SCENE II.--_A Room in_ Sir DAVY DUNCE's _House_.

_Enter_ Lady DUNCE _and_ SYLVIA.

_L. Dunce._ Die a maid, Sylvia, fie, for shame! what a scandalous resolution's that! Five thousand pounds to your portion, and leave it all to hospitals, for the innocent recreation hereafter of leading apes in hell?[31] fie, for shame!

_Sylv._ Indeed, such another charming animal as your consort, Sir Davy, might do much with me; 'tis an unspeakable blessing to lie all night by a horseload of diseases; a beastly, unsavoury, old, groaning, grunting, wheezing wretch, that smells of the grave he's going to already. From such a curse, and haircloth next my skin, good Heaven deliver me!

_L. Dunce._ Thou mistakest the use of a husband, Sylvia: they are not meant for bedfellows; heretofore, indeed, 'twas a fulsome fashion, to lie o' nights with a husband; but the world's improved, and customs altered.

_Sylv._ Pray instruct me then what the use of a husband is.

_L. Dunce._ Instead of a gentleman-usher for ceremony's sake, to be in waiting on set days and particular occasions; but the friend, cousin, is the jewel unvaluable.

_Sylv._ But Sir Davy, madam, will be difficult to be so governed; I am mistaken if his nature is not too jealous to be blinded.

_L. Dunce._ So much the better; of all, the jealous fool is easiest to be deceived: for observe, where there's jealousy there's always fondness; which if a woman, as she ought to do, will make the right use of, the husband's fears shall not so awake him on one side, as his dotage shall blind him on the other.

_Sylv._ Is your piece of mortality such a doting doodle? is he so very fond of you?

_L. Dunce._ No, but he has the vanity to think that I am very fond of him; and if he be jealous, 'tis not so much for fear I do abuse, as that in time I may, and therefore imposes this confinement on me; though he has other divertisements that take him off from my enjoyment, which make him so loathsome no woman but must hate him.

_Sylv._ His private divertisements I am a stranger to.

_L. Dunce._ Then for his person, 'tis incomparably odious; he has such a breath, one kiss of him were enough to cure the fits of the mother;[32] 'tis worse than assafoetida.

_Sylv._ Oh, hideous!

_L. Dunce._ Everything that's nasty he affects: clean linen he says is unwholesome; and to make him more charming, he's continually eating of garlic and chewing tobacco.

_Sylv._ Faugh! this is love! this is the blessing of matrimony!

_L. Dunce._ Rail not so unreasonably against love, Sylvia. As I have dealt freely, and acknowledged to thee the passion I have for Beaugard, so methinks Sylvia need not conceal her good thoughts of her friend. Do not I know Courtine sticks in your stomach?

_Sylv._ If he does, I'll assure you he shall never get to my heart. But can you have the conscience to love another man now you are married? What do you think will become of you?

_L. Dunce._ I tell thee, Sylvia, I was never married to that engine we have been talking of; my parents indeed made me say something to him after a priest once, but my heart went not along with my tongue; I minded not what it was: for my thoughts, Sylvia, for these seven years, have been much better employed--Beaugard! Ah, curse on the day that first sent him into France!

_Sylv._ Why so, I beseech you?

_L. Dunce._ Had he stayed here, I had not been sacrificed to the arms of this monument of man, for the bed of death could not be more cold than his has been: he would have delivered me from the monster, for even then I loved him, and was apt to think my kindness not neglected.

_Sylv._ I find indeed your ladyship had good thoughts of him.

_L. Dunce._ Surely 'tis impossible to think too well of him, for he has wit enough to call his good-nature in question, and yet good-nature enough to make his wit suspected.

_Sylv._ But how do you hope ever to get sight of him? Sir Davy's watchfulness is invincible. I dare swear he would smell out a rival if he were in the house, only by natural instinct; as some that always sweat when a cat's in the room. Then again, Beaugard's a soldier, and that's a thing the old gentleman, you know, loves dearly.

_L. Dunce._ There lies the greatest comfort of my uneasy life; he is one of those fools, forsooth, that are led by the nose by knaves to rail against the king and the government, and is mightily fond of being thought of a party. I have had hopes this twelve-month to have heard of his being in the Gatehouse[33] for treason.

_Sylv._ But I find only yourself the prisoner all this while.

_L. Dunce._ At present indeed I am so; but fortune I hope will smile, wouldst thou but be my friend, Sylvia.

_Sylv._ In any mischievous design, with all my heart.

_L. Dunce._ The conclusion, madam, may turn to your satisfaction. But you have no thoughts of Courtine?

_Sylv._ Not I, I'll assure you, cousin.

_L. Dunce._ You don't think him well shaped, straight, and proportionable?

_Sylv._ Considering he eats but once a week, the man is well enough.

_L. Dunce._ And then he wears his clothes, you know, filthily, and like a horrid sloven.

_Sylv._ Filthily enough of all conscience, with a threadbare red coat, which his tailor duns him for to this day, over which a great, broad, greasy, buff-belt, enough to turn any one's stomach but a disbanded soldier; a peruke tied up in a knot, to excuse its want of combing; and then, because he has been a man at arms, he must wear two tuffles of a beard, forsooth, to lodge a dunghill of snuff upon, to keep his nose in good humour.

_L. Dunce._ Nay, now I am sure that thou lovest him.

_Sylv._ So far from it, that I protest eternally against the whole sex.

_L. Dunce._ That time will best demonstrate; in the mean while to our business.

_Sylv._ As how, madam?

_L. Dunce._ To-night must I see Beaugard; they are this minute at dinner in the Haymarket; now to make my evil genius, that haunts me everywhere, my thing called a husband, himself to assist his poor wife at a dead lift, I think would not be unpleasant.

_Sylv._ But 'twill be impossible.

_L. Dunce._ I am apt to be persuaded rather very easy. You know our good and friendly neighbour, Sir Jolly.

_Sylv._ Out on him, beast! he's always talking filthily to a body; if he sits but at the table with one, he'll be making nasty figures in the napkins.

_L. Dunce._ He and my sweet yoke-fellow are the most intimate friends in the world; so that partly out of neighbourly kindness, as well as the great delight he takes to be meddling in matters of this nature, with a great deal of pains and industry he has procured me Beaugard's picture, and given him to understand how well a friend of his in petticoats, called myself, wishes him.

_Sylv._ But what's all this to the making the husband instrumental? for I must confess, of all creatures, a husband's the thing that's odious to me.

_L. Dunce._ That must be done this night: I'll instantly to my chamber, take my bed in a pet, and send for Sir Davy.

_Sylv._ But which way then must the lover come?

_L. Dunce._ Nay, I'll betray Beaugard to him, show him the picture he sent me, and beg of him, as he tenders his own honour and my quiet, to take some course to secure me from the scandalous solicitations of that innocent fellow.

_Sylv._ And so make him the property, the go-between, to bring the affair to an issue the more decently.

_L. Dunce._ Right, Sylvia; 'tis the best office a husband can do a wife; I mean an old husband. Bless us, to be yoked in wedlock with a paralytic, coughing, decrepit dotterel; to be a dry-nurse all one's life-time to an old child of sixty-five; to lie by the image of death a whole night, a dull immoveable, that has no sense of life but through its pains! the pigeon's as happy that's laid to a sick man's feet, when the world has given him over:[34] for my part, this shall henceforth be my prayer:--

Curst be the memory, nay double curst, Of her that wedded age for interest first! Though worn with years, with fruitless wishes full, 'Tis all day troublesome, and all night dull. Who wed with fools, indeed, lead happy lives; Fools are the fittest, finest things for wives: Yet old men profit bring, as fools bring ease, And both make youth and wit much better please. [_Exeunt._

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Knights of the post were hired witnesses and men of straw who made a trade of becoming bail. They hung about the various inns of court so as to be available at a moment's notice. In _Hudibras_ we read:

"Retain all sorts of witnesses That ply i' the Temples under trees, Or walk the Round with Knights o' th' Posts About the crossed-legged Knights their hosts."

[27] In Covent Garden.

[28] A courtesan.

[29] A famous ordinary, which stood on the site of Drummond's bank at Charing Cross, frequently alluded to by writers of the period.

[30] Refuse.

[31] The fate, according to an old proverb, of those who die maids.

[32] Hysterics.

[33] A well-known prison near the west end of Westminster Abbey, where political prisoners were confined.

[34] An old superstitious practice. Pepys makes mention of pigeons being placed at the feet of Catherine of Braganza, Charles II.'s queen, when she was dangerously ill.

ACT THE SECOND.