The Fortunate Mistress Part 11

I had conceived some hope that, if they saw land, we should be delivered; and I told her she did not understand things of that nature; that she might be sure if they saw land they would go directly towards it, and would make into some harbour; but it was, as Amy said, a frightful distance to it. The land looked like clouds, and the sea went as high as mountains, so that no hope appeared in the seeing the land, but we were in fear of foundering before we could reach it. This made Amy so desponding still; but as the wind, which blew from the east, or that way, drove us furiously towards the land, so when, about half-an-hour after, I stepped to the steerage-door and looked out, I saw the land much nearer than Amy represented it; so I went in and encouraged Amy again, and indeed was encouraged myself.

In about an hour, or something more, we saw, to our infinite satisfaction, the open harbour of Harwich, and the vessel standing directly towards it, and in a few minutes more the ship was in smooth water, to our inexpressible comfort; and thus I had, though against my will and contrary to my true interest, what I wished for, to be driven away to England, though it was by a storm.

Nor did this incident do either Amy or me much service, for, the danger being over, the fears of death vanished with it; ay, and our fear of what was beyond death also. Our sense of the life we had lived went off, and with our return to life our wicked taste of life returned, and we were both the same as before, if not worse. So certain is it that the repentance which is brought about by the mere apprehensions of death wears off as those apprehensions wear off, and deathbed repentance, or storm repentance, which is much the same, is seldom true.

However, I do not tell you that this was all at once neither; the fright we had at sea lasted a little while afterwards; at least the impression was not quite blown off as soon as the storm; especially poor Amy. As soon as she set her foot on sh.o.r.e she fell flat upon the ground and kissed it, and gave G.o.d thanks for her deliverance from the sea; and turning to me when she got up, "I hope, madam," says she, "you will never go upon the sea again."

I know not what ailed me, not I; but Amy was much more penitent at sea, and much more sensible of her deliverance when she landed and was safe, than I was. I was in a kind of stupidity, I know not well what to call it; I had a mind full of horror in the time of the storm, and saw death before me as plainly as Amy, but my thoughts got no vent, as Amy's did.

I had a silent, sullen kind of grief, which could not break out either in words or tears, and which was therefore much the worse to bear.

I had a terror upon me for my wicked life past, and firmly believed I was going to the bottom, launching into death, where I was to give an account of all my past actions; and in this state, and on that account, I looked back upon my wickedness with abhorrence, as I have said above, but I had no sense of repentance from the true motive of repentance; I saw nothing of the corruption of nature, the sin of my life, as an offence against G.o.d, as a thing odious to the holiness of His being, as abusing His mercy and despising His goodness. In short, I had no thorough effectual repentance, no sight of my sins in their proper shape, no view of a Redeemer, or hope in Him. I had only such a repentance as a criminal has at the place of execution, who is sorry, not that he has committed the crime, as it is a crime, but sorry that he is to be hanged for it.

It is true Amy's repentance wore off too, as well as mine, but not so soon. However, we were both very grave for a time.

As soon as we could get a boat from the town we went on sh.o.r.e, and immediately went to a public-house in the town of Harwich, where we were to consider seriously what was to be done, and whether we should go up to London or stay till the ship was refitted, which, they said, would be a fortnight, and then go for Holland, as we intended, and as business required.

Reason directed that I should go to Holland, for there I had all my money to receive, and there I had persons of good reputation and character to apply to, having letters to them from the honest Dutch merchant at Paris, and they might perhaps give me a recommendation again to merchants in London, and so I should get acquaintance with some people of figure, which was what I loved; whereas now I knew not one creature in the whole city of London, or anywhere else, that I could go and make myself known to. Upon these considerations, I resolved to go to Holland, whatever came of it.

But Amy cried and trembled, and was ready to fall into fits, when I did but mention going upon the sea again, and begged of me not to go, or if I would go, that I would leave her behind, though I was to send her a-begging. The people in the inn laughed at her, and jested with her, asked her if she had any sins to confess that she was ashamed should be heard of, and that she was troubled with an evil conscience; told her, if she came to sea, and to be in a storm, if she had lain with her master, she would certainly tell her mistress of it, and that it was a common thing for poor maids to confess all the young men they had lain with; that there was one poor girl that went over with her mistress, whose husband was a ......r, in ......, in the city of London, who confessed, in the terror of a storm, that she had lain with her master, and all the apprentices, so often, and in such-and-such places, and made the poor mistress, when she returned to London, fly at her husband, and make such a stir as was indeed the ruin of the whole family. Amy could bear all that well enough, for though she had indeed lain with her master, it was with her mistress's knowledge and consent, and, which was worse, was her mistress's own doing. I record it to the reproach of my own vice, and to expose the excesses of such wickedness as they deserve to be exposed.

I thought Amy's fear would have been over by that time the ship would be gotten ready, but I found the girl was rather worse and worse; and when I came to the point that we must go on board or lose the pa.s.sage, Amy was so terrified that she fell into fits; so the ship went away without us.

But my going being absolutely necessary, as above, I was obliged to go in the packet-boat some time after, and leave Amy behind at Harwich, but with directions to go to London and stay there to receive letters and orders from me what to do. Now I was become, from a lady of pleasure, a woman of business, and of great business too, I a.s.sure you.

I got me a servant at Harwich to go over with me, who had been at Rotterdam, knew the place, and spoke the language, which was a great help to me, and away I went. I had a very quick pa.s.sage and pleasant weather, and, coming to Rotterdam, soon found out the merchant to whom I was recommended, who received me with extraordinary respect. And first he acknowledged the accepted bill for four thousand pistoles, which he afterwards paid punctually; other bills that I had also payable at Amsterdam he procured to be received for me; and whereas one of the bills for one thousand two hundred crowns was protested at Amsterdam, he paid it me himself, for the honour of the indorser, as he called it, which was my friend the merchant at Paris.

There I entered into a negotiation by his means for my jewels, and he brought me several jewellers to look on them, and particularly one to value them, and to tell me what every particular was worth. This was a man who had great skill in jewels, but did not trade at that time, and he was desired by the gentleman that I was with to see that I might not be imposed upon.

All this work took me up near half a year, and by managing my business thus myself, and having large sums to do with, I became as expert in it as any she-merchant of them all. I had credit in the bank for a large sum of money, and bills and notes for much more.

After I had been here about three months, my maid Amy writes me word that she had received a letter from her friend, as she called him. That, by the way, was the prince's gentleman, that had been Amy's extraordinary friend indeed, for Amy owned to me he had lain with her a hundred times, that is to say, as often as he pleased, and perhaps in the eight years which that affair lasted it might be a great deal oftener. This was what she called her friend, who she corresponded with upon this particular subject, and, among other things, sent her this particular news, that my extraordinary friend, my real husband, who rode in the _gens d'armes_, was dead, that he was killed in a rencounter, as they call it, or accidental scuffle among the troopers; and so the jade congratulated me upon my being now a real free woman. "And now, madam,"

says she at the end of her letter, "you have nothing to do but to come hither and set up a coach and a good equipage, and if beauty and a good fortune won't make you a d.u.c.h.ess, nothing will." But I had not fixed my measures yet. I had no inclination to be a wife again. I had had such bad luck with my first husband, I hated the thoughts of it. I found that a wife is treated with indifference, a mistress with a strong pa.s.sion; a wife is looked upon as but an upper servant, a mistress is a sovereign; a wife must give up all she has, have every reserve she makes for herself be thought hard of, and be upbraided with her very pin-money, whereas a mistress makes the saying true, that what the man has is hers, and what she has is her own; the wife bears a thousand insults, and is forced to sit still and bear it, or part, and be undone; a mistress insulted helps herself immediately, and takes another.

These were my wicked arguments for whoring, for I never set against them the difference another way--I may say, every other way; how that, first, a wife appears boldly and honourably with her husband, lives at home, and possesses his house, his servants, his equipages, and has a right to them all, and to call them her own; entertains his friends, owns his children, and has the return of duty and affection from them, as they are here her own, and claims upon his estate, by the custom of England, if he dies and leaves her a widow.

The wh.o.r.e skulks about in lodgings, is visited in the dark, disowned upon all occasions before G.o.d and man; is maintained, indeed, for a time, but is certainly condemned to be abandoned at last, and left to the miseries of fate and her own just disaster. If she has any children, her endeavour is to get rid of them, and not maintain them; and if she lives, she is certain to see them all hate her, and be ashamed of her. While the vice rages, and the man is in the devil's hand, she has him; and while she has him, she makes a prey of him; but if he happens to fall sick, if any disaster befalls him, the cause of all lies upon her. He is sure to lay all his misfortunes at her door; and if once he comes to repentance, or makes but one step towards a reformation, he begins with her--leaves her, uses her as she deserves, hates her, abhors her, and sees her no more; and that with this never-failing addition, namely, that the more sincere and unfeigned his repentance is, the more earnestly he looks up, and the more effectually he looks in, the more his aversion to her increases, and he curses her from the bottom of his soul; nay, it must be a kind of excess of charity if he so much as wishes G.o.d may forgive her.

The opposite circ.u.mstances of a wife and wh.o.r.e are such and so many, and I have since seen the difference with such eyes, as I could dwell upon the subject a great while; but my business is history. I had a long scene of folly yet to run over. Perhaps the moral of all my story may bring me back again to this part, and if it does I shall speak of it fully.

While I continued in Holland I received several letters from my friend (so I had good reason to call him) the merchant in Paris, in which he gave me a farther account of the conduct of that rogue the Jew, and how he acted after I was gone; how impatient he was while the said merchant kept him in suspense, expecting me to come again; and how he raged when he found I came no more.

It seems, after he found I did not come, he found out by his unwearied inquiry where I had lived, and that I had been kept as a mistress by some great person; but he could never learn by who, except that he learnt the colour of his livery. In pursuit of this inquiry he guessed at the right person, but could not make it out, or offer any positive proof of it; but he found out the prince's gentleman, and talked so saucily to him of it that the gentleman treated him, as the French call it, _a coup de baton_--that is to say, caned him very severely, as he deserved; and that not satisfying him, or curing his insolence, he was met one night late upon the Pont Neuf, in Paris, by two men, who, m.u.f.fling him up in a great cloak, carried him into a more private place and cut off both his ears, telling him it was for talking impudently of his superiors; adding that he should take care to govern his tongue better and behave with more manners, or the next time they would cut his tongue out of his head.

This put a check to his sauciness that way; but he comes back to the merchant and threatened to begin a process against him for corresponding with me, and being accessory to the murder of the jeweller, &c.

The merchant found by his discourse that he supposed I was protected by the said Prince de ----; nay, the rogue said he was sure I was in his lodgings at Versailles, for he never had so much as the least intimation of the way I was really gone; but that I was there he was certain, and certain that the merchant was privy to it. The merchant bade him defiance. However, he gave him a great deal of trouble and put him to a great charge, and had like to have brought him in for a party to my escape; in which case he would have been obliged to have produced me, and that in the penalty of some capital sum of money.

But the merchant was too many for him another way, for he brought an information against him for a cheat; wherein laying down the whole fact, how he intended falsely to accuse the widow of the jeweller for the supposed murder of her husband; that he did it purely to get the jewels from her; and that he offered to bring him (the merchant) in, to be confederate with him, and to share the jewels between them; proving also his design to get the jewels into his hands, and then to have dropped the prosecution upon condition of my quitting the jewels to him. Upon this charge he got him laid by the heels; so he was sent to the Conciergerie--that is to say, to Bridewell--and the merchant cleared. He got out of jail in a little while, though not without the help of money, and continued teasing the merchant a long while, and at last threatening to a.s.sa.s.sinate and murder him. So the merchant, who, having buried his wife about two months before, was now a single man, and not knowing what such a villain might do, thought fit to quit Paris, and came away to Holland also.

It is most certain that, speaking of originals, I was the source and spring of all that trouble and vexation to this honest gentleman; and as it was afterwards in my power to have made him full satisfaction, and did not, I cannot say but I added ingrat.i.tude to all the rest of my follies; but of that I shall give a fuller account presently.

I was surprised one morning, when, being at the merchant's house who he had recommended me to in Rotterdam, and being busy in his counting-house, managing my bills, and preparing to write a letter to him to Paris, I heard a noise of horses at the door, which is not very common in a city where everybody pa.s.ses by water; but he had, it seems, ferried over the Maas from Willemstadt, and so came to the very door, and I, looking towards the door upon hearing the horses, saw a gentleman alight and come in at the gate. I knew nothing, and expected nothing, to be sure, of the person; but, as I say, was surprised, and indeed more than ordinarily surprised, when, coming nearer to me, I saw it was my merchant of Paris, my benefactor, and indeed my deliverer.

I confess it was an agreeable surprise to me, and I was exceeding glad to see him, who was so honourable and so kind to me, and who indeed had saved my life. As soon as he saw me he ran to me, took me in his arms, and kissed me with a freedom that he never offered to take with me before. "Dear Madam ----," says he, "I am glad to see you safe in this country; if you had stayed two days longer in Paris you had been undone." I was so glad to see him that I could not speak a good while, and I burst out into tears without speaking a word for a minute; but I recovered that disorder, and said, "The more, sir, is my obligation to you that saved my life;" and added, "I am glad to see you here, that I may consider how to balance an account in which I am so much your debtor." "You and I will adjust that matter easily," says he, "now we are so near together. Pray where do you lodge?" says he.

"In a very honest, good house," said I, "where that gentleman, your friend, recommended me," pointing to the merchant in whose house we then were.

"And where you may lodge too, sir," says the gentleman, "if it suits with your business and your other conveniency."

"With all my heart," says he. "Then, madam," adds he, turning to me, "I shall be near you, and have time to tell you a story which will be very long, and yet many ways very pleasant to you; how troublesome that devilish fellow, the Jew, has been to me on your account, and what a h.e.l.lish snare he had laid for you, if he could have found you."

"I shall have leisure too, sir," said I, "to tell you all my adventures since that, which have not been a few, I a.s.sure you."

In short, he took up his lodgings in the same house where I lodged, and the room he lay in opened, as he was wishing it would, just opposite to my lodging-room, so we could almost call out of bed to one another; and I was not at all shy of him on that score, for I believed him perfectly honest, and so indeed he was; and if he had not, that article was at present no part of my concern.

It was not till two or three days, and after his first hurries of business were over, that we began to enter into the history of our affairs on every side, but when we began, it took up all our conversation for almost a fortnight. First, I gave him a particular account of everything that happened material upon my voyage, and how we were driven into Harwich by a very terrible storm; how I had left my woman behind me, so frighted with the danger she had been in that she durst not venture to set her foot into a ship again any more, and that I had not come myself if the bills I had of him had not been payable in Holland; but that money, he might see, would make a woman go anywhere.

He seemed to laugh at all our womanish fears upon the occasion of the storm, telling me it was nothing but what was very ordinary in those seas, but that they had harbours on every coast so near that they were seldom in danger of being lost indeed. "For," says he, "if they cannot fetch one coast, they can always stand away for another, and run afore it," as he called it, "for one side or other." But when I came to tell him what a crazy ship it was, and how, even when they got into Harwich, and into smooth water, they were fain to run the ship on sh.o.r.e, or she would have sunk in the very harbour; and when I told him that when I looked out at the cabin-door I saw the Dutchmen, one upon his knees here, and another there, at their prayers, then indeed he acknowledged I had reason to be alarmed; but, smiling, he added, "But you, madam," says he, "are so good a lady, and so pious, you would but have gone to heaven a little the sooner; the difference had not been much to you."

I confess when he said this it made all the blood turn in my veins, and I thought I should have fainted. "Poor gentleman," thought I, "you know little of me. What would I give to be really what you really think me to be!" He perceived the disorder, but said nothing till I spoke; when, shaking my head, "Oh, sir!" said I, "death in any shape has some terror in it, but in the frightful figure of a storm at sea and a sinking ship, it comes with a double, a treble, and indeed an inexpressible horror; and if I were that saint you think me to be (which G.o.d knows I am not), it is still very dismal. I desire to die in a calm, if I can." He said a great many good things, and very prettily ordered his discourse between serious reflection and compliment, but I had too much guilt to relish it as it was meant, so I turned it off to something else, and talked of the necessity I had on me to come to Holland, but I wished myself safe on sh.o.r.e in England again.

He told me he was glad I had such an obligation upon me to come over into Holland, however, but hinted that he was so interested in my welfare, and, besides, had such further designs upon me, that if I had not so happily been found in Holland he was resolved to have gone to England to see me, and that it was one of the princ.i.p.al reasons of his leaving Paris.

I told him I was extremely obliged to him for so far interesting himself in my affairs, but that I had been so far his debtor before that I knew not how anything could increase the debt; for I owed my life to him already, and I could not be in debt for anything more valuable than that. He answered in the most obliging manner possible, that he would put it in my power to pay that debt, and all the obligations besides that ever he had, or should be able to lay upon me.

I began to understand him now, and to see plainly that he resolved to make love to me, but I would by no means seem to take the hint; and, besides, I knew that he had a wife with him in Paris; and I had, just then at least, no gust to any more intriguing. However, he surprised me into a sudden notice of the thing a little while after by saying something in his discourse that he did, as he said, in his wife's days.

I started at that word, "What mean you by that, sir?" said I. "Have you not a wife at Paris?" "No, madam, indeed," said he; "my wife died the beginning of September last," which, it seems, was but a little after I came away.

We lived in the same house all this while, and as we lodged not far off of one another, opportunities were not wanting of as near an acquaintance as we might desire; nor have such opportunities the least agency in vicious minds to bring to pa.s.s even what they might not intend at first.

However, though he courted so much at a distance, yet his pretensions were very honourable; and as I had before found him a most disinterested friend, and perfectly honest in his dealings, even when I trusted him with all I had, so now I found him strictly virtuous, till I made him otherwise myself, even almost whether he would or no, as you shall hear.

It was not long after our former discourse, when he repeated what he had insinuated before, namely, that he had yet a design to lay before me, which, if I would agree to his proposals, would more than balance all accounts between us. I told him I could not reasonably deny him anything; and except one thing, which I hoped and believed he would not think of, I should think myself very ungrateful if I did not do everything for him that lay in my power.

He told me what he should desire of me would be fully in my power to grant, or else he should be very unfriendly to offer it; and still all this while he declined making the proposal, as he called it, and so for that time we ended our discourse, turning it off to other things. So that, in short, I began to think he might have met with some disaster in his business, and might have come away from Paris in some discredit, or had had some blow on his affairs in general; and as really I had kindness enough to have parted with a good sum to have helped him, and was in grat.i.tude bound to have done so, he having so effectually saved to me all I had, so I resolved to make him the offer the first time I had an opportunity, which two or three days after offered itself, very much to my satisfaction.

He had told me at large, though on several occasions, the treatment he had met with from the Jew, and what expense he had put him to; how at length he had cast him, as above, and had recovered good damage of him, but that the rogue was unable to make him any considerable reparation.

He had told me also how the Prince de ----'s gentleman had resented his treatment of his master, and how he had caused him to be used upon the Pont Neuf, &c., as I have mentioned above, which I laughed at most heartily.

"It is a pity," said I, "that I should sit here and make that gentleman no amends; if you would direct me, sir," said I, "how to do it, I would make him a handsome present, and acknowledge the justice he had done to me, as well as to the prince, his master." He said he would do what I directed in it; so I told him I would send him five hundred crowns.

"That's too much," said he, "for you are but half interested in the usage of the Jew; it was on his master's account he corrected him, not on yours." Well, however, we were obliged to do nothing in it, for neither of us knew how to direct a letter to him, or to direct anybody to him; so I told him I would leave it till I came to England, for that my woman, Amy, corresponded with him, and that he had made love to her.

"Well, but, sir," said I, "as, in requital for his generous concern for me, I am careful to think of him, it is but just that what expense you have been obliged to be at, which was all on my account, should be repaid you; and therefore," said I, "let me see--." And there I paused, and began to reckon up what I had observed, from his own discourse, it had cost him in the several disputes and hearings which he had with that dog of a Jew, and I cast them up at something above 2130 crowns; so I pulled out some bills which I had upon a merchant in Amsterdam, and a particular account in bank, and was looking on them in order to give them to him; when he, seeing evidently what I was going about, interrupted me with some warmth, and told me he would have nothing of me on that account, and desired I would not pull out my bills and papers on that score; that he had not told me the story on that account, or with any such view; that it had been his misfortune first to bring that ugly rogue to me, which, though it was with a good design, yet he would punish himself with the expense he had been at for his being so unlucky to me; that I could not think so hard of him as to suppose he would take money of me, a widow, for serving me, and doing acts of kindness to me in a strange country, and in distress too; but he said he would repeat what he had said before, that he kept me for a deeper reckoning, and that, as he had told me, he would put me into a posture to even all that favour, as I called it, at once, so we should talk it over another time, and balance all together.

Now I expected it would come out, but still he put it off, as before, from whence I concluded it could not be matter of love, for that those things are not usually delayed in such a manner, and therefore it must be matter of money. Upon which thought I broke the silence, and told him, that as he knew I had, by obligation, more kindness for him than to deny any favour to him that I could grant, and that he seemed backward to mention his case, I begged leave of him to give me leave to ask him whether anything lay upon his mind with respect to his business and effects in the world; that if it did, he knew what I had in the world as well as I did, and that, if he wanted money, I would let him have any sum for his occasion, as far as five or six thousand pistoles, and he should pay me as his own affairs would permit; and that, if he never paid me, I would a.s.sure him that I would never give him any trouble for it.

He rose up with ceremony, and gave me thanks in terms that sufficiently told me he had been bred among people more polite and more courteous than is esteemed the ordinary usage of the Dutch; and after his compliment was over he came nearer to me, and told me he was obliged to a.s.sure me, though with repeated acknowledgments of my kind offer, that he was not in any want of money; that he had met with no uneasiness in any of his affairs--no, not of any kind whatever, except that of the loss of his wife and one of his children, which indeed had troubled him much; but that this was no part of what he had to offer me, and by granting which I should balance all obligations; but that, in short, it was that, seeing Providence had (as it were for that purpose) taken his wife from him, I would make up the loss to him; and with that he held me fast in his arms, and, kissing me, would not give me leave to say no, and hardly to breathe.