Krindlesyke | Page 2

this what's-her-name the gaby's bringing ...
ELIZA:
Phoebe.
EZRA:?A posical name; I never heard the like.?She'll be a flighty faggit, mark my words.
ELIZA:?She's only been here once before; and now?She'll be here all the time. I'll find it strange?With another woman in the house. Needs must?Get used to it. Your mother found it strange,?Likely ... It's my turn now, and long in coming.?Perhaps, that makes it harder. I've got set?Like a vane, when the wind's blown east so long, it's clogged With dust, and cannot whisk with the chopping breeze.?'Twill need a wrench to shift my bent; for change?Comes sore and difficult at my time of life.
EZRA:?Ay, you may find your nose put out of joint,?If she's a spirited wench.
ELIZA:
Due east it's blown?Since your mother died. She barely outlived my coming;?And never saw a grandchild. I wonder ... Yet,?I spared her all I could. Ay, that was it:?She couldn't abide to watch me trying to spare her,?Another woman doing her work, finoodling?At jobs she'd do so smartly, tidying her hearth,?Using her oven, washing her cups and saucers,?Scouring her tables, redding up her rooms,?Handling her treasures, and wearing out her gear.?And now, another, wringing out my dishclout,?And going about my jobs in her own fashion;?Turning my household, likely, howthery-towthery,?While I sit mum. But it takes forty years'?Steady east wind to teach some folk; and then?They're overdried to profit by their learning.?And so, without a complaint, and keeping her secrets,?Your mother died with patient, quizzical eyes,?Half-pitying, fixed on mine; and dying, left?Krindlesyke and its gear to its new mistress.
EZRA:?A woman, she was. You've never had her hand?At farls and bannocks; and her singing-hinnies?Fair melted in the mouth--not sad and soggy?As yours are like to be. She'd no habnab?And hitty-missy ways; and she'd turn to,?At shearing-time, and clip with any man.?She never spared herself.
ELIZA:
And died at forty,?As white and worn as an old table-cloth,?Darned, washed, and ironed to a shred of cobweb,?Past mending; while your father was sixty-nine?Before he could finish himself, soak as he might.
EZRA:?Don't you abuse my father. A man, he was--?No fonder of his glass than a man should be.?Few like him now: I've not his guts, and Jim's?Just a lamb's head, gets half-cocked on a thimble,?And mortal, swilling an eggcupful; a gill?Would send him randy, reeling to the gallows.?Dad was the boy! Got through three bottles a day,?And never turned a hair, when his own master,?Before we'd to quit Rawridge, because the dandy?Had put himself outside of all his money--?Teeming it down his throat in liquid gold,?Swallowing stock and plenishing, gear and graith.?A bull-trout's gape and a salamander thrapple--?A man, and no mistake!
ELIZA:
A man; and so,?She died; and since your mother was carried out,?Hardly a woman's crossed the threshold, and none?Has slept the night at Krindlesyke. Forty-year,?With none but men! They've kept me at it; and now?Jim's bride's to take the work from my hands, and do?Things over that I've done over for forty-year,?Since I took them from your mother--things some woman's?Been doing at Krindlesyke since the first bride?Came home.
EZRA:
Three hundred years since the first herd?Cut peats for that hearth's kindling. Set alow,?Once and for all, it's seen a wheen lives burn?Black-out: and when we, too, lie in the house?That never knew housewarming, 'twill be glowing.?Ay! and some woman's tongue's been going it,?Like a wag-at-the-wa', in this steading, three hundred years, Tick-tocking the same things over.
ELIZA:
Dare say, we'll manage:?A decent lass--though something in her eye,?I couldn't quite make out. Hardly Jim's sort ...?But, who can ever tell why women marry??And Jim ...
EZRA:
Takes after me: and wenches buzz?Round a handsome lad, as wasps about a bunghole.
ELIZA:?Though now they only see skin-deep, those eyes?Will search the marrow. Jim will have his hands full,?Unless she's used to menfolk and their ways,?And past the minding. She'd the quietness?That's a kind of pride, and yet, not haughty--held?Her head like a young blood-mare, that's mettlesome?Without a touch of vice. She'll gan her gait?Through this world, and the next. The bit in her teeth,?There'll be no holding her, though Jim may tug?The snaffle, till he's tewed. I've kenned that look?In women's eyes, and mares', though, with a difference.?And Jim--yet she seemed fond enough of Jim:?His daffing's likely fresh to her, though his jokes?Are last week's butter. Last week's! For forty-year?I've tholed them, all twice-borrowed, from dad and granddad, And rank, when I came to Krindlesyke, to find?Life, the same jobs and same jests over and over.
EZRA:?A notion, that, to hatch, full-fledged and crowing!?You must have brooded, old clocker.
ELIZA:
True enough,?Marriage means little more than a new gown?To some: but Phoebe's not a fancicle tauntril,?With fingers itching to hansel new-fangled flerds.?Why she'd wed ...
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