บทที่ บทที่ 13 · 第13章

However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure; and having thus

taken my leave of him, I never saw him more, for he found means to

break out of the bailiff’s house that night or the next, and go over

into France, and for the rest of the creditors scrambled for it as well

as they could. How, I knew not, for I could come at no knowledge of

anything, more than this, that he came home about three o’clock in the

morning, caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint, and

the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could get

together, he got over, as I said, to France, from whence I had one or

two letters from him, and no more. I did not see him when he came home,

for he having given me such instructions as above, and I having made

the best of my time, I had no more business back again at the house,

not knowing but I might have been stopped there by the creditors; for a

commission of bankrupt being soon after issued, they might have stopped

me by orders from the commissioners. But my husband, having so

dexterously got out of the bailiff’s house by letting himself down in a

most desperate manner from almost the top of the house to the top of

another building, and leaping from thence, which was almost two

storeys, and which was enough indeed to have broken his neck, he came

home and got away his goods before the creditors could come to seize;

that is to say, before they could get out the commission, and be ready

to send their officers to take possession.

My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much of a

gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me from France, he let me

know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine holland for £30, which

were really worth £90, and enclosed me the token and an order for the

taking them up, paying the money, which I did, and made in time above

£100 of them, having leisure to cut them and sell them, some and some,

to private families, as opportunity offered.

However, with all this, and all that I had secured before, I found,

upon casting things up, my case was very much altered, any my fortune

much lessened; for, including the hollands and a parcel of fine

muslins, which I carried off before, and some plate, and other things,

I found I could hardly muster up £500; and my condition was very odd,

for though I had no child (I had had one by my gentleman draper, but it

was buried), yet I was a widow bewitched; I had a husband and no

husband, and I could not pretend to marry again, though I knew well

enough my husband would never see England any more, if he lived fifty

years. Thus, I say, I was limited from marriage, what offer might

soever be made me; and I had not one friend to advise with in the

condition I was in, least not one I durst trust the secret of my

circumstances to, for if the commissioners were to have been informed

where I was, I should have been fetched up and examined upon oath, and

all I have saved be taken away from me.

Upon these apprehensions, the first thing I did was to go quite out of

my knowledge, and go by another name. This I did effectually, for I

went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a very private place, dressed

up in the habit of a widow, and called myself Mrs. Flanders.

Here, however, I concealed myself, and though my new acquaintances knew

nothing of me, yet I soon got a great deal of company about me; and

whether it be that women are scarce among the sorts of people that

generally are to be found there, or that some consolations in the

miseries of the place are more requisite than on other occasions, I

soon found an agreeable woman was exceedingly valuable among the sons

of affliction there, and that those that wanted money to pay half a

crown on the pound to their creditors, and that run in debt at the sign

of the Bull for their dinners, would yet find money for a supper, if

they liked the woman.

However, I kept myself safe yet, though I began, like my Lord

Rochester’s mistress, that loved his company, but would not admit him

farther, to have the scandal of a whore, without the joy; and upon this

score, tired with the place, and indeed with the company too, I began

to think of removing.

It was indeed a subject of strange reflection to me to see men who were

overwhelmed in perplexed circumstances, who were reduced some degrees

below being ruined, whose families were objects of their own terror and

other people’s charity, yet while a penny lasted, nay, even beyond it,

endeavouring to drown themselves, labouring to forget former things,

which now it was the proper time to remember, making more work for

repentance, and sinning on, as a remedy for sin past.

But it is none of my talent to preach; these men were too wicked, even

for me. There was something horrid and absurd in their way of sinning,

for it was all a force even upon themselves; they did not only act

against conscience, but against nature; they put a rape upon their

temper to drown the reflections, which their circumstances continually

gave them; and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would

interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their brows,

in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes it would

break out at their very mouths when they had parted with their money

for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have heard them, turning about,

fetch a deep sigh, and cry, “What a dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear,

I’ll drink thy health, though”; meaning the honest wife, that perhaps

had not a half-crown for herself and three or four children. The next

morning they are at their penitentials again; and perhaps the poor

weeping wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of what

his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are turned out of

doors, or some other dreadful news; and this adds to his

self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored on it till he is

almost mad, having no principles to support him, nothing within him or

above him to comfort him, but finding it all darkness on every side, he

flies to the same relief again, viz. to drink it away, debauch it away,

and falling into company of men in just the same condition with

himself, he repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step

onward of his way to destruction.

I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet. On the contrary,

I began to consider here very seriously what I had to do; how things

stood with me, and what course I ought to take. I knew I had no

friends, no, not one friend or relation in the world; and that little I

had left apparently wasted, which when it was gone, I saw nothing but

misery and starving was before me. Upon these considerations, I say,

and filled with horror at the place I was in, and the dreadful objects

which I had always before me, I resolved to be gone.

I had made an acquaintance with a very sober, good sort of a woman, who

was a widow too, like me, but in better circumstances. Her husband had

been a captain of a merchant ship, and having had the misfortune to be

cast away coming home on a voyage from the West Indies, which would

have been very profitable if he had come safe, was so reduced by the

loss, that though he had saved his life then, it broke his heart, and

killed him afterwards; and his widow, being pursued by the creditors,

was forced to take shelter in the Mint. She soon made things up with

the help of friends, and was at liberty again; and finding that I

rather was there to be concealed, than by any particular prosecutions

and finding also that I agreed with her, or rather she with me, in a

just abhorrence of the place and of the company, she invited to go home

with her till I could put myself in some posture of settling in the

world to my mind; withal telling me, that it was ten to one but some

good captain of a ship might take a fancy to me, and court me, in that

part of the town where she lived.

I accepted her offer, and was with her half a year, and should have

been longer, but in that interval what she proposed to me happened to

herself, and she married very much to her advantage. But whose fortune

soever was upon the increase, mine seemed to be upon the wane, and I

found nothing present, except two or three boatswains, or such fellows,

but as for the commanders, they were generally of two sorts: 1. Such

as, having good business, that is to say, a good ship, resolved not to

marry but with advantage, that is, with a good fortune; 2. Such as,

being out of employ, wanted a wife to help them to a ship; I mean (1) a

wife who, having some money, could enable them to hold, as they call

it, a good part of a ship themselves, so to encourage owners to come

in; or (2) a wife who, if she had not money, had friends who were

concerned in shipping, and so could help to put the young man into a

good ship, which to them is as good as a portion; and neither of these

was my case, so I looked like one that was to lie on hand.

This knowledge I soon learned by experience, viz. that the state of

things was altered as to matrimony, and that I was not to expect at

London what I had found in the country: that marriages were here the

consequences of politic schemes for forming interests, and carrying on

business, and that Love had no share, or but very little, in the

matter.

That as my sister-in-law at Colchester had said, beauty, wit, manners,

sense, good humour, good behaviour, education, virtue, piety, or any

other qualification, whether of body or mind, had no power to

recommend; that money only made a woman agreeable; that men chose

mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and it was requisite

to a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a graceful

behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no

ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was

neither crooked nor monstrous, but the money was always agreeable,

whatever the wife was.

On the other hand, as the market ran very unhappily on the men’s side,

I found the women had lost the privilege of saying No; that it was a

favour now for a woman to have the Question asked, and if any young

lady had so much arrogance as to counterfeit a negative, she never had

the opportunity given her of denying twice, much less of recovering

that false step, and accepting what she had but seemed to decline. The

men had such choice everywhere, that the case of the women was very

unhappy; for they seemed to ply at every door, and if the man was by

great chance refused at one house, he was sure to be received at the

next.