Volume Xiv Part 85 (1/2)

WAN. Why, I pray?

CAPT. What a miserable condition wilt thou come to? his wife cannot be an honest woman; and if thou shouldst turn honest, would it not vex thee to be chaste and poxed[197]--a saint without a nose? what calendar will admit thee by[198] an incurable slave that's made of rogue's flesh? consider that.

WAN. Why, that's something yet; thou hast nothing but a few scars and a little old fame to trust to; and that scarce thatches your head.

CAPT. Nay, then I see thou art base, and this plot not accident.

And now I do not grudge him thee; go together, 'tis pity to part you, wh.o.r.e and parson, as consonant----

WAN. As wh.o.r.e and captain.

CAPT. Take her, I'll warrant her a breeder. I'll prophesy she shall lie with thy whole congregation, and bring an heir to thy parish; one that thou may'st enclose the common by his t.i.tle, and recover it by common law.

PAR. That's more than thy dear dam could do for thee, thou son of a thousand fathers, all poor soldiers: rogues that ought mischiefs, no midwives, for their birth. But I cry thee mercy, my patron has an estate of old iron by his side, with the farm of old ladies he sc.r.a.pes a dirty living from.

WAN. He earn from an old lady: hang him, he's only wicked in his desires; and for adultery he cannot be condemned, though he should have the vanity to betray himself. G.o.d forgive me for belying him so often as I have done; the weak-chined slave hired me once to say I was with child by him.

CAPT. This is pretty. Farewell; and may the next pig thou farrow'st have a promising face, without the dad's fool or gallows in't, that all may swear, at first sight, that's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; and it shall go hard, but I'll have it called mine. I have the way; 'tis but praising thee, and swearing thou art honest before I am asked: you taught me the trick.

PAR. Next levy I'll preach against thee, and tell them what a piece you are. Your drum and borrowed scarf shall not prevail; nor shall you win with charms, half-ell long (hight ferret riband) the youth of our parish, as you have done.[199]

CAPT. No, lose no time: prythee, study and learn to preach, and leave railing against the surplice, now thou hast preached thyself into linen. Adieu, Abigail! adieu, heir-apparent to Sir Oliver Mar-text! to church, go; I'll send a beadle shall sing your epithalamium.

PAR. Adieu, my captain of a tame band. I'll tell your old lady how you abused her breath, and swore you earned your money harder than those that dig in the mines for't. [_Exit_ CAPTAIN.] A fart fill thy sail, captain of a galley foist.[200] He's gone: come, sweet, let's to church immediately, that I may go and take my revenge: I'll make him wear thin breeches.

WAN. But if you should be such a man as he says you are, what would my friends say when they hear I have cast myself away?

PAR. He says! hang him, lean, mercenary, provand[201] rogue: I knew his beginning, when he made the stocks lousy, and swarmed so with vermin, we were afraid he would have brought that curse upon the country. He says! but what matters what he says? a rogue by sire and dam! his father was a broad, fat pedlar, a what-do-you-lack, sir? that haunted good houses, and stole more than he bought: his dam was a gipsy, a pilfering, canting Sybil in her youth, and she suffered in her old age for a witch. Poor Stromwell, the rogue was a perpetual burthen to her, she carried him longer at her back than in her belly; he dwelt there, till she lost him one night in the great frost upon our common, and there he was found in the morning candied in ice--a pox of their charity that thawed him! You might smell a rogue then in the bud: he is now run away from his wife.

WAN. His wife?

PAR. Yes, his wife; why, do you not know he's married according to the rogues' liturgy? a left-handed bridegroom. I saw him take the ring from a tinker's dowager.

WAN. Is this possible?

PAR. Yes, most possible, and you shall see how I'll be revenged on him: I will immediately go seek the ordinance against reformadoes.

WAN. What ordinance?

PAR. Why, they do so swarm about the town, and are so destructive to trade and all civil government, that the state has declared no person shall keep above two colonels and four captains (of what trade soever) in his family; for now the war is done, broken breech, woodmonger, ragman, butcher, and linkboy (comrades that made up the ragged regiment in this holy war), think to return and be admitted to serve out their times again.

WAN. Your ordinance will not touch the captain, for he is a known soldier.

PAR. He a captain! an apocryphal modern one, that went convoy once to Brentford with those troops that conducted the contribution-puddings in the late holy war, when the city ran mad after their russet Levites, ap.r.o.n-rogues with horn hands. Hang him, he's but the sign of a soldier; and I hope to see him hanged for that commission, when the king comes to his place again.

WAN. You abuse him now he's gone; but----

PAR. Why, dost thou think I fear him? No, wench, I know him too well for a cowardly slave, that dares as soon eat his fox,[202]

as draw it in earnest: the slave's noted to make a conscience of nothing but fighting.