Act V
Scene I.—Sir Charles Marlow has arrived, and the two elders have been making merry over the blunder; both are now eager for the marriage. But they are mystified by Marlow's assertion that he is indifferent to MISS Hardcastle, and his assertion is corroborated by what Hardcastle saw.
Scene II.—The back of the garden. Enter Tony, booted and spurred, meeting Hastings.
Tony: Ecod, five-and-twenty miles in two hours and a half is no such bad driving.
Hastings: But where are your fellow-passengers? Where have you left the ladies?
Tony: Why, where I found 'em! Led 'em astray, man. There's not a pond or a slough within five miles of the place but they can tell the taste of; and finished with the horsepond at the back of the garden. Mother's confoundedly frightened, and thinks herself forty miles off. So now, if your own horses be ready, you can whip off with my cousin, and no one to budge an inch after you.
Hastings: My dear friend, how can I be grateful.
[Exit.
Tony: Here she comes—got up from the pond.
[Enter Mrs. Hardcastle.
Mrs. Hardcastle: Oh, Tony, I'm killed—shook—battered to death! That last jolt has done for me. Whereabouts are we?
Tony: Crackskull Common by my guess, forty miles from home. Don't be afraid. Is that a man galloping behind us? Don't be afraid.
Mrs. Hardcastle: Oh, there's a man coming! We are undone!
Tony (aside): Father-in-law, by all that's unlucky! Hide yourself, and keep close; if I cough it will mean danger.
[Enter Hardcastle.
Hardcastle: I am sure I heard voices. What, Tony? Are you back already? (Tony laughs.)
Mrs. Hardcastle (running forward): Oh, lud; he'll murder my poor boy! Here, good gentleman, whet your rage on me. Take my money, take my life, good Mr. Highwayman, but spare my child.
Hardcastle: Sure, Dorothy, you have lost your wits? This is one of your tricks, you graceless rogue. Don't you remember me, and the mulberry-tree, and the horsepond?
Mrs. Hardcastle: I shall remember it as long as I live. And this is your doing—you——
Tony: Ecod, mother, all the parish says you've spoilt me, so you may take the fruits on't.
[Exeunt.
Miss Neville thinks better of the elopement, and resolves to appeal to Mr. Hardcastle's influence with his wife. This improved plan is carried to a successful issue, with great satisfaction to Tony Lumpkin.
Scene III.—The hall. Sir Charles Marlow and Hardcastle witness, from concealment, the formal proposal of Marlow to make the supposed "poor relation" his wife. They break in.
Sir Charles: Charles, Charles, how thou hast deceived me! Is this your indifference?
Hardcastle: Your cold contempt? Your formal interview? What have you to say?
Marlow: That I'm all amazement. What does it mean?
Hardcastle: It means that you say and unsay things at pleasure; that you can address a lady in private and deny it in public; that you have one story for us and another for my daughter.
Marlow: Daughter? This lady your daughter? Oh, the devil! Oh—!
Kate: In which of your characters may we address you? The faltering gentleman who looks on the ground and hates hypocrisy, or the bold, forward Agreeable Rattle of the ladies' club?
Marlow: Zounds, this is worse than death! I must
be gone.
Hardcastle: But you shall not! I see it was all a mistake. She'll forgive you; we'll all forgive you. Courage, man! And if she makes as good a wife as she has a daughter, I don't believe you'll ever repent your bargain. So now to supper. To-morrow we shall gather all the poor of this parish about us; the mistakes of the night shall be crowned with a merry morning.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] The Life of Goldsmith, by John Forster, may be found in Volume IX of the World's Greatest Books (see also Vol. IV, p. 275). "The Mistakes of a Night, or She Stoops to Conquer," appeared at Covent Garden, in March, 1773. So convinced was George Colman that the public would endure nothing but sentiment, that he could hardly be induced to accept the play, and was extremely nervous about its success, almost until the fall of the curtain on the first night. Nevertheless, its success was immediate and decisive, and it became established as a stock piece. The play loses nothing by the suppression of sentimental passages between Hastings and Miss Neville, without which Colman would certainly have declined it altogether. Apart from the main argument—the wooing of Kate Hardcastle—the plot turns on the points that Tony Lumpkin is the son of Mrs. Hardcastle by her first marriage, and that Constance Neville is her niece and ward, not her husband's.