The Conscious Lovers

Scene I. Sir John Bevil’s House.

Enter Sir John Bevil and Humphry.

John Bevil

Have you ordered that I should not be interrupted while I am dressing?

Humphry

Yes, sir; I believed you had something of moment to say to me.

John Bevil

Let me see, Humphry; I think it is now full forty years since I first took thee to be about myself.

Humphry

I thank you, sir, it has been an easy forty years; and I have passed ’em without much sickness, care, or labour.

John Bevil

Thou hast a brave constitution; you are a year or two older than I am, sirrah.

Humphry

You have ever been of that mind, sir.

John Bevil

You knave, you know it; I took thee for thy gravity and sobriety, in my wild years.

Humphry

Ah, sir! our manners were formed from our different fortunes, not our different age. Wealth gave a loose to your youth, and poverty put a restraint upon mine.

John Bevil

Well, Humphry, you know I have been a kind master to you; I have used you, for the ingenuous nature I observed in you from the beginning, more like an humble friend than a servant.

Humphry

I humbly beg you’ll be so tender of me as to explain your commands, sir, without any farther preparation.

John Bevil

I’ll tell thee, then: In the first place, this wedding of my son’s in all probability⁠—shut the door⁠—will never be at all.

Humphry

How, sir! not be at all? for what reason is it carried on in appearance?

John Bevil

Exit.

Enter Phillis.

Phillis

Oh, Mr. Thomas, is Mrs. Sugar-key at home? Lard, one is almost ashamed to pass along the streets! The town is quite empty, and nobody of fashion left in it; and the ordinary people do so stare to see anything, dressed like a woman of condition, as it were on the same floor with them, pass by. Alas! alas! it is a sad thing to walk. O fortune! fortune!

Tom

What! a sad thing to walk? Why, Madam Phillis, do you wish yourself lame?

Phillis

No, Mr. Tom, but I wish I were generally carried in a coach or chair, and of a fortune neither to stand nor go, but to totter, or slide, to be shortsighted, or stare, to fleer in the face, to look distant, to observe, to overlook, yet all become me; and, if I was rich, I could twire and loll as well as the best of them. Oh, Tom! Tom! is it not a pity that you should be so great a coxcomb, and I so great a coquet, and yet be such poor devils as we are?

Tom

Mrs. Phillis, I am your humble servant for that⁠—

Phillis

Yes, Mr. Thomas, I know how much you are my humble servant, and know what you said to Mrs. Judy, upon seeing her in one of her lady’s cast manteaus: That anyone would have thought her the lady, and that she had ordered the other to wear it till it sat easy; for now only it was becoming. To my lady it was only a covering, to Mrs. Judy it was a habit.

Think? that I am still your son, sir. Sir, you have been married, and I have not. And you have, sir, found the inconvenience there is when a man weds with too much love in his head. I have been told, sir, that at the time you married, you made a mighty bustle on the occasion. There was challenging and fighting, scaling walls, locking up the lady, and the gallant under an arrest for fear of killing all his rivals. Now, sir, I suppose you having found the ill consequences of these strong passions and prejudices, in preference of one woman to another, in case of a man’s becoming a widower⁠—

John Bevil

How is this?

Bevil Jr.

I say, sir, experience has made you wiser in your care of me; for, sir, since you lost my dear mother, your time has been so heavy, so lonely, and so tasteless, that you are so good as to guard me against the like unhappiness, by marrying me prudentially by way of bargain and sale. For, as you well judge, a woman that is espoused for a fortune, is yet a better bargain if she dies; for then a man still enjoys what he did marry, the money, and is disencumbered of what he did not marry, the woman.

Indiana

The more in him! He scorns the thought⁠—

Isabella

Then he⁠—he⁠—he⁠—

Indiana

Well, be not so eager. If he is an ill man, let us look into his stratagems. Here is another of them. Showing a letter. Here’s two hundred and fifty pounds in bank notes, with these words: “To pay for the set of dressing-plate which will be brought home tomorrow.” Why, dear aunt, now here’s another piece of skill for you, which I own I cannot comprehend; and it is with a bleeding heart I hear you say anything to the disadvantage of Mr. Bevil. When he is present I look upon him as one to whom I owe my life and the support of it; then, again, as the man who loves me with sincerity and honour. When his eyes are cast another way, and I dare survey him, my heart is painfully divided between shame and love. Oh! could I tell you⁠—

Isabella

Ah! you need not; I imagine all this for you.

Indiana

This is my state of mind in his presence; and when he is absent, you are ever dinning my ears with notions of the arts of men; that his hidden bounty, his respectful conduct, his careful provision for me, after his preserving me from utmost misery, are certain signs he means nothing but to make I know not what of me.

Isabella

Oh! You have a sweet opinion of him, truly.

Indiana

I have, when I am with him, ten thousand things, besides my sex’s natural decency and shame, to suppress my heart, that yearns to thank, to praise, to say it loves him.

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 Cimberton! how abstracted, how refined is your sense of things! But, indeed, it is too true there is nothing so ordinary as to say, in the best governed families, my master and lady have gone to bed; one does not know but it might have been said of one’s self. Hiding her face with her fan.

Cimberton

Lycurgus, madam, instituted otherwise; among the Lacedaemonians the whole female world was pregnant, but none but the mothers themselves knew by whom; their meetings were secret, and the amorous congress always by stealth; and no such professed doings between the sexes as are tolerated among us under the audacious word, marriage.

Mrs. Sealand