Second Plays Part 74

MELISANDE. Very easy for you, I should think.

GERVASE. But not for you?

MELISANDE (bitterly). You dress up and amuse yourself, and then laugh and go back to your ordinary life again--you don't want to remember _that_, do you, every time you do it?

GERVASE. You let your hair down and flirt with me and laugh and go home again, but _you_ can't forget. Why should I?

MELISANDE (furiously). How dare you say I flirted with you?

GERVASE. How dare you say I laughed at you?

MELISANDE. Do you think I knew you would be there when I went up to the wood?

GERVASE. Do you think _I_ knew you would be there when _I_ went up?

MELISANDE. Then why were you there all dressed up like that?

GERVASE. My car broke down and I spent the night in it. I went up the hill to look for breakfast.

MELISANDE. Breakfast! That's all you think about.

GERVASE (cheerfully). Well, it's always cropping up.

MELISANDE (in disgust). Oh! (She moves away from him and then turns round holding out her hand) Good-bye, Mr. Mallory.

GERVASE (taking it). Good-bye, Miss Knowle. . . . (Gently) May I kiss your hands, Melisande?

MELISANDE (pathetically). Oh, don't! (She hides her face in them.)

GERVASE. Dear hands. . . . May I kiss your lips, Melisande? (She says nothing. He comes closer to her) Melisande!

(He is about to put his arms round her, but she breaks away from him.)

MELISANDE. Oh, don't, don't! What's the good of pretending? It was only pretence this morning--what's the good of going on with it? I thought you were so different from other men, but you're just the same, just the same. You talk about the things they talk about, you wear the clothes they wear. You were my true knight, my fairy Prince, this morning, and this afternoon you come down dressed like that (she waves her hand at it) and tell me that you are on the Stock Exchange!

Oh, can't you see what you've done? All the beautiful world that I had built up for you and me--shattered, shattered.

GERVASE (going to her). Melisande!

MELISANDE. No, no!

GERVASE (stopping). All right.

MELISANDE (recovering herself). Please go.

GERVASE (with a smile). Well, that's not quite fair, you know.

MELISANDE. What do you mean?

GERVASE. Well, what about _my_ beautiful world--the world that _I_ had built up?

MELISANDE. I don't understand.

GERVASE. What about _your_ pretence this morning? I thought you were so different from other women, but you're just the same, just the same. You were my true lady, my fairy Princess, this morning; and this afternoon the Queen, your mother, disabled herself by indigestion, tells me that you do all the housekeeping for her just like any ordinary commonplace girl. Your father, the King, has obviously never had a battle-axe in his hand in his life; your suitor, Prince Robert of Coote, is much more at home with a niblick than with a lance; and your cousin, the Lady Jane----

MELISANDE (sinking on to the sofa and hiding her face). Oh, cruel, cruel!

GERVASE (remorsefully). Oh, forgive me, Melisande. It was horrible of me.

MELISANDE. No, but it's true. How could any romance come into this house? Now you know why I wanted you to take me away--away to the ends of the earth with you.

GERVASE. Well, that's what I want to do.

MELISANDE. Ah, don't! When you're on the Stock Exchange!

GERVASE. But there's plenty of romance on the Stock Exchange. (Nodding his head) Oh yes, you want to look out for it.

MELISANDE (reproachfully). Now you're laughing at me again.

GERVASE. My dear, I'm not. Or if I am laughing at you, then I am laughing at myself too. And if we can laugh together, then we can be happy together, Melisande.

MELISANDE. I want romance, I want beauty. I don't want jokes.

GERVASE. I see what it is. You don't like my knickerbockers.

MELISANDE (bewildered). Did you expect me to?

GERVASE. No. (After a pause) I think that's why I put 'em on. (She looks at him in surprise.) You see, we had to come back to the twentieth century some time; we couldn't go on pretending for ever.

Well, here we are--(indicating his clothes)--back. But I feel just as romantic, Melisande. I want beauty--your beauty--just as much. (He goes to her.)

MELISANDE. Which Melisande do you want? The one who talked to you this morning in the wood, or the one who--(bitterly) does all the housekeeping for her mother? (Violently) And badly, badly, badly!

GERVASE. The one who does all the housekeeping for her mother--and badly, badly, badly, _bless_ her, because she has never realised what a gloriously romantic thing housekeeping is.

MELISANDE (amazed). Romantic!

GERVASE (with enthusiasm). Most gloriously romantic. . . . Did you ever long when you were young to be wrecked on a desert island?

MELISANDE (clasping her hands). Oh yes!

GERVASE. You imagined yourself there--alone or with a companion?

MELISANDE. Often!

GERVASE. And what were you doing? What is the romance of the desert island which draws us all? Climbing the bread-fruit tree, following the turtle to see where it deposits its eggs, discovering the spring of water, building the hut--_housekeeping_, Melisande. . . . Or take Robinson Crusoe. When Man Friday came along and left his footprint in the sand, why did Robinson Crusoe stagger back in amazement? Because he said to himself, like a good housekeeper, "By Jove, I'm on the track of a servant at last." There's romance for you!

MELISANDE (smiling and shaking her head at him). What nonsense you talk!

GERVASE. It isn't nonsense; indeed, indeed it isn't. There's romance everywhere if you look for it. _You_ look for it in the old fairy-stories, but did _they_ find it there? Did the gentleman who had just been given a new pair of seven-league boots think it romantic to be changed into a fish? He probably thought it a confounded nuisance, and wondered what on earth to do with his boots. Did Cinderella and the Prince find the world romantic after they were married? Think of the endless silent evenings which they spent together, with nothing in common but an admiration for Cinderella's feet--do you think _they_ didn't long for the romantic days of old? And in two thousand or two hundred thousand years, people will read stories about _us_, and sigh and say, "Will those romantic days never come back again?" Ah, they are here now, Melisande, for _us_; for the people with imagination; for you and for me.