The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 63

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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sizes.

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 wors.h.i.+p 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!