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 c.o.c.k-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 c.o.c.ksureness, while you can: too soon, Time plucks the feathers off you; and you lie, Naked and skewered, with not a c.o.c.k-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, G.o.d forbid! I'm no tame p.u.s.s.ycat, To snuggle on the corner of a settle, With one eye open for the chance-thrown t.i.tbit, 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, la.s.s, 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, la.s.s?

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 s.l.u.thery 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 G.o.d-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 p.r.i.c.king in my veins.

(_She loosens the string of her ap.r.o.n, 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-gla.s.s; 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: la.s.s, 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 ap.r.o.n 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.