Section 16

He seemed distasted a little at her talking as she did, as well as I, taking it, as I fancied he would, as something forward of her; but when he saw me give such an answer, he
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‘came immediately to himself. The next morning we talked of it again, when I found he was fully satisfied; and, smiling, said he hoped I would not want money, and not tell him of it, and that I had promised him otherwise. I told him I had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady’s talking so publicly the day before of what she had nothing to do with; but I supposed she wanted what I owed her, which was about eight guineas, which I had resolved to give her, and had given it her the same night.
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 expres- sions, he asked me if I would be very honest to him, and give a sinceré 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
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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 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 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 Bath, where was more help and better advice to be had.
He consented, and I brought him to Bath, which was
about fifteen miles, as I remember. Here he continued
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' 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 apprehension 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 betweenus. 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 tender- ness 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 in- creased. From Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which was merely a journey of pleasure, to take the air; and here
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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 lie 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 Bath, where, as he had opportunity to come to me when he would, he often repeated the same moderation, and I fre- quently lay with him, and although all the familiarities of
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‘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 drunk, 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
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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 every- thing, 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 she 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 —
HEIGHT OF PROSPERITY __ ror
| 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 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 maid-servant with me, away I went for London.