HUFF (seizing the DOWSER and bringing him up in front of SHALE):
Look at him there!This is the man I told you of when youWere talking small of sin. You made it out,Did you, a fool's mere nasty game, like dogsThat snuggle in muck, and grin and roll themselvesWith snorting pleasure? Ah, but you are wrong.'Tis something that goes thrusting dreadfullyIts wilful bravery of evil againstThe 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 walkLording 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 wentAfter his calling lust: and all since thenThey've lived together, fleering in my face,Pleased in sight of the windows of my houseWith doing wrong, and making my disgrace.O but wait here with me; wait till your newsIs not to be mistaken, for the wayThe earth buckles and singes like hot boards:You'll surely see how dreadful sin can beThen, when you mark these two running about,With raging fear for what they did against meBuzzing 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 thenYou'll see what 'tis to be an upright man,Who keeps a patient anger for his wrongsThinking of judgment coming — you will see thatWhen 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 airJudges their wickedness; you watch me thenLooking delighted, like a noblemanWho 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 thingThat calls aloud on my mind and spirit, and theyAnswer to it like starving conquering soldiersTold 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, oneWho pours his will into our minds to seeHow 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 fireLike glaring fog into the empty night;And in the gust of its wrath the world will soonShrivel and spin like paper in a furnace.I knew they both would have to pay me at lastWith 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 tailDo 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 thingNow is to be satisfied.Wrong ventured out against me and braved:And I'll be glad to see all breathing pleasureBurn as foolishly to naughtAs a moth in candle flame,If I but have my will to watch over thoseWho 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 makeYour 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 lifeIn 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 foolsTerrified round me; I must go out and thinkWhere 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 elseFor ever but senseless rounds of hurrying motionThat cannot glory in itself. O no!I will not think of that; I'll blind my brainWith fancying the splendours of destruction;When like a burr in the star's fiery maneThe crackling earth is caught and rusht along,The forests on the mountains blazing so,That from the rocks of ore beneath them comeWhite-hot rivers of smelted metal pouringAcross 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 fallenOut of a window and broke all its cogs. — Where'sThat old cider, Vine would have us payTwopence 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 weekWith every gulp of cider, and every gulpWas half the beauty it should have been, the scoreSo 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 calledTo pay for you?(Throwing the dog on the floor)I shall be savage soon!We're leaving all this! — O, and it was so pleasantHere, 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 manWho 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 moonThat'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 cloudThat would drift smoky round her, fending it offWith steady rounds of blue and yellow light.It was not much to see. She was no moreThan a curved bit of silver rind. But INever 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 airAlready!
Merrick:
It seems to me, my breathing goesAll hot down my windpipe, hot as ciderMulled 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 leftA kind of tawny red, a dust of fineThin light upon the blue where she was lying, —Just a curled paring of the moon, amidThe faint grey cloud that set the gleaming wheelAround 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 makeCruel 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 thingFor 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 ladI was delighted with my life: there seemedNaught but things to enjoy. Say we were bathing:There'ld be the cool smell of the water, and coolThe splashing under the trees: but I did loatheThe sinking mud slithering round my feet,And I did love to loathe it so! And thenWe'ld troop to kill a wasp's nest; and for sureI would be stung; and if I liked the duskAnd singing and the game of it all, I lovedThe smart of the stings, and fleeing the buzzing furies.And sometimes I'ld be looking at myselfMaking so much of everything; there'ld seemA part of me speaking about myself:'You know, this is much more than being happy.'Tis hunger of some power in you, that livesOn 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 delightHave both had liking welcome from it, bothHave made the world keen to be glad and sorry.For why? It felt the living power thriveThe 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 mindWhen I was at my wains; though 'twas a thingOf such a flight I could not read its colour. —Why was I like a man sworn to a thingWorking 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 bestThe 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 lifeIn some great handsome way at last. And now —We are just fooled. There never was any goodIn the world going on or being at all.The fine things life has plotted to do are worthA rotten toadstool kickt to flying bits.End of the World? Ay, and the end of a joke.
Vine:
ell, Huff's the man for this turn.
Merrick:
Ay, the good man!He could but grunt when times were pleasant; nowThere's misery enough to make him trumpet.And yet, by God, he shan't come blowing his hornOver 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 beenNothing at all! I've had the world about me,And felt it as my own concern. What elseShould 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 sightMay silence with its business all my thinking —Though it will be the star plunged down so closeIt 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 wereSomebody I would like to see go crazedWith staring fright. I'ld have my pleasure thenOf living on into the End of the World.But there is no one at all for me, no oneNow my poor wife is gone.
Merrick:
Why, what did sheTo harm you?
Vine:
Didn't she marry me? — It's trueShe 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 jumpingAs nimble as a stoat, delighting roundThe way the world's to be terrible and tormented. —Ay, but I'll have a thing to tell her nowWhen 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 enemiesShowing 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 listOf frantic things for them to do, when airIs scorching smother and the sin they didFrightens 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 meWhat I can't do myself. — And yet it's hardTo make out where Shale hurt you. What's the sumOf all he did to you? Got you quit of marriageWithout 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 cageWith 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 menHave 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 fromThe sounds and lights of the world, never abroadNor flying free in warmth and air sweet-smelling:A crawling caterpillar, eating his lifeIn 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 believeA 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 placeIs where they cook the brine: a long dark shed,Hot as an oven, full of a grey steamAnd ruddy light that leaks out of the furnace;And stirring the troughs, ladling the brine that boilsAs thick as treacle, a double standing row,Women — boldly talking in wicked jokesAll day long. I went to see 'em. It wasA wonderful rousing sight. Not one of themWas really wearing clothes: half of a sackPinned 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 endOf daring, 'tis the one place my life has madeWhere 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 tellFor certain what they were. I can call upNaught venturesome and darting like their style;Very tame braveries now! — O Shale's the manTo smile upon the End of the World; 'tis ShaleHas lived the bold stiff fashion, and filled himselfWith 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 leastWas 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 birdThat 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 eyesFrom 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 beyondLooking 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, creepInto 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 moreThan 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-topsIn quiver of yellow flame.2. And a great smokeWaving 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 diveThat lasts until the earth's burnt out? Or howWould that trick serve, when we stand up to gasp,And find the star waiting for our plunged headsTo knock them into pummy?
Vine:
Scarce more dazedI'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-doMy 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 hourOf 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 timeFor aught but giving you back where you belong;And that's with you, Huff. Take her.
Huff:
Here is depthI cannot see to. Is it your last fling? —The dolt I am in these things! — What's this wayYou'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 throwTheir robbery down, soon as they hear a stepSounding behind them on the road, and runA 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?