The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2)

by Daniel Defoe

despatch--I say, in this timethe following scene opened.

  It was one afternoon, about four o'clock, my friendly Quaker and Isitting in her chamber upstairs, and very cheerful, chatting together(for she was the best company in the world), when somebody ringinghastily at the door, and no servant just then in the way, she ran downherself to the door, when a gentleman appears, with a footman attending,and making some apologies, which she did not thoroughly understand, hespeaking but broken English, he asked to speak with me, by the very samename that I went by in her house, which, by the way, was not the namethat he had known me by.

  She, with very civil language, in her way, brought him into a veryhandsome parlour below stairs, and said she would go and see whether theperson who lodged in her house owned that name, and he should hearfarther.

  I was a little surprised, even before I knew anything of who it was, mymind foreboding the thing as it happened (whence that arises let thenaturalists explain to us); but I was frighted and ready to die when myQuaker came up all gay and crowing. "There," says she, "is the DutchFrench merchant come to see thee." I could not speak one word to her norstir off of my chair, but sat as motionless as a statue. She talked athousand pleasant things to me, but they made no impression on me. Atlast she pulled me and teased me. "Come, come," says she, "be thyself,and rouse up. I must go down again to him; what shall I say to him?""Say," said I, "that you have no such body in the house." "That Icannot do," says she, "because it is not the truth. Besides, I haveowned thou art above. Come, come, go down with me." "Not for a thousandguineas," said I. "Well," says she, "I'll go and tell him thou wilt comequickly." So, without giving me time to answer her, away she goes.

  A million of thoughts circulated in my head while she was gone, and whatto do I could not tell; I saw no remedy but I must speak with him, butwould have given L500 to have shunned it; yet had I shunned it, perhapsthen I would have given L500 again that I had seen him. Thus fluctuatingand unconcluding were my thoughts, what I so earnestly desired Ideclined when it offered itself; and what now I pretended to decline wasnothing but what I had been at the expense of L40 or L50 to send Amy toFrance for, and even without any view, or, indeed, any rationalexpectation of bringing it to pass; and what for half a year before Iwas so uneasy about that I could not be quiet night or day till Amyproposed to go over to inquire after him. In short, my thoughts were allconfused and in the utmost disorder. I had once refused and rejectedhim, and I repented it heartily; then I had taken ill his silence, andin my mind rejected him again, but had repented that too. Now I hadstooped so low as to send after him into France, which if he had known,perhaps, he had never come after me; and should I reject him a thirdtime! On the other hand, he had repented too, in his turn, perhaps, andnot knowing how I had acted, either in stooping to send in search afterhim or in the wickeder part of my life, was come over hither to seek meagain; and I might take him, perhaps, with the same advantages as Imight have done before, and would I now be backward to see him! Well,while I was in this hurry my friend the Quaker comes up again, andperceiving the confusion I was in, she runs to her closet and fetched mea little pleasant cordial; but I would not taste it. "Oh," says she, "Iunderstand thee. Be not uneasy; I'll give thee something shall take offall the smell of it; if he kisses thee a thousand times he shall be nowiser." I thought to myself, "Thou art perfectly acquainted with affairsof this nature; I think you must govern me now;" so I began to inclineto go down with her. Upon that I took the cordial, and she gave me akind of spicy preserve after it, whose flavour was so strong, and yet sodeliciously pleasant, that it would cheat the nicest smelling, and itleft not the least taint of the cordial on the breath.

  Well, after this, though with some hesitation still, I went down a pairof back-stairs with her, and into a dining-room, next to the parlour inwhich he was; but there I halted, and desired she would let me considerof it a little. "Well, do so," says she, and left me with more readinessthan she did before. "Do consider, and I'll come to thee again."

  Though I hung back with an awkwardness that was really unfeigned, yetwhen she so readily left me I thought it was not so kind, and I began tothink she should have pressed me still on to it; so foolishly backwardare we to the thing which, of all the world, we most desire; mockingourselves with a feigned reluctance, when the negative would be death tous. But she was too cunning for me; for while I, as it were, blamed herin my mind for not carrying me to him, though, at the same time, Iappeared backward to see him, on a sudden she unlocks the folding-doors,which looked into the next parlour, and throwing them open. "There,"says she (ushering him in), "is the person who, I suppose, thouinquirest for;" and the same moment, with a kind decency, she retired,and that so swift that she would not give us leave hardly to know whichway she went.

  I stood up, but was confounded with a sudden inquiry in my thoughts howI should receive him, and with a resolution as swift as lightning, inanswer to it, said to myself, "It shall be coldly." So on a sudden I puton an air of stiffness and ceremony, and held it for about two minutes;but it was with great difficulty.

  He restrained himself too, on the other hand, came towards me gravely,and saluted me in form; but it was, it seems, upon his supposing theQuaker was behind him, whereas she, as I said, understood things toowell, and had retired as if she had vanished, that we might have fullfreedom; for, as she said afterwards, she supposed we had seen oneanother before, though it might have been a great while ago.

  Whatever stiffness I had put on my behaviour to him, I was surprised inmy mind, and angry at his, and began to wonder what kind of aceremonious meeting it was to be. However, after he perceived the womanwas gone he made a kind of a hesitation, looking a little round him."Indeed," said he, "I thought the gentlewoman was not withdrawn;" andwith that he took me in his arms and kissed me three or four times; butI, that was prejudiced to the last degree with the coldness of his firstsalutes, when I did not know the cause of it, could not be thoroughlycleared of the prejudice though I did know the cause, and thought thateven his return, and taking me in his arms, did not seem to have thesame ardour with which he used to receive me, and this made me behave tohim awkwardly, and I know not how for a good while; but this by the way.

  He began with a kind of an ecstasy upon the subject of his finding meout; how it was possible that he should have been four years in England,and had used all the ways imaginable, and could never so much as havethe least intimation of me, or of any one like me; and that it was nowabove two years that he had despaired of it, and had given over allinquiry; and that now he should chop upon me, as it were, unlooked andunsought for.

  I could easily have accounted for his not finding me if I had but setdown the detail of my real retirement; but I gave it a new, and indeed atruly hypocritical turn. I told him that any one that knew the mannerof life I led might account for his not finding me; that the retreat Ihad taken up would have rendered it a hundred thousand to one odds thathe ever found me at all; that, as I had abandoned all conversation,taken up another name, lived remote from London, and had not preservedone acquaintance in it, it was no wonder he had not met with me; thateven my dress would let him see that I did not desire to be known byanybody.

  Then he asked if I had not received some letters from him. I told himno, he had not thought fit to give me the civility of an answer to thelast I wrote to him, and he could not suppose I should expect a returnafter a silence in a case where I had laid myself so low and exposedmyself in a manner I had never been used to; that indeed I had neversent for any letters after that to the place where I had ordered his tobe directed; and that, being so justly, as I thought, punished for myweakness, I had nothing to do but to repent of being a fool, after I hadstrictly adhered to a just principle before; that, however, as what Idid was rather from motions of gratitude than from real weakness,however it might be construed by him, I had the satisfaction in myselfof having fully discharged the debt. I added, that I had not wantedoccasions of all the seeming advancements which the pretended felicityof a marriage life was usually
set off with, and might have been what Idesired not to name; but that, however low I had stooped to him, I hadmaintained the dignity of female liberty against all the attacks eitherof pride or avarice; and that I had been infinitely obliged to him forgiving me an opportunity to discharge the only obligation thatendangered me, without subjecting me to the consequence; and that Ihoped he was satisfied I had paid the debt by offering myself to bechained, but was infinitely debtor to him another way for letting meremain free.

  He was so confounded at this discourse that he knew not what to say, andfor a good while he stood mute indeed; but recovering himself a little,he said I run out into a discourse he hoped was over and forgotten, andhe did not intend to revive it; that he knew I had not had his letters,for that, when