Ay: though you're just a splurging jackalally, You've spoken truth for once, Jim: womenfolk, Wenches and wives, are all just weatherc.o.c.ks.

I've ever found them faithless, first and last.

But, where's your daughter, Jim? I want to hold The bairn.

JIM: They've taken even her from me.

(_ELIZA, who has been filling the teapot, takes EZRA by the hand, and leads him to his seat at the table._)

ELIZA: Come, husband: sup your tea, before it's cold: And you, too, son. Ay, we're a faithless lot.

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-d.y.k.e; 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 la.s.s ...

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 s.p.u.n.k 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 d.y.k.e, 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 d.i.c.k-a.s.s. 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 h.e.l.l.

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 h.o.a.rd 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 bra.s.s 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.