The Way of the World
either doting or averse. While they are lovers, if they have fire and
sense, their jealousies are insupportable: and when they cease to love
(we ought to think at least) they loathe, they look upon us with horror
and distaste, they meet us like the ghosts of what we were, and as from
such, fly from us.
MRS. MAR. True, ’tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should
ever die before us, and that the man so often should outlive the lover.
But say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been
loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of
life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to
have been born old, because we one day must be old. For my part, my
youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.
MRS. FAIN. Then it seems you dissemble an aversion to mankind only in
compliance to my mother’s humour.
MRS. MAR. Certainly. To be free, I have no taste of those insipid dry
discourses with which our sex of force must entertain themselves apart
from men. We may affect endearments to each other, profess eternal
friendships, and seem to dote like lovers; but ’tis not in our natures
long to persevere. Love will resume his empire in our breasts, and every
heart, or soon or late, receive and readmit him as its lawful tyrant.
MRS. FAIN. Bless me, how have I been deceived! Why, you profess a
libertine.
MRS. MAR. You see my friendship by my freedom. Come, be as sincere,
acknowledge that your sentiments agree with mine.
MRS. FAIN. Never.
MRS. MAR. You hate mankind?
MRS. FAIN. Heartily, inveterately.
MRS. MAR. Your husband?
MRS. FAIN. Most transcendently; ay, though I say it, meritoriously.
MRS. MAR. Give me your hand upon it.
MRS. FAIN. There.
MRS. MAR. I join with you; what I have said has been to try you.
MRS. FAIN. Is it possible? Dost thou hate those vipers, men?
MRS. MAR. I have done hating ’em, and am now come to despise ’em; the
next thing I have to do is eternally to forget ’em.
MRS. FAIN. There spoke the spirit of an Amazon, a Penthesilea.
MRS. MAR. And yet I am thinking sometimes to carry my aversion further.
MRS. FAIN. How?
MRS. MAR. Faith, by marrying; if I could but find one that loved me very
well, and would be throughly sensible of ill usage, I think I should do
myself the violence of undergoing the ceremony.
MRS. FAIN. You would not make him a cuckold?
MRS. MAR. No; but I’d make him believe I did, and that’s as bad.
MRS. FAIN. Why had not you as good do it?
MRS. MAR. Oh, if he should ever discover it, he would then know the
worst, and be out of his pain; but I would have him ever to continue upon
the rack of fear and jealousy.
MRS. FAIN. Ingenious mischief! Would thou wert married to Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. Would I were.
MRS. FAIN. You change colour.
MRS. MAR. Because I hate him.
MRS. FAIN. So do I; but I can hear him named. But what reason have you
to hate him in particular?
MRS. MAR. I never loved him; he is, and always was, insufferably proud.
MRS. FAIN. By the reason you give for your aversion, one would think it
dissembled; for you have laid a fault to his charge, of which his enemies
must acquit him.
MRS. MAR. Oh, then it seems you are one of his favourable enemies.
Methinks you look a little pale, and now you flush again.
MRS. FAIN. Do I? I think I am a little sick o’ the sudden.
MRS. MAR. What ails you?
MRS. FAIN. My husband. Don’t you see him? He turned short upon me
unawares, and has almost overcome me.
SCENE II.
[_To them_] FAINALL _and_ MIRABELL.
MRS. MAR. Ha, ha, ha! he comes opportunely for you.
MRS. FAIN. For you, for he has brought Mirabell with him.
FAIN. My dear.
MRS. FAIN. My soul.
FAIN. You don’t look well to-day, child.
MRS. FAIN. D’ye think so?
MIRA. He is the only man that does, madam.
MRS. FAIN. The only man that would tell me so at least, and the only man
from whom I could hear it without mortification.
FAIN. Oh, my dear, I am satisfied of your tenderness; I know you cannot
resent anything from me; especially what is an effect of my concern.
MRS. FAIN. Mr. Mirabell, my mother interrupted you in a pleasant
relation last night: I would fain hear it out.
MIRA. The persons concerned in that affair have yet a tolerable
reputation. I am afraid Mr. Fainall will be censorious.
MRS. FAIN. He has a humour more prevailing than his curiosity, and will
willingly dispense with the hearing of one scandalous story, to avoid
giving an occasion to make another by being seen to walk with his wife.
This way, Mr. Mirabell, and I dare promise you will oblige us both.
SCENE III.
FAINALL, MRS. MARWOOD.
FAIN. Excellent creature! Well, sure, if I should live to be rid of my
wife, I should be a miserable man.
MRS. MAR. Ay?
FAIN. For having only that one hope, the accomplishment of it of
consequence must put an end to all my hopes, and what a wretch is he who
must survive his hopes! Nothing remains when that day comes but to sit
down and weep like Alexander when he wanted other worlds to conquer.
MRS. MAR. Will you not follow ’em?
FAIN. Faith, I think not,
MRS. MAR. Pray let us; I have a reason.
FAIN. You are not jealous?
MRS. MAR. Of whom?
FAIN. Of Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. If I am, is it inconsistent with my love to you that I am
tender of your honour?
FAIN. You would intimate then, as if there were a fellow-feeling between
my wife and him?
MRS. MAR. I think she does not hate him to that degree she would be
thought.
FAIN. But he, I fear, is too insensible.
MRS. MAR. It may be you are deceived.
FAIN. It may be so. I do not now begin to apprehend it.
MRS. MAR. What?
FAIN. That I have been deceived, madam, and you are false.
MRS. MAR. That I am false? What mean you?
FAIN. To let you know I see through all your little arts.—Come, you both
love him, and both have equally dissembled your aversion. Your mutual
jealousies of one another have made you clash till you have both struck
fire. I have seen the warm confession red’ning on your cheeks, and
sparkling from your eyes.
MRS. MAR. You do me wrong.
FAIN. I do not. ’Twas for my ease to oversee and wilfully neglect the
gross advances made him by my wife, that by permitting her to be engaged,
I might continue unsuspected in my pleasures, and take you oftener to my
arms in full security. But could you think, because the nodding husband
would not wake, that e’er the watchful lover slept?
MRS. MAR. And wherewithal can you reproach me?
FAIN. With infidelity, with loving another, with love of Mirabell.
MRS. MAR. ’Tis false. I challenge you to show an instance that can
confirm your groundless accusation. I hate him.
FAIN. And wherefore do you hate him? He is insensible, and your
resentment follows his neglect. An instance? The injuries you have done
him are a proof: your interposing in his love. What cause had you to
make discoveries of his pretended passion? To undeceive the credulous
aunt, and be the officious obstacle of his match with Millamant?
MRS. MAR. My obligations to my lady urged me: I had professed a
friendship to her, and could not see her easy nature so abused by that
dissembler.
FAIN. What, was it conscience then? Professed a friendship! Oh, the
pious friendships of the female sex!
MRS. MAR. More tender, more sincere, and more enduring, than all the
vain and empty vows of men, whether professing love to us or mutual faith
to one another.
FAIN. Ha, ha, ha! you are my wife’s friend too.
MRS. MAR. Shame and ingratitude! Do you reproach me? You, you upbraid
me? Have I been false to her, through strict fidelity to you, and
sacrificed my friendship to keep my love inviolate? And have you the
baseness to charge me with the guilt, unmindful of the merit? To you it
should be meritorious that I have been vicious. And do you reflect that
guilt upon me which should lie buried in your bosom?
FAIN. You misinterpret my reproof. I meant but to remind you of the
slight account you once could make of strictest ties when set in
competition with your love to me.
MRS. MAR. ’Tis false, you urged it with deliberate malice. ’Twas spoke
in scorn, and I never will forgive it.
FAIN. Your guilt, not your resentment, begets your rage. If yet you
loved, you could forgive a jealousy: but you are stung to find you are
discovered.
MRS. MAR. It shall be all discovered. You too shall be discovered; be
sure you shall. I can but be exposed. If I do it myself I shall prevent
your baseness.
FAIN. Why, what will you do?
MRS. MAR. Disclose it to your wife; own what has past between us.
FAIN. Frenzy!
MRS. MAR. By all my wrongs I’ll do’t. I’ll publish to the world the
injuries you have done me, both in my fame and fortune: with both I
trusted you, you bankrupt in honour, as indigent of wealth.
FAIN. Your fame I have preserved. Your fortune has been bestowed as the
prodigality of your love would have it, in pleasures which we both have
shared. Yet, had not you been false I had e’er this repaid it. ’Tis
true—had you permitted Mirabell with Millamant to have stolen their
marriage, my lady had been incensed beyond all means of reconcilement:
Millamant had forfeited the moiety of her fortune, which then would have
descended to my wife. And wherefore did I marry but to make lawful prize
of a rich widow’s wealth, and squander it on love and you?
MRS. MAR. Deceit and frivolous pretence!
FAIN. Death, am I not married? What’s pretence? Am I not imprisoned,
fettered? Have I not a wife? Nay, a wife that was a widow, a young
widow, a handsome widow, and would be again a widow, but that I have a
heart of proof, and something of a constitution to bustle through the
ways of wedlock and this world. Will you yet be reconciled to truth and
me?
MRS. MAR. Impossible. Truth and you are inconsistent.—I hate you, and
shall for ever.
FAIN. For loving you?
MRS. MAR. I loathe the name of love after such usage; and next to the
guilt with which you would asperse me, I scorn you most. Farewell.
FAIN. Nay, we must not part thus.
MRS. MAR. Let me go.
FAIN. Come, I’m sorry.
MRS. MAR. I care not. Let me go. Break my hands, do—I’d leave ’em to
get loose.
FAIN. I would not hurt you for the world. Have I no other hold to keep
you here?
MRS. MAR. Well, I have deserved it all.
FAIN. You know I love you.
MRS. MAR. Poor dissembling! Oh, that—well, it is not yet—
FAIN. What? What is it not? What is it not yet? It is not yet too
late—
MRS. MAR. No, it is not yet too late—I have that comfort.
FAIN. It is, to love another.
MRS. MAR. But not to loathe, detest, abhor mankind, myself, and the
whole treacherous world.
FAIN. Nay, this is extravagance. Come, I ask your pardon. No tears—I
was to blame, I could not love you and be easy in my doubts. Pray
forbear—I believe you; I’m convinced I’ve done you wrong; and any way,
every way will make amends: I’ll hate my wife yet more, damn her, I’ll
part with her, rob her of all she’s worth, and we’ll retire somewhere,
anywhere, to another world; I’ll marry thee—be pacified.—’Sdeath, they
come: hide your face, your tears. You have a mask: wear it a moment.
This way, this way: be persuaded.
SCENE IV.
MIRABELL _and_ MRS. FAINALL.
MRS. FAIN. They are here yet.
MIRA. They are turning into the other walk.
MRS. FAIN. While I only hated my husband, I could bear to see him; but
since I have despised him, he’s too offensive.
MIRA. Oh, you should hate with prudence.