On the other hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own
conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of
the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of
poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that
there was no looking behind me. But as poverty brought me into it, so
fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it
quite off, if I could but come to lay up money enough to maintain me.
But these were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they
vanished; for his company was so delightful, that there was no being
melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all the subject of
those hours when I was alone.
I lived six years in this happy but unhappy condition, in which time I
brought him three children, but only the first of them lived; and
though I removed twice in those six years, yet I came back the sixth
year to my first lodgings at Hammersmith. Here it was that I was one
morning surprised with a kind but melancholy letter from my gentleman,
intimating that he was very ill, and was afraid he should have another
fit of sickness, but that his wife's relations being in the house with
him, it would not be practicable to have me with him, which, however,
he expressed his great dissatisfaction in, and that he wished I could
be allowed to tend and nurse him as I did before.
I was very much concerned at this account, and was very impatient to
know how it was with him. I waited a fortnight or thereabouts, and
heard nothing, which surprised me, and I began to be very uneasy
indeed. I think, I may say, that for the next fortnight I was near to
distracted. It was my particular difficulty that I did not know
directly where he was; for I understood at first he was in the lodgings
of his wife's mother; but having removed myself to London, I soon
found, by the help of the direction I had for writing my letters to
him, how to inquire after him, and there I found that he was at a house
in Bloomsbury, whither he had, a little before he fell sick, removed
his whole family; and that his wife and wife's mother were in the same
house, though the wife was not suffered to know that she was in the
same house with her husband.
Here I also soon understood that he was at the last extremity, which
made me almost at the last extremity too, to have a true account. One
night I had the curiosity to disguise myself like a servant-maid, in a
round cap and straw hat, and went to the door, as sent by a lady of his
neighbourhood, where he lived before, and giving master and mistress's
service, I said I was sent to know how Mr. ---- did, and how he had
rested that night. In delivering this message I got the opportunity I
desired; for, speaking with one of the maids, I held a long gossip's
tale with her, and had all the particulars of his illness, which I
found was a pleurisy, attended with a cough and a fever. She told me
also who was in the house, and how his wife was, who, by her relation,
they were in some hopes might recover her understanding; but as to the
gentleman himself, in short she told me the doctors said there was very
little hopes of him, that in the morning they thought he had been
dying, and that he was but little better then, for they did not expect
that he could live over the next night.