FIGHT AND THRASH HER CAPTAIN. 481 the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her so well, and was so sensible of the disaster of her drinking being the occasion of it all, that I could not resent it to such a degree as I had done in her predecessor, but I pitied her heartily; however, I put away all her servants, and almost locked her up, that is to say, I set new people over her, who would not suffer any one to come near her without my knowledge. CHAPTER XVI. AND THRASH HIM I MEET AND FIGHT HER CAPTAIN, BUT what to do with the villain that had thus abused both her and me, that was the question that remained; to fight him upon equal terms, I thought was a little hard; that after a man had treated me as he had done, he deserved no fair play for his life; so I resolved to wait for him in Stepney fields, and which way he often came home pretty late, and pistol him in the dark, and, if possible, to let him know what I killed him for, before I did it; but when I came to consider of this, it shocked my temper too as well as principle, and I could not be a murderer, whatever else I could be, or whatever I was provoked to be. However, I resolved on the other hand, that I would severely correct him for what he had done, and it was not long before I had an opportunity; for, hearing one morning that he was walking across the fields from Stepney to Shadwell, which way I knew he often went, I waited for his coming home again, and fairly met him. I had not many words with him, but told him I had long looked for him; that he knew the villany he had been guilty of in my family, and he could not believe, since he knew also that I was fully informed of it, but that I must be a great coward, as well as a cuckold, or that I would resent it, and that it was now a very proper time to call him to an account for it; and therefore bade him, if he durst show his face to what he had done, and defend the name of a captain of a manof-war, as they said he had been, to draw. He seemed surprised at the thing, and began to parley, and would lessen the crime of it, but I told him it was not a time to talk that way, since he could not deny the fact; and to lessen the crime, was to lay it the more upon the woman, who, I was sure, if he had not first debauched with wine, he could never have brought to the rest; and, seeing he refused to draw, I knocked him down with my cane at one blow, and I would not strike him again while he lay on the ground, but waited to see him recover a little, for I saw plainly he was not killed. In a few minutes he came to himself again, and then I took him fast by one wrist, and caned him as severely as I was able, and as long as I could hold it for want of breath, but forebore his head, because I was resolved he should feel it; in this condition at last he begged for mercy, but I was deaf to all pity a great while, till he roared out like a boy soundly whipped. Then I took his sword from him, and broke it before his face, and left him on the ground, giv ing him two or three kicks on the backside, and bade him go and take the law of me, if he thought fit. I had now as much satisfaction as indeed could be taken of a coward, and had no more to say to him; but as I knew it would make a great noise about the town, I immediately removed my family, and that I might be perfectly concealed, went into the north of England, and lived in a little town called not far from Lancaster, where I lived retired, and was no more heard of for about two years. My wife, though more confined than she used to be, and so kept up from the lewd part which, I believe, in the intervals of her intemperance, she was truly ashamed of and abhorred, yet retained the drinking part, which becoming, as I have said, necessary for her subsistence, she soon ruined her health, and in about a year and a half after my removal into the north, she died. Thus I was once more a free man, and as one would think, should by this time have been fully satisfied that matrimony was not appointed to be a state of felicity to me. I should have mentioned that the villain of a captain whe I had drubbed, as above, pretended to make a great stir about my assaulting him on the highway, and that I had fallen upon him with three ruffians, with an intent to murder him; and this began to obtain belief among the people in the neighbourhood; I sent him word of so much of it as I had heard, and told him I hoped it did not come from his own mouth, but if it did, I expected he would publicly disown it, he himself declaring he knew it to be false, or else I should be forced to act the same thing over again, till I had disciplined him into better manners; and that he might be assured, that if he continued to pretend that I had anybody with me when I caned him, I would publish the whole story in print, and besides that, would cane him again wherever I met him, and as often as I met him, till he thought fit to defend himself with his sword like a gentleman. He gave me no answer to this letter; and the satisfaction I had for that was, that I gave twenty or thirty copies of it about among the neighbours, which made it as public as if I had printed it (that is, as to his acquaintance and mine), and made him so hissed at and hated, that he was obliged to remove into some other part of the town, whither I did not inquire. My wife being now dead, I knew not what course to take in the world, and I grew so disconsolate and discouraged, that I was next door to being distempered, and sometimes, indeed, I thought myself a little touched in my head. But it proved nothing but vapours, and the vexation of this affair, and in about a year's time, or thereabouts, it wore off again. I had rambled up and down in a most discontented unsettled posture after this, I say, about a year, and then I considered I had three innocent children, and I could take no care of them, and that I must either go away, and leave them to the wide world, or settle here and get somebody to look after them, and that better a mother-in-law than no mother, for to live such a wandering life it would not do; so I resolved I would marry as anything offered, though it was mean, and the meaner the better. I concluded my next wife should be only taken as an upper servant, that is to say, a nurse to my children, and housekeeper to myself, and let her be whore or honest woman, said I, as she likes best, I am resolved I will not much concern myself about that; for I was now one desperate, that valued not how things went. In this careless, and indeed rash, foolish humour, I talked to myself thus: If I marry an honest woman, my children will be taken care of; if she be a slut, and abuses me, as I set everybody does, I will kidnap her and send her to Virginia, to my plantations there, and there she shall work hard enough, and fare hard enough to keep her chaste, I'll warrant her. I knew well enough at first that these were mad hair-brained notions, and I thought no more of being serious in them than I thought of being a man in the moon : but I know not how it happened to me, I reasoned and talked to myself in this wild manner so long, that I brought myself to be seriously desperate; that is, to resolve upon another marriage, with all the suppositions of unhappiness that could be imagined to fall out. And yet even this rash resolution of my senses did not come presently to action; for I was half a year after this before I fixed upon anything; at last, as he that seeks mischief shall certainly find it, so it was with me. There happened to be a young, or rather, a middle-aged woman in the next town, which was but a half mile off, who usually was at my house, and among my children, every day when the weather was tolerable; and though she came but merely as a neighbour, and to see us, yet she was always helpful in directing and ordering things for them, and mighty handy about them, as well before my wife died as after. Her father was one that I employed often to go to Liverpool, and sometimes to Whitehaven, and do business for me; for having, as it were, settled myself in the northern parts of England, I had ordered part of my effects to be shipped, as occasion of shipping offered, to either of those two towns, to which, the war continuing very sharp, it was safer coming, as to privateers, than about through the channel to London. I took a mighty fancy at last, that this girl would answer my end, particularly that I saw she was mighty useful among the children; so on the other hand, the children loved her very well, and I resolved to love her too, flattering myself mightily, that as I had married two gentlewomen and one citizen, and they proved all three whores, I should now find what I wanted in an innocent country wench. I took up a world of time in considering of this matter; indeed scarce any of my matches were done without very mature consideration; the second was the worst in that article, but in this, I thought of it, I believe, four months THOUGHTS OF A FOURTH WIFE. 485 most seriously before I resolved, and that very prudence spoiled the whole thing; however, at last being resolved, I took Mrs. Margaret one day as she passed by my parlour door, called her in, and told her I wanted to speak with her; she came readily in, but blushed mightily when I bade her sit down in a chair just by me. I used no great ceremony with her, but told her that I had observed she had been mighty kind to my children, and was very tender to them, and that they all loved her, and that if she and I could agree about it, I intended to make her their mother, if she was not engaged to somebody else. The girl sat still, and said never a word, till I said those words, 'if she was not engaged to somebody else;' when she seemed struck. However, I took no notice of it, other than this, Look ye, Moggy, said I (so they call them in the country), if you have promised yourself, you must tell me. For we all knew that a young fellow, a good clergyman's wicked son, had hung about her a great while, two or three years, and made love to her, but could never get the girl in the mind, it seems, to have him. She knew I was not ignorant of it, and therefore, after her first surprise was over, she told me Mr.-———— had, as I knew, often come after her, but she had never promised him anything, and had, for several years, refused him; her father always telling her that he was a wicked fellow, and that he would be her ruin if she had him. Well, Moggy, then, says I, what dost say to me? art thou free to make me a wife? She blushed and looked down upon the ground, and would not speak a good while; but, when I pressed her to tell me, she looked up, and said, she supposed I was but jesting with her; well, I got over that, and told her I was in very good earnest with her, and I took her for a sober, honest, modest girl, and, as I said, one that my children loved mighty well, and I was in earnest with her; if she would give me her consent, I would give her my word that I would have her, and we would be married to-morrow morning. She looked up again at that, and smiled a little, and said, No, that was too soon to say yes; she hoped I would give her some time to consider of it, and to talk with her father about it. I told her she needed not much time to consider about it; but, however, I would give her till to-morrow morning, |