The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume VI

by Aphra Behn

I was a great while, (like you,) before I forgot the remembrance of my first Languishments, and I almost thought (by an excess of Melancholy,) that the end of my Misfortunes were with my Life at hand: Yet still like a fond Slave, willing to drag my Fetters on, I hop'd she would find Arguments to convince me she was not false; and in that Humor, fear'd only I should not be handsomly and neatly jilted. Could she but have dissembled well, I had been still her Cully. Could she have play'd her Game with discretion, but, vain of her Conquest, she boasted it to all the World, and I alone was the kind keeping Blockhead, to whom 'twas unperceived, so well she swore me into belief of her Truth to me. Till one day, lying under a solitary Shade, with my sad Thoughts fixt on my declining Happiness, and almost drown'd in Tears, I saw a Woman drest in glorious Garments, all loose and flowing with the wind, scouring the Fields and Groves with such a pace, as Venus, when she heard her lov'd Youth was slain, hasted to behold her ruin. She past me, as I lay, with an unexpressible swiftness, and spoke as she run, with a loud Voice. At her first approach, I felt a strange trembling at my Heart without knowing the reason, and found at last this Woman was Fame. Yet I was not able to tell from whence proceeded my Inquietude. When her Words made me but too well understand the Cause: The fatal Subject of what she cry'd, in passing by me, were these:

Poor Lycidus, for shame arise,
And wipe Loves Errors from thy Eyes;
Shake off the God that holds thy Heart;
Since Silvia for another burns,
And all thy past Indurement scorns
While thou the Cully art.

I believed, as she spoke, that I had ill understood her, but she repeated it so often, that I no longer doubted my wretchedness. I leave you, who so well can guess, to imagin, what Complaints I made, filling the Grove, where I was laid, with my piteous Cries; sometimes I rose and raved, and rail'd on Love, and reproached the fair Fugitive. But the tender God was still pleading in my Heart, and made me ever end my noisy Griefs in Sighs and silent Tears. A thousand Thoughts of revenge I entertained against this happy Rival, and the charming ingrate: But those Thoughts, like my Rage, would also end in soft reproaching murmurs and regret only. And I would sometimes argue with Love in this manner.

Ah, cruel Love! when will thy Torments cease?
And when shall I have leave to dye in Peace?
And why, too charming and too cruel Maid,
Cou'd'st thou not yet thy fleeting Heart have stay'd?
And by degrees thy fickle Humor shewn,
By turns the Enemy and Friend put on:
Have us'd my Heart a little to thy scorn,
The loss at least might have been easier born.
With feigned Vows, (that poor Expence of Breath,)
Alas thou might'st have sooth'd me to my death.
Thy Coldness, and thy visible decays
In time had put a period to my days.
And lay'd me quietly into my Tomb,
Before thy proof of Perjuries had come.
You might have waited yet a little space }
And sav'd mine, and thy, Honour this disgrace; }
Alas I languish'd and declin'd apace. }
I lov'd my Life too eagerly away
To have disturb'd thee with too long a stay.
Ah! cou'd you not my dying Heart have fed
With some small Cordial Food, till I was dead?
Then uncontroul'd, and unreproach'd your Charms
Might have been render'd to my Rival's Arms.
Then all my right to him you might impart,
And Triumph'd o're a true and broken Heart.

Though I complained thus for a good while, I was not without some secret hope, that what I had heard was not true; nor would I be persuaded to undeceive myself of that hope which was so dear and precious to me. I was not willing to be convinced I was intirely miserable, out of too great a fear to find it true; and there were some Moments in which I believed Fame might falsly accuse Silvia, and it did not seem reasonable to me, that, after all the Vows and Oaths she had made, she should so easily betray 'em, and forgetting my Services, receive those of another, less capable of rend'ring them to her advantage. Sometimes I would excuse her ingratitude with a thousand things that seem'd reasonable, but still that was but to make me more sensible of my disgrace; and then I would accuse myself of a thousand weaknesses below the Character of a Man; I would even despise and loath my own easiness, and resolve to be no longer a Mark-out-fool for all the Rhiming Wits of the Island to aim their Dogrel at. And grown, as I imagined, brave at this thought, I resolved first to be fully convinced of the perfidy of my Mistress, and then to rent my Heart from the attachment that held it.

You know, that from the Desart of Remembrance, one does, with great facility, look over all the Island of Love. I was resolved to go thither one day; and where indeed I could survey all things that past, in the Groves, the Bowers, by Rivers, or Fountains, or whatever other place, remote or obscure 'twas from thence, that one day I saw the faithless Silvia, in the Palace of True Pleasure, in the very Bower of Bliss with one of my Rivals, but most intimate Friend.

'Twas there, I saw my Rival take
Pleasures, he knew how to make;
There he took, and there was given,
All the Joys that Rival Heaven;
Kneeling at her Feet he lay,
And in transports dy'd away:
Where the faithless suffer'd too
All the amorous Youth cou'd do.

The Ardour of his fierce desire
Set his Face and Eyes on fire.
All their Language was the Blisses
Of Ten thousand eager Kisses;
While his ravish'd Neck she twin'd
And to his Kisses, Kisses join'd;
Till, both inflam'd, she yeilded so
She suffer'd all the Youth cou'd do.

In fine, 'twas there I saw that I must lose the day. And I saw in this Lover Ten thousand Charms of Youth and Beauty; on which the ingrate with greedy languishing Eyes, eternally gazed with the same Joy she used to behold me when she made me most happy. I confess, this Object was so far from pleasing me, (as I believed a confirmation would,) that the change inspired me with a rage, which nothing else could do, and made me say things unbecoming the Dignity of my Sex, who ought to disdain those faithless Slaves, which Heaven first made to obey the Lords of the Creation. A thousand times I was about to have rush'd upon 'em, and have ended the Lives of the loose betrayers of my repose, but Love stepp'd in and stay'd my hand, preventing me from an Outrage, that would have cost me that rest of Honour, I yet had left: But when my rage was abated, I fell to a more insupportable Torment, that of extream Grief to find another possest of what I had been so long, and with so much Toil in gaining: 'Twas thus I retir'd, and after a little while brought myself to make calm Reflections upon this Adventure, which reduced me to some reason. When one day as I was walking in an unfrequented Shade, whither my Melancholy had conducted me, I incountred a Man, of a haughty look and meen, his Apparel rich and glorious, his Eyes awful, and his Stature tall; the very sight of him inspired me with coldness, which render'd me almost insensible of the infidelity of Silvia. This Person was Pride, who looking on me, as he past, with a fierce and disdainful Smile, over his Shoulder, and regarding me with scorn, said;