trouble would be brought upon you or upon Mr. ----; so I came immediately
to bring word of it, that you might be prepared for it, and might not be
surprised; but I see they have been too nimble for me, so that I know
not what to advise. The poor woman, it seems, is turned out of doors
into the street; and another of the neighbours there told me, that when
they took her children from her she swooned away, and when they
recovered her out of that, she ran distracted, and is put into a
madhouse by the parish, for there is nobody else to take any care of
her."
This was all acted to the life by this good, kind, poor creature; for
though her design was perfectly good and charitable, yet there was not
one word of it true in fact; for I was not turned out of doors by the
landlord, nor gone distracted. It was true, indeed, that at parting with
my poor children I fainted, and was like one mad when I came to myself
and found they were gone; but I remained in the house a good while after
that, as you shall hear.
While the poor woman was telling this dismal story, in came the
gentlewoman's husband, and though her heart was hardened against all
pity, who was really and nearly related to the children, for they were
the children of her own brother, yet the good man was quite softened
with the dismal relation of the circumstances of the family; and when
the poor woman had done, he said to his wife, "This is a dismal case,
my dear, indeed, and something must be done." His wife fell a-raving at
him: "What," says she, "do you want to have four children to keep? Have
we not children of our own? Would you have these brats come and eat up
my children's bread? No, no, let 'em go to the parish, and let them take
care of them; I'll take care of my own."
"Come, come, my dear," says the husband, "charity is a duty to the poor,
and he that gives to the poor lends to the Lord; let us lend our
heavenly Father a little of our children's bread, as you call it; it
will be a store well laid up for them, and will be the best security
that our children shall never come to want charity, or be turned out of
doors, as these poor innocent creatures are." "Don't tell me of
security," says the wife, "'tis a good security for our children to keep
what we have together, and provide for them, and then 'tis time enough
to help keep other folks' children. Charity begins at home."
"Well, my dear," says he again, "I only talk of putting out a little
money to interest: our Maker is a good borrower; never fear making a bad
debt there, child, I'll be bound for it."
"Don't banter me with your charity and your allegories," says the wife
angrily; "I tell you they are my relations, not yours, and they shall
not roost here; they shall go to the parish."
"All your relations are my relations now," says the good gentleman very
calmly, "and I won't see your relations in distress, and not pity them,
any more than I would my own; indeed, my dear, they shan't go to the
parish. I assure you, none of my wife's relations shall come to the
parish, if I can help it."
"What! will you take four children to keep?" says the wife.
"No, no, my dear," says he, "there's your sister ----, I'll go and talk
with her; and your uncle ----, I'll send for him, and the rest. I'll
warrant you, when we are all together, we will find ways and means to
keep four poor little creatures from beggary and starving, or else it
would be very hard; we are none of us in so bad circumstances but we are
able to spare a mite for the fatherless. Don't shut up your bowels of
compassion against your own flesh and blood. Could you hear these poor
innocent children cry at your door for hunger, and give them no bread?"
"Prithee, what need they cry at our door?" says she. "'Tis the business
of the parish to provide for them; they shan't cry at our door. If they
do, I'll give them nothing." "Won't you?" says he; "but I will. Remember
that dreadful Scripture is directly against us, Prov. xxi. 13, 'Whoso
stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but
shall not be heard.'"
"Well, well," says she, "you must do what you will, because you pretend
to be master; but if I had my will I would send them where they ought to
be sent: I would send them from whence they came."
Then the poor woman put in, and said, "But, madam, that is sending them
to starve indeed, for the parish has no obligation to take care of 'em,
and so they will lie and perish in the street."
"Or be sent back again," says the husband, "to our parish in a
cripple-cart, by the justice's warrant, and so expose us and all the
relations to the last degree among our neighbours, and among those who
know the good old gentleman their grandfather, who lived and flourished
in this parish so many years, and was so well beloved among all people,
and deserved it so well."
"I don't value that one farthing, not I," says the wife; "I'll keep none
of them."
"Well, my dear," says her husband, "but I value it, for I won't have
such a blot lie upon the family, and upon your children; he was a
worthy, ancient, and good man, and his name is respected among all his
neighbours; it will be a reproach to you, that are his daughter, and to
our children, that are his grandchildren, that we should let your
brother's children perish, or come to be a charge to the public, in the
very place where your family once flourished. Come, say no more; I will
see what can be done."
Upon this he sends and gathers all the relations together at a tavern
hard by, and sent for the four little children, that they might see
them; and they all, at first word, agreed to have them taken care of,
and, because his wife was so furious that she would not suffer one of
them to be kept at home, they agreed to keep them all together for a
while; so they committed them to the poor woman that had managed the
affair for them, and entered into obligations to one another to supply
the needful sums for their maintenance; and, not to have one separated
from the rest, they sent for the youngest from the parish where it was
taken in, and had them all brought up together.
It would take up too long a part of this story to give a particular
account with what a charitable tenderness this good person, who was but
an uncle-in-law to them, managed that affair; how careful he was of
them; went constantly to see them, and to see that they were well
provided for, clothed, put to school, and, at last, put out in the world
for their advantage; but it is enough to say he acted more like a father
to them than an uncle-in-law, though all along much against his wife's
consent, who was of a disposition not so tender and compassionate as
her husband.
You may believe I heard this with the same pleasure which I now feel at
the relating it again; for I was terribly affrighted at the
apprehensions of my children being brought to misery and distress, as
those must be who have no friends, but are left to parish benevolence.
I was now, however, entering on a new scene of life. I had a great house
upon my hands, and some furniture left in it; but I was no more able to
maintain myself and my maid Amy in it than I was my five children; nor
had I anything to subsist with but what I might get by working, and that
was not a town where much work was to be had.
My landlord had been very kind indeed after he came to know my
circumstances; though, before he was acquainted with that part, he had
gone so far as to seize my goods, and to carry some of them off too.
But I had lived three-quarters of a year in his house after that, and
had paid him no rent, and, which was worse, I was in no condition to pay
him any. However, I observed he came oftener to see me, looked kinder
upon me, and spoke more friendly to me, than he used to do, particularly
the last two or three times he had been there. He observed, he said, how
poorly I lived, how low I was reduced, and the like; told me it grieved
him for my sake; and the last time of all he was kinder still, told me
he came to dine with me, and that I should give him leave to treat me;
so he called my maid Amy, and sent her out to buy a joint of meat; he
told her what she should buy; but naming two or three things, either of
which she might take, the maid, a cunning wench, and faithful to me as
the skin to my back, did not buy anything outright, but brought the
butcher along with her, with both the things that she had chosen, for
him to please himself. The one was a large, very good leg of veal; the
other a piece of the fore-ribs of roasting beef. He looked at them, but
made me chaffer with the butcher for him, and I did so, and came back to
him and told him what the butcher had demanded for either of them, and
what each of them came to. So he pulls out eleven shillings and
threepence, which they came to together, and bade me take them both; the
rest, he said, would serve another time.
I was surprised, you may be sure, at the bounty of a man that had but a
little while ago been my terror, and had torn the goods out of my house
like a fury; but I considered that my distresses had mollified his
temper, and that he had afterwards been so compassionate as to give me
leave to live rent free in the house a whole year.
But now he put on the face, not of a man of compassion only, but of a
man of friendship and kindness, and this was so unexpected that it was
surprising. We chatted together, and were, as I may call it, cheerful,
which was more than I could say I had been for three years before. He
sent for wine and beer too, for I had none; poor Amy and I had drank
nothing but water for many weeks, and indeed I have often wondered at
the faithful temper of the poor girl, for which I but ill requited her
at last.
When Amy was come with the wine, he made her fill a glass to him, and
with the glass in his hand he came to me and kissed me, which I was, I
confess, a little surprised at, but more at what followed; for he told
me, that as the sad condition which I was reduced to had made him pity
me, so my conduct in it, and the courage I bore it with, had given him a
more than ordinary respect for me, and made him very thoughtful for my
good; that he was resolved for the present to do something to relieve
me, and to employ his thoughts in the meantime, to see if he could for
the future put me into a way to support myself.
While he found me change colour, and look surprised at his discourse,
for so I did, to be sure, he turns to my maid Amy, and looking at her,
he says to me, "I say all this, madam, before your maid, because both
she and you shall know that I have no ill design, and that I have, in
mere kindness, resolved to do something for you if I can; and as I have
been a witness of the uncommon honesty and fidelity of Mrs. Amy here to
you in all your distresses, I know she may be trusted with so honest a
design as mine is; for I assure you, I bear a proportioned regard to
your maid too, for her affection to you."
Amy made him a curtsey, and the poor girl looked so confounded with joy
that she could not speak, but her colour came and went, and every now
and then she blushed as red as scarlet, and the next minute looked as
pale as death. Well, having said this, he sat down, made me sit down,
and then drank to me, and made me drink two glasses of wine together;
"For," says he, "you have need of it;" and so indeed I had. When he had
done so, "Come, Amy," says he, "with your mistress's leave, you shall
have a glass too." So he made her drink two glasses also; and then
rising up, "And now, Amy," says he, "go and get dinner; and you, madam,"
says he to me, "go up and dress you, and come down and smile and be
merry;" adding, "I'll make you easy if I can;" and in the meantime, he
said, he would walk in the garden.
When he was gone, Amy changed her countenance indeed, and looked as
merry as ever she did in her life. "Dear madam," says she, "what does
this gentleman mean?" "Nay, Amy," said I, "he means to do us good, you
see, don't he? I know no other meaning he can have, for he can get
nothing by me." "I warrant you, madam," says she, "he'll ask you a
favour by-and-by." "No, no, you are mistaken, Amy, I dare say," said I;
"you have heard what he said, didn't you?" "Ay," says Amy, "it's no
matter for that, you shall see what he will do after dinner." "Well,
well, Amy," says I, "you have hard thoughts of him. I cannot be of your
opinion: I don't see anything in him yet that looks like it." "As to
that, madam," says Amy, "I don't see anything of it yet neither; but
what should move a gentleman to take pity of us as he does?" "Nay," says
I, "that's a hard thing too, that we should judge a man to be wicked
because he's charitable, and vicious because he's kind." "Oh, madam,"
says Amy, "there's abundance of charity begins in that vice; and he is
not so unacquainted with things as not to know that poverty is the
strongest incentive--a temptation against which no virtue is powerful
enough to stand out. He knows your condition as well as you do." "Well,
and what then?" "Why, then, he knows too that you are young and
handsome, and he has the surest bait in the world to take you with."
"Well, Amy," said I, "but he may find himself mistaken too in such a
thing as that." "Why, madam," says Amy, "I hope you won't deny him if he
should offer it."
"What d'ye mean by that, hussy?" said I. "No, I'd starve first."
"I hope not, madam, I hope you would be wiser; I'm sure if he will set
you up, as he talks of, you ought to deny him nothing; and you will
starve if you do not consent, that's certain."
"What! consent to lie with him for bread? Amy," said I, "how can you
talk so!"
"Nay, madam," says Amy, "I don't think you would for anything else; it
would not be lawful for anything else, but for bread, madam; why, nobody
can starve, there's no bearing that, I'm sure."
"Ay," says I, "but if he would give me an estate to live on, he should
not lie with me, I assure you."
"Why, look you, madam; if he would but give you enough to live easy
upon, he should lie with me for it with all my heart."
"That's a token, Amy, of inimitable kindness to me," said I, "and I know
how to value it; but there's more friendship than honesty in it, Amy."
"Oh, madam," says Amy, "I'd do anything to get you out of this sad
condition; as to honesty, I think honesty is out of the question when
starving is the case. Are not we almost starved to death?"
"I am indeed," said I, "and thou art for my sake; but to be a whore,
Amy!" and there I stopped.
"Dear madam," says Amy, "if I will starve for your sake, I will be a
whore or anything for your sake; why, I would die for you if I were put
to it."
"Why, that's an excess of affection, Amy," said I, "I never met with
before; I wish I may be ever in condition to make you some returns
suitable. But, however, Amy, you shall not be a whore to him, to oblige
him to be kind to me; no, Amy, nor I won't be a whore to him, if he
would give me much more than he is able to give me or do for me."
"Why, madam," says Amy, "I don't say I will go and ask him; but I say,
if he should promise to do so and so for you, and the condition was such
that he would not serve you unless I would let him lie with me, he
should lie with me as often as he would, rather than you should not have
his assistance. But this is but talk, madam; I don't see any need of
such discourse, and you are of opinion that there will be no need of
it."
"Indeed so I am, Amy; but," said I, "if there was, I tell you again, I'd
die before I would consent, or before you should consent for my sake."
Hitherto I had not only preserved the virtue itself, but the virtuous
inclination and resolution; and had I kept myself there I had been
happy, though I had perished of mere hunger; for, without question, a
woman ought rather to die than to prostitute her virtue and honour, let
the temptation be what it will.
But to return to my story; he walked about the garden, which was,
indeed, all in disorder, and overrun with weeds, because I had not been
able to hire a gardener to do anything to it, no, not so much as to dig
up ground enough to sow a few turnips and carrots for family use. After
he had viewed it, he came in, and sent Amy to fetch a poor man, a
gardener, that used to help our man-servant, and carried him into the
garden, and ordered him to do several things in it, to put it into a
little order; and this took him up near an hour.
By this time I had dressed me as well as I could; for though I had good
linen left still, yet I had but a poor head-dress, and no knots, but old
fragments; no necklace, no earrings; all those things were gone long ago
for mere bread.
However, I was tight and clean, and in better plight than he had seen me
in a great while, and he looked extremely pleased to see me so; for, he
said, I looked so disconsolate and so afflicted before, that it grieved
him to see me; and he bade me pluck up a good heart, for he hoped to put
me in a condition to live in the world, and be beholden to nobody.
I told him that was impossible, for I must be beholden to him for it,
for all the friends I had in the world would not or could not do so much
for me as that he spoke of "Well, widow," says he (so he called me, and
so indeed I was in the worst sense that desolate word could be used
in), "if you are beholden to me, you shall be beholden to nobody else."
By this time dinner was ready, and Amy came in to lay the cloth, and
indeed it was happy there was none to dine but he and I, for I had but
six plates left in the house, and but two dishes; however, he knew how
things were, and bade me make no scruple about bringing out what I had.
He hoped to see me in a better plight. He did not come, he said, to be
entertained, but to entertain me, and comfort and encourage me. Thus he
went on, speaking so cheerfully to me, and such cheerful things, that it
was a cordial to my very soul to hear him speak.
Well, we went to dinner. I'm sure I had not ate a good meal hardly in a
twelvemonth, at least not of such a joint of meat as the loin of veal
was. I ate, indeed, very heartily, and so did he, and he made me drink
three or four glasses of wine; so that, in short, my spirits were lifted
up to a degree I had not been used to, and I was not only cheerful, but
merry; and so he pressed me to be.
I told him I had a great deal of reason to be merry, seeing he had been
so kind to me, and had given me hopes of recovering me from the worst
circumstances that ever woman of any sort of fortune was sunk into; that
he could not but believe that what he had said to me was like life from
the dead; that it was like recovering one sick from the brink of the
grave; how I should ever make him a return any way suitable was what I
had not yet had time to think of; I could only say that I should never
forget it while I had life, and should be always ready to acknowledge
it.
He said that was all he desired of me; that his reward would be the
satisfaction of having rescued me from misery; that he found he was
obliging one that knew what gratitude meant; that he would make it his
business to make me completely easy, first or last, if it lay in his
power; and in the meantime he bade me consider of anything that I
thought he might do for me, for my advantage, and in order to make me
perfectly easy.
After we had talked thus, he bade me be cheerful. "Come," says he, "lay
aside these melancholy things, and let us be merry." Amy waited at the
table, and she smiled and laughed, and was so merry she could hardly
contain it, for the girl loved me to an excess hardly to be described;
and it was such an unexpected thing to hear any one talk to her
mistress, that the wench was beside herself almost, and, as soon as
dinner was over, Amy went upstairs, and put on her best clothes too, and
came down dressed like a gentlewoman.
We sat together talking of a thousand things--of what had been, and what
was to be--all the rest of the day, and in the evening he took his
leave of me, with a thousand expressions of kindness and tenderness and
true affection to me, but offered not the least of what my maid Amy had
suggested.
At his going away he took me in his arms, protested an honest kindness
to me; said a thousand kind things to me, which I cannot now recollect;
and, after kissing me twenty times or thereabouts, put a guinea into my
hand, which, he said, was for my present supply, and told me that he
would see me again before it was out; also he gave Amy half-a-crown.
When he was gone, "Well, Amy," said I, "are you convinced now that he is
an honest as well as a true friend, and that there has been nothing, not
the least appearance of anything, of what you imagined in his
behaviour?" "Yes," says Amy, "I am, but I admire at it. He is such a
friend as the world, sure, has not abundance of to show."
"I am sure," says I, "he is such a friend as I have long wanted, and as
I have as much need of as any creature in the world has or ever had."
And, in short, I was so overcome with the comfort of it that I sat down
and cried for joy a good while, as I had formerly cried for sorrow. Amy
and I went to bed that night (for Amy lay with me) pretty early, but lay
chatting almost all night about it, and the girl was so transported that
she got up two or three times in the night and danced about the room in
her shift; in short, the girl was half distracted with the joy of it; a
testimony still of her violent affection for her mistress, in which no
servant ever went beyond her.
We heard no more of him for two days, but the third day he came again;
then he told me, with the same kindness, that he had ordered me a supply
of household goods for the furnishing the house; that, in particular, he
had sent me back all the goods that he had seized for rent, which
consisted, indeed, of the best of my former furniture. "And now," says
he, "I'll tell you what I have had in my head for you for your present
supply, and that is," says he, "that the house being well furnished, you
shall let it out to lodgings for the summer gentry," says he, "by which
you will easily get a good comfortable subsistence, especially seeing
you shall pay me no rent for two years, nor after neither, unless you
can afford it."
This was the first view I had of living comfortably indeed, and it was a
very probable way, I must confess, seeing we had very good conveniences,
six rooms on a floor, and three stories high. While he was laying down
the scheme of my management, came a cart to the door with a load of
goods, and an upholsterer's man to put them up. They were chiefly the
furniture of two rooms which he had carried away for his two years'
rent, with two fine cabinets, and some pier-glasses out of the parlour,
and several other valuable things.
These were all restored to their places, and he told me he gave them me
freely, as a satisfaction for the cruelty he had used me with before;
and the furniture of one room being finished and set up, he told me he
would furnish one chamber for himself, and would come and be one of my
lodgers, if I would give him leave.
I told him he ought not to ask me leave, who had so much right to make
himself welcome. So the house began to look in some tolerable figure,
and clean; the garden also, in about a fortnight's work, began to look
something less like a wilderness than it used to do; and he ordered me
to put up a bill for letting rooms, reserving one for himself, to come
to as he saw occasion.
When all was done to his mind, as to placing the goods, he seemed very
well pleased, and we dined together again of his own providing; and the
upholsterer's man gone, after dinner he took me by the hand. "Come now,
madam," says he, "you must show me your house" (for he had a mind to see
everything over again). "No, sir," said I; "but I'll go show you your
house, if you please;" so we went up through all the rooms, and in the
room which was appointed for himself Amy was doing something. "Well,
Amy," says he, "I intend to lie with you to-morrow night." "To-night if
you please, sir," says Amy very innocently; "your room is quite ready."
"Well, Amy," says he, "I am glad you are so willing." "No," says Amy, "I
mean your chamber is ready to-night," and away she run out of the room,
ashamed enough; for the girl meant no harm, whatever she had said to me
in private.