Scene
III
The same.
Lady Wishfort, Mrs. Millamant, Sir Wilfull, Mirabell, Fainall, and Mrs. Marwood.
Fainall
Your date of deliberation, madam, is expired. Here is the instrument; are you prepared to sign?
Lady Wishfort
If I were prepared, I am not impowered. My niece exerts a lawful claim, having matched herself by my direction to Sir Wilfull.
Fainall
That sham is too gross to pass on me—though ’tis imposed on you, madam.
Mrs. Millamant
Sir, I have given my consent.
Mirabell
And, sir, I have resigned my pretensions.
Sir Wilful
And, sir, I assert my right; and will maintain it in defiance of you, sir, and of your instrument. S’heart, an you talk of an instrument sir, I have an old fox by my thigh shall hack your instrument of ram vellum to shreds, sir. It shall not be sufficient for a mittimus or a tailor’s measure; therefore withdraw your instrument, sir, or, by’r Lady, I shall draw mine.
Lady Wishfort
Hold, nephew, hold!
Mrs. Millamant
Good Sir Wilfull, respite your valour.
Fainall
Indeed? Are you provided of your guard, with your single beef-eater there? But I’m prepared for you, and insist upon my first proposal. You shall submit your own estate to my management, and absolutely make over my wife’s to my sole use, as pursuant to the purport and tenor of this other covenant. I suppose, madam, your consent is not requisite in this case; nor, Mr. Mirabell, your resignation; nor, Sir Wilfull, your right. You may draw your fox if you please, sir, and make a bear-garden flourish somewhere else; for here it will not avail. This, my Lady Wishfort, must be subscribed, or your darling daughter’s turned adrift, like a leaky hulk to sink or swim, as she and the current of this lewd town can agree.
Lady Wishfort
Is there no means, no remedy, to stop my ruin? Ungrateful wretch! Dost thou not owe thy being, thy subsistance, to my daughter’s fortune?
Fainall
I’ll answer you when I have the rest of it in my possession.
Mirabell
But that you would not accept of a remedy from my hands—I own I have not deserved you should owe any obligation to me; or else, perhaps, I could devise—
Lady Wishfort
Oh, what? what? To save me and my child from ruin, from want, I’ll forgive all that’s past; nay, I’ll consent to anything to come, to be delivered from this tyranny.
Mirabell
Aye, madam; but that is too late, my reward is intercepted. You have disposed of her who only could have made me a compensation for all my services. But be it as it may, I am resolved I’ll serve you; you shall not be wronged in this savage manner.
Lady Wishfort
How! dear Mr. Mirabell, can you be so generous at last! But it is not possible. Harkee, I’ll break my nephew’s match; you shall have my niece yet, and all her fortune, if you can but save me from this imminent danger.
Mirabell
Will you? I take you at your word. I ask no more. I must have leave for two criminals to appear.
Lady Wishfort
Aye, aye, anybody, anybody!
Mirabell
Foible is one, and a penitent.
Enter Mrs. Fainall, Foible, and Mincing.
Mrs. Marwood
Oh, my shame! Mirabell and Lady Wishfort go to Mrs. Fainall and Foible. These corrupt things are brought hither to expose me. To Fainall.
Fainall
If it must all come out, why let ’em know it, ’tis but the way of the world. That shall not urge me to relinquish or abate one tittle of my terms; no, I will insist the more.
Foible
Yes, indeed, madam; I’ll take my bible-oath of it.
Mincing
And so will I, mem.
Lady Wishfort
O Marwood, Marwood, art thou false? My friend deceive me! Hast thou been a wicked accomplice with that profligate man?
Mrs. Marwood
Have you so much ingratitude and injustice to give credit, against your friend, to the aspersions of two such mercenary trulls?
Mincing
Mercenary, mem? I scorn your words. ’Tis true we found you and Mr. Fainall in the blue garret; by the same token, you swore us to secrecy upon Messalinas’s poems. Mercenary! No, if we would have been mercenary, we should have held our tongues; you would have bribed us sufficiently.
Fainall
Go, you are an insignificant thing!—Well, what are you the better for this? Is this Mr. Mirabell’s expedient? I’ll be put off no longer.—You, thing, that was a wife, shall smart for this! I will not leave thee wherewithal to hide thy shame; your body shall be naked as your reputation.
Mrs. Fainall
I despise you and defy your malice!—you have aspersed me wrongfully—I have proved your falsehood—go, you and your treacherous—I will not name it, but starve together—perish!
Fainall
Not while you are worth a groat, indeed, my dear.—Madam, I’ll be fooled no longer.
Lady Wishfort
Ah, Mr. Mirabell, this is small comfort, the detection of this affair.
Mirabell
Oh, in good time—your leave for the other offender and penitent to appear, madam.
Enter Waitwell with a box of writings.
Lady Wishfort
O Sir Rowland!—Well, rascal?
Waitwell
What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at last, madam.
Mirabell
Give it me.—Madam, you remember your promise.
Lady Wishfort
Aye, dear sir.
Mirabell
Where are the gentlemen?
Waitwell
At hand, sir, rubbing their eyes—just risen from sleep.
Fainall
’Sdeath, what’s this to me? I’ll not wait your private concerns.
Enter Petulant and Witwoud.
Petulant
How now? What’s the matter? Whose hand’s out?
Witwoud
Heyday! What, are you all got together, like players at the end of the last act?
Mirabell
You may remember, gentlemen, I once requested your hands as witnesses to a certain parchment.
Witwoud
Aye, I do, my hand I remember—Petulant set his mark.
Mirabell
You wrong him; his name is fairly written, as shall appear.—You do not remember, gentlemen, anything of what that parchment contained—Undoing the box.
Witwoud
No.
Petulant
Not I; I writ, I read nothing.
Mirabell
Very well, now you shall know.—Madam, your promise.
Lady Wishfort
Aye, aye, sir, upon my honour.
Mirabell
Mr. Fainall, it is now time that you should know that your lady, while she was at her own disposal, and before you had by your insinuations wheedled her out of a pretended settlement of the greatest part of her fortune—
Fainall
Sir! Pretended?
Mirabell
Yes, sir. I say that this lady, while a widow, having, it seems, received some cautions respecting your inconstancy and tyranny of temper, which from her own partial opinion and fondness of you she could never have suspected—she did, I say, by the wholesome advice of friends, and of sages learned in the laws of this land, deliver this same as her act and deed to me in trust, and to the uses within mentioned. You may read if you please—Holding out the parchment. though perhaps what is written on the back may serve your occasions.
Fainall
Very likely, sir. What’s here?—Damnation! Reads. “A deed of conveyance of the whole estate real of Arabella Languish, widow, in trust to Edward Mirabell.”—Confusion!
Mirabell
Even so, sir; ’tis the way of the world, sir, of the widows of the world. I suppose this deed may bear an elder date than what you have obtained from your lady.
Fainall
Perfidious fiend! Then thus I’ll be revenged. Offers to run at Mrs. Fainall.
Sir Wilful
Hold, sir; now you may make your bear-garden flourish somewhere else, sir.
Fainall
Mirabell, you shall hear of this, sir; be sure you shall.—Let me pass, oaf!
Exit.
Mrs. Fainall
Madam, you seem to stifle your resentment. You had better give it vent.
Mrs. Marwood
Yes, it shall have vent—and to your confusion; or I’ll perish in the attempt.
Exit.
Lady Wishfort
O daughter, daughter! ’Tis plain thou hast inherited thy mother’s prudence.
Mrs. Fainall
Thank Mr. Mirabell, a cautious friend, to whose advice all is owing.
Lady Wishfort
Well, Mr. Mirabell, you have kept your promise—and I must perform mine.—First, I pardon for your sake Sir Rowland there and Foible. The next thing is to break the matter to my nephew—and how to do that—
Mirabell
For that, madam, give yourself no trouble; let me have your consent. Sir Wilfull is my friend: he has had compassion upon lovers, and generously engaged a volunteer in this action, for our service, and now designs to prosecute his travels.
Sir Wilful
S’heart, aunt, I have no mind to marry. My cousin’s a fine lady, and the gentleman loves her and she loves him, and they deserve one another; my resolution is to see foreign parts—I have set on’t—and when I’m set on’t I must do’t. And if these two gentlemen would travel too, I think they may be spared.
Petulant
For my part, I say little—I think things are best off or on.
Witwoud
I’gad, I understand nothing of the matter: I’m in a maze yet, like a dog in a dancing school.
Lady Wishfort
Well, sir, take her, and with her all the joy I can give you.
Mrs. Millamant
Why does not the man take me? Would you have me give myself to you over again?
Mirabell
Aye, and over and over again; Kisses her hand. I would have you as often as possibly I can. Well, Heaven grant I love you not too well, that’s all my fear.
Sir Wilful
S’heart, you’ll have time enough to toy after you’re married, or, if you will toy now, let us have a dance in the meantime; that we who are not lovers may have some other employment besides looking on.
Mirabell
With all my heart, dear Sir Wilfull. What shall we do for music?
Foible
Oh, sir, some that were provided for Sir Rowland’s entertainment are yet within call. A dance.
Lady Wishfort
As I am a person, I can hold out no longer: I have wasted my spirits so today already that I am ready to sink under the fatigue; and I cannot but have some fears upon me yet, that my son Fainall will pursue some desperate course.
Mirabell
Madam, disquiet not yourself on that account; to my knowledge his circumstances are such he must of force comply. For my part I will contribute all that in me lies to a reunion. In the meantime, madam—To Mrs. Fainall. let me before these witnesses restore to you this deed of trust: it may be a means, well-managed, to make you live easily together.
From hence let those be warned, who mean to wed,
Lest mutual falsehood stain the bridal-bed:
For each deceiver to his cost may find
That marriage frauds too oft are paid in kind.
Exeunt omnes.