Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль Дефо
was not wanting with all that persuasions and entreaties could perform, but it was all fruitless; representing to him how fast our money wasted, and what would be our condition when it was gone, made no impression on him; but like one stupid he went on, not valuing all that tears and lamentations could be supposed to do, nor did he abate his figure or equipage, his horses or servants, even to the last, till he had not a hundred pounds left in the whole world.
It was not above three years that all the ready money was thus spending off; yet he spent it, as I may say, foolishly too, for he kept no valuable company neither, but generally with huntsmen and horse-coursers, and men meaner than himself, which is another consequence of a man's being a fool. Such can never take delight in men more wise and capable than themselves; and that makes them converse with scoundrels, drink belch with porters, and keep company always below themselves.
This was my wretched condition, when one morning my husband told me he was sensible he was come to a miserable condition and he would go and seek his fortune somewhere or other. He had said something to that purpose several times before that, upon my pressing him to consider his circumstances and the circumstances of his family before it should be too late. But as I found he had no meaning in anything of that kind, as indeed he had not much in anything he ever said, so I thought they were but words of course now. When he said he would be gone, I used to wish secretly, and even say in my thoughts, "I wish you would, for if you go on thus you will starve us all."
He stayed, however, at home all that day, and lay at home that night. Early the next morning he gets out of bed, goes to a window which looked out towards the stables, and sounds his French horn, as he called it, which was his usual signal to call his men to go out a-hunting.
It was about the latter end of August, and so was light yet at five o'clock, and it was about that time that I heard him and his two men go out and shut the yard gates after them. He said nothing to me more than as usual when he used to go out upon his sport; neither did I rise or say anything to him that was material, but went to sleep again after he was gone for two hours or thereabouts.
It must be a little surprising to the reader to tell him at once that after this I never saw my husband more; but to go further, I not only never saw him more, but I never heard from him or of him, neither of any or either of his two servants or of the horses, either what became of them, where or which way they went, or what they did or intended to do, no more than if the ground had opened and swallowed them all up, and nobody had known it, except as hereafter.
I was not for the first night or two at all surprised, no, nor very much the first week or two, believing that if anything evil had befallen them I should soon enough have heard of that, and also knowing that as he had two servants and three horses with him, it would be the strangest thing in the world that anything could befall them all, but that I must some time or other hear of them.
But you will easily allow that as time ran on a week, two weeks, a month, two months, and so on, I was dreadfully frighted at last, and the more when I looked into my own circumstances and considered the condition in which I was left; with five children and not one farthing subsistence for them, other than about seventy pounds in money and what few things of value I had about me, which, though considerable in themselves, were yet nothing to feed a family, and for a length of time too.
What to do I knew not, nor to whom to have recourse; to keep in the house where I was I could not, the rent being too great, and to leave it without his order, if my husband should return, I could not think of that neither; so that I continued extremely perplexed, melancholy, and discouraged to the last degree.
Chapter 2
I remained in this dejected condition near a twelve-month. My husband had two sisters, who were married and lived very well, and some other near relations that I knew of and I hoped would do something for me, and I frequently sent to these to know if they could give me any account of my vagrant creature; but they all declared to me in answer that they knew nothing about him, and, after frequent sending, began to think me troublesome, and to let me know they thought so too by their treating my maid with very slight and unhandsome returns to her enquiries.
This grated hard and added to my affliction, but I had no recourse but to my tears, for I had not a friend of my own left me in the world. I should have observed that it was about half a year before this elopement of my husband that the disaster I mentioned above befell my brother, who broke, and that in such bad circumstances that I had the mortification to hear not only that he was in prison, but that there would be little or nothing to be had by way of composition.
Misfortunes seldom come alone. This was the forerunner of my husband's flight, and as my expectations were cut off on that side, my husband gone, and my family of children on my hands and nothing to subsist them, my condition was the most deplorable that words can express.
I had some plate and some jewels, as might be supposed, my fortune and former circumstances considered, and my husband, who had never stayed to be distressed, had not been put to the necessity of rifling me, as husbands usually do in such cases. But as I had seen an end of all the ready money during the long time I had lived in a state of expectation for my husband, so I began to make away one thing after another, till those few things of value which I had began to lessen apace, and I saw nothing but misery and the utmost distress before me, even to have my children starve before my face. I leave any one that is a mother of children, and has lived in plenty and good fashion, to consider and reflect what must be my condition. As to my husband, I had now no hope or expectation of seeing him any more, and indeed, if I had, he was the man of all the men in the world the least able to help me, or to have turned his hand to the gaining one shilling towards lessening our distress. He neither had the capacity nor the inclination; he could have been no clerk, for he scarce wrote a legible hand; he was so far from being able to write sense, that he could not make sense of what others wrote; he was so far from understanding good English, that he could not spell good English. To be out of all business was his delight, and he would stand leaning against a post for half an hour together, with pipe in his mouth, with all the tranquillity in the world, smoking, like Dryden's countryman that whistled as he went, for want of thought; and this even when his family was, as it were, starving, that little he had wasting, and that we were all bleeding to death, he not knowing, and as little considering, where to get another shilling when the last was spent.
This being his temper and the extent of his capacity, I confess I did not see so much loss in his parting with me as at first I thought I did, though it was hard and cruel to the last degree in him not giving me the least notice of his design; and indeed, that which I was most astonished at was that, seeing he must certainly have intended this excursion some few moments at least before he put it in practice, yet he did not come and take what little stock of money we had left, or at least a share of it, to bear his expense for a little while; but he did not, and I am morally certain he had not five guineas with him in the world when he went away. All that I could come to the knowledge of about him was that he left his hunting horn, which he called the French horn, in the stable, and his hunting saddle, went away in a handsome furniture as they call it, which he used sometimes to travel with, having an embroidered housing, a case of pistols, and other things belonging to them; and one of his servants had another saddle with pistols, though plain, and the other a long gun; so that they did not go out as sportsmen, but rather as travellers. What part of the world they went to I never heard for many years.
As I have said, I sent to his relations, but they sent me short and surly answers; nor did any one of them offer to come to see me or to see the children, or so much as to enquire after them, well perceiving that I was in a condition that was likely to be soon troublesome to them. But it was no time now to dally with them or with the world. I left off sending to them and went myself among them, laid my circumstances open to them, told them my whole case and the condition I was reduced to, begged they would advise me what course to take, laid myself as low as they could desire, and entreated them to consider that I was not in a condition to help myself, and that without some assistance we must all inevitably perish. I told them that if I had but one child, or two children, I would have