Scene
II
Another room in Lady Wishfort’s house.
Mrs. Fainall, Lady Wishfort, and Mrs. Marwood.
Lady Wishfort
O my dear friend, how can I enumerate the benefits that I have received from your goodness! To you I owe the timely discovery of the false vows of Mirabell; to you I owe the detection of the impostor Sir Rowland. And now you are become an intercessor with my son-in-law, to save the honour of my house and compound for the frailties of my daughter. Well, friend, you are enough to reconcile me to the bad world, or else I would retire to deserts and solitudes, and feed harmless sheep by groves and purling streams. Dear Marwood, let us leave the world, and retire by ourselves and be shepherdesses.
Mrs. Marwood
Let us first dispatch the affair in hand, madam. We shall have leisure to think of retirement afterwards. Here is one who is concerned in the treaty.
Lady Wishfort
O daughter, daughter! is it possible thou shouldst be my child, bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and as I may say, another me, and yet transgress the most minute particle of severe virtue? Is it possible you should lean aside to iniquity, who have been cast in the direct mould of virtue? I have not only been a mould but a pattern for you, and a model for you, after you were brought into the world.
Mrs. Fainall
I don’t understand your ladyship.
Lady Wishfort
Not understand! Why, have you not been naught? Have you not been sophisticated? Not understand! Here I am ruined to compound for your caprices and your cuckoldoms. I must pawn my plate and my jewels, and ruin my niece, and all little enough—
Mrs. Fainall
I am wronged and abused, and so are you. ’Tis a false accusation, as false as hell, as false as your friend there; aye, or your friend’s friend, my false husband.
Mrs. Marwood
My friend, Mrs. Fainall! Your husband my friend! what do you mean?
Mrs. Fainall
I know what I mean, madam, and so do you; and so shall the world at a time convenient.
Mrs. Marwood
I am sorry to see you so passionate, madam. More temper would look more like innocence. But I have done. I am sorry my zeal to serve your ladyship and family should admit of misconstruction, or make me liable to affronts. You will pardon me, madam, if I meddle no more with an affair in which I am not personally concerned.
Lady Wishfort
O dear friend, I am so ashamed that you should meet with such returns!—To Mrs. Fainall. You ought to ask pardon on your knees, ungrateful creature! she deserves more from you than all your life can accomplish.—To Mrs. Marwood. Oh, don’t leave me destitute in this perplexity!—no, stick to me, my good genius.
Mrs. Fainall
I tell you, madam, you’re abused.—Stick to you? Aye, like a leech, to suck your best blood—she’ll drop off when she’s full. Madam, you shan’t pawn a bodkin, nor part with a brass counter, in composition for me. I defy ’em all. Let ’em prove their aspersions: I know my own innocence, and dare stand a trial.
Exit.
Lady Wishfort
Why, if she should be innocent, if she should be wronged after all, ha?—I don’t know what to think—and I promise you, her education has been unexceptionable—I may say it, for I chiefly made it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to impress upon her tender years a young odium and aversion to the very sight of men; aye, friend, she would ha’ shrieked if she had but seen a man till she was in her teens. As I’m a person, ’tis true—she was never suffered to play with a male child, though but in coats. Nay, her very babies were of the feminine gender. Oh, she never looked a man in the face but her own father or the chaplain, and him we made a shift to put upon her for a woman, by the help of his long garments, and his sleek face, till she was going in her fifteen.
Mrs. Marwood
’Twas much she should be deceived so long.
Lady Wishfort
I warrant you, or she would never have borne to have been catechised by him, and have heard his long lectures against singing and dancing and such debaucheries, and going to filthy plays, and profane music meetings, where the lewd trebles squeak nothing but bawdy, and the basses roar blasphemy. Oh, she would have swooned at the sight or name of an obscene playbook!—and can I think after all this that my daughter can be naught? What, a whore? And thought it excommunication to set her foot within the door of a playhouse. O dear friend, I can’t believe it. No, no; as she says, let him prove it, let him prove it.
Mrs. Marwood
Prove it, madam! What, and have your name prostituted in a public court! Yours and your daughter’s reputation worried at the bar by a pack of bawling lawyers! To be ushered in with an Oh yes of scandal; and have your case opened by an old fumbling leacher in a quoif like a man-midwife; to bring your daughter’s infamy to light; to be a theme for legal punsters and quibblers by the statute; and become a jest, against a rule of court, where there is no precedent for a jest in any record, not even in Doomsday Book. To discompose the gravity of the bench, and provoke naughty interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good judge, tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and fidges off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sat upon cowage!—
Lady Wishfort
Oh, ’tis very hard!
Mrs. Marwood
And then to have my young revellers of the Temple take notes, like prentices at a conventicle; and after talk it over again in commons, or before drawers in an eating-house.
Lady Wishfort
Worse and worse!
Mrs. Marwood
Nay, this is nothing; if it would end here ’twere well. But it must after this be consigned by the shorthand writers to the public press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay, into the throats and lungs, of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud flounder-man’s. And this you must hear till you are stunned; nay, you must hear nothing else for some days.
Lady Wishfort
Oh ’tis insupportable. No, no, dear friend, make it up, make it up; aye, aye, I’ll compound. I’ll give up all, myself and my all, my niece and her all—anything, everything, for composition.
Mrs. Marwood
Nay, madam, I advise nothing, I only lay before you, as a friend, the inconveniences which perhaps you have overseen. Here comes Mr. Fainall; if he will be satisfied to huddle up all in silence, I shall be glad. You must think I would rather congratulate than condole with you.
Enter Fainall.
Lady Wishfort
Aye, aye, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood. No, no, I do not doubt it.
Fainall
Well, madam, I have suffered myself to be overcome by the importunity of this lady, your friend; and am content you shall enjoy your own proper estate during life, on condition you oblige yourself never to marry, under such penalty as I think convenient.
Lady Wishfort
Never to marry!
Fainall
No more Sir Rowlands; the next imposture may not be so timely detected.
Mrs. Marwood
That condition, I dare answer, my lady will consent to, without difficulty; she has already but too much experienced the perfidiousness of men.—Besides, madam, when we retire to our pastoral solitude, we shall bid adieu to all other thoughts.
Lady Wishfort
Aye, that’s true; but in case of necessity, as of health, or some such emergency—
Fainall
Oh, if you are prescribed marriage, you shall be considered; I will only reserve to myself the power to choose for you. If your physic be wholesome, it matters not who is your apothecary. Next, my wife shall settle on me the remainder of her fortune, not made over already; and for her maintenance depend entirely on my discretion.
Lady Wishfort
This is most inhumanly savage: exceeding the barbarity of a Muscovite husband.
Fainall
I learned it from his Czarish majesty’s retinue, in a winter evening’s conference over brandy and pepper, amongst other secrets of matrimony and policy, as they are at present practised in the northern hemisphere. But this must be agreed unto, and that positively. Lastly, I will be endowed, in right of my wife, with that six thousand pound, which is the moiety of Mrs. Millamant’s fortune in your possession, and which she has forfeited (as will appear by the last will and testament of your deceased husband, Sir Jonathan Wishfort) by her disobedience in contracting herself against your consent or knowledge, and by refusing the offered match with Sir Wilfull Witwoud, which you, like a careful aunt, had provided for her.
Lady Wishfort
My nephew was non compos, and could not make his addresses.
Fainall
I come to make demands—I’ll hear no objections.
Lady Wishfort
You will grant me time to consider?
Fainall
Yes, while the instrument is drawing, to which you must set your hand till more sufficient deeds can be perfected: which I will take care shall be done with all possible speed. In the meanwhile I will go for the said instrument, and till my return you may balance this matter in your own discretion.
Exit.
Lady Wishfort
This insolence is beyond all precedent, all parallel. Must I be subject to this merciless villain?
Mrs. Marwood
’Tis severe indeed, madam, that you should smart for your daughter’s wantonness.
Lady Wishfort
’Twas against my consent that she married this barbarian, but she would have him, though her year was not out.—Ah! her first husband, my son Languish, would not have carried it thus. Well, that was my choice, this is hers; she is matched now with a witness—I shall be mad!—Dear friend; is there no comfort for me? Must I live to be confiscated at this rebel-rate?—Here come two more of my Egyptian plagues too.
Enter Mrs. Millamant and Sir Wilfull Witwoud.
Sir Wilful
Aunt, your servant.
Lady Wishfort
Out, caterpillar, call not me aunt; I know thee not.
Sir Wilful
I confess I have been a little in disguise, as they say.—S’heart! and I’m sorry for’t. What would you have? I hope I committed no offence, aunt—and if I did I am willing to make satisfaction; and what can a man say fairer? If I have broke anything I’ll pay for’t, an it cost a pound. And so let that content for what’s past, and make no more words. For what’s to come, to pleasure you I’m willing to marry my cousin. So, pray, let’s all be friends, she and I are agreed upon the matter before a witness.
Lady Wishfort
How’s this, dear niece? Have I any comfort? Can this be true?
Mrs. Millamant
I am content to be a sacrifice to your repose, madam, and to convince you that I had no hand in the plot, as you were misinformed. I have laid my commands on Mirabell to come in person, and be a witness that I give my hand to this flower of knighthood; and for the contract that passed between Mirabell and me, I have obliged him to make a resignation of it in your ladyship’s presence. He is without and waits your leave for admittance.
Lady Wishfort
Well, I’ll swear I am something revived at this testimony of your obedience; but I cannot admit that traitor—I fear I cannot fortify myself to support his appearance. He is as terrible to me as a gorgon: if I see him I swear I shall turn to stone, petrify incessantly.
Mrs. Millamant
If you disoblige him he may resent your refusal, and insist upon the contract still. Then ’tis the last time he will be offensive to you.
Lady Wishfort
Are you sure it will be the last time?—If I were sure of that—shall I never see him again?
Mrs. Millamant
Sir Wilfull, you and he are to travel together, are you not?
Sir Wilful
S’heart, the gentleman’s a civil gentleman, aunt, let him come in; why, we are sworn brothers and fellow-travellers.—We are to be Pylades and Orestes, he and I.—He is to be my interpreter in foreign parts. He has been overseas once already; and with proviso that I marry my cousin, will cross ’em once again, only to bear me company.—S’heart, I’ll call him in—an I set on’t once, he shall come in; and see who’ll hinder him. Goes to the door and hems.
Mrs. Marwood
This is precious fooling, if it would pass; but I’ll know the bottom of it.
Lady Wishfort
O dear Marwood, you are not going?
Mrs. Marwood
Not far, madam; I’ll return immediately.
Exit.
Enter Mirabell.
Sir Wilful
Look up, man, I’ll stand by you; ’sbud, an she do frown, she can’t kill you. Besides—hark’ee, she dare not frown desperately, because her face is none of her own. S’heart, an she should, her forehead would wrinkle like the coat of a cream cheese; but mum for that, fellow-traveller.
Mirabell
If a deep sense of the many injuries I have offered to so good a lady, with a sincere remorse and a hearty contrition, can but obtain the least glance of compassion. I am too happy.—Ah, madam, there was a time—but let it be forgotten—I confess I have deservedly forfeited the high place I once held, of sighing at your feet; nay, kill me not by turning from me in disdain—I come not to plead for favour. Nay, not for pardon: I am a suppliant only for pity—I am going where I never shall behold you more—
Sir Wilful
How, fellow-traveller! You shall go by yourself then.
Mirabell
Let me be pitied first, and afterwards forgotten. I ask no more.
Sir Wilful
By’r Lady, a very reasonable request, and will cost you nothing, aunt! Come, come, forgive and forget, aunt. Why you must an you are a Christian.
Mirabell
Consider, madam; in reality you could not receive much prejudice: it was an innocent device, though I confess it had a face of guiltiness—it was at most an artifice which love contrived; and errors which love produces have ever been accounted venial. At least think it is punishment enough that I have lost what in my heart I hold most dear, that to your cruel indignation I have offered up this beauty, and with her my peace and quiet; nay, all my hopes of future comfort.
Sir Wilful
An he does not move me, would I may never be o’ the quorum.—an it were not as good a deed as to drink, to give her to him again, I would I might never take shipping!—Aunt, if you don’t forgive quickly, I shall melt, I can tell you that. My contract went no farther than a little mouth-glue, and that’s hardly dry—one doleful sigh more from my fellow-traveller and ’tis dissolved.
Lady Wishfort
Well, nephew, upon your account—Ah, he has a false insinuating tongue!—Well, sir, I will stifle my just resentment at my nephew’s request.—I will endeavour what I can to forget, but on proviso that you resign the contract with my niece immediately.
Mirabell
It is in writing and with papers of concern; but I have sent my servant for it, and will deliver it to you, with all acknowledgments for your transcendent goodness.
Lady Wishfort
Aside. Oh, he has witchcraft in his eyes and tongue!—When I did not see him I could have bribed a villain to his assassination; but his appearance rakes the embers which have so long lain smothered in my breast.