Heartwell, Vainlove and Bellmour following.
BELL. Hist, hist, is not that Heartwell going to Silvia?
VAIN. He’s talking to himself, I think; prithee let’s try if we can hear him.
HEART. Why, whither in the devil’s name am I agoing now? Hum—let me think—is not this Silvia’s house, the cave of that enchantress, and which consequently I ought to shun as I would infection? To enter here is to put on the envenomed shirt, to run into the embraces of a fever, and in some raving fit, be led to plunge myself into that more consuming fire, a woman’s arms. Ha! well recollected, I will recover my reason, and be gone.
BELL. Now Venus forbid!
VAIN. Hush—
HEART. Well, why do you not move? Feet, do your office—not one inch; no, fore Gad I’m caught. There stands my north, and thither my needle points. Now could I curse myself, yet cannot repent. O thou delicious, damned, dear, destructive woman! S’death, how the young fellows will hoot me! I shall be the jest of the town: nay, in two days I expect to be chronicled in ditty, and sung in woful ballad, to the tune of the Superannuated Maiden’s Comfort, or the Bachelor’s Fall; and upon the third, I shall be hanged in effigy, pasted up for the exemplary ornament of necessary houses and cobblers’ stalls. Death, I can’t think on’t—I’ll run into the danger to lose the apprehension.
SCENE III.
Bellmour, Vainlove.
BELL. A very certain remedy, probatum est. Ha, ha, ha, poor George, thou art i’ th’ right, thou hast sold thyself to laughter; the ill-natured town will find the jest just where thou hast lost it. Ha, ha, how a’ struggled, like an old lawyer between two fees.