Act
III
Scene I. Sealand’s House.
Enter Tom, meeting Phillis.
Tom
Well, Phillis! What, with a face as if you had never seen me before!—What a work have I to do now? She has seen some new visitant at their house whose airs she has caught, and is resolved to practise them upon me. Numberless are the changes she’ll dance through before she’ll answer this plain question: videlicet, have you delivered my master’s letter to your lady? Nay, I know her too well to ask an account of it in an ordinary way; I’ll be in my airs as well as she. Aside.—Well, madam, as unhappy as you are at present pleased to make me, I would not, in the general, be any other than what I am. I would not be a bit wiser, a bit richer, a bit taller, a bit shorter than I am at this instant. Looking steadfastly at her.
Phillis
Did ever anybody doubt, Master Thomas, but that you were extremely satisfied with your sweet self?
Tom
I am, indeed. The thing I have least reason to be satisfied with is my fortune, and I am glad of my poverty. Perhaps if I were rich I should overlook the finest woman in the world, that wants nothing but riches to be thought so.
Phillis
How prettily was that said! But I’ll have a great deal more before I’ll say one word. Aside.
Tom
I should, perhaps, have been stupidly above her had I not been her equal; and by not being her equal, never had opportunity of being her slave. I am my master’s servant for hire—I am my mistress’s from choice, would she but approve my passion.
Phillis
I think it’s the first time I ever heard you speak of it with any sense of the anguish, if you really do suffer any.
Tom
Ah, Phillis! can you doubt, after what you have seen?
Phillis
I know not what I have seen, nor what I have heard; but since I am at leisure, you may tell me when you fell in love with me; how you fell in love with me; and what you have suffered or are ready to suffer for me.
Tom
Oh, the unmerciful jade! when I am in haste about my master’s letter. But I must go through it. Aside.—Ah! too well I remember when, and how, and on what occasion I was first surprised. It was on the 1st of April, 1715, I came into Mr. Sealand’s service; I was then a hobbledehoy, and you a pretty little tight girl, a favourite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that time we neither of us knew what was in us. I remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean; the person employed on the inner side was your charming self, whom I had never seen before.
Phillis
I think I remember the silly accident. What made ye, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street?
Tom
You know not, I warrant you—you could not guess what surprised me. You took no delight when you immediately grew wanton in your conquest, and put your lips close, and breathed upon the glass, and when my lips approached, a dirty cloth you rubbed against my face, and hid your beauteous form! When I again drew near, you spit, and rubbed, and smiled at my undoing.
Phillis
What silly thoughts you men have!
Tom
We were Pyramus and Thisbe—but ten times harder was my fate. Pyramus could peep only through a wall; I saw her, saw my Thisbe in all her beauty, but as much kept from her as if a hundred walls between—for there was more: there was her will against me. Would she but yet relent! O Phillis! Phillis! shorten my torment, and declare you pity me.
Phillis
I believe it’s very sufferable; the pain is not so exquisite but that you may bear it a little longer.
Tom
Oh! my charming Phillis, if all depended on my fair one’s will, I could with glory suffer—but, dearest creature, consider our miserable state.
Phillis
How! Miserable!
Tom
We are miserable to be in love, and under the command of others than those we love; with that generous passion in the heart, to be sent to and fro on errands, called, checked, and rated for the meanest trifles. Oh, Phillis! you don’t know how many china cups and glasses my passion for you has made me break. You have broke my fortune as well as my heart.
Phillis
Well, Mr. Thomas, I cannot but own to you that I believe your master writes and you speak the best of any men in the world. Never was woman so well pleased with a letter as my young lady was with his; and this is an answer to it. Gives him a letter.
Tom
This was well done, my dearest; consider, we must strike out some pretty livelihood for ourselves by closing their affairs. It will be nothing for them to give us a little being of our own, some small tenement, out of their large possessions. Whatever they give us, it will be more than what they keep for themselves. One acre with Phillis would be worth a whole county without her.
Phillis
O, could I but believe you!
Tom
If not the utterance, believe the touch of my lips. Kisses her.
Phillis
There’s no contradicting you. How closely you argue, Tom!
Tom
And will closer, in due time. But I must hasten with this letter, to hasten towards the possession of you. Then, Phillis, consider how I must be revenged, look to it, of all your skittishness, shy looks, and at best but coy compliances.
Phillis
Oh, Tom, you grow wanton, and sensual, as my lady calls it; I must not endure it. Oh! foh! you are a man—an odious, filthy, male creature—you should behave, if you had a right sense or were a man of sense, like Mr. Cimberton, with distance and indifference; or, let me see, some other becoming hard word, with seeming in-in-inadvertency, and not rush on one as if you were seizing a prey.—But hush! the ladies are coming.—Good Tom, don’t kiss me above once, and be gone. Lard, we have been fooling and toying, and not considered the main business of our masters and mistresses.
Tom
Why, their business is to be fooling and toying as soon as the parchments are ready.
Phillis
Well remembered, parchments; my lady, to my knowledge, is preparing writings between her coxcomb cousin, Cimberton, and my mistress, though my master has an eye to the parchments already prepared between your master, Mr. Bevil, and my mistress; and, I believe, my mistress herself has signed and sealed, in her heart, to Mr. Myrtle.—Did I not bid you kiss me but once, and be gone? But I know you won’t be satisfied.
Tom
No, you smooth creature, how should I? Kissing her hand.
Phillis
Well, since you are so humble, or so cool, as to ravish my hand only, I’ll take my leave of you like a great lady, and you a man of quality. They salute formally.
Tom
Pox of all this state. Offers to kiss her more closely.
Phillis
No, prithee, Tom, mind your business. We must follow that interest which will take, but endeavour at that which will be most for us, and we like most. Oh, here is my young mistress! Tom taps her neck behind, and kisses his fingers. Go, ye liquorish fool.
Exit Tom.
Enter Lucinda.
Lucinda
Who was that you were hurrying away?
Phillis
One that I had no mind to part with.
Lucinda
Why did you turn him away then?
Phillis
For your ladyship’s service—to carry your ladyship’s letter to his master. I could hardly get the rogue away.
Lucinda
Why, has he so little love for his master?
Phillis
No; but he hath so much love for his mistress.
Lucinda
But I thought I heard him kiss you. Why did you suffer that?
Phillis
Why, madam, we vulgar take it to be a sign of love—We servants, we poor people, that have nothing but our persons to bestow or treat for, are forced to deal and bargain by way of sample, and therefore as we have no parchments or wax necessary in our agreements, we squeeze with our hands and seal with our lips, to ratify vows and promises.
Lucinda
But can’t you trust one another without such earnest down?
Phillis
We don’t think it safe, any more than you gentry, to come together without deeds executed.
Lucinda
Thou art a pert merry hussy.
Phillis
I wish, madam, your lover and you were as happy as Tom and your servant are.
Lucinda
You grow impertinent.
Phillis
I have done, madam; and I won’t ask you what you intend to do with Mr. Myrtle, what your father will do with Mr. Bevil, nor what you all, especially my lady, mean by admitting Mr. Cimberton as particularly here as if he were married to you already; nay, you are married actually as far as people of quality are.
Lucinda
How is that?
Phillis
You have different beds in the same house.
Lucinda
Pshaw! I have a very great value for Mr. Bevil, but have absolutely put an end to his pretensions in the letter I gave you for him. But my father, in his heart, still has a mind to him, were it not for this woman they talk of; and I am apt to imagine he is married to her, or never designs to marry at all.
Phillis
Then Mr. Myrtle—
Lucinda
He had my parents’ leave to apply to me, and by that he has won me and my affections; who is to have this body of mine without them, it seems, is nothing to me. My mother says ’tis indecent for me to let my thoughts stray about the person of my husband; nay, she says a maid, rigidly virtuous, though she may have been where her lover was a thousand times, should not have made observations enough to know him from another man when she sees him in a third place.
Phillis
That is more than the severity of a nun, for not to see when one may is hardly possible; not to see when one can’t is very easy. At this rate, madam, there are a great many whom you have not seen who—
Lucinda
Mamma says the first time you see your husband should be at that instant he is made so. When your father, with the help of the minister, gives you to him, then you are to see him; then you are to observe and take notice of him; because then you are to obey him.
Phillis
But does not my lady remember you are to love as well as obey?
Lucinda
To love is a passion, it is a desire, and we must have no desires.—Oh, I cannot endure the reflection! With what insensibility on my part, with what more than patience have I been exposed and offered to some awkward booby or other in every county of Great Britain!
Phillis
Indeed, madam, I wonder I never heard you speak of it before with this indignation.
Lucinda
Every corner of the land has presented me with a wealthy coxcomb. As fast as one treaty has gone off, another has come on, till my name and person have been the tittle-tattle of the whole town. What is this world come to?—no shame left—to be bartered for like the beasts of the field, and that in such an instance as coming together to an entire familiarity and union of soul and body. Oh! and this without being so much as well-wishers to each other, but for increase of fortune.
Phillis
But, madam, all these vexations will end very soon in one for all. Mr. Cimberton is your mother’s kinsman, and three hundred years an older gentleman than any lover you ever had; for which reason, with that of his prodigious large estate, she is resolved on him, and has sent to consult the lawyers accordingly; nay, has (whether you know it or no) been in treaty with Sir Geoffry, who, to join in the settlement, has accepted of a sum to do it, and is every moment expected in town for that purpose.
Lucinda
How do you get all this intelligence?
Phillis
By an art I have, I thank my stars, beyond all the waiting-maids in Great Britain—the art of listening, madam, for your ladyship’s service.
Lucinda
I shall soon know as much as you do; leave me, leave me, Phillis, begone. Here, here! I’ll turn you out. My mother says I must not converse with my servants, though I must converse with no one else.
Exit Phillis.
—How unhappy are we who are born to great fortunes! No one looks at us with indifference, or acts towards us on the foot of plain dealing; yet, by all I have been heretofore offered to or treated for I have been used with the most agreeable of all abuses—flattery. But now, by this phlegmatic fool I’m used as nothing, or a mere thing. He, forsooth, is too wise, too learned to have any regard for desires, and I know not what the learned oaf calls sentiments of love and passion—Here he comes with my mother—It’s much if he looks at me, or if he does, takes no more notice of me than of any other movable in the room.
Enter Mrs. Sealand, and Mr. Cimberton.
Mrs. Sealand
How do I admire this noble, this learned taste of yours, and the worthy regard you have to our own ancient and honourable house in consulting a means to keep the blood as pure and as regularly descended as may be.
Cimberton
Why, really, madam, the young women of this age are treated with discourses of such a tendency, and their imaginations so bewildered in flesh and blood, that a man of reason can’t talk to be understood. They have no ideas of happiness, but what are more gross than the gratification of hunger and thirst.
Lucinda
With how much reflection he is a coxcomb! Aside.
Cimberton
And in truth, madam, I have considered it as a most brutal custom that persons of the first character in the world should go as ordinarily, and with as little shame, to bed as to dinner with one another. They proceed to the propagation of the species as openly as to the preservation of the individual.
Lucinda
She that willingly goes to bed to thee must have no shame, I’m sure. Aside.
Mrs. Sealand
Oh, cousin Cimberton! cousin Cimberton! how abstracted, how refined is your sense of things! But, indeed, it is too true there is nothing so ordinary as to say, in the best governed families, my master and lady have gone to bed; one does not know but it might have been said of one’s self. Hiding her face with her fan.
Cimberton
Lycurgus, madam, instituted otherwise; among the Lacedaemonians the whole female world was pregnant, but none but the mothers themselves knew by whom; their meetings were secret, and the amorous congress always by stealth; and no such professed doings between the sexes as are tolerated among us under the audacious word, marriage.
Mrs. Sealand
Oh, had I lived in those days and been a matron of Sparta, one might with less indecency have had ten children, according to that modest institution, than one, under the confusion of our modern, barefaced manner.
Lucinda
And yet, poor woman, she has gone through the whole ceremony, and here I stand a melancholy proof of it. Aside.
Mrs. Sealand
We will talk then of business. That girl walking about the room there is to be your wife. She has, I confess, no ideas, no sentiments, that speak her born of a thinking mother.
Cimberton
I have observed her; her lively look, free air, and disengaged countenance speak her very—
Lucinda
Very what?
Cimberton
If you please, madam—to set her a little that way.
Mrs. Sealand
Lucinda, say nothing to him, you are not a match for him; when you are married, you may speak to such a husband when you’re spoken to. But I am disposing of you above yourself every way.
Cimberton
Madam, you cannot but observe the inconveniences I expose myself to, in hopes that your ladyship will be the consort of my better part. As for the young woman, she is rather an impediment than a help to a man of letters and speculation. Madam, there is no reflection, no philosophy, can at all times subdue the sensitive life, but the animal shall sometimes carry away the man. Ha! ay, the vermilion of her lips.
Lucinda
Pray, don’t talk of me thus.
Cimberton
The pretty enough—pant of her bosom.
Lucinda
Sir! madam, don’t you hear him?
Cimberton
Her forward chest.
Lucinda
Intolerable!
Cimberton
High health.
Lucinda
The grave, easy impudence of him!
Cimberton
Proud heart.
Lucinda
Stupid coxcomb!
Cimberton
I say, madam, her impatience, while we are looking at her, throws out all attractions—her arms—her neck—what a spring in her step!
Lucinda
Don’t you run me over thus, you strange unaccountable!
Cimberton
What an elasticity in her veins and arteries!
Lucinda
I have no veins, no arteries.
Mrs. Sealand
Oh, child! hear him, he talks finely; he’s a scholar, he knows what you have.
Cimberton
The speaking invitation of her shape, the gathering of herself up, and the indignation you see in the pretty little thing—Now, I am considering her, on this occasion, but as one that is to be pregnant.
Lucinda
The familiar, learned, unseasonable puppy! Aside.
Cimberton
And pregnant undoubtedly she will be yearly. I fear I shan’t, for many years, have discretion enough to give her one fallow season.
Lucinda
Monster! there’s no bearing it. The hideous sot! there’s no enduring it, to be thus surveyed like a steed at sale.
Cimberton
At sale! She’s very illiterate—But she’s very well limbed too; turn her in; I see what she is.
Exit Lucinda, in a rage.
Mrs. Sealand
Go, you creature, I am ashamed of you.
Cimberton
No harm done—you know, madam, the better sort of people, as I observed to you, treat by their lawyers of weddings adjusting himself at the glass—and the woman in the bargain, like the mansion house in the sale of the estate, is thrown in, and what that is, whether good or bad, is not at all considered.
Mrs. Sealand
I grant it; and therefore make no demand for her youth and beauty, and every other accomplishment, as the common world think ’em, because she is not polite.
Cimberton
Madam, I know your exalted understanding, abstracted, as it is, from vulgar prejudices, will not be offended, when I declare to you, I marry to have an heir to my estate, and not to beget a colony, or a plantation. This young woman’s beauty and constitution will demand provision for a tenth child at least.
Mrs. Sealand
With all that wit and learning, how considerate! What an economist! Aside.—Sir, I cannot make her any other than she is; or say she is much better than the other young women of this age, or fit for much besides being a mother; but I have given directions for the marriage settlements, and Sir Geoffry Cimberton’s counsel is to meet ours here, at this hour, concerning this joining in the deed, which, when executed, makes you capable of settling what is due to Lucinda’s fortune. Herself, as I told you, I say nothing of.
Cimberton
No, no, no, indeed, madam, it is not usual; and I must depend upon my own reflection and philosophy not to overstock my family.
Mrs. Sealand
I cannot help her, cousin Cimberton; but she is, for aught I see, as well as the daughter of anybody else.
Cimberton
That is very true, madam.
Enter a Servant, who whispers Mrs. Sealand.
Mrs. Sealand
The lawyers are come, and now we are to hear what they have resolved as to the point whether it’s necessary that Sir Geoffry should join in the settlement, as being what they call in the remainder. But, good cousin, you must have patience with ’em. These lawyers, I am told, are of a different kind; one is what they call a chamber counsel, the other a pleader. The conveyancer is slow, from an imperfection in his speech, and therefore shunned the bar, but extremely passionate and impatient of contradiction. The other is as warm as he; but has a tongue so voluble, and a head so conceited, he will suffer nobody to speak but himself.
Cimberton
You mean old Serjeant Target and Counsellor Bramble? I have heard of ’em.
Mrs. Sealand
The same. Show in the gentlemen.
Exit Servant.
Reenter Servant, introducing Myrtle and Tom disguised as Bramble and Target.
Mrs. Sealand
Gentlemen, this is the party concerned, Mr. Cimberton; and I hope you have considered of the matter.
Target
Yes, madam, we have agreed that it must be by indent—dent—dent—dent—
Bramble
Yes, madam, Mr. Serjeant and myself have agreed, as he is pleased to inform you, that it must be an indenture tripartite, and tripartite let it be, for Sir Geoffry must needs be a party; old Cimberton, in the year 1619, says, in that ancient roll in Mr. Serjeant’s hands, as recourse thereto being had, will more at large appear—
Target
Yes, and by the deeds in your hands, it appears that—
Bramble
Mr. Serjeant, I beg of you to make no inferences upon what is in our custody; but speak to the titles in your own deeds. I shall not show that deed till my client is in town.
Cimberton
You know best your own methods.
Mrs. Sealand
The single question is, whether the entail is such that my cousin, Sir Geoffry, is necessary in this affair?
Bramble
Yes, as to the lordship of Tretriplet, but not as to the messuage of Grimgribber.
Target
I say that Gr—gr—that Gr—gr—Grimgribber, Grimgribber is in us; that is to say the remainder thereof, as well as that of Tr—tr—Triplet.
Bramble
You go upon the deed of Sir Ralph, made in the middle of the last century, precedent to that in which old Cimberton made over the remainder, and made it pass to the heirs general, by which your client comes in; and I question whether the remainder even of Tretriplet is in him—But we are willing to waive that, and give him a valuable consideration. But we shall not purchase what is in us forever, as Grimgribber is, at the rate, as we guard against the contingent of Mr. Cimberton having no son—Then we know Sir Geoffry is the first of the collateral male line in this family—yet—
Target
Sir, Gr—gr—ber is—
Bramble
I apprehend you very well, and your argument might be of force, and we would be inclined to hear that in all its parts—But, sir, I see very plainly what you are going into. I tell you, it is as probable a contingent that Sir Geoffry may die before Mr. Cimberton, as that he may outlive him.
Target
Sir, we are not ripe for that yet, but I must say—
Bramble
Sir, I allow you the whole extent of that argument; but that will go no farther than as to the claimants under old Cimberton. I am of opinion that, according to the instruction of Sir Ralph, he could not dock the entail, and then create a new estate for the heirs general.
Target
Sir, I have not patience to be told that, when Gr—gr—ber—
Bramble
I will allow it you, Mr. Serjeant; but there must be the word heirs forever, to make such an estate as you pretend.
Cimberton
I must be impartial, though you are counsel for my side of the question. Were it not that you are so good as to allow him what he has not said, I should think it very hard you should answer him without hearing him—But, gentlemen, I believe you have both considered this matter, and are firm in your different opinions. ’Twere better, therefore, you proceeded according to the particular sense of each of you, and gave your thoughts distinctly in writing. And do you see, sirs, pray let me have a copy of what you say in English.
Bramble
Why, what is all we have been saying? In English! Oh! but I forget myself, you’re a wit. But, however, to please you, sir, you shall have it, in as plain terms as the law will admit of.
Cimberton
But I would have it, sir, without delay.
Bramble
That, sir, the law will not admit of. The Courts are sitting at Westminster, and I am this moment obliged to be at every one of them, and ’twould be wrong if I should not be in the hall to attend one of ’em at least; the rest would take it ill else. Therefore, I must leave what I have said to Mr. Serjeant’s consideration, and I will digest his arguments on my part, and you shall hear from me again, sir.
Exit Bramble.
Target
Agreed, agreed.
Cimberton
Mr. Bramble is very quick; he parted a little abruptly.
Target
He could not bear my argument; I pinched him to the quick about that Gr—gr—ber.
Mrs. Sealand
I saw that, for he durst not so much as hear you. I shall send to you, Mr. Serjeant, as soon as Sir Geoffry comes to town, and then I hope all may be adjusted.
Target
I shall be at my chambers, at my usual hours.
Exit.
Cimberton
Madam, if you please, I’ll now attend you to the tea table, where I shall hear from your ladyship reason and good sense, after all this law and gibberish.
Mrs. Sealand
’Tis a wonderful thing, sir, that men of professions do not study to talk the substance of what they have to say in the language of the rest of the world. Sure, they’d find their account in it.
Cimberton
They might, perhaps, madam, with people of your good sense; but with the generality ’twould never do. The vulgar would have no respect for truth and knowledge, if they were exposed to naked view.
Truth is too simple, of all art bereaved:
Since the world will—why let it be deceived.
Exeunt.