Touch and Go Part 17

GERALD. You want to make me unhappy.

ANABEL. I DO think you're the last word in selfishness. If I say I can't forget, you merely say, "I'VE forgotten"; and if I say I'm unhappy, all YOU can answer is that I want to make YOU unhappy. I don't in the least.

I want to be happy myself. But you don't help me.

GERALD. There is no help for it, you see. If you WERE happy with me here you'd be happy. As you aren't, nothing will make you--not genuinely.

ANABEL. And that's all you care.

GERALD. No--I wish we could both be happy at the same moment. But apparently we can't.

ANABEL. And why not?--Because you're selfish, and think of nothing but yourself and your own feelings.

GERALD. If it is so, it is so.

ANABEL. Then we shall never be happy.

GERALD. Then we sha'n't. (A pause.)

ANABEL. Then what are we going to do?

GERALD. Do?

ANABEL. Do you want me to be with you?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Are you sure?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Then why don't you want me to be happy?

GERALD. If you'd only BE happy, here and now---

ANABEL. How can I?

GERALD. How can't you?--You've got a devil inside you.

ANABEL. Then make me not have a devil.

GERALD. I've know you long enough--and known myself long enough--to know I can make you nothing at all, Anabel: neither can you make me. If the happiness isn't there--well, we shall have to wait for it, like a dispensation. It probably means we shall have to hate each other a little more.--I suppose hate is a real process.

ANABEL. Yes, I know you believe more in hate than in love.

GERALD. n.o.body is more weary of hate than I am--and yet we can't fix our own hour, when we shall leave off hating and fighting. It has to work itself out in us.

ANABEL. But I don't WANT to hate and fight with you any more. I don't BELIEVE in it--not any more.

GERALD. It's a cleansing process--like Aristotle's Katharsis. We shall hate ourselves clean at last, I suppose.

ANABEL. Why aren't you clean now? Why can't you love? (He laughs.) DO you love me?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Do you want to be with me for ever?

GERALD. Yes.

ANABEL. Sure?

GERALD. Quite sure.

ANABEL. Why are you so cool about it?

GERALD. I'm not. I'm only sure--which you are not.

ANABEL. Yes, I am--I WANT to be married to you.

GERALD. I know you want me to want you to be married to me. But whether off your own bat you have a positive desire that way, I'm not sure. You keep something back--some sort of female reservation--like a dagger up your sleeve. You want to see me in transports of love for you.

ANABEL. How can you say so? There--you see--there--this is the man that pretends to love me, and then says I keep a dagger up my sleeve. You liar!

GERALD. I do love you--and you do keep a dagger up your sleeve--some devilish little female reservation which spies at me from a distance, in your soul, all the time, as if I were an enemy.

ANABEL. How CAN you say so?--Doesn't it show what you must be yourself?

Doesn't it show?--What is there in your soul?

GERALD. I don't know.

ANABEL. Love, pure love?--Do you pretend it's love?

GERALD. I'm so tired of this.

ANABEL. So am I, dead tired: you self-deceiving, self complacent thing.

Ha!--aren't you just the same? You haven't altered one sc.r.a.p not a sc.r.a.p.

GERALD. All right--you are always free to change yourself.

ANABEL. I HAVE changed I AM better, I DO love you--I love you wholly and unselfishly--I do--and I want a good new life with you.

GERALD. You're terribly wrapped up in your new goodness. I wish you'd make up your mind to be downright bad.

ANABEL. Ha!--Do you?--You'd soon see. You'd soon see where you'd be if---- There's somebody coming. (Rises.)

GERALD. Never mind; it's the clerks leaving work, I suppose. Sit still.

ANABEL. Won't you go?

GERALD. No. (A man draws near, followed by another.)