Chapter XII: Introduction (12)

It is a subject too surfeiting to entertain people with the beauty of a person they will never see. Let it suffice to tell them she was the most beautiful creature of her sex that I ever saw before or since; and it cannot be wondered if I was charmed with her the very first moment I saw her face. Her behaviour was likewise a beauty in itself, and was so extraordinary that I cannot say I can describe it.

The next day she was much more free than she was the first night, and I had so much conversation as to enter into particulars of things on both sides; also she gave me leave to come and see her house, which, however, I did not do under a fortnight or thereabouts, because I did not know how far she would dispense with the ceremony which it was necessary to keep up at the beginning of the mourning.

However, I came as a man that had business with her, relating to the ship her husband was dead out of, and the first time I came was admitted; and, in short, the first time I came I made love to her. She received that proposal with disdain. I cannot indeed say she treated me with any disrespect, but she said she abhorred the offer, and would hear no more of it. How I came to make such a proposal to her I scarce knew then, though it was very much my intention from the first.

In the meantime I inquired into her circumstances and her character, and heard nothing but what was very agreeable of them both; and, above all, I found she had the report of the best-humoured lady and the best-bred of all that part of the town; and now I thought I had found what I had so often wished for to make me happy and had twice miscarried in, and resolved not to miss her, if it was possible to obtain her.

It came indeed a little into my thoughts that I was a married man, and had a second wife alive, who, though she was false to me and a whore, yet I was not legally divorced from her, and that she was my wife for all that. But I soon got over that part; for, first, as she was a whore, and the marquis had confessed it to me, I was divorced in law, and I had a power to put her away. But having had the misfortune of fighting a duel, and being obliged to quit the country, I could not claim the legal process which was my right, and therefore might conclude myself as much divorced as if it had been actually done, and so that scruple vanished.

I suffered now two months to run without pressing my widow any more, only I kept a strict watch to find if any one else pretended to her. At the end of two months I visited her again, when I found she received me with more freedom, and we had no more sighs and sobs about the last husband; and though she would not let me press my former proposal so far as I thought I might have done, yet I found I had leave to come again, and it was the article of decency which she stood upon as much as anything; that I was not disagreeable to her, and that my using her so handsomely upon the road had given me a great advantage in her favour.

I went on gradually with her, and gave her leave to stand off for two months more. But then I told her the matter of decency, which was but a ceremony, was not to stand in competition with the matter of affection; and, in short, I could not bear any longer delay, but that, if she thought fit, we might marry privately; and, to cut the story short, as I did my courtship, in about five months I got her in the mind, and we were privately married, and that with so very exact a concealment that her maid, that was so instrumental in it, yet had no knowledge of it for near a month more.

I was now, not only in my imagination, but in reality, the most happy creature in the world, as I was so infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was indeed the best-humoured woman in the world, a most accomplished, beautiful creature indeed, perfectly well-bred, and had not one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without the least interruption for about six years.

But I, that was to be the most unhappy fellow alive in the article of matrimony, had at last a disappointment of the worst sort even here. I had three fine children by her, and in her time of lying-in with the last she got some cold, that she did not in a long time get off; and, in short, she grew very sickly. In being so continually ill and out of order, she very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors. Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, it goes on by little and little to their destruction. So in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that, till, in short, she could not live without them, and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking.

As I likened drink to the devil, in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. In short, my beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife grew a beast, a slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table—nay, in her own closet by herself, till, instead of a well-made, fine shape, she was as fat as a hostess; her fine face, bloated and blotched, had not so much as the ruins of the most beautiful person alive—nothing remained but a good eye; that indeed she held to the last. In short, she lost her beauty, her shape, her manners, and at last her virtue; and, giving herself up to drinking, killed herself in about a year and a half after she first began that cursed trade, in which time she twice was exposed in the most scandalous manner with a captain of a ship, who, like a villain, took the advantage of her being in drink and not knowing what she did. But it had this unhappy effect, that instead of her being ashamed and repenting of it when she came to herself, it hardened her in the crime, and she grew as void of modesty at last as of sobriety.

Oh, the power of intemperance! and how it encroaches on the best dispositions in the world; how it comes upon us gradually and insensibly; and what dismal effects it works upon our morals, changing the most virtuous, regular, well-instructed, and well-inclined tempers into worse than brutal! That was a good story, whether real or invented, of the devil tempting a young man to murder his father. No, he said; that was unnatural. “Why, then,” says the devil, “go and lie with your mother.” “No,” says he; “that is abominable.” “Well, then,” says the devil, “if you will do nothing else to oblige me, go and get drunk.” “Ay, ay,” says the fellow, “I will do that.” So he went and made himself drunk as a swine, and when he was drunk, he murdered his father and lay with his mother.

Never was a woman more virtuous, modest, chaste, sober; she never so much as desired to drink any thing strong; it was with the greatest entreaty that I could prevail with her to drink a glass or two of wine, and rarely, if ever, above one or two at a time; even in company she had no inclination to it. Not an immodest word ever came out of her mouth, nor would she suffer it in any one else in her hearing without resentment and abhorrence. But upon that weakness and illness after her last lying-in, as above, the nurse pressed her, whenever she found herself faint and a sinking of her spirits, to take this cordial and that dram, to keep up her spirits, till it became necessary even to keep her alive, and gradually increased to a habit, so that it was no longer her physic but her food. Her appetite sunk and went quite away, and she ate little or nothing, but came at last to such a dreadful height that, as I have said, she would be drunk in her own dressing-room by eleven o’clock in the morning, and, in short, at last was never sober.

In this life of hellish excess, as I have said, she lost all that was before so valuable in her, and a villain, if it be proper to call a man who was really a gentleman by such a name, who was an intimate acquaintance, coming to pretend a visit to her, made her and her maid so drunk together that he lay with them both; with the mistress, the maid being in the room, and with the maid, the mistress being in the room; after which he, it seems, took the like liberty with them both as often as he thought fit, till the wench, being with child, discovered it for herself, and for her mistress too. Let any one judge what was my case now. I, that for six years thought myself the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable, distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her so well, and was so sensible of the disaster of her drinking being the occasion of it all, that I could not resent it to such a degree as I had done in her predecessor; but I pitied her heartily. However, I put away all her servants, and almost locked her up; that is to say, I set new people over her, who would not suffer any one to come near her without my knowledge.

But what to do with the villain that had thus abused both her and me, that was the question that remained. To fight him upon equal terms, I thought, was a little hard; that after a man had treated me as he had done, he deserved no fair play for his life. So I resolved to wait for him in Stepney fields, and which way he often came home pretty late, and pistol him in the dark, and, if possible, to let him know what I killed him for before I did it. But when I came to consider of this, it shocked my temper too as well as principle, and I could not be a murderer, whatever else I could be, or whatever I was provoked to be.

However, I resolved, on the other hand, that I would severely correct him for what he had done, and it was not long before I had an opportunity; for, hearing one morning that he was walking across the fields from Stepney to Shadwell, which way I knew he often went, I waited for his coming home again, and fairly met him.

I had not many words with him, but told him I had long looked for him; that he knew the villainy he had been guilty of in my family, and he could not believe, since he knew also that I was fully informed of it, but that I must be a great coward, as well as a cuckold, or that I would resent it, and that it was now a very proper time to call him to an account for it; and therefore bade him, if he durst show his face to what he had done, and defend the name of a captain of a man-of-war, as they said he had been, to draw.

He seemed surprised at the thing, and began to parley, and would lessen the crime of it; but I told him it was not a time to talk that way, since he could not deny the fact; and to lessen the crime was to lay it the more upon the woman, who, I was sure, if he had not first debauched with wine, he could never have brought to the rest; and, seeing he refused to draw, I knocked him down with my cane at one blow, and I would not strike him again while he lay on the ground, but waited to see him recover a little; for I saw plainly he was not killed. In a few minutes he came to himself again, and then I took him fast by one wrist, and caned him as severely as I was able, and as long as I could hold it for want of breath, but forbore his head, because I was resolved he should feel it. In this condition at last he begged for mercy, but I was deaf to all pity a great while, till he roared out like a boy soundly whipped. Then I took his sword from him and broke it before his face, and left him on the ground, giving him two or three kicks on the backside, and bade him go and take the law of me if he thought fit.

I had now as much satisfaction as indeed could be taken of a coward, and had no more to say to him; but as I knew it would make a great noise about the town, I immediately removed my family, and, that I might be perfectly concealed, went into the north of England, and lived in a little town called ——, not far from Lancaster, where I lived retired, and was no more heard of for about two years. My wife, though more confined than she used to be, and so kept up from the lewd part which, I believe, in the intervals of her intemperance, she was truly ashamed of and abhorred, yet retained the drinking part, which becoming, as I have said, necessary for her subsistence, she soon ruined her health, and in about a year and a half after my removal into the north she died.

Thus I was once more a free man, and, as one would think, should by this time have been fully satisfied that matrimony was not appointed to be a state of felicity to me.

I should have mentioned that the villain of a captain who I had drubbed, as above, pretended to make a great stir about my assaulting him on the highway, and that I had fallen upon him with three ruffians, with an intent to murder him; and this began to obtain belief among the people in the neighbourhood. I sent him word of so much of it as I had heard, and told him I hoped it did not come from his own mouth; but if it did, I expected he would publicly disown it, he himself declaring he knew it to be false, or else I should be forced to act the same thing over again, till I had disciplined him into better manners; and that he might be assured that if he continued to pretend that I had anybody with me when I caned him, I would publish the whole story in print, and, besides that, would cane him again wherever I met him, and as often as I met him, till he thought fit to defend himself with his sword like a gentleman.

He gave me no answer to this letter; and the satisfaction I had for that was, that I gave twenty or thirty copies of it about among the neighbours, which made it as public as if I had printed it (that is, as to his acquaintance and mine), and made him so hissed at and hated that he was obliged to remove into some other part of the town—whither I did not inquire.

My wife being now dead, I knew not what course to take in the world, and I grew so disconsolate and discouraged that I was next door to being distempered, and sometimes, indeed, I thought myself a little touched in my head. But it proved nothing but vapours and the vexation of this affair, and in about a year’s time, or thereabouts, it wore off again.

I had rambled up and down in a most discontented, unsettled posture after this, I say, about a year, and then I considered I had three innocent children, and I could take no care of them, and that I must either go away and leave them to the wide world or settle here and get somebody to look after them, and that better a mother-in-law than no mother; for to live such a wandering life it would not do; so I resolved I would marry as anything offered, though it was mean, and the meaner the better. I concluded my next wife should be only taken as an upper servant; that is to say, a nurse to my children and housekeeper to myself; “and let her be whore or honest woman,” said I, “as she likes best; I am resolved I will not much concern myself about that;” for I was now one desperate, that valued not how things went.

In this careless, and indeed rash, foolish humour, I talked to myself thus: “If I marry an honest woman, my children will be taken care of; if she be a slut and abuses me, as I see everybody does, I will kidnap her and send her to Virginia, to my plantations there, and there she shall work hard enough and fare hard enough to keep her chaste, I’ll warrant her.”

I knew well enough at first that these were mad, hare-brained notions, and I thought no more of being serious in them than I thought of being a man in the moon; but I know not how it happened to me, I reasoned and talked to myself in this wild manner so long that I brought myself to be seriously desperate; that is, to resolve upon another marriage, with all the suppositions of unhappiness that could be imagined to fall out.

And yet even this rash resolution of my senses did not come presently to action; for I was half a year after this before I fixed upon anything. At last, as he that seeks mischief shall certainly find it, so it was with me. There happened to be a young, or rather a middle-aged, woman in the next town, which was but a half-mile off, who usually was at my house and among my children every day when the weather was tolerable; and though she came but merely as a neighbour, and to see us, yet she was always helpful in directing and ordering things for them, and mighty handy about them, as well before my wife died as after.

Her father was one that I employed often to go to Liverpool, and sometimes to Whitehaven, and do business for me; for having, as it were, settled myself in the northern parts of England, I had ordered part of my effects to be shipped, as occasion of shipping offered, to either of those two towns, to which, the war continuing very sharp, it was safer coming, as to privateers, than about through the Channel to London.

I took a mighty fancy at last that this girl would answer my end, particularly that I saw she was mighty useful among the children; so, on the other hand, the children loved her very well, and I resolved to love her too, flattering myself mightily, that as I had married two gentlewomen and one citizen, and they proved all three whores, I should now find what I wanted in an innocent country wench.

I took up a world of time in considering of this matter; indeed scarce any of my matches were done without very mature consideration. The second was the worst in that article, but in this I thought of it, I believe, four months most seriously before I resolved, and that very prudence spoiled the whole thing. However, at last being resolved, I took Mrs. Margaret one day as she passed by my parlour-door, called her in, and told her I wanted to speak with her. She came readily in, but blushed mightily when I bade her sit down in a chair just by me.

I used no great ceremony with her, but told her that I had observed she had been mighty kind to my children, and was very tender to them, and that they all loved her, and that, if she and I could agree about it, I intended to make her their mother, if she was not engaged to somebody else. The girl sat still and said never a word till I said those words, “if she was not engaged to somebody else;” when she seemed struck. However, I took no notice of it, other than this, “Look ye, Moggy,” said I (so they call them in the country), “if you have promised yourself, you must tell me.” For we all knew that a young fellow, a good clergyman’s wicked son, had hung about her a great while, two or three years, and made love to her, but could never get the girl in the mind, it seems, to have him.

She knew I was not ignorant of it, and therefore, after her first surprise was over, she told me Mr. —— had, as I knew, often come after her, but she had never promised him anything, and had for several years refused him; her father always telling her that he was a wicked fellow, and that he would be her ruin if she had him.

“Well, Moggy, then,” says I, “what dost say to me? Art thou free to make me a wife?” She blushed and looked down upon the ground, and would not speak a good while; but when I pressed her to tell me, she looked up, and said she supposed I was but jesting with her. Well, I got over that, and told her I was in very good earnest with her, and I took her for a sober, honest, modest girl, and, as I said, one that my children loved mighty well, and I was in earnest with her; if she would give me her consent, I would give her my word that I would have her, and we would be married to-morrow morning. She looked up again at that, and smiled a little, and said no, that was too soon too to say yes. She hoped I would give her some time to consider of it, and to talk with her father about it.

I told her she needed not much time to consider about it; but, however, I would give her till to-morrow morning, which was a great while. By this time I had kissed Moggy two or three times, and she began to be freer with me; and when I pressed her to marry me the next morning, she laughed, and told me it was not lucky to be married in her old clothes.

I stopped her mouth presently with that, and told her she should not be married in her old clothes, for I would give her some new. “Ay, it may be afterwards,” says Moggy, and laughed again. “No, just now,” says I. “Come along with me, Moggy;” so I carried her upstairs into my wife’s room that was, and showed her a new morning-gown of my wife’s, that she had never worn above two or three times, and several other fine things. “Look you there, Moggy,” says I, “there is a wedding-gown for you; give me your hand now that you will have me to-morrow morning. And as to your father, you know he has gone to Liverpool on my business, but I will answer for it he shall not be angry when he comes home to call his master son-in-law; and I ask him no portion. Therefore give me thy hand for it, Moggy,” says I very merrily to her, and kissed her again; and the girl gave me her hand, and very pleasantly too, and I was mightily pleased with it, I assure you.

There lived about three doors from us an ancient gentleman who passed for a doctor of physic, but who was really a Romish priest in orders, as there are many in that part of the country; and in the evening I sent to speak with him. He knew that I understood his profession, and that I had lived in popish countries, and, in a word, believed me a Roman too, for I was such abroad. When he came to me I told him the occasion for which I sent for him, and that it was to be to-morrow morning. He readily told me, if I would come and see him in the evening, and bring Moggy with me, he would marry us in his own study, and that it was rather more private to do it in the evening than in the morning. So I called Moggy again to me, and told her, since she and I had agreed the matter for to-morrow, it was as well to be done overnight, and told her what the doctor had said.

Moggy blushed again, and said she must go home first, that she could not be ready before to-morrow. “Look ye, Moggy,” says I, “you are my wife now, and you shall never go away from me a maid. I know what you mean; you would go home to shift you. Come, Moggy,” says I, “come along with me again upstairs.” So I carried her to a chest of linen, where were several new shifts of my last wife’s, which she had never worn at all, and some that had been worn.

“There is a clean smock for you, Moggy,” says I, “and to-morrow you shall have all the rest.” When I had done this, “Now, Moggy,” says I, “go and dress you;” so I locked her in, and went downstairs. “Knock,” says I, “when you are dressed.”

After some time Moggy did not knock, but down she came into my room, completely dressed, for there were several other things that I bade her take, and the clothes fitted her as if they had been made for her. It seems she slipped the lock back.

“Well, Moggy,” says I, “now you see you shan’t be married in your old clothes;” so I took her in my arms and kissed her; and well pleased I was as ever I was in my life, or with anything I ever did in my life. As soon as it was dark Moggy slipped away beforehand, as the doctor and I had agreed, to the old gentleman’s housekeeper, and I came in about half-an-hour after; and there we were married in the doctor’s study—that is to say, in his oratory or chapel, a little room within his study—and we stayed and supped with him afterwards.

Then, after a short stay more, I went home first, because I would send the children all to bed, and the other servants out of the way; and Moggy came some time after, and so we lay together that night. The next morning I let all the family know that Moggy was my wife, and my three children were rejoiced at it to the last degree. And now I was a married man a fourth time; and, in short, I was really more happy in this plain country girl than with any of all the wives I had had. She was not young, being about thirty-three, but she brought me a son the first year. She was very pretty, well-shaped, and of a merry, cheerful disposition, but not a beauty. She was an admirable family manager, loved my former children, and used them not at all the worse for having some of her own. In a word, she made me an excellent wife, but lived with me but four years, and died of a hurt she got of a fall while she was with child, and in her I had a very great loss indeed.

And yet such was my fate in wives, that, after all the blushing and backwardness of Mrs. Moggy at first, Mrs. Moggy had, it seems, made a slip in her younger days, and was got with child ten years before, by a gentleman of a great estate in that country, who promised her marriage, and afterwards deserted her. But as that had happened long before I came into the country, and the child was dead and forgotten, the people were so good to her, and so kind to me, that, hearing I had married her, nobody ever spoke of it; neither did I ever hear of it or suspect it till after she was in her grave, and then it was of small consequence to me one way or other; and she was a faithful, virtuous, obliging wife to me. I had very severe affliction indeed while she lived with me; for the smallpox, a frightful distemper in that country, broke into my family, and carried off three of my children and a maid-servant; so that I had only one of my former wife’s, and one by my Moggy, the first a son, the last a daughter.

While these things were in agitation came on the invasion of the Scots and the fight at Preston; and I have cause to bless the memory of my Moggy; for I was all on fire on that side, and just going away with horse and arms to join the Lord Derwentwater. But Moggy begged me off (as I may call it), and hung about me so with her tears and importunities that I sat still and looked on; for which I had reason to be thankful.

I was really a sorrowful father, and the loss of my children stuck close to me; but the loss of my wife stuck closer to me than all the rest. Nor was my grief lessened or my kindest thoughts abated in the least by the account I heard of her former miscarriages, seeing they were so long before I knew her, and were not discovered by me or to me in her lifetime.

All these things put together made me very comfortless. And now I thought Heaven summoned me to retire to Virginia, the place, and, as I may say, the only place, I had been blessed at, or had met with anything that deserved the name of success in, and where, indeed, my affairs being in good hands, the plantations were increased to such a degree that some years my return here made up eight hundred pounds, and one year almost a thousand. So I resolved to leave my native country once more, and taking my son with me, and leaving Moggy’s daughter with her grandfather, I made him my principal agent, left him considerable in his hands for the maintenance of the child, and left my will in his hand, by which, if I died before I should otherwise provide for her, I left her £2000 portion, to be paid by my son out of the estate I had in Virginia, and the whole estate, if he died unmarried.

I embarked for Virginia in the year ——, at the town of Liverpool, and had a tolerable voyage thither, only that we met with a pirate ship, in the latitude of 48 degrees, who plundered us of every thing they could come at that was for their turn; that is to say, provisions, ammunition, small-arms, and money. But, to give the rogues their due, though they were the most abandoned wretches that were ever seen, they did not use us ill. And as to my loss, it was not considerable; the cargo which I had on board was in goods, and was of no use to them; nor could they come at those things without rummaging the whole ship, which they did not think worth their while.

I found all my affairs in very good order at Virginia, my plantations prodigiously increased, and my manager, who first inspired me with travelling thoughts, and made me master of any knowledge worth naming, received me with a transport of joy, after a ramble of four-and-twenty years.

I ought to remember it, to the encouragement of all faithful servants, that he gave me an account, which, I believe, was critically just, of the whole affairs of the plantations, each by themselves, and balanced in years, every year’s produce being fully transmitted, charges deducted, to my order at London.

I was exceedingly satisfied, as I had good reason indeed, with his management; and with his management, as much in its degree, of his own I can safely say it. He had improved a very large plantation of his own at the same time, which he began upon the foot of the country’s allowance of land and the encouragement he had from me.

When he had given me all this pleasing, agreeable account, you will not think it strange that I had a desire to see the plantations, and to view all the servants, which, in both the works, were upwards of three hundred; and as my tutor generally bought some every fleet that came from England, I had the mortification to see two or three of the Preston gentlemen there, who, being prisoners of war, were spared from the public execution, and sent over to that slavery, which to gentlemen must be worse than death.

I do not mention what I did or said relating to them here. I shall speak at large of it when the rest of them came over, which more nearly concerned me.

But one circumstance occurred to me here that equally surprised me and terrified me to the last degree. Looking over all the servants, as I say above, and viewing the plantations narrowly and frequently, I came one day by a place where some women were at work by themselves. I was seriously reflecting on the misery of human life, when I saw some of those poor wretches. Thought I, “They have perhaps lived gay and pleasantly in the world, notwithstanding, through a variety of distresses, they may have been brought to this; and if a body was to hear the history of some of them now, it would perhaps be as moving and as seasonable a sermon as any minister in the country could preach.”

While I was musing thus and looking at the women, on a sudden I heard a combustion among other of the women-servants, who were almost behind me, in the same work, and help was called loudly for, one of the women having swooned away. They said she would die immediately if something was not done to relieve her. I had nothing about me but a little bottle, which we always carried about us there with rum, to give any servant a dram that merited that favour; so I turned my horse and went up towards the place. But as the poor creature was lying flat on the ground, and the rest of the women-servants about her, I did not see her, but gave them the bottle, and they rubbed her temples with it, and, with much ado, brought her to life, and gave her a little to drink. But she could drink none of it, and was exceeding ill afterwards, so that she was carried to the infirmary—so they call it in the religious houses in Italy where the sick nuns and friars are carried; but here, in Virginia, I think they should call it the condemned hole, for it really was only a place just fit for people to die in, not a place to be cured in.

The sick woman refusing to drink, one of the women-servants brought me the bottle again, and I bade them drink it among them, which had almost set them together by the ears for the liquor, there being not enough to give every one a sup.

I went home to my house immediately, and reflecting on the miserable provision was wont to be made for poor servants when they were sick, I inquired of my manager if it was so still. He said he believed mine was better than any in the country; but he confessed it was but sad lodging. However, he said he would go and look after it immediately and see how it was.

He came to me again about an hour after, and told me the woman was very ill, and frighted with her condition; that she seemed to be very penitent for some things in her past life, which lay heavy upon her mind, believing she should die; that she asked him if there was no minister to comfort poor dying servants; and he told her that she knew they had no minister nearer than such a place, but that, if she lived till morning, he should be sent for. He told me, also, that he had removed her into a room where their chief workman used to lodge; that he had given her a pair of sheets, and everything he could that he thought she wanted, and had appointed another woman-servant to tend her and sit up with her.

“Well,” says I, “that’s well; for I cannot bear to have poor creatures lie and perish, by the mere hardship of the place they are in, when they are sick and want help. Besides,” said I, “some of those unfortunate creatures they call convicts may be peopie that have been tenderly brought up.” “Really, sir,” says he, “this poor creature, I always said, had something of a gentlewoman in her. I could see it by her behaviour, and I have heard the other women say that she lived very great once, and that she had fifteen hundred pound to her portion; and I dare say she has been a handsome woman in her time, and she has a hand as fine as a lady’s now, though it be tanned with the weather. I dare say she was never brought up to labour as she does here, and she says to the rest that it will kill her.”

“Truly,” says I, “it may be so, and that may be the reason that she faints under it;” and I added, “Is there nothing you can put her to within doors that may not be so laborious and expose her to so much heat and cold?” He told me yes, there was. He could set her to be the housekeeper, for the woman that lately was such was out of her time, and was married and turned planter. “Why, then, let her have it,” said I, “if she recovers; and in the meantime go,” said I, “and tell her so; perhaps the comfort of it may help to restore her.”

He did so, and with that, taking good care of her, and giving her good warm diet, the woman recovered, and in a little time was abroad again; for it was the mere weight of labour, and being exposed to hard lodging and mean diet, to one so tenderly bred, that struck her and she fainted at her work.

When she was made housekeeper she was quite another body. She put all the household into such excellent order, and managed their provisions so well, that my tutor admired her conduct, and would be every now and then speaking of her to me, that she was an excellent manager. “I’ll warrant,” says he, “she has been bred a gentlewoman, and she has been a fine woman in her time too.” In a word, he said so many good things of her that I had a mind to see her. So one day I took occasion to go to the plantation-house, as they called it, and into a parlour always reserved for the master of the plantation. There she had opportunity to see me before I could see her, and as soon as she had seen me she knew me; but indeed had I seen her an hundred times I should not have known her. She was, it seems, in the greatest confusion and surprise at seeing who I was that it was possible for any one to be; and when I ordered my manager to bring her into the room, he found her crying, and begged him to excuse her, that she was frighted, and should die away if she came near me.

I, not imagining anything but that the poor creature was afraid of me (for masters in Virginia are terrible things), bade him tell her she need to be under no concern at my calling for her; for it was not for any hurt nor for any displeasure, but that I had some orders to give her. So, having, as he thought, encouraged her, though her surprise was of another kind, he brought her in. When she came in she held a handkerchief in her hand, wiping her eyes, as if she had cried. “Mrs. Housekeeper,” said I, speaking cheerfully to her, “don’t be concerned at my sending for you; I have had a very good account of your management, and I called for you to let you know I am very well pleased with it; and if it falls in my way to do you any good, if your circumstances will allow it, I may be willing enough to help you out of your misery.”

She made low courtesies, but said nothing. However, she was so far encouraged that she took her hand from her face, and I saw her face fully; and I believe she did it desiring I should discover who she was; but I really knew nothing of her, any more than if I had never seen her in my life, but went on, as I thought, to encourage her, as I used to do with any that I saw deserved it.

In the meantime my tutor, who was in the room, went out on some business or other—I know not what. As soon as he was gone she burst out into a passion, and fell down on her knees just before me: “Oh, sir!” says she, “I see you don’t know me. Be merciful to me; I am your miserable divorced wife!”

I was astonished; I was frighted; I trembled like one in an ague; I was speechless; in a word, I was ready to sink, and she fell flat on her face, and lay there as if she had been dead. I was speechless, I say, as a stone. I had only presence of mind enough to step to the door and fasten it, that my tutor might not come in; then, going back to her, I took her up and spoke comfortably to her, and told her I no more knew her than if I had never seen her.

“Oh, sir!” said she, “afflictions are dreadful things; such as I have suffered have been enough to alter my countenance; but forgive,” said she, “for God’s sake, the injuries I have done you. I have paid dear for all my wickedness, and it is just, it is righteous, that God should bring me to your foot, to ask your pardon for all my brutish doings. Forgive me, sir,” said she, “I beseech you, and let me be your slave or servant for it as long as I live; it is all I ask;” and with those words she fell upon her knees again and cried so vehemently that it was impossible for her to stop it or to speak a word more. I took her up again, made her sit down, desired her to compose herself, and to hear what I was going to say; though indeed it touched me so sensibly that I was hardly able to speak any more than she was.

First, I told her it was such a surprise to me that I was not able to say much to her; and indeed the tears run down my face almost as fast as they did on hers. I told her that I should only tell her now, that, as nobody had yet known anything that had passed, so it was absolutely necessary not a word of it should be known; that it should not be the worse for her that she was thus thrown in my hands again; but that I could do nothing for her if it was known, and, therefore, that her future good or ill fortune would depend upon her entire concealing it; that, as my manager would come in again presently, she should go back to her part of the house, and go on in the business as she did before; that I would come to her and talk more at large with her in a day or two. So she retired, after assuring me that not a word of it should go out of her mouth; and indeed she was willing to retire before my tutor came again, that he might not see the agony she was in.

I was so perplexed about this surprising incident that I hardly knew what I did or said all that night; nor was I come to any settled resolution in the morning what course to take in it. However, in the morning I called my tutor, and told him that I had been exceedingly concerned about the poor distressed creature, the housekeeper; that I had heard some of her story, which was very dismal; that she had been in very good circumstances and was bred very well, and that I was glad he had removed her out of the field into the house; but still she was almost naked, and that I would have him go down to the warehouse and give her some linen, especially head-clothes, and all sorts of small things such as hoods, gloves, stockings, shoes, petticoats, &c., and to let her choose for herself; also a morning-gown of calico, and a mantua of a better kind of calico; that is to say, new clothe her; which he did, but brought me word that he found her all in tears, and that she had cried all night long, and, in short, he believed she would indeed cry herself to death; that all the while she was receiving the things he gave her she cried; that now and then she would struggle with and stop it, but that then, upon another word speaking, she would burst out again, so that it grieved everybody that saw her.

I was really affected with her case very much, but struggled hard with myself to hide it, and turned the discourse to something else. In the meantime, though I did not go to her the next day, nor till the third day, yet I studied day and night how to act, and what I should do in this remarkable case.

When I came to the house, which was the third day, she came into the room I was in, clothed all over with my things which I had ordered her, and told me she thanked God she was now my servant again and wore my livery, thanked me for the clothes I had sent her, and said it was much more than she had deserved from me.

I then entered into discourses with her, nobody being present but ourselves; and first I told her she should name no more of the unkind things that had passed, for she had humbled herself more than enough on that subject, and I would never reproach her with anything that was past. I found that she had been the deepest sufferer by far. I told her it was impossible for me, in my present circumstances, to receive her there as a wife who came over as a convict, neither did she know so little as to desire it; but I told her I might be instrumental to put an end to her misfortunes in the world, and especially to the miserable part of it which was her present load, provided she could effectually keep her own counsel and never let the particulars come out of her mouth, and that from the day she did she might date her irrevocable ruin.

She was as sensible of the necessity of that part as I was, and told me all she could claim of me would be only to deliver her from her present calamity that she was not able to support; and that then, if I pleased, she might live such a life as that she might apply the residue of what time she should have wholly to repentance; that she was willing to do the meanest offices in the world for me; and though she should rejoice to hear that I would forgive her former life, yet that she would not look any higher than to be my servant as long as she lived; and, in the meantime, I might be satisfied she would never let any creature so much as know that I had ever seen her before.

I asked her if she was willing to let me into any part of the history of her life since she and I parted; but I did not insist upon it otherwise than as she thought convenient. She said, as her breach with me began first in folly and ended in sin, so her whole life afterwards was a continued series of calamity, sin and sorrow, sin and shame, and at last misery; that she was deluded into gay company and to an expensive way of living which betrayed her to several wicked courses to support the expenses of it; that after a thousand distresses and difficulties, being not able to maintain herself, she was reduced to extreme poverty; that she would many times have humbled herself to me in the lowest and most submissive manner in the world, being sincerely penitent for her first crime, but that she could never hear of me, nor which way I was gone; that she was by that means so abandoned that she wanted bread, and those wants and distresses brought her into bad company of another kind, and that she fell in among a gang of thieves, with whom she herded for some time, and got money enough a great while, but under the greatest dread and terror imaginable, being in the constant fear of coming to shame; that afterwards what she feared was come upon her, and for a very trifling attempt in which she was not principal, but accidentally concerned, she was sent to this place. She told me her life was such a collection of various fortunes—up and down, in plenty and in misery, in prison and at liberty, at ease and in torment—that it would take up a great many days to give me a history of it; that I was come to see the end of it, as I had seen the best part of the beginning; that I knew she was brought up tenderly and fared delicately; but that now she was, with the prodigal, brought to desire husks with swine, and even to want that supply. Her tears flowed so strongly upon this discourse that they frequently interrupted her, so that she could not go on without difficulty, and at last could not go on at all. So I told her I would excuse her telling any more of her story at that time; that I saw it was but a renewing of her grief, and that I would rather contribute to her forgetting what was past, and desired her to say no more of it; so I broke off that part.

In the meantime I told her, since Providence had thus cast her upon my hands again, I would take care that she should not want, and that she should not live hardly neither, though I could go no further at present; and thus we parted for that time, and she continued in the business of housekeeper; only that, to ease her, I gave her an assistant; and, though I would not have it called so, it was neither more or less than a servant to wait on her and do everything for her; and told her, too, that it was so.

After she had been some time in this place she recovered her spirits and grew cheerful; her fallen flesh plumped up, and the sunk and hollow parts filled again, so that she began to recover something of that brightness and charming countenance which was once so very agreeable to me; and sometimes I could not help having warm desires towards her, and of taking her into her first station again; but there were many difficulties occurred which I could not get over a great while.