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.
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