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“has told you I had a great deal more than ever I pretended to have, and I am sure I never employed him so to do.”
“Well,” says he, “Captain — may have told me so, but what then, if you have not so much, that may lie at his door, but you never told me what you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all.”
“That is so just,” said I, “and so generous, that it makes my having but a little a double affliction to me.”
“The less you have, my dear,” says he, “the worse for us both; but I hope your affliction is not caused for fear I should be unkind to you for want of a portion; no, no, if you have nothing, tell me plainly; I may perhaps tell the Captain he has cheated me, but I can never say you have, for did not you give it under your hand that you was poor, and so I ought to expect you to be?”
“Well,” said I, “my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in deceiving you before marriage, if I deceive you since, ‘tis ne’er the worse; that I am poor, ‘tis too true, but not so poor as to have nothing neither.” So I pulled out some bank bills and gave him about a hundred and sixty pounds. “There is something, my dear,” says I, “and not quite all neither.”
I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly welcome; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he did not question by my discourse to him but that my fine clothes, gold watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune.
I let him please himself with that £160 two or three days, and then having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I brought him a hundred pounds more home in gold, and told him there was a little more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more, I brought him £180 more, and about £60 in linen, which I made believe I had been obliged to take with the £100 which I gave him in gold, as a composition for a debt of £600, being little more than five shillings in the pound, and over-valued too.
“And now, my dear,” says I to him, “I am very sorry to tell you, that I have given you my whole fortune.” I added that if the person who had my £600 had not abused me, I had been worth a thousand pound to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful, and reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had it.
He was so obliged by the manner and so pleased with the sum, for he had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he accepted it very thankfully: and thus I got over the fraud of passing for a fortune without money and cheated a man into marrying me on pretence of it, which, by the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazards of being ill used afterwards.
My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantations in Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to Virginia to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like.
I began presently to understand his meaning, and I took him up very plainly one morning and told him that I did so; that I found his estate turned to no account at this distance, compared to what it would do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and live there; that I was sensible he had been disappointed in a wife, and that finding his expectations not answered that way I could do no less, to make amends, than tell him that I was very willing to go to Virginia with him and live there.
He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such a proposal to him: he told me that though he was disappointed in his expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that I was all to him that a wife could be, but that this offer was so kind that it was more than he could express.
To bring the story short, we agreed to go: he told me that he had a very good house there well furnished, that his mother lived in it and one sister, which was all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there they would remove to another house which was her own for life, and his after her decease; so that I should have all the house to myself; and I found it all exactly as he said.
We put on board the ship which we went in a large quantity of good furniture for our house, with stores of linen and other necessaries and a good cargo for sale, and away we went.
To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was long and full of dangers, is out of my way. I kept no journal, neither did my husband; all that I can say is, that after a terrible passage, frighted twice with dreadful storms, and once with what was still more terrible, I mean a pirate, who came on board and took away almost all our provisions; and, which would have been beyond all to me, they had once taken my husband, but by entreaties were prevailed with to leave him; I say, after all these terrible things we arrived in York River in Virginia, and coming to our plantation we were received with all the tenderness and affection (by my husband’s mother) that could be expressed.
We lived here all together, my mother-in-law at my entreaty continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted with; my husband likewise continued the same at first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition the most uncomfortable in the world.
My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman, I may call her so, for her son was above thirty: I say, she was very pleasant good company, and used to entertain me in particular with abundance of stories to divert me, as well as of the country we were in, as of the people.
Among the rest she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that Colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts: either (I) such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, (2) such as are transported after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death.
“When they come here,” says she, “we make no difference, the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out; when ‘tis expired,” said she, “they have encouragement given them to plant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and as the merchants will trust them with tools and necessaries upon the credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them. Hence, child,” says she, “many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have,” continued she, “several justices of the peace, officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand.”
She was going on with that part of the story when her own part in it interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence she told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that she was become a criminal, and “Here’s the mark of it, child,” says she, and shewed me a very fine white arm and hand, but branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.
This story was very moving to me, but my mother (smiling) said, “You need not think such a thing strange, daughter, for some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it; there’s Major—,” says she, “he was an eminent pickpocket; there’s Justice Ba—r, was a shoplifter, and both of them were burnt in the hand, and I could name you several such as they are.”
We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she gave me of the like; after some time, as she was telling some stories of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into very ill company in London in her young days, occassioned by her mother sending her frequently to carry victuals to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, in a miserable starving condition,