Moll Flanders (13 page)

He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month and we began to live a new kind of life with one another, and could I have satisfied myself to have gone on with it, I believe it might have continued as long as we had continued alive together. One evening, as we were sitting and talking together under a little awning, which served as an arbour at the entrance into the garden, he was in a very pleasant, agreeable humour and said abundance of kind things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good agreement and the disorders of our past breach, and what a satisfaction it was to him that we had room to hope we should never have any more of it.

I fetched a deep sigh and told him there was nobody in the world could be more delighted than I was in the good agreement we had always kept up or more afflicted with the breach of it; but I was sorry to tell him that there was an unhappy circumstance in our case, which lay too close to my heart and which I knew not how to break to him, that rendered my part of it very miserable and took from me all the comfort of the rest.

He importuned me to tell him what it was. I told him I could not tell how to do it; that while it was concealed from him, I alone was unhappy, but if he knew it also, we should be both so; and that, therefore, to keep him in the dark about it was the kindest thing that I could do, and it was on that account alone that I kept a secret from him, the very keeping of which, I thought, would first or last be my destruction.

It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation and the double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him. He told me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not be faithful to him, if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought so too, and yet I could not do it. He went back to what I had said before to him and told me he hoped it did not relate to what I said in my passion, and that he had resolved to forget all that as the effect of a rash, provoked spirit. I told him I wished I could forget it all too, but that it was not to be done, the impression was too deep, and it was impossible.

He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in anything, and that therefore he would importune me no more about it, resolving to acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only begged I would then agree that whatever it was, it should no more interrupt our quiet and our mutual kindness.

This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me, for I really wanted his farther importunities, that I might be prevailed with to bring out that which indeed was like death to me to conceal. So I answered him plainly that I could not say I was glad not to be importuned though I could not tell how to comply. “But come, my dear,” said I, “what conditions will you make with me upon the opening this affair to you?”

“Any conditions in the world,” said he, “that you can in reason desire of me.” “Well,” said I, “come, give it me under your hand that if you do not find I am in any fault or that I am willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortunes that is to follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do me any injury, or make me be the sufferer for that which is not my fault.”

“That,” says he, “is the most reasonable demand in the world; not to blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a pen and ink,” says he; so I ran in and fetched pen, ink, and paper, and he wrote the condition down in the very words I had proposed it and signed it with his name. “Well,” says he, “what is next, my dear?” “Why,” says I, “the next is that you will not blame me for not discovering the secret to you before I knew it.” “Very just again,” says he; “with all my heart”; so he wrote down that also and signed it.

“Well, my dear,” says I, “then I have but one condition more to make with you, and that is that as there is nobody concerned in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world except your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice or to your mother’s prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.”

This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly, but read them over and over before he signed them, hesitating at them several times and repeating them: “My mother’s prejudice! And your prejudice! What mysterious thing can this be?” However, at last he signed it.

“Well,” says I, “my dear, I’ll ask you no more under your hand; but as you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing that perhaps ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence of mind suitable to a man of sense.”

“I’ll do my utmost,” says he, “upon condition you will keep me no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these preliminaries.”

“Well, then,” says I, “it is this: As I told you before in a heat that I was not your lawful wife and that our children were not legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of our mother now alive and in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it in a manner not to be denied or contradicted.”

I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, “Now remember your promise and receive it with presence of mind; for who could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?” However, I called a servant and got him a little glass of rum (which is the usual dram of the country), for he was fainting away.

When he was a little recovered I said to him, “This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and therefore have patience and compose your mind to hear it out, and I’ll make it as short as I can”; and with this I told him what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother came to discover it to me, as above. “And now, my dear,” says I, “you will see reason for my capitulations, and that I neither have been the cause of this matter nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.”

“I am fully satisfied of that,” says he, “but ’tis a dreadful surprise to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put an end to all your difficulties without your going to England.” “That would be strange,” said I, “as all the rest.” “No, no,” says he, “I’ll make it easy; there’s nobody in the way of it all but myself.” He looked a little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them or that they who talk of such things never do them.

But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he became pensive and melancholy and, in a word, as I thought, a little distempered in his head. I endeavoured to talk him into temper and into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be well and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and went so far that he made two attempts upon himself, and in one of them had actually strangled himself, and had not his mother come into the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a Negro servant she cut him down and recovered him.

Things were now come to a lamentable height. My pity for him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all the kind carriage I could, to make up the breach; but, in short, it had gotten too great a head, it preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a lingering consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I might perhaps have married again there very much to my advantage had it been my business to have stayed in the country; but my mind was restless too; I hankered after coming to England, and nothing would satisfy me without it.

In short, by an unwearied importunity, my husband, who was apparently decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with; and so my fate pushing me on, the way was made clear for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good cargo for my coming to England.

When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call him), we agreed that after I arrived, he should pretend to have an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry again when he would. He promised, and engaged to me to correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me as long as I lived; and that if he died before me, he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still, in the name of a sister, and he was in some respects just to this; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in its time.

I came away in the month of August, after I had been eight years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me, which perhaps few women have gone through the like.

We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my clothes and money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers, I resolved to come for London and leave the ship to get to her port as she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my brother’s chief correspondent lived.

I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while after that the ship was arrived at Bristol, but at the same time had the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in and the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled.

I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of it I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even so much as without acquaintances, for I found it was absolutely necessary not to revive former acquaintance; and as for my subtle friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead and her husband also.

The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme; and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune, though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in the way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.

The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive and full of snares. I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking what might offer; but I must do myself justice as to protest I meant nothing but in an honest way nor had any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them to be guided.

Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy acquaintance, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company, that is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and this gave me many sad reflections. However, I shook them off and still flattered myself that something or other might offer for my advantage.

But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff, where, if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea-captain or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I was at the Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife: and consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect there must have some tendency that way.

I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to the Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious treaty. I had resisted some casual offers of gallantry and had managed that way well enough. I was not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice of it, and I had no extraordinary offers that tempted me with the main thing which I wanted.

However, I went this length the first season,
viz.
, I contracted an acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who, though she did not keep an ill house, yet had none of the best principles in herself. I had on all occasions behaved myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my reputation, and all the men that I had conversed with were of so good reputation that I had not gotten the least reflection by conversing with them; nor did any of them seem to think there was room for a wicked correspondence if they had offered it; yet there was one gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it.

I had many melancholy hours at the Bath after all the company was gone; for though I went to Bristol sometimes for the disposing my effects and for recruits of money, yet I chose to come back to the Bath for my residence because, being on good terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer, I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there than I could do anywhere else. Here, I say, I passed the winter as heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose house I lodged, I could not avoid communicating something of what lay hardest upon my mind, and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances. I told her also that I had a mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and as I had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition and the great loss I had received, so I did not fail to let my new friend know that I expected a supply from thence, and so indeed I did; and as the ships went from Bristol to York River, in Virginia, and back again generally in less time than from London, and that my brother corresponded chiefly at Bristol, I thought it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to go to London.