The Conscious Lovers

epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr. Sealand’s service; I was then a hobbledehoy, and you a pretty little tight girl, a favourite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that time we neither of us knew what was in us. I remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean; the person employed on the inner side was your charming self, whom I had never seen before. Phillis I think I remember the silly accident. What made ye, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street? Tom You know not, I warrant you⁠—you could not guess what surprised me. You took no delight when you immediately grew wanton in your conquest, and put your lips close, and breathed upon the glass, and when my lips approached, a dirty cloth you rubbed against my face, and hid your beauteous form! When I again drew near, you spit, and rubbed, and smiled at my undoing. Phillis What silly thoughts you men have! Tom We were Pyramus and Thisbe⁠—but ten times harder was my fate. Pyramus could peep only through a wall; I saw her, saw my Thisbe in all her beauty, but as much kept from her as if a hundred walls between⁠—for there was more: there was her will against me. Would she but yet relent! O Phillis! Phillis! shorten my torment, and declare you pity me. Phillis I believe it’s very sufferable; the pain is not so exquisite but that you may bear it a little longer. Tom Oh! my charming Phillis, if all depended on my fair one’s will, I could with glory suffer⁠—but, dearest creature, consider our miserable state. Phillis How! Miserable! Tom We are miserable to be in love, and under the command of others than those we love; with that generous passion in the heart, to be sent to and fro on errands, called, checked, and rated for the meanest trifles. Oh, Phillis! you don’t know how many china cups and glasses my passion for you has made me break. You have broke my fortune as well as my heart. Phillis Well, Mr. Thomas, I cannot but own to you that I believe your master writes and you speak the best of any men in the world. Never was woman so well pleased with a letter as my young lady was with his; and this is an answer to it. Gives him a letter. Tom This was well done, my dearest; consider, we must strike out some pretty livelihood for ourselves by closing their affairs. It will be nothing for them to give us a little being of our own, some small tenement, out of their large possessions. Whatever they give us, it will be more than what they keep for themselves. One acre with Phillis would be worth a whole county without her. Phillis O, could I but believe you! Tom If not the utterance, believe the touch of my lips. Kisses her. Phillis There’s no contradicting you. How closely you argue, Tom! Tom And will closer, in due time. But I must hasten with this letter, to hasten towards the possession of you. Then, Phillis, consider how I must be revenged, look to it, of all your skittishness, shy looks, and at best but coy compliances. Phillis Oh, Tom, you grow wanton, and sensual, as my lady calls it; I must not endure it. Oh! foh! you are a man⁠—an odious, filthy, male creature⁠—you should behave, if you had a right sense or were a man of sense, like Mr. Cimberton, with distance and indifference; or, let me see, some other becoming hard word, with seeming in-in-inadvertency, and not rush on one as if you were seizing a prey.⁠—But hush! the ladies are coming.⁠—Good Tom, don’t kiss me above once, and be gone. Lard, we have been fooling and toying, and not considered the main business of our masters and mistresses. Tom Why, their business is to be fooling and toying as soon as the parchments are ready. Phillis Well remembered, parchments; my lady, to my knowledge, is preparing writings between her coxcomb cousin, Cimberton, and my mistress, though my master has an eye to the parchments already prepared between your master, Mr. Bevil, and my mistress; and, I believe, my mistress herself has signed and sealed, in her heart, to Mr. Myrtle.⁠—Did I not bid you kiss me but once, and be gone? But I know you won’t be satisfied. Tom No, you smooth creature, how should I? Kissing her hand. Phillis Well, since you are so humble, or so cool, as to ravish my hand only, I’ll take my leave of you like a great lady, and you a man of quality. They salute formally. Tom Pox of all this state. Offers to kiss her more closely. Phillis No, prithee, Tom, mind your business. We must follow that interest which will take, but endeavour at that which will be most for us, and we like most. Oh, here is my young mistress! Tom taps her neck behind, and kisses his fingers. Go, ye liquorish fool. Exit Tom. Enter Lucinda. Lucinda Who was that you were hurrying away? Phillis One that I had no mind to part with. Lucinda Why did you turn him away then? Phillis For your ladyship’s service⁠—to carry your ladyship’s letter to his master. I could hardly get the rogue away. Lucinda Why, has he so little love for his master? Phillis No; but he hath so much love for his mistress. Lucinda But I thought I heard him kiss you. Why did you suffer that? Phillis Why, madam, we vulgar take it to be a sign of love⁠—We servants, we poor people, that have nothing but our persons to bestow or treat for, are forced to deal and bargain by way of sample, and therefore as we have no parchments or wax necessary in our agreements, we squeeze with our hands and seal with our lips, to ratify vows and promises. Lucinda But can’t you trust one another without such earnest down? Phillis We don’t think it safe, any more than you gentry, to come together without