Moll Flanders. Даниэль Дефо

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СКАЧАТЬ as he held me above an hour and a half in that discourse, so he answered all my objections, and fortified his discourse with all the arguments that human wit and art could devise.

      I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression enough upon me, so as to give me any thought of the matter, till he told me at last very plainly, that if I refused, he was sorry to add, that he could never go on with me in that station as we stood before; that though he loved me as well as ever, and that I was as agreeable to him; yet the sense of virtue had not so forsaken him as to suffer him to lie with a woman that his brother courted to make his wife; that if he took his leave of me, with a denial from me in this affair, whatever he might do for me in the point of support, grounded on his first engagement of maintaining me, yet he would not have me be surprised, that he was obliged to tell me, he could not allow himself to see me any more, and that indeed I could not expect it of him.

      I received this last part with some tokens of surprise and disorder, and had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed I loved him to an extravagance not easy to imagine; but he perceived my disorder, and entreated me to consider seriously of it, assured me that it was the only way to preserve our mutual affection; that in this station we might love as friends, with the utmost passion, and with a love of relation untainted, free from our own just reproaches, and free from other people’s suspicions: that he should ever acknowledge his happiness owing to me; that he would be debtor to me as long as he lived, and would be paying that debt as long as he had breath. Thus he wrought me up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively figures, and indeed heightened by my imagination of being turned out to the wide world, a mere cast-off whore, for it was no less, and perhaps exposed as such; with little to provide for myself; with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world, out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay; all this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all occasions to lay it home to me, in the worst colours; on the other hand, he failed not to set forth the easy prosperous life, which I was going to live.

      He answered all that I could object from affection, and from former engagements, with telling me the necessity that was before us of taking other measures now; and as to his promises of marriage, the nature of things, he said, had put an end to that, by the probability of my being his brother’s wife, before the time to which his promises all referred.

      Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason; he conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger that I was in, which I had not considered of before, and that was, of being dropped by both of them, and left alone in the world to shift for myself.

      This, and his persuasion, at length prevailed with me to consent, though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to see I should go to church like a bear to the stake; I had some little apprehensions about me too, lest my new spouse, who, by the way, I had not the least affection for, should be skilful enough to challenge me on another account, upon our first coming to bed together; but whether he did it with design or not, I know not; but his elder brother took care to make him very much fuddled before he went to bed, so that I had the satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night. How he did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived it, that his brother might be able to make no judgment of the difference between a maid and a married woman, nor did he ever entertain any notions of it, or disturb his thoughts about it.

      I should go back a little here, to where I left off. The elder brother having thus managed me, his next business was to manage his mother, and he never left till he had brought her to acquiesce, and be passive even without acquainting the father, other than by post letters: so that she consented to our marrying privately, leaving her to manage the father afterwards.

      Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what service he had done him, and how he had brought his mother to consent, which though true, was not indeed done to serve him, but to serve himself; but thus diligently did he cheat him, and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore into his brother’s arms for a wife. So naturally do men give up honour and justice and even Christianity to secure themselves.

      I must now come back to Brother Robin, as we always called him, who having got his mother’s consent, as above, came big with the news to me, and told me the whole story of it, with a sincerity so visible, that I must confess it grieved me that I must be the instrument to abuse so honest a gentleman; but there was no remedy, he would have me, and I was not obliged to tell him that I was his brother’s whore, though I had no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it, and behold we were married.

      Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage bed, but nothing could have happened more suitable to my circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddled when he came to bed, that he could not remember in the morning, whether he had had any conversation with me or no, and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality he had not, that I might be sure he could make no inquiry about anything else.

      It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the farther particulars of the family, or of myself, for the five years that I lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children by him, and that at the end of the five years he died. He had been really a very good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably together; but as he had not received much from them, and had in the little time he lived acquired no great matters, so my circumstances were not great, nor was I much mended by the match. Indeed, I had preserved the elder brother’s bonds to me, to pay me £500, which he offered me for my consent to marry his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the money he formerly gave me, and about as much more by my husband, left me a widow with about £1,200 in my pocket.

      My two children were indeed taken happily off of my hands, by my husband’s father and mother, and that was all they got by Mrs. Betty.

      I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband; nor can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have done, or was suitable to the good usage I had from him, for he was a tender, kind, good-humoured man as any woman could desire; but his brother being so always in my sight, at least while we were in the country, was a continual snare to me; and I never was in bed with my husband, but I wished myself in the arms of his brother; and though his brother never offered me the least kindness that way, after our marriage, but carried it just as a brother ought to do; yet it was impossible for me to do so to him: in short, I committed adultery and incest with him every day in my desires, which without doubt was as effectually criminal.

      Before my husband died, his elder brother was married, and we being then removed to London, were written to by the old lady to come and be at the wedding; my husband went, but I pretended indisposition, so I stayed behind; for, in short, I could not bear the sight of his being given to another woman, though I knew I was never to have him myself.

      I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my pocket, I put no small value upon myself. I was courted by several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very warmly by one, a linen draper, at whose house, after my husband’s death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance; here I had all the liberty and opportunity to be gay, and appear in company that I could desire; my landlord’s sister being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much mistress of her virtue as I thought at first she had been. She brought me into a world of wild company, and even brought home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify, to see her pretty widow. Now as fame and fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed; had abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers; but I found not one fair proposal among them all; as for their common design, that I understood too well to be drawn into any more snares of that kind. The case was altered with me, I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I had been tricked once by that cheat called Love, but the game was over. I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and to be well married or not at all.

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