The Way of the World

ACT II
Scene I.

St. James's Park.

MRS. FAINALL and MRS. MARWOOD.

MRS. FAINALL
Ay, ay, dear Marwood, if we will be happy, we must find the means in ourselves, and among ourselves. Men are ever in extremes; either doting or averse. While they are lovers, if they have fire and sense, their jealousies are insupportable: and when they cease to love (we ought to think at least) they loathe, they look upon us with horror and distaste, they meet us like the ghosts of what we were, and as from such, fly from us.

MRS. MARWOOD
True, 'tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should ever die before us, and that the man so often should outlive the lover. But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old. For my part, my youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession.

MRS. FAINALL
Then it seems you dissemble an aversion to mankind only in compliance to my mother's humour.

MRS. MARWOOD
Certainly. To be free, I have no taste of those insipid dry discourses with which our sex of force must entertain themselves apart from men. We may affect endearments to each other, profess eternal friendships, and seem to dote like lovers; but 'tis not in our natures long to persevere. Love will resume his empire in our breasts, and every heart, or soon or late, receive and readmit him as its lawful tyrant.

MRS. FAINALL
Bless me, how have I been deceived! Why, you profess a libertine.

MRS. MARWOOD
You see my friendship by my freedom. Come, be as sincere, acknowledge that your sentiments agree with mine.

MRS. FAINALL
Never.

MRS. MARWOOD
You hate mankind?

MRS. FAINALL
Heartily, inveterately.

MRS. MARWOOD
Your husband?

MRS. FAINALL
Most transcendently; ay, though I say it, meritoriously.

MRS. MARWOOD
Give me your hand upon it.

MRS. FAINALL
There.

MRS. MARWOOD
I join with you; what I have said has been to try you.

MRS. FAINALL
Is it possible? Dost thou hate those vipers, men?

MRS. MARWOOD
I have done hating 'em, and am now come to despise 'em; the next thing I have to do is eternally to forget 'em.

MRS. FAINALL
There spoke the spirit of an Amazon, a Penthesilea.

MRS. MARWOOD
And yet I am thinking sometimes to carry my aversion further.

MRS. FAINALL
How?

MRS. MARWOOD
Faith, by marrying; if I could but find one that loved me very well, and would be throughly sensible of ill usage, I think I should do myself the violence of undergoing the ceremony.

MRS. FAINALL
You would not make him a cuckold?

MRS. MARWOOD
No; but I'd make him believe I did, and that's as bad.

MRS. FAINALL
Why had not you as good do it?

MRS. MARWOOD
Oh, if he should ever discover it, he would then know the worst, and be out of his pain; but I would have him ever to continue upon the rack of fear and jealousy.

MRS. FAINALL
Ingenious mischief! Would thou wert married to Mirabell.

MRS. MARWOOD
Would I were.

MRS. FAINALL
You change colour.

MRS. MARWOOD
Because I hate him.

MRS. FAINALL
So do I; but I can hear him named. But what reason have you to hate him in particular?

MRS. MARWOOD
I never loved him; he is, and always was, insufferably proud.

MRS. FAINALL
By the reason you give for your aversion, one would think it dissembled; for you have laid a fault to his charge, of which his enemies must acquit him.

MRS. MARWOOD
Oh, then it seems you are one of his favourable enemies. Methinks you look a little pale, and now you flush again.

MRS. FAINALL
Do I? I think I am a little sick o' the sudden.

MRS. MARWOOD
What ails you?

MRS. FAINALL
My husband. Don't you see him? He turned short upon me unawares, and has almost overcome me.