Deborah - Act 1
Act I A fishing and pilot village on a great estuary. Low cottages on either side of bare ground sloping down to the river. The background is grey water and grey sky, and a low coast on the extreme of sight. On a rough bench beside the open door of one cottage sits moodily Saul, a pilot (L.). A group of men and women (R.) gazing earnestly up the river, among them Deborah, a girl in the early twenties, old Martin, and a woman, thought half-witted by the village (First Woman) .
1ST WOMAN . There is no help for us; we are left alone,
Left in the power of this flying thing
That hates our lives: God was the only one
Who saw it sliding down into our air;
He would not hold it back, but means to let
The wild disease play all it will with our souls.
A MAN . Now hold your crying tongue, daft-witted thing;
We're thrang enough without you clamorous.
DEBORAH . [ turning aside from gazing ]. No sign of the boat, and we're an hour watching.
SAUL . Not yet in sight?
DEBORAH . No.
SAUL . Curse their feeble arms!
And all the time the sickness goes on working!
Let them not bring the doctor here too late
To save my Barnaby; or if they do,
Let them not come within my sight.
DEBORAH . O God,
Dear God, send us some skill to help us soon.
Let them bring back with them cures for my sick darling.
ANOTHER WOMAN [ crouching on the ground ]. They may bring back all the skill of the town,
'Twill be no good to my dears now.
MARTIN . Woman,
You should be with your dead.
THE WOMAN . Don't tell me that.
Ah, but the way they cried all night! And I,
Knowing nothing of this new sudden illness,
What could I do? I'd naught but water for them.
Now I'm like one that comes in mazed from a storm:
And I'm afraid of them, afraid to see
The darling bodies lying there so hurt:
I'ld hear their dreadful pains crying again.
I couldn't bide it, neighbours. Let me stay
And hear you talk.
MARTIN . But you should go to them;
Dead or alive, children need their mother.
THE WOMAN . No, no, I couldn't bide it.
MARTIN . Up with you.
Stay with them till they're earth-fast. In a month
You'll grieve you shirkt seeing them all you might.
THE WOMAN [ suddenly leaping upright ]. Ah! what's that?
MARTIN . What then?
THE WOMAN . I heard one call:
I heard one of my children calling for me.
MARTIN . Poor thing, it's daft.
THE WOMAN . [ crying out ]. Ah!
MARTIN . Why do you hold your breast?
THE WOMAN . A great qualm took me: 'twas as if a hand
Crusht in my heart. Be quiet, let me listen. —
Ah! there again, like being cut inside. —
The sickness! It has got me! Oh good God!
Yes, I will go home to my little ones.
MARTIN . Her children need her.
1ST WOMAN . We've no help at all;
We are left alone, jail'd by river and marsh;
The malady can have all its will with us.
You don't know your plight: but I within me
Can see the thing, a ghost as grey as rain,
Fleeces of shadowy air wrapping his shape,
Tall as the winds standing up over us,
Smiling and idly bandying with his feet
This way and that the writhing bodies like
A man turns rats that have taken the bane he laid.
MARTIN . Ay, do you see that? Do you hear her, friends?
Those were no words of crippled wits, but speech
Out of a spirit full of aching sight.
She's seen our sickness, and the look of it
Is as the wrath of God. Will you cure that?
The plague that's on us is the blame of the Lord;
And all you think of is to get a doctor:
Do you mean him to make friends with God for you?
DEBORAH . What have we done, that anger should be poured
On us more than another town? We were
As good as any simple folk can be;
But all in an evening down it came on us,
This tearing sickness, whether made of some
Bad breath of the marsh, or blight from over sea.
And you say none can put the fever down?
ANOTHER WOMAN . The fool I was to come to such a place,
And to have children in it! A spit of clay,
Hummockt between the river and the marsh,
A fine place for a town it is! A bairn
Would know the health of such a rotten ground.
A MAN . And who can choose to build in a fair health
But the like of nobles? We must pilot and fish,
And when we've done our day upon the water.
We can but crawl above the tide, no more,
Sleep as near our trade as we dare, or else
We shall be better'd in it.
THE WOMAN . Just as well
Be in the tide as on this rick of slime:
It's nigh as wet, nothing but washt-up ooze
And silted umber, mere marsh steadied with clay
To be a kind of mortar, not an earth.
It takes a man to build houses on slime;
And then ask women to come bed with him,
Ay, and to child, in such a filthy place.
THE MAN . Ah, don't deafen us, woman. You came blithe,
I warrant, when Matt whistled you from your Mammy.
You know there's never choosing for us folks.
THE WOMAN . And what's the worth of a young girl's wits?
THE MAN . Why, naught.
Same as an old one's.
MARTIN . That's it, quarrel and snarl,
When half your people are fighting death or dead.
You're all alike for wisdom..
2ND MAN [ to the Woman ]. Why are you fasht?
'Tis we are cruelly teased with waiting so
For medicine, we with children crying in pain, — —
DEBORAH . Or with a sweetheart being dragged away
By this rough dying, — —
3RD MAN . Or with a childing wife
Brought wrongly to her time, — Oh Christ, that I knew
Some ease for her, even an hour's ease!
2ND MAN [ to the Woman ]. But the sickness has lowpt over all your lot.
THE WOMAN . Well and what then? There never was an ailing
With such a sudden stroke as this fiend has,
All in a minute crazing your whole flesh;
And I am flayed with fear till doctor comes
And tells us what the good thing is against it.
I lost my first bairn from your marshy air.
His life was nothing but fever from his start,
And he was gone before they signed his brow
With holy water. But had I known the place,
Would I have come? Hemm'd in behind with quags
That half the year are fens and always quick,
With nothing of a trod way going through;
No skill in all the place, parson or leech;
Five miles of river for a boat to row
To fetch in either. And here's this pestilence
Killing us all and none knows how to cure it.
Maybe the sickness will learn some of you
The kind of place you have.
MARTIN . It's nought to do
With anything here; it's over the whole world.
ANOTHER WOMAN . Look at the sorrow on Saul! How that man loves
His little Barnaby. — O 'twould be cruel
If he should lose him now, with his wife gone.
2ND MAN . No more cruel for him with one child caught,
Than 'tis for me with two in the fearful risk.
Where are those lagging fellows? We should have sent
Someone who had the sickness in his house.
I would have got a doctor, if it meant
Pulling him from the bedside of the Mayor.
DEBORAH . O but my heart is dying in me, waiting;
With such a yearn of love in it, and all
Useless, a failure when 'tis needed most.
For us, with lives so hazardous, to love
Is like a poor girl's game of being a queen.
What good are all these marvellous desires
That seem to hold life in mastery? They are
Dreamt things only. Men make no more of them
Than a hawk would make of a spider's mesh, when life
Is fearfully desiring towards death.
O David, if you leave me, after our love!
You to go beyond the meaning of love,
And I, with your memory at my breast,
To stay behind in all the bitter meaning.
1ST MAN . The boat, the boat!
DEBORAH . O God be praised, they're coming!
SAUL . Have they a doctor?
1ST WOMAN . There is no help for us; we are left alone,
Left in the power of this flying thing
That hates our lives: God was the only one
Who saw it sliding down into our air;
He would not hold it back, but means to let
The wild disease play all it will with our souls.
A MAN . Now hold your crying tongue, daft-witted thing;
We're thrang enough without you clamorous.
DEBORAH . [ turning aside from gazing ]. No sign of the boat, and we're an hour watching.
SAUL . Not yet in sight?
DEBORAH . No.
SAUL . Curse their feeble arms!
And all the time the sickness goes on working!
Let them not bring the doctor here too late
To save my Barnaby; or if they do,
Let them not come within my sight.
DEBORAH . O God,
Dear God, send us some skill to help us soon.
Let them bring back with them cures for my sick darling.
ANOTHER WOMAN [ crouching on the ground ]. They may bring back all the skill of the town,
'Twill be no good to my dears now.
MARTIN . Woman,
You should be with your dead.
THE WOMAN . Don't tell me that.
Ah, but the way they cried all night! And I,
Knowing nothing of this new sudden illness,
What could I do? I'd naught but water for them.
Now I'm like one that comes in mazed from a storm:
And I'm afraid of them, afraid to see
The darling bodies lying there so hurt:
I'ld hear their dreadful pains crying again.
I couldn't bide it, neighbours. Let me stay
And hear you talk.
MARTIN . But you should go to them;
Dead or alive, children need their mother.
THE WOMAN . No, no, I couldn't bide it.
MARTIN . Up with you.
Stay with them till they're earth-fast. In a month
You'll grieve you shirkt seeing them all you might.
THE WOMAN [ suddenly leaping upright ]. Ah! what's that?
MARTIN . What then?
THE WOMAN . I heard one call:
I heard one of my children calling for me.
MARTIN . Poor thing, it's daft.
THE WOMAN . [ crying out ]. Ah!
MARTIN . Why do you hold your breast?
THE WOMAN . A great qualm took me: 'twas as if a hand
Crusht in my heart. Be quiet, let me listen. —
Ah! there again, like being cut inside. —
The sickness! It has got me! Oh good God!
Yes, I will go home to my little ones.
MARTIN . Her children need her.
1ST WOMAN . We've no help at all;
We are left alone, jail'd by river and marsh;
The malady can have all its will with us.
You don't know your plight: but I within me
Can see the thing, a ghost as grey as rain,
Fleeces of shadowy air wrapping his shape,
Tall as the winds standing up over us,
Smiling and idly bandying with his feet
This way and that the writhing bodies like
A man turns rats that have taken the bane he laid.
MARTIN . Ay, do you see that? Do you hear her, friends?
Those were no words of crippled wits, but speech
Out of a spirit full of aching sight.
She's seen our sickness, and the look of it
Is as the wrath of God. Will you cure that?
The plague that's on us is the blame of the Lord;
And all you think of is to get a doctor:
Do you mean him to make friends with God for you?
DEBORAH . What have we done, that anger should be poured
On us more than another town? We were
As good as any simple folk can be;
But all in an evening down it came on us,
This tearing sickness, whether made of some
Bad breath of the marsh, or blight from over sea.
And you say none can put the fever down?
ANOTHER WOMAN . The fool I was to come to such a place,
And to have children in it! A spit of clay,
Hummockt between the river and the marsh,
A fine place for a town it is! A bairn
Would know the health of such a rotten ground.
A MAN . And who can choose to build in a fair health
But the like of nobles? We must pilot and fish,
And when we've done our day upon the water.
We can but crawl above the tide, no more,
Sleep as near our trade as we dare, or else
We shall be better'd in it.
THE WOMAN . Just as well
Be in the tide as on this rick of slime:
It's nigh as wet, nothing but washt-up ooze
And silted umber, mere marsh steadied with clay
To be a kind of mortar, not an earth.
It takes a man to build houses on slime;
And then ask women to come bed with him,
Ay, and to child, in such a filthy place.
THE MAN . Ah, don't deafen us, woman. You came blithe,
I warrant, when Matt whistled you from your Mammy.
You know there's never choosing for us folks.
THE WOMAN . And what's the worth of a young girl's wits?
THE MAN . Why, naught.
Same as an old one's.
MARTIN . That's it, quarrel and snarl,
When half your people are fighting death or dead.
You're all alike for wisdom..
2ND MAN [ to the Woman ]. Why are you fasht?
'Tis we are cruelly teased with waiting so
For medicine, we with children crying in pain, — —
DEBORAH . Or with a sweetheart being dragged away
By this rough dying, — —
3RD MAN . Or with a childing wife
Brought wrongly to her time, — Oh Christ, that I knew
Some ease for her, even an hour's ease!
2ND MAN [ to the Woman ]. But the sickness has lowpt over all your lot.
THE WOMAN . Well and what then? There never was an ailing
With such a sudden stroke as this fiend has,
All in a minute crazing your whole flesh;
And I am flayed with fear till doctor comes
And tells us what the good thing is against it.
I lost my first bairn from your marshy air.
His life was nothing but fever from his start,
And he was gone before they signed his brow
With holy water. But had I known the place,
Would I have come? Hemm'd in behind with quags
That half the year are fens and always quick,
With nothing of a trod way going through;
No skill in all the place, parson or leech;
Five miles of river for a boat to row
To fetch in either. And here's this pestilence
Killing us all and none knows how to cure it.
Maybe the sickness will learn some of you
The kind of place you have.
MARTIN . It's nought to do
With anything here; it's over the whole world.
ANOTHER WOMAN . Look at the sorrow on Saul! How that man loves
His little Barnaby. — O 'twould be cruel
If he should lose him now, with his wife gone.
2ND MAN . No more cruel for him with one child caught,
Than 'tis for me with two in the fearful risk.
Where are those lagging fellows? We should have sent
Someone who had the sickness in his house.
I would have got a doctor, if it meant
Pulling him from the bedside of the Mayor.
DEBORAH . O but my heart is dying in me, waiting;
With such a yearn of love in it, and all
Useless, a failure when 'tis needed most.
For us, with lives so hazardous, to love
Is like a poor girl's game of being a queen.
What good are all these marvellous desires
That seem to hold life in mastery? They are
Dreamt things only. Men make no more of them
Than a hawk would make of a spider's mesh, when life
Is fearfully desiring towards death.
O David, if you leave me, after our love!
You to go beyond the meaning of love,
And I, with your memory at my breast,
To stay behind in all the bitter meaning.
1ST MAN . The boat, the boat!
DEBORAH . O God be praised, they're coming!
SAUL . Have they a doctor?
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