Oscar Wilde: A Woman of No Importance

4. FOURTH ACT (continued)

HESTER. Ask your own heart, not mine. I never had a mother to save, or shame.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. He is hard - he is hard. Let me go away.

GERALD. [Rushes over and kneels down bedside his mother.] Mother, forgive me: I have been to blame.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Don't kiss my hands: they are cold. My heart is cold: something has broken it.

HESTER, Ah, don't say that. Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow - oh, sorrow cannot break it. Besides, what sorrows have you now? Why, at this moment you are more dear to him than ever, DEAR though you have BEEN, and oh! how dear you HAVE been always. Ah! be kind to him.

GERALD. You are my mother and my father all in one. I need no second parent. It was for you I spoke, for you alone. Oh, say something, mother. Have I but found one love to lose another? Don't tell me that. O mother, you are cruel. [Gets up and flings himself sobbing on a sofa.]

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. [To HESTER.] But has he found indeed another love?

HESTER. You know I have loved him always.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. But we are very poor.

HESTER. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden. Let him share it with me.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. But we are disgraced. We rank among the outcasts Gerald is nameless. The sins of the parents should be visited on the children. It is God's law.

HESTER. I was wrong. God's law is only Love.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. [Rises, and taking HESTER by the hand, goes slowly over to where GERALD is lying on the sofa with his head buried in his hands. She touches him and he looks up.] Gerald, I cannot give you a father, but I have brought you a wife.