Moll Flanders (6 page)

“By my faith, madam,” says Robin, “’tis in vain to mince the matter or tell any more lies about it; I am in earnest, as much as a man is that’s going to be hanged. If Mrs. Betty would say she loved me and that she would marry me, I’d have her tomorrow morning fasting, and say, ‘To have and to hold,’ instead of eating my breakfast.”

“Well,” says the mother, “then there’s one son lost”; and she said it in a very mournful tone, as one greatly concerned at it. “I hope not, madam,” says Robin; “no man is lost when a good wife has found him.” “Why, but, child,” says the old lady, “she is a beggar.” “Why, then, madam, she has the more need of charity,” says Robin; “I’ll take her off the hands of the parish, and she and I’ll beg together.” “It’s bad jesting with such things,” says the mother. “I don’t jest, madam,” says Robin; “we’ll come and beg your pardon, madam, and your blessing, madam, and my father’s.” “This is all out of the way, son,” says the mother. “If you are in earnest you are undone.” “I am afraid not,” says he, “for I am really afraid she won’t have me. After all my sister’s huffing, I believe I shall never be able to persuade her to it.”

“That’s a fine tale, indeed. She is not so far gone neither. Mrs. Betty is no fool,” says the youngest sister. “Do you think she has learnt to say no any more than other people?” “No, Mrs. Mirth-wit,” says Robin, “Mrs. Betty’s no fool, but Mrs. Betty may be engaged some other way, and what then?” “Nay,” says the eldest sister, “we can say nothing to that. Who must it be to, then? She is never out of the doors; it must be between you.” “I have nothing to say to that,” says Robin. “I have been examined enough; there’s my brother. If it must be between us, go to work with him.”

This stung the elder brother to the quick, and he concluded that Robin had discovered something. However, he kept himself from appearing disturbed. “Prithee,” says he, “don’t go to sham your stories off upon me; I tell you I deal in no such ware; I have nothing to say to no Mrs. Bettys in the parish”; and with that he rose up and brushed off. “No,” says the eldest sister, “I dare answer for my brother; he knows the world better.”

Thus the discourse ended; but it left the eldest brother quite confounded. He concluded his brother had made a full discovery, and he began to doubt whether I had been concerned in it or not; but with all his management, he could not bring it about to get at me. At last he was so perplexed that he was quite desperate and resolved he would see me whatever came of it. In order to this, he contrived it so that one day, after dinner, watching his eldest sister till he could see her go upstairs, he runs after her. “Hark ye, sister,” says he, “where is this sick woman? May not a body see her?” “Yes,” says the sister, “I believe you may; but let me go in first a little and I’ll tell you.” So she run up to the door and gave me notice, and presently called to him again. “Brother,” says she, “you may come in if you please.” So in he came, just in the same kind of rant. “Well,” says he at the door as he came in, “where’s this sick body that’s in love? How do ye do, Mrs. Betty?” I would have got up out of my chair, but was so weak I could not for a good while; and he saw it and his sister too; and she said, “Come, do not strive to stand up; my brother desires no ceremony, especially now you are so weak.” “No, no, Mrs. Betty, pray sit still,” says he, and so sets himself down in a chair over against me and appeared as if he was mighty merry.

He talked a deal of rambling stuff to his sister and to me; sometimes of one thing, sometimes another, on purpose to amuse her, and every now and then would turn it upon the old story. “Poor Mrs. Betty,” says he, “it is a sad thing to be in love; why, it has reduced you sadly.” At last I spoke a little. “I am glad to see you so merry, sir,” says I; “but I think the doctor might have found something better to do than to make his game of his patients. If I had been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to have let him come to me.” “What proverb?” says he. “What—

‘Where love is the case,

The doctor’s an ass.’

Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?” I smiled and said nothing. “Nay,” says he, “I think the effect has proved it to be love; for it seems the doctor has done you little service; you mend very slowly, they say. I doubt there’s somewhat in it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt you are sick of the incurables.” I smiled and said, “No, indeed, sir, that’s none of my distemper.”

We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should play upon his flute to me; his sister said she believed my head could not bear it. I bowed and said, “Pray, madam, do not hinder it; I love the flute very much.” Then his sister said, “Well, do, then, brother.” With that he pulled out the key of his closet. “Dear sister,” says he, “I am very lazy; do step and fetch my flute; it lies in such a drawer,” naming a place where he was sure it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking for it.

As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me of the discourse his brother had about me and his concern about it, which was the reason of his contriving this visit. I assured him I had never opened my mouth either to his brother or to anybody else. I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my love to him and his offering to have me forget that affection and remove it to another had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the same circumstances to struggle with as I had before. I added that I foresaw that as soon as I was well I must quit the family, and that as for marrying his brother, I abhorred the thoughts of it after what had been my case with him, and that he might depend upon it, I would never see his brother again upon that subject; that if he would break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me, be that between his conscience and himself; but he should never be able to say that I, who he had persuaded to call myself his wife and who had given him the liberty to use me as a wife, was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to be, whatever he might be to me.

He was going to reply, and had said that he was sorry I could not be persuaded, and was a-going to say more, but he heard his sister a-coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these few words as a reply, that I could never be persuaded to love one brother and marry the other. He shook his head and said, “Then I am ruined,” meaning himself; and that moment his sister entered the room and told him she could not find the flute. “Well,” says he merrily, “this laziness won’t do”; so he gets up and goes himself to look for it, but comes back without it too; not but that he could have found it, but he had no mind to play; and besides, the errand he sent his sister on was answered another way; for he only wanted to speak to me, which he had done, though not much to his satisfaction.

I had, however, a great deal of satisfaction in having spoken my mind to him in freedom and with such an honest plainness, as I have related; and though it did not at all work the way I desired, that is to say, to oblige the person to me the more, yet it took from him all possibility of quitting me but by a downright breach of honour, and giving up all the faith of a gentleman, which he had so often engaged by never to abandon me, but to make me his wife as soon as he came to his estate.

It was not many weeks after this before I was about the house again and began to grow well; but I continued melancholy and retired, which amazed the whole family except he that knew the reason of it; yet it was a great while before he took any notice of it, and I, as backward to speak as he, carried as respectfully to him, but never offered to speak a word that was particular of any kind whatsoever; and this continued for sixteen or seventeen weeks; so that, as I expected every day to be dismissed the family on account of what distaste they had taken another way, in which I had no guilt, I expected to hear no more of this gentleman after all his solemn vows but to be ruined and abandoned.

At last I broke the way myself in the family for my removing; for being talking seriously with the old lady one day about my own circumstances and how my distemper had left a heaviness upon my spirits, the old lady said, “I am afraid, Betty, what I have said to you about my son has had some influence upon you and that you are melancholy on his account; pray, will you let me know how the matter stands with you both if it may not be improper? For, as for Robin, he does nothing but rally and banter when I speak of it to him.” “Why, truly, madam,” said I, “that matter stands as I wish it did not, and I shall be very sincere with you in it whatever befalls me. Mr. Robert has several times proposed marriage to me, which is what I had no reason to expect, my poor circumstances considered; but I have always resisted him, and that perhaps in terms more positive than became me, considering the regard that I ought to have for every branch of your family; but,” said I, “madam, I could never so far forget my obligations to you and all your house to offer to consent to a thing which I knew must needs be disobliging to you, and have positively told him that I would never entertain a thought of that kind unless I had your consent and his father’s also, to whom I was bound by so many invincible obligations.”

“And is this possible, Mrs. Betty?” says the old lady. “Then you have been much juster to us than we have been to you; for we have all looked upon you as a kind of a snare to my son, and I had a proposal to make you for your removing, for fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it to you because I was afraid of grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again; for we have a respect for you still, though not so much as to have it be the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have all wronged you very much.”

“As to the truth of what I say, madam,” said I, “I refer to your son himself; if he will do me any justice, he must tell you the story just as I have told it.”

Away goes the old lady to her daughters and tells them the whole story, just as I had told it her; and they were surprised at it, you may be sure, as I believed they would be. One said she could never have thought it; another said Robin was a fool; a third said she would not believe a word of it, and she would warrant that Robin would tell the story another way. But the old lady, who was resolved to go to the bottom of it before I could have the least opportunity of acquainting her son with what had passed, resolved, too, that she would talk with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him, for he was gone but to a lawyer’s house in the town, and upon her sending he returned immediately.

Upon his coming up to them, for they were all together, “Sit down, Robin,” says the old lady; “I must have some talk with you.” “With all my heart, madam,” says Robin, looking very merry. “I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great loss in that affair.” “How can that be?” says his mother. “Did you not say you resolved to have Mrs. Betty?” “Aye, madam,” says Robin; “but there is one that has forbid the banns.” “Forbid the banns! Who can that be?” “Even Mrs. Betty herself,” says Robin. “How so?” says his mother. “Have you asked her the question, then?” “Yes, indeed, madam,” says Robin; “I have attacked her in form five times since she was sick, and am beaten off; the jade is so stout she won’t capitulate nor yield upon any terms except such as I can’t effectually grant.” “Explain yourself,” says the mother, “for I am surprised; I do not understand you. I hope you are not in earnest.”

“Why, madam,” says he, “the case is plain enough upon me, it explains itself; she won’t have me, she says; is not that plain enough? I think ’tis plain, and pretty rough too.” “Well, but,” says the mother, “you talk of conditions that you cannot grant; what does she want—a settlement? Her jointure ought to be according to her portion; what does she bring?” “Nay, as to fortune,” says Robin, “she is rich enough; I am satisfied in that point; but ’tis I that am not able to come up to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without.”

Here the sisters put in. “Madam,” says the second sister, “’tis impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct answer to anything; you had better let him alone and talk no more of it; you know how to dispose of her out of his way.” Robin was a little warmed with his sister’s rudeness, but he was even with her presently. “There are two sorts of people, madam,” says he, turning to his mother, “that there is no contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool; ’tis a little hard I should engage with both of them together.”

The younger sister then put in. “We must be fools indeed,” says she, “in my brother’s opinion, that he should make us believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him and she has refused him.”

“Answer, and answer not, says Solomon,” replied her brother. “When your brother had said that he had asked her no less than five times, and that she positively denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the truth of it when her mother did not.” “My mother, you see, did not understand it,” says the second sister. “There’s some difference,” says Robin, “between desiring me to explain it and telling me she did not believe it.”

“Well, but, son,” says the old lady, “if you are disposed to let us into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?” “Yes, madam,” says Robin, “I had done it before now if the teasers here had not worried me by way of interruption. The conditions are that I bring my father and you to consent to it, and without that she protests she will never see me more upon that head; and the conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be answered now, and blush a little.”

This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the mother because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters, they stood mute a great while; but the mother said with some passion, “Well, I heard this before, but I could not believe it; but if it is so, then we have all done Betty wrong, and she has behaved better than I expected.” “Nay,” says the eldest sister, “if it is so, she has acted handsomely indeed.” “I confess,” says the mother, “it was none of her fault if he was enough fool to take a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him shows more respect to us than I can tell how to express; I shall value the girl the better for it as long as I know her.” “But I shall not,” says Robin, “unless you will give your consent.” “I’ll consider of that awhile,” says the mother; “I assure you, if there were not some other objections, this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to consent.” “I wish it would go quite through with it,” says Robin; “if you had as much thought about making me easy as you have about making me rich, you would soon consent to it.”