FORE. How, how? Is that the reason? Come, you know something; tell me and I’ll forgive you. Do, good niece. Come, you shall have my coach and horses — faith and troth you shall. Does my wife complain? Come, I know women tell one another. She is young and sanguine, has a wanton hazel eye, and was born under Gemini, which may incline her to society. She has a mole upon her lip, with a moist palm, and an open liberality on the mount of Venus.
ANG. Ha, ha, ha!
FORE. Do you laugh? Well, gentlewoman, I’ll — but come, be a good girl, don’t perplex your poor uncle, tell me — won’t you speak? Odd, I’ll —
SCENE IV.
[To them] Servant.
SERV. Sir Sampson is coming down to wait upon you.
ANG. Good-bye, uncle — call me a chair. I’ll find out my aunt, and tell her she must not come home.
FORE. I’m so perplexed and vexed, I’m not fit to receive him; I shall scarce recover myself before the hour be past. Go nurse, tell Sir Sampson I’m ready to wait on him.
NURSE. Yes, sir,
FORE. Well — why, if I was born to be a cuckold, there’s no more to be said — he’s here already.
SCENE V.
Foresight, and Sir Sampson Legend with a paper.
SIR SAMP. Nor no more to be done, old boy; that’s plain — here ’tis, I have it in my hand, old Ptolomey, I’ll make the ungracious prodigal know who begat him; I will, old Nostrodamus. What, I warrant my son thought nothing belonged to a father but forgiveness and affection; no authority, no correction, no arbitrary power; nothing to be done, but for him to offend and me to pardon. I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday he thought I was to pay the piper. Well, but here it is under black and white, signatum, sigillatum, and deliberatum; that as soon as my son Benjamin is arrived, he’s to make over to him his right of inheritance. Where’s my daughter that is to be? — Hah! old Merlin! body o’ me, I’m so glad I’m revenged on this undutiful rogue.
FORE. Odso, let me see; let me see the paper. Ay, faith and troth, here ’tis, if it will but hold. I wish things were done, and the conveyance made. When was this signed, what hour? Odso, you should have consulted me for the time. Well, but we’ll make haste —
SIR SAMP. Haste, ay, ay; haste enough. My son Ben will be in town to-night. I have ordered my lawyer to draw up writings of settlement and jointure — all shall be done to-night. No matter for the time; prithee, brother Foresight, leave superstition. Pox o’ the time; there’s no time but the time present, there’s no more to be said of what’s past, and all that is to come will happen. If the sun shine by day, and the stars by night, why, we shall know one another’s faces without the help of a candle, and that’s all the stars are good for.
FORE. How, how? Sir Sampson, that all? Give me leave to contradict you, and tell you you are ignorant.
SIR SAMP. I tell you I am wise; and sapiens dominabitur astris; there’s Latin for you to prove it, and an argument to confound your Ephemeris. — Ignorant! I tell you, I have travelled old Fircu, and know the globe. I have seen the antipodes, where the sun rises at midnight, and sets at noon-day.
FORE. But I tell you, I have travelled, and travelled in the celestial spheres, know the signs and the planets, and their houses. Can judge of motions direct and retrograde, of sextiles, quadrates, trines and oppositions, fiery-trigons and aquatical-trigons. Know whether life shall be long or short, happy or unhappy, whether diseases are curable or incurable. If journeys shall be prosperous, undertakings successful, or goods stolen recovered; I know —
SIR SAMP. I know the length of the Emperor of China’s foot; have kissed the Great Mogul’s slippers, and rid a-hunting upon an elephant with a Cham of Tartary. Body o’ me, I have made a cuckold of a king, and the present majesty of Bantam is the issue of these loins.
FORE. I know when travellers lie or speak truth, when they don’t know it themselves.
SIR SAMP. I have known an astrologer made a cuckold in the twinkling of a star; and seen a conjurer that could not keep the devil out of his wife’s circle.
FORE. What, does he twit me with my wife too? I must be better informed of this. [Aside.] Do you mean my wife, Sir Sampson? Though you made a cuckold of the king of Bantam, yet by the body of the sun —
SIR SAMP. By the horns of the moon, you would say, brother Capricorn.
FORE. Capricorn in your teeth, thou modern Mandeville; Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude. Take back your paper of inheritance; send your son to sea again. I’ll wed my daughter to an Egyptian mummy, e’er she shall incorporate with a contemner of sciences, and a defamer of virtue.
SIR SAMP. Body o’ me, I have gone too far; I must not provoke honest Albumazar: — an Egyptian mummy is an illustrious creature, my trusty hieroglyphic; and may have significations of futurity about him; odsbud, I would my son were an Egyptian mummy for thy sake. What, thou art not angry for a jest, my good Haly? I reverence the sun, moon and stars with all my heart. What, I’ll make thee a present of a mummy: now I think on’t, body o’ me, I have a shoulder of an Egyptian king that I purloined from one of the pyramids, powdered with hieroglyphics, thou shalt have it brought home to thy house, and make an entertainment for all the philomaths, and students in physic and astrology in and about London.
FORE. But what do you know of my wife, Sir Sampson?
SIR SAMP. Thy wife is a constellation of virtues; she’s the moon, and thou art the man in the moon. Nay, she is more illustrious than the moon; for she has her chastity without her inconstancy: ‘sbud I was but in jest.
SCENE VI.
[To them] Jeremy.
SIR SAMP. How now, who sent for you? Ha! What would you have?
FORE. Nay, if you were but in jest — who’s that fellow? I don’t like his physiognomy.
SIR SAMP. My son, sir; what son, sir? My son Benjamin, hoh?
JERE. No, sir, Mr. Valentine, my master; ’tis the first time he has been abroad since his confinement, and he comes to pay his duty to you.
SIR SAMP. Well, sir.
SCENE VII.
Foresight, Sir Sampson, Valentine, Jeremy.
JERE. He is here, sir.
VAL. Your blessing, sir.
SIR SAMP. You’ve had it already, sir; I think I sent it you to-day in a bill of four thousand pound: a great deal of money, brother Foresight.
FORE. Ay, indeed, Sir Sampson, a great deal of money for a young man; I wonder what he can do with it!
SIR SAMP. Body o’ me, so do I. Hark ye, Valentine, if there be too much, refund the superfluity; dost hear, boy?
VAL. Superfluity, sir? It will scarce pay my debts. I hope you will have more indulgence than to oblige me to those hard conditions which my necessity signed to.
SIR SAMP. Sir, how, I beseech you, what were you pleased to intimate, concerning indulgence?
VAL. Why, sir, that you would not go to the extremity of the conditions, but release me at least from some part.
SIR SAMP. Oh, sir, I understand you — that’s all, ha?
VAL. Yes, sir, all that I presume to ask. But what you, out of fatherly fondness, will be pleased to add, shall be doubly welcome.
SIR SAMP. No doubt of it, sweet sir; but your filial piety, and my fatherly fondness would fit like two tallies. Here’s a rogue, brother Foresight, makes a bargain under hand and seal in the morning, and would be released from it in the afternoon; here’s a rogue, dog, here’s conscience and honesty; this is your wit now, this is the morality of your wits! You are a wit, and have been a beau, and may be a — why sirrah, is it not here under hand and seal — can you deny it?
VAL. Sir, I don’t deny it.
SIR SAMP. Sirrah, you’ll be hanged; I shall live to see you go up Holborn Hill. Has he not a rogue’s face? Speak brother, you understand physiognomy, a hanging look to me — of all my boys the most unlike me; he has a damned Tyburn face, without the benefit o’ the clergy.
FORE. Hum — truly I don’t care to discourage a young man, — he has a violent death in his
face; but I hope no danger of hanging.
VAL. Sir, is this usage for your son? — For that old weather-headed fool, I know how to laugh at him; but you, sir —
SIR SAMP. You, sir; and you, sir: why, who are you, sir?
VAL. Your son, sir.
SIR SAMP. That’s more than I know, sir, and I believe not.
VAL. Faith, I hope not.
SIR SAMP. What, would you have your mother a whore? Did you ever hear the like? Did you ever hear the like? Body o’ me —
VAL. I would have an excuse for your barbarity and unnatural usage.
SIR SAMP. Excuse! Impudence! Why, sirrah, mayn’t I do what I please? Are not you my slave? Did not I beget you? And might not I have chosen whether I would have begot you or no? ‘Oons, who are you? Whence came you? What brought you into the world? How came you here, sir? Here, to stand here, upon those two legs, and look erect with that audacious face, ha? Answer me that! Did you come a volunteer into the world? Or did I, with the lawful authority of a parent, press you to the service?
VAL. I know no more why I came than you do why you called me. But here I am, and if you don’t mean to provide for me, I desire you would leave me as you found me.
SIR SAMP. With all my heart: come, uncase, strip, and go naked out of the world as you came into ‘t.
VAL. My clothes are soon put off. But you must also divest me of reason, thought, passions, inclinations, affections, appetites, senses, and the huge train of attendants that you begot along with me.
SIR SAMP. Body o’ me, what a manyheaded monster have I propagated!
VAL. I am of myself, a plain, easy, simple creature, and to be kept at small expense; but the retinue that you gave me are craving and invincible; they are so many devils that you have raised, and will have employment.
SIR SAMP. ‘Oons, what had I to do to get children, — can’t a private man be born without all these followers? Why, nothing under an emperor should be born with appetites. Why, at this rate, a fellow that has but a groat in his pocket may have a stomach capable of a ten shilling ordinary.
JERE. Nay, that’s as clear as the sun; I’ll make oath of it before any justice in Middlesex.
SIR SAMP. Here’s a cormorant too. ‘S’heart this fellow was not born with you? I did not beget him, did I?
JERE. By the provision that’s made for me, you might have begot me too. Nay, and to tell your worship another truth, I believe you did, for I find I was born with those same whoreson appetites too, that my master speaks of.
SIR SAMP. Why, look you there, now. I’ll maintain it, that by the rule of right reason, this fellow ought to have been born without a palate. ‘S’heart, what should he do with a distinguishing taste? I warrant now he’d rather eat a pheasant, than a piece of poor John; and smell, now, why I warrant he can smell, and loves perfumes above a stink. Why there’s it; and music, don’t you love music, scoundrel?
JERE. Yes; I have a reasonable good ear, sir, as to jigs and country dances, and the like; I don’t much matter your solos or sonatas, they give me the spleen.
SIR SAMP. The spleen, ha, ha, ha; a pox confound you — solos or sonatas? ‘Oons, whose son are you? How were you engendered, muckworm?
JERE. I am by my father, the son of a chair-man; my mother sold oysters in winter, and cucumbers in summer; and I came upstairs into the world; for I was born in a cellar.
FORE. By your looks, you should go upstairs out of the world too, friend.
SIR SAMP. And if this rogue were anatomized now, and dissected, he has his vessels of digestion and concoction, and so forth, large enough for the inside of a cardinal, this son of a cucumber. — These things are unaccountable and unreasonable. Body o’ me, why was not I a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking their paws? Nature has been provident only to bears and spiders; the one has its nutriment in his own hands; and t’other spins his habitation out of his own entrails.
VAL. Fortune was provident enough to supply all the necessities of my nature, if I had my right of inheritance.
SIR SAMP. Again! ‘Oons, han’t you four thousand pounds? If I had it again, I would not give thee a groat. — What, would’st thou have me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own vitals? S’heart, live by your wits: you were always fond of the wits, now let’s see, if you have wit enough to keep yourself. Your brother will be in town to-night or to-morrow morning, and then look you perform covenants, and so your friend and servant: — come, brother Foresight.
SCENE VIII.
Valentine, Jeremy.
JERE. I told you what your visit would come to.
VAL. ’Tis as much as I expected. I did not come to see him, I came to see Angelica: but since she was gone abroad, it was easily turned another way, and at least looked well on my side. What’s here? Mrs. Foresight and Mrs. Frail, they are earnest. I’ll avoid ’em. Come this way, and go and enquire when Angelica will return.
SCENE IX.
Mrs. Foresight and Mrs. Frail.
MRS. FRAIL. What have you to do to watch me? ‘S’life I’ll do what I please.
MRS. FORE. You will?
MRS. FRAIL. Yes, marry will I. A great piece of business to go to Covent Garden Square in a hackney coach, and take a turn with one’s friend.
MRS. FORE. Nay, two or three turns, I’ll take my oath.
MRS. FRAIL. Well, what if I took twenty — I warrant if you had been there, it had been only innocent recreation. Lord, where’s the comfort of this life if we can’t have the happiness of conversing where we like?
MRS. FORE. But can’t you converse at home? I own it, I think there’s no happiness like conversing with an agreeable man; I don’t quarrel at that, nor I don’t think but your conversation was very innocent; but the place is public, and to be seen with a man in a hackney coach is scandalous. What if anybody else should have seen you alight, as I did? How can anybody be happy while they’re in perpetual fear of being seen and censured? Besides, it would not only reflect upon you, sister, but me.
MRS. FRAIL. Pooh, here’s a clutter: why should it reflect upon you? I don’t doubt but you have thought yourself happy in a hackney coach before now. If I had gone to Knight’s Bridge, or to Chelsea, or to Spring Garden, or Barn Elms with a man alone, something might have been said.
MRS. FORE. Why, was I ever in any of those places? What do you mean, sister?
MRS. FRAIL. Was I? What do you mean?
MRS. FORE. You have been at a worse place.
MRS. FRAIL. I at a worse place, and with a man!
MRS. FORE. I suppose you would not go alone to the World’s End.
MRS. FRAIL. The World’s End! What, do you mean to banter me?
MRS. FORE. Poor innocent! You don’t know that there’s a place called the World’s End? I’ll swear you can keep your countenance purely: you’d make an admirable player.
MRS. FRAIL. I’ll swear you have a great deal of confidence, and in my mind too much for the stage.
MRS. FORE. Very well, that will appear who has most; you never were at the World’s End?
MRS. FRAIL. No.
MRS. FORE. You deny it positively to my face?
MRS. FRAIL. Your face, what’s your face?
MRS. FORE. No matter for that, it’s as good a face as yours.
MRS. FRAIL. Not by a dozen years’ wearing. But I do deny it positively to your face, then.
MRS. FORE. I’ll allow you now to find fault with my face; for I’ll swear your impudence has put me out of countenance. But look you here now, where did you lose this gold bodkin? Oh, sister, sister!
MRS. FRAIL. My bodkin!
MRS. FORE. Nay, ’tis yours, look at it.
MRS. FRAIL. Well, if you go to that, where did you find this bodkin? Oh, sister, sister! Sister every way.
MRS. FORE. Oh, devil on’t, that I could not discover her without betraying myself. [Aside.]
MRS. FRAIL. I have heard gentlemen say, sister, that one should take great care, when one makes a thrust in fencing, not to lie open oneself.
&nbs
p; MRS. FORE. It’s very true, sister. Well, since all’s out, and as you say, since we are both wounded, let us do what is often done in duels, take care of one another, and grow better friends than before.
MRS. FRAIL. With all my heart: ours are but slight flesh wounds, and if we keep ’em from air, not at all dangerous. Well, give me your hand in token of sisterly secrecy and affection.
MRS. FORE. Here ’tis, with all my heart.
MRS. FRAIL. Well, as an earnest of friendship and confidence, I’ll acquaint you with a design that I have. To tell truth, and speak openly one to another, I’m afraid the world have observed us more than we have observed one another. You have a rich husband, and are provided for. I am at a loss, and have no great stock either of fortune or reputation, and therefore must look sharply about me. Sir Sampson has a son that is expected to-night, and by the account I have heard of his education, can be no conjurer. The estate you know is to be made over to him. Now if I could wheedle him, sister, ha? You understand me?
Complete Works of William Congreve Page 44