Даниэль Дефо – Moll Flanders (страница 17)

Let love alone be our debate.

I wrote again,

She loves enough that does not hate.

This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that is to say, the pen; I say he took it for a favour, and a mighty one it was if he had known all: however, he took it as I meant it, that is, to let him think I was inclined to go on with him, as indeed I had reason to do, for he was the best-humoured merry sort of a fellow that I ever met with; and I often reflected how doubly criminal it was to deceive such a man; but that necessity which pressed me to a settlement suitable to my condition was my authority for it, and certainly his affection to me and the goodness of his temper, however they might argue against using him ill, yet they strongly argued to me that he would better take the disappointment than some fiery tempered wretch, who might have nothing to recommend him but those passions which would serve only to make a woman miserable.

Besides, though I had jested with him (as he supposed it) so often about my poverty, yet when he found it to be true, he had foreclosed all manner of objection, seeing, whether he was in jest or in earnest, he had declared he took me without any regard to my portion, and, whether I was in jest or in earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor, so that, in a word, I had him fast both ways; and though he might say afterwards he was cheated yet he could never say that I had cheated him.

He pursued me close after this, and, as I saw there was no need to fear losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer than prudence might otherwise have dictated to me: but I considered how much this caution and indifference would give me the advantage over him when I should come to own my circumstances to him; and I managed it the more warily because I found he inferred from thence that I had either the more money or the more judgment, and would not venture at all.

I took the freedom one day to tell him that it was true I had received the compliment of a lover from him, namely, that he would take me without enquiring into my fortune, and I would make him a suitable return in this, namely, that I would make as little enquiry into his as consisted with reason, but I hoped he would allow me to ask some questions which he should answer or not as he thought fit; one of these questions related to our manner of living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a great plantation in Virginia, and I told him I did not care to be transported.

He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all his affairs, and to tell me in a frank open way all his circumstances, by which I found he was very well to pass in the world; but that great part of his estate consisted of three plantations which he had in

Virginia, which brought him in a very good income of about £300 a year; but that if he was to live on them, would bring him in four times as much. Very well, thought I, you shall carry me thither then as soon as you please, though I won’t tell you so beforehand.

I jested with him about the figure he would make in Virginia; but found he would do anything I desired, so I turned my tale. I told him I had good reason not to desire to go there to live, because if his plantations were worth so much there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman of £1,200 a year, as he said his estate would be.

He replied he did not ask what my fortune was, he had told me from the beginning he would not, and he would be as good as his word; but whatever it was, he assured me he would never desire me to go to Virginia with him, or go thither himself without me, unless I made it my choice.

All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing could have happened more perfectly agreeable; I carried it on as far as this with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered at, and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the ladies that nothing but want of courage for such an indifferency makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill used as they are; would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit, they would certainly be slighted less, and courted more; had I discovered really what my great fortune was, and that in all I had not full £500 when he expected £1,500, yet I hooked him so fast and played with him so long, that I was satisfied he would have had me in my worst circumstances; and indeed it was less a surprise to him when he learnt the truth than it would have been, because having not the least blame to lay on me who had carried it with an air of indifference to the last, he could not say one word except that indeed he thought it had been more, but that if it had been less, he did not repent his bargain; only that he should not be able to maintain me so well as he intended.

In short, we were married, and very happily married on my side, I assure you, as to the man: for he was the best humoured man that ever woman had, but his circumstances were not so good as I imagined, as on the other hand he had not bettered himself so much as he expected.

When we were married I was shrewdly put to it to bring him that little stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but there was a necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day when we were alone to enter into a short dialogue with him about it. “My dear,” said I, “we have been married a fortnight, is it not time to let you know whether you have got a wife with something or with nothing?”

“Your own time for that, my dear,” says he; “I am satisfied I have got the wife I love; I have not troubled you much,” says he, “with my enquiry after it.”

“That’s true,” said I, “but I have a great difficulty about it, which I scarce know how to manage.”

“What’s that, my dear?” says he.

“Why,” says I, “‘tis a little hard upon me, and ‘tis harder upon you; I am told that Captain—” (meaning my friend’s husband) “has told you I had a great deal more than ever I pretended to have, and I am sure I never employed him so to do.”

“Well,” says he, “Captain — may have told me so, but what then, if you have not so much, that may lie at his door, but you never told me what you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all.”

“That is so just,” said I, “and so generous, that it makes my having but a little a double affliction to me.”

“The less you have, my dear,” says he, “the worse for us both; but I hope your affliction is not caused for fear I should be unkind to you for want of a portion; no, no, if you have nothing, tell me plainly; I may perhaps tell the Captain he has cheated me, but I can never say you have, for did not you give it under your hand that you was poor, and so I ought to expect you to be?”

“Well,” said I, “my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in deceiving you before marriage, if I deceive you since, ‘tis ne’er the worse; that I am poor, ‘tis too true, but not so poor as to have nothing neither.” So I pulled out some bank bills and gave him about a hundred and sixty pounds. “There is something, my dear,” says I, “and not quite all neither.”

I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly welcome; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he did not question by my discourse to him but that my fine clothes, gold watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune.

I let him please himself with that £160 two or three days, and then having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I brought him a hundred pounds more home in gold, and told him there was a little more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more, I brought him £180 more, and about £60 in linen, which I made believe I had been obliged to take with the £100 which I gave him in gold, as a composition for a debt of £600, being little more than five shillings in the pound, and over-valued too.

“And now, my dear,” says I to him, “I am very sorry to tell you, that I have given you my whole fortune.” I added that if the person who had my £600 had not abused me, I had been worth a thousand pound to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful, and reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had it.

He was so obliged by the manner and so pleased with the sum, for he had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he accepted it very thankfully: and thus I got over the fraud of passing for a fortune without money and cheated a man into marrying me on pretence of it, which, by the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazards of being ill used afterwards.

My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantations in Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to Virginia to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like.