The Fortunate Mistress Part 10

This thought immediately rushed into my head as soon as the Dutch merchant had told me what wicked things were in the head of that cursed Jew; and the villain (for so I must call him) convinced the Dutch merchant that he was in earnest by an expression which showed the rest of his design, and that was, a plot to get the rest of the jewels into his hand.

When first he hinted to the Dutchman that the jewels were such a man's (meaning my husband's), he made wonderful exclamations on account of their having been concealed so long. Where must they have lain? And what was the woman that brought them? And that she (meaning me) ought to be immediately apprehended and put into the hands of justice. And this was the time that, as I said, he made such horrid gestures and looked at me so like a devil.

The merchant, hearing him talk at that rate, and seeing him in earnest, said to him, "Hold your tongue a little; this is a thing of consequence.

If it be so, let you and I go into the next room and consider of it there;" and so they withdrew, and left me.

Here, as before, I was uneasy, and called him out, and, having heard how it was, gave him that answer, that I was his wife, or widow, which the malicious Jew said should not serve my turn. And then it was that the Dutchman called him out again; and in this time of his withdrawing, the merchant, finding, as above, that he was really in earnest, counterfeited a little to be of his mind, and entered into proposals with him for the thing itself.

In this they agreed to go to an advocate, or counsel, for directions how to proceed, and to meet again the next day, against which time the merchant was to appoint me to come again with the jewels, in order to sell them. "No," says the merchant, "I will go farther with her than so; I will desire her to leave the jewels with me, to show to another person, in order to get the better price for them." "That's right," says the Jew; "and I'll engage she shall never be mistress of them again; they shall either be seized by us," says he, "in the king's name, or she shall be glad to give them up to us to prevent her being put to the torture."

The merchant said "Yes" to everything he offered, and they agreed to meet the next morning about it, and I was to be persuaded to leave the jewels with him, and come to them the next day at four o'clock in order to make a good bargain for them; and on these conditions they parted.

But the honest Dutchman, filled with indignation at the barbarous design, came directly to me and told me the whole story. "And now, madam," says he, "you are to consider immediately what you have to do."

I told him, if I was sure to have justice, I would not fear all that such a rogue could do to me; but how such things were carried on in France I knew not. I told him the greatest difficulty would be to prove our marriage, for that it was done in England, and in a remote part of England too; and, which was worse, it would be hard to produce authentic vouchers of it, because we were married in private. "But as to the death of your husband, madam, what can be said to that?" said he. "Nay," said I, "what can they say to it? In England," added I, "if they would offer such an injury to any one, they must prove the fact or give just reason for their suspicions. That my husband was murdered, that every one knows; but that he was robbed, or of what, or how much, that none knows--no, not myself; and why was I not questioned for it then? I have lived in Paris ever since, lived publicly, and no man had yet the impudence to suggest such a thing of me."

"I am fully satisfied of that," says the merchant; "but as this is a rogue who will stick at nothing, what can we say? And who knows what he may swear? Suppose he should swear that he knows your husband had those particular jewels with him the morning when he went out, and that he showed them to him to consider their value, and what price he should ask the Prince de ---- for them?"

"Nay, by the same rule," said I, "he may swear that I murdered my husband, if he finds it for his turn." "That's true," said he; "and if he should, I do not see what could save you;" but added, "I have found out his more immediate design. His design is to have you carried to the Chatelet, that the suspicion may appear just, and then to get the jewels out of your hands if possible; then, at last, to drop the prosecution on your consenting to quit the jewels to him; and how you will do to avoid this is the question which I would have you consider of."

"My misfortune, sir," said I, "is that I have no time to consider, and I have no person to consider with or advise about it. I find that innocence may be oppressed by such an impudent fellow as this; he that does not value perjury has any man's life at his mercy. But, sir," said I, "is the justice such here that, while I may be in the hands of the public and under prosecution, he may get hold of my effects and get my jewels into his hands?"

"I don't know," says he, "what may be done in that case; but if not he, if the court of justice should get hold of them I do not know but you may find it as difficult to get them out of their hands again, and, at least, it may cost you half as much as they are worth; so I think it would be a much better way to prevent their coming at them at all."

"But what course can I take to do that," says I, "now they have got notice that I have them? If they get me into their hands they will oblige me to produce them, or perhaps sentence me to prison till I do."

"Nay," says he, "as this brute says, too, put you to the question--that is, to the torture, on pretence of making you confess who were the murderers of your husband."

"Confess!" said I. "How can I confess what I know nothing of?"

"If they come to have you to the rack," said he, "they will make you confess you did it yourself, whether you did it or no, and then you are cast."

The very word rack frighted me to death almost, and I had no spirit left in me. "Did it myself!" said I. "That's impossible!"

"No, madam," says he, "'tis far from impossible. The most innocent people in the world have been forced to confess themselves guilty of what they never heard of, much less had any hand in."

"What, then, must I do?" said I. "What would you advise me to?"

"Why," says he, "I would advise you to be gone. You intended to go away in four or five days, and you may as well go in two days; and if you can do so, I shall manage it so that he shall not suspect your being gone for several days after." Then he told me how the rogue would have me ordered to bring the jewels the next day for sale, and that then he would have me apprehended; how he had made the Jew believe he would join with him in his design, and that he (the merchant) would get the jewels into his hands. "Now," says the merchant, "I shall give you bills for the money you desired, immediately, and such as shall not fail of being paid. Take your jewels with you, and go this very evening to St.

Germain-en-Laye; I'll send a man thither with you, and from thence he shall guide you to-morrow to Rouen, where there lies a s.h.i.+p of mine, just ready to sail for Rotterdam; you shall have your pa.s.sage in that s.h.i.+p on my account, and I will send orders for him to sail as soon as you are on board, and a letter to my friend at Rotterdam to entertain and take care of you."

This was too kind an offer for me, as things stood, not to be accepted, and be thankful for; and as to going away, I had prepared everything for parting, so that I had little to do but to go back, take two or three boxes and bundles, and such things, and my maid Amy, and be gone.

Then the merchant told me the measures he had resolved to take to delude the Jew while I made my escape, which was very well contrived indeed.

"First," said he, "when he comes to-morrow I shall tell him that I proposed to you to leave the jewels with me, as we agreed, but that you said you would come and bring them in the afternoon, so that we must stay for you till four o'clock; but then, at that time, I will show a letter from you, as if just come in, wherein you shall excuse your not coming, for that some company came to visit you, and prevented you; but that you desire me to take care that the gentleman be ready to buy your jewels, and that you will come to-morrow at the same hour, without fail.

"When to-morrow is come, we shall wait at the time, but you not appearing, I shall seem most dissatisfied, and wonder what can be the reason; and so we shall agree to go the next day to get out a process against you. But the next day, in the morning, I'll send to give him notice that you have been at my house, but he not being there, have made another appointment, and that I desire to speak with him. When he comes, I'll tell him you appear perfectly blind as to your danger, and that you appeared much disappointed that he did not come, though you could not meet the night before; and obliged me to have him here to-morrow at three o'clock. When to-morrow comes," says he, "you shall send word that you are taken so ill that you cannot come out for that day, but that you will not fail the next day; and the next day you shall neither come or send, nor let us ever hear any more of you; for by that time you shall be in Holland, if you please."

I could not but approve all his measures, seeing they were so well contrived, and in so friendly a manner, for my benefit; and as he seemed to be so very sincere, I resolved to put my life in his hands.

Immediately I went to my lodgings, and sent away Amy with such bundles as I had prepared for my travelling. I also sent several parcels of my fine furniture to the merchant's house to be laid up for me, and bringing the key of the lodgings with me, I came back to his house. Here we finished our matters of money, and I delivered into his hands seven thousand eight hundred pistoles in bills and money, a copy of an a.s.signment on the townhouse of Paris for four thousand pistoles, at three per cent. interest, attested, and a procuration for receiving the interest half-yearly; but the original I kept myself.

I could have trusted all I had with him, for he was perfectly honest, and had not the least view of doing me any wrong. Indeed, after it was so apparent that he had, as it were, saved my life, or at least saved me from being exposed and ruined--I say, after this, how could I doubt him in anything?

When I came to him, he had everything ready as I wanted, and as he had proposed. As to my money, he gave me first of all an accepted bill, payable at Rotterdam, for four thousand pistoles, and drawn from Genoa upon a merchant at Rotterdam, payable to a merchant at Paris, and endorsed by him to my merchant; this, he a.s.sured me, would be punctually paid; and so it was, to a day. The rest I had in other bills of exchange, drawn by himself upon other merchants in Holland. Having secured my jewels too, as well as I could, he sent me away the same evening in a friend's coach, which he had procured for me, to St.

Germain, and the next morning to Rouen. He also sent a servant of his own on horseback with me, who provided everything for me, and who carried his orders to the captain of the s.h.i.+p, which lay about three miles below Rouen, in the river, and by his directions I went immediately on board. The third day after I was on board the s.h.i.+p went away, and we were out at sea the next day after that; and thus I took my leave of France, and got clear of an ugly business, which, had it gone on, might have ruined me, and sent me back as naked to England as I was a little before I left it.

And now Amy and I were at leisure to look upon the mischiefs that we had escaped; and had I had any religion or any sense of a Supreme Power, managing, directing, and governing in both causes and events in this world, such a case as this would have given anybody room to have been very thankful to the Power who had not only put such a treasure into my hand, but given me such an escape from the ruin that threatened me; but I had none of those things about me. I had, indeed, a grateful sense upon my mind of the generous friends.h.i.+p of my deliverer, the Dutch merchant, by whom I was so faithfully served, and by whom, as far as relates to second causes, I was preserved from destruction.

I say, I had a grateful sense upon my mind of his kindness and faithfulness to me, and I resolved to show him some testimony of it as soon as I came to the end of my rambles, for I was yet but in a state of uncertainty, and sometimes that gave me a little uneasiness too. I had paper indeed for my money, and he had showed himself very good to me in conveying me away, as above; but I had not seen the end of things yet, for unless the bills were paid, I might still be a great loser by my Dutchman, and he might, perhaps, have contrived all that affair of the Jew to put me into a fright and get me to run away, and that as if it were to save my life; that if the bills should be refused, I was cheated with a witness, and the like. But these were but surmises, and, indeed, were perfectly without cause, for the honest man acted as honest men always do, with an upright and disinterested principle, and with a sincerity not often to be found in the world. What gain he made by the exchange was just, and was nothing but what was his due, and was in the way of his business; but otherwise he made no advantage of me at all.

When I pa.s.sed in the s.h.i.+p between Dover and Calais and saw beloved England once more under my view--England, which I counted my native country, being the place I was bred up in, though not born there--a strange kind of joy possessed my mind, and I had such a longing desire to be there that I would have given the master of the s.h.i.+p twenty pistoles to have stood over and set me on sh.o.r.e in the Downs; and when he told me he could not do it--that is, that he durst not do it if I would have given him a hundred pistoles--I secretly wished that a storm would rise that might drive the s.h.i.+p over to the coast of England, whether they would or not, that I might be set on sh.o.r.e anywhere upon English ground.

This wicked wish had not been out of my thoughts above two or three hours, but the master steering away to the north, as was his course to do, we lost sight of land on that side, and only had the Flemish sh.o.r.e in view on our right hand, or, as the seamen call it, the starboard side; and then, with the loss of the sight, the wish for landing in England abated, and I considered how foolish it was to wish myself out of the way of my business; that if I had been on sh.o.r.e in England, I must go back to Holland on account of my bills, which were so considerable, and I having no correspondence there, that I could not have managed it without going myself. But we had not been out of sight of England many hours before the weather began to change; the winds whistled and made a noise, and the seamen said to one another that it would blow hard at night. It was then about two hours before sunset, and we were pa.s.sed by Dunkirk, and I think they said we were in sight of Ostend; but then the wind grew high and the sea swelled, and all things looked terrible, especially to us that understood nothing but just what we saw before us; in short, night came on, and very dark it was; the wind freshened and blew harder and harder, and about two hours within night it blew a terrible storm.

I was not quite a stranger to the sea, having come from Roch.e.l.le to England when I was a child, and gone from London, by the River Thames, to France afterward, as I have said. But I began to be alarmed a little with the terrible clamour of the men over my head, for I had never been in a storm, and so had never seen the like, or heard it; and once offering to look out at the door of the steerage, as they called it, it struck me with such horror (the darkness, the fierceness of the wind, the dreadful height of the waves, and the hurry the Dutch sailors were in, whose language I did not understand one word of, neither when they cursed or when they prayed); I say, all these things together filled me with terror, and, in short, I began to be very much frighted.

When I was come back into the great cabin, there sat Amy, who was very sea-sick, and I had a little before given her a sup of cordial waters to help her stomach. When Amy saw me come back and sit down without speaking, for so I did, she looked two or three times up at me; at last she came running to me. "Dear madam," says she, "what is the matter?

What makes you look so pale? Why, you an't well; what is the matter?" I said nothing still, but held up my hands two or three times. Amy doubled her importunities; upon that I said no more but, "Step to the steerage-door, and look out, as I did;" so she went away immediately, and looked too, as I had bidden her; but the poor girl came back again in the greatest amazement and horror that ever I saw any poor creature in, wringing her hands and crying out she was undone! she was undone!

she should be drowned! they were all lost! Thus she ran about the cabin like a mad thing, and as perfectly out of her senses as any one in such a case could be supposed to be. I was frighted myself, but when I saw the girl in such a terrible agony, it brought me a little to myself, and I began to talk to her and put her in a little hope. I told her there was many a s.h.i.+p in a storm that was not cast away, and I hoped we should not be drowned; that it was true the storm was very dreadful, but I did not see that the seamen were so much concerned as we were. And so I talked to her as well as I could, though my heart was full enough of it, as well as Amy's; and death began to stare in my face; ay, and something else too--that is to say, conscience, and my mind was very much disturbed; but I had n.o.body to comfort me.

But Amy being in so much worse a condition--that is to say, so much more terrified at the storm than I was--I had something to do to comfort her.

She was, as I have said, like one distracted, and went raving about the cabin, crying out she was undone! undone! she should be drowned! and the like. And at last, the s.h.i.+p giving a jerk, by the force, I suppose, of some violent wave, it threw poor Amy quite down, for she was weak enough before with being sea-sick, and as it threw her forward, the poor girl struck her head against the bulk-head, as the seamen call it, of the cabin, and laid her as dead as a stone upon the floor or deck; that is to say, she was so to all appearance.

I cried out for help, but it had been all one to have cried out on the top of a mountain where n.o.body had been within five miles of me, for the seamen were so engaged and made so much noise that n.o.body heard me or came near me. I opened the great cabin door, and looked into the steerage to cry for help, but there, to increase my fright, was two seamen on their knees at prayers, and only one man who steered, and he made a groaning noise too, which I took to be saying his prayers, but it seems it was answering to those above, when they called to him to tell him which way to steer.

Here was no help for me, or for poor Amy, and there she lay still so, and in such a condition, that I did not know whether she was dead or alive. In this fright I went to her, and lifted her a little way up, setting her on the deck, with her back to the boards of the bulk-head; and I got a little bottle out of my pocket, and I held it to her nose, and rubbed her temples and what else I could do, but still Amy showed no signs of life, till I felt for her pulse, but could hardly distinguish her to be alive. However, after a great while, she began to revive, and in about half-an-hour she came to herself, but remembered nothing at first of what had happened to her for a good while more.

When she recovered more fully, she asked me where she was. I told her she was in the s.h.i.+p yet, but G.o.d knows how long it might be. "Why, madam," says she, "is not the storm over?" "No, no," says I, "Amy."

"Why, madam," says she, "it was calm just now" (meaning when she was in the swooning fit occasioned by her fall). "Calm, Amy!" says I. "'Tis far from calm. It may be it will be calm by-and-by, when we are all drowned and gone to heaven."

"Heaven, madam!" says she. "What makes you talk so? Heaven! I go to heaven! No, no; if I am drowned I am d.a.m.ned! Don't you know what a wicked creature I have been? I have been a wh.o.r.e to two men, and have lived a wretched, abominable life of vice and wickedness for fourteen years. Oh, madam! you know it, and G.o.d knows it, and now I am to die--to be drowned! Oh! what will become of me? I am undone for ever!--ay, madam, for ever! to all eternity! Oh! I am lost! I am lost! If I am drowned, I am lost for ever!"

All these, you will easily suppose, must be so many stabs into the very soul of one in my own case. It immediately occurred to me, "Poor Amy!

what art thou that I am not? What hast thou been that I have not been?

Nay, I am guilty of my own sin and thine too." Then it came to my remembrance that I had not only been the same with Amy, but that I had been the devil's instrument to make her wicked; that I had stripped her, and prost.i.tuted her to the very man that I had been naught with myself; that she had but followed me, I had been her wicked example; and I had led her into all; and that, as we had sinned together, now we were likely to sink together.

All this repeated itself to my thoughts at that very moment, and every one of Amy's cries sounded thus in my ears: "I am the wicked cause of it all! I have been thy ruin, Amy! I have brought thee to this, and now thou art to suffer for the sin I have enticed thee to! And if thou art lost for ever, what must I be? what must be my portion?"

It is true this difference was between us, that I said all these things within myself, and sighed and mourned inwardly; but Amy, as her temper was more violent, spoke aloud, and cried, and called out aloud, like one in agony.

I had but small encouragement to give her, and indeed could say but very little, but I got her to compose herself a little, and not let any of the people of the s.h.i.+p understand what she meant or what she said; but even in her greatest composure she continued to express herself with the utmost dread and terror on account of the wicked life she had lived, crying out she should be d.a.m.ned, and the like, which was very terrible to me, who knew what condition I was in myself.

Upon these serious considerations, I was very penitent too for my former sins, and cried out, though softly, two or three times, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" To this I added abundance of resolutions of what a life I would live if it should please G.o.d but to spare my life but this one time; how I would live a single and a virtuous life, and spend a great deal of what I had thus wickedly got in acts of charity and doing good.

Under these dreadful apprehensions I looked back on the life I had led with the utmost contempt and abhorrence. I blushed, and wondered at myself how I could act thus, how I could divest myself of modesty and honour, and prost.i.tute myself for gain; and I thought, if ever it should please G.o.d to spare me this one time from death, it would not be possible that I should be the same creature again.

Amy went farther; she prayed, she resolved, she vowed to lead a new life, if G.o.d would spare her but this time. It now began to be daylight, for the storm held all night long, and it was some comfort to see the light of another day, which none of us expected; but the sea went mountains high, and the noise of the water was as frightful to us as the sight of the waves; nor was any land to be seen, nor did the seamen know whereabout they were. At last, to our great joy, they made land, which was in England, and on the coast of Suffolk; and the s.h.i.+p being in the utmost distress, they ran for the sh.o.r.e at all hazards, and with great difficulty got into Harwich, where they were safe, as to the danger of death; but the s.h.i.+p was so full of water and so much damaged that if they had not laid her on sh.o.r.e the same day she would have sunk before night, according to the opinion of the seamen, and of the workmen on sh.o.r.e too who were hired to a.s.sist them in stopping their leaks.

Amy was revived as soon as she heard they had espied land, and went out upon the deck; but she soon came in again to me. "Oh, madam!" says she, "there's the land indeed to be seen. It looks like a ridge of clouds, and may be all a cloud for aught I know; but if it be land, 'tis a great way off, and the sea is in such a combustion, we shall all perish before we can reach it. 'Tis the dreadfullest sight to look at the waves that ever was seen. Why, they are as high as mountains; we shall certainly be all swallowed up, for all the land is so near."