Scene III. Indiana’s House.
Enter Isabella.
Isabella
What anxiety do I feel for this poor creature! What will be the end of her? Such a languishing unreserved passion for a man that at last must certainly leave or ruin her! and perhaps both! Then the aggravation of the distress is, that she does not believe he will—not but, I must own, if they are both what they would seem, they are made for one another, as much as Adam and Eve were, for there is no other of their kind but themselves.
Enter Boy.
So, Daniel! what news with you?
Boy
Madam, there’s a gentleman below would speak with my lady.
Isabella
Sirrah! don’t you know Mr. Bevil yet?
Boy
Madam, ’tis not the gentleman who comes every day, and asks for you, and won’t go in till he knows whether you are with her or no.
Isabella
Ha! that’s a particular I did not know before. Well! be it who it will, let him come up to me.
Exit Boy; and reenters with Mr. Sealand; Isabella looks amazed.
Mr. Sealand
Madam, I can’t blame your being a little surprised to see a perfect stranger make a visit, and—
Isabella
I am indeed surprised!—I see he does not know me. Aside.
Mr. Sealand
You are very prettily lodged here, madam; in troth you seem to have everything in plenty—A thousand a year, I warrant you, upon this pretty nest of rooms, and the dainty one within them. Aside, and looking about.
Isabella
Apart. Twenty years, it seems, have less effect in the alteration of a man of thirty than of a girl of fourteen—he’s almost still the same; but alas! I find, by other men, as well as himself, I am not what I was. As soon as he spoke, I was convinced ’twas he; how shall I contain my surprise and satisfaction! He must not know me yet.
Mr. Sealand
Madam, I hope I don’t give you any disturbance; but there is a young lady here with whom I have a particular business to discourse, and I hope she will admit me to that favour.
Isabella
Why, sir, have you had any notice concerning her? I wonder who could give it you.
Mr. Sealand
That, madam, is fit only to be communicated to herself.
Isabella
Well, sir! you shall see her.—Aside. I find he knows nothing yet, nor shall from me. I am resolved I will observe this interlude, this sport of nature and of fortune.—You shall see her presently, sir; for now I am as a mother, and will trust her with you.
Exit.
Mr. Sealand
As a mother! right; that’s the old phrase for one of those commode ladies, who lend out beauty for hire to young gentlemen that have pressing occasions. But here comes the precious lady herself. In troth a very sightly woman—
Enter Indiana.
Indiana
I am told, sir, you have some affair that requires your speaking with me.
Mr. Sealand
Yes, madam, there came to my hands a bill drawn by Mr. Bevil, which is payable tomorrow; and he, in the intercourse of business, sent it to me, who have cash of his, and desired me to send a servant with it; but I have made bold to bring you the money myself.
Indiana
Sir! was that necessary?
Mr. Sealand
No, madam; but to be free with you, the fame of your beauty, and the regard which Mr. Bevil is a little too well known to have for you, excited my curiosity.
Indiana
Too well known to have for me! Your sober appearance, sir, which my friend described, made me expect no rudeness, or absurdity, at least—Who’s there?—Sir, if you pay the money to a servant, ’twill be as well.
Mr. Sealand
Pray, madam, be not offended; I came hither on an innocent, nay, a virtuous design; and, if you will have patience to hear me, it may be as useful to you, as you are in a friendship with Mr. Bevil, as to my only daughter, whom I was this day disposing of.
Indiana
You make me hope, sir, I have mistaken you. I am composed again; be free, say on—Aside.—what I am afraid to hear.
Mr. Sealand
I feared, indeed, an unwarranted passion here, but I did not think it was in abuse of so worthy an object, so accomplished a lady as your sense and mien bespeak; but the youth of our age care not what merit and virtue they bring to shame, so they gratify—
Indiana
Sir, you are going into very great errors; but as you are pleased to say you see something in me that has changed at least the colour of your suspicions, so has your appearance altered mine, and made me earnestly attentive to what has any way concerned you to inquire into my affairs and character.
Mr. Sealand
How sensibly, with what an air she talks!
Indiana
Good sir, be seated, and tell me tenderly; keep all your suspicions concerning me alive, that you may in a proper and prepared way acquaint me why the care of your daughter obliges a person of your seeming worth and fortune to be thus inquisitive about a wretched, helpless, friendless—Weeping. But I beg your pardon; though I am an orphan, your child is not; and your concern for her, it seems, has brought you hither.—I’ll be composed; pray go on, sir.
Mr. Sealand
How could Mr. Bevil be such a monster, to injure such a woman?
Indiana
No, sir, you wrong him; he has not injured me. My support is from his bounty.
Mr. Sealand
Bounty! when gluttons give high prices for delicates, they are prodigious bountiful.
Indiana
Still, still you will persist in that error. But my own fears tell me all. You are the gentleman, I suppose, for whose happy daughter he is designed a husband by his good father, and he has, perhaps, consented to the overture. He was here this morning, dressed beyond his usual plainness—nay, most sumptuously—and he is to be, perhaps, this night a bridegroom.
Mr. Sealand
I own he was intended such; but, madam, on your account, I have determined to defer my daughter’s marriage till I am satisfied from your own mouth of what nature are the obligations you are under to him.
Indiana
His actions, sir; his eyes have only made me think he designed to make me the partner of his heart. The goodness and gentleness of his demeanour made me misinterpret all. ’Twas my own hope, my own passion, that deluded me; he never made one amorous advance to me. His large heart, and bestowing hand, have only helped the miserable; nor know I why, but from his mere delight in virtue, that I have been his care and the object on which to indulge and please himself with pouring favours.
Mr. Sealand
Madam, I know not why it is, but I, as well as you, am methinks afraid of entering into the matter I came about; but ’tis the same thing as if we had talked never so distinctly—he ne’er shall have a daughter of mine.
Indiana
If you say this from what you think of me, you wrong yourself and him. Let not me, miserable though I may be, do injury to my benefactor. No, sir, my treatment ought rather to reconcile you to his virtues. If to bestow without a prospect of return; if to delight in supporting what might, perhaps, be thought an object of desire, with no other view than to be her guard against those who would not be so disinterested; if these actions, sir, can in a careful parent’s eye commend him to a daughter, give yours, sir, give her to my honest, generous Bevil. What have I to do but sigh, and weep, and rave, run wild, a lunatic in chains, or, hid in darkness, mutter in distracted starts and broken accents my strange, strange story!
Mr. Sealand
Take comfort, madam.
Indiana
All my comfort must be to expostulate in madness, to relieve with frenzy my despair, and shrieking to demand of fate why—why was I born to such variety of sorrows.
Mr. Sealand
If I have been the least occasion—
Indiana
No, ’twas Heaven’s high will I should be such; to be plundered in my cradle! tossed on the seas! and even there an infant captive! to lose my mother, hear but of my father! to be adopted! lose my adopter! then plunged again into worse calamities!
Mr. Sealand
An infant captive!
Indiana
Yet then, to find the most charming of mankind, once more to set me free from what I thought the last distress, to load me with his services, his bounties, and his favours; to support my very life in a way that stole, at the same time, my very soul itself from me.
Mr. Sealand
And has young Bevil been this worthy man?
Indiana
Yet then, again, this very man to take another! without leaving me the right, the pretence of easing my fond heart with tears! For, oh! I can’t reproach him, though the same hand that raised me to this height now throws me down the precipice.
Mr. Sealand
Dear lady! Oh, yet one moment’s patience: my heart grows full with your affliction.—But yet there’s something in your story that—
Indiana
My portion here is bitterness and sorrow.
Mr. Sealand
Do not think so. Pray answer me: does Bevil know your name and family?
Indiana
Alas! too well! Oh, could I be any other thing than what I am—I’ll tear away all traces of my former self, my little ornaments, the remains of my first state, the hints of what I ought to have been—
In her disorder she throws away a bracelet, which Sealand takes up, and looks earnestly on it.
Mr. Sealand
Ha! what’s this? My eyes are not deceived! It is, it is the same! the very bracelet which I bequeathed to my wife at our last mournful parting.
Indiana
What said you, sir? Your wife? Whither does my fancy carry me? What means this unfelt motion at my heart? And yet, again my fortune but deludes me; for if I err not, sir, your name is Sealand; but my lost father’s name was—
Mr. Sealand
Danvers; was it not?
Indiana
What new amazement? That is, indeed, my family.
Mr. Sealand
Know, then, when my misfortunes drove me to the Indies, for reasons too tedious now to mention, I changed my name of Danvers into Sealand.
Enter Isabella.
Isabella
If yet there wants an explanation of your wonder, examine well this face (yours, sir, I well remember), gaze on and read in me your sister, Isabella.
Mr. Sealand
My sister!
Isabella
But here’s a claim more tender yet—your Indiana, sir, your long-lost daughter.
Mr. Sealand
Oh, my child! my child!
Indiana
All gracious Heaven! is it possible! do I embrace my father?
Mr. Sealand
And I do hold thee.—These passions are too strong for utterance. Rise, rise, my child, and give my tears their way.—Oh, my sister! Embracing her.
Isabella
Now, dearest niece, my groundless fears, my painful cares no more shall vex thee. If I have wronged thy noble lover with too much suspicion, my just concern for thee, I hope, will plead my pardon.
Mr. Sealand
Oh! make him, then, the full amends, and be yourself the messenger of joy. Fly this instant! tell him all these wondrous turns of Providence in his favour! Tell him I have now a daughter to bestow which he no longer will decline; that this day he still shall be a bridegroom; nor shall a fortune, the merit which his father seeks, be wanting. Tell him the reward of all his virtues waits on his acceptance.
Exit Isabella.
My dearest Indiana! Turns and embraces her.
Indiana
Have I, then, at last, a father’s sanction on my love? His bounteous hand to give, and make my heart a present worthy of Bevil’s generosity?
Mr. Sealand
Oh, my child! how are our sorrows past o’erpaid by such a meeting! Though I have lost so many years of soft paternal dalliance with thee, yet, in one day to find thee thus, and thus bestow thee, in such perfect happiness, is ample, ample reparation!—And yet, again, the merit of thy lover—
Indiana
Oh! had I spirits left to tell you of his actions! how strongly filial duty has suppressed his love; and how concealment still has doubled all his obligations; the pride, the joy of his alliance, sir, would warm your heart, as he has conquered mine.
Mr. Sealand
How laudable is love when born of virtue! I burn to embrace him—
Indiana
See, sir, my aunt already has succeeded, and brought him to your wishes.
Enter Isabella, with Sir John Bevil, Bevil Jr., Mrs. Sealand, Cimberton, Myrtle, and Lucinda.
John Bevil
Entering. Where, where’s this scene of wonder? Mr. Sealand, I congratulate, on this occasion, our mutual happiness—Your good sister, sir, has, with the story of your daughter’s fortune, filled us with surprise and joy. Now all exceptions are removed; my son has now avowed his love, and turned all former jealousies and doubts to approbation; and, I am told, your goodness has consented to reward him.
Mr. Sealand
If, sir, a fortune equal to his father’s hopes can make this object worthy his acceptance.
Bevil Jr.
I hear your mention, sir, of fortune, with pleasure only as it may prove the means to reconcile the best of fathers to my love. Let him be provident, but let me be happy.—My ever-destined, my acknowledged wife! Embracing Indiana.
Indiana
Wife! Oh, my ever loved! My lord! my master!
John Bevil
I congratulate myself, as well as you, that I had a son who could, under such disadvantages, discover your great merit.
Mr. Sealand
Oh, Sir John! how vain, how weak is human prudence! What care, what foresight, what imagination could contrive such blest events, to make our children happy, as Providence in one short hour has laid before us?
Cimberton
To Mrs. Sealand. I am afraid, madam, Mr. Sealand is a little too busy for our affair. If you please, we’ll take another opportunity.
Mrs. Sealand
Let us have patience, sir.
Cimberton
But we make Sir Geoffry wait, madam.
Myrtle
O, sir, I am not in haste.
During this, Bevil Jr., presents Lucinda to Indiana.
Mr. Sealand
But here! here’s our general benefactor! Excellent young man, that could be at once a lover to her beauty and a parent to her virtue.
Bevil Jr.
If you think that an obligation, sir, give me leave to overpay myself, in the only instance that can now add to my felicity, by begging you to bestow this lady on Mr. Myrtle.
Mr. Sealand
She is his without reserve; I beg he may be sent for. Mr. Cimberton, notwithstanding you never had my consent, yet there is, since I last saw you, another objection to your marriage with my daughter.
Cimberton
I hope, sir, your lady has concealed nothing from me?
Mr. Sealand
Troth, sir, nothing but what was concealed from myself—another daughter, who has an undoubted title to half my estate.
Cimberton
How, Mr. Sealand? Why, then, if half Mrs. Lucinda’s fortune is gone, you can’t say that any of my estate is settled upon her. I was in treaty for the whole; but if that is not to be come at, to be sure there can be no bargain. Sir, I have nothing to do but take my leave of your good lady, my cousin, and beg pardon for the trouble I have given this old gentleman.
Myrtle
That you have, Mr. Cimberton, with all my heart. Discovers himself.
All
Mr. Myrtle!
Myrtle
And I beg pardon of the whole company that I assumed the person of Sir Geoffry, only to be present at the danger of this lady being disposed of, and in her utmost exigence to assert my right to her; which, if her parents will ratify, as they once favoured my pretensions, no abatement of fortune shall lessen her value to me.
Lucinda
Generous man!
Mr. Sealand
If, sir, you can overlook the injury of being in treaty with one who has meanly left her, as you have generously asserted your right in her, she is yours.
Lucinda
Mr. Myrtle, though you have ever had my heart, yet now I find I love you more, because I bring you less.
Myrtle
We have much more than we want; and I am glad any event has contributed to the discovery of our real inclinations to each other.
Mrs. Sealand
Well! however, I’m glad the girl’s disposed of, anyway. Aside.
Bevil Jr.
Myrtle, no longer rivals now, but brothers!
Myrtle
Dear Bevil, you are born to triumph over me! but now our competition ceases; I rejoice in the preeminence of your virtue, and your alliance adds charms to Lucinda.
John Bevil
Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have set the world a fair example: your happiness is owing to your constancy and merit; and the several difficulties you have struggled with evidently show—
Whate’er the generous mind itself denies,
The secret care of Providence supplies.
Exeunt.