الفصل الفصل 23 · 第23章

When I had done so, he made me put them into my lap, and took my little

drawer, and poured out all my money among his, and bade me get me gone,

and carry it all home into my own chamber.

I relate this story the more particularly because of the good-humour

there was in it, and to show the temper with which we conversed. It was

not long after this but he began every day to find fault with my

clothes, with my laces and headdresses, and, in a word, pressed me to

buy better; which, by the way, I was willing enough to do, though I did

not seem to be so, for I loved nothing in the world better than fine

clothes. I told him I must housewife the money he had lent me, or else

I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me, in a few words,

that as he had a sincere respect for me, and knew my circumstances, he

had not lent me that money, but given it me, and that he thought I had

merited it from him by giving him my company so entirely as I had done.

After this he made me take a maid, and keep house, and his friend that

come with him to Bath being gone, he obliged me to diet him, which I

did very willingly, believing, as it appeared, that I should lose

nothing by it, nor did the woman of the house fail to find her account

in it too.

We had lived thus near three months, when the company beginning to wear

away at the Bath, he talked of going away, and fain he would have me to

go to London with him. I was not very easy in that proposal, not

knowing what posture I was to live in there, or how he might use me.

But while this was in debate he fell very sick; he had gone out to a

place in Somersetshire, called Shepton, where he had some business and

was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel; so he

sent his man back to Bath, to beg me that I would hire a coach and come

over to him. Before he went, he had left all his money and other things

of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I

secured them as well as I could, and locked up the lodgings and went to

him, where I found him very ill indeed; however, I persuaded him to be

carried in a litter to the Bath, where there was more help and better

advice to be had.

He consented, and I brought him to the Bath, which was about fifteen

miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a fever, and kept

his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him and tended him myself,

as much and as carefully as if I had been his wife; indeed, if I had

been his wife I could not have done more. I sat up with him so much and

so often, that at last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any longer,

and then I got a pallet-bed into his room, and lay in it just at his

bed’s feet.

I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the

apprehension of losing such a friend as he was, and was like to be to

me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together. However, at

last he grew better, and gave hopes that he would recover, as indeed he

did, though very slowly.

Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not be backward

to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in other cases in this

account; but I affirm, that through all this conversation, abating the

freedom of coming into the chamber when I or he was in bed, and abating

the necessary offices of attending him night and day when he was sick,

there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh

that it had been so to the last!

After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace, and I would

have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not let me, till he was able

to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him, and then I

removed to my own chamber.

He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness and

concern for him; and when he grew quite well, he made me a present of

fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, for hazarding my life

to save his.

And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable affection

for me, but all along attested it to be with the utmost reserve for my

virtue and his own. I told him I was fully satisfied of it. He carried

it that length that he protested to me, that if he was naked in bed

with me, he would as sacredly preserve my virtue as he would defend it

if I was assaulted by a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I did

so; but this did not satisfy him, he would, he said, wait for some

opportunity to give me an undoubted testimony of it.

It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my own

business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach, and would

go with me, and did so; and now indeed our intimacy increased. From

Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which was merely a journey of

pleasure, to take the air; and here it was our hap to have no lodging

in the inn but in one large chamber with two beds in it. The master of

the house going up with us to show his rooms, and coming into that

room, said very frankly to him, “Sir, it is none of my business to

inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie

as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,” and with

that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across the room and

effectually divided the beds. “Well,” says my friend, very readily,

“these beds will do, and as for the rest, we are too near akin to lie

together, though we may lodge near one another”; and this put an honest

face on the thing too. When we came to go to bed, he decently went out

of the room till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the bed on his

own side of the room, but lay there talking to me a great while.

At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in the bed

with me and not offer me the least injury, he starts out of his bed.

“And now, my dear,” says he, “you shall see how just I will be to you,

and that I can keep my word,” and away he comes to my bed.

I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted him

much if he had not made those promises at all; so after a little

struggle, as I said, I lay still and let him come to bed. When he was

there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all night with him, but he

had no more to do with me, or offered anything to me, other than

embracing me, as I say, in his arms, no, not the whole night, but rose

up and dressed him in the morning, and left me as innocent for him as I

was the day I was born.

This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to others, who

know how the laws of nature work; for he was a strong, vigorous, brisk

person; nor did he act thus on a principle of religion at all, but of

mere affection; insisting on it, that though I was to him the most

agreeable woman in the world, yet, because he loved me, he could not

injure me.

I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never understood

before, so it was to me perfectly amazing. We traveled the rest of the

journey as we did before, and came back to the Bath, where, as he had

opportunity to come to me when he would, he often repeated the

moderation, and I frequently lay with him, and he with me, and although

all the familiarities between man and wife were common to us, yet he

never once offered to go any farther, and he valued himself much upon

it. I do not say that I was so wholly pleased with it as he thought I

was, for I own much wickeder than he, as you shall hear presently.

We lived thus near two years, only with this exception, that he went

three times to London in that time, and once he continued there four

months; but, to do him justice, he always supplied me with money to

subsist me very handsomely.

Had we continued thus, I confess we had had much to boast of; but as

wise men say, it is ill venturing too near the brink of a command, so

we found it; and here again I must do him the justice to own that the

first breach was not on his part. It was one night that we were in bed

together warm and merry, and having drunk, I think, a little more wine

that night, both of us, than usual, although not in the least to

disorder either of us, when, after some other follies which I cannot

name, and being clasped close in his arms, I told him (I repeat it with

shame and horror of soul) that I could find in my heart to discharge

him of his engagement for one night and no more.

He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was no

resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him any more,

let what would come of it.

Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I exchanged the place

of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding title of whore. In the

morning we were both at our penitentials; I cried very heartily, he

expressed himself very sorry; but that was all either of us could do at

that time, and the way being thus cleared, and the bars of virtue and

conscience thus removed, we had the less difficult afterwards to

struggle with.

It was but a dull kind of conversation that we had together for all the

rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes, and every now and then

started that melancholy objection, “What if I should be with child now?

What will become of me then?” He encouraged me by telling me, that as

long as I was true to him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone

such a length (which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with

child, he would take care of that, and of me too. This hardened us

both. I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a

midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured me I

should never want if I should be with child. These mutual assurances

hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated the crime as often

as we pleased, till at length, as I had feared, so it came to pass, and

I was indeed with child.

After I was sure it was so, and I had satisfied him of it too, we began

to think of taking measures for the managing it, and I proposed

trusting the secret to my landlady, and asking her advice, which he

agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found) used to such things, made

light of it; she said she knew it would come to that at last, and made

us very merry about it. As I said above, we found her an experienced

old lady at such work; she undertook everything, engaged to procure a

midwife and a nurse, to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with

reputation, and she did so very dexterously indeed.