Moll Flanders

D >> Daniel Defoe >> Moll Flanders

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

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

I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually
waking; to reveal it, which would have been some ease to me,
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 of it in my sleep, and tell my husband of it whether I would
or no. If I discovered it, the least thing I could expect was to
lose 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 insufferable 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, who
would have been neither a husband nor a brother; 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, as he thought
himself, 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
more, but had no more children.

During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me
old stories of her former adventures, which, however, were
no ways pleasant to me; for by it, though she did not tell it me
in plain terms, yet I could easily understand, joined with what
I had heard myself, of my first tutors, that in her younger days
she had been both whore and thief; but I verily believed she
had lived to repent sincerely of both, and that she was then a
very pious, sober, and religious woman.

Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain
that my life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said,
but in the worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no
good of it, so really no good issue came of it, and all my
seeming prosperity wore off, and ended in misery and
destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it came to this,
for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything went
wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my
husband grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind,
and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage
was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far,
that we came at last to be in such ill terms with one another,
that I claimed a promise of him, which he entered willingly
into with me when I consented to come from England with
him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or
that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England
again when I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle
his affairs.

I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess
I did it not in the most obliging terms that could be in the
world neither; but I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was
remote from my friends, and could do myself no justice, and
that he was jealous without cause, my conversation having
been unblamable, and he having no pretense for it, and that to
remove to England would take away all occasion from him.

I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid
coming to a point, either to keep his word with me or to break
it; and this, notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master
of, and employed his mother and other agents to prevail with
me to alter my resolutions; indeed, the bottom of the thing lay
at my heart, and that made all his endeavours fruitless, for my
heart was alienated from him as a husband. I loathed the
thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand pretenses
of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing
nothing more than to be with child by him, which to be sure
would have prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to
England.

However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up
a rash and fatal resolution; in short, I should not go to England;
and though he had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable
thing for me to desire it; that it would be ruinous to his affairs,
would unhinge his whole family, and be next to an undoing
him in the world; that therefore I ought not to desire it of him,
and that no wife in the world that valued her family and her
husband's prosperity would insist upon such a thing.

This plunged me again, for when I considered the thing
calmly, and took my husband as he really was, a diligent,
careful man in the main work of laying up an estate for his
children, and that he knew nothing of the dreadful circumstances
that he was in, I could not but confess to myself that my
proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that had
the good of her family at heart would have desired.

But my discontents were of another nature; I looked upon him
no longer as a husband, but as a near relation, the son of my
own mother, and I resolved somehow or other to be clear of
him, but which way I did not know, nor did it seem possible.

It is said by the ill-natured world, of our sex, that if we are
set on a thing, it is impossible to turn us from our resolutions;
in short, I never ceased poring upon the means to bring to
pass my voyage, and came that length with my husband at last,
as to propose going without him. This provoked him to the
last degree, and he called me not only an unkind wife, but an
unnatural mother, and asked me how I could entertain such a
thought without horror, as that of leaving my two children
(for one was dead) without a mother, and to be brought up by
strangers, and never to see them more. It was true, had things
been right, I should not have done it, but now it was my real
desire never to see them, or him either, any more; and as to the
charge of unnatural, I could easily answer it to myself, while
I knew that the whole relation was unnatural in the highest
degree in the world.

However, it was plain there was no bringing my husband to
anything; he would neither go with me nor let me go without
him, and it was quite out of my power to stir without his
consent, as any one that knows the constitution of the country
I was in, knows very well.

We had many family quarrels about it, and they began in
time to grow up to a dangerous height; for as I was quite
estranged form my husband (as he was called) in affection, so
I took no heed to my words, but sometimes gave him language
that was provoking; and, in short, strove all I could to bring
him to a parting with me, which was what above all things in
the world I desired most.

He took my carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so,
for at last I refused to bed with him, and carrying on the breach
upon all occasions to extremity, he told me once he thought I
was mad, and if I did not alter my conduct, he would put me
under cure; that is to say, into a madhouse. I told him he
should find I was far enough from mad, and that it was not in
his power, or any other villain's, to murder me. I confess at
the same time I was heartily frighted at his thoughts of putting
me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all
the possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion
might be; for that then no one would have given credit to a
word of it.

This therefore brought me to a resolution, whatever came of
it, to lay open my whole case; but which way to do it, or to
whom, was an inextricable difficulty, and took me many months
to resolve. In the meantime, another quarrel with my husband
happened, which came up to such a mad extreme as almost
pushed me on to tell it him all to his face; but though I kept it
in so as not to come to the particulars, I spoke so much as put
him into the utmost confusion, and in the end brought out the
whole story.

He began with a calm expostulation upon my being so resolute
to go to England; I defended it, and one hard word bringing
on another, as is usual in all family strife, he told me I did not
treat him as if he was my husband, or talk of my children as if
I was a mother; and, in short, that I did not deserve to be used
as a wife; that he had used all the fair means possible with me;
that he had argued with all the kindness and calmness that a
husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made him such
a vile return, that I treated him rather like a dog than a man,
and rather like the most contemptible stranger than a husband;
that he was very loth to use violence with me, but that, in short,
he saw a necessity of it now, and that for the future he should
be obliged to take such measures as should reduce me to my
duty.

My blood was now fired to the utmost, though I knew what
he had said was very true, and nothing could appear more
provoked. I told him, for his fair means and his foul, they
were equally contemned by me; that for my going to England,
I was resolved on it, come what would; and that as to treating
him not like a husband, and not showing myself a mother to
my children, there might be something more in it than he
understood at present; but, for his further consideration, I
thought fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful
husband, nor they lawful children, and that I had reason to
regard neither of them more than I did.

I confess I was moved to pity him when I spoke it, for he
turned pale as death, and stood mute as one thunderstruck,
and once or twice I thought he would have fainted; in short,
it put him in a fit something like an apoplex; he trembled, a
sweat or dew ran off his face, and yet he was cold as a clod,
so that I was forced to run and fetch something for him to
keep life in him. When he recovered of that, he grew sick and
vomited, and in a little after was put to bed, and the next
morning was, as he had been indeed all night, in a violent fever.

However, it went off again, and he recovered, though but
slowly, and when he came to be a little better, he told me I
had given him a mortal wound with my tongue, and he had
only one thing to ask before he desired an explanation. I
interrupted him, and told him I was sorry I had gone so far,
since I saw what disorder it put him into, but I desired him
not to talk to me of explanations, for that would but make
things worse.

This heightened his impatience, and, indeed, perplexed him
beyond all bearing; for now he began to suspect that there
was some mystery yet unfolded, but could not make the least
guess at the real particulars of it; all that ran in his brain was,
that I had another husband alive, which I could not say in fact
might not be true, but I assured him, however, there was not
the least of that in it; and indeed, as to my other husband, he
was effectually dead in law to me, and had told me I should
look on him as such, so I had not the least uneasiness on that
score.

But now I found the thing too far gone to conceal it much
longer, and my husband himself gave me an opportunity to
ease myself of the secret, much to my satisfaction. He had
laboured with me three or four weeks, but to no purpose, only
to tell him whether I had spoken these words only as the effect
of my passion, to put him in a passion, or whether there was
anything of truth in the bottom of them. But I continued
inflexible, and would explain nothing, unless he would first
consent to my going to England, which he would never do,
he said, while he lived; on the other hand, I said it was in my
power to make him willing when I pleased--nay, to make him
entreat me to go; and this increased his curiosity, and made him
importunate to the highest degree, but it was all to no purpose.

At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon
me to get the main secret out of me, and she used her utmost
skill with me indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once by
telling her that the reason and mystery of the whole matter lay
in herself, and that it was my respect to her that had made me
conceal it; and that, in short, I could go no farther, and therefore
conjured her not to insist upon it.

She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell
what to say or to think; but, laying aside the supposition as a
policy of mine, continued her importunity on account of her
son, and, if possible, to make up the breach between us two.
As to that, I told her that it was indeed a good design in her,
but that it was impossible to be done; and that if I should reveal
to her the truth of what she desired, she would grant it to be
impossible, and cease to desire it. At last I seemed to be
prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dared trust her
with a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon
see that this was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in
her breast, if she would engage solemnly not to acquaint her
son with it without my consent.

She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come
at the main secret, she agreed to that too, and after a great
many other preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story.
First I told her how much she was concerned in all the unhappy
breach which had happened between her son and me, by telling
me her own story and her London name; and that the surprise
she saw I was in was upon that occasion. The I told her my
own story, and my name, and assured her, by such other tokens
as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or less,
than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate;
the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her
belly, and the same that she left in such-and-such hands when
she was transported.

It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she
was not inclined to believe the story, or to remember the
particulars, for she immediately foresaw the confusion that
must follow in the family upon it. But everything concurred
so exactly with the stories she had told me of herself, and which,
if she had not told me, she would perhaps have been content
to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth, and she
had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me,
and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word
for a long time together. At last she broke out: 'Unhappy child!'
says she, 'what miserable chance could bring thee hither? and
in the arms of my own son, too! Dreadful girl,' says she, 'why,
we are all undone! Married to thy own brother! Three children,
and two alive, all of the same flesh and blood! My son and my
daughter lying together as husband and wife! All confusion
and distraction for ever! Miserable family! what will become
of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?' And thus she
ran on for a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if
I had, did I know what to say, for every word wounded me to
the soul. With this kind of amazement on our thoughts we
parted for the first time, though my mother was more surprised
than I was, because it was more news to her than to me.
However, she promised again to me at parting, that she would
say nothing of it to her son, till we had talked of it again.

It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second
conference upon the same subject; when, as if she had been
willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to
suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began
to tell them with alterations and omissions; but I refreshed her
memory and set her to rights in many things which I supposed
she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely with the
whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and
then she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the
severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little
over with her, we fell into a close debate about what should
be first done before we gave an account of the matter to my
husband. But to what purpose could be all our consultations?
We could neither of us see our way through it, nor see how it
could be safe to open such a scene to him. It was impossible
to make any judgment, or give any guess at what temper he
would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it;
and if he should have so little government of himself as to make
it public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the
whole family, and expose my mother and me to the last degree;
and if at last he should take the advantage the law would give
him, he might put me away with disdain and leave me to sue
for the little portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the
suit, and then be a beggar; the children would be ruined too,
having no legal claim to any of his effects; and thus I should
see him, perhaps, in the arms of another wife in a few months,
and be myself the most miserable creature alive.

My mother was as sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole,
we knew not what to do. After some time we came to more
sober resolutions, but then it was with this misfortune too, that
my mother's opinion and mine were quite different from one
another, and indeed inconsistent with one another; for my
mother's opinion was, that I should bury the whole thing
entirely, and continue to live with him as my husband till some
other event should make the discovery of it more convenient;
and that in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us
together again, and restore our mutual comfort and family
peace; that we might lie as we used to do together, and so let
the whole matter remain a secret as close as death. 'For, child,'
says she, 'we are both undone if it comes out.'

To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my
circumstances, as far as she was able, and to leave me what
she could at her death, secured for me separately from my
husband; so that if it should come out afterwards, I should not
be left destitute, but be able to stand on my own feet and
procure justice from him.

This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the
thing, though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my
thoughts ran quite another way.

As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all
remain as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her
how she could think I could bear the thoughts of lying with
my own brother. In the next place, I told her that her being
alive was the only support of the discovery, and that while she
owned me for her child, and saw reason to be satisfied that I
was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she should die
before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent creature
that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or
should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how
he had threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what
concern I had been in about it, and how that was the thing that
drove me to the necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.

From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious
reflections I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution,
which I hoped she would like, as a medium between both, viz.
that she should use her endeavours with her son to give me
leave to go to England, as I had desired, and to furnish me with
a sufficient sum of money, either in goods along with me, or
in bills for my support there, all along suggesting that he might
one time or other think it proper to come over to me.

That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and
after first obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to
secrecy, discover the case to him, doing it gradually, and as
her own discretion should guide her, so that he might not be
surprised with it, and fly out into any passions and excesses
on my account, or on hers; and that she should concern herself
to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying again, unless
he had a certain account of my being dead.

This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really
alienated from him in the consequences of these things; indeed,
I mortally hated him as a husband, and it was impossible to
remove that riveted aversion I had to him. At the same time,
it being an unlawful, incestuous living, added to that aversion,
and though I had no great concern about it in point of
conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with him
the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily
it was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly
have embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that
kind to me, for which reason I could not bear the thoughts of
coming between the sheets with him. I cannot say that I was
right in point of policy in carrying it such a length, while at the
same time I did not resolve to discover the thing to him; but I
am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought
not to be.

In their directly opposite opinion to one another my mother
and I continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile
our judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could
never either of us yield our own, or bring over the other.

I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother, and
she insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent
to my going from him to England; and in this uncertainty we
continued, not differing so as to quarrel, or anything like it,
but so as not to be able to resolve what we should do to make
up that terrible breach that was before us.

At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother
my resolution, viz. that, in short, I would tell him of it myself.
My mother was frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts
of it; but I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually
and softly, and with all the art and good-humour I was mistress
of, and time it also as well as I could, taking him in good-humour
too. I told her I did not question but, if I could be hypocrite
enough to feign more affection to him than I really had, I should
succeed in all my design, and we might part by consent, and
with a good agreement, for I might live him well enough for
a brother, though I could not for a husband.

All this while he lay at my mother to find out, if possible, what
was the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he
called it, which I mentioned before: namely, that I was not his
lawful wife, nor my children his legal children. My mother put
him off, told him she could bring me to no explanations, but
found there was something that disturbed me very much, and
she hoped she should get it out of me in time, and in the
meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more
tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him
of his terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending
me to a madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make
a woman desperate on any account whatever.

He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure
me that he loved me as well as ever, and that he had so such
design as that of sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might
say in his passion; also he desired my mother to use the same
persuasions to me too, that our affections might be renewed,
and we might lie together in a good understanding as we used
to do.

I found the effects of this treaty presently. My husband's
conduct was immediately altered, and he was quite another
man to me; nothing could be kinder and more obliging than he
was to me upon all occasions; and I could do no less than
make some return to it, which I did as well as I could, but it
was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was more
frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being
with child again by him was ready to throw me into fits; and
this made me see that there was an absolute necessity of breaking
the case to him without any more delay, which, however, I did
with all the caution and reserve imaginable.

He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month,
and we began to live a new kind of life with one another; and
could I have satisfied myself to have gone on with it, I believe
it might have continued as long as we had continued alive
together. One evening, as we were sitting and talking very
friendly together under a little awning, which served as an
arbour at the entrance from our house into the garden, he was
in a very pleasant, agreeable humour, and said abundance of
kind things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good
agreement, and the disorders of our past breach, and what a
satisfaction it was to him that we had room to hope we should
never have any more of it.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28