The Double Widowing Part 3

Lucy I admire the wisdom of our law which permits spouses to disinherit one another. For only the hope of inheriting is the dike that can prevent a torrent of family quarrels. Go quickly. Here is my mistress. To gain her confidence, I am going to help her out of her sorrows.

(Exit Tuneless and the Maid. Enter from another direction, the Countess and the Widow Bramble.)

Countess Save your tears, Madame, save your tears. To tremble, to sigh, to sob.

All these demonstrations of sorrow are worse than sorrow itself.

Widow Alas.

Countess Don't avoid the offer I'm making you any more. Respond to me exactly.

You don't like to have your niece around. I'm going to take her off your hands and marry her off in the country. Won't you give her some wedding present?

Widow This is the fourth day of my widowhood--the fourth day isn't it, Lucy?

Lucy The fourth, yes.

Widow (to Countess) Well, Madame, since then I haven't had any nourishment at all.

Lucy We are nourished only by affliction and black tea.

Widow Everything I eat rests on my stomach like lead.

Lucy We eat hardly anything, and what we eat suffocates us.

Countess Answer me, then Madame, agree.

Widow No, I won't be alive in four days.

Countess Live, and don't cry.

Widow Ah, I will cry more than thirty years.

Lucy To die soon and cry forever is our final resolution.

Widow I don't know what I'm saying, Lucy.

Lucy I see it plainly. We haven't the strength to marry Arabella.

Countess While your husband was living, you gave the excuse that you hoped to have children. Now, your hopes and excuses are dead with your husband: you are mistress of your estate. You must marry Arabella, or tell me that you don't wish it.

Widow I cannot make up my mind to marry Arabella. Really, I don't wish her so much ill as to expose her to marriage.

Countess To hear you speak thus about marriage, one would think you didn't like it.

Widow On the contrary, it was because my happiness was so perfect, that I don't wish to marry my niece.

Countess That's a reason to marry her.

Widow I had a very loveable husband, and I don't want her to have one.

Countess Explain yourself!

Widow She will be too overcome if she loses him, to marry her would be to expose her to the risk of becoming a widow. (cries) And, to unhappiness like mine. Ah, Madame, in the abyss in which I find myself--retreat and solitude--that's the road my niece ought to take.

Countess Solitude doesn't agree with Arabella.

Widow Don't speak to me anymore about it. I am too afflicted.

Countess And, in a word--your niece?

Widow No, no--I am too afflicted. I intend that she spend her life in a convent.

Countess >From the bad reasons you give me, I discern the good ones you keep to yourself. You wish to protect your money, so you can remarry.

Widow Me! Me, remarry!

Countess Listen, to undertake a second marriage, you need the great wealth your husband left you. And, this great wealth, having been earned in managing my affairs--I could--I haven't yet signed off on your husband's accounts--. That's why I beg you not to refuse the ten thousand crowns that you have in your strongbox. I beg you, I really do.

(Exit Countess.)

Widow (ill tempered) I beg you, she says, I beg you.

Lucy She begs you with a certain air--

Widow Taking on a tone--

Lucy Of people of quality who--

Widow Believing that their prayers--

Lucy Are a sort of command. A great lord who asks a citizen to do him a service is like a banker respectfully asking payment on a promissory note.

Widow She speaks as if one was in great fear of her.

Lucy You'd have less reason to fear if your husband were alive. For he was as clever in protecting his prey as he was in catching it.

Widow Alas, I am indeed lost.

Lucy Madame, the Countess could easily cheat you. You may say that she cannot cheat the widow of an honest steward, who enriched himself as everyone does by entangling his affairs with hers. But, now she is going to take from you unjustly that which your husband earned on the fair and square.

Widow That's what I'm afraid of, Lucy.

Lucy They ought not to oppress widows--because they have lost their main support.

Widow Their support. That's very true, I am without support.

Lucy Without support! That's why you ought to pacify the Countess. That way you would peaceably obtain your husband's wealth. Then, find some young man to be your support.

Widow Ah, Lucy. If I think of accommodating the Countess, it is not to gain peace. But, before I give her anything, I wish to consult with some smart man.