Moll Flanders. Даниэль Дефо

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СКАЧАТЬ I could not so readily come at playing the harpsichord or spinnet, because I had no instrument of my own to practise on, and could only come at theirs in the intervals when they left it; but yet I learned tolerably well, and the young ladies at length got two instruments, that is to say, a harpsichord and a spinnet too, and then they taught me themselves; but as to dancing, they could hardly help my learning country dances, because they always wanted me to make up even number; and on the other hand, they were as heartily willing to learn me everything that they had been taught themselves, as I could be to take the learning.

      By this means I had, as I have said, all the advantages of education that I could have had, if I had been as much a gentlewoman as they were, with whom I lived; and in some things I had the advantage of my ladies, though they were my superiors, viz., that mine were all the gifts of Nature, and which all their fortunes could not furnish. First, I was apparently handsomer than any of them. Secondly, I was better shaped, and thirdly, I sung better, by which I mean, I had a better voice; in all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own conceit, but the opinion of all that knew the family.

      I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz., that being really taken for very handsome, or if you please for a great beauty, I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself, as anybody else could have of me, and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak of it, which happened often, and was a great satisfaction to me.

      Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this part of my life, I not only had the reputation of living in a very good family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had the character too of a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to know what a temptation to wickedness meant.

      But that which I was too vain of, was my ruin, or rather my vanity was the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was, had two sons, young gentlemen of extraordinary parts and behaviour; and it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed themselves with me in a quite different manner.

      The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the country, and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too much judgment of things to pay too dear for his pleasures; he began with that unhappy snare to all women, viz., taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how well carriaged, and the like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he had known as well how to catch a woman in his net, as a partridge when he went a setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his sisters, when though I was not by, yet when he knew I was not so far off, but that I should be sure to hear him: his sisters would return softly to him, “Hush, brother, she will hear you, she is but in the next room”; then he would put it off, and talk softlier as if he had not known it, and begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then as if he had forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I that was so well pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.

      After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method how to lay it in my way, he played an open game; and one day going by his sister’s chamber when I was there, he comes in with an air of gaiety, “O! Mrs. Betty,” said he to me, “how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don’t your cheeks burn, Mrs. Betty?” I made a curtsy, and blushed, but said nothing.

      “What makes you talk so, brother?” says the lady.

      “Why,” says he, “we have been talking of her below stairs this half hour.”

      “Well,” says his sister, “you can say no harm of her, that I am sure, so it is no matter what you have been talking about.”

      “Nay,” says he, “it is so far from talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great many fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure you; and particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester, and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.”

      “I wonder at you brother,” says the sister. “Betty wants but one thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against our sex just now; and if a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an extreme; yet if she has not money, she’s nobody, she had as good want them all; nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands.”

      Her younger brother, who was by, cried, “Hold, sister, you run too fast, I am an exception to your rule: I assure you, if I find a woman so accomplished as you talk of, I won’t trouble myself about the money.”

      “O,” says the sister, “but you will take care not to fancy one then without the money.”

      “You don’t know that neither,” says the brother.

      “But why, sister,” says the elder brother, “why do you exclaim so about the fortune? You are none of them that want a fortune, whatever else you want.”

      “I understand you, brother,” replies the lady very smartly, “you suppose I have the money and want the beauty; but as times go now, the first will do, so I have the better of my neighbours.”

      “Well,” says the younger brother, “but your neighbours may be even with you; for beauty will steal a husband sometimes in spite of money; and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach before her.”

      I thought it was time for me to withdraw, and I did so; but not so far, but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard abundance of fine things said of myself, which prompted my vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her, upon my account, so I could easily see that she resented them, by her future conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust; for I had never had the least thought of what she suspected, as to her younger brother: indeed the elder brother in his distant remote way had said a great many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have supposed he never intended.

      It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards the room where his sister used to sit and work, as he often used to do; and calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I being there alone, stepped to the door, and said, “Sir, the ladies are not here, they are walked down the garden.”

      As I stepped forward to say this, he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his arms, as if it had been by chance, “O! Mrs. Betty,” says he, “are you here? that’s better still, I want to speak with you, more than I do with them.” And then having me in his arms he kissed me three or four times.

      I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he held me fast, and still kissed me, till he was out of breath, and, sitting down, says he, “Dear Betty, I am in love with you.”

      His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew about my heart, and put me into disorder enough. He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in love with me, and my heart spoke as plain as a voice, that I liked it; nay, whenever he said, “I am in love with you,” my blushes plainly replied “Would you were, Sir.” However, nothing else passed at that time; it was but a surprise, and I soon recovered myself. He had stayed longer with me, but he happened to look out at the window and see his sisters coming up the garden, so he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he was very serious, and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away he went infinitely pleased, and had there not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right, but the mistake lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest, and the gentleman was not.

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