第 六十 章 · 第60章

I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for one Moll

Flanders, who was a famous successful thief, that all of them had heard

of, but none of them had ever seen; but that, as he knew well, was none

of my name. But I placed all to the account of my ill fortune, and that

under this name I was dealt with as an old offender, though this was

the first thing they had ever known of me. I gave him a long particular

of things that had befallen me since I saw him, but I told him if I had

seen him since he might think I had, and then gave him an account how I

had seen him at Brickhill; how furiously he was pursued, and how, by

giving an account that I knew him, and that he was a very honest

gentleman, one Mr. ——, the hue-and-cry was stopped, and the high

constable went back again.

He listened most attentively to all my story, and smiled at most of the

particulars, being all of them petty matters, and infinitely below what

he had been at the head of; but when I came to the story of Brickhill,

he was surprised. “And was it you, my dear,” said he, “that gave the

check to the mob that was at our heels there, at Brickhill?” “Yes,”

said I, “it was I indeed.” And then I told him the particulars which I

had observed him there. “Why, then,” said he, “it was you that saved my

life at that time, and I am glad I owe my life to you, for I will pay

the debt to you now, and I’ll deliver you from the present condition

you are in, or I will die in the attempt.”

I told him, by no means; it was a risk too great, not worth his running

the hazard of, and for a life not worth his saving. ’Twas no matter for

that, he said, it was a life worth all the world to him; a life that

had given him a new life; “for,” says he, “I was never in real danger

of being taken, but that time, till the last minute when I was taken.”

Indeed, he told me his danger then lay in his believing he had not been

pursued that way; for they had gone off from Hockey quite another way,

and had come over the enclosed country into Brickhill, not by the road,

and were sure they had not been seen by anybody.

Here he gave me a long history of his life, which indeed would make a

very strange history, and be infinitely diverting. He told me he took

to the road about twelve years before he married me; that the woman

which called him brother was not really his sister, or any kin to him,

but one that belonged to their gang, and who, keeping correspondence

with him, lived always in town, having good store of acquaintance; that

she gave them a perfect intelligence of persons going out of town, and

that they had made several good booties by her correspondence; that she

thought she had fixed a fortune for him when she brought me to him, but

happened to be disappointed, which he really could not blame her for;

that if it had been his good luck that I had had the estate, which she

was informed I had, he had resolved to leave off the road and live a

retired, sober life but never to appear in public till some general

pardon had been passed, or till he could, for money, have got his name

into some particular pardon, that so he might have been perfectly easy;

but that, as it had proved otherwise, he was obliged to put off his

equipage and take up the old trade again.

He gave me a long account of some of his adventures, and particularly

one when he robbed the West Chester coaches near Lichfield, when he got

a very great booty; and after that, how he robbed five graziers, in the

west, going to Burford Fair in Wiltshire to buy sheep. He told me he

got so much money on those two occasions, that if he had known where to

have found me, he would certainly have embraced my proposal of going

with me to Virginia, or to have settled in a plantation on some other

parts of the English colonies in America.

He told me he wrote two or three letters to me, directed according to

my order, but heard nothing from me. This I indeed knew to be true, but

the letters coming to my hand in the time of my latter husband, I could

do nothing in it, and therefore chose to give no answer, that so he

might rather believe they had miscarried.

Being thus disappointed, he said, he carried on the old trade ever

since, though when he had gotten so much money, he said, he did not run

such desperate risks as he did before. Then he gave me some account of

several hard and desperate encounters which he had with gentlemen on

the road, who parted too hardly with their money, and showed me some

wounds he had received; and he had one or two very terrible wounds

indeed, as particularly one by a pistol bullet, which broke his arm,

and another with a sword, which ran him quite through the body, but

that missing his vitals, he was cured again; one of his comrades having

kept with him so faithfully, and so friendly, as that he assisted him

in riding near eighty miles before his arm was set, and then got a

surgeon in a considerable city, remote from that place where it was

done, pretending they were gentlemen travelling towards Carlisle and

that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen, and that one of

them had shot him into the arm and broke the bone.

This, he said, his friend managed so well, that they were not suspected

at all, but lay still till he was perfectly cured. He gave me so many

distinct accounts of his adventures, that it is with great reluctance

that I decline the relating them; but I consider that this is my own

story, not his.

I then inquired into the circumstances of his present case at that

time, and what it was he expected when he came to be tried. He told me

that they had no evidence against him, or but very little; for that of

three robberies, which they were all charged with, it was his good

fortune that he was but in one of them, and that there was but one

witness to be had for that fact, which was not sufficient, but that it

was expected some others would come in against him; that he thought

indeed, when he first saw me, that I had been one that came of that

errand; but that if somebody came in against him, he hoped he should be

cleared; that he had had some intimation, that if he would submit to

transport himself, he might be admitted to it without a trial, but that

he could not think of it with any temper, and thought he could much

easier submit to be hanged.

I blamed him for that, and told him I blamed him on two accounts;

first, because if he was transported, there might be a hundred ways for

him that was a gentleman, and a bold enterprising man, to find his way

back again, and perhaps some ways and means to come back before he

went. He smiled at that part, and said he should like the last the best

of the two, for he had a kind of horror upon his mind at his being sent

over to the plantations, as Romans sent condemned slaves to work in the

mines; that he thought the passage into another state, let it be what

it would, much more tolerable at the gallows, and that this was the

general notion of all the gentlemen who were driven by the exigence of

their fortunes to take the road; that at the place of execution there

was at least an end of all the miseries of the present state, and as

for what was to follow, a man was, in his opinion, as likely to repent

sincerely in the last fortnight of his life, under the pressures and

agonies of a jail and the condemned hole, as he would ever be in the

woods and wilderness of America; that servitude and hard labour were

things gentlemen could never stoop to; that it was but the way to force

them to be their own executioners afterwards, which was much worse; and

that therefore he could not have any patience when he did but think of

being transported.

I used the utmost of my endeavour to persuade him, and joined that

known woman’s rhetoric to it—I mean, that of tears. I told him the

infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater pressure upon the

spirits of a gentleman than any of the mortifications that he could

meet with abroad could be; that he had at least in the other a chance

for his life, whereas here he had none at all; that it was the easiest

thing in the world for him to manage the captain of a ship, who were,

generally speaking, men of good-humour and some gallantry; and a small

matter of conduct, especially if there was any money to be had, would

make way for him to buy himself off when he came to Virginia.

He looked wistfully at me, and I thought I guessed at what he meant,

that is to say, that he had no money; but I was mistaken, his meaning

was another way. “You hinted just now, my dear,” said he, “that there

might be a way of coming back before I went, by which I understood you

that it might be possible to buy it off here. I had rather give £200 to

prevent going, than £100 to be set at liberty when I came there.” “That

is, my dear,” said I, “because you do not know the place so well as I

do.” “That may be,” said he; “and yet I believe, as well as you know

it, you would do the same, unless it is because, as you told me, you

have a mother there.”

I told him, as to my mother, it was next to impossible but that she

must be dead many years before; and as for any other relations that I

might have there, I knew them not now; that since the misfortunes I had

been under had reduced me to the condition I had been in for some

years, I had not kept up any correspondence with them; and that he

would easily believe, I should find but a cold reception from them if I

should be put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported

felon; that therefore, if I went thither, I resolved not to see them;

but that I had many views in going there, if it should be my fate,

which took off all the uneasy part of it; and if he found himself

obliged to go also, I should easily instruct him how to manage himself,

so as never to go a servant at all, especially since I found he was not

destitute of money, which was the only friend in such a condition.

He smiled, and said he did not tell me he had money. I took him up

short, and told him I hoped he did not understand by my speaking, that

I should expect any supply from him if he had money; that, on the other

hand, though I had not a great deal, yet I did not want, and while I

had any I would rather add to him than weaken him in that article,

seeing, whatever he had, I knew in the case of transportation he would

have occasion of it all.