Даниэль Дефо - Roxana

But you will easily allow, that as Time run on a Week, two Weeks, a Month, two Months, and so on, I was dreadfully frighted at last, and the more when I look’d into my own Circumstances, and consider’d the Condition in which I was left; with five Children, and not one Farthing Subsistance for them, other than about seventy Pound in Money, and what few Things of Value I had about me, which, tho’ 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 perplex’d, melancholly, and discourag’d, to the last Degree.

I remain’d in this dejected Condition near a Twelvemonth. My Husband had two Sisters, who were married, and liv’d very well, and some other near Relations that I knew of, and I hop’d 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 declar’d 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 Inquiries.

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 observ’d, that it was about half a Year before this Elopement of my Husband, that the Disaster I mention’d above befel my Brother; who Broke, [31] Broke : became bankrupt. 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. [32] Composition : partial payment in settlement of a debt.

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 [33] Plate : silver coins, utensils, or ornaments. and some Jewels, as might be supposed, my Fortune and former Circumstances consider’d; and my Husband, who had never staid to be distress’d, 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 liv’d 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 liv’d 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 turn’d his hand to the gaining one Shilling towards lessening our Distress; he neither had the Capacity or the Inclination; he could have been no Clerk, for he scarce wrote a legible Hand; he was so far from being able to write Sence, that he could not make Sence 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 wou’d stand leaning against a Post for half an Hour together, with a Pipe in his Mouth, with all the Tranquillity in the World, smoaking, like Dryden’s Countryman that Whistled as he went, for want of Thought ; [34] Dryden’s Countryman : ‘Cymon and Iphigenia, from Boccace’, II.84–5, in Dryden’s Fables Ancient and Modern (1700). 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; tho’ 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 astonish’d 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 Expence for a little while, but he did not; and I am morally certain he had not five Guineas [35] Guineas : The guinea, originally made of gold from Guinea (West Africa), was current in England from 1661 to 1817. It varied in value from twenty shillings to thirty shillings, until fixed at twenty-one shillings in 1717. with him in the World, when he went away: All that I cou’d come to the Knowledge of, about him, was, that he left his Hunting-Horn, which he call’d the French Horn, in the Stable, and his Hunting Saddle, went away in a handsome Furniture, [36] in a handsome Furniture : with handsome riding equipment (including an outfit, harness and trappings for the horse, and arms). 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 reduc’d to, begg’d they would advise me what Course to take, laid myself as low as they could desire, and intreated 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 had but one Child, or two Children, I would have done my Endeavour to have work’d for them with my Needle, and should only have come to them to beg them to help me to some Work, that I might get our Bread by my Labour; but to think of one single Woman not bred to Work, and at a Loss where to get Employment, to get the Bread of five Children, that was not possible, some of my Children being young too, and none of them big enough to help one another.

It was all one, I receiv’d not one Farthing of Assistance from any-body, was hardly ask’d to sit down at the two Sisters’ Houses, nor offer’d to Eat or Drink at two more near Relations. The Fifth, an Ancient Gentlewoman, Aunt-in-Law to my Husband, a Widow, and the least able also of any of the rest, did, indeed, ask me to sit down, gave me a Dinner, and refresh’d me with a kinder Treatment than any of the rest; but added the melancholly Part, viz : That she would have help’d me, but that, indeed, she was not able; which, however, I was satisfied was very true.

Here I reliev’d myself with the constant Assistant of the Afflicted, I mean Tears; for, relating to her how I was received by the other of my Husband’s Relations, it made me burst into Tears, and I cry’d vehemently for a great while together, till I made the good old Gentlewoman cry too several times.