Moll Flanders. Даниэль ДефоЧитать онлайн книгу.
my husband died, his elder brother was married, and we being then removed to London, were written to by the old lady to come and be at the wedding; my husband went, but I pretended indisposition, so I stayed behind; for, in short, I could not bear the sight of his being given to another woman, though I knew I was never to have him myself.
I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my pocket, I put no small value upon myself. I was courted by several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very warmly by one, a linen draper, at whose house, after my husband’s death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance; here I had all the liberty and opportunity to be gay, and appear in company that I could desire; my landlord’s sister being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much mistress of her virtue as I thought at first she had been. She brought me into a world of wild company, and even brought home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify, to see her pretty widow. Now as fame and fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed; had abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers; but I found not one fair proposal among them all; as for their common design, that I understood too well to be drawn into any more snares of that kind. The case was altered with me, I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I had been tricked once by that cheat called Love, but the game was over. I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and to be well married or not at all.
I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, and was often entertained with such, as I was also with others; but I found by just observation, that the brightest men came upon the dullest errand, that is to say, the dullest as to what I aimed at; on the other hand, those who came with the best proposals were the dullest and most disagreeable part of the world. I was not averse to a tradesman, but then I would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was something of a gentleman too; that when my husband had a mind to carry me to the court, or to the play, he might become a sword, and look as like a gentleman as another man; and not like one that had the mark of his apron-strings upon his coat, or the mark of his hat upon his periwig; that should look as if he was set on to his sword, when his sword was put on to him, and that carried his trade in his countenance.
Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-waterthing, called a gentleman-tradesman, and as a just plague upon my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say, I laid for myself.
This was a draper too, for though my comrade would have bargained for me with her brother; yet when they came to the point, it was it seems for a mistress, and I kept true to this notion, that a woman should never be kept for a mistress, that had money to make herself a wife.
Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue, kept me honest; though, as it proved, I found I had much better have been sold by my she comrade, to her brother, than have sold myself as I did to a tradesman that was rake, gentleman, shopkeeper, and beggar all together.
But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin myself in the grossest manner that ever woman did; for my new husband, coming to a lump of money at once, fell into such a profusion of expense, that all I had, and all he had, would not have held it out above one year.
He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and what I got by that, was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of my money spent upon myself. “Come, my dear,” says he to me one day, “shall we go and take a turn into the country for a week?”
“Ay, my dear,” says I. “Whither would you go?”
“I care not whither,” says he, “but I have a mind to look like quality for a week, we’ll go to Oxford,” says he.
“How,” says I, “shall we go? I am no horse-woman, and ‘tis too far for a coach.”
“Too far?” says he; “no place is too far for a coach and six. If I carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess.”
“Hum,” says I, “my dear, ‘tis a frolic, but if you have a mind to it, I don’t care.”
Well, the time was appointed, we had a rich coach, very good horses, a coachman, postillion, and two footmen in very good liveries; a gentleman on horseback, and a page with a feather in his hat upon another horse; the servants all called him “My Lord,” and I was “Her Honour, the Countess,” and thus we travelled to Oxford, and a pleasant journey we had; for give him his due, not a beggar alive knew better how to be a lord than my husband. We saw all the rarities at Oxford, talked with two or three Fellows of Colleges, about putting a nephew, that was left to his lordship’s care, to the University, and of their being his tutors; we diverted ourselves with bantering several other poor scholars, with the hopes of being at least his lordship’s chaplain and putting on a scarf; and thus having lived like quality indeed, as to expense, we went away for Northampton, and in a word, in about twelve days’ ramble came home again, to the tune of about £93 expense.
Vanity is the perfection of a fop; my husband had this excellence, that he valued nothing of expense; as his history, you may be sure, has very little weight in it, ‘tis enough to tell you, that in about two years and a quarter he broke, got into a Spunging-House, being arrested in an action too heavy for him to give bail, so he sent for me to come to him.
It was no surprise to me, for I had foreseen something before that all was going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve something if I could for myself. But when he sent for me, he behaved much better than I expected: he told me plainly, he had played the fool, and suffered himself to be surprised, which he might have prevented: that now he foresaw he could not stand it, and therefore he would have me go home, and in the night take away everything I had in the house of any value, and secure it; and alter that, he told me, that if I could get away £100 or £200 in goods out of the shop, I should do it. “Only,” says he, “let me know nothing of it, neither what you take, or whither you carry it; for as for me,” says he, “I am resolved to get out of this house and be gone; and if you never hear of me more, my dear,” says he, “I wish you well; I am only sorry for the injury I have done you.” He said some very handsome things to me indeed at parting; for I told you he was a gentleman, and that was all the benefit I had of his being so; that he used me very handsomely, even to the last, only spent all I had, and left me to rob the creditors for something to subsist on.
However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure, and having thus taken my leave of him I never saw him more; for he found means to break out of the bailiff’s house that night or the next: how I knew not, for I could come at no knowledge of anything more than this, that he came home about three o’clock in the morning, caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint and the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could he got over to France, from whence I had one or two letters from him and no more.
I did not see him when he came home, for he having given me such instructions as above and I having made the best of my time, I had no more business back again at the house, not knowing but
I might have been stopped there by the creditors; for a Commission of Bankrupt being soon after issued, they might have stopped me by orders from the Commissioners. But my husband having desperately got out from the bailiff’s by letting himself down from almost the top of the house to the top of another building and leaping from thence, which was almost two stories, and which was enough indeed to have broken his neck: he came home and got away his goods before the creditors could come to seize, that is to say, before they could get out the commission and be ready to send their officers to take possession.
My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much of a gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me he let me know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine holland for £30 which were worth above £90, and enclosed me the token for the taking them up, paying the money, which I did, and made in time above £100 of them, having leisure to cut them and sell them to private families, as opportunity offered.
However, with all this and all that I had secured before, I found upon casting things up, my case was very much altered and my fortune much lessened; for including the hollands and a parcel of fine muslins, which I carried off before, and some plate and other