Читать книгу The Heiress; a comedy, in five acts - Burgoyne John - Страница 2

A Lady's Apartment.

Mr. Blandish and Mrs. Letitia Blandish discovered writing: Letters folded up, and Message Cards scattered upon the Table.

Mrs. Blandish leans upon her Elbows, as meditating; writes, as pleased with her Thought; lays down the Pen.

Mrs. Blandish. There it is, complete —

[Reads conceitedly.

There's phrase – there's a period – match it, if you can.

Blandish. Not I, indeed: I am working upon a quite different plan: but, in the name of the old father of adulation, to whom is that perfect phrase addressed?

Mrs. Blandish. To one worth the pains, I can tell you – Miss Alscrip.

Blandish. What, sensibility to Miss Alscrip! My dear sister, this is too much, even in your own way: had you run changes upon her fortune, stocks, bonds, and mortgages; upon Lord Gayville's coronet at her feet, or forty other coronets, to make footballs of if she pleased, – it would have been plausible; but the quality you have selected —

Mrs. Blandish. Is one she has no pretensions to; therefore the flattery is more persuasive – that's my maxim.

Blandish. And mine also, but I don't try it quite so high – Sensibility to Miss Alscrip! you might as well have applied it to her uncle's pig-iron, from which she derives her first fifty thousand; or the harder heart of the old usurer, her father, from which she expects the second. But come, [Rings.] to the business of the morning.

Enter Prompt

Here, Prompt – send out the chairman with the billets and cards. – Have you any orders, madam?

Mrs. Blandish. [Delivering her Letter.] This to Miss Alscrip, with my impatient inquiries after her last night's rest, and that she shall have my personal salute in half an hour. – You take care to send to all the lying-in ladies?

Prompt. At their doors, madam, before the first load of straw.

Blandish. And to all great men that keep the house – whether for their own disorders, or those of the nation?

Prompt. To all, sir – their secretaries, and principal clerks.

Blandish. [Aside to Prompt.] How goes on the business you have undertaken for Lord Gayville?

Prompt. I have conveyed his letter, and expect this morning to get an answer.

Blandish. He does not think me in the secret?

Prompt. Mercy forbid you should be!

[Archly.

Blandish. I should never forgive your meddling.

Prompt. Oh! never, never!

Blandish. [Aloud.] Well, dispatch —

Mrs. Blandish. Hold! – apropos, to the lying-in list – at Mrs. Barbara Winterbloom's, to inquire after the Angola kittens, and the last hatch of Java sparrows.

Prompt. [Reading his Memorandum as he goes out.] Ladies in the straw – ministers, &c. – old maids, cats, and sparrows: never had a better list of how d'ye's, since I had the honour to collect for the Blandish family.

[Exit.

Mrs. Blandish. These are the attentions that establish valuable friendships in female life. By adapting myself to the whims of one, submitting to the jest of another, assisting the little plots of a third, and taking part against the husbands with all, I am become an absolute essential in the polite world; the very soul of every fashionable party in town or country.

Blandish. The country! Pshaw! Time thrown away.

Mrs. Blandish. Time thrown away! As if women of fashion left London, to turn freckled shepherdesses. – No, no; cards, cards and backgammon, are the delights of rural life; and, slightly as you may think of my skill, at the year's end I am no inconsiderable sharer in the pin-money of my society.

Blandish. A paltry resource – Gambling is a damned trade, and I have done with it.

Mrs. Blandish. Indeed!

Blandish. Yes; 'twas high time. – The women don't pay; and as for the men, the age grows circumspect in proportion to its poverty. It's odds but one loses a character to establish a debt, and must fight a duel to obtain the payment. I have a thousand better plans, but two principal ones; and I am only at a loss which to chuse.

Mrs. Blandish. Out with them, I beseech you.

Blandish. Whether I shall marry my friend's intended bride, or his sister.

Mrs. Blandish. Marry his intended bride? – What, pig-iron and usury? – Your opinion of her must advance your addresses admirably.

Blandish. My lord's opinion of her will advance them; he can't bear the sight of her, and, in defiance of his uncle, Sir Clement Flint's, eagerness for the match, is running mad after an adventure, which I, who am his confidant, shall keep going till I determine. – There's news for you.

Mrs. Blandish. And his sister, Lady Emily, the alternative! The first match in England, in beauty, wit, and accomplishment.

Blandish. Pooh! A fig for her personal charms; she will bring me connexion that would soon supply fortune; the other would bring fortune enough to make connexion unnecessary.

Mrs. Blandish. And as to the certainty of success with the one or the other —

Blandish. Success! – Are they not women? – But I must away. And first for Lord Gayville, and his fellow student, Clifford.

Mrs. Blandish. Apropos! Look well to Clifford. Lady Emily and he were acquainted at the age of first impressions.

Blandish. I dare say he always meant to be the complete friend of the family; for, besides his design on Lady Emily, his game, I find, has been to work upon Lord Gayville's understanding; he thinks he must finally establish himself in his esteem, by inexorably opposing all his follies. – Poor simpleton! – Now, my touch of opposition goes only to enhance the value of my acquiescence. So adieu for the morning – You to Miss Alscrip, with an unction of flattery, fit for a house-painter's brush; I to Sir Clement, and his family, with a composition as delicate as ether, and to be applied with the point of a feather.

[Going.

Mrs. Blandish. Hark you, Blandish – a good wish before you go: To make your success complete, may you find but half your own vanity in those you have to work on!

Blandish. Thank you, my dear Letty; this is not the only tap you have hit me to-day, and you are right; for if you and I did not sometimes speak truth to each other, we should forget there was such a quality incident to the human mind.

[Exeunt.