My husband, you may suppose, was a little surprised at the arriving of all this cargo from England; and talking with me after he saw the account of this particular, “My dear,” says he, “what is the meaning of all this? I fear you will run us too deep in debt: when shall we be able to make return for it all?” I smiled, and told him that it was all paid for; and then I told him, that what our circumstances might expose us to, I had not taken my whole stock with me, that I had reserved so much in my friend’s hands, which now we were come over safe, and was settled in a way to live, I had sent for, as he might see.
He was amazed, and stood a while telling upon his fingers, but said nothing. At last he began thus: “Hold, let’s see,” says he, telling upon his fingers still, and first on his thumb; “there’s £246 in money at first, then two gold watches, diamond rings, and plate,” says he, upon the forefinger. Then upon the next finger, “Here’s a plantation on York River, £100 a year, then £150 in money, then a sloop load of horses, cows, hogs, and stores;” and so on to the thumb again. “And now,” says he, “a cargo cost £250 in England, and worth here twice the money.” “Well,” says I, “what do you make of all that?” “Make of it?” says he; “why, who says I was deceived when I married a wife in Lancashire? I think I have married a fortune, and a very good fortune too,” says he.
In a word, we were now in very considerable circumstances, and every year increasing; for our new plantation grew upon our hands insensibly, and in eight years which we lived upon it, we brought it to such pitch, that the produce was at least £300 sterling a year; I mean, worth so much in England.
After I had been a year at home again, I went over the bay to see my son, and to receive another year’s income of my plantation; and I was surprised to hear, just at my landing there, that my old husband was dead, and had not been buried above a fortnight. This, I confess, was not disagreeable news, because now I could appear as I was, in a married condition; so I told my son before I came from him, that I believed I should marry a gentleman who had a plantation near mine; and though I was legally free to marry, as to any obligation that was on me before, yet that I was shy of it, lest the blot should some time or other be revived, and it might make a husband uneasy. My son, the same kind, dutiful, and obliging creature as ever, treated me now at his own house, paid me my hundred pounds, and sent me home again loaded with presents.
Some time after this, I let my son know I was married, and invited him over to see us, and my husband wrote a very obliging letter to him also, inviting him to come and see him; and he came accordingly some months after, and happened to be there just when my cargo from England came in, which I let him believe belonged all to my husband’s estate, not to me.
It must be observed that when the old wretch my brother (husband) was dead, I then freely gave my husband an account of all that affair, and of this cousin, as I had called him before, being my own son by that mistaken unhappy match. He was perfectly easy in the account, and told me he should have been as easy if the old man, as we called him, had been alive. “For,” said he, “it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it was a mistake impossible to be prevented.” He only reproached him with desiring me to conceal it, and to live with him as a wife, after I knew that he was my brother; that, he said, was a vile part. Thus all these difficulties were made easy, and we lived together with the greatest kindness and comfort imaginable.
We are grown old; I am come back to England, being almost seventy years of age, husband sixty-eight, having performed much more than the limited terms of my transportation; and now, notwithstanding all the fatigues and all the miseries we have both gone through, we are both of us in good heart and health. My husband remained there some time after me to settle our affairs, and at first I had intended to go back to him, but at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over to England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.
Written in the year 1683.
Endnotes
-
The bell at St. Sepulchre’s, which tolls upon execution day. ↩
Colophon
Moll Flanders
was published in 1722 by
Daniel Defoe.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Mike Colagrosso,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1995 by
An Anonymous Volunteer and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
The Tête à Tête,
a painting completed in 1743 by
William
