The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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.