The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2)

by Daniel Defoe

will show aletter from you, as if just come in, wherein you shall excuse your notcoming, for that some company came to visit you, and prevented you; butthat you desire me to take care that the gentleman be ready to buy yourjewels, and that you will come to-morrow at the same hour, withoutfail.

  "When to-morrow is come, we shall wait at the time, but you notappearing, I shall seem most dissatisfied, and wonder what can be thereason; and so we shall agree to go the next day to get out a processagainst you. But the next day, in the morning, I'll send to give himnotice that you have been at my house, but he not being there, have madeanother appointment, and that I desire to speak with him. When he comes,I'll tell him you appear perfectly blind as to your danger, and that youappeared much disappointed that he did not come, though you could notmeet the night before; and obliged me to have him here to-morrow atthree o'clock. When to-morrow comes," says he, "you shall send word thatyou are taken so ill that you cannot come out for that day, but that youwill not fail the next day; and the next day you shall neither come orsend, nor let us ever hear any more of you; for by that time you shallbe in Holland, if you please."

  I could not but approve all his measures, seeing they were so wellcontrived, and in so friendly a manner, for my benefit; and as he seemedto be so very sincere, I resolved to put my life in his hands.Immediately I went to my lodgings, and sent away Amy with such bundlesas I had prepared for my travelling. I also sent several parcels of myfine furniture to the merchant's house to be laid up for me, andbringing the key of the lodgings with me, I came back to his house. Herewe finished our matters of money, and I delivered into his hands seventhousand eight hundred pistoles in bills and money, a copy of anassignment on the townhouse of Paris for four thousand pistoles, atthree per cent. interest, attested, and a procuration for receiving theinterest half-yearly; but the original I kept myself.

  I could have trusted all I had with him, for he was perfectly honest,and had not the least view of doing me any wrong. Indeed, after it wasso apparent that he had, as it were, saved my life, or at least saved mefrom being exposed and ruined--I say, after this, how could I doubt himin anything?

  When I came to him, he had everything ready as I wanted, and as he hadproposed. As to my money, he gave me first of all an accepted bill,payable at Rotterdam, for four thousand pistoles, and drawn from Genoaupon a merchant at Rotterdam, payable to a merchant at Paris, andendorsed by him to my merchant; this, he assured me, would be punctuallypaid; and so it was, to a day. The rest I had in other bills ofexchange, drawn by himself upon other merchants in Holland. Havingsecured my jewels too, as well as I could, he sent me away the sameevening in a friend's coach, which he had procured for me, to St.Germain, and the next morning to Rouen. He also sent a servant of hisown on horseback with me, who provided everything for me, and whocarried his orders to the captain of the ship, which lay about threemiles below Rouen, in the river, and by his directions I wentimmediately on board. The third day after I was on board the ship wentaway, and we were out at sea the next day after that; and thus I took myleave of France, and got clear of an ugly business, which, had it goneon, might have ruined me, and sent me back as naked to England as I wasa little before I left it.

  And now Amy and I were at leisure to look upon the mischiefs that we hadescaped; and had I had any religion or any sense of a Supreme Power,managing, directing, and governing in both causes and events in thisworld, such a case as this would have given anybody room to have beenvery thankful to the Power who had not only put such a treasure into myhand, but given me such an escape from the ruin that threatened me; butI had none of those things about me. I had, indeed, a grateful senseupon my mind of the generous friendship of my deliverer, the Dutchmerchant, by whom I was so faithfully served, and by whom, as far asrelates to second causes, I was preserved from destruction.

  I say, I had a grateful sense upon my mind of his kindness andfaithfulness to me, and I resolved to show him some testimony of it assoon as I came to the end of my rambles, for I was yet but in a state ofuncertainty, and sometimes that gave me a little uneasiness too. I hadpaper indeed for my money, and he had showed himself very good to me inconveying me away, as above; but I had not seen the end of things yet,for unless the bills were paid, I might still be a great loser by myDutchman, and he might, perhaps, have contrived all that affair of theJew to put me into a fright and get me to run away, and that as if itwere to save my life; that if the bills should be refused, I was cheatedwith a witness, and the like. But these were but surmises, and, indeed,were perfectly without cause, for the honest man acted as honest menalways do, with an upright and disinterested principle, and with asincerity not often to be found in the world. What gain he made by theexchange was just, and was nothing but what was his due, and was in theway of his business; but otherwise he made no advantage of me at all.

  When I passed in the ship between Dover and Calais and saw belovedEngland once more under my view--England, which I counted my nativecountry, being the place I was bred up in, though not born there--astrange kind of joy possessed my mind, and I had such a longing desireto be there that I would have given the master of the ship twentypistoles to have stood over and set me on shore in the Downs; and whenhe told me he could not do it--that is, that he durst not do it if Iwould have given him a hundred pistoles--I secretly wished that a stormwould rise that might drive the ship over to the coast of England,whether they would or not, that I might be set on shore anywhere uponEnglish ground.

  This wicked wish had not been out of my thoughts above two or threehours, but the master steering away to the north, as was his course todo, we lost sight of land on that side, and only had the Flemish shorein view on our right hand, or, as the seamen call it, the starboardside; and then, with the loss of the sight, the wish for landing inEngland abated, and I considered how foolish it was to wish myself outof the way of my business; that if I had been on shore in England, Imust go back to Holland on account of my bills, which were soconsiderable, and I having no correspondence there, that I could nothave managed it without going myself. But we had not been out of sightof England many hours before the weather began to change; the windswhistled and made a noise, and the seamen said to one another that itwould blow hard at night. It was then about two hours before sunset, andwe were passed by Dunkirk, and I think they said we were in sight ofOstend; but then the wind grew high and the sea swelled, and all thingslooked terrible, especially to us that understood nothing but just whatwe saw before us; in short, night came on, and very dark it was; thewind freshened and blew harder and harder, and about two hours withinnight it blew a terrible storm.

  I was not quite a stranger to the sea, having come from Rochelle toEngland when I was a child, and gone from London, by the River Thames,to France afterward, as I have said. But I began to be alarmed a littlewith the terrible clamour of the men over my head, for I had never beenin a storm, and so had never seen the like, or heard it; and onceoffering to look out at the door of the steerage, as they called it, itstruck me with such horror (the darkness, the fierceness of the wind,the dreadful height of the waves, and the hurry the Dutch sailors werein, whose language I did not understand one word of, neither when theycursed or when they prayed); I say, all these things together filled mewith terror, and, in short, I began to be very much frighted.

  When I was come back into the great cabin, there sat Amy, who was verysea-sick, and I had a little before given her a sup of cordial waters tohelp her stomach. When Amy saw me come back and sit down withoutspeaking, for so I did, she looked two or three times up at me; at lastshe came running to me. "Dear madam," says she, "what is the matter?What makes you look so pale? Why, you an't well; what is the matter?" Isaid nothing still, but held up my hands two or three times. Amy doubledher importunities; upon that I said no more but, "Step to thesteerage-door, and look out, as I did;" so she went away immediately,and looked too, as I had bidden her; but the poor girl came back againin the greatest amazement and horror that ever I saw any poor creaturein, wringing her hands and crying out
she was undone! she was undone!she should be drowned! they were all lost! Thus she ran about the cabinlike a mad thing, and as perfectly out of her senses as any one in sucha case could be supposed to be. I was frighted myself, but when I sawthe girl in such a terrible agony, it brought me a little to myself, andI began to talk to her and put her in a little hope. I told her therewas many a ship in a storm that was not cast away, and I hoped we shouldnot be drowned; that it was true the storm was very dreadful, but I didnot see that the seamen were so much concerned as we were. And so Italked to her as well as I could, though my heart was full enough of it,as well as Amy's; and death began to stare in my face; ay, and somethingelse too--that is to say, conscience, and my mind was very muchdisturbed; but I had nobody to comfort me.

  But Amy being in so much worse a condition--that is to say, so much moreterrified at the storm than I was--I had