to do I could not tell; I saw no remedy but I must speak with him, but
would have given £500 to have shunned it; yet had I shunned it, perhaps
then I would have given £500 again that I had seen him. Thus fluctuating
and unconcluding were my thoughts, what I so earnestly desired I
declined when it offered itself; and what now I pretended to decline was
nothing but what I had been at the expense of £40 or £50 to send Amy to
France for, and even without any view, or, indeed, any rational
expectation of bringing it to pass; and what for half a year before I
was so uneasy about that I could not be quiet night or day till Amy
proposed to go over to inquire after him. In short, my thoughts were all
confused and in the utmost disorder. I had once refused and rejected
him, and I repented it heartily; then I had taken ill his silence, and
in my mind rejected him again, but had repented that too. Now I had
stooped so low as to send after him into France, which if he had known,
perhaps, he had never come after me; and should I reject him a third
time! On the other hand, he had repented too, in his turn, perhaps, and
not knowing how I had acted, either in stooping to send in search after
him or in the wickeder part of my life, was come over hither to seek me
again; and I might take him, perhaps, with the same advantages as I
might have done before, and would I now be backward to see him! Well,
while I was in this hurry my friend the Quaker comes up again, and
perceiving the confusion I was in, she runs to her closet and fetched me
a little pleasant cordial; but I would not taste it. "Oh," says she, "I
understand thee. Be not uneasy; I'll give thee something shall take off
all the smell of it; if he kisses thee a thousand times he shall be no
wiser." I thought to myself, "Thou art perfectly acquainted with affairs
of this nature; I think you must govern me now;" so I began to incline
to go down with her. Upon that I took the cordial, and she gave me a
kind of spicy preserve after it, whose flavour was so strong, and yet so
deliciously pleasant, that it would cheat the nicest smelling, and it
left not the least taint of the cordial on the breath.
Well, after this, though with some hesitation still, I went down a pair
of back-stairs with her, and into a dining-room, next to the parlour in
which he was; but there I halted, and desired she would let me consider
of it a little. "Well, do so," says she, and left me with more readiness
than she did before. "Do consider, and I'll come to thee again."
Though I hung back with an awkwardness that was really unfeigned, yet
when she so readily left me I thought it was not so kind, and I began to
think she should have pressed me still on to it; so foolishly backward
are we to the thing which, of all the world, we most desire; mocking
ourselves with a feigned reluctance, when the negative would be death to
us. But she was too cunning for me; for while I, as it were, blamed her
in my mind for not carrying me to him, though, at the same time, I
appeared backward to see him, on a sudden she unlocks the folding-doors,
which looked into the next parlour, and throwing them open. "There,"
says she (ushering him in), "is the person who, I suppose, thou
inquirest for;" and the same moment, with a kind decency, she retired,
and that so swift that she would not give us leave hardly to know which
way she went.
I stood up, but was confounded with a sudden inquiry in my thoughts how
I should receive him, and with a resolution as swift as lightning, in
answer to it, said to myself, "It shall be coldly." So on a sudden I put
on an air of stiffness and ceremony, and held it for about two minutes;
but it was with great difficulty.
He restrained himself too, on the other hand, came towards me gravely,
and saluted me in form; but it was, it seems, upon his supposing the
Quaker was behind him, whereas she, as I said, understood things too
well, and had retired as if she had vanished, that we might have full
freedom; for, as she said afterwards, she supposed we had seen one
another before, though it might have been a great while ago.
Whatever stiffness I had put on my behaviour to him, I was surprised in
my mind, and angry at his, and began to wonder what kind of a
ceremonious meeting it was to be. However, after he perceived the woman
was gone he made a kind of a hesitation, looking a little round him.
"Indeed," said he, "I thought the gentlewoman was not withdrawn;" and
with that he took me in his arms and kissed me three or four times; but
I, that was prejudiced to the last degree with the coldness of his first
salutes, when I did not know the cause of it, could not be thoroughly
cleared of the prejudice though I did know the cause, and thought that
even his return, and taking me in his arms, did not seem to have the
same ardour with which he used to receive me, and this made me behave to
him awkwardly, and I know not how for a good while; but this by the way.
He began with a kind of an ecstasy upon the subject of his finding me
out; how it was possible that he should have been four years in England,
and had used all the ways imaginable, and could never so much as have
the least intimation of me, or of any one like me; and that it was now
above two years that he had despaired of it, and had given over all
inquiry; and that now he should chop upon me, as it were, unlooked and
unsought for.
I could easily have accounted for his not finding me if I had but set
down the detail of my real retirement; but I gave it a new, and indeed a
truly hypocritical turn. I told him that any one that knew the manner
of life I led might account for his not finding me; that the retreat I
had taken up would have rendered it a hundred thousand to one odds that
he ever found me at all; that, as I had abandoned all conversation,
taken up another name, lived remote from London, and had not preserved
one acquaintance in it, it was no wonder he had not met with me; that
even my dress would let him see that I did not desire to be known by
anybody.
Then he asked if I had not received some letters from him. I told him
no, he had not thought fit to give me the civility of an answer to the
last I wrote to him, and he could not suppose I should expect a return
after a silence in a case where I had laid myself so low and exposed
myself in a manner I had never been used to; that indeed I had never
sent for any letters after that to the place where I had ordered his to
be directed; and that, being so justly, as I thought, punished for my
weakness, I had nothing to do but to repent of being a fool, after I had
strictly adhered to a just principle before; that, however, as what I
did was rather from motions of gratitude than from real weakness,
however it might be construed by him, I had the satisfaction in myself
of having fully discharged the debt. I added, that I had not wanted
occasions of all the seeming advancements which the pretended felicity
of a marriage life was usually set off with, and might have been what I
desired not to name; but that, however low I had stooped to him, I had
maintained the dignity of female liberty against all the attacks either
of pride or avarice; and that I had been infinitely obliged to him for
giving me an opportunity to discharge the only obligation that
endangered me, without subjecting me to the consequence; and that I
hoped he was satisfied I had paid the debt by offering myself to be
chained, but was infinitely debtor to him another way for letting me
remain free.
He was so confounded at this discourse that he knew not what to say, and
for a good while he stood mute indeed; but recovering himself a little,
he said I run out into a discourse he hoped was over and forgotten, and
he did not intend to revive it; that he knew I had not had his letters,
for that, when he first came to England, he had been at the place to
which they were directed, and found them all lying there but one, and
that the people had not known how to deliver them; that he thought to
have had a direction there how to find me, but had the mortification to
be told that they did not so much as know who I was; that he was under a
great disappointment; and that I ought to know, in answer to all my
resentments, that he had done a long and, he hoped, a sufficient penance
for the slight that I had supposed he had put upon me; that it was true
(and I could not suppose any other) that upon the repulse I had given
them in a case so circumstanced as his was, and after such earnest
entreaties and such offers as he had made me, he went away with a mind
heartily grieved and full of resentment; that he had looked back on the
crime he had committed with some regret, but on the cruelty of my
treatment of the poor infant I went with at that time with the utmost
detestation, and that this made him unable to send an agreeable answer
to me; for which reason he had sent none at all for some time; but that
in about six or seven months, those resentments wearing off by the
return of his affection to me and his concern in the poor child ----.
There he stopped, and indeed tears stood in his eyes; while in a
parenthesis he only added, and to this minute he did not know whether it
was dead or alive. He then went on: Those resentments wearing off, he
sent me several letters--I think he said seven or eight--but received no
answer; that then his business obliging him to go to Holland, he came to
England, as in his way, but found, as above, that his letters had not
been called for, but that he left them at the house after paying the
postage of them; and going then back to France, he was yet uneasy, and
could not refrain the knight-errantry of coming to England again to seek
me, though he knew neither where or of who to inquire for me, being
disappointed in all his inquiries before; that he had yet taken up his
residence here, firmly believing that one time or other he should meet
me, or hear of me, and that some kind chance would at last throw him in
my way; that he had lived thus above four years, and though his hopes
were vanished, yet he had not any thoughts of removing any more in the
world, unless it should be at last, as it is with other old men, he
might have some inclination to go home to die in his own country, but
that he had not thought of it yet; that if I would consider all these
steps, I would find some reasons to forget his first resentments, and to
think that penance, as he called it, which he had undergone in search of
me an _amende honorable_, in reparation of the affront given to the
kindness of my letter of invitation; and that we might at last make
ourselves some satisfaction on both sides for the mortifications past.
I confess I could not hear all this without being moved very much, and
yet I continued a little stiff and formal too a good while. I told him
that before I could give him any reply to the rest of his discourse I
ought to give him the satisfaction of telling him that his son was
alive, and that indeed, since I saw him so concerned about it, and
mention it with such affection, I was sorry that I had not found out
some way or other to let him know it sooner; but that I thought, after
his slighting the mother, as above, he had summed up his affection to
the child in the letter he had wrote to me about providing for it; and
that he had, as other fathers often do, looked upon it as a birth which,
being out of the way, was to be forgotten, as its beginning was to be
repented of; that in providing sufficiently for it he had done more than
all such fathers used to do, and might be well satisfied with it.
He answered me that he should have been very glad if I had been so good
but to have given him the satisfaction of knowing the poor unfortunate
creature was yet alive, and he would have taken some care of it upon
himself, and particularly by owning it for a legitimate child, which,
where nobody had known to the contrary, would have taken off the infamy
which would otherwise cleave to it, and so the child should not itself
have known anything of its own disaster; but that he feared it was now
too late.
He added that I might see by all his conduct since that what unhappy
mistake drew him into the thing at first, and that he would have been
very far from doing the injury to me, or being instrumental to add _une
miserable_ (that was his word) to the world, if he had not been drawn
into it by the hopes he had of making me his own; but that, if it was
possible to rescue the child from the consequences of its unhappy birth,
he hoped I would give him leave to do it, and he would let me see that
he had both means and affection still to do it; and that,
notwithstanding all the misfortunes that had befallen him, nothing that
belonged to him, especially by a mother he had such a concern for as he
had for me, should ever want what he was in a condition to do for it.
I could not hear this without being sensibly touched with it. I was
ashamed that he should show that he had more real affection for the
child, though he had never seen it in his life, than I that bore it, for
indeed I did not love the child, nor love to see it; and though I had
provided for it, yet I did it by Amy's hand, and had not seen it above
twice in four years, being privately resolved that when it grew up it
should not be able to call me mother.
However, I told him the child was taken care of, and that he need not be
anxious about it, unless he suspected that I had less affection for it
than he that had never seen it in his life; that he knew what I had
promised him to do for it, namely, to give it the thousand pistoles
which I had offered him, and which he had declined; that I assured him I
had made my will, and that I had left it £5000, and the interest of it
till he should come of age, if I died before that time; that I would
still be as good as that to it; but if he had a mind to take it from me
into his government, I would not be against it; and to satisfy him that
I would perform what I said, I would cause the child to be delivered to
him, and the £5000 also for its support, depending upon it that he would
show himself a father to it by what I saw of his affection to it now.
I had observed that he had hinted two or three times in his discourse,
his having had misfortunes in the world, and I was a little surprised at
the expression, especially at the repeating it so often; but I took no
notice of that part yet.
He thanked me for my kindness to the child with a tenderness which
showed the sincerity of all he had said before, and which increased the
regret with which, as I said, I looked back on the little affection I
had showed to the poor child. He told me he did not desire to take him
from me, but so as to introduce him into the world as his own, which he
could still do, having lived absent from his other children (for he had
two sons and a daughter which were brought up at Nimeguen, in Holland,
with a sister of his) so long that he might very well send another son
of ten years old to be bred up with them, and suppose his mother to be
dead or alive, as he found occasion; and that, as I had resolved to do
so handsomely for the child, he would add to it something considerable,
though, having had some great disappointments (repeating the words), he
could not do for it as he would otherwise have done.
I then thought myself obliged to take notice of his having so often
mentioned his having met with disappointments. I told him I was very
sorry to hear he had met with anything afflicting to him in the world;
that I would not have anything belonging to me add to his loss, or
weaken him in what he might do for his other children; and that I would
not agree to his having the child away, though the proposal was
infinitely to the child's advantage, unless he would promise me that the
whole expense should be mine, and that, if he did not think £5000 enough
for the child, I would give it more.
We had so much discourse upon this and the old affairs that it took up
all our time at his first visit. I was a little importunate with him to
tell me how he came to find me out, but he put it off for that time,
and only obtaining my leave to visit me again, he went away; and indeed
my heart was so full with what he had said already that I was glad when
he went away. Sometimes I was full of tenderness and affection for him,
and especially when he expressed himself so earnestly and passionately
about the child; other times I was crowded with doubts about his
circumstances. Sometimes I was terrified with apprehensions lest, if I
should come into a close correspondence with him, he should any way come
to hear what kind of life I had led at Pall Mall and in other places,
and it might make me miserable afterwards; from which last thought I
concluded that I had better repulse him again than receive him. All
these thoughts, and many more, crowded in so fast, I say, upon me that I
wanted to give vent to them and get rid of him, and was very glad when
he was gone away.
We had several meetings after this, in which still we had so many
preliminaries to go through that we scarce ever bordered upon the main
subject. Once, indeed, he said something of it, and I put it off with a
kind of a jest. "Alas!" says I, "those things are out of the question
now; 'tis almost two ages since those things were talked between us,"
says I. "You see I am grown an old woman since that." Another time he
gave a little push at it again, and I laughed again. "Why, what dost
thou talk of?" said I in a formal way. "Dost thou not see I am turned
Quaker? I cannot speak of those things now." "Why," says he, "the
Quakers marry as well as other people, and love one another as well.
Besides," says he, "the Quakers' dress does not ill become you," and so
jested with me again, and so it went off for a third time. However, I
began to be kind to him in process of time, as they call it, and we grew
very intimate; and if the following accident had not unluckily
intervened, I had certainly married him, or consented to marry him, the
very next time he had asked me.
I had long waited for a letter from Amy, who, it seems, was just at that
time gone to Rouen the second time, to make her inquiries about him; and
I received a letter from her at this unhappy juncture, which gave me the
following account of my business:--
I. That for my gentleman, who I had now, as I may say, in my arms, she
said he had been gone from Paris, as I have hinted, having met with some
great losses and misfortunes; that he had been in Holland on that very
account, whither he had also carried his children; that he was after
that settled for some time at Rouen; that she had been at Rouen, and
found there (by a mere accident), from a Dutch skipper, that he was at
London, had been there above three years; that he was to be found upon
the Exchange, on the French walk; and that he lodged at St. Laurence
Pountney's Lane, and the like; so Amy said she supposed I might soon
find him out, but that she doubted he was poor, and not worth looking
after. This she did because of the next clause, which the jade had most
mind to on many accounts.
II. That as to the Prince ----; that, as above, he was gone into
Germany, where his estate lay; that he had quitted the French service,
and lived retired; that she had seen his gentleman, who remained at
Paris to solicit his arrears, &c.; that he had given her an account how
his lord had employed him to inquire for me and find me out, as above,
and told her what pains he had taken to find me; that he had understood
that I was gone to England; that he once had orders to go to England to
find me; that his lord had resolved, if he could have found me, to have
called me a countess, and so have married me, and have carried me into
Germany with him; and that his commission was still to assure me that
the prince would marry me if I would come to him, and that he would send
him an account that he had found me, and did not doubt but he would have
orders to come over to England to attend me in a figure suitable to my
quality.
Amy, an ambitious jade, who knew my weakest part--namely, that I loved
great things, and that I loved to be flattered and courted--said
abundance of kind things upon this occasion, which she knew were
suitable to me and would prompt my vanity; and talked big of the
prince's gentleman having orders to come over to me with a procuration
to marry me by proxy (as princes usually do in like cases), and to
furnish me with an equipage, and I know not how many fine things; but
told me, withal, that she had not yet let him know that she belonged to
me still, or that she knew where to find me, or to write to me; because
she was willing to see the bottom of it, and whether it was a reality or
a gasconade. She had indeed told him that, if he had any such
commission, she would endeavour to find me out, but no more.
III. For the Jew, she assured me that she had not been able to come at a
certainty what was become of him, or in what part of the world he was;
but that thus much she had learned from good hands, that he had
committed a crime, in being concerned in a design to rob a rich banker
at Paris; and that he was fled, and had not been heard of there for
above six years.
IV. For that of my husband, the brewer, she learned, that being
commanded into the field upon an occasion of some action in Flanders, he
was wounded at the battle of Mons, and died of his wounds in the
Hospital of the Invalids; so there was an end of my four inquiries,
which I sent her over to make.
This account of the prince, and the return of his affection to me, with
all the flattering great things which seemed to come along with it; and
especially as they came gilded and set out by my maid Amy--I say this
account of the prince came to me in a very unlucky hour, and in the very
crisis of my affair.
The merchant and I had entered into close conferences upon the grand
affair. I had left off talking my platonics, and of my independency, and
being a free woman, as before; and he having cleared up my doubts too,
as to his circumstances and the misfortunes he had spoken of, I had gone
so far that we had begun to consider where we should live, and in what
figure, what equipage, what house, and the like.
I had made some harangues upon the delightful retirement of a country
life, and how we might enjoy ourselves so effectually without the
encumbrances of business and the world; but all this was grimace, and
purely because I was afraid to make any public appearance in the world,
for fear some impertinent person of quality should chop upon me again
and cry out, "Roxana, Roxana, by ----!" with an oath, as had been done
before.
My merchant, bred to business and used to converse among men of
business, could hardly tell how to live without it; at least it appeared
he should be like a fish out of water, uneasy and dying. But, however,
he joined with me; only argued that we might live as near London as we
could, that he might sometimes come to 'Change and hear how the world
should go abroad, and how it fared with his friends and his children.
I answered that if he chose still to embarrass himself with business, I
supposed it would be more to his satisfaction to be in his own country,
and where his family was so well known, and where his children also
were.
He smiled at the thoughts of that, and let me know that he should be
very willing to embrace such an offer; but that he could not expect it
of me, to whom England was, to be sure, so naturalised now as that it
would be carrying me out of my native country, which he would not desire
by any means, however agreeable it might be to him.
I told him he was mistaken in me; that as I had told him so much of a
married state being a captivity, and the family being a house of
bondage, that when I married I expected to be but an upper servant; so,
if I did notwithstanding submit to it, I hoped he should see I knew how
to act the servant's part, and do everything to oblige my master; that
if I did not resolve to go with him wherever he desired to go, he might
depend I would never have him. "And did I not," said I, "offer myself to
go with you to the East Indies?"
All this while this was indeed but a copy of my countenance; for, as my
circumstances would not admit of my stay in London, at least not so as
to appear publicly, I resolved, if I took him, to live remote in the
country, or go out of England with him.
But in an evil hour, just now came Amy's letter, in the very middle of
all these discourses; and the fine things she had said about the prince
began to make strange work with me. The notion of being a princess, and
going over to live where all that had happened here would have been
quite sunk out of knowledge as well as out of memory (conscience
excepted), was mighty taking. The thoughts of being surrounded with
domestics, honoured with titles, be called her Highness, and live in all
the splendour of a court, and, which was still more, in the arms of a
man of such rank, and who, I knew, loved and valued me--all this, in a
word, dazzled my eyes, turned my head, and I was as truly crazed and
distracted for about a fortnight as most of the people in Bedlam, though
perhaps not quite so far gone.
When my gentleman came to me the next time I had no notion of him; I
wished I had never received him at all. In short, I resolved to have no
more to say to him, so I feigned myself indisposed; and though I did
come down to him and speak to him a little, yet I let him see that I was
so ill that I was (as we say) no company, and that it would be kind in
him to give me leave to quit him for that time.
The next morning he sent a footman to inquire how I did; and I let him
know I had a violent cold, and was very ill with it. Two days after he
came again, and I let him see me again, but feigned myself so hoarse
that I could not speak to be heard, and that it was painful to me but to
whisper; and, in a word, I held him in this suspense near three weeks.
During this time I had a strange elevation upon my mind; and the prince,
or the spirit of him, had such a possession of me that I spent most of
this time in the realising all the great things of a life with the
prince, to my mind pleasing my fancy with the grandeur I was supposing
myself to enjoy, and with wickedly studying in what manner to put off
this gentleman and be rid of him for ever.