Kabanata Kabanata 55 · 第55章

The sight of the constable, indeed, struck me with terror, and I

thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into faintings, and

indeed the people themselves thought I would have died, when the woman

argued again for me, and entreated her husband, seeing they had lost

nothing, to let me go. I offered him to pay for the two pieces,

whatever the value was, though I had not got them, and argued that as

he had his goods, and had really lost nothing, it would be cruel to

pursue me to death, and have my blood for the bare attempt of taking

them. I put the constable in mind that I had broke no doors, nor

carried anything away; and when I came to the justice, and pleaded

there that I had neither broken anything to get in, nor carried

anything out, the justice was inclined to have released me; but the

first saucy jade that stopped me, affirming that I was going out with

the goods, but that she stopped me and pulled me back as I was upon the

threshold, the justice upon that point committed me, and I was carried

to Newgate. That horrid place! my very blood chills at the mention of

its name; the place where so many of my comrades had been locked up,

and from whence they went to the fatal tree; the place where my mother

suffered so deeply, where I was brought into the world, and from whence

I expected no redemption but by an infamous death: to conclude, the

place that had so long expected me, and which with so much art and

success I had so long avoided.

I was not fixed indeed; ’tis impossible to describe the terror of my

mind, when I was first brought in, and when I looked around upon all

the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on myself as lost, and that

I had nothing to think of but of going out of the world, and that with

the utmost infamy: the hellish noise, the roaring, swearing, and

clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful crowd of

afflicting things that I saw there, joined together to make the place

seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it.

Now I reproached myself with the many hints I had had, as I have

mentioned above, from my own reason, from the sense of my good

circumstances, and of the many dangers I had escaped, to leave off

while I was well, and how I had withstood them all, and hardened my

thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by an

inevitable and unseen fate to this day of misery, and that now I was to

expiate all my offences at the gallows; that I was now to give

satisfaction to justice with my blood, and that I was come to the last

hour of my life and of my wickedness together. These things poured

themselves in upon my thoughts in a confused manner, and left me

overwhelmed with melancholy and despair.

Then I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance

yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no, not in the least, because, as

I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of further sinning

was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes,

and for the fact as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but

I mourned that I was to be punished for it. I was a penitent, as I

thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took

away all the comfort, and even the hope of my repentance in my own

thoughts.

I got no sleep for several nights or days after I came into that

wretched place, and glad I would have been for some time to have died

there, though I did not consider dying as it ought to be considered

neither; indeed, nothing could be filled with more horror to my

imagination than the very place, nothing was more odious to me than the

company that was there. Oh! if I had but been sent to any place in the

world, and not to Newgate, I should have thought myself happy.

In the next place, how did the hardened wretches that were there before

me triumph over me! What! Mrs. Flanders come to Newgate at last? What!

Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Molly, and after that plain Moll Flanders? They thought

the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they

expected me there many years ago, and was I come at last? Then they

flouted me with my dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy,

bid me have a good heart, not to be cast down, things might not be so

bad as I feared, and the like; then called for brandy, and drank to me,

but put it all up to my score, for they told me I was but just come to

the college, as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket,

though they had none.

I asked one of this crew how long she had been there. She said four

months. I asked her how the place looked to her when she first came

into it. “Just as it did now to you,” says she, “dreadful and

frightful”; that she thought she was in hell; “and I believe so still,”

adds she, “but it is natural to me now, I don’t disturb myself about

it.” “I suppose,” says I, “you are in no danger of what is to follow?”

“Nay,” says she, “for you are mistaken there, I assure you, for I am

under sentence, only I pleaded my belly, but I am no more with child

than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next

sessions.” This “calling down” is calling down to their former

judgment, when a woman has been respited for her belly, but proves not

to be with child, or if she has been with child, and has been brought

to bed. “Well,” says I, “are you thus easy?” “Ay,” says she, “I can’t

help myself; what signifies being sad? If I am hanged, there’s an end

of me,” says she; and away she turns dancing, and sings as she goes the

following piece of Newgate wit—

“If I swing by the string,

I shall hear the bell ring,

And then there’s an end of poor Jenny.”

I mention this because it would be worth the observation of any

prisoner, who shall hereafter fall into the same misfortune, and come

to that dreadful place of Newgate, how time, necessity, and conversing

with the wretches that are there familiarizes the place to them; how at

last they become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest

dread upon their spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful

and merry in their misery as they were when out of it.

I cannot say, as some do, this devil is not so black as he is painted;

for indeed no colours can represent the place to the life, not any soul

conceive aright of it but those who have been sufferers there. But how

hell should become by degree so natural, and not only tolerable, but

even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have

experienced it, as I have.

The same night that I was sent to Newgate, I sent the news of it to my

old governess, who was surprised at it, you may be sure, and spent the

night almost as ill out of Newgate, as I did in it.

The next morning she came to see me; she did what she could to comfort

me, but she saw that was to no purpose; however, as she said, to sink

under the weight was but to increase the weight; she immediately

applied herself to all the proper methods to prevent the effects of it,

which we feared, and first she found out the two fiery jades that had

surprised me. She tampered with them, offered them money, and, in a

word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution; she offered

one of the wenches £100 to go away from her mistress, and not to appear

against me, but she was so resolute, that though she was but a servant

maid at £3 a year wages or thereabouts, she refused it, and would have

refused it, as my governess said she believed, if she had offered her

£500. Then she attacked the other maid; she was not so hard-hearted in

appearance as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to be merciful;

but the first wench kept her up, and changed her mind, and would not so

much as let my governess talk with her, but threatened to have her up

for tampering with the evidence.

Then she applied to the master, that is to say, the man whose goods had

been stolen, and particularly to his wife, who, as I told you, was

inclined at first to have some compassion for me; she found the woman

the same still, but the man alleged he was bound by the justice that

committed me, to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his

recognisance.

My governess offered to find friends that should get his recognisances

off of the file, as they call it, and that he should not suffer; but it

was not possible to convince him that could be done, or that he could

be safe any way in the world but by appearing against me; so I was to

have three witnesses of fact against me, the master and his two maids;

that is to say, I was as certain to be cast for my life as I was

certain that I was alive, and I had nothing to do but to think of

dying, and prepare for it. I had but a sad foundation to build upon, as

I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only the

effect of my fear of death, not a sincere regret for the wicked life

that I had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me, for the

offending my Creator, who was now suddenly to be my judge.

I lived many days here under the utmost horror of soul; I had death, as

it were, in view, and thought of nothing night and day, but of gibbets

and halters, evil spirits and devils; it is not to be expressed by

words how I was harassed, between the dreadful apprehensions of death

and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my past horrible

life.

The ordinary of Newgate came to me, and talked a little in his way, but

all his divinity ran upon confessing my crime, as he called it (though

he knew not what I was in for), making a full discovery, and the like,

without which he told me God would never forgive me; and he said so

little to the purpose, that I had no manner of consolation from him;

and then to observe the poor creature preaching confession and

repentance to me in the morning, and find him drunk with brandy and

spirits by noon, this had something in it so shocking, that I began to

nauseate the man more than his work, and his work too by degrees, for

the sake of the man; so that I desired him to trouble me no more.

I know not how it was, but by the indefatigable application of my

diligent governess I had no bill preferred against me the first

sessions, I mean to the grand jury, at Guildhall; so I had another

month or five weeks before me, and without doubt this ought to have

been accepted by me, as so much time given me for reflection upon what

was past, and preparation for what was to come; or, in a word, I ought

to have esteemed it as a space given me for repentance, and have

employed it as such, but it was not in me. I was sorry (as before) for

being in Newgate, but had very few signs of repentance about me.