Touch and Go Part 16

ANABEL. How beautiful this old park is!

GERALD. Yes, it is beautiful--seems so far away from everywhere, if one doesn't remember that the hall is turned into offices.--No one has lived here since I was a little boy. I remember going to a Christmas party at the Walsalls'.

ANABEL. Has it been shut up so long?

GERALD. The Walsalls didn't like it--too near the ugliness. They were county, you know--we never were: father never gave mother a chance, there. And besides, the place is damp, cellars full of water.

ANABEL. Even now?

GERALD. No, not now--they've been drained. But the place would be too damp for a dwelling-house. It's all right as offices. They burn enormous fires. The rooms are quite charming. This is what happens to the stately homes of England--they buzz with inky clerks, or their equivalent.

Stateliness is on its last legs.

ANABEL. Yes, it grieves me--though I should be bored if I had to be stately, I think.--Isn't it beautiful in this light, like an eighteenth-century aquatint? I'm sure no age was as ugly as this, since the world began.

GERALD. For pure ugliness, certainly not. And I believe none has been so filthy to live in.--Let us sit down a minute, shall we? and watch the rooks fly home. It always stirs sad, sentimental feelings in me.

ANABEL. So it does in me.--Listen! one can hear the coal-carts on the road--and the brook--and the dull noise of the town--and the beating of New London pit--and voices--and the rooks--and yet it is so still. We seem so still here, don't we?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Don't you think we've been wrong?

GERALD. How?

ANABEL. In the way we've lived--and the way we've loved.

GERALD. It hasn't been heaven, has it? Yet I don't know that we've been wrong, Anabel. We had it to go through.

ANABEL. Perhaps.--And, yes, we've been wrong, too.

GERALD. Probably. Only, I don't feel it like that.

ANABEL. Then I think you ought. You ought to feel you've been wrong.

GERALD. Yes, probably. Only, I don't. I can't help it. I think we've gone the way we had to go, following our own natures.

ANABEL. And where has it landed us?

GERALD. Here.

ANABEL. And where is that?

GERALD. Just on this bench in the park, looking at the evening.

ANABEL. But what next?

GERALD. G.o.d knows! Why trouble?

ANABEL. One must trouble. I want to feel sure.

GERALD. What of?

ANABEL. Of you--and of myself.

GERALD. Then BE sure.

ANABEL. But I can't. Think of the past--what it's been.

GERALD. This isn't the past.

ANABEL. But what is it? Is there anything sure in it? Is there any real happiness?

GERALD. Why not?

ANABEL. But how can you ask? Think of what our life has been.

GERALD. I don't want to.

ANABEL. No, you don't. But what DO you want?

GERALD. I'm all right, you know, sitting here like this.

ANABEL. But one can't sit here forever, can one?

GERALD. I don't want to.

ANABEL. And what will you do when we leave here?

GERALD. G.o.d knows! Don't worry me. Be still a bit.

ANABEL. But I'M worried. You don't love me.

GERALD. I won't argue it.

ANABEL. And I'm not happy.

GERALD. Why not, Anabel?

ANABEL. Because you don't love me--and I can't forget.

GERALD. I do love you--and to-night I've forgotten.

ANABEL. Then make me forget, too. Make me happy.

GERALD. I CAN'T make you--and you know it.

ANABEL. Yes, you can. It's your business to make me happy. I've made you happy.