Moll Flanders. Даниэль ДефоЧитать онлайн книгу.
part of her fortune so in trustees, without letting him know anything of it, that it was quite out of his reach, and made him very well contented with the rest.
It is true she was pretty well besides, that is to say, she had about £1,400 in money which she gave him, and the other, after some time, she brought to light as a perquisite to herself, which he was to accept as a mighty favour, seeing, though it was not to be his, it might ease him in the article of her particular expenses; and I must add that by this conduct the gentleman himself became not only more humble in his applications to her to obtain her, but also was much the more an obliging husband when he had her. I cannot but remind the ladies how much they place themselves below the common station of a wife, which if I may be allowed not to be partial, is low enough already; I say, they place themselves below their common station, and prepare their own mortifications, by their submitting so to be insulted by the men beforehand, which I confess I see no necessity of.
This relation may serve therefore to let the ladies see that the advantage is not so much on the other side as the men think it is; and that though it may be true the men have but too much choice among us, and that some women may be found who will dishonour themselves, be cheap, and too easy to come at; yet if they will have women worth having they may find them as uncome-at-able a’s ever; and that those that are otherwise have often such deficiencies when had, as rather recommend the ladies that are difficult, than encourage the men to go on with their easy courtship and expect wives equally valuable that will come at first call.
Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the men by keeping their ground and letting their pretended lovers see they can resent being slighted, and that they are not afraid of saying. “No.” They insult us mightily with telling us of the number of women; that the wars and the sea, and trade, and other incidents have carried the men so much away that there is no proportion between the numbers of the sexes; but I am far from granting that the number of the women is so great, or the number of the men so small; but if they will have me tell the truth, the disadvantage of the women is a terrible scandal upon the men, and it lies here only, namely, that the age is so wicked, and the sex so debauched, that in short, the number of such men as an honest woman ought to meddle with is small indeed; and it is but here and there that a man is to be found who is fit for an honest woman to venture upon.
But the consequence even of that too amounts to no more than this, that women ought to be the more nice; for how do we know the just character of the man that makes the offer? To say that the woman should be the more easy on this occasion is to say we should be the forwarder to venture, because of the greatness of the danger, which is very absurd.
On the contrary, the women have ten thousand times the more reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of being betrayed is the greater, and would the ladies act the wary part, they would discover every cheat that offered; for, in short, the lives of very few men now-a-days will bear a character; and if the ladies do but make a little enquiry, they would soon be able to distinguish the men and deliver themselves: as for women that do not think their own safety worth their own thought, that impatient of their present state run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle, I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people, and they look like people that venture their estates in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize.
No man of common sense will value a woman the less for not giving up herself at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures, as the rate of men now goes: in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, that having but one cast for her life shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.
I would fain have the conduct of my sex a little regulated in this particular, which is the same thing in which of all the parts of life I think at this time we suffer most in: ‘tis nothing but lack of courage, the fear of not being married at all, and of that frightful state of life, called an old maid. This, I say, is the woman’s snare; but would the ladies once but get above that fear and manage rightly, they would more certainly avoid it by standing their ground in a case so absolutely necessary to their felicity, than by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not marry so soon, they would make themselves amends by marrying safer; she is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one: in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost reputation excepted, but if she manages well may be married safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself it is ten thousand to one but she is undone.
But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this time no little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the offer of a good husband the most necessary thing in the world to me; but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy, was not the way: it soon began to be found that the widow had no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me: being well bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all which I had allowed to my character, whether justly or no is not to the purpose: I say, all these would not do without the dross. In short, the widow, they said, had no money!
I resolved therefore that it was necessary to change my station and make a new appearance in some other place, and even to pass by another name if I found occasion.
I communicated my thoughts to my intimate friend the captain’s lady, who I had so faithfully served in her case with the captain, and who was as ready to serve me in the same kind as I could desire: I made no scruple to lay my circumstances open to her; my stock was but low, for I had made but about £540 at the close of my last affair, and I had wasted some of that: however, I had about £460 left, a great many very rich clothes, a gold watch and some jewels, though of no extraordinary value, and about £30 or £40 left in linen not disposed of.
My dear and faithful friend, the captain’s wife, was so sensible of the service I had done her in the affair above that she was not only a steady friend to me, but knowing my circumstances she frequently made me presents as money came into her hands; such as fully amounted to a maintenance, so that I spent none of my own; and at last she made this unhappy proposal to me, namely, that as we had observed, as above, how the men made no scruple to set themselves out as persons meriting a woman of fortune of their own, it was but just to deal with them in their own way, and if it was possible to deceive the deceiver.
The captain’s lady, in short, put this project into my head, and told me if I would be ruled by her I should certainly get a husband of fortune without leaving him any room to reproach me with want of my own. I told her that I would give up myself wholly to her directions, and that I would have neither tongue to speak, or feet to step in that affair, but as she should direct me; depending that she would extricate me out of every difficulty that she brought me into, which she said she would answer for.
The first step she put me upon was to call her cousin, and go to a relation’s house of hers in the country where she directed me, and where she brought her husband to visit me, and calling me cousin, she worked matters so about that her husband and she together invited me most passionately to come to town and live with them, for they now lived in a quite different place from where they were before. In the next place she tells her husband that I had at least £1,500 fortune, and that I was like to have a great deal more.
It was enough to tell her husband this, there needed nothing on my side; I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it presently went all over the neighbourhood that the young widow at Captain —’s was a fortune, that she had at least £1,500, and perhaps a great deal more, and that the captain said so, and if the captain was asked at any time about me he made no scruple to affirm it, though he knew not one word of the matter other than that his wife had told him so; and in this he thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so. With the reputation of this fortune, I presently found myself blessed with admirers enough, and that I had my choice of men, as they said they were, which, by the way, confirms what I was saying before: this being my case, I who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but to single out from them all the properest man that might be for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely to depend upon the hearsay of fortune, and not enquire too far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for my case