The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (story books to read TXT) 📖

phlegmatic sot it is! Why, sirrah, you're an anchorite! - a vile, insensible stock. You a soldier! - you're a walking block, fit only to dust the company's regimentals on! Odds life! I have a great mind to marry the girl myself!

ABSOLUTE I am entirely at your disposal, sir: if you should think of addressing Miss Languish yourself, I suppose you would have me marry the aunt; or if you should change your mind, and take the old lady - 'tis the same to me - I'll marry the niece.

Sir ANTHONY Upon my word, Jack, thou'rt either a very great hypocrite, or - but, come, I know your indifference on such a subject must be all a lie - I'm sure it must - come, now - damn your demure face! - come, confess Jack - you have been lying, ha'n't you? You have been playing the hypocrite, hey! - I'll never forgive you, if you ha'n't been lying and playing the hypocrite.

ABSOLUTE I'm sorry, sir, that the respect and duty which I bear to you should be so mistaken.

Sir ANTHONY Hang your respect and duty! But come along with me, I'll write a note to Mrs. Malaprop, and you shall visit the lady directly. Her eyes shall be the Promethean torch to you - come along, I'll never forgive you, if you don't come back stark mad with rapture and impatience - if you don't, egad, I will marry the girl myself!

[Exeunt.]

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Scene II - JULIA's Dressing-room. [FAULKLAND discovered alone.]

FAULKLAND They told me Julia would return directly; I wonder she is not yet come! How mean does this captious, unsatisfied temper of mine appear to my cooler judgment! Yet I know not that I indulge it in any other point: but on this one subject, and to this one subject, whom I think I love beyond my life, I am ever ungenerously fretful and madly capricious! I am conscious of it - yet I cannot correct myself! What tender honest joy sparkled in her eyes when we met! how delicate was the warmth of her expression! I was ashamed to appear less happy - though I had come resolved to wear a face of coolness and upbraiding. Sir Anthony's presence prevented my proposed expostulations: yet I must be satisfied that she has not been so very happy in my absence. She is coming! Yes! - I know the nimbleness of her tread, when she thinks her impatient Faulkland counts the moments of her stay.

[Enter JULIA.]

JULIA I had not hoped to see you again so soon.

FAULKLAND Could I, Julia, be contented with my first welcome - restrained as we were by the presence of a third person?

JULIA O Faulkland, when your kindness can make me thus happy, let me not think that I discovered something of coldness in your first salutation.

FAULKLAND 'Twas but your fancy, Julia. I was rejoiced to see you - to see you in such health. Sure I had no cause for coldness?

JULIA Nay, then, I see you have taken something ill. You must not conceal from me what it is.

FAULKLAND Well, then - shall I own to you that my joy at hearing of your health and arrival here, by your neighbour Acres, was somewhat damped by his dwelling much on the high spirits you had enjoyed in Devonshire - on your mirth - your singing - dancing, and I know not what! For such is my temper, Julia, that I should regard every mirthful moment in your absence as a treason to constancy. The mutual tear that steals down the cheek of parting lovers is a compact, that no smile shall live there till they meet again.

JULIA Must I never cease to tax my Faulkland with this teasing minute caprice? Can the idle reports of a silly boor weigh in your breast against my tried affections?

FAULKLAND They have no weight with me, Julia: No, no - I am happy if you have been so - yet only say, that you did not sing with mirth - say that you thought of Faulkland in the dance.

JULIA I never can be happy in your absence. If I wear a countenance of content, it is to show that my mind holds no doubt of my Faulkland's truth. If I seemed sad, it were to make malice triumph; and say, that I had fixed my heart on one, who left me to lament his roving, and my own credulity. Believe me, Faulkland, I mean not to upbraid you, when I say, that I have often dressed sorrow in smiles, lest my friends should guess whose unkindness had caused my tears.

FAULKLAND You were ever all goodness to me. Oh, I am a brute, when I but admit a doubt of your true constancy!

JULIA If ever without such cause from you, as I will not suppose possible, you find my affections veering but a point, may I become a proverbial scoff for levity and base ingratitude.

FAULKLAND Ah! Julia, that last word is grating to me. I would I had no title to your gratitude! Search your heart, Julia; perhaps what you have mistaken for love, is but the warm effusion of a too thankful heart.

JULIA For what quality must I love you?

FAULKLAND For no quality! To regard me for any quality of mind or understanding, were only to esteem me. And for person - I have often wished myself deformed, to be convinced that I owed no obligation there for any part of your affection.

JULIA Where nature has bestowed a show of nice attention in the features of a man, he should laugh at it as misplaced. I have seen men, who in this vain article, perhaps, might rank above you; but my heart has never asked my eyes if it were so or not.

FAULKLAND Now this is not well from you, Julia - I despise person in a man - yet if you loved me as I wish, though I were an AEthiop, you'd think none so fair.

JULIA I see you are determined to be unkind! The contract which my poor father bound us in gives you more than a lover's privilege.

FAULKLAND Again, Julia, you raise ideas that feed and justify my doubts. I would not have been more free - no - I am proud of my restraint. Yet - yet - perhaps your high respect alone for this solemn compact has fettered your inclinations, which else had made a worthier choice. How shall I be sure, had you remained unbound in thought and promise, that I should still have been the object of your persevering love?

JULIA Then try me now. Let us be free as strangers as to what is past: my heart will not feel more liberty!

FAULKLAND There now! so hasty, Julia! so anxious to be free! If your love for me were fixed and ardent, you would not lose your hold, even though I wished it!

JULIA Oh! you torture me to the heart! I cannot bear it.

FAULKLAND I do not mean to distress you. If I loved you less I should never give you an uneasy moment. But hear me. All my fretful doubts arise from this. Women are not used to weigh and separate the motives of their affections: the cold dictates of prudence, gratitude, or filial duty, may sometimes be mistaken for the pleadings of the heart. I would not boast - yet let me say, that I have neither age, person, nor character, to found dislike on; my fortune such as few ladies could be charged with indiscretion in the match. O Julia! when love receives such countenance from prudence, nice minds will be suspicious of its birth.

JULIA I know not whither your insinuations would tend: - but as they seem pressing to insult me, I will spare you the regret of having done so. - I have given you no cause for this! [Exit in tears.]

FAULKLAND In tears! Stay, Julia: stay but for a moment. - The door is fastened! - Julia! - my soul - but for one moment! - I hear her sobbing! - 'Sdeath! what a brute am I to use her thus! Yet stay! - Ay - she is coming now: - how little resolution there is in a woman! - how a few soft words can turn them! - No, faith! - she is not coming either. - Why, Julia - my love - say but that you forgive me - come but to tell me that - now this is being too resentful. Stay! she is coming too - I thought she would - no steadiness in anything: her going away must have been a mere trick then - she shan't see that I was hurt by it. - I'll affect indifference - [Hums a tune; then listens.] No - zounds! she's not coming! - nor don't intend it, I suppose. - This is not steadiness, but obstinacy! Yet I deserve it. - What, after so long an absence to quarrel with her tenderness! - 'twas barbarous and unmanly! - I should be ashamed to see her now. - I'll wait till her just resentment is abated - and when I distress her so again, may I lose her for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose gnawing passions, and long hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half the day and all the night. [Exit.]

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Scene III - Mrs. MALAPROP's Lodgings. [Mrs. MALAPROP, with a letter in her hand, and CAPTAIN ABSOLUTE.]

Mrs. MALAPROP Your being Sir Anthony's son, captain, would itself be a sufficient accommodation; but from the ingenuity of your appearance, I am convinced you deserve the character here given of you.

ABSOLUTE Permit me to say, madam, that as I never yet have had the pleasure of seeing Miss Languish, my principal inducement in this affair at present is the honour of being allied to Mrs. Malaprop; of whose intellectual accomplishments, elegant manners, and unaffected learning, no tongue is silent.

Mrs. MALAPROP Sir, you do me infinite honour! I beg, captain, you'll be seated. - [They sit.] Ah! few gentlemen, now-a-days, know how to value the ineffectual qualities in a woman! few think how a little knowledge becomes a gentlewoman! - Men have no sense now but for the worthless flower of beauty!

ABSOLUTE It is but too true, indeed, ma'am; - yet I fear our ladies should share the blame - they think our admiration of beauty so great, that knowledge in them would be superfluous. Thus, like garden-trees, they seldom show fruit, till time has robbed them of the more specious blossom. - Few, like Mrs. Malaprop and the orange-tree, are rich in both at once!

Mrs. MALAPROP Sir, you overpower me with good-breeding. - He is the very pine-apple of politeness! - You are not ignorant, captain, that this giddy girl has somehow contrived to fix her affections on a beggarly, strolling, eaves-dropping ensign, whom none of us have seen, and nobody knows anything of.

ABSOLUTE Oh, I have heard the silly affair before. - I'm not at all prejudiced against her on that account.

Mrs. MALAPROP You are very good and very considerate, captain. I am sure I have done everything in my power since I exploded the affair; long ago I laid my positive conjunctions on her, never to think on the fellow again; - I have since laid Sir Anthony's preposition before her; but, I am sorry to say, she seems resolved to