(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.)