Krindlesyke | Page 6

ELIZA:
Go, daughter, go.
What ill-chance made you come to-day, of all
days?
JUDITH:
Why not to-day? Come, woman, I'd ken that,
Before I go.
I've half a mind to stay.
ELIZA:
Nay, lass, you said ...
JUDITH:
I've said a lot, in my time.
I've changed my mind. 'Twas Jim I came to
see--
Though why, God kens! I liked the singing-hinny:
Happen,
there'll be some more for me, if I stay.
I find I cannot thrive on
nettle-broth:
And it's not every day ...
ELIZA:

Judith, you ken.
JUDITH:
Ken? I ken nothing, but what you tell me.
ELIZA:
Daughter,
I'll tell you all. You'll never have the heart ...
JUDITH:
The heart!
ELIZA:
To stay and shame us, when you ken all.
JUDITH:
All?
ELIZA:
When you talked of weddings, you'd hit the truth:
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. So, we must hide
In the ditch,
as they pass by, if we should chance
To meet them on the road--their

road and ours--
The same road, though we're travelling different ways.

The bride comes home. Brides come home every day.
And you and
I ...
ELIZA:
There's nothing else for it.
JUDITH:
There's nothing else?
ELIZA:
Nay, lass! How could you bide?
They'll soon ... But, you'll not meet
them, if you go ...
JUDITH:
Go, where?
ELIZA:
And how should I ken where you're bound for?
I thought you might
be making home.
JUDITH:
Home--home!
I might be making home? And where's my home--

Ay, and my bairn's home, if it be not here?
ELIZA:
Here? You'd not stay?
JUDITH:
Why not? Have I no right?
ELIZA:
If you'll not go for my sake, go for Jim's.
If you were
fond ...
JUDITH:

And, think you, I'd be here,
If I had not been fond of Jim? And yet,

Why should I spare him? He's not spared me much,
Who gave him all
a woman has to give.
ELIZA:
But, think of her, the bride, and her home-coming.
JUDITH:
I'll go.
ELIZA:
You lose but little: too well I ken
How little--I, who've dwelt this
forty-year
At Krindlesyke.
JUDITH:
Happen you never loved.
ELIZA:
I, too, was young, once, daughter.
JUDITH:
Ay: and yet,
You've never tramped the road I've had to travel.
God
send it stretch not forty-year!
ELIZA:
I've come
That forty-year. We're out on the selfsame road,
The
three of us: but, she's the stoniest bit
To travel still--the bride just
setting out,
And stepping daintily down the lilylea.
We've known
the worst.
JUDITH:
But, she can keep the highway,
While I must slink in the ditch,
among the nettles.
ELIZA:
I've kept the hard road, daughter, forty-year:
The ditch

may be easier going, after all:
Nettles don't sting each other.
JUDITH:
Nay: but I'm not
A ditch-born nettle, but, among the nettles,
Only a
woman, naked to every sting:
And there are slugs and slithery toads
and paddocks
In the ditch-bottom; and their slimy touch
Is worse to
bear than any nettle ...
ELIZA:
Ay--
The pity of it! A maid blooms only once:
And then, that a man
should ruin ... But, you've your bairn: And bairns, while we can hold
them safe in our arms,
And they still need the breast, make up for
much:
For there's a kind of comfort in their clinging,
Though they
only cling till they can stand alone.
But yours is not a son. If I'd only
had
One daughter ...
JUDITH:
Well, you'll have a daughter now.
But we must go our way to--God
kens where!
Before Jim brings the bride home. You've your wish:

Jim brings you home a daughter ...
(_As she speaks, a step is heard, and EZRA BARRASFORD appears in
the doorway. Turning to go, JUDITH meets him. She tries to pass him,
but he clutches her arm; and she stands, dazed, while his fingers grope
over her._)
EZRA:
So Jim's back:
And has slipped by his old dad without a word?
I
caught no footfall, though once I'd hear an adder
Slink through the
bent. I'm deafer than an adder--
Deaf as the stone-wall Johnny
Looney built
Around the frog that worried him with croaking.
I
couldn't hear the curlew--not a note.
But I forget my manners. 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