Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

  He was in a mighty good humour when he heard me say I had paid her, and it went off into some other discourse at that time. But the next morning, he having heard me up before him, he called to me and I answered. He asked me to come into his chamber; he was in bed when I came in, and he made me come and sit down on his bedside, for he said he had something to say to me. After some very kind expressions, he asked me if I would be very honest to him and give a sincere answer to one thing he would desire of me. After some little cavil with him at the word “sincere,” and asking him if I had ever given him any answers which were not sincere, I promised him I would. Why, then, his request was, he said, to let him see my purse. I immediately put my hand into my pocket and, laughing at him, pulled it out, and there was in it three guineas and a half. Then he asked me if there was all the money I had. I told him no, laughing again, not by a great deal.

  Well, then, he said, he would have me promise to go and fetch him all the money I had, every farthing. I told him I would, and I went into my chamber and fetched him a little private drawer, where I had about six guineas more and some silver, and threw it all down upon the bed and told him there was all my wealth, honestly to a shilling. He looked a little at it, but did not tell it, and huddled it all into the drawer again, and then, reaching his pocket, pulled out a key and bade me open a little walnut-tree box he had upon the table, and bring him such a drawer, which I did. In this drawer there was a great deal of money in gold, I believe near two hundred guineas, but I knew not how much. He took the drawer and, taking me by the hand, made me put it in and take a whole handful; I was backward at that, but he held my hand hard in his hand and put it into the drawer and made me take out as many guineas almost as I could well take up at once.

  When I had done so, he made me put them into my lap, and took my little drawer and poured out all my own money among his, and bade me get me gone and carry it all into my own chamber.

  I relate this story the more particularly because of the good humour of it, and to show the temper with which we conversed. It was not long after this but he began every day to find fault with my clothes, with my laces, and head-dresses, and in a word pressed me to buy better, which, by the way, I was willing enough to do though I did not seem to be so. I loved nothing in the world better than fine clothes; but I told him I must housewife the money he had lent me or else I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me in a few words that as he had a sincere respect for me and knew my circumstances, he had not lent me that money, but given it me, and that he thought I had merited it from him by giving him my company so entirely as I had done. After this he made me take a maid and keep house, and his friend being gone, he obliged me to diet him, which I did very willingly, believing, as it appeared, that I should lose nothing by it, nor did the woman of the house fail to find her account in it too.

  We had lived thus near three months when, the company beginning to wear away at the Bath, he talked of going away, and fain he would have me to go to London with him. I was not very easy in that proposal, not knowing what posture I was to live in there or how he might use me. But while this was in debate he fell very sick; he had gone out to a place in Somersetshire, called Shepton, and was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel; so he sent his man back to the Bath to beg me that I would hire a coach and come over to him. Before he went, he had left his money and other things of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I secured them as well as I could and locked up the lodgings and went to him, where I found him very ill indeed, so I persuaded him to be carried in a litter to the Bath, where was more help and better advice to be had.

  He consented, and I brought him to the Bath, which was about fifteen miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a fever and kept his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him and tended him as carefully as if I had been his wife; indeed, if I had been his wife I could not have done more. I sat up with him so much and so often that at last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any longer, and then I got a pallet-bed into his room and lay in it just at his bed’s feet.

  I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the apprehensions of losing such a friend as he was and was like to be to me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together. At last he grew better and gave hopes that he would recover, as indeed he did, though very slowly.

  Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not be backward to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in other cases; but I affirm, through all this conversation, abating the coming into the chamber when I or he was in bed, and the necessary offices of attending him night and day when he was sick, there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh, that it had been so to the last!

  After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace, and I would have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not let me till he was able to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him, when I removed to my own chamber.

  He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness for him; and when he grew well he made me a present of fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, hazarding my life to save his.

  And now he made deep protestations of a sincere, inviolable affection for me, but with the utmost reserve for my virtue and his own. I told him I was fully satisfied of it. He carried it that length that he protested to me that if he was naked in bed with me, he would as sacredly preserve my virtue as he would defend it if I was assaulted by a ravisher. I believed him and told him I did so; but this did not satisfy him; he would, he said, wait for some opportunity to give me an undoubted testimony of it.

  It was a great while after this that I had occasion on my business to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach and would go with me; and now indeed our intimacy increased. From Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which was merely a journey of pleasure, to take the air; and here it was our hap to have no lodgings in the inn, but in one large chamber with two beds in it. The master of the house, going with us to show his rooms and coming into that room, said very frankly to him, “Sir, it is none of my business to inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,” and with that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across the room and effectually divided the beds. “Well,” says my friend very readily, “these beds will do; and as for the rest, we are too near akin to be together though we may lodge near one another”; and this put an honest face on the thing too. When we came to go to bed, he decently went out of the room till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the other bed, but lay there talking to me a great while.

  At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in the bed with me and not offer me the least injury, he starts out of his bed. “And now, my dear,” says he, “you shall see how just I will be to you, and that I can keep my word,” and away he comes to my bed.

  I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted him much if he had not made those promises at all; so after a little struggle I lay still and let him come to bed. When he was there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all night with him, but he had no more to do with me or offered anything to me other than embracing me, as I say, in his arms, no, not the whole night, but rose up and dressed him in the morning and left me as innocent for him as I was the day I was born.

  This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to others who know how the laws of nature work; for he was a vigorous, brisk person. Nor did he act thus on a principle of religion at all, but of mere affection; insisting on it that though I was to him the most agreeable woman in the world, yet because he loved me, he could not injure me.

  I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never saw before, so it was perfectly amazing. We travelled the rest of the journey as we did before and came back to the Bath, where, as he had opportunity to come to me when he would, he often repeated the same moderation, and I frequently lay with him
, and although all the familiarities of man and wife were common to us, yet he never once offered to go any farther, and he valued himself much upon it. I do not say that I was so wholly pleased with it as he thought I was, for I own I was much wickeder than he.

  We lived thus near two years, only with this exception: that he went three times to London in that time, and once he continued there four months; but, to do him justice, he always supplied me with money to subsist on very handsomely.

  Had we continued thus, I confess we had had much to boast of; but, as wise men say, it is ill venturing too near the brink of a command. So we found it; and here again I must do him the justice to own that the first breach was not on his part. It was one night that we were in bed together, warm and merry, and having drank, I think, a little more both of us than usual, though not in the least to disorder us, when, after some other follies which I cannot name, and being clasped close in his arms, I told him (I repeat it with shame and horror of soul) that I could find in my heart to discharge him of his engagement for one night and no more.

  He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was no resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him any more.

  Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I exchanged the place of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding title of whore. In the morning we were both at our penitentials; I cried very heartily, he expressed himself very sorry; but that was all either of us could do at that time, and the way being thus cleared and the bars of virtue and conscience thus removed, we had the less to struggle with.

  It was but a dull kind of conversation that we had together for all the rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes and every now and then started that melancholy objection, “What if I should be with child now? What will become of me then?” He encouraged me by telling me that as long as I was true to him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone such a length (which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with child, he would take care of that and me too. This hardened us both. I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured me I should never want if I should be with child. These mutual assurances hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated the crime as often as we pleased, till at length, as I feared, so it came to pass, and I was indeed with child.

  After I was sure it was so and I had satisfied him of it too, we began to think of taking measures for the managing it, and I proposed trusting the secret to my landlady and asking her advice, which he agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found) used to such things, made light of it; she said she knew it would come to that at last and made us very merry about it. As I said above, we found her an experienced old lady at such work; she undertook everything, engaged to procure a midwife and a nurse, to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with reputation, and she did so very dexterously indeed.

  When I grew near my time, she desired my gentleman to go away to London or make as if he did so. When he was gone, she acquainted the parish officers that there was a lady ready to lie in at her house, but that she knew her husband very well, and gave them, as she pretended, an account of his name, which she called Sir Walter Cleave, telling them he was a worthy gentleman, and that he would answer for all inquiries, and the like. This satisfied the parish officers presently, and I lay in, in as much credit as I could have done if I had really been my Lady Cleave, and was assisted in my travail by three or four of the best citizens’ wives of Bath, which, however, made me a little the more expensive to him. I often expressed my concern to him about that part, but he bid me not be concerned at it.

  As he had furnished me very sufficiently with money for the extraordinary expenses of my lying in, I had everything very handsome about me, but did not affect to be so gay or extravagant neither; besides, knowing the world as I had done, and that such kind of things do not often last long, I took care to lay up as much money as I could for a wet day, as I called it, making him believe it was all spent upon the extraordinary appearance of things in my lying in.

  By this means, with what he had given me as above, I had at the end of my lying in two hundred guineas by me, including also what was left of my own.

  I was brought to bed of a fine boy indeed, and a charming child it was; and when he heard of it, he wrote me a very kind, obliging letter about it and then told me he thought it would look better for me to come away for London as soon as I was up and well; that he had provided apartments for me at Hammersmith, as if I came only from London; and that after a while I should go back to the Bath and he would go with me.

  I liked his offer very well and hired a coach on purpose, and taking my child and a wet-nurse to tend and suckle it, and a maidservant with me, away I went for London.

  He met me at Reading in his own chariot and, taking me into that, left the servant and the child in the hired coach, and so he brought me to my new lodgings at Hammersmith, with which I had abundance of reason to be very well pleased, for they were very handsome rooms.

  And now I was indeed in the height of what I might call prosperity, and I wanted nothing but to be a wife, which, however, could not be in this case, and therefore on all occasions I studied to save what I could, as I said above, against the time of scarcity, knowing well enough that such things as these do not always continue; that men that keep mistresses often change them, grow weary of them, or jealous of them, or something or other; and sometimes the ladies that are thus well used are not careful by a prudent conduct to preserve the esteem of their persons or the nice article of their fidelity, and then they are justly cast off with contempt.

  But I was secured in this point, for as I had no inclination to change, so I had no manner of acquaintance, so no temptation to look any farther. I kept no company but in the family where I lodged, and with a clergyman’s lady at next door; so that when he was absent I visited nobody, nor did he ever find me out of my chamber or parlour whenever he came down; if I went anywhere to take the air, it was always with him.

  The living in this manner with him and his with me was certainly the most undesigned thing in the world; he often protested to me that when he became first acquainted with me, and even to the very night when we first broke in upon our rules, he never had the least design of lying with me; that he always had a sincere affection for me, but not the least real inclination to do what he had done. I assured him I never suspected him; that if I had I should not so easily have yielded to the freedoms which brought it on, but that it was all a surprise and was owing to our having yielded too far to our mutual inclinations that night; and indeed I have often observed since, and leave it as a caution to the readers of this story, that we ought to be cautious of gratifying our inclinations in loose and lewd freedoms lest we find our resolutions of virtue fail us in the juncture when their assistance should be most necessary.

  It is true that from the first hour I began to converse with him I resolved to let him lie with me if he offered it; but it was because I wanted his help and knew of no other way of securing him. But when we were that night together and, as I have said, had gone such a length, I found my weakness; the inclination was not to be resisted, but I was obliged to yield up all even before he asked it.

  However, he was so just to me that he never upbraided me with that; nor did he ever express the least dislike of my conduct on any other occasion, but always protested he was as much delighted with my company as he was the first hour we came together.

  It is true that he had no wife, that is to say, she was no wife to him, but the reflections of conscience oftentimes snatch a man, especially a man of sense, from the arms of a mistress, as it did him at last, though on another occasion.

  On the other hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that there was no looking behind me; but as
poverty brought me into it, so fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it quite off if I could but come to lay up money enough to maintain me. But these were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they vanished; for his company was so delightful that there was no being melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all the subject of those hours when I was alone.

  I lived six years in this happy but unhappy condition, in which time I brought him three children, but only the first of them lived; and though I removed twice in that six years, yet I came back the sixth year to my first lodgings at Hammersmith. Here it was that I was one morning surprised with a kind but melancholy letter from my gentleman, intimating that he was very ill and was afraid he should have another fit of sickness, but that his wife’s relations being in the house with him, it would not be practicable to have me with him, which, however, he expressed his great dissatisfaction in, and that he wished I could be allowed to tend and nurse him as I did before.

  I was very much concerned at this account and was very impatient to know how it was with him. I waited a fortnight or thereabouts and heard nothing, which surprised me, and I began to be very uneasy indeed. I think I may say that for the next fortnight I was near to distracted. It was my particular difficulty that I did not know directly where he was; for I understood at first he was in the lodgings of his wife’s mother; but having removed myself to London, I soon found, by the help of the direction I had for writing my letters to him, how to inquire after him, and there I found that he was at a house in Bloomsbury, whither he had removed his whole family; and that his wife and wife’s mother were in the same house, though the wife was not suffered to know that she was in the same house with her husband.

  Here I also soon understood that he was at the last extremity, which made me almost at the last extremity too, to have a true account. One night I had the curiosity to disguise myself like a servant-maid, in a round cap and straw hat, and went to the door, as sent by a lady of his neighbourhood where he lived before, and giving master and mistress’s service, I said I was sent to know how Mr. —— did and how he had rested that night. In delivering this message I got the opportunity I desired; for, speaking with one of the maids, I held a long gossip’s tale with her and had all the particulars of his illness, which I found was a pleurisy, attended with a cough and fever. She told me also who was in the house and how his wife was, who, by her relation, they were in some hopes might recover her understanding; but as to the gentleman himself, the doctors said there was very little hopes of him, that in the morning they thought he had been dying, and that he was but little better then, for they did not expect that he could live over the next night.