The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 31

Yes. (_Pause_) There won't be much doing in this place after this.

JOHANNA (_remains unmoved_)

FELIX

And how are you going to live, Johanna?... I mean, how are the two of you going to live--you and father?

JOHANNA (_gives him a look as if his question surprised her_)

FELIX

He is going to be lonely. I think he would feel very grateful if you took a little more interest in him--if you went for a walk for him when there is time for it. And you, too ...

JOHANNA (_brusquely_)

How could that help me or him? What can he be to me or I to him? I was not made to a.s.sist people in days of trial. I can't help it, but that's the way I am. I seem to be stirred by a sort of hostility against people who appeal to my pity. I felt it like that all the time mother was sick.

FELIX

No, you were not made for that.... But what were you made for then?

JOHANNA (_shrugs her shoulders and sits down as before, with hands folded in her lap and her eyes staring straight ahead_)

FELIX

Johanna, why do you never talk to me any more as you used to? Have you, then, nothing to tell me? Don't you remember how we used to tell each other everything?

JOHANNA

That was long ago. We were children then.

FELIX

Why can't you talk to me any longer as you did then? Have you forgotten how well we two used to understand each other? How we used to confide all our secrets to each other? What good chums we used to be?... How we wanted to go out into the wide world together?

JOHANNA

Into the wide world.... Oh, yes, I remember. But there is nothing left now of all those words of wonder and romance.

FELIX

Perhaps it depends on ourselves only.

JOHANNA

No, those words have no longer the same meaning as before.

FELIX

What do you mean?

JOHANNA

Into the wide world ...

FELIX

What is the matter, Johanna?

JOHANNA

Once, when we were in the museum together, I saw a picture of which I often think. It has a meadow with knights and ladies in it--and a forest, a vineyard, an inn, and young men and women dancing, and a big city with churches and towers and bridges. And soldiers are marching across the bridges, and a ship is gliding down the river. And farther back there is a hill, and on that hill a castle, and lofty mountains in the extreme distance. And clouds are floating above the mountains, and there is mist on the meadow, and a flood of sunlight is pouring down on the city, and a storm is raging over the castle, and there is ice and snow on the mountains.--And when anybody spoke of "the wide world," or I read that term anywhere, I used always to think of that picture. And it used to be the same with so many other big-sounding words. Fear was a tiger with cavernous mouth--love was a page with long light curls kneeling at the feet of a lady--death was a beautiful young man with black wings and a sword in his hand--and fame was blaring bugles, men with bent backs, and a road strewn with flowers. In those days it was possible to talk of all sorts of things, Felix. But to-day everything has a different look--fame, and death, and love, and the wide world.

FELIX (_hesitatingly_)

I feel a little scared on your behalf, Johanna.

JOHANNA

Why, Felix?

FELIX

Johanna!--I wish you wouldn't do anything to worry father.

JOHANNA

Does that depend on me alone?

FELIX

I know in what direction your dreams are going, Johanna.--What is to come out of that?

JOHANNA

Is it necessary that something comes out of everything?--I think, Felix, that many people are destined to mean nothing to each other but a common memory.

FELIX

You have said it yourself, Johanna--that you are not made to see other people suffer.

JOHANNA (_shrinks slightly at those words_)

FELIX

Suffer ... and ...

JULIAN (_enters_)