ACT V. SCENE I JULIA's Dressing-Room. Enter JULIA, R. JUL. How this message has alarmed me! what dreadful accident can he mean? why such charge to be alone? O Faulkland! how many unhappy moments, tears, you have cost me! Enter FAULKLAND, L. how many What means this? why this caution, Faulkland? FAULK. You see before you a wretch whose life is forfeited-Nay, start not; the infirmity of my temper has drawn all this misery on me: I left you fretful and passionate-an untoward accident drew me into a quarrel-the event is, that I must fly this kingdom instantly!-Oh, Julia, had I been so fortunate as to have called you mine entirely, before this mischance had fallen on me, I should not so deeply dread my banishment! JUL. My soul is oppressed with sorrow at the nature of your misfortune: had these adverse circumstances arisen from a less fatal cause, I should have felt strong comfort in the thought, that I could now chase from your bosom every doubt of the warm sincerity of my love. My heart has long known no other guardian: I now entrust my person to your honour-we will fly together: when safe from pursuit, my father's will may be fulfilled, and I receive a legal claim to be the partner of your sorrows, and tenderest comforter. FAULK. O Julia! I am bankrupt in gratitude!—Would you not wish some hours to weigh the advantages you forego, and what little compensation poor Faulkland can make you, beside his solitary love? JUL. I ask not a moment-No, Faulkland, I have loved you for yourself and if I now, more than ever, prize the solemn engagement which se long has pledged us to each other, it is because it leaves no room for hard aspersions on my fame, and puts the seal of duty to an act of love. But let us not linger-perhaps this delay FAULK. 'Twill be better I should not venture out again till dark yet am I grieved to think what numberless distresses will press heavy on your gentle disposition ! JUL. Perhaps your fortune may be forfeited by this unhappy act? I know not whether 'tis so, but sure that alone can never make us unhappy -The little I have will be sufficient to support us, and exile never should be splendid. FAULK. Ay, but in such an abject state of life my wounded pride, perhaps, may increase the natural fretfulness of my temper, till I become a rude, morose companion, beyond your patience to endure. JUL. If your thoughts should assume so unhappy a bent, you will the more want some mild and affectionate spirit to watch over and console you; one who, by bearing your infirmities with gentleness and resignation, may teach you so to bear the evils of your fortune. FAULK. Julia, I have proved you to the quick! and with this useless device, I throw away all my doubts. Hows hall I plead to be forgiven this last unworthy effect of my restless, unsatisfied disposition? JUL. Has no such disaster happened as you related? FAULK. I am ashamed to own that it was all pretended. Let me to-morrow, in the face of heaven, receive my future guide and monitress, and expiate my past folly, by years of tender adoration. JUL. Hold, Faulkland! that you are free from a crime, which I before feared to name, heaven knows how sincerely I rejoice! These are tears of thankfulness for that! But, that your cruel doubts should have urged you to an imposition that has wrung my heart, gives me now a pang more keen than I can express! FAULK. By heavens! Julia JUL. Yet hear me-My father loved you, Faulkland! and you preserved the life that tender parent gave me ! in his presence I pledged my hand-joyfully pledged it. where before I had given my heart. When, soon after, I lost that parent, it seemed to me, that Providence had, in Faulkland, shown me whither to transfer, without a pause, my gratified duty as well as my affection: hence I have been content to bear from you, what pride and delicacy would have forbid me from another. I will not upbraid you by repeating how you have trifled with my sincerity. FAULK. I confess it all! yet, hear JUL. After such a year of trial, I might have flattered myself that I should not have been insulted with a new probation of my sincerity, as cruel as unnecessary! I now see that it is not in your nature to be content, or confident in love. With this conviction I never will be yours. FAULK. Nay, but Julia, by my soul and honour !-If, after this JUL. But one word more. As my faith has once been given to you, I will never barter it with another. I shall pray for your happiness with the truest sincerity; and the dearest blessing I can ask of heaven to send you, will be to charm you from that unhappy temper which alone has prevented the performance of our solemn engagement. All I request of you is, that you will yourself reflect upon this infirmity; and, when you number up the many delights it has deprived you of, let it not be your least regret, that it lost you the love of one who would have followed you in beggary through the world. [Exit. R. true FAULK. She's gone!-for ever!-There was an awful resolution in her manner that rivetted me to my place. O, fool!-dolt!-barbarian! Cursed as I am, with more imperfections than my fellow wretches, kind fortune sent a heaven-gifted cherub to my aid, and, like a ruffian, I have driven her from my side! I must now hasten to my appointment. Well, my mind is turned for such a scene! I shall wish only to become a principal in it, and reverse the tale my cursed folly put me upon forging here. O love! tormentor! fiend! whose influence, like the moon's, ac but and urges ting on men of dull souls, makes idiots of them, meeting subtler spirits, betrays their course, sensibility to madness! Enter MAID and LYDIA, L. MAID. My mistress, ma'am, I know was now; perhaps she is only in the next room. [ Exit, L. here, just [Exit. R. LYD. Heigho! Though he has used me so, this fellow runs strangely in my head. I believe one lecture from my grave cousin will make me recall him. Enter JULIA, R. Oh, Julia, I am come to you with such an appetite for consolation! Lud, child! what's the matter with you! You have been crying!-I'll be hanged if that Faulkland has not been tormenting you! JUL. You mistake the cause of my uneasiness: something has flurried me a little. Nothing that you can guess at. LYD. Ah! whatever vexations you may have, I can assure you mine surpass them. You know who Beverley proves to be! JUL. I will now own to you, Lydia, that Mr. Faulkland had before informed me of the whole affair. LYD. So, then, I see I have been deceived by every one! but I don't care, I'll never have him. JUL. Nay, Lydia LYD. Why, is it not provoking, when I thought we were coming to the prettiest distress imaginable, to find myself made a mere Smithfield bargain of at last?-There had I projected one of the most sentimental elopements! so becoming a disguise! so amiable a ladder of ropes! conscious moon-four horses-Scotch parson-with such surprise to Mrs. Malaprop! and such paragraphs in the newspapers!-Oh, I shall die with disappointment! JUL. I don't wonder at it. LYD. Now-sad reverse !-what have I to expect, but after a deal of flimsy preparation, with a bishop's licence and my aunt's blessing, to go simpering up to the altar! or, perhaps, be cried three times in a country church, and have an unmannerly fat clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish, to join John Absolute and Lydia Languish, spinster.—Oh, that I should live to hear myself called spinster! JUL. Melancholy, indeed! LYD. How mortifying, to remember the dear, delicious shifts I used to be put to, to gain half a minute's conversation with this fellow! How often have I stole forth in the coldest night in January, and found him in the garden, stuck like a dripping statue !-There would he kneel to me in the snow, and sneeze and cough, so pathetically!-he shivering with cold, and I with apprehension!—and, while the freezing blast numbed our joints, how warmly would he press me to pity his flame, and glow with mutual ardour!-Ah, Julia, that was something like being in love! JUL. IfI were in spirits, Lydia, I could chide you only by laughing heartily at you; but it suits more the situation of my mind at present earnestly to entreat you, not to let a man, who loves you with sincerity, suffer that unhappiness from your caprice, which I know too well caprice can inflict. [MRS. MALAPROP speaks within, L. LYD. Oh, lud! what has brought my aunt here? Enter MRS. MALAPROP and DAVID, L. MRS. M. So! so! here's fine work! here's fine suicide, paracide, and simulation, going on in the fields! and Sir Anthony not to be found to prevent the antistrophe! JUL. For heaven's sake, madam, what's the matter? MRS. M. That gentleman can tell you, 'twas he enveloped the affair to me. LYD. Oh, patience!-Do, ma'am, for heaven's sake, tell us what is the matter! MRS. M. Why, murder's the matter! slaughter's the matter! killing's the matter! But he can tell you the perpendiculars. [Pointing to David. JUL. Do speak, my friend. [TO DAVID. DAV. Lookye, my lady-by the mass, there's mischief |