My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate,
and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence
still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is
not be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to
this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present
it would not be proper, no not though a general pardon should be
issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.
It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are
out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the
steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name
of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under
that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.
I have been told that in one of our neighbour nations, whether it be in
France or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, that
when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to
be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally
unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so they
are immediately taken into the care of the Government, and put into a
hospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed,
fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to
services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest,
industrious behaviour.
Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor
desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper
in the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed to
very great distresses, even before I was capable either of
understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of
life which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary
course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.
But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for
a certain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz. having an opportunity
of borrowing three pieces of fine holland of a certain draper in
Cheapside. The circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard
them related so many ways, that I can scarce be certain which is the
right account.
However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded her
belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for about
seven months; in which time having brought me into the world, and being
about again, she was called down, as they term it, to her former
judgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to the
plantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands, you
may be sure.
This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything
of myself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention, that as I was born
in such an unhappy place, I had no parish to have recourse to for my
nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least account how I was
kept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of my
mother’s took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or
by whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.
The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of myself,
was that I had wandered among a crew of those people they call gypsies,
or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very little while that I had
been among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured or blackened, as
they do very young to all the children they carry about with them; nor
can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.
It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and I have a
notion in my head that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself
and would not go any farther with them), but I am not able to be
particular in that account; only this I remember, that being taken up
by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I
came into the town with the gypsies, but that I would not go any
farther with them, and that so they had left me, but whither they were
gone that I knew not, nor could they expect it of me; for though they
send round the country to inquire after them, it seems they could not
be found.
I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish
charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came
to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above
three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order
some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as
if I had been born in the place.
In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to
nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in
better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as
I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they
were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to
service or get their own bread.
This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach
children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before
that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great
deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very
religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely
and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a
word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were
brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the
dancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified
with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had
ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little
service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a
drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me
into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service,
as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young;
and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my
living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief
trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would
work for her, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did
nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so
much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me
very well.
One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor
children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her
usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to
observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to; as
I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make, and
after a while she began to talk to me. “Thou foolish child,” says she,
“thou art always crying” (for I was crying then); “prithee, what dost
cry for?” “Because they will take me away,” says I, “and put me to
service, and I can’t work housework.” “Well, child,” says she, “but
though you can’t work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in
time, and they won’t put you to hard things at first.” “Yes, they
will,” says I, “and if I can’t do it they will beat me, and the maids
will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I
can’t do it”; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more
to her.
This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved
I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would
speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.
Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was
such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not
have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to
me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very
apprehension of its being to be so at last.
When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with
me. “And what would you have?” says she; “don’t I tell you that you
shall not go to service till your are bigger?” “Ay,” said I, “but then
I must go at last.” “Why, what?” said she; “is the girl mad? What would
you be—a gentlewoman?” “Yes,” says I, and cried heartily till I roared
out again.
This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it
would. “Well, madam, forsooth,” says she, gibing at me, “you would be a
gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will
you do it by your fingers’ end?”
“Yes,” says I again, very innocently.
“Why, what can you earn?” says she; “what can you get at your work?”
“Threepence,” said I, “when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain
work.”
“Alas! poor gentlewoman,” said she again, laughing, “what will that do
for thee?”
“It will keep me,” says I, “if you will let me live with you.” And this
I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman’s
heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.
“But,” says she, “that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and
who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?” says she, and smiled all
the while at me.
“I will work harder, then,” says I, “and you shall have it all.”
“Poor child! it won’t keep you,” says she; “it will hardly keep you in
victuals.”
“Then I will have no victuals,” says I, again very innocently; “let me
but live with you.”
“Why, can you live without victuals?” says she.
“Yes,” again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still
I cried heartily.
I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but
it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in
short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried
at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the
teaching-room. “Come,” says she, “you shan’t go to service; you shall
live with me”; and this pacified me for the present.
Some time after this, she going to wait on the Mayor, and talking of
such things as belonged to her business, at last my story came up, and
my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole tale. He was so pleased with it,
that he would call his lady and his two daughters to hear it, and it
made mirth enough among them, you may be sure.
However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes Mrs.
Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse, and to
see her school and the children. When they had looked about them a
little, “Well, Mrs. ——,” says the Mayoress to my nurse, “and pray which
is the little lass that intends to be a gentlewoman?” I heard her, and
I was terribly frighted at first, though I did not know why neither;
but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me. “Well, miss,” says she, “and what are
you at work upon?” The word miss was a language that had hardly been
heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called
me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my
hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she took up one of
the hands. “Nay,” says she, “the child may come to be a gentlewoman for
aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman’s hand,” says she. This
pleased me mightily, you may be sure; but Mrs. Mayoress did not stop
there, but giving me my work again, she put her hand in her pocket,
gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work, and learn to work well,
and I might be a gentlewoman for aught she knew.
Now all this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest
of them did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing
by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another; for alas! all I
understood by being a gentlewoman was to be able to work for myself,
and get enough to keep me without that terrible bugbear going to
service, whereas they meant to live great, rich and high, and I know
not what.
Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came in, and they
called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked a long while to me, and
I answered them in my innocent way; but always, if they asked me
whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered Yes. At last one of
them asked me what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; but,
however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that did not go
to service, to do housework. They were pleased to be familiar with me,
and like my little prattle to them, which, it seems, was agreeable
enough to them, and they gave me money too.
As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called her,
and told her she should have all I got for myself when I was a
gentlewoman, as well as now. By this and some other of my talk, my old
tutoress began to understand me about what I meant by being a
gentlewoman, and that I understood by it no more than to be able to get
my bread by my own work; and at last she asked me whether it was not
so.
I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a
gentlewoman; “for,” says I, “there is such a one,” naming a woman that
mended lace and washed the ladies’ laced-heads; “she,” says I, “is a
gentlewoman, and they call her madam.”
“Poor child,” says my good old nurse, “you may soon be such a
gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has had two
or three bastards.”
I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, “I am sure they
call her madam, and she does not go to service nor do housework”; and
therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a
gentlewoman as that.
The ladies were told all this again, to be sure, and they made
themselves merry with it, and every now and then the young ladies, Mr.
Mayor’s daughters, would come and see me, and ask where the little
gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself.
This held a great while, and I was often visited by these young ladies,
and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I was known by it
almost all over the town.
I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little womanish, for
I was mighty grave and humble, very mannerly, and as I had often heard
the ladies say I was pretty, and would be a very handsome woman, so you
may be sure that hearing them say so made me not a little proud.
However, that pride had no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often
gave me money, and I gave it to my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so
just to me as to lay it all out again for me, and gave me head-dresses,
and linen, and gloves, and ribbons, and I went very neat, and always
clean; for that I would do, and if I had rags on, I would always be
clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good
nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and
would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money;
and this made them oftentimes give me more, till at last I was indeed
called upon by the magistrates, as I understood it, to go out to
service; but then I was come to be so good a workwoman myself, and the
ladies were so kind to me, that it was plain I could maintain
myself—that is to say, I could earn as much for my nurse as she was
able by it to keep me—so she told them that if they would give her
leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her
assistant and teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for
I was very nimble at my work, and had a good hand with my needle,
though I was yet very young.
But the kindness of the ladies of the town did not end here, for when
they came to understand that I was no more maintained by the public
allowance as before, they gave me money oftener than formerly; and as I
grew up they brought me work to do for them, such as linen to make, and
laces to mend, and heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing
them, but even taught me how to do them; so that now I was a
gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word, I not only found myself
clothes and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in my pocket
too beforehand.
The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their
children’s; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one
thing, some another, and these my old woman managed for me like a mere
mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them
and twist them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.
At last one of the ladies took so much fancy to me that she would have
me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters.
Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my old good woman
said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would
do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. “Well,” says the lady,
“that’s true; and therefore I’ll only take her home for a week, then,
that I may see how my daughters and she agree together, and how I like
her temper, and then I’ll tell you more; and in the meantime, if
anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them you
have sent her out to my house.”
This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady’s house; but
I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with
me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were as unwilling to
part with me.
However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest
old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost
fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish;
but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady’s house that I was
not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was
fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a
gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought, I say, that it was
fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and
therefore I longed to be there again.
About the time that I was fourteen years and a quarter old, my good
nurse, mother I rather to call her, fell sick and died. I was then in a
sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end
to a poor body’s family when once they are carried to the grave, so the
poor good woman being buried, the parish children she kept were
immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end,
and the children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till
they were sent somewhere else; and as for what she left, her daughter,
a married woman with six or seven children, came and swept it all away
at once, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to
jest with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for
herself if she pleased.
I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do, for I
was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and that which
was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-twenty shillings of
mine in her hand, which was all the estate the little gentlewoman had
in the world; and when I asked the daughter for it, she huffed me and
laughed at me, and told me she had nothing to do with it.
It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of it, and that
it lay in such a place, that it was the child’s money, and had called
once or twice for me to give it me, but I was, unhappily, out of the
way somewhere or other, and when I came back she was past being in a
condition to speak of it. However, the daughter was so honest
afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly about
it.
Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very night to
be turned into the wide world; for the daughter removed all the goods,
and I had not so much as a lodging to go to, or a bit of bread to eat.
But it seems some of the neighbours, who had known my circumstances,
took so much compassion of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I
had been a week, as I mentioned above; and immediately she sent her
maid to fetch me away, and two of her daughters came with the maid
though unsent. So I went with them, bag and baggage, and with a glad
heart, you may be sure. The fright of my condition had made such an
impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but
was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they
thought fit to have me be.
But my new generous mistress, for she exceeded the good woman I was
with before, in everything, as well as in the matter of estate; I say,
in everything except honesty; and for that, though this was a lady most
exactly just, yet I must not forget to say on all occasions, that the
first, though poor, was as uprightly honest as it was possible for any
one to be.
I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good gentlewoman,
but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress that was, sent her two
daughters to take care of me; and another family which had taken notice
of me when I was the little gentlewoman, and had given me work to do,
sent for me after her, so that I was mightily made of, as we say; nay,
and they were not a little angry, especially madam the Mayoress, that
her friend had taken me away from her, as she called it; for, as she
said, I was hers by right, she having been the first that took any
notice of me. But they that had me would not part with me; and as for
me, though I should have been very well treated with any of the others,
yet I could not be better than where I was.
Here I continued till I was between seventeen and eighteen years old,
and here I had all the advantages for my education that could be
imagined; the lady had masters home to the house to teach her daughters
to dance, and to speak French, and to write, and other to teach them
music; and I was always with them, I learned as fast as they; and
though the masters were not appointed to teach me, yet I learned by
imitation and inquiry all that they learned by instruction and
direction; so that, in short, I learned to dance and speak French as
well as any of them, and to sing much better, for I had a better voice
than any of them. I could not so readily come at playing on the
harpsichord or spinet, because I had no instrument of my own to
practice on, and could only come at theirs in the intervals when they
left it, which was uncertain; but yet I learned tolerably well too, and
the young ladies at length got two instruments, that is to say, a
harpsichord and a spinet too, and then they taught me themselves. But
as to dancing, they could hardly help my learning country-dances,
because they always wanted me to make up even number; and, on the other
hand, they were as heartily willing to learn me everything that they
had been taught themselves, as I could be to take the learning.
By this means I had, as I have said above, all the advantages of
education that I could have had if I had been as much a gentlewoman as
they were with whom I lived; and in some things I had the advantage of
my ladies, though they were my superiors; but they were all the gifts
of nature, and which all their fortunes could not furnish. First, I was
apparently handsomer than any of them; secondly, I was better shaped;
and, thirdly, I sang better, by which I mean I had a better voice; in
all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own
conceit of myself, but the opinion of all that knew the family.
I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz. that being
really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a great beauty,
I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself as anybody
else could have of me; and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak
of it, which could not but happen to me sometimes, and was a great
satisfaction to me.
Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this
part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a very good
family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and
sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had the character too of
a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always
been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to
know what a temptation to wickedness meant.
But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my vanity was
the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had two sons, young
gentlemen of very promising parts and of extraordinary behaviour, and
it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed
themselves with me in a quite different manner.
The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the country,
and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too
much judgment of things to pay too dear for his pleasures; he began
with the unhappy snare to all women, viz. taking notice upon all
occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how
well-carriaged, and the like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he
had known as well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when
he went a-setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his
sisters when, though I was not by, yet when he knew I was not far off
but that I should be sure to hear him. His sisters would return softly
to him, “Hush, brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next
room.” Then he would put it off and talk softlier, as if he had not
known it, and begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had
forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well
pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.
After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method
how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game; and one day, going
by his sister’s chamber when I was there, doing something about
dressing her, he comes in with an air of gaiety. “Oh, Mrs. Betty,” said
he to me, “how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don’t your cheeks burn, Mrs.
Betty?” I made a curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. “What makes you
talk so, brother?” says the lady. “Why,” says he, “we have been talking
of her below-stairs this half-hour.” “Well,” says his sister, “you can
say no harm of her, that I am sure, so ’tis no matter what you have
been talking about.” “Nay,” says he, “’tis so far from talking harm of
her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great many
fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure you; and
particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester;
and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.”
“I wonder at you, brother,” says the sister. “Betty wants but one
thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against
our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty, birth, breeding,
wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she
have not money, she’s nobody, she had as good want them all for nothing
but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their
own hands.”
Her younger brother, who was by, cried, “Hold, sister, you run too
fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find a woman
so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I would not
trouble myself about the money.”
“Oh,” says the sister, “but you will take care not to fancy one, then,
without the money.”
“You don’t know that neither,” says the brother.
“But why, sister,” says the elder brother, “why do you exclaim so at
the men for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none of them that
want a fortune, whatever else you want.”
“I understand you, brother,” replies the lady very smartly; “you
suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go now, the
first will do without the last, so I have the better of my neighbours.”
“Well,” says the younger brother, “but your neighbours, as you call
them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes
in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the
mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach
before her.”
I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and I did so,
but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard
abundance of the fine things said of myself, which served to prompt my
vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest
in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously
out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her upon
my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by her future
conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never had
the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother;
indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had said a great
many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in
earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have
supposed he never intended, and perhaps never thought of.
It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards the room
where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often used to do; and
calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I, being there
alone, stepped to the door, and said, “Sir, the ladies are not here,
they are walked down the garden.” As I stepped forward to say this,
towards the door, he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his
arms, as if it had been by chance, “Oh, Mrs. Betty,” says he, “are you
here? That’s better still; I want to speak with you more than I do with
them”; and then, having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four
times.
I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he
held me fast, and still kissed me, till he was almost out of breath,
and then, sitting down, says, “Dear Betty, I am in love with you.”
His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew about my
heart and put me into disorder enough, which he might easily have seen
in my face. He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in
love with me, and my heart spoke as plain as a voice, that I liked it;
nay, whenever he said, “I am in love with you,” my blushes plainly
replied, “Would you were, sir.”
However, nothing else passed at that time; it was but a surprise, and
when he was gone I soon recovered myself again. He had stayed longer
with me, but he happened to look out at the window and see his sisters
coming up the garden, so he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he
was very serious, and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away
he went, leaving me infinitely pleased, though surprised; and had there
not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right, but the mistake
lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest and the gentleman was not.
From this time my head ran upon strange things, and I may truly say I
was not myself; to have such a gentleman talk to me of being in love
with me, and of my being such a charming creature, as he told me I was;
these were things I knew not how to bear, my vanity was elevated to the
last degree. It is true I had my head full of pride, but, knowing
nothing of the wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my own
safety or of my virtue about me; and had my young master offered it at
first sight, he might have taken any liberty he thought fit with me;
but he did not see his advantage, which was my happiness for that time.
After this attack it was not long but he found an opportunity to catch
me again, and almost in the same posture; indeed, it had more of design
in it on his part, though not on my part. It was thus: the young ladies
were all gone a-visiting with their mother; his brother was out of
town; and as for his father, he had been in London for a week before.
He had so well watched me that he knew where I was, though I did not so
much as know that he was in the house; and he briskly comes up the
stairs and, seeing me at work, comes into the room to me directly, and
began just as he did before, with taking me in his arms, and kissing me
for almost a quarter of an hour together.
It was his younger sister’s chamber that I was in, and as there was
nobody in the house but the maids below-stairs, he was, it may be, the
ruder; in short, he began to be in earnest with me indeed. Perhaps he
found me a little too easy, for God knows I made no resistance to him
while he only held me in his arms and kissed me; indeed, I was too well
pleased with it to resist him much.
However, as it were, tired with that kind of work, we sat down, and
there he talked with me a great while; he said he was charmed with me,
and that he could not rest night or day till he had told me how he was
in love with me, and, if I was able to love him again, and would make
him happy, I should be the saving of his life, and many such fine
things. I said little to him again, but easily discovered that I was a
fool, and that I did not in the least perceive what he meant.
Then he walked about the room, and taking me by the hand, I walked with
him; and by and by, taking his advantage, he threw me down upon the
bed, and kissed me there most violently; but, to give him his due,
offered no manner of rudeness to me, only kissed a great while. After
this he thought he had heard somebody come upstairs, so got off from
the bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of love for me, but told
me it was all an honest affection, and that he meant no ill to me; and
with that he put five guineas into my hand, and went away downstairs.
I was more confounded with the money than I was before with the love,
and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the ground I stood on. I
am the more particular in this part, that if my story comes to be read
by any innocent young body, they may learn from it to guard themselves
against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own
beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts
the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she
believes herself charming enough to captivate him, ’tis natural to
expect the effects of it.
This young gentleman had fired his inclination as much as he had my
vanity, and, as if he had found that he had an opportunity and was
sorry he did not take hold of it, he comes up again in half an hour or
thereabouts, and falls to work with me again as before, only with a
little less introduction.
And first, when he entered the room, he turned about and shut the door.
“Mrs. Betty,” said he, “I fancied before somebody was coming upstairs,
but it was not so; however,” adds he, “if they find me in the room with
you, they shan’t catch me a-kissing of you.” I told him I did not know
who should be coming upstairs, for I believed there was nobody in the
house but the cook and the other maid, and they never came up those
stairs. “Well, my dear,” says he, “’tis good to be sure, however”; and
so he sits down, and we began to talk. And now, though I was still all
on fire with his first visit, and said little, he did as it were put
words in my mouth, telling me how passionately he loved me, and that
though he could not mention such a thing till he came to this estate,
yet he was resolved to make me happy then, and himself too; that is to
say, to marry me, and abundance of such fine things, which I, poor
fool, did not understand the drift of, but acted as if there was no
such thing as any kind of love but that which tended to matrimony; and
if he had spoke of that, I had no room, as well as no power, to have
said no; but we were not come that length yet.
We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very breath with
kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then being both well warmed,
he went farther with me than decency permits me to mention, nor had it
been in my power to have denied him at that moment, had he offered much
more than he did.
However, though he took these freedoms with me, it did not go to that
which they call the last favour, which, to do him justice, he did not
attempt; and he made that self-denial of his a plea for all his
freedoms with me upon other occasions after this. When this was over,
he stayed but a little while, but he put almost a handful of gold in my
hand, and left me, making a thousand protestations of his passion for
me, and of his loving me above all the women in the world.
It will not be strange if I now began to think, but alas! it was but
with very little solid reflection. I had a most unbounded stock of
vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue. I did indeed
case sometimes with myself what young master aimed at, but thought of
nothing but the fine words and the gold; whether he intended to marry
me, or not to marry me, seemed a matter of no great consequence to me;
nor did my thoughts so much as suggest to me the necessity of making
any capitulation for myself, till he came to make a kind of formal
proposal to me, as you shall hear presently.
Thus I gave up myself to a readiness of being ruined without the least
concern and am a fair memento to all young women whose vanity prevails
over their virtue. Nothing was ever so stupid on both sides. Had I
acted as became me, and resisted as virtue and honour require, this
gentleman had either desisted his attacks, finding no room to expect
the accomplishment of his design, or had made fair and honourable
proposals of marriage; in which case, whoever had blamed him, nobody
could have blamed me. In short, if he had known me, and how easy the
trifle he aimed at was to be had, he would have troubled his head no
farther, but have given me four or five guineas, and have lain with me
the next time he had come at me. And if I had known his thoughts, and
how hard he thought I would be to be gained, I might have made my own
terms with him; and if I had not capitulated for an immediate marriage,
I might for a maintenance till marriage, and might have had what I
would; for he was already rich to excess, besides what he had in
expectation; but I seemed wholly to have abandoned all such thoughts as
these, and was taken up only with the pride of my beauty, and of being
beloved by such a gentleman. As for the gold, I spent whole hours in
looking upon it; I told the guineas over and over a thousand times a
day. Never a poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the
story as I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my
ruin was at the door; indeed, I think I rather wished for that ruin
than studied to avoid it.
In the meantime, however, I was cunning enough not to give the least
room to any in the family to suspect me, or to imagine that I had the
least correspondence with this young gentleman. I scarce ever looked
towards him in public, or answered if he spoke to me when anybody was
near us; but for all that, we had every now and then a little
encounter, where we had room for a word or two, and now and then a
kiss, but no fair opportunity for the mischief intended; and especially
considering that he made more circumlocution than, if he had known my
thoughts, he had occasion for; and the work appearing difficult to him,
he really made it so.
But as the devil is an unwearied tempter, so he never fails to find
opportunity for that wickedness he invites to. It was one evening that
I was in the garden, with his two younger sisters and himself, and all
very innocently merry, when he found means to convey a note into my
hand, by which he directed me to understand that he would to-morrow
desire me publicly to go of an errand for him into the town, and that I
should see him somewhere by the way.
Accordingly, after dinner, he very gravely says to me, his sisters
being all by, “Mrs. Betty, I must ask a favour of you.” “What’s that?”
says his second sister. “Nay, sister,” says he very gravely, “if you
can’t spare Mrs. Betty to-day, any other time will do.” Yes, they said,
they could spare her well enough, and the sister begged pardon for
asking, which they did but of mere course, without any meaning. “Well,
but, brother,” says the eldest sister, “you must tell Mrs. Betty what
it is; if it be any private business that we must not hear, you may
call her out. There she is.” “Why, sister,” says the gentleman very
gravely, “what do you mean? I only desire her to go into the High
Street” (and then he pulls out a turnover), “to such a shop”; and then
he tells them a long story of two fine neckcloths he had bid money for,
and he wanted to have me go and make an errand to buy a neck to the
turnover that he showed, to see if they would take my money for the
neckcloths; to bid a shilling more, and haggle with them; and then he
made more errands, and so continued to have such petty business to do,
that I should be sure to stay a good while.
When he had given me my errands, he told them a long story of a visit
he was going to make to a family they all knew, and where was to be
such-and-such gentlemen, and how merry they were to be, and very
formally asks his sisters to go with him, and they as formally excused
themselves, because of company that they had notice was to come and
visit them that afternoon; which, by the way, he had contrived on
purpose.
He had scarce done speaking to them, and giving me my errand, but his
man came up to tell him that Sir W—— H——’s coach stopped at the door;
so he runs down, and comes up again immediately. “Alas!” says he aloud,
“there’s all my mirth spoiled at once; sir W—— has sent his coach for
me, and desires to speak with me upon some earnest business.” It seems
this Sir W—— was a gentleman who lived about three miles out of town,
to whom he had spoken on purpose the day before, to lend him his
chariot for a particular occasion, and had appointed it to call for
him, as it did, about three o’clock.
Immediately he calls for his best wig, hat, and sword, and ordering his
man to go to the other place to make his excuse— that was to say, he
made an excuse to send his man away—he prepares to go into the coach.
As he was going, he stopped a while, and speaks mighty earnestly to me
about his business, and finds an opportunity to say very softly to me,
“Come away, my dear, as soon as ever you can.” I said nothing, but made
a curtsy, as if I had done so to what he said in public. In about a
quarter of an hour I went out too; I had no dress other than before,
except that I had a hood, a mask, a fan, and a pair of gloves in my
pocket; so that there was not the least suspicion in the house. He
waited for me in the coach in a back-lane, which he knew I must pass
by, and had directed the coachman whither to go, which was to a certain
place, called Mile End, where lived a confidant of his, where we went
in, and where was all the convenience in the world to be as wicked as
we pleased.
When we were together he began to talk very gravely to me, and to tell
me he did not bring me there to betray me; that his passion for me
would not suffer him to abuse me; that he resolved to marry me as soon
as he came to his estate; that in the meantime, if I would grant his
request, he would maintain me very honourably; and made me a thousand
protestations of his sincerity and of his affection to me; and that he
would never abandon me, and as I may say, made a thousand more
preambles than he need to have done.
However, as he pressed me to speak, I told him I had no reason to
question the sincerity of his love to me after so many protestations,
but—and there I stopped, as if I left him to guess the rest. “But what,
my dear?” says he. “I guess what you mean: what if you should be with
child? Is not that it? Why, then,” says he, “I’ll take care of you and
provide for you, and the child too; and that you may see I am not in
jest,” says he, “here’s an earnest for you,” and with that he pulls out
a silk purse, with an hundred guineas in it, and gave it me. “And I’ll
give you such another,” says he, “every year till I marry you.”
My colour came and went, at the sight of the purse and with the fire of
his proposal together, so that I could not say a word, and he easily
perceived it; so putting the purse into my bosom, I made no more
resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleased, and as often as
he pleased; and thus I finished my own destruction at once, for from
this day, being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of
value left to recommend me, either to God’s blessing or man’s
assistance.
But things did not end here. I went back to the town, did the business
he publicly directed me to, and was at home before anybody thought me
long. As for my gentleman, he stayed out, as he told me he would, till
late at night, and there was not the least suspicion in the family
either on his account or on mine.
We had, after this, frequent opportunities to repeat our crime—chiefly
by his contrivance—especially at home, when his mother and the young
ladies went abroad a-visiting, which he watched so narrowly as never to
miss; knowing always beforehand when they went out, and then failed not
to catch me all alone, and securely enough; so that we took our fill of
our wicked pleasure for near half a year; and yet, which was the most
to my satisfaction, I was not with child.
But before this half-year was expired, his younger brother, of whom I
have made some mention in the beginning of the story, falls to work
with me; and he, finding me alone in the garden one evening, begins a
story of the same kind to me, made good honest professions of being in
love with me, and in short, proposes fairly and honourably to marry me,
and that before he made any other offer to me at all.
I was now confounded, and driven to such an extremity as the like was
never known; at least not to me. I resisted the proposal with
obstinacy; and now I began to arm myself with arguments. I laid before
him the inequality of the match; the treatment I should meet with in
the family; the ingratitude it would be to his good father and mother,
who had taken me into their house upon such generous principles, and
when I was in such a low condition; and, in short, I said everything to
dissuade him from his design that I could imagine, except telling him
the truth, which would indeed have put an end to it all, but that I
durst not think of mentioning.
But here happened a circumstance that I did not expect indeed, which
put me to my shifts; for this young gentleman, as he was plain and
honest, so he pretended to nothing with me but what was so too; and,
knowing his own innocence, he was not so careful to make his having a
kindness for Mrs. Betty a secret in the house, as his brother was. And
though he did not let them know that he had talked to me about it, yet
he said enough to let his sisters perceive he loved me, and his mother
saw it too, which, though they took no notice of it to me, yet they did
to him, an immediately I found their carriage to me altered, more than
ever before.
I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was easy, I
say, to see that their carriage to me was altered, and that it grew
worse and worse every day; till at last I got information among the
servants that I should, in a very little while, be desired to remove.
I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that I should
be otherwise provided for; and especially considering that I had reason
every day to expect I should be with child, and that then I should be
obliged to remove without any pretences for it.
After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity to tell me
that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the family. He did not
charge me with it, he said, for he know well enough which way it came
out. He told me his plain way of talking had been the occasion of it,
for that he did not make his respect for me so much a secret as he
might have done, and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I
would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he loved
me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true his father and
mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that he was now in a way to
live, being bred to the law, and he did not fear maintaining me
agreeable to what I should expect; and that, in short, as he believed I
would not be ashamed of him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of
me, and that he scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to
own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but to give
him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest.
I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily
my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of
conscience, but from a view of the happiness I might have enjoyed, and
had now made impossible; for though I had no great scruples of
conscience, as I have said, to struggle with, yet I could not think of
being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other. But then it came
into my thoughts that the first brother had promised to made me his
wife when he came to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had
often thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for a
wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed, till now,
though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no disturbance at
all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen his affection to me,
so neither did he lessen his bounty, though he had the discretion
himself to desire me not to lay out a penny of what he gave me in
clothes, or to make the least show extraordinary, because it would
necessarily give jealousy in the family, since everybody know I could
come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private
friendship, which they would presently have suspected.
But I was now in a great strait, and knew not what to do. The main
difficulty was this: the younger brother not only laid close siege to
me, but suffered it to be seen. He would come into his sister’s room,
and his mother’s room, and sit down, and talk a thousand kind things of
me, and to me, even before their faces, and when they were all there.
This grew so public that the whole house talked of it, and his mother
reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared quite altered.
In short, his mother had let fall some speeches, as if she intended to
put me out of the family; that is, in English, to turn me out of doors.
Now I was sure this could not be a secret to his brother, only that he
might not think, as indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest
brother had made any proposal to me about it; but as I easily could see
that it would go farther, so I saw likewise there was an absolute
necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to me,
and which to do first I knew not; that is, whether I should break it to
him or let it alone till he should break it to me.
Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider things
very seriously, and never till now; I say, upon serious consideration,
I resolved to tell him of it first; and it was not long before I had an
opportunity, for the very next day his brother went to London upon some
business, and the family being out a-visiting, just as it had happened
before, and as indeed was often the case, he came according to his
custom, to spend an hour or two with Mrs. Betty.
When he came and had sat down a while, he easily perceived there was an
alteration in my countenance, that I was not so free and pleasant with
him as I used to be, and particularly, that I had been a-crying; he was
not long before he took notice of it, and asked me in very kind terms
what was the matter, and if anything troubled me. I would have put it
off if I could, but it was not to be concealed; so after suffering many
importunities to draw that out of me which I longed as much as possible
to disclose, I told him that it was true something did trouble me, and
something of such a nature that I could not conceal from him, and yet
that I could not tell how to tell him of it neither; that it was a
thing that not only surprised me, but greatly perplexed me, and that I
knew not what course to take, unless he would direct me. He told me
with great tenderness, that let it be what it would, I should not let
it trouble me, for he would protect me from all the world.
I then began at a distance, and told him I was afraid the ladies had
got some secret information of our correspondence; for that it was easy
to see that their conduct was very much changed towards me for a great
while, and that now it was come to that pass that they frequently found
fault with me, and sometimes fell quite out with me, though I never
gave them the least occasion; that whereas I used always to lie with
the eldest sister, I was lately put to lie by myself, or with one of
the maids; and that I had overheard them several times talking very
unkindly about me; but that which confirmed it all was, that one of the
servants had told me that she had heard I was to be turned out, and
that it was not safe for the family that I should be any longer in the
house.
He smiled when he heard all this, and I asked him how he could make so
light of it, when he must needs know that if there was any discovery I
was undone for ever, and that even it would hurt him, though not ruin
him as it would me. I upbraided him, that he was like all the rest of
the sex, that, when they had the character and honour of a woman at
their mercy, oftentimes made it their jest, and at least looked upon it
as a trifle, and counted the ruin of those they had had their will of
as a thing of no value.
He saw me warm and serious, and he changed his style immediately; he
told me he was sorry I should have such a thought of him; that he had
never given me the least occasion for it, but had been as tender of my
reputation as he could be of his own; that he was sure our
correspondence had been managed with so much address, that not one
creature in the family had so much as a suspicion of it; that if he
smiled when I told him my thoughts, it was at the assurance he lately
received, that our understanding one another was not so much as known
or guessed at; and that when he had told me how much reason he had to
be easy, I should smile as he did, for he was very certain it would
give me a full satisfaction.
“This is a mystery I cannot understand,” says I, “or how it should be
to my satisfaction that I am to be turned out of doors; for if our
correspondence is not discovered, I know not what else I have done to
change the countenances of the whole family to me, or to have them
treat me as they do now, who formerly used me with so much tenderness,
as if I had been one of their own children.”
“Why, look you, child,” says he, “that they are uneasy about you, that
is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the case as it is,
and as it respects you and I, is so far from being true, that they
suspect my brother Robin; and, in short, they are fully persuaded he
makes love to you; nay, the fool has put it into their heads too
himself, for he is continually bantering them about it, and making a
jest of himself. I confess I think he is wrong to do so, because he
cannot but see it vexes them, and makes them unkind to you; but ’tis a
satisfaction to me, because of the assurance it gives me, that they do
not suspect me in the least, and I hope this will be to your
satisfaction too.”
“So it is,” says I, “one way; but this does not reach my case at all,
nor is this the chief thing that troubles me, though I have been
concerned about that too.” “What is it, then?” says he. With which I
fell to tears, and could say nothing to him at all. He strove to pacify
me all he could, but began at last to be very pressing upon me to tell
what it was. At last I answered that I thought I ought to tell him too,
and that he had some right to know it; besides, that I wanted his
direction in the case, for I was in such perplexity that I knew not
what course to take, and then I related the whole affair to him. I told
him how imprudently his brother had managed himself, in making himself
so public; for that if he had kept it a secret, as such a thing ought
to have been, I could but have denied him positively, without giving
any reason for it, and he would in time have ceased his solicitations;
but that he had the vanity, first, to depend upon it that I would not
deny him, and then had taken the freedom to tell his resolution of
having me to the whole house.
I told him how far I had resisted him, and told him how sincere and
honourable his offers were. “But,” says I, “my case will be doubly
hard; for as they carry it ill to me now, because he desires to have
me, they’ll carry it worse when they shall find I have denied him; and
they will presently say, there’s something else in it, and then out it
comes that I am married already to somebody else, or that I would never
refuse a match so much above me as this was.”
This discourse surprised him indeed very much. He told me that it was a
critical point indeed for me to manage, and he did not see which way I
should get out of it; but he would consider it, and let me know next
time we met, what resolution he was come to about it; and in the
meantime desired I would not give my consent to his brother, nor yet
give him a flat denial, but that I would hold him in suspense a while.
I seemed to start at his saying I should not give him my consent. I
told him he knew very well I had no consent to give; that he had
engaged himself to marry me, and that my consent was the same time
engaged to him; that he had all along told me I was his wife, and I
looked upon myself as effectually so as if the ceremony had passed; and
that it was from his own mouth that I did so, he having all along
persuaded me to call myself his wife.
“Well, my dear,” says he, “don’t be concerned at that now; if I am not
your husband, I’ll be as good as a husband to you; and do not let those
things trouble you now, but let me look a little farther into this
affair, and I shall be able to say more next time we meet.”
He pacified me as well as he could with this, but I found he was very
thoughtful, and that though he was very kind to me and kissed me a
thousand times, and more I believe, and gave me money too, yet he
offered no more all the while we were together, which was above two
hours, and which I much wondered at indeed at that time, considering
how it used to be, and what opportunity we had.
His brother did not come from London for five or six days, and it was
two days more before he got an opportunity to talk with him; but then
getting him by himself he began to talk very close to him about it, and
the same evening got an opportunity (for we had a long conference
together) to repeat all their discourse to me, which, as near as I can
remember, was to the purpose following. He told him he heard strange
news of him since he went, viz. that he made love to Mrs. Betty. “Well,”
says his brother a little angrily, “and so I do. And what then? What
has anybody to do with that?” “Nay,” says his brother, “don’t be angry,
Robin; I don’t pretend to have anything to do with it; nor do I pretend
to be angry with you about it. But I find they do concern themselves
about it, and that they have used the poor girl ill about it, which I
should take as done to myself.” “Whom do you mean by _they_?” says
Robin. “I mean my mother and the girls,” says the elder brother. “But
hark ye,” says his brother, “are you in earnest? Do you really love
this girl? You may be free with me, you know.” “Why, then,” says Robin,
“I will be free with you; I do love her above all the women in the
world, and I will have her, let them say and do what they will. I
believe the girl will not deny me.”
It struck me to the heart when he told me this, for though it was most
rational to think I would not deny him, yet I knew in my own conscience
I must deny him, and I saw my ruin in my being obliged to do so; but I
knew it was my business to talk otherwise then, so I interrupted him in
his story thus.
“Ay!” said I, “does he think I cannot deny him? But he shall find I can
deny him, for all that.”
“Well, my dear,” says he, “but let me give you the whole story as it
went on between us, and then say what you will.”
Then he went on and told me that he replied thus: “But, brother, you
know she has nothing, and you may have several ladies with good
fortunes.”
“’Tis no matter for that,” said Robin; “I love the girl, and I will
never please my pocket in marrying, and not please my fancy.” “And so,
my dear,” adds he, “there is no opposing him.”
“Yes, yes,” says I, “you shall see I can oppose him; I have learnt to
say No, now though I had not learnt it before; if the best lord in the
land offered me marriage now, I could very cheerfully say No to him.”
“Well, but, my dear,” says he, “what can you say to him? You know, as
you said when we talked of it before, he will ask you many questions
about it, and all the house will wonder what the meaning of it should
be.”
“Why,” says I, smiling, “I can stop all their mouths at one clap by
telling him, and them too, that I am married already to his elder
brother.”
He smiled a little too at the word, but I could see it startled him,
and he could not hide the disorder it put him into. However, he
returned, “Why, though that may be true in some sense, yet I suppose
you are but in jest when you talk of giving such an answer as that; it
may not be convenient on many accounts.”
“No, no,” says I pleasantly, “I am not so fond of letting the secret
come out without your consent.”
“But what, then, can you say to him, or to them,” says he, “when they
find you positive against a match which would be apparently so much to
your advantage?”
“Why,” says I, “should I be at a loss? First of all, I am not obliged
to give me any reason at all; on the other hand, I may tell them I am
married already, and stop there, and that will be a full stop too to
him, for he can have no reason to ask one question after it.”
“Ay,” says he; “but the whole house will tease you about that, even to
father and mother, and if you deny them positively, they will be
disobliged at you, and suspicious besides.”
“Why,” says I, “what can I do? What would you have me do? I was in
straight enough before, and as I told you, I was in perplexity before,
and acquainted you with the circumstances, that I might have your
advice.”
“My dear,” says he, “I have been considering very much upon it, you may
be sure, and though it is a piece of advice that has a great many
mortifications in it to me, and may at first seem strange to you, yet,
all things considered, I see no better way for you than to let him go
on; and if you find him hearty and in earnest, marry him.”
I gave him a look full of horror at those words, and, turning pale as
death, was at the very point of sinking down out of the chair I sat in;
when, giving a start, “My dear,” says he aloud, “what’s the matter with
you? Where are you a-going?” and a great many such things; and with
jogging and called to me, fetched me a little to myself, though it was
a good while before I fully recovered my senses, and was not able to
speak for several minutes more.
When I was fully recovered he began again. “My dear,” says he, “what
made you so surprised at what I said? I would have you consider
seriously of it? You may see plainly how the family stand in this case,
and they would be stark mad if it was my case, as it is my brother’s;
and for aught I see, it would be my ruin and yours too.”
“Ay!” says I, still speaking angrily; “are all your protestations and
vows to be shaken by the dislike of the family? Did I not always object
that to you, and you made light thing of it, as what you were above,
and would value; and is it come to this now?” said I. “Is this your
faith and honour, your love, and the solidity of your promises?”
He continued perfectly calm, notwithstanding all my reproaches, and I
was not sparing of them at all; but he replied at last, “My dear, I
have not broken one promise with you yet; I did tell you I would marry
you when I was come to my estate; but you see my father is a hale,
healthy man, and may live these thirty years still, and not be older
than several are round us in town; and you never proposed my marrying
you sooner, because you knew it might be my ruin; and as to all the
rest, I have not failed you in anything, you have wanted for nothing.”
I could not deny a word of this, and had nothing to say to it in
general. “But why, then,” says I, “can you persuade me to such a horrid
step as leaving you, since you have not left me? Will you allow no
affection, no love on my side, where there has been so much on your
side? Have I made you no returns? Have I given no testimony of my
sincerity and of my passion? Are the sacrifices I have made of honour
and modesty to you no proof of my being tied to you in bonds too strong
to be broken?”
“But here, my dear,” says he, “you may come into a safe station, and
appear with honour and with splendour at once, and the remembrance of
what we have done may be wrapt up in an eternal silence, as if it had
never happened; you shall always have my respect, and my sincere
affection, only then it shall be honest, and perfectly just to my
brother; you shall be my dear sister, as now you are my dear——” and
there he stopped.
“Your dear whore,” says I, “you would have said if you had gone on, and
you might as well have said it; but I understand you. However, I desire
you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and the many
hours’ pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest
woman; that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the eyes of
the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had passed
between us as if we had been publicly wedded by the parson of the
parish. You know and cannot but remember that these have been your own
words to me.”
I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what
follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said nothing, and I went
on thus: “You cannot,” says I, “without the highest injustice, believe
that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be
questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen
afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask
you what foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a
suggestion?
“If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if
I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and in the essence
of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those
arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same
thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my
affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? It is
in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,” said
I, “depend upon it ’tis impossible, and whatever the change of your
side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it is
come that unhappy length, be your whore than your brother’s wife.”
He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last
discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had
not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but
that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his
view in the affair before me, and that on my account in particular,
that he had thought of the other as a remedy so effectual as nothing
could come up to it. That he thought this would not be entire parting
us, but we might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more
satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in, as things
might happen; that he durst say, I could not apprehend anything from
him as to betraying a secret, which could not but be the destruction of
us both, if it came out; that he had but one question to ask of me that
could lie in the way of it, and if that question was answered in the
negative, he could not but think still it was the only step I could
take.
I guessed at his question presently, namely, whether I was sure I was
not with child? As to that, I told him he need not be concerned about
it, for I was not with child. “Why, then, my dear,” says he, “we have
no time to talk further now. Consider of it, and think closely about
it; I cannot but be of the opinion still, that it will be the best
course you can take.” And with this he took his leave, and the more
hastily too, his mother and sisters ringing at the gate, just at the
moment that he had risen up to go.
He left me in the utmost confusion of thought; and he easily perceived
it the next day, and all the rest of the week, for it was but Tuesday
evening when we talked; but he had no opportunity to come at me all
that week, till the Sunday after, when I, being indisposed, did not go
to church, and he, making some excuse for the like, stayed at home.
And now he had me an hour and a half again by myself, and we fell into
the same arguments all over again, or at least so near the same, as it
would be to no purpose to repeat them. At last I asked him warmly, what
opinion he must have of my modesty, that he could suppose I should so
much as entertain a thought of lying with two brothers, and assured him
it could never be. I added, if he was to tell me that he would never
see me more, than which nothing but death could be more terrible, yet I
could never entertain a thought so dishonourable to myself, and so base
to him; and therefore, I entreated him, if he had one grain of respect
or affection left for me, that he would speak no more of it to me, or
that he would pull his sword out and kill me. He appeared surprised at
my obstinacy, as he called it; told me I was unkind to myself, and
unkind to him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both,
and impossible for either of us to foresee, but that he did not see any
other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he thought it the
more unkind; but that if he must say no more of it to me, he added with
an unusual coldness, that he did not know anything else we had to talk
of; and so he rose up to take his leave. I rose up too, as if with the
same indifference; but when he came to give me as it were a parting
kiss, I burst out into such a passion of crying, that though I would
have spoke, I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him
the adieu, but cried vehemently.
He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great
many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my passion, but still
urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting,
that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but
letting me plainly see that he would decline me in the main point—nay,
even as a mistress; making it a point of honour not to lie with the
woman that, for aught he knew, might come to be his brother’s wife.
The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction as the
loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction; and the loss of
all the expectations I had, and which I always had built my hopes upon,
of having him one day for my husband. These things oppressed my mind so
much, that, in short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a
word, threw me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the
family expected my life.
I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and
light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when I was
light-headed, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was
distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he
really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not
the least room to desire it on one side or other, or so much as to make
it decent.
It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the violence of my
fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the
physicians said two or three times, they could do no more for me, but
that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out, only
strengthening the first with cordials to maintain the struggle. After
the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, so
melancholy, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I
should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave it as
their opinion that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me,
and, in short, that I was in love. Upon this, the whole house was set
upon me to examine me, and to press me to tell whether I was in love or
not, and with whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at
all.
They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that
had like to have put the whole family in an uproar, and for some time
did so. They happened to be all at table but the father; as for me, I
was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk, which was
just as they had finished their dinner, the old gentlewoman, who had
sent me somewhat to eat, called her maid to go up and ask me if I would
have any more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half what
she had sent me already.
“Alas,” says the old lady, “that poor girl! I am afraid she will never
be well.”