Даниэль Дефо – Moll Flanders (страница 18)

I began presently to understand his meaning, and I took him up very plainly one morning and told him that I did so; that I found his estate turned to no account at this distance, compared to what it would do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and live there; that I was sensible he had been disappointed in a wife, and that finding his expectations not answered that way I could do no less, to make amends, than tell him that I was very willing to go to Virginia with him and live there.

He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such a proposal to him: he told me that though he was disappointed in his expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that I was all to him that a wife could be, but that this offer was so kind that it was more than he could express.

To bring the story short, we agreed to go: he told me that he had a very good house there well furnished, that his mother lived in it and one sister, which was all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there they would remove to another house which was her own for life, and his after her decease; so that I should have all the house to myself; and I found it all exactly as he said.

We put on board the ship which we went in a large quantity of good furniture for our house, with stores of linen and other necessaries and a good cargo for sale, and away we went.

To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was long and full of dangers, is out of my way. I kept no journal, neither did my husband; all that I can say is, that after a terrible passage, frighted twice with dreadful storms, and once with what was still more terrible, I mean a pirate, who came on board and took away almost all our provisions; and, which would have been beyond all to me, they had once taken my husband, but by entreaties were prevailed with to leave him; I say, after all these terrible things we arrived in York River in Virginia, and coming to our plantation we were received with all the tenderness and affection (by my husband’s mother) that could be expressed.

We lived here all together, my mother-in-law at my entreaty continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted with; my husband likewise continued the same at first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition the most uncomfortable in the world.

My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman, I may call her so, for her son was above thirty: I say, she was very pleasant good company, and used to entertain me in particular with abundance of stories to divert me, as well as of the country we were in, as of the people.

Among the rest she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that Colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts: either (I) such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, (2) such as are transported after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death.

“When they come here,” says she, “we make no difference, the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out; when ‘tis expired,” said she, “they have encouragement given them to plant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and as the merchants will trust them with tools and necessaries upon the credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them. Hence, child,” says she, “many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have,” continued she, “several justices of the peace, officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand.”

She was going on with that part of the story when her own part in it interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence she told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that she was become a criminal, and “Here’s the mark of it, child,” says she, and shewed me a very fine white arm and hand, but branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.

This story was very moving to me, but my mother (smiling) said, “You need not think such a thing strange, daughter, for some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it; there’s Major—,” says she, “he was an eminent pickpocket; there’s Justice Ba—r, was a shoplifter, and both of them were burnt in the hand, and I could name you several such as they are.”

We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she gave me of the like; after some time, as she was telling some stories of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into very ill company in London in her young days, occassioned by her mother sending her frequently to carry victuals to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, in a miserable starving condition, who was afterwards condemned to die, but having got respite by pleading her belly perished afterwards in the prison.

Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices in that dreadful place. “And, child,” says my mother, “perhaps you may know little of it, or it may be have heard nothing about it; but depend upon it,” says she, “we all know here, that there are more thieves and rogues made by that one prison of Newgate, than by all the clubs and societies of villains in the nation; ‘tis that cursed place,” says my mother, “that half peoples this Colony.”

Here she went on with her own story so long and in so particular a manner that I began to be very uneasy, but coming to one particular that required telling her name, I thought I should have sunk down in the place; she perceived I was out of order, and asked me if I was not well, and what ailed me? I told her I was so affected with the melancholy story she had told that it had overcome me, and I begged her to talk no more of it.

“Why, my dear,” says she very kindly, “what need these things trouble you? These passages were long before your time, and they give me no trouble at all now, nay, I look back on them with a particular satisfaction, as they have been a means to bring me to this place.” Then she went on to tell me how she fell into a good family, where behaving herself well and her mistress dying, her master married her, by whom she had my husband and his sister, and that by her diligence and good management after her husband’s death she had improved the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so that most of the estate was of her getting, not of her husband’s, for she had been a widow upwards of sixteen years.

I heard this part of the story with very little attention, because I wanted much to retire and give vent to my passions; and let anyone judge what must be the anguish of my mind, when I came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my own mother, and that I had now had two children, and was big with another, by my own brother, and lay with him still every night.

I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. O! had the story never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have lain with my husband if I had known nothing of it.

I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to reveal it I could not find would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be next to impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should talk in my sleep and tell my husband of it whether I would or no; if I discovered it, the least thing I could expect to lose was my husband, for he was too nice and too honest a man to have continued my husband after he had known I had been his sister, so that I was perplexed to the last degree.

I leave it to any man to judge what difficulties presented to my view. I was away from my native country at a distance prodigious, and the return to me unpassable; I lived very well, but in a circumstance unsufferable in itself; if I had discovered myself to my mother it might be difficult to convince her of the particulars, and I had no way to prove them. On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted me I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediately separated me from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, so that between the surprise on one hand and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sure to be undone.

In the meantime, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived therefore in open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under the appearance of an honest wife; and though I was not much touched with the crime of it, yet the action had something in it shocking to nature, and made my husband even nauseous to me. However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that it was absolutely necessary to conceal it all, and not make the least discovery of it either to mother or husband; and thus I lived with the greatest pressure imaginable for three years or more.