The Way of the World
MRS. FAIN. Yes, for I have loved with indiscretion.
MIRA. You should have just so much disgust for your husband as may be
sufficient to make you relish your lover.
MRS. FAIN. You have been the cause that I have loved without bounds, and
would you set limits to that aversion of which you have been the
occasion? Why did you make me marry this man?
MIRA. Why do we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous actions? To
save that idol, reputation. If the familiarities of our loves had
produced that consequence of which you were apprehensive, where could you
have fixed a father’s name with credit but on a husband? I knew Fainall
to be a man lavish of his morals, an interested and professing friend, a
false and a designing lover, yet one whose wit and outward fair behaviour
have gained a reputation with the town, enough to make that woman stand
excused who has suffered herself to be won by his addresses. A better
man ought not to have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not
answered to the purpose. When you are weary of him you know your remedy.
MRS. FAIN. I ought to stand in some degree of credit with you, Mirabell.
MIRA. In justice to you, I have made you privy to my whole design, and
put it in your power to ruin or advance my fortune.
MRS. FAIN. Whom have you instructed to represent your pretended uncle?
MIRA. Waitwell, my servant.
MRS. FAIN. He is an humble servant to Foible, my mother’s woman, and may
win her to your interest.
MIRA. Care is taken for that. She is won and worn by this time. They
were married this morning.
MRS. FAIN. Who?
MIRA. Waitwell and Foible. I would not tempt my servant to betray me by
trusting him too far. If your mother, in hopes to ruin me, should
consent to marry my pretended uncle, he might, like Mosca in the _Fox_,
stand upon terms; so I made him sure beforehand.
MRS. FAIN. So, if my poor mother is caught in a contract, you will
discover the imposture betimes, and release her by producing a
certificate of her gallant’s former marriage.
MIRA. Yes, upon condition that she consent to my marriage with her
niece, and surrender the moiety of her fortune in her possession.
MRS. FAIN. She talked last night of endeavouring at a match between
Millamant and your uncle.
MIRA. That was by Foible’s direction and my instruction, that she might
seem to carry it more privately.
MRS. FAIN. Well, I have an opinion of your success, for I believe my
lady will do anything to get an husband; and when she has this, which you
have provided for her, I suppose she will submit to anything to get rid
of him.
MIRA. Yes, I think the good lady would marry anything that resembled a
man, though ’twere no more than what a butler could pinch out of a
napkin.
MRS. FAIN. Female frailty! We must all come to it, if we live to be
old, and feel the craving of a false appetite when the true is decayed.
MIRA. An old woman’s appetite is depraved like that of a girl. ’Tis the
green-sickness of a second childhood, and, like the faint offer of a
latter spring, serves but to usher in the fall, and withers in an
affected bloom.
MRS. FAIN. Here’s your mistress.
SCENE V.
[_To them_] MRS. MILLAMANT, WITWOUD, MINCING.
MIRA. Here she comes, i’faith, full sail, with her fan spread and
streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders.—Ha, no, I cry her mercy.
MRS. FAIN. I see but one poor empty sculler, and he tows her woman after
him.
MIRA. You seem to be unattended, madam. You used to have the _beau
monde_ throng after you, and a flock of gay fine perukes hovering round
you.
WIT. Like moths about a candle. I had like to have lost my comparison
for want of breath.
MILLA. Oh, I have denied myself airs to-day. I have walked as fast
through the crowd—
WIT. As a favourite just disgraced, and with as few followers.
MILLA. Dear Mr. Witwoud, truce with your similitudes, for I am as sick
of ’em—
WIT. As a physician of a good air. I cannot help it, madam, though ’tis
against myself.
MILLA. Yet again! Mincing, stand between me and his wit.
WIT. Do, Mrs. Mincing, like a screen before a great fire. I confess I
do blaze to-day; I am too bright.
MRS. FAIN. But, dear Millamant, why were you so long?
MILLA. Long! Lord, have I not made violent haste? I have asked every
living thing I met for you; I have enquired after you, as after a new
fashion.
WIT. Madam, truce with your similitudes.—No, you met her husband, and
did not ask him for her.
MIRA. By your leave, Witwoud, that were like enquiring after an old
fashion to ask a husband for his wife.
WIT. Hum, a hit, a hit, a palpable hit; I confess it.
MRS. FAIN. You were dressed before I came abroad.
MILLA. Ay, that’s true. Oh, but then I had—Mincing, what had I? Why
was I so long?
MINC. O mem, your laship stayed to peruse a packet of letters.
MILLA. Oh, ay, letters—I had letters—I am persecuted with letters—I hate
letters. Nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has ’em, one
does not know why. They serve one to pin up one’s hair.
WIT. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all
your letters? I find I must keep copies.
MILLA. Only with those in verse, Mr. Witwoud. I never pin up my hair
with prose. I think I tried once, Mincing.
MINC. O mem, I shall never forget it.
MILLA. Ay, poor Mincing tift and tift all the morning.
MINC. Till I had the cramp in my fingers, I’ll vow, mem. And all to no
purpose. But when your laship pins it up with poetry, it fits so
pleasant the next day as anything, and is so pure and so crips.
WIT. Indeed, so crips?
MINC. You’re such a critic, Mr. Witwoud.
MILLA. Mirabell, did you take exceptions last night? Oh, ay, and went
away. Now I think on’t I’m angry—no, now I think on’t I’m pleased:—for I
believe I gave you some pain.
MIRA. Does that please you?
MILLA. Infinitely; I love to give pain.
MIRA. You would affect a cruelty which is not in your nature; your true
vanity is in the power of pleasing.
MILLA. Oh, I ask your pardon for that. One’s cruelty is one’s power,
and when one parts with one’s cruelty one parts with one’s power, and
when one has parted with that, I fancy one’s old and ugly.
MIRA. Ay, ay; suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to
destroy your lover—and then how vain, how lost a thing you’ll be! Nay,
’tis true; you are no longer handsome when you’ve lost your lover: your
beauty dies upon the instant. For beauty is the lover’s gift: ’tis he
bestows your charms:—your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old,
whom the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flattered
by it, and discover beauties in it: for that reflects our praises rather
than your face.
MILLA. Oh, the vanity of these men! Fainall, d’ye hear him? If they
did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could
not commend one if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover’s gift! Lord,
what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one
pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as
one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more.
WIT. Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, madam,
than of making so many card-matches.
MILLA. One no more owes one’s beauty to a lover than one’s wit to an
echo. They can but reflect what we look and say: vain empty things if we
are silent or unseen, and want a being.
MIRA. Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two the greatest
pleasures of your life.
MILLA. How so?
MIRA. To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised,
and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk.
WIT. But I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won’t give
an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an
echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words.
MILLA. Oh, fiction; Fainall, let us leave these men.
MIRA. Draw off Witwoud. [_Aside to_ MRS. FAINALL.]
MRS. FAIN. Immediately; I have a word or two for Mr. Witwoud.
SCENE VI.
MRS. MILLAMANT, MIRABELL, MINCING.
MIRA. I would beg a little private audience too. You had the tyranny to
deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that
concerned my love.
MILLA. You saw I was engaged.
MIRA. Unkind! You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools: things
who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness
that time which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find
delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you; they
are not capable; or, if they were, it should be to you as a
mortification: for, sure, to please a fool is some degree of folly.
MILLA. I please myself.—Besides, sometimes to converse with fools is for
my health.
MIRA. Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of
fools?
MILLA. Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to assafoetida.
MIRA. You are not in a course of fools?
MILLA. Mirabell, if you persist in this offensive freedom you’ll
displease me. I think I must resolve after all not to have you:—we
shan’t agree.
MIRA. Not in our physic, it may be.
MILLA. And yet our distemper in all likelihood will be the same; for we
shall be sick of one another. I shan’t endure to be reprimanded nor
instructed; ’tis so dull to act always by advice, and so tedious to be
told of one’s faults, I can’t bear it. Well, I won’t have you,
Mirabell—I’m resolved—I think—you may go—ha, ha, ha! What would you give
that you could help loving me?
MIRA. I would give something that you did not know I could not help it.
MILLA. Come, don’t look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?
MIRA. I say that a man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a
fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing and sincerity.
MILLA. Sententious Mirabell! Prithee don’t look with that violent and
inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old
tapestry hanging!
MIRA. You are merry, madam, but I would persuade you for a moment to be
serious.
MILLA. What, with that face? No, if you keep your countenance, ’tis
impossible I should hold mine. Well, after all, there is something very
moving in a lovesick face. Ha, ha, ha! Well I won’t laugh; don’t be
peevish. Heigho! Now I’ll be melancholy, as melancholy as a
watch-light. Well, Mirabell, if ever you will win me, woo me now.—Nay,
if you are so tedious, fare you well: I see they are walking away.
MIRA. Can you not find in the variety of your disposition one moment—
MILLA. To hear you tell me Foible’s married, and your plot like to
speed? No.
MIRA. But how you came to know it—
MILLA. Without the help of the devil, you can’t imagine; unless she
should tell me herself. Which of the two it may have been, I will leave
you to consider; and when you have done thinking of that, think of me.
SCENE VII.
MIRABELL _alone_.
MIRA. I have something more.—Gone! Think of you? To think of a
whirlwind, though ’twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady
contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. A fellow that
lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a
man that is lodged in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which
they cannot turn, and by which they are not turned, and by one as well as
another; for motion, not method, is their occupation. To know this, and
yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of
reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct.—Oh,