Moll Flanders

“Why,” says I, “should I be at a loss? First, I am not obliged to give them any reason: on the other hand, I may tell them I am married already, and stop there, and that will be a full stop too to him, for he can have no reason to ask one question after it.”

“Ay,” says he, “but the whole house will tease you about that, and if you deny them positively, they will be disobliged at you, and suspicious besides.”

“Why,” says I, “what can I do? What would you have me do? I was in strait enough before, as I told you, and acquainted you with the circumstances, that I might have your advice.”

“My dear,” says he, “I have been considering very much upon it, you may be sure, and though the advice has many mortifications in it to me, and may at first seem strange to you, yet all things considered, I see no better way for you, than to let him go on; and if you find him hearty and in earnest, marry him.”

I gave him a look full of horror at those words, and turning pale as death, was at the very point of sinking down out of the chair I sat in: when giving a start, “My dear,” says he aloud, “what’s the matter with you? Where are you agoing?”—and a great many such things; and with jogging and calling to me, fetched me a little to myself, though it was a good while before I fully recovered my senses, and was not able to speak for several minutes.

When I was fully recovered, he began again: “My dear,” says he, “I would have you consider seriously of it: you may see plainly how the family stand in this case, and they would be stark mad if it was my case, as it is my brother’s, and for ought I see, it would be my ruin and yours too.”

“Ay!” says I, still speaking angrily; “are all your protestations and vows to be shaken by the dislike of the family? Did I not always object that to you, and you made a light thing of it, as what you were above, and would not value; and is it come to this now? Is this your faith and honour, your love, and the solidity of your promises?”

He continued perfectly calm, notwithstanding all my reproaches, and I was not sparing of them at all; but he replied at last, “My dear, I have not broken one promise with you yet; I did tell you I would marry you when I was come to my estate; but you see my father is a hail, healthy man, and may live these thirty years still, and not be older than several are round us in the town; and you never proposed my marrying you sooner, because you know it might be my ruin; and as to the rest, I have not failed you in anything.”

I could not deny a word of this. “But why then,” says I, “can you persuade me to such a horrid step, as leaving you, since you have not left me? Will you allow no affection, no love on my side, where there has been so much on your side? Have I made you no returns?

Have I given no testimony of my sincerity, and of my passion? Are the sacrifices I have made of honour and modesty to you, no proof of my being tied to you in bonds too strong to be broken?”

“But here, my dear,” says he, “you may come into a safe station, and appear with honour, and the remembrance of what we have done may be wrapped up in an eternal silence, as if it had never happened; you shall always have my sincere affection, only then it shall be honest, and perfectly just to my brother; you shall be my dear sister, as now you are my dear—” and there he stopped.

“Your dear whore,” says I, “you would have said, and you might as well have said it; but I understand you: however, I desire you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and the many hours’ pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest woman; that I was your wife intentionally, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had passed between us, as if we had been publicly wedded by the parson of the parish; you know these have been your own words to me.”

I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what follows; he stood stock still for a while, and said nothing, and I went on thus:

“You cannot,” says I, “without the highest injustice believe that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask you what foundation have I given for such a suggestion. If then I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if I have been persuaded to believe that I am really your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those arguments, and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? Is it in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,” said I, “depend upon it, it is impossible, and whatever the change on your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it is come that unhappy length, be your whore than your brother’s wife.”

He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his view in the affair before me, that he had thought of the other as a remedy, only that he thought this would not be an entire parting us, but we might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in. That he durst say, I could not apprehend anything from him, as to betraying a secret, which could not but be the destruction of us both if it came out: that he had but one question to ask of me, that could lie in the way of it, and if that question was answered, he could not but think still it was the only step I could take.

I guessed at his question presently, namely, whether I was not with child? As to that, I told him, he need not be concerned about it, for I was not with child.

“Why then, my dear,” says he, “we have no time to talk farther now; consider of it, I cannot but be of the opinion still, that it will be the best course you can take.” And with this, he took his leave, and the more hastily too, his mother and sisters ringing at the gate just at the moment he had risen up to go.

He left me in the utmost confusion of thought; and he easily perceived it the next day, and all the rest of the week, but he had no opportunity to come at me all that week, till the Sunday after, when I being indisposed did not go to Church, and he making some excuse stayed at home.

And now he had me an hour and a half again by myself, and we fell into the same arguments all over again; at last I asked him warmly, “What opinion he must have of my modesty, that he could suppose, I should so much as entertain a thought of lying with two brothers?” And assured him it could never be. I added, “If he was to tell me that he would never see me more, than which nothing but death could be more terrible, yet I could never entertain a thought so dishonourable to myself, and so base to him; and therefore, I entreated him, if he had one grain of respect or affection left for me, that he would speak no more of it to me, or that he would pull his sword out and kill me.”

He appeared surprised at my obstinacy, as he called it, told me I was unkind to myself, and unkind to him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both, but that he did not see any other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he thought it the more unkind; but that if he must say no more of it to me, he added with an unusual coldness, that he did not know anything else we had to talk of; and so he rose up to take his leave; I rose up too, as if with the same indifference, but when he came to give me, as it were, a parting kiss, I burst out into such a passion of crying, that though I would have spoke, I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him the adieu, but cried vehemently.

He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great many kind things to me, but still urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting, that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but letting me plainly see that he would decline me in the main point; nay, even as a mistress; making it a point of honour not to lie with the woman, that for ought he knew, might one time or other come to be his brother’s wife.

The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction, as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction; and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my husband: these things oppressed my mind so much, that, in short, the agonies of my mind threw me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family expected my life.

I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious; but nothing lay so near me, as the fear that when I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it on one side, or other.

It was near five weeks that I kept my bed, and though the violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the physicians said two or three times they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out. After the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave their opinion, that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love: upon this, the whole house set upon me to press me to tell, whether I was in love or not, and with whom? But as I well might, I denied my being in love at all.

They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that had like to put the whole family in an uproar, they happened to be all at table, but the father; as for me I was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk, the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat to eat, bid her maid go up, and ask me if I would have any more; but the maid brought down word, I had not eaten half what she had sent me already.

“Alas,” says the old lady, “that poor girl; I am afraid she will never be well.”

“Well!” says the elder brother, “how should Mrs. Betty be well, they say she is in love?”

“I believe nothing of it,” says the old gentlewoman.

“I don’t know,” says the eldest sister, “what to say to it, they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing, too, that has turned the creature’s head, I believe, and who knows what possessions may follow such doing? For my part I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,” says the elder brother.

“Aye, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,” says Robin, “and that’s your mortification.”

“Well, well, that is not the question,” says his sister. “The girl is well enough, and she knows it, she need not be told of it to make her vain.”

“We don’t talk of her being vain,” says the elder brother, “but of her being in love; maybe she is in love with herself, it seems my sisters think so.”

“I would she was in love with me,” says Robin. “I’d quickly put her out of her pain.”

“What do you mean by that, son?” says the old lady, “how can you talk so?”

“Why, madam,” says Robin again, very honestly, “do you think I’d let the poor girl die for love, and of me too, that is so near at hand to be had.”

“Fie, brother,” says the second sister, “how can you talk so? Would you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?”

“Prithee, child,” says Robin. “Beauty’s a portion, and good humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion.”

So there was her mouth stopped.

“I find,” says the eldest sister, “if Betty is not in love, my brother is. I wonder he had not broke his mind to Betty. I warrant she won’t say ‘No’.”

“They that yield when they are asked,” said Robin, “are one step before them that were never asked to yield, and two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and that’s an answer to you, sister.”

This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things were come to that pass, that it was time the wench—meaning me—was out of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would consider of it, as soon as she could be removed.

Robin replied, that was for the master and mistress of the family, who were not to be taught by one that had so little judgement as his eldest sister.

It run up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family: I heard of it, and cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I complained to her, that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters; and I had more need to think of a coffin, than of being in love, and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody’s mistakes but my own.

She was sensible of the justice of what I said, but told me, since there had been such a clamour among them, and that her younger son talked after such a rattling way as he did, she desired I would be so faithful to her, as to answer her but one question sincerely.

I told her I would, and with the utmost plainness and sincerity. Why then the question was, “whether there was anything between her son Robert and me?”

I told her with all the protestations of sincerity that I was able to make, and as I might well do, that there was not, nor ever had been; I told her, that Mr. Robert had rattled and jested, as she knew it was his way, and that I took it always as I supposed he meant it, to be a wild airy way of discourse that had no signification in it; and assured her, that there was not the least tittle of what she understood by it between us; and that those who had suggested it, had done me a great deal of wrong, and Mr. Robert no service at all.

The old lady was fully satisfied, and kissed me, spoke cheerfully to me, and bid me take care of my health, and want for nothing, and so took her leave. But when she came down, she found the brother and all his sisters together by the ears; they were angry even to passion, at his upbraiding them with their being homely, and having never had any sweethearts, never having been asked the question, their being so forward as almost to ask first, and the like. He rallied them with Mrs. Betty; how pretty, how good humoured, how she sung better than they did, and danced better, and how much handsomer she was; and in doing this, he omitted no ill-natured thing that could vex them. The old lady came down in the height of it, and to stop it, told them the discourse she had had with me, and how I answered, that there was nothing between Mr. Robert and I.

“She’s wrong there,” says Robin, “for if there was not a great deal between us, we should be closer together than we are. I told her I loved her hugely,” says he, “but I could never make the jade believe I was in earnest.”

“I do not know how you should,” says his mother, “nobody in their senses could believe you were in earnest, to talk so to a poor girl, whose circumstances you know so well.”