Moll Flanders (29 page)

I was at a loss in my thoughts to conclude at first what this gentleman designed; but I found afterward he had had some drink in his head and that he was not very unwilling to have some more. He carried me to the Spring Garden, at Knightsbridge, where we walked in the gardens, and he treated me very handsomely; but I found he drank freely. He pressed me also to drink, but I declined it.

Hitherto he kept his word with me and offered me nothing amiss. We came away in the coach again, and he brought me into the streets, and by this time it was near ten o’clock at night, when he stopped the coach at a house where, it seems, he was acquainted, and where they made no scruple to show us upstairs into a room with a bed in it. At first I seemed to be unwilling to go up, but after a few words I yielded to that too, being indeed willing to see the end of it and in hopes to make something of it at last. As for the bed, etc., I was not much concerned about that part.

Here he began to be a little freer with me than he had promised; and I by little and little yielded to everything, so that, in a word, he did what he pleased with me; I need say no more. All this while he drank freely too, and about one in the morning we went into the coach again. The air and the shaking of the coach made the drink get more up in his head, and he grew uneasy, and was for acting over again what he had been doing before; but as I thought my game now secure, I resisted and brought him to be a little still, which had not lasted five minutes but he fell fast asleep.

I took this opportunity to search him to a nicety. I took a gold watch, with a silk purse of gold, his fine full-bottom periwig and silver-fringed gloves, his sword and fine snuff-box, and gently opening the coach-door, stood ready to jump out while the coach was going on; but the coach stopping in the narrow street beyond Temple Bar to let another coach pass, I got softly out, fastened the door again, and gave my gentleman and the coach the slip together.

This was an adventure indeed unlooked for and perfectly undesigned by me, though I was not so past the merry part of life as to forget how to behave when a fop so blinded by his appetite should not know an old woman from a young. I did not indeed look so old as I was by ten or twelve years; yet I was not a young wench of seventeen, and it was easy enough to be distinguished. There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting, so ridiculous, as a man heated by wine in his head and a wicked gust in his inclination together; he is in the possession of two devils at once, and can no more govern himself by his reason than a mill can grind without water; vice tramples upon all that was in him that had any good in it; nay, his very sense is blinded by its own rage, and he acts absurdities even in his view; such as drinking more when he is drunk already; picking up a common woman without any regard to what she is or who she is, whether sound or rotten, clean or unclean, whether ugly or handsome, old or young, and so blinded as not really to distinguish. Such a man is worse than lunatic; prompted by his vicious head, he no more knows what he is doing than this wretch of mine knew when I picked his pocket of his watch and his purse of gold.

These are the men of whom Solomon says, “They go like an ox to the slaughter, till a dart strikes through their liver”; an admirable description, by the way, of the foul disease, which is a poisonous, deadly contagion mingling with the blood, whose centre or fountain is in the liver; from whence, by the swift circulation of the whole mass, that dreadful, nauseous plague strikes immediately through his liver, and his spirits are infected, his vitals stabbed through as with a dart.

It is true this poor unguarded wretch was in no danger from me, though I was greatly apprehensive at first what danger I might be in from him; but he was really to be pitied in one respect: that he seemed to be a good sort of a man in himself—a gentleman that had no harm in his design, a man of sense and of a fine behaviour, a comely handsome person, a sober and solid countenance, a charming beautiful face, and everything that could be agreeable; only had unhappily had some drink the night before, had not been in bed, as he told me when we were together; was hot, and his blood fired with wine, and in that condition his reason, as it were asleep, had given him up.

As for me, my business was his money and what I could make of him; and after that, if I could have found out any way to have done it, I would have sent him safe home to his house and to his family, for ’twas ten to one but he had an honest, virtuous wife and innocent children that were anxious for his safety, and would have been glad to have gotten him home and taken care of him till he was restored to himself. And then with what shame and regret would he look back upon himself! How would he reproach himself with associating himself with a whore picked up in the worst of all holes, the cloister, among the dirt and filth of the town! How would he be trembling for fear he had got the pox, for fear a dart had struck through his liver, and hate himself every time he looked back upon the madness and brutality of his debauch! How would he, if he had any principles of honour, abhor the thought of giving any ill distemper, if he had it, as for aught he knew he might, to his modest and virtuous wife, and thereby sowing the contagion in the life-blood of his posterity!

Would such gentlemen but consider the contemptible thoughts which the very women they are concerned with in such cases as these have of them, it would be a surfeit to them. As I said above, they value not the pleasure, they are raised by no inclination to the man; the passive jade thinks of no pleasure but the money; and when he is, as it were, drunk in the ecstasies of his wicked pleasure, her hands are in his pockets for what she can find there, and of which he can no more be sensible in the moment of his folly than he can forethink of it when he goes about it.

I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow who indeed deserved no better usage that while he was busy with her another way, conveyed his purse with twenty guineas in it out of his fob-pocket, where he had put it for fear of her, and put another purse with gilded counters in it into the room of it. After he had done, he says to her, “Now, han’t you picked my pocket?” She jested with him and told him she supposed he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob and with his fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied him, and so she brought off his money. And this was a trade with her; she kept a sham gold watch and a purse of counters in her pocket to be ready on all such occasions, and I doubt not practised it with success.

I came home with this last booty to my governess, and really when I told her the story, it so affected her that she was hardly able to forbear tears to think how such a gentleman run a daily risk of being undone every time a glass of wine got into his head.

But as to the purchase I got and how entirely I stripped him, she told me it pleased her wonderfully. “Nay, child,” says she, “the usage may, for aught I know, do more to reform him than all the sermons that ever he will hear in his life.” And if the remainder of the story be true, so it did.

I found the next day she was wonderful inquisitive about this gentleman; the description I gave her of him—his dress, his person, his face—all concurred to make her think of a gentleman whose character she knew. She mused awhile, and I going on in the particulars, says she, “I lay a hundred pound I know the man.”

“I am sorry if you do,” says I, “for I would not have him exposed on any account in the world; he has had injury enough already, and I would not be instrumental to do him any more.” “No, no,” says she, “I will do him no injury, but you may let me satisfy my curiosity a little, for if it is he, I warrant you I find it out.” I was a little startled at that, and I told her, with an apparent concern in my face, that by the same rule he might find me out, and then I was undone. She returned warmly, “Why, do you think I will betray you, child? No, no,” says she, “not for all he is worth in the world. I have kept your counsel in worse things than these; sure you may trust me in this.” So I said no more.

She laid her scheme another way, and without acquainting me with it, but she was resolved to find it out. So she goes to a certain friend of hers who was acquainted in the family that she guessed at and told her she had some extraordinary business with such a gentleman (who, by the way, was no less than a baronet and of a very good family), and that she knew not how to come at him without somebody to introduce her. Her friend promised her readily to do it, and accordingly goes to the house to see if the gentleman was in town.

The next day she comes to my governess and tells her that Sir —— was at home, but that he had met with a disaster and was very ill, and there was no speaking to him. “What disaster?” says my governess hastily, as if she was surprised at it. “Why,” says her friend, “he had been at Hampstead to visit a gentleman of his acquaintance, and as he came back again he was set upon and robbed; and having got a little drink too, as they suppose, the rogues abused him, and he is very ill.” “Robbed!” says my governess. “And what did they take from him?” “Why,” says her friend, “they took his gold watch and his gold snuff-box, his fine periwig, and what money he had in his pocket, which was considerable, to be sure, for Sir —— never goes without a purse of guineas about him.”

“Pshaw!” says my old governess, jeering. “I warrant you he has got drunk now and got a whore, and she has picked his pocket, and so he comes home to his wife and tells her he has been robbed; that’s an old sham; a thousand such tricks are put upon the poor women every day.”

“Fie!” says her friend. “I find you don’t know Sir ——; why, he is as civil a gentleman, there is not a finer man, nor a soberer, modester person in the whole city; he abhors such things; there’s nobody that knows him will think such a thing of him.” “Well, well,” says my governess, “that’s none of my business; if it was, I warrant I should find there was something of that in it; your modest men in common opinion are sometimes no better than other people, only they keep a better character or, if you please, are the better hypocrites.”

“No, no,” says her friend, “I can assure you Sir —— is no hypocrite; he is really an honest, sober gentleman, and he has certainly been robbed.” “Nay,” says my governess, “it may be he has; it is no business of mine, I tell you; I only want to speak with him; my business is of another nature.” “But,” says her friend, “let your business be of what nature it will, you cannot see him yet, for he is not fit to be seen, for he is very ill and bruised very much.” “Ay,” says my governess, “nay, then he has fallen into bad hands, to be sure.” And then she asked gravely, “Pray, where is he bruised?” “Why, in his head,” says her friend, “and one of his hands, and his face, for they used him barbarously.” “Poor gentleman,” says my governess. “I must wait, then, till he recovers”; and adds, “I hope it will not be long.”

Away she comes to me and tells me this story. “I have found out your fine gentleman, and a fine gentleman he was,” says she; “but, mercy on him, he is in a sad pickle now. I wonder what the d—l you have done to him; why, you have almost killed him.” I looked at her with disorder enough. “I killed him!” says I. “You must mistake the person; I am sure I did nothing to him; he was very well when I left him,” said I, “only drunk and fast asleep.” “I know nothing of that,” says she, “but he is in a sad pickle now”; and so she told me all that her friend had said. “Well, then,” says I, “he fell into bad hands after I left him, for I left him safe enough.”

About ten days after, my governess goes again to her friend to introduce her to this gentleman; she had inquired other ways in the meantime and found that he was about again, so she got leave to speak with him.

She was a woman of an admirable address and wanted nobody to introduce her; she told her tale much better than I shall be able to tell it for her, for she was mistress of her tongue, as I said already. She told him that she came, though a stranger, with a single design of doing him a service, and he should find she had no other end in it; that as she came purely on so friendly an account, she begged a promise from him, that if he did not accept what she should officiously propose, he would not take it ill that she meddled with what was not her business; she assured him that as what she had to say was a secret that belonged to him only, so whether he accepted her offer or not, it should remain a secret to all the world unless he exposed it himself; nor should his refusing her service in it make her so little show her respect as to do him the least injury, so that he should be entirely at liberty to act as he thought fit.

He looked very shy at first and said he knew nothing that related to him that required much secrecy; that he had never done any man any wrong and cared not what anybody might say of him; that it was no part of his character to be unjust to anybody, nor could he imagine in what any man could render him any service; but that if it was as she said, he could not take it ill from any one that should endeavour to serve him; and so, as it were, left her at liberty either to tell him or not to tell him, as she thought fit.

She found him so perfectly indifferent that she was almost afraid to enter into the point with him; but, however, after some other circumlocutions, she told him that by a strange and unaccountable accident she came to have a particular knowledge of the late unhappy adventure he had fallen into, and that in such a manner that there was nobody in the world but herself and him that were acquainted with it, no, not the very person that was with him.

He looked a little angrily at first. “What adventure?” said he. “Why, sir,” said she, “of your being robbed coming from Knightsbr—, Hampstead, sir, I should say,” says she. “Be not surprised, sir,” says she, “that I am able to tell you every step you took that day from the cloister in Smithfield to the Spring Garden at Knightsbridge, and thence to the —— in the Strand, and how you were left asleep in the coach afterwards. I say, let not this surprise you, for, sir, I do not come to make a booty of you, I ask nothing of you, and I assure you the woman that was with you knows nothing who you are and never shall; and yet perhaps I may serve you farther still, for I did not come barely to let you know that I was informed of these things, as if I wanted a bribe to conceal them; assure yourself, sir,” said she, “that whatever you think fit to do or say to me, it shall be all a secret, as it is, as much as if I were in my grave.”

He was astonished at her discourse and said gravely to her, “Madam, you are a stranger to me, but it is very unfortunate that you should be let into the secret of the worst action of my life and a thing that I am justly ashamed of, in which the only satisfaction I had was that I thought it was known only to God and my own conscience.” “Pray, sir,” says she, “do not reckon the discovery of it to me to be any part of your misfortune. It was a thing, I believe, you were surprised into, and perhaps the woman used some art to prompt you to it. However, you will never find any just cause,” said she, “to repent that I came to hear of it; nor can your mouth be more silent in it than I have been and ever shall be.”

“Well,” says he, “but let me do some justice to the woman too; whoever she is, I do assure you she prompted me to nothing, she rather declined me. It was my own folly and madness that brought me into it all; aye, and brought her into it too; I must give her her due so far. As to what she took from me, I could expect no less from her in the condition I was in, and to this hour I know not whether she robbed me or the coachman; if she did it, I forgive her. I think all gentlemen that do so should be used in the same manner; but I am more concerned for some other things than I am for all that she took from me.”

My governess now began to come into the whole matter, and he opened himself freely to her. First she said to him in answer to what he had said about me, “I am glad, sir, you are so just to the person that you were with. I assure you she is a gentlewoman, and no woman of the town; and however you prevailed with her as you did, I am sure ’tis not her practice. You run a great venture indeed, sir; but if that be part of your care, you may be perfectly easy, for I do assure you no man has touched her before you since her husband, and he has been dead now almost eight years.”

It appeared that this was his grievance and that he was in a very great fright about it; however, when my governess said this to him, he appeared very well pleased and said, “Well, madam, to be plain with you, if I was satisfied of that, I should not so much value what I lost; for as to that, the temptation was great, and perhaps she was poor and wanted it.” “If she had not been poor, sir,” says she, “I assure you she would never have yielded to you; and as her poverty first prevailed with her to let you do as you did, so the same poverty prevailed with her to pay herself at last when she saw you was in such a condition that if she had not done it, perhaps the next coachman or chairman might have done it more to your hurt.”

“Well,” says he, “much good may it do her. I say again, all the gentlemen that do so ought to be used in the same manner, and then they would be cautious of themselves. I have no more concern about it but on the score which you hinted at before.” Here he entered into some freedoms with her on the subject of what passed between us, which are not so proper for a woman to write, and the great terror that was upon his mind with relation to his wife for fear she should have received any injury from me and should communicate it farther; and asked her at last if she could not procure him an opportunity to speak with me. My governess gave him farther assurances of my being a woman clear from any such thing, and that he was as entirely safe in that respect as he was with his own lady; but as for seeing me, she said it might be of dangerous consequence; but, however, that she would talk with me and let him know, endeavouring at the same time to persuade him not to desire it and that it could be of no service to him, seeing she hoped he had no desire to renew the correspondence and that on my account it was a kind of putting my life in his hands.