JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, WASHINGTON IRVING
149
Chas. Good day, my lord!—What, musing! I never see thee with that air of grave cogitation, but I am sure there is some mischief devising.
Roch. On the contrary, I am vehemently tempted to reform.
Chas. Reform! ha! ha! ha! why, man, no one will credit thy conversion! Is not thy name a by-word? Do not mothers frighten their daughters with it, as formerly with that of Belzebub? Is not thy appearance in a neighborhood a signal for all the worthy burghers to bar their windows and put their womankind under lock and key?—Art thou not, in melancholy truth, the most notorious seapegrace in the kingdom?
Roch. Heaven forefend that in anything I should take precedence of your majesty.
Chas. But what proof do you give of your conversion?
Roch. The most solemn—I am going to be married.
Chas. Married!—And who, pray, is the lady you have an idea of rendering miserable?
Roch. The Lady Clara.
Chas. The Lady Clara! The brilliant, the discreet, the virtuous Lady Clara! She marry Rochester! ha! ha! ha!
Roch. Ah, my liege, heaven has given her a superabundance of virtues.—She will be able to make a very virtuous man of me with her superfluity.
Chas. Well, when thou art married, I will undertake to write thy epithalamium.
Roch. Then your majesty may at once invoke the Muses. All is settled. (With great gravity.) As soon as the rites are solemnized, I shall quit the court, and its mundane pleasures, and retire with my lovely bride to my castle at Rochester, under permission of my creditors, the faithful garrison of that fortress.
Chas. What! is your castle again in pledge?
Roch. No, my liege, not again. It has never, to my knowledge, been exactly out of keeping. A castle requires a custodian.
Chas. Ah, Rochester! Rochester! Thou art an extravagant dog. I see I shall be called on to pay these usurers at last.
Roch. Your majesty is ever bounteous. I should not have dared to solicit, and certainly shall not presume to decline.
Chas. Ha! ha! Thou art an arrant juggler, and hast an admirable knack of extracting a gift out of an empty hand. But, to business,—where shall we pass the night?
Roch. (Assuming a serious air.) I must beg your majesty to excuse me this evening—I have an engagement of a grave and important nature.
Chas. Grave and important! Thou liest, Rochester, or thine eyes speak false—and whither does this grave engagement take thee?
Roch. To the tavern of the Grand Admiral in Wapping!
Chas. I thought it was some such haunt. And the object of this business?
Roch. A young girl, beautiful as an angel, and virtuous as a dragon—about whom there hangs a mystery that I must investigate.
Chas. A mysterious beauty! It is a case for royal scrutiny—I will investigate it myself.
Roch. But, my liege—
Chas. No buts. Provide disguises. We will go together. (With mock gravity.) I like to study human nature in all its varieties, and there is no school equal to a tavern. There's something of philosophy in this—one often gets a useful lesson in the course of a frolic.
Roch. (Aside.) It shall go hard but your majesty shall have one to-night. (Aloud.) Ah, how few, except myself, give your majesty credit for your philosophy! And yet, by many, I am considered the partaker of your majesty's excesses.
Chas. Partaker! what a calumny! you are the promoter of them.
Roch. The world will judge me in this instance with even more severity than your majesty has done, should any disagreeable adventure be the result.
Chas. Psha! I take the consequences on myself. Provide two seamen's dresses, a purse well filled, and arrange everything for nine precisely. Till then, farewell.
(Exit.)
Roch. I will attend your majesty. So! the plot is in train. I'll off to Lady Clara, and report progress. Let me see. This night the lesson. To-morrow my disgrace. Within eight days my marriage, and then, at my leisure, to repent and reform.
(Exit.)
END OF ACT THE FIRST.
