Part 9
Look at him there! This is the man I told you of when you Were talking small of sin. You made it out, Did you, a fool's mere nasty game, like dogs That snuggle in muck, and grin and roll themselves With snorting pleasure? Ah, but you are wrong. 'Tis something that goes thrusting dreadfully Its wilful bravery of evil against The worth and right of goodness in the world: Ay, do you see how his face still brags at me? And long it has been, the time he's had to walk Lording about me with his wickedness. Do you know what he dared? I had a wife, A flighty pretty linnet-headed girl, But mine: he practised on her with his eyes; He knew of luring glances, and she went After his calling lust: and all since then They've lived together, fleering in my face, Pleased in sight of the windows of my house With doing wrong, and making my disgrace. O but wait here with me; wait till your news Is not to be mistaken, for the way The earth buckles and singes like hot boards: You'll surely see how dreadful sin can be Then, when you mark these two running about, With raging fear for what they did against me Buzzing close to their souls, stinging their hearts, And they like scampering beasts when clegs are fierce, Or flinging themselves low as the ground to writhe, Their arms hugging their desperate heads. And then You'll see what 'tis to be an upright man, Who keeps a patient anger for his wrongs Thinking of judgment coming--you will see that When you mark how my looks hunt these wretches, And smile upon their groans and posturing anguish. O watch how calm I'll be, when the blazing air Judges their wickedness; you watch me then Looking delighted, like a nobleman Who sees his horse winning an easy race.
Merrick:
You fool, Huff, you believe it now!
Huff:
You fool, Merrick, how should I not believe a thing That calls aloud on my mind and spirit, and they Answer to it like starving conquering soldiers Told to break out and loot?
Shale:
You vile old wasp!
Sollers:
We've talkt enough: let's all go home and sleep; There might be a fiend in the air about us, one Who pours his will into our minds to see How we can frighten one another.
Huff:
A fiend! Shale will soon have the flapping wings of a fiend, And flaming wings, beating about his head. There'll be no air for Shale, very soon now, But the breathing of a fiend: the star's coming! The star that breathes a horrible fury of fire Like glaring fog into the empty night; And in the gust of its wrath the world will soon Shrivel and spin like paper in a furnace. I knew they both would have to pay me at last With sight of their damned souls for all my wrong!
Shale:
Somebody stop his gab.
Merrick (seizing the DOWSER and shaking him):
Is it the truth? Is it the truth we're in the way of the star?
Sollers:
O let us go home; let us go home and sleep!
[A crowd, of men and women burst in and shout confusedly.]
1. Look out for the star! 2. 'Tis moving, moving. 3. Grows as you stare at it. 4. Bigger than ever. 1. Down it comes with a diving pounce, As though it had lookt for us and at last found us. 2. O so near and coming so quick! 3. And how the burning hairs of its tail Do seem surely to quiver for speed. 4. We saw its great tail twitch behind it. 'Tis come so near, so gleaming near. 1. The tail is wagging! 2. Come out and see! 3. The star is wagging its tail and eyeing us-- 4. Like a cat huncht to leap on a bird.
Merrick:
Out of my way and let me see for myself.
[They all begin to hustle out: HUFF speaks in midst of the turmoil.]
Huff:
Ay, now begins the just man's reward; And hatred of the evil thing Now is to be satisfied. Wrong ventured out against me and braved: And I'll be glad to see all breathing pleasure Burn as foolishly to naught As a moth in candle flame, If I but have my will to watch over those Who injured me bawling hoarse heartless fear.
[They are all gone but HUFF, SHALE and the DOWSER.]
Shale:
As for you, let you and the women make Your howling scare of this; I'll stand and laugh. But if it truly were the End of the World, I'ld be the man to face it out, not you: I who have let life go delighted through me, Not you, who've sulkt away your chance of life In mumping about being paid for goodness.
[Going.]
Huff (after him):
You wait, you wait!
[He follows the rest.]
Dowser (alone):
Naught but a plague of flies! I cannot do with noises, and light fools Terrified round me; I must go out and think Where there is quiet and no one near. O, think! Life that has done such wonders with its thinking, And never daunted in imagining; That has put on the sun and the shining night, The flowering of the earth and tides of the sea, And irresistible rage of fate itself, All these as garments for its spirit's journey-- O now this life, in the brute chance of things, Murder'd, uselessly murder'd! And naught else For ever but senseless rounds of hurrying motion That cannot glory in itself. O no! I will not think of that; I'll blind my brain With fancying the splendours of destruction; When like a burr in the star's fiery mane The crackling earth is caught and rusht along, The forests on the mountains blazing so, That from the rocks of ore beneath them come White-hot rivers of smelted metal pouring Across the plains to roar into the sea ...
[The curtain is lowered for a few moments only.]
## ACT II
[As before, a little while after. The room is empty when the curtain goes up. SOLLERS runs in and paces about, but stops short when he catches sight of a pot dog on the mantelpiece.]
Sollers:
The pace it is coming down!--What to do now?-- My brain has stopt: it's like a clock that's fallen Out of a window and broke all its cogs.--Where's That old cider, Vine would have us pay Twopence a glass for? Let's try how it smells: Old Foxwhelp, and a humming stingo it is! (To the pot dog) Hullo, you! What are you grinning at?-- I know! There'll be no score against me for this drink! O that score! I've drunk it down for a week With every gulp of cider, and every gulp Was half the beauty it should have been, the score So scratcht my swallowing throat, like a wasp in the drink! And I need never have heeded it!-- Old grinning dog! You've seen me happy here; And now, all's done! But do you know this too, That I can break you now, and never called To pay for you? [Throwing the dog on the floor] I shall be savage soon! We're leaving all this!--O, and it was so pleasant Here, in here, of an evening.----Smash! [He sweeps a lot of crockery on to the floor.] It's all no good! Let's make a wreck of it all! [Picking up a chair and swinging it.] Damn me! Now I'm forgetting to drink, and soon 'Twill be too late. Where's there a mug not shivered?
[He goes to draw himself cider. MERRICK rushes in.]
Merrick:
You at the barrels too? Out of the road!
[He pushes SOLLERS away and spills his mug.]
Sollers:
Go and kick out of doors, you black donkey.
Merrick:
Let me come at the vessel, will you?
[They wrestle savagely.]
Sollers:
Keep off; I'm the first here. Lap what you've spilt of mine.
Merrick:
You with your chiselling and screw-driving, Your wooden work, you bidding me, the man Who hammers a meaning into red hot iron?
[VINE comes in slowly. He is weeping; the two wrestlers stop and stare at him, as he sits down, and holds his head in his hands, sobbing.]
Vine:
O this is a cruel affair!
Sollers:
Here's Vine crying!
Vine:
I've seen the moon.
Merrick:
The moon? 'Tisn't the moon That's tumbling on us, but yon raging star. What notion now is clotted in your head?
Vine:
I've seen the moon; it has nigh broke my heart.
Sollers:
Not the moon too jumping out of her ways?
Vine:
No, no;--but going quietly and shining, Pushing away a flimsy gentle cloud That would drift smoky round her, fending it off With steady rounds of blue and yellow light. It was not much to see. She was no more Than a curved bit of silver rind. But I Never before so noted her--
Sollers:
What he said, The dowser!
Merrick:
Ay, about his yellowhammers.
Sollers:
And there's a kind of stifle in the air Already!
Merrick:
It seems to me, my breathing goes All hot down my windpipe, hot as cider Mulled and steaming travels down my swallow.
Sollers:
And a queer racing through my ears of blood.
Merrick:
I wonder, is the star come closer still?
Sollers:
O, close, I know, and viciously heading down.
Vine:
She was so silver! and the sun had left A kind of tawny red, a dust of fine Thin light upon the blue where she was lying,-- Just a curled paring of the moon, amid The faint grey cloud that set the gleaming wheel Around the tilted slip of shining silver. O it did seem to me so safe and homely, The moon quietly going about the earth; It's a rare place we have to live in, here; And life is such a comfortable thing-- And what's the sense of it all? Naught but to make Cruel as may be the slaughtering of it.
[He breaks down again.]
Sollers:
It heats my mind!
[He begins to walk up and down desperately.]
Merrick:
'Twas bound to come sometime, Bound to come, I suppose. 'Tis a poor thing For us, to fall plumb in the chance of it; But, now or another time, 'twas bound to be.-- I have been thinking back. When I was a lad I was delighted with my life: there seemed Naught but things to enjoy. Say we were bathing: There'ld be the cool smell of the water, and cool The splashing under the trees: but I did loathe The sinking mud slithering round my feet, And I did love to loathe it so! And then We'ld troop to kill a wasp's nest; and for sure I would be stung; and if I liked the dusk And singing and the game of it all, I loved The smart of the stings, and fleeing the buzzing furies. And sometimes I'ld be looking at myself Making so much of everything; there'ld seem A part of me speaking about myself: 'You know, this is much more than being happy. 'Tis hunger of some power in you, that lives On your heart's welcome for all sorts of luck, But always looks beyond you for its meaning.' And that's the way the world's kept going on, I believe now. Misery and delight Have both had liking welcome from it, both Have made the world keen to be glad and sorry. For why? It felt the living power thrive The more it made everything, good and bad, Its own belonging, forged to its own affair,-- The living power that would do wonders some day. I don't know if you take me?
Sollers:
I do, fine; I've felt the very thought go through my mind When I was at my wains; though 'twas a thing Of such a flight I could not read its colour.-- Why was I like a man sworn to a thing Working to have my wains in every curve, Ay, every tenon, right and as they should be? Not for myself, not even for those wains: But to keep in me living at its best The skill that must go forward and shape the world, Helping it on to make some masterpiece.
Merrick:
And never was there aught to come of it! The world was always looking to use its life In some great handsome way at last. And now-- We are just fooled. There never was any good In the world going on or being at all. The fine things life has plotted to do are worth A rotten toadstool kickt to flying bits. End of the World? Ay, and the end of a joke.
Vine:
Well, Huff's the man for this turn.
Merrick:
Ay, the good man! He could but grunt when times were pleasant; now There's misery enough to make him trumpet. And yet, by God, he shan't come blowing his horn Over my misery! We are just fooled, did I say?--We fooled ourselves, Looking for worth in what was still to come; And now there's a stop to our innings. Well, that's fair: I've been a living man, and might have been Nothing at all! I've had the world about me, And felt it as my own concern. What else Should I be crying for? I've had my turn. The world may be for the sake of naught at last, But it has been for my sake: I've had that.
[He sits again, and broods.]
Sollers:
I can't stay here. I must be where my sight May silence with its business all my thinking-- Though it will be the star plunged down so close It puffs its flaming vengeance in my face.
[He goes.]
Vine:
I wish there were someone who had done me wrong, Like Huff with his wife and Shale; I wish there were Somebody I would like to see go crazed With staring fright. I'ld have my pleasure then Of living on into the End of the World. But there is no one at all for me, no one Now my poor wife is gone.
Merrick:
Why, what did she To harm you?
Vine:
Didn't she marry me?--It's true She made it come all right. She died at last. Besides, it would be wasting wishes on her, To be in hopes of her weeping at this. She'ld have her hands on her hips and her tongue jumping As nimble as a stoat, delighting round The way the world's to be terrible and tormented.-- Ay, but I'll have a thing to tell her now When she begins to ask the news! I'll say 'You've misst such a show as never was nor will be, A roaring great affair of death and ruin; And I was there--the world smasht to sparkles!' O, I can see her vext at that!
[MERRICK has been sunk in thought during this, but VINE seems to brighten at his notion, and speaks quite cheerfully to HUFF, who now comes in, looking mopish, and sits down.]
Vine:
We've all been envying you, Huff. You're well off, You with your goodness and your enemies Showing you how to relish it with their terror. When do you mean the gibing is to start?
Huff:
There's time enough.
Vine:
O, do they still hold out? If they should be for spiting you to the last! You'ld best keep on at them: think out a list Of frantic things for them to do, when air Is scorching smother and the sin they did Frightens their hearts. You'll shout them into fear, I undertake, if you find breath enough.
Huff:
You have the breath. What's all your pester for? You leave me be.
Vine:
Why, you're to do for me What I can't do myself.--And yet it's hard To make out where Shale hurt you. What's the sum Of all he did to you? Got you quit of marriage Without the upset of a funeral.
Huff:
Why need you blurt your rambling mind at me? Let me bide quiet in my thought awhile, And it's a little while we have for thought.
Merrick:
I know your thought. Paddling round and around, Like a squirrel working in a spinning cage With his neck stretcht to have his chin poke up, And silly feet busy and always going; Paddling round the story of your good life, Your small good life, and how the decent men Have jeered at your wry antic.
Huff:
My good life! And what good has my goodness been to me? You show me that! Somebody show me that! A caterpillar munching a cabbage-heart, Always drudging further and further from The sounds and lights of the world, never abroad Nor flying free in warmth and air sweet-smelling: A crawling caterpillar, eating his life In a deaf dark--that's my gain of goodness! And it's too late to hatch out now!-- I can but fancy what I might have been; I scarce know how to sin!--But I believe A long while back I did come near to it.
Merrick:
Well done!--O but I should have guesst all this!
Huff:
I was in Droitwich; and the sight of the place Is where they cook the brine: a long dark shed, Hot as an oven, full of a grey steam And ruddy light that leaks out of the furnace; And stirring the troughs, ladling the brine that boils As thick as treacle, a double standing row, Women--boldly talking in wicked jokes All day long. I went to see 'em. It was A wonderful rousing sight. Not one of them Was really wearing clothes: half of a sack Pinned in an apron was enough for most, And here and there might be a petticoat; But nothing in the way of bodices.-- O, they knew words to shame a carter's face!
Merrick:
This is the thought you would be quiet in!
Huff:
Where else can I be quiet? Now there's an end Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind, When I stood in the midst of those bare women, All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me: Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell-mell, Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. I beat them down; and now I cannot tell For certain what they were. I can call up Naught venturesome and darting like their style; Very tame braveries now!--O Shale's the man To smile upon the End of the World; 'tis Shale Has lived the bold stiff fashion, and filled himself With thinking pride in what a man may do.-- I wish I had seen those women more than once!
Vine:
Well, here's an upside down! This is old Huff! What have you been in your heart all these years? The man you were or the new man you are?
Huff:
Just a dead flesh!
Merrick:
Nay, Huff the good man at least Was something alive, though snarling like trapt vermin. But this? What's this for the figure of a man? 'Tis a boy's smutty picture on a wall.
Huff:
I was alive, was I? Like a blind bird That flies and cannot see the flight it takes, Feeling it with mere rowing of its wings. But Shale--he's had a stirring sense of what he is.
[Shouting outside. Then SOLLERS walks in again, very quiet and steady. He stands in the middle, looking down on the floor.]
Vine:
What do they holla for there?
Sollers:
The earth.
Merrick:
The earth?
Sollers:
The earth's afire.
Huff:
The earth blazing already?
[Shouts again.]
O, not so soon as this?
Vine:
What sort of a fire?
Sollers:
The earth has caught the heat of the star, you fool.
Merrick:
I know: there's come some dazzle in your eyes From facing to the star; a lamp would do it.
Huff:
It will be that. Your sight, being so strained, Is flashing of itself.
Sollers:
Say what you like. There's a red flare out of the land beyond Looking over the hills into our valley. The thing's begun, 'tis certain. Go and see.
Vine:
I won't see that. I will stay here.
Sollers:
Ay, creep Into your oven. You'll be cooler there.-- O my God, we'll all be coals in an hour!
[Shouts again.]
Huff:
And I have naught to stand in my heart upright, And vow it made my living time worth more Than if my time had been death in a grave!
[Several persons run in.]
The Crowd:
1. The river's the place! 2. The only safe place now! 3. Best all charge down to the river! 4. For there's a blaze, A travelling blaze comes racing along the earth.
Sollers:
'Tis true. The air's red-hot above the hills.
The Crowd:
1. Ay, but the burning now crests the hill-tops In quiver of yellow flame. 2. And a great smoke Waving and tumbling upward. 3. The river now! 4. The only place we have, not to be roasted!
Merrick:
And what will make us water-rats or otters, To keep our breath still living through a dive That lasts until the earth's burnt out? Or how Would that trick serve, when we stand up to gasp, And find the star waiting for our plunged heads To knock them into pummy?
Vine:
Scarce more dazed I'ld be with that than now. I shall be bound, When I'm to give my wife the tale of it all, To be devising: more of this to-do My mind won't carry.
Huff:
O ashamed I am, Ashamed!--It needn't have been downright feats, Such as the braving men, the like of Shale, Do easily, and smile, keeping them up. If I could look back to one manful hour Of romping in the face of all my goodness!--
[SHALE comes in, dragging Mrs HUFF by the hand.]
Shale:
Huff! Where's Huff?--Huff, you must take her back! You'll take her back? She's yours: I give her up.
Merrick:
Belike here's something bold again.
Mrs Huff (to SHALE):
Once more, Listen.
Shale:
I will not listen. There's no time For aught but giving you back where you belong; And that's with you, Huff. Take her.
Huff:
Here is depth I cannot see to. Is it your last fling?-- The dolt I am in these things!--What's this way You've found of living wickedly to the end?
Shale:
Scorn as you please, but take her back, man, take her.
Huff:
But she's my wife! Take her back now? What for?
Mrs Huff:
What for? Have you not known of thieves that throw Their robbery down, soon as they hear a step Sounding behind them on the road, and run A long way off, and pull an honest face? Ay, see Shale's eyes practising baby-looks! He never stole, not he!
Shale:
Don't hear her talk.
Mrs Huff:
But he was a talker once! Love was the thing; And love, he swore, would make the wrong go right, And Huff was a kind of devil--and that's true----
Huff:
What? I've been devilish and never knew?
Mrs Huff:
The devil in the world that hates all love. But Shale said, he'd the love in him would hold If the world's frame and the fate of men were crackt.
Shale:
What I said! Whoever thought the world was going to crack?
Mrs Huff:
And now he hears someone move behind him.-- They'll say, perhaps, 'You stole this!'--Down it goes, Thrown to the dirty road--thrown to Huff!
Shale:
Yes, to the owner.
Mrs Huff:
It was not such brave thieving. You did not take me from my owner, Shale: There's an old robber will do that some day, Not you.
Vine:
Were you thinking of me then, missis?
Mrs Huff (still to SHALE):