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):
You found me lost in the dirt: I was with Huff.
You lifted me from there; and there again,
Like a frightened urchin, you're for throwing me.
Shale:
Let it be that! I'm firm
Not to have you about me, when the thing,
Whatever it is, that's standing now behind
The burning of the world, comes out on us.
Huff:
The way men cheat! This windle-stalk was he
Would hold a show of spirit for the world
To study while it ruined!--Make what you please
Of your short wrangle here, but leave me out.
I have my thoughts--O far enough from this.
[Turning away.]
Shale (seizing him):
You shall not put me off. I tell you, Huff,
You are to take her back now.
Huff:
Take her back!
And what has she to do with what I want?
Shale:
Isn't she yours? I must be quit of her;
I'll not be in the risk of keeping her.
She's yours!
Huff:
And what's the good of her now to me?
What's the good of a woman whom I've married?
[During this, WARP the molecatcher has come in.]
Warp:
Shale and Huff at their old pother again!
Merrick:
The molecatcher.
Sollers:
Warp, have you travelled far?
Is it through frenzy and ghastly crowds you've come?
Vine:
Have you got dreadful things to tell us, Warp?
Warp:
Why, no.
But seemingly you'ld have had news for me,
If I'd come later. Is Huff to murder Shale,
Or Shale for murdering Huff? One way or 'tother,
'Tis time 'twas settled surely.--Mrs Huff,
They're neither of them worth you: here's your health.
[Draws and drinks.]
Huff:
Where have you been? Are you not new from folk
That throng together in a pelting horror?
Warp:
Do you think the whole land hearkens to the flurry
Of an old dog biting at a young dog's throat?
Merrick:
No, no! Not their shrill yapping; you've not heard
The world's near to be blasted?
Warp:
No mutter of it.
I am from walking the whole ground I trap,
And there's no likeness of it, but the moles
I've turned up dead and dried out of three counties.
Sollers:
Why, but the fire that's eating the whole earth;
The breath of it is scarlet in the sky!
You must have seen that?
Warp:
But what's taken you?
You are like boys that go to hunt for ghosts,
And turn the scuttle of rats to a roused demon
Crawling to shut the door of the barn they search.
Fire? Yes, fire is playing a pretty game
Yonder, and has its golden fun to itself,
Seemingly.
Sollers:
You don't know what 'tis that burns?
Warp:
Call me a mole and not a molecatcher
If I do not. It is a rick that burns;
And a strange thing I'll count it if the rick
Be not old Huff's.
Sollers:
That flare a fired stack?
Huff:
Only one of my ricks alight? O Glory!
There may be chance for me yet.
Merrick:
Best take the train
To Droitwich, Huff.
Vine (at the door):
It would be like a stack,
But for the star.
Sollers (to WARP):
Yes, as you're so clever,
You can talk down maybe yon brandishing star!
Warp:
O, 'tis the star has flickt your brains? Indeed,
The tail swings long enough to-night for that.
Well, look your best at it; 'tis off again
To go its rounds, they tell me, from now on;
And the next time it swaggers in our sky,
The moles a long while will have tired themselves
Of having their easy joke with me.
[A pause.]
Merrick:
You mean
The flight of the star is from us?
Sollers:
But the world,
The whole world reckons on it battering us!
Warp:
Who told you that?
Sollers:
A dowser.
Merrick:
Where's he gone?
Warp:
A dowser! say a tramping conjurer.
You'll believe aught, if you believe a dowser.
Sollers: