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_ ACT II - SCENE III
SCENE.--Police-Office.
[JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &c.]
JUSTICE
Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, let me entreat you to consider the consequences. What will the world say to your exposing your own child?
FLINT
The world is not my friend. I belong to a profession which has long brought me acquainted with its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and desire its censure above its plaudits.
JUSTICE
But in this case delicacy must make you pause.
FLINT
Delicacy--ha! ha!--pawnbroker--how fitly these words suit. Delicate pawnbroker--delicate devil--let the law take its course.
JUSTICE
Consider, the jewels are found.
FLINT
'Tis not the silly baubles I regard. Are you a man? are you a father? and think you I could stoop so low, vile as I stand here, as to make money--filthy money--of the stuff which a daughter's touch has desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them.
JUSTICE
Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child.
FLINT
Only, only,--there, it is that stings me, makes me mad. She was the only thing I had to love me--to bear me up against the nipping injuries of the world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your prisoner.
(The Justice makes signs to an Officer, who goes out, and returns with Miss Flyn.)
FLINT
What mockery of my sight is here? This is no daughter.
OFFICER
Daughter, or no daughter, she has confessed to this casket.
FLINT
_(Handling it.)_ The very same. Was it in the power of these pale splendours to dazzle the sight of honesty--to put out the regardful eye of piety and daughter-love? Why, a poor glow-worm shews more brightly. Bear witness how I valued them--_(tramples on them)_.--Fair lady, know you aught of my child?
MISS FLYN
I shall here answer no questions.
JUSTICE
You must explain how you came by the jewels, madam.
MISS FLYN
_(Aside.)_ Now confidence assist me!----A gentleman in the neighbourhood will answer for me----
JUSTICE
His name----
MISS FLYN
Pendulous----
JUSTICE
That lives in the next street?
MISS FLYN
The same----now I have him sure.
JUSTICE
Let him be sent for. I believe the gentleman to be respectable, and will accept his security.
FLINT
Why do I waste my time, where I have no business? None--I have none any more in the world--none.
[Enter Pendulous.]
PENDULOUS
What is the meaning of this extraordinary summons?--Maria here?
FLINT
Know you any thing of my daughter, Sir?
PENDULOUS
Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why I am brought hither; but for this lady, if you have any thing against her, I will answer it with my life and fortunes.
JUSTICE
Make out the bail-bond.
OFFICER
(Surveying Pendulous.)
Please, your worship, before you take that gentleman's bond, may I have leave to put in a word?
PENDULOUS
(_Agitated._)
I guess what is coming.
OFFICER
I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand at a criminal bar.
JUSTICE
Ha!
MISS FLYN
(_Aside._) Better and better.
OFFICER
My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips quivered about, while he was being tried, just as they do now. His name is not Pendulous.
MISS FLYN
Excellent!
OFFICER
He pleaded to the name of Thomson at York assizes.
JUSTICE
Can this be true?
MISS FLYN
I could kiss the fellow!
OFFICER
He was had up for a footpad.
MISS FLYN
A dainty fellow!
PENDULOUS
My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere.
JUSTICE
You confess, then.
PENDULOUS
I am steeped in infamy.
MISS FLYN
I am as deep in the mire as yourself.
PENDULOUS
My reproach can never be washed out.
MISS FLYN
Nor mine.
PENDULOUS
I am doomed to everlasting shame.
MISS FLYN
We are both in a predicament.
JUSTICE
I am in a maze where all this will end.
MISS FLYN
But here comes one who, if I mistake not, will guide us out of all our difficulties.
[Enter Marian and Davenport.]
MARIAN
(Kneeling.)
My dear father!
FLINT
Do I dream?
MARIAN
I am your Marian.
JUSTICE
Wonders thicken!
FLINT
The casket--
MISS FLYN
Let me clear up the rest.
FLINT
The casket--
MISS FLYN
Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, when, by an artifice of her maid Lucy,--set on, as she confesses, by this gentleman here,--
DAVENPORT
I plead guilty.
MISS FLYN
She was persuaded, that you were in a hurry going to marry her to an object of her dislike; nay, that he was actually in the house for the purpose. The speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she quitted your roof, she intrusted the return of them; which the precipitate measures of this gentleman _(pointing to the Officer)_ alone prevented. Mr. Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true.
[Enter Cutlet, in haste.]
CUTLET
Aye, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness. I have run in such a haste, hearing how affairs stood, that I have left my shambles without a protector. If your worship had seen how she cried _(pointing to Marian),_ and trembled, and insisted upon being brought to her father. Mr. Davenport here could not stay her.
FLINT
I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you play once again, to please your old father?
MARIAN
I have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty
suspicions of me.
DAVENPORT
What is to become of me?
FLINT
I will do more than that. The poor lady shall have her jewels again.
MARIAN
Shall she?
FLINT
Upon reasonable terms _(smiling)._ And now, I suppose, the court may adjourn.
DAVENPORT
Marian!
FLINT
I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. Davenport; but you have behaved upon the whole so like a man of honour, that it will give me pleasure, if you will visit at my house for the future; but _(smiling)_ not clandestinely, Marian.
MARIAN
Hush, father.
FLINT
I own I had prejudices against gentry. But I have met with so much candour and kindness among my betters this day--from this gentleman in particular--_(turning to the Justice)_--that I begin to think of leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman myself.
JUSTICE
You have the feelings of one.
FLINT
Marian will not object to it.
JUSTICE
But _(turning to Miss Flyn)_ what motive could induce this lady to take so much disgrace upon herself, when a word's explanation might have relieved her?
MISS FLYN
This gentleman _(turning to Pendulous)_ can explain.
PENDULOUS
The devil!
MISS FLYN
This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and honourable suit from a mistaken delicacy--
PENDULOUS
How!
MISS FLYN
Drove me upon the expedient of involving myself in the same disagreeable embarrassments with himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy might subsist between us for the future.
PENDULOUS
I see it--I see it all.
JUSTICE
(_To Pendulous._) You were then tried at York?
PENDULOUS
I was--CAST--
JUSTICE
Condemned--
PENDULOUS
EXECUTED.
JUSTICE
How?
PENDULOUS
CUT DOWN and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. False delicacy, adieu! The true sort, which this lady has manifested--by an expedient which at first sight might seem a little unpromising, has cured me of the other. We are now on even terms.
MISS FLYN
And may--
PENDULOUS
Marry,--I know it was your word.
MISS FLYN
And make a very quiet--
PENDULOUS
Exemplary--
MISS FLYN
Agreeing pair of--
PENDULOUS
ACQUITTED FELONS.
FLINT
And let the prejudiced against our profession acknowledge, that a money-lender may have the heart of a father; and that in the casket, whose loss grieved him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as _(turning to Marian)_ one poor domestic jewel.
[THE END]
Charles Lamb's play: Pawnbroker's Daughter, A Farce
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