Kabanata Kabanata 28 · 第28章

“Why,” says I, “if your case is so plain as you say it is, you may be

legally divorced, and then you may find honest women enough to ask the

question of fairly; the sex is not so scarce that you can want a wife.”

“Well, then,” said he, “I am in earnest; I’ll take your advice; but

shall I ask you one question seriously beforehand?”

“Any question,” said I, “but that you did before.”

“No, that answer will not do,” said he, “for, in short, that is the

question I shall ask.”

“You may ask what questions you please, but you have my answer to that

already,” said I. “Besides, sir,” said I, “can you think so ill of me

as that I would give any answer to such a question beforehand? Can any

woman alive believe you in earnest, or think you design anything but to

banter her?”

“Well, well,” says he, “I do not banter you, I am in earnest; consider

of it.”

“But, sir,” says I, a little gravely, “I came to you about my own

business; I beg of you to let me know, what you will advise me to do?”

“I will be prepared,” says he, “against you come again.”

“Nay,” says I, “you have forbid my coming any more.”

“Why so?” said he, and looked a little surprised.

“Because,” said I, “you can’t expect I should visit you on the account

you talk of.”

“Well,” says he, “you shall promise me to come again, however, and I

will not say any more of it till I have gotten the divorce, but I

desire you will prepare to be better conditioned when that’s done, for

you shall be the woman, or I will not be divorced at all; why, I owe it

to your unlooked-for kindness, if it were to nothing else, but I have

other reasons too.”

He could not have said anything in the world that pleased me better;

however, I knew that the way to secure him was to stand off while the

thing was so remote, as it appeared to be, and that it was time enough

to accept of it when he was able to perform it; so I said very

respectfully to him, it was time enough to consider of these things

when he was in a condition to talk of them; in the meantime, I told

him, I was going a great way from him, and he would find objects enough

to please him better. We broke off here for the present, and he made me

promise him to come again the next day, for his resolutions upon my own

business, which after some pressing I did; though had he seen farther

into me, I wanted no pressing on that account.

I came the next evening, accordingly, and brought my maid with me, to

let him see that I kept a maid, but I sent her away as soon as I was

gone in. He would have had me let the maid have stayed, but I would

not, but ordered her aloud to come for me again about nine o’clock. But

he forbade that, and told me he would see me safe home, which, by the

way, I was not very well pleased with, supposing he might do that to

know where I lived and inquire into my character and circumstances.

However, I ventured that, for all that the people there or thereabout

knew of me, was to my advantage; and all the character he had of me,

after he had inquired, was that I was a woman of fortune, and that I

was a very modest, sober body; which, whether true or not in the main,

yet you may see how necessary it is for all women who expect anything

in the world, to preserve the character of their virtue, even when

perhaps they may have sacrificed the thing itself.

I found, and was not a little pleased with it, that he had provided a

supper for me. I found also he lived very handsomely, and had a house

very handsomely furnished; all of which I was rejoiced at indeed, for I

looked upon it as all my own.

We had now a second conference upon the subject-matter of the last

conference. He laid his business very home indeed; he protested his

affection to me, and indeed I had no room to doubt it; he declared that

it began from the first moment I talked with him, and long before I had

mentioned leaving my effects with him. “’Tis no matter when it began,”

thought I; “if it will but hold, ’twill be well enough.” He then told

me how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my effects, and

leaving them to him, had engaged him. “So I intended it should,”

thought I, “but then I thought you had been a single man too.” After we

had supped, I observed he pressed me very hard to drink two or three

glasses of wine, which, however, I declined, but drank one glass or

two. He then told me he had a proposal to make to me, which I should

promise him I would not take ill if I should not grant it. I told him I

hoped he would make no dishonourable proposal to me, especially in his

own house, and that if it was such, I desired he would not propose it,

that I might not be obliged to offer any resentment to him that did not

become the respect I professed for him, and the trust I had placed in

him in coming to his house; and begged of him he would give me leave to

go away, and accordingly began to put on my gloves and prepare to be

gone, though at the same time I no more intended it than he intended to

let me.

Well, he importuned me not to talk of going; he assured me he had no

dishonourable thing in his thoughts about me, and was very far from

offering anything to me that was dishonourable, and if I thought so, he

would choose to say no more of it.

That part I did not relish at all. I told him I was ready to hear

anything that he had to say, depending that he would say nothing

unworthy of himself, or unfit for me to hear. Upon this, he told me his

proposal was this: that I would marry him, though he had not yet

obtained the divorce from the whore his wife; and to satisfy me that he

meant honourably, he would promise not to desire me to live with him,

or go to bed with him till the divorce was obtained. My heart said yes

to this offer at first word, but it was necessary to play the hypocrite

a little more with him; so I seemed to decline the motion with some

warmth, and besides a little condemning the thing as unfair, told him

that such a proposal could be of no signification, but to entangle us

both in great difficulties; for if he should not at last obtain the

divorce, yet we could not dissolve the marriage, neither could we

proceed in it; so that if he was disappointed in the divorce, I left

him to consider what a condition we should both be in.

In short, I carried on the argument against this so far, that I

convinced him it was not a proposal that had any sense in it. Well,

then he went from it to another, and that was, that I would sign and

seal a contract with him, conditioning to marry him as soon as the

divorce was obtained, and to be void if he could not obtain it.

I told him such a thing was more rational than the other; but as this

was the first time that ever I could imagine him weak enough to be in

earnest in this affair, I did not use to say Yes at first asking; I

would consider of it.

I played with this lover as an angler does with a trout. I found I had

him fast on the hook, so I jested with his new proposal, and put him

off. I told him he knew little of me, and bade him inquire about me; I

let him also go home with me to my lodging, though I would not ask him

to go in, for I told him it was not decent.

In short, I ventured to avoid signing a contract of marriage, and the

reason why I did it was because the lady that had invited me so

earnestly to go with her into Lancashire insisted so positively upon

it, and promised me such great fortunes, and such fine things there,

that I was tempted to go and try. “Perhaps,” said I, “I may mend myself

very much”; and then I made no scruple in my thoughts of quitting my

honest citizen, whom I was not so much in love with as not to leave him

for a richer.

In a word, I avoided a contract; but told him I would go into the

north, that he should know where to write to me by the consequence of

the business I had entrusted with him; that I would give him a

sufficient pledge of my respect for him, for I would leave almost all I

had in the world in his hands; and I would thus far give him my word,

that as soon as he had sued out a divorce from his first wife, he would

send me an account of it, I would come up to London, and that then we

would talk seriously of the matter.

It was a base design I went with, that I must confess, though I was

invited thither with a design much worse than mine was, as the sequel

will discover. Well, I went with my friend, as I called her, into

Lancashire. All the way we went she caressed me with the utmost

appearance of a sincere, undissembled affection; treated me, except my

coach-hire, all the way; and her brother brought a gentleman’s coach to

Warrington to receive us, and we were carried from thence to Liverpool

with as much ceremony as I could desire. We were also entertained at a

merchant’s house in Liverpool three or four days very handsomely; I

forbear to tell his name, because of what followed. Then she told me

she would carry me to an uncle’s house of hers, where we should be

nobly entertained. She did so; her uncle, as she called him, sent a

coach and four horses for us, and we were carried near forty miles I

know not whither.

We came, however, to a gentleman’s seat, where was a numerous family, a

large park, extraordinary company indeed, and where she was called

cousin. I told her if she had resolved to bring me into such company as

this, she should have let me have prepared myself, and have furnished

myself with better clothes. The ladies took notice of that, and told me

very genteelly they did not value people in their country so much by

their clothes as they did in London; that their cousin had fully

informed them of my quality, and that I did not want clothes to set me

off; in short, they entertained me, not like what I was, but like what

they thought I had been, namely, a widow lady of a great fortune.

The first discovery I made here was, that the family were all Roman

Catholics, and the cousin too, whom I called my friend; however, I must

say that nobody in the world could behave better to me, and I had all

the civility shown me that I could have had if I had been of their

opinion. The truth is, I had not so much principle of any kind as to be

nice in point of religion, and I presently learned to speak favourably

of the Romish Church; particularly, I told them I saw little but the

prejudice of education in all the difference that were among Christians

about religion, and if it had so happened that my father had been a

Roman Catholic, I doubted not but I should have been as well pleased

with their religion as my own.