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.)