Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль Дефо

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      After we had talked thus he bade me be cheerful. "Come," says he, "lay aside these melancholy things and let us be merry." Amy waited at the table, and she smiled and laughed and was so merry she could hardly contain it, for the girl loved me to an excess hardly to be described; and it was such an unexpected thing to hear any one talk to her mistress, that the wench was beside herself almost; and as soon as dinner was over, Amy went upstairs and put on her best clothes too, and came down dressed like a gentlewoman.

      We sat together talking of a thousand things, of what had been and what was to be, all the rest of the day, and in the evening he took his leave of me with a thousand expressions of kindness and tenderness and true affection to me, but offered not the least of what my maid Amy had suggested.

      At his going away he took me in his arms, protested an honest kindness to me, said a thousand kind things to me which I cannot now recollect, and, after kissing me twenty times or thereabouts, put a guinea into my hand, which he said was for my present supply, and told me that he would see me again before 'twas out; also, he gave Amy half a crown.

      When he was gone, "Well, Amy," said I, "are you convinced now that he is an honest as well as a true friend, and that there has been nothing, not the least appearance of anything of what you imagined, in his behaviour?" "Yes," says Amy, "I am, but I admire at it; he is such a friend as the world sure has not abundance of to show."

      "I am sure," says I, "he is such a friend as I have long wanted, and as I have as much need of as any creature in the world has or ever had" and, in short, I was so overcome with the comfort of it that I sat down and cried for joy a good while, as I had formerly cried for sorrow. Amy and I went to bed that night (for Amy lay with me) pretty early, but lay chatting almost all night about it, and the girl was so transported that she got up two or three times in the night and danced about the room in her shift; in short, the girl was half distracted with the joy of it, a testimony still of her violent affection for her mistress, in which no servant ever went beyond her.

      We heard no more of him for two days, but the third day he came again; then he told me, with the same kindness, that he had ordered me a supply of household goods for the furnishing the house; that in particular he had sent me back all the goods that he had seized for rent, which consisted indeed of the best of my former furniture. "And now," says he, "I'll tell you what I have had in my head for you for your present supply, and that is," says he, "that the house being well furnished, you shall let it out to lodgings for the summer gentry," says he, "by which you will easily get a good, comfortable subsistence, especially seeing you shall pay me no rent for two years, nor after neither, unless you can afford it."

      This was the first view I had of living comfortably indeed, and it was a very probable way, I must confess, seeing we had very good conveniences, six rooms on a floor, and three storeys high. While he was laying down the scheme of my management, came a cart to the door with a load of goods, and an upholsterer's man to put them up; they were chiefly the furniture of two rooms which he had carried away for his two years' rent, with two fine cabinets and some pier-glasses out of the parlour, and several other valuable things.

      These were all restored to their places, and he told me he gave them as freely as a satisfaction for the cruelty he had used me with before; and the furniture of one room being finished and set up, he told me he would furnish one chamber for himself, and would come and be one of my lodgers if I would give him leave.

      I told him he ought not to ask me leave, who had so much right to make himself welcome. So the house began to look in some tolerable figure and clean; the garden also in about a fortnight's work began to look something less like a wilderness than it used to do; and he ordered me to put up a bill for letting rooms, reserving one for himself to come to as he saw occasion.

      When all was done to his mind, as to placing the goods, he seemed very well pleased, and we dined together again of his own providing, and the upholsterer's man gone. After dinner he took me by the hand. "Come now, madam," says he, "you must show me your house" (for he had a mind to see everything over again). "No, sir," said I, "but I'll go show you your house, if you please." So we went up through all the rooms, and in the room which was appointed for himself Amy was doing something. "Well, Amy," says he, "I intend to lie with you to-morrow night." "To-night, if you please, sir," says Amy very innocently; "your room is quite ready." "Well, Amy," says he, "I am glad you are so willing." "No," says Amy, "I mean your chamber is ready to-night"; and away she ran out of the room, ashamed enough, for the girl meant no harm, whatever she had said to me in private.

      However, he said no more then; but when Amy was gone he walked about the room and looked at everything, and taking me by the hand he kissed me and spoke a great many kind, affectionate things to me indeed: as of his measures for my advantage, and what he would do to raise me again in the world; told me that my afflictions and the conduct I had shown in bearing them to such an extremity had so engaged him to me, that he valued me infinitely above all the women in the world; that though he was under such engagements that he could not marry me (his wife and he had been parted for some reasons which make too long a story to intermix with mine), yet that he would be everything else that a woman could ask in a husband. And with that he kissed me again and took me in his arms, but offered not the least uncivil action to me, and told me he hoped I would not deny him all the favours he should ask, because he resolved to ask nothing of me but what it was fit for a woman of virtue and modesty, for such he knew me to be, to yield.

      I confess the terrible pressure of my former misery, the memory of which lay heavy upon my mind, and the surprising kindness with which he had delivered me, and withal, the expectations of what he might still do for me, were powerful things and made me have scarce the power to deny him anything he would ask. However, I told him thus, with an air of tenderness too, that he had done so much for me that I thought I ought to deny him nothing, only I hoped and depended upon him that he would not take the advantage of the infinite obligations I was under to him, to desire anything of me the yielding to which would lay me lower in his esteem than I desired to be; that as I took him to be a man of honour, so I knew he could not like me the better for doing anything that was below a woman of honesty and good manners to do.

      He told me that he had done all this for me without so much as telling me what kindness or real affection he had for me; that I might not be under any necessity of yielding to him in anything for want of bread, and he would no more oppress my gratitude now than he would my necessity before, nor ask anything, supposing he would stop his favours or withdraw his kindness, if he was denied. It was true, he said, he might tell me more freely his mind now than before, seeing I had let him see that I accepted his assistance and saw that he was sincere in his design of serving me; that he had gone thus far to show me that he was kind to me, but that now he would tell me that he loved me, and yet would demonstrate that his love was both honourable and that what he should desire was what he might honestly ask and I might honestly grant.

      I answered that, within those two limitations, I was sure I ought to deny him nothing, and I should think myself not ungrateful only but very unjust if I should; so he said no more, but I observed he kissed me more and took me in his arms in a kind of familiar way more than usual, and which once or twice put me in mind of my maid Amy's words. And yet I must acknowledge I was so overcome with his goodness to me in those many kind things he had done, that I not only was easy at what he did and made no resistance, but was inclined to do the like, whatever he had offered to do. But he went no further than what I have said, nor did he offer so much as to sit down on the bedside with me, but took his leave, said he loved me tenderly and would convince me of it by such demonstrations as should be to my satisfaction. I told him I had a great deal of reason to believe him, that he was full master of the whole house and of me as far as was within the bounds we had spoken of, which I believed he would not break, and asked him if he would not lodge there that night.

      He said he could not well stay that night, business requiring him in London, but added, smiling, СКАЧАТЬ