by Daniel Defoe
“Any conditions in the world,” said he, “that you can in reason desire of me.” “Well,” said I, “come, give it me under your hand that if you do not find I am in any fault or that I am willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortunes that is to follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do me any injury, or make me be the sufferer for that which is not my fault.”
“That,” says he, “is the most reasonable demand in the world; not to blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a pen and ink,” says he; so I ran in and fetched pen, ink, and paper, and he wrote the condition down in the very words I had proposed it and signed it with his name. “Well,” says he, “what is next, my dear?” “Why,” says I, “the next is that you will not blame me for not discovering the secret to you before I knew it.” “Very just again,” says he; “with all my heart”; so he wrote down that also and signed it.
“Well, my dear,” says I, “then I have but one condition more to make with you, and that is that as there is nobody concerned in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world except your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice or to your mother’s prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.”
This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly, but read them over and over before he signed them, hesitating at them several times and repeating them: “My mother’s prejudice! And your prejudice! What mysterious thing can this be?” However, at last he signed it.
“Well,” says I, “my dear, I’ll ask you no more under your hand; but as you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing that perhaps ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence of mind suitable to a man of sense.”
“I’ll do my utmost,” says he, “upon condition you will keep me no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these preliminaries.”
“Well, then,” says I, “it is this: As I told you before in a heat that I was not your lawful wife and that our children were not legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of our mother now alive and in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it in a manner not to be denied or contradicted.”
I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, “Now remember your promise and receive it with presence of mind; for who could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?” However, I called a servant and got him a little glass of rum (which is the usual dram of the country), for he was fainting away.
When he was a little recovered I said to him, “This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and therefore have patience and compose your mind to hear it out, and I’ll make it as short as I can”; and with this I told him what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother came to discover it to me, as above. “And now, my dear,” says I, “you will see reason for my capitulations, and that I neither have been the cause of this matter nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.”
“I am fully satisfied of that,” says he, “but ’tis a dreadful surprise to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put an end to all your difficulties without your going to England.” “That would be strange,” said I, “as all the rest.” “No, no,” says he, “I’ll make it easy; there’s nobody in the way of it all but myself.” He looked a little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them or that they who talk of such things never do them.
But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he became pensive and melancholy and, in a word, as I thought, a little distempered in his head. I endeavoured to talk him into temper and into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be well and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and went so far that he made two attempts upon himself, and in one of them had actually strangled himself, and had not his mother come into the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a Negro servant she cut him down and recovered him.
Things were now come to a lamentable height. My pity for him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all the kind carriage I could, to make up the breach; but, in short, it had gotten too great a head, it preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a lingering consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I might perhaps have married again there very much to my advantage had it been my business to have stayed in the country; but my mind was restless too; I hankered after coming to England, and nothing would satisfy me without it.
In short, by an unwearied importunity, my husband, who was apparently decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with; and so my fate pushing me on, the way was made clear for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good cargo for my coming to England.
When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call him), we agreed that after I arrived, he should pretend to have an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry again when he would. He promised, and engaged to me to correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me as long as I lived; and that if he died before me, he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still, in the name of a sister, and he was in some respects just to this; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in its time.
I came away in the month of August, after I had been eight years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me, which perhaps few women have gone through the like.
We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsale. We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again in which the ship sprung her mainmast, as they called it. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my clothes and money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers, I resolved to come for London and leave the ship to get to her port as she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my brother’s chief correspondent lived.
I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while after that the ship was arrived at Bristol, but at the same time had the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in and the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled.
I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of it I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even so much as without acquaintances, for I found it was absolutely necessary not to revive former acquaintance; and as for my subtle friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead and her husband also.
The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so t
o an extreme; and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune, though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in the way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.
The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive and full of snares. I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking what might offer; but I must do myself justice as to protest I meant nothing but in an honest way nor had any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them to be guided.
Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy acquaintance, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company, that is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and this gave me many sad reflections. However, I shook them off and still flattered myself that something or other might offer for my advantage.
But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff, where, if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea-captain or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I was at the Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife: and consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect there must have some tendency that way.
I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to the Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious treaty. I had resisted some casual offers of gallantry and had managed that way well enough. I was not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice of it, and I had no extraordinary offers that tempted me with the main thing which I wanted.
However, I went this length the first season, viz., I contracted an acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who, though she did not keep an ill house, yet had none of the best principles in herself. I had on all occasions behaved myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my reputation, and all the men that I had conversed with were of so good reputation that I had not gotten the least reflection by conversing with them; nor did any of them seem to think there was room for a wicked correspondence if they had offered it; yet there was one gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it.
I had many melancholy hours at the Bath after all the company was gone; for though I went to Bristol sometimes for the disposing my effects and for recruits of money, yet I chose to come back to the Bath for my residence because, being on good terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer, I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there than I could do anywhere else. Here, I say, I passed the winter as heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose house I lodged, I could not avoid communicating something of what lay hardest upon my mind, and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances. I told her also that I had a mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and as I had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition and the great loss I had received, so I did not fail to let my new friend know that I expected a supply from thence, and so indeed I did; and as the ships went from Bristol to York River, in Virginia, and back again generally in less time than from London, and that my brother corresponded chiefly at Bristol, I thought it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to go to London.
My new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition, and indeed was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living with her to so low a price during the winter that she convinced me she got nothing by me; and as for lodging, during the winter I paid nothing at all.
When the spring season came on, she continued to be as kind to me as she could, and I lodged with her for a time till it was found necessary to do otherwise. She had some persons of character that frequently lodged in her house, and in particular the gentleman who, as I said, singled me out for his companion in the winter before; and he came down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants and lodged in the same house. I suspected that my landlady had invited him thither, letting him know that I was still with her; but she denied it.
In a word, this gentleman came down and continued to single me out for his peculiar confidence. He was a complete gentleman—that must be confessed—and his company was agreeable to me as mine, if I might believe him, was to him. He made no professions to me but of an extraordinary respect, and he had such an opinion of my virtue that, as he often professed, he believed if he should offer anything else, I should reject him with contempt. He soon understood from me that I was a widow; that I had arrived at Bristol from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at the Bath till the next Virginia fleet should arrive, by which I expected considerable effects. I understood by him that he had a wife, but that the lady was distempered in her head and was under the conduct of her own relations, which he consented to, to avoid any reflection that might be cast upon him for mismanaging her cure; and in the meantime he came to the Bath to divert his thoughts under such a melancholy circumstance.
My landlady, who of her own accord encouraged the correspondence on all occasions, gave me an advantageous character of him, as a man of honour and of virtue, as well as of a great estate. And indeed I had reason to say so of him too; for though we lodged both on a floor, and he had frequently come into my chamber even when I was in bed, and I also into his, yet he never offered anything to me farther than a kiss or so much as solicited me to anything till long after, as you shall hear.
I frequently took notice to my landlady of his exceeding modesty, and she again used to tell me she believed it was so from the beginning; however, she used to tell me that she thought I ought to expect some gratifications from him for my company, for indeed he did, as it were, engross me. I told her I had not given him the least occasion to think I wanted it or that I would accept of it from him. She told me she would take that part upon her, and she managed it so dexterously that the first time we were together alone, after she had talked with him, he began to inquire a little into my circumstances, as how I had subsisted myself since I came on shore and whether I did not want money. I stood off very boldly. I told him that though my cargo of tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite lost; that the merchant that I had been consigned to had so honestly managed for me that I had not wanted, and that I hoped with frugal management I should make it hold out till more would come, which I expected by the next fleet; that in the meantime I had retrenched my expenses, and whereas I kept a maid last season, now I lived without; and whereas I had a chamber and a dining-room then on the first floor, I now had but one room two pair of stairs, and the like; “but I live,” said I, “as well satisfied now as then”; adding that his company had made me live much more cheerfully than otherwise I should have done, for which I was much obliged to him; and so I put off all room for any offer at the present. It was not long before he attacked me again and told me he found that I was backward to trust him with the secret of my circumstances, which he was sorry for; assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own curiosity, but merely to assist me if there was any occasion; but since I would not own myself to stand in need of any assistance, he had but one thing more to desire of me, and that was that I would promise him that when I was any way straitened, I would frankly tell him of it, and that I would make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer; adding that I should always find I had a true friend though perhaps I was afraid to trust him.
I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely obliged, to let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness; and indeed from that time I did not appear so much reserved to him as I had done before, though still with
in the bounds of the strictest virtue on both sides; but how free soever our conversation was, I could not arrive to that freedom which he desired, viz., to tell him I wanted money, though I was secretly very glad of his offer.
Some weeks passed after this, and still I never asked him for money, when my landlady, a cunning creature, who had often pressed me to it but found that I could not do it, makes a story of her own inventing and comes in bluntly to me when we were together. “Oh, widow!” says she, “I have bad news to tell you this morning.” “What is that?” said I. “Is the Virginia ships taken by the French?”—for that was my fear. “No, no,” says she, “but the man you sent to Bristol yesterday for money is come back and says he has brought none.”
I could by no means like her project; I thought it looked too much like prompting him, which he did not want, and I saw that I should lose nothing by being backward, so took her up short. “I can’t imagine why he should say so,” said I, “for I assure you he brought me all the money I sent him for, and here it is,” said I (pulling out my purse, with about twelve guineas in it); and added, “I intend you shall have most of it by and by.”
He seemed distasted a little at her talking as she did, as well as I, taking it, as I fancied he would, as something forward of her; but when he saw me give such an answer, he came immediately to himself. The next morning we talked of it again, when I found he was fully satisfied and, smiling, said he hoped I would not want money and not tell him of it, and that I had promised him otherwise. I told him I had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady’s talking so publicly the day before of what she had nothing to do with; but I supposed she wanted what I owed her, which was about eight guineas, which I had resolved to give her and had given it her the same night.