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: