The Conscious Lovers

deeds executed. Lucinda Thou art a pert merry hussy. Phillis I wish, madam, your lover and you were as happy as Tom and your servant are. Lucinda You grow impertinent. Phillis I have done, madam; and I won’t ask you what you intend to do with Mr. Myrtle, what your father will do with Mr. Bevil, nor what you all, especially my lady, mean by admitting Mr. Cimberton as particularly here as if he were married to you already; nay, you are married actually as far as people of quality are. Lucinda How is that? Phillis You have different beds in the same house. Lucinda Pshaw! I have a very great value for Mr. Bevil, but have absolutely put an end to his pretensions in the letter I gave you for him. But my father, in his heart, still has a mind to him, were it not for this woman they talk of; and I am apt to imagine he is married to her, or never designs to marry at all. Phillis Then Mr. Myrtle⁠— Lucinda He had my parents’ leave to apply to me, and by that he has won me and my affections; who is to have this body of mine without them, it seems, is nothing to me. My mother says ’tis indecent for me to let my thoughts stray about the person of my husband; nay, she says a maid, rigidly virtuous, though she may have been where her lover was a thousand times, should not have made observations enough to know him from another man when she sees him in a third place. Phillis That is more than the severity of a nun, for not to see when one may is hardly possible; not to see when one can’t is very easy. At this rate, madam, there are a great many whom you have not seen who⁠— Lucinda Mamma says the first time you see your husband should be at that instant he is made so. When your father, with the help of the minister, gives you to him, then you are to see him; then you are to observe and take notice of him; because then you are to obey him. Phillis But does not my lady remember you are to love as well as obey? Lucinda To love is a passion, it is a desire, and we must have no desires.⁠—Oh, I cannot endure the reflection! With what insensibility on my part, with what more than patience have I been exposed and offered to some awkward booby or other in every county of Great Britain! Phillis Indeed, madam, I wonder I never heard you speak of it before with this indignation. Lucinda Every corner of the land has presented me with a wealthy coxcomb. As fast as one treaty has gone off, another has come on, till my name and person have been the tittle-tattle of the whole town. What is this world come to?⁠—no shame left⁠—to be bartered for like the beasts of the field, and that in such an instance as coming together to an entire familiarity and union of soul and body. Oh! and this without being so much as well-wishers to each other, but for increase of fortune. Phillis But, madam, all these vexations will end very soon in one for all. Mr. Cimberton is your mother’s kinsman, and three hundred years an older gentleman than any lover you ever had; for which reason, with that of his prodigious large estate, she is resolved on him, and has sent to consult the lawyers accordingly; nay, has (whether you know it or no) been in treaty with Sir Geoffry, who, to join in the settlement, has accepted of a sum to do it, and is every moment expected in town for that purpose. Lucinda How do you get all this intelligence? Phillis By an art I have, I thank my stars, beyond all the waiting-maids in Great Britain⁠—the art of listening, madam, for your ladyship’s service. Lucinda I shall soon know as much as you do; leave me, leave me, Phillis, begone. Here, here! I’ll turn you out. My mother says I must not converse with my servants, though I must converse with no one else. Exit Phillis. —How unhappy are we who are born to great fortunes! No one looks at us with indifference, or acts towards us on the foot of plain dealing; yet, by all I have been heretofore offered to or treated for I have been used with the most agreeable of all abuses⁠—flattery. But now, by this phlegmatic fool I’m used as nothing, or a mere thing. He, forsooth, is too wise, too learned to have any regard for desires, and I know not what the learned oaf calls sentiments of love and passion⁠—Here he comes with my mother⁠—It’s much if he looks at me, or if he does, takes no more notice of me than of any other movable in the room. Enter Mrs. Sealand, and Mr. Cimberton. Mrs. Sealand How do I admire this noble, this learned taste of yours, and the worthy regard you have to our own ancient and honourable house in consulting a means to keep the blood as pure and as regularly descended as may be. Cimberton Why, really, madam, the young women of this age are treated with discourses of such a tendency, and their imaginations so bewildered in flesh and blood, that a man of reason can’t talk to be understood. They have no ideas of happiness, but what are more gross than the gratification of hunger and thirst. Lucinda With how much reflection he is a coxcomb! Aside. Cimberton And in truth, madam, I have considered it as a most brutal custom that persons of the first character in the world should go as ordinarily, and with as little shame, to bed as to dinner with one another. They proceed to the propagation of the species as openly as to the preservation of the individual. Lucinda She that willingly goes to bed to thee must have no shame, I’m sure. Aside. Mrs. Sealand Oh, cousin Cimberton! cousin