Part 10 (1/2)

You'll ken the road he'd take, the fox's track-- A thief to catch a thief! He's lifted all: But, if you cop him, I'll give you half, although 'Twill scarcely leave enough to bury us With decency, when we have starved to death, Your mother and I. Run, lad: there's fifty-sovereign!

And mind you clout and clapperclaw the cull: Spanghew his jacket, when you've riped his pockets-- The scurvy scrunt!

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 pa.s.sing, 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!

Words tumbling from her lips in a witless jumble.

Contrary, to the last, she wouldn't answer: But crept away, like a wounded pheasant, to die Alone. She's gone before me, after all-- And she, so hale; while I was crutched and crippled.

I haven't looked on her face for eleven-year: But she was bonnie, when I saw her first, That morning at the fair--so fresh and pink.

BELL: She must have died alone. It's an ill thing To die alone, folk say; but I don't know.

She'd hardly die more lonely than she lived: For every woman's lonely in her heart.

I never looked on a lonelier face.

PETER: Come, Bell: We'd best be making tracks: there's nothing here: So let's be going.

BELL: Going, Peter, where?

PETER: There's nothing to bide here for: we're too late.

Jim's stolen a march on us: there's no loot left.

BELL: And you would leave a woman, lying dead; And an old blind cripple who cannot do a hand's-turn, With no one to look after them--and they, Your father and mother?

PETER: Little enough I owe them: What can we do for them, anyway? We can't Bring back the dead to life: and, sooner or later, Someone will come from Rawridge to see to the sheep: And dad won't hurt, meanwhile: he's gey and tough.

BELL: And you would leave your mother, lying dead, With none but strangers' hands to lay her out-- No soul of her kin to tend her at the last?

(_She goes to the dresser and looks in the drawers, taking out an ap.r.o.n and tying it round her waist._)

EZRA: I never guessed she'd go, and leave me alone.

How did she think I could get along without her?

She kenned I could do nothing for myself: And yet she's left me alone, to starve to death-- Just sit in my chair, and starve. It wasn't like her.

And the breath's scarce out of her body, before the place Is overrun with a plague of thieving rats.

They'll eat me out of house and home: my G.o.d, I've come to this--an old blind crippled dobby, Forsaken of wife and bairns; and left to die-- To be nibbled to death by rats: de'il scart the vermin!

BELL: Time's drawn your teeth, but hasn't dulled your tongue's edge.