Moll Flanders. Даниэль Дефо
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that it was enough that the men could insult us that had but little money, but if she suffered such an affront to pass upon her without resenting it she would be rendered low-prized upon all occasions, that a woman can never want an opportunity to be revenged of a man that has used her ill, and that there were ways enough to humble such a fellow as that or else certainly women were the most unhappy creatures in the world.
She was very well pleased with the discourse, and told me seriously that she would be very glad to make him sensible of her resentment, and either to bring him on again, or have the satisfaction of her revenge being as public as possible.
I told her that if she would take my advice, I would tell her how she should obtain her wishes in both those things; and that I would engage I would bring the man to her door again and make him beg to be let in. She smiled at that, and soon let me see that if he came to her door, her resentment was not so great to let him stand long there.
However, she listened very willingly to my offer of advice; so I told her that the first thing she ought to do was a piece of justice to herself; namely, that whereas he had reported among the ladies that he had left her, and pretended to give the advantage of the negative to himself, she should take care to have it well spread among the women, which she could not fail of an opportunity to do, that she had enquired into his circumstances and found he was not the man he pretended to be. “Let them be told, too, madam,” said I, “that you found he was not the man you expected and that you thought it was not safe to meddle with him, that you heard he was of an ill temper, and that he boasted how he had used the women ill upon many occasions, and that particularly he was debauched in his morals, et cetera.” The last of which indeed had some truth in it; but I did not find that she seemed to like him much the worse for that part.
She came most readily into all this, and immediately she went to work to find instruments she had very little difficulty in the search; for telling her story in general to a couple of her gossips, it was the chat of the tea table all over that part of the town, and I met with it wherever I visited: also, as it was known that I was acquainted with the young lady herself, my opinion was asked very often, and I confirmed it with all the necessary aggravations, and set out his character in the blackest colours; and as a piece of secret intelligence, I added what the gossips knew nothing of, namely, that I had heard he was in very bad circumstances; that he was under a necessity of a fortune to support his interest with the owners of the ship he commanded: that his own part was not paid for, and if it was not paid quickly, his owners would put him out of the ship, and his chief mate was likely to command it, who offered to buy that part which the captain had promised to take.
I added, for I was heartily piqued at the rogue as I called him, that I had heard a rumour too, that he had a wife alive at Plymouth and another in the West Indies, a thing which they all knew was not uncommon for such kind of gentlemen.
This worked as we both desired it, for presently the young lady at the next door, who had a father and mother that governed both her and her fortune, was shut up, and her father forbid him the house: also in one place more the woman had the courage, however strange it was, to say “No”; and he could try nowhere but he was reproached with his pride, and that he pretended not to give the women leave to enquire into his character, and the like.
By this time he began to be sensible of his mistake; and seeing all the women on that side the water alarmed, he went over to Ratcliff and got access to some of the ladies there; but though the young women there too were according to the fate of the day pretty willing to be asked, yet such was his ill luck, that his character followed him over the water; so that though he might have had wives enough, yet it did not happen among the women that had good fortunes, which was what he wanted.
But this was not all; she very ingeniously managed another thing herself, for she got a young gentleman who was a relation to come and visit her two or three times a week in a very fine chariot and good liveries, and her two agents and I also presently spread a report all over that this gentleman came to court her; that he was a gentleman of a thousand pounds a year, and that he was fallen in love with her, and that she was going to her aunt’s in the City, because it was inconvenient for the gentleman to come to her with his coach to Rotherhithe, the streets being so narrow and difficult.
This took immediately, the captain was laughed at in all companies, and was ready to hang himself; he tried all the ways possible to come at her again, and wrote the most passionate letters to her in the world, and, in short, by great application, obtained leave to wait on her again, as he said, only to clear his reputation.
At this meeting she had her full revenge of him; for she told him she wondered what he took her to be, that she should admit any man to a treaty of so much consequence as that of marriage, without enquiring into his circumstances; that if he thought she was to be huffed into wedlock, and that she was in the same circumstances which her neighbours might be in, namely, to take up with the first good Christian that came, he was mistaken; that in a word his character was really bad, or he was very ill beholden to his neighbours; and that unless he could clear up some points in which she had justly been prejudiced she had no more to say to him, but give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was not afraid to say “No” either to him, or any man else.
With that she told him what she had heard, or rather raised herself by my means, of his character; his not having paid for the part he pretended to own of the ship he commanded; of the resolution of his owners to put him out of the command, and to put his mate in his stead; and of the scandal raised on his morals; his having been reproached with such and such women, and his having a wife at Plymouth and another in the West Indies, and the like; and she asked him whether she had not good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse him and to insist upon having satisfaction in points so significant as they were?
He was so confounded at her discourse that he could not answer a word, and she began to believe that all was true by his disorder, though she knew that she had been the raiser of these reports herself.
After some time he recovered a little, and from that time was the most humble, modest, and importunate man alive in his courtship.
She asked him if he thought she was so at her last shift that she could or ought to bear such treatment, and if he did not see that she did not want those who thought it worth their while to come farther to her than he did, meaning the gentleman whom she had brought to visit her by way of sham.
She brought him by these tricks to submit to all possible measures to satisfy her, as well of his circumstances as of his behaviour. He brought her undeniable evidence of his having paid for his part of the ship; he brought her certificates from his owners that the report of their intending to remove him from the command of the ship was false and groundless; in short, he was quite the reverse of what he was before.
Thus I convinced her that if the men made their advantage of our sex in the affair of marriage upon the supposition of there being such a choice to be had, and of the women being so easy, it was only owing to this, that the women wanted courage to maintain their ground, and that according to my Lord Rochester
“A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can
Revenge herself on her undoer, man.”
After these things this young lady played her part so well, that though she resolved to have him, and that indeed having him was the main bent of her design, yet she made his obtaining her to be to him the most difficult thing in the world; and this she did, not by a haughty reserved carriage, but by a just policy, playing back upon him his own game; for as he pretended by a kind of lofty carriage to place himself above the occasion of a character, she broke with him upon that subject, and at the same time that she made him submit to all possible enquiry after his affairs, she apparently shut the door against his looking into her own.
It was enough to him to obtain her for a wife; as to what she had, she told him plainly that as he knew her circumstances it was but just she should know his; and though at the same time he had only known her circumstances by common fame, yet he had made so many protestations of his passion for her that he could ask no more but her hand to his grand request, and the like ramble according to the custom of lovers: in short, he left himself no room to ask any more questions about her estate, and she took the