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
deliberatemalice. '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
frivolouspretence!
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.
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
commitdisagreeable 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" target="_blank" title="a.做作的;假装的">
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" target="_blank" title="n.称赞,表扬;推荐">
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