Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

“ And Jim brings home his bride to-day. Even now ...
Judith:
And Jim brings home ...
Eliza:
I looked for them by this:
But you’ve still time ...
Judith:
The bride comes home to-day.
Brides should come home: it’s right a man should bring
His bride home—ay! And we must go, my wean,
To spare her blushes. We’re no company
For bride and bridegroom. Happen, we should meet them,
You must not cry to him: I must not lift
My eyes to his. We’re nothing now to him.
Your cry might tell her heart too much: my eyes
Might meet her eyes, and tell ... It isn’t good
For a bride to know too much. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah, a brat—Jim’s bairn!
He hasn’t lost much time, has Jim, the dog!
Come, let me take it, daughter. I’ve never held
A grandchild in my arms. Six sons I’ve had,
But not one’s made me granddad, to my knowledge:
And all the hoggerels have turned lowpy-dyke,
And scrambled, follow-my-leader, over the crag’s edge,
But Jim, your husband: and not for me to say,
Before his wife, that he’s the draft of the flock. ”

“ Ezra:
Tuts! Girls take their chance. And you’d
Conceit enough of Jim, at one time—proud
As a pipit that’s hatched a cuckoo: and if the gowk
Were half as handsome as I—you ken, yourself,
You needed no coaxing: I wasted little breath
Whistling to heel: you came at the first “Isca!”
Eliza:
Who kens what a lass runs away from, crazed to quit
Home, at all hazards, little realizing
It’s life, itself, she’s trying to escape;
And plodging deeper.
Ezra:
Trust a wench for kenning. ”

“ And you’d a tongue to glaver a guff of a girl,
The devil’s own; and whatever’s gone from you,
You’ve still a tongue, though with a difference:
Now it’s all edge.
Ezra:
The knife that spreads the butter
Will slice the loaf. But it’s sharper than my teeth.
Eliza:
Ay, tongues cut deeper than any fang can bite,
Sore-rankling wounds.
Ezra:
You talk of tongues! I’m deaf:
But, for my sins, I cannot be deaf to yours,
Nattering me into my grave; and, likely, your words
Will flaffer about my lugs like channering peesweeps,
When I lie cold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Judith (taking it) :
I’m famished. Cake! We’re grand, to-day, indeed!
And scones and bannocks—carties, quite a spread!
It’s almost like a wedding.
Eliza:
A wedding, woman?
Can’t folk have scones and bannocks and singing-hinnies,
But you must prate of weddings—you, and all!
Judith:
I meant no harm. I thought, perhaps, Jim might ...
Though, doubtless, he was married long ago?
20 (Eliza does not answer. Judith’s baby begins to whimper, and she tries to hush it in an absent manner.)
Judith:
Whisht, whisht! my little lass! You mustn’t cry,
And shame the ears of decent folk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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,
114 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. ”

“ My bride, the lady I have made my wife.
Poor lass, she’s quaking like a dothery-dick.
Eliza (to Phœbe) :
Daughter, may you ...
Ezra (crooning, unseen, to the baby) :
“Dance for your mammy,
Dance for your daddy ...”
Jim:
What ails the old runt now?
You mustn’t heed him, Phœbe, lass: he’s blind
And old and watty: but there’s no harm in him.
(Goes towards settle.)
Come, dad, and jog your wits, and stir your stumps,
And welcome ... What the devil’s this? Whose brat ...
Ezra:
Whose brat? And who should ken—although they say,
It’s a wise father knows his own child. Ay! ”

“ 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 ”

“ Jim, you dog,
To go and wed, and never tell your dad!
I thought ’twas swedes you were after: and, by gox!
It’s safer fetching turnips than a wife.
But, welcome home! Is this the bonnie bride?
You’re welcome, daughter, home to Krindlesyke.
(Feeling her face.)
But, wife, it’s Judith, after all! I kenned
That Judith was the lucky lass. You said
’Twas somebody else: I cannot mind the name—
Some fly-by-the-sky, outlandish name: but I
Was right, you see. Though I be blind and deaf,
I’m not so dull as some folk think. There’s others
Are getting on in years, forby old Ezra. ”

“ 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—
66 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? ”

“ Eliza:
Nay, forty-year of Krindlesyke, and all!
Ezra:
Young carroty-pow must have been in a fine fantigue,
When she found I’d mizzled. Yet, if she’d turned up
In time, poor mealy-face, for all your roses,
You’d never have clapped eyes on Krindlesyke:
This countryside and you would still be strangers.
Eliza:
In time!
Ezra:
A narrow squeak.
Eliza:
If she’d turned up,
The red-haired girl had lived at Krindlesyke,
Instead of me, this forty-year: and I—
I might ... But we must dree our weird. And yet,
To think what my life might have been, if only—
The difference! ”