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 ap.r.o.n 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 s.m.u.tty 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: