a match for any,
I’d fancy, with a fair field, and no favour.
But ghosts and graves! I’m down-in-the-mouth to-day:
I must have supped off toadstools on a tombstone,
Or happen the droppy weather makes me dyvous:
I never could thole the mooth and muggy mizzle,
Seeping me sodden: I’d liefer it teemed wholewater,
A sousing, drooking downpour, any time.
I’m dowf and blunkit, why, deuce only kens!
It seems as if Eliza had me fey:
And that old witch would be the death of me:
And these white walls ... ’Twould be the queerest start!
But, Michael’s happy?

Judith:

He’s the best of husbands—
The best of fathers: he ...

Bell:

I ken, I ken.
Well ... He’s got what he wanted, anyway.

Judith:

And you?

Bell:

Ay ... I was born to take my luck.
But I must go.

Judith:

You’ll not wait for them?

Bell:

Nay:
I’m dead to them: I’ve bid good-bye to them
Till doomsday: and I’m through with Krindlesyke,
This time, I hope—though you can never tell.
I hadn’t ettled to darken the door again;
Yet here I am: and even now the walls
Seem closing ... It would be the queerest start
If, after all ... But, dod, I’ve got the dismals,
And no mistake! I’m in the dowie dumps—
Maundering and moonging like a spancelled cow:
It’s over dour and dearn for me in this loaning
On a dowly day. Best pull myself together,
And put my best foot foremost before darkening:
And I’ve no mind to meet them in the road.
So long!

(She goes out of the door and makes down the syke.)

Judith:

Good-bye! If you’d only bide a while ...
Come back! You mustn’t go like that ... Bell, Bell!

(She breaks off, as Bell Haggard is already out of hearing, and stands watching her till she is out of sight; then turns, closing the door, and sinks into a chair in an abstracted fashion. She takes up her knitting mechanically, but sits, motionless, brooding by the fire.)

Judith:

To think that Jim—and after all these years ...
And then, to come like that! I wonder what ...
I wish he hadn’t gone without the boots.

(She resumes her knitting, musing in silence, until she is roused by the click of the latch. The door opens, and Bell Haggard stumbles into the room and sinks to the floor in a heap. Her brow is bleeding, and her dress, torn and dishevelled.)

Judith (starting up):

Bell! What has happened, woman? Are you hurt?
Oh, but your brow is bleeding!

Bell:

I’d an inkling
There must be blood somewhere: I seemed to smell it.

Judith:

But what has happened, Bell? Don’t say ’twas Jim!

Bell:

Nay ... nay ... it wasn’t Jim ... I stumbled, Judith:
And, seemingly, I cracked my cruntle a bit—
It’s Jill fell down, and cracked her crown, this journey.
I smelt the blood ... but, it’s not there, the pain ...
It’s in my side ... I must have dunched my side
Against a stone in falling ... I could fancy
A rib or so’s gone smash.

Judith (putting an arm about her and helping her to rise):

Come and lie down,
And I’ll see what ...

Bell:

Nay: but I’ll not lie down:
I’m not that bad ... and, anyhow, I swore
I’d not lie down again at Krindlesyke.
If I lay down, the walls would close on me,
And scrunch the life out ... But I’m havering—
Craitching and craking like a doitered crone.
Lightheaded from the tumble ... mother-wit’s
Jirbled and jumbled ... I came such a flam.
I’m not that bad ... I say, I’ll not lie down ...
Just let me rest a moment by the hearth,
Until ...

(Judith leads her to a chair, fetches a basin of water and some linen, and bathes the wound on Bell’s brow.)

Judith:

I wish ...

Bell:

I’m better here. I’ll soon
Be fit again ... Bell isn’t done for, yet:
She’s a tough customer—she’s always been
A banging, bobberous bletherskite, has Bell—
No fushenless, brashy, mim-mouthed mealy-face,
Fratished and perished in the howl-o’-winter.
No wind has ever blown too etherish,
Too snell to fire her blood: she’s always relished
A gorly, gousty, blusterous day that sets
Her body alow and birselling like a whinfire.
But what a windyhash! My wit’s wool-gathering;
And I’m waffling like a ... But I’d best be stepping,
Before he comes: I’ve far to travel to-night:
And I’m not so young ... And Michael mustn’t find
His tinker-mother, squatted by the hearth,
Nursing a bloody head. But, mind you, Judith:
I stumbled; and I hurt my side in falling:
Whatever they may say, you stick to that:
Swear that I told you that upon my oath—
So help me God, and all—my bible-oath.
I’m better ... already ... I fancy ... and I’ll go
Before ... What was I saying? Well, old hob,
I little ettled I’d look on you again.
The times I’ve polished you, the elbow-grease
I’ve wasted on you: but I never made
You shine like that ... You’re winking red eyes at me:
And well you may, to see ... I little guessed
You’d see me sitting ... I’ve watched many fires
Since last I sat beside this hearth—good fires:
Coal, coke, and peat, but wood-fires in the main.
There’s naught like izles for dancing flames and singing:
Birch kindles best, and has the liveliest flames:
But elm just smoulders—it’s the coffin-wood ...
Coffins? Who muttered coffins? Let’s not talk
Of coffins, Judith ... Shut in a black box!
They couldn’t keep old Ezra in: the lid
Flew off; and old granddaddy sat up, girning ...
They had to screw him down ... And Solomon
Slept with his fathers ... I wonder he could sleep,
After the razzle-dazzle ... Concubines!
’Twould take a pyramid to keep him down!
And me ... That tumble’s cracked the bell ... not stopt
The crazy clapper, seemingly ... But, coffins—
Let’s talk no more of coffins: what have I
To do with coffins? Let us talk of fires:
I’ve always loved a fire: I’d set the world
Alow for my delight, if it would burn.
It’s such a soggy, sodden world to-day,
I’m duberous I could kindle it with an izle:
It might just smoulder with muckle funeral-plumes
Of smoke, like coffin-elder ... And the blaze—
The biggest flare-up ever I set eyes on,
It was a kind of funeral, you might say—
A fiery, flaming, roaring funeral,
A funeral such as I ... but no such luck
For me in this world—likely, in the next!
And anyway, it wouldn’t be much fun,
If I couldn’t watch it, myself ... Ay, Long Nick Salkeld,
And his old woman, Zillah, died together,
The selfsame day, within an hour or so.
’Twas on Spadeadam Waste we’d camped that time ...
And kenning how they loved their caravan,
And how they’d hate to leave it, or be parted
From one another, even by a foot of earth,
We laid them out, together, side by side,
In the van, as they’d slept in it, night after night,
For hard on fifty-year. We took naught out,
And shifted naught: just burnished up the brasses,
Till they twinkled as Zillah’d kept them, while she could ...
And so, with not a coffin-board betwixt them,
At dead of night we fired the caravan ...
The flames leapt up; and roaring to the stars,
As we stood round ... The flames leapt up, and roaring ...
I hear them roaring now ... the flames ... I hear ...
Flames roaring in my head ... I hear ... I hear ...
And flying izles ... falling sparks ... I hear
Flames roaring ... roaring ... roaring ...

(She sways forward, but Judith catches her in her arms.)

Where am I? Judith, is that you?
How did I come here, honey? But, now I mind—
I fell ... He must have hidden in the heather
To trip me up ... He kicked me, as I lay—
The harrygad!

Judith:

Jim!

Bell:

Nay! What am I saying?
I stumbled, Judith: you must stick to that,
Whatever they may say ... I stumbled, Judith.
Think what would happen if they strung Jim up;
Should I ... you can’t hang any man alone ...
Think what would happen should I ... Don’t you see,
We cannot let them string up Michael’s uncle?
Respectable ... it wouldn’t be respectable ...
And I ... I slutted, fifteen ... I’d an inkling
There must be blood, somewhere ... I thought I smelt it ...
And it tastes salt on the lips ... It’s choking me ...
It’s fire and salt and candle-light for me
This time, and Whinny Muir and Brig-o’-Dread ...
I’m done for, Judith ... It’s all up with me ...
It’s been a fine ploy, while it lasted ...

Judith:

Come ...

Bell:

Life with a smack in it: death with a tang ...

Judith:

I’ll help you into bed.

(Bell Haggard gazes about her in a dazed fashion, as Judith raises her and supports her across the floor towards the inner room.)

Bell:

Bed, did you say?
Bed, it’s not bedtime, is it? To bed, to bed,
Says Sleepyhead: tarry awhile, says Slow:
Put on the pot, says Greedygut ... I swore
I’d not lie down ... You cannot dodge your luck:
It had to be ... And I must dree my weird.
When first I came to Krindlesyke, I felt
These walls ... these walls ... They’re closing on me now!
Let’s sup before we go!

(They pass into the other room, but Bell Haggard’s voice still sounds through the open door.)

Bell:

Nay! not that bed—
Eliza’s bed! The old witch lay in wait
For me ... and now she has me! Well, what odds?
Jim called me witch: and the old spaewife and I
Should be the doose bedfellows, after all.
Early to bed and early to rise ... I’ve never
Turned in, while I could wink an eye, before:
I’ve always sat late ... And I’d sit it out
Now ... But I’m dizzy ... And that old witch, Eliza—
I little guessed she’d play this cantrip on me:
But what a jest—Jerusalem, what a jest!
She must be chuckling, thinking how she’s done me:
And I could laugh, if it wasn’t for the pain ...
It doesn’t do to rattle broken ribs—
But I could die of laughing, split my sides,
If they weren’t split already. Yet my clapper
Keeps wagging: and I’m my own passing-bell—
They knew, who named me ... Talking to gain time ...
It’s running out so quick ... And mum’s the word:
I mustn’t rouse her ... She sleeps couthily,
Free of the coil of cumber and trouble ... I never
Looked on a lonelier face ... The flames ... the flames ...
They’re roaring to the stars ... roaring ... roaring ...
The heather’s all turned gold ... and golden showers—
Izles and flying embers and falling stars ...
Great flakes of fire ... They’ve set the world alow ...
It’s all about me ... blood-red in my eyes ...
I’m burning ... What have I to do with worms!
Burning ... burning ... burning ...

(Her voice sinks to a low moaning, which goes on for some time, then stops abruptly. After a while, Judith comes into the living-room, fills a basin of water from a bucket, and carries it into the other room. She returns with Bell’s orange-coloured kerchief, which she throws on the fire, where it burns to a grey wisp. She then takes a nightdress and a white mutch from a drawer in the dresser, and carries them into the other room, where she stays for some time. The baby in the cradle wakens, and begins to whimper till Judith comes out, shutting the door behind her, and takes it in her arms.)

Judith:

Whisht, whisht, my canny hinny, my bonnie boy!
Your wee warm body’s good to cuddle after ...
Whisht, whisht! (Gazing in the fire.)

First, Phœbe—and then, Bell ... Oh, Jim!

Steps are heard on the threshold, and Michael and Ruth enter, carrying their sleeping sons, Nicholas, aged five, and Ralph, aged three. They put down the children on the settle by the hearth, where they sit, dazed and silent, sleepily rubbing their eyes.

Ruth:

Well, I’m not sorry to be home again:
My arms are fairly broken.

Michael:

Ay: they’re heavy.
The hoggerel you lift up turns a sheep
Before you set it down again. Well, Judith,
You’ve had a quiet day of it, I warrant?

Judith (in a low voice):

Michael, your mother’s here.

Michael:

My mother here?

Ruth:

I always fancied she’d turn up again,
In spite of all her raivelling—Michael, you mind,
About the mutch with frills, and all thon havers?
But where we are to put her I can’t think:
There’s not a bed for her.

Judith:

She’s on my bed.

Ruth:

Your bed? But you ...

Judith:

She’s welcome to my bed,
As long as she has need. She’ll not lie long,
Before they lift her.

Michael:

Judith!

Ruth:

She’s not dead?

Judith:

Ay, son: she breathed her last an hour ago.

Ruth:

So, after all, the poor old soul crept back
To Krindlesyke to die.

(Michael Barrasford, without a word, moves towards the inner room in a dazed manner, lifts the latch, and goes in. After a moment’s hesitation, Ruth follows him, closing the door behind her. The boys, who have been sitting staring at the fire, drowsily and unheeding, rouse themselves gradually, stretching and yawning.)

Nicholas:

Grannie, we saw the circus:
And Ralph still says he wants to be a herd,
Like dad: but I can’t bide the silly baas.
When I’m a man I’ll be a circus-rider,
And gallop, gallop! I’m clean daft on horses.

(An owl hoots piercingly without.)

Ralph:

Grannie, what’s that?

Judith:

Only an owl, son.

Nicholas:

Bo!
Fearent of hoolets!

Ralph:

I thought it was a bo-lo.

Nicholas:

Bo-los or horneys or wirrakows can’t scare me:
And I like to hear the jinneyhoolets scritching:
It gives me such a queer, cold, creepy feeling.
I like to feel the shivers in my hair.
When I’m a man I’ll ride the fells by moonlight,
Like the mosstroopers, when the owls are skirling.
They used to gallop on their galloways,
The reivers, dad says ...

(The owl calls again, and is answered by its mate; and then they seem to be flying round and round Krindlesyke, hooting shrilly.)

Ralph:

Oh, there it is again!
Grannie, I’m freckened ...

Judith:

Its an ellerish yelling:
I never heard ...

Ralph:

What’s in the other room?
I want my dad and mammy.

Judith:

You’re overtired.
Come, I’ll undress you, and tuck you into bed:
And you’ll sleep sound, my lamb, as sound and snug
As a yeanling in a maud-neuk.

Nicholas:

I’ll ride! I’ll ride!