The Way of the World
argument, I rose and with a constrained smile told her, I thought nothing
was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome; she reddened
and I withdrew, without expecting her reply.
FAIN. You were to blame to resent what she spoke only in compliance with
her aunt.
MIRA. She is more mistress of herself than to be under the necessity of
such a resignation.
FAIN. What? though half her fortune depends upon her marrying with my
lady’s approbation?
MIRA. I was then in such a humour, that I should have been better
pleased if she had been less discreet.
FAIN. Now I remember, I wonder not they were weary of you; last night
was one of their cabal-nights: they have ’em three times a week and meet
by turns at one another’s apartments, where they come together like the
coroner’s inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week. You
and I are excluded, and it was once proposed that all the male sex should
be excepted; but somebody moved that to avoid scandal there might be one
man of the community, upon which motion Witwoud and Petulant were
enrolled members.
MIRA. And who may have been the foundress of this sect? My Lady
Wishfort, I warrant, who publishes her detestation of mankind, and full
of the vigour of fifty-five, declares for a friend and ratafia; and let
posterity shift for itself, she’ll breed no more.
FAIN. The discovery of your sham addresses to her, to conceal your love
to her niece, has provoked this separation. Had you dissembled better,
things might have continued in the state of nature.
MIRA. I did as much as man could, with any reasonable conscience; I
proceeded to the very last act of flattery with her, and was guilty of a
song in her commendation. Nay, I got a friend to put her into a lampoon,
and compliment her with the imputation of an affair with a young fellow,
which I carried so far, that I told her the malicious town took notice
that she was grown fat of a sudden; and when she lay in of a dropsy,
persuaded her she was reported to be in labour. The devil’s in’t, if an
old woman is to be flattered further, unless a man should endeavour
downright personally to debauch her: and that my virtue forbade me. But
for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your
wife’s friend, Mrs. Marwood.
FAIN. What should provoke her to be your enemy, unless she has made you
advances which you have slighted? Women do not easily forgive omissions
of that nature.
MIRA. She was always civil to me, till of late. I confess I am not one
of those coxcombs who are apt to interpret a woman’s good manners to her
prejudice, and think that she who does not refuse ’em everything can
refuse ’em nothing.
FAIN. You are a gallant man, Mirabell; and though you may have cruelty
enough not to satisfy a lady’s longing, you have too much generosity not
to be tender of her honour. Yet you speak with an indifference which
seems to be affected, and confesses you are conscious of a negligence.
MIRA. You pursue the argument with a distrust that seems to be
unaffected, and confesses you are conscious of a concern for which the
lady is more indebted to you than is your wife.
FAIN. Fie, fie, friend, if you grow censorious I must leave you:—I’ll
look upon the gamesters in the next room.
MIRA. Who are they?
FAIN. Petulant and Witwoud.—Bring me some chocolate.
MIRA. Betty, what says your clock?
BET. Turned of the last canonical hour, sir.
MIRA. How pertinently the jade answers me! Ha! almost one a’ clock!
[_Looking on his watch_.] Oh, y’are come!
SCENE II.
MIRABELL _and_ FOOTMAN.
MIRA. Well, is the grand affair over? You have been something tedious.
SERV. Sir, there’s such coupling at Pancras that they stand behind one
another, as ’twere in a country-dance. Ours was the last couple to lead
up; and no hopes appearing of dispatch, besides, the parson growing
hoarse, we were afraid his lungs would have failed before it came to our
turn; so we drove round to Duke’s Place, and there they were riveted in a
trice.
MIRA. So, so; you are sure they are married?
SERV. Married and bedded, sir; I am witness.
MIRA. Have you the certificate?
SERV. Here it is, sir.
MIRA. Has the tailor brought Waitwell’s clothes home, and the new
liveries?
SERV. Yes, sir.
MIRA. That’s well. Do you go home again, d’ye hear, and adjourn the
consummation till farther order; bid Waitwell shake his ears, and Dame
Partlet rustle up her feathers, and meet me at one a’ clock by Rosamond’s
pond, that I may see her before she returns to her lady. And, as you
tender your ears, be secret.
SCENE III.
MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY.
FAIN. Joy of your success, Mirabell; you look pleased.
MIRA. Ay; I have been engaged in a matter of some sort of mirth, which
is not yet ripe for discovery. I am glad this is not a cabal-night. I
wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of consequence should be
discreet, will suffer your wife to be of such a party.
FAIN. Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are engaged are women
and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind too contemptible to
give scandal.
MIRA. I am of another opinion: the greater the coxcomb, always the more
the scandal; for a woman who is not a fool can have but one reason for
associating with a man who is one.
FAIN. Are you jealous as often as you see Witwoud entertained by
Millamant?
MIRA. Of her understanding I am, if not of her person.
FAIN. You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has wit.
MIRA. She has beauty enough to make any man think so, and complaisance
enough not to contradict him who shall tell her so.
FAIN. For a passionate lover methinks you are a man somewhat too
discerning in the failings of your mistress.
MIRA. And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for I
like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults. Her follies
are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those
affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her
more agreeable. I’ll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that
insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated
her failings: I studied ’em and got ’em by rote. The catalogue was so
large that I was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her
heartily. To which end I so used myself to think of ’em, that at length,
contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less and
less disturbance, till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember
’em without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my
own frailties, and in all probability in a little time longer I shall
like ’em as well.
FAIN. Marry her, marry her; be half as well acquainted with her charms
as you are with her defects, and, my life on’t, you are your own man
again.
MIRA. Say you so?
FAIN. Ay, ay; I have experience. I have a wife, and so forth.
SCENE IV.
[_To them_] MESSENGER.
MESS. Is one Squire Witwoud here?
BET. Yes; what’s your business?
MESS. I have a letter for him, from his brother Sir Wilfull, which I am
charged to deliver into his own hands.
BET. He’s in the next room, friend. That way.
SCENE V.
MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY.
MIRA. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilfull
Witwoud?
FAIN. He is expected to-day. Do you know him?
MIRA. I have seen him; he promises to be an extraordinary person. I
think you have the honour to be related to him.
FAIN. Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwoud by a former wife, who was
sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife’s mother. If you marry Millamant,
you must call cousins too.
MIRA. I had rather be his relation than his acquaintance.
FAIN. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.
MIRA. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty.
FAIN. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England that all Europe
should know we have blockheads of all ages.
MIRA. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of
the nation and prohibit the exportation of fools.
FAIN. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a
little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.
MIRA. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant and those of the
squire, his brother, anything related?
FAIN. Not at all: Witwoud grows by the knight like a medlar grafted on a
crab. One will melt in your mouth and t’other set your teeth on edge;
one is all pulp and the other all core.
MIRA. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be
rotten without ever being ripe at all.
FAIN. Sir Wilfull is an odd mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy. But
when he’s drunk, he’s as loving as the monster in The Tempest, and much
after the same manner. To give bother his due, he has something of
good-nature, and does not always want wit.
MIRA. Not always: but as often as his memory fails him and his
commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory and some few
scraps of other folks’ wit. He is one whose conversation can never be
approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good
quality: he is not exceptious, for he so passionately affects the
reputation of understanding raillery that he will construe an affront
into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill language satire and
fire.
FAIN. If you have a mind to finish his picture, you have an opportunity
to do it at full length. Behold the original.
SCENE VI.
[_To them_] WITWOUD.
WIT. Afford me your compassion, my dears; pity me, Fainall, Mirabell,
pity me.
MIRA. I do from my soul.
FAIN. Why, what’s the matter?
WIT. No letters for me, Betty?
BET. Did not a messenger bring you one but now, sir?
WIT. Ay; but no other?
BET. No, sir.
WIT. That’s hard, that’s very hard. A messenger, a mule, a beast of
burden, he has brought me a letter from the fool my brother, as heavy as
a panegyric in a funeral sermon, or a copy of commendatory verses from
one poet to another. And what’s worse, ’tis as sure a forerunner of the
author as an epistle dedicatory.
MIRA. A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?
WIT. Ay, ay, my half-brother. My half-brother he is, no nearer, upon
honour.
MIRA. Then ’tis possible he may be but half a fool.
WIT. Good, good, Mirabell, _le drôle_! Good, good, hang him, don’t
let’s talk of him.—Fainall, how does your lady? Gad, I say anything in
the world to get this fellow out of my head. I beg pardon that I should
ask a man of pleasure and the town a question at once so foreign and
domestic. But I talk like an old maid at a marriage, I don’t know what I
say: but she’s the best woman in the world.
FAIN. ’Tis well you don’t know what you say, or else your commendation
would go near to make me either vain or jealous.
WIT. No man in town lives well with a wife but Fainall. Your judgment,
Mirabell?
MIRA. You had better step and ask his wife, if you would be credibly
informed.
WIT. Mirabell!
MIRA. Ay.
WIT. My dear, I ask ten thousand pardons. Gad, I have forgot what I was
going to say to you.
MIRA. I thank you heartily, heartily.
WIT. No, but prithee excuse me:—my memory is such a memory.
MIRA. Have a care of such apologies, Witwoud; for I never knew a fool
but he affected to complain either of the spleen or his memory.
FAIN. What have you done with Petulant?
WIT. He’s reckoning his money; my money it was: I have no luck to-day.
FAIN. You may allow him to win of you at play, for you are sure to be