bargain; and I had a great deal of reason to be assured that he
would stand to it, by the letters he wrote to me, which were
the kindest and most obliging that could be.
I now grew big, and the people where I lodged perceived it,
and began to take notice of it to me, and, as far as civility
would allow, intimated that I must think of removing. This
put me to extreme perplexity, and I grew very melancholy, for
indeed I knew not what course to take. I had money, but no
friends, and was like to have a child upon my hands to keep,
which was a difficult I had never had upon me yet, as the
particulars of my story hitherto make appear.
In the course of this affair I fell very ill, and my melancholy
really increased my distemper; my illness proved at length to
be only an ague, but my apprehensions were really that I should
miscarry. I should not say apprehensions, for indeed I would
have been glad to miscarry, but I could never be brought to
entertain so much as a thought of endeavouring to miscarry,
or of taking any thing to make me miscarry; I abhorred, I say,
so much as the thought of it.
However, speaking of it in the house, the gentlewoman who
kept the house proposed to me to send for a midwife. I
scrupled it at first, but after some time consented to it, but
told her I had no particular acquaintance with any midwife,
and so left it to her.
It seems the mistress of the house was not so great a stranger
to such cases as mine was as I thought at first she had been,
as will appear presently, and she sent for a midwife of the
right sort–that is to say, the right sort for me.
The woman appeared to be an experienced woman in her
business, I mean as a midwife; but she had another calling too,
in which she was as expert as most women if not more. My
landlady had told her I was very melancholy, and that she
believed that had done me harm; and once, before me, said to
her, ‘Mrs. B—-‘ (meaning the midwife), ‘I believe this lady’s
trouble is of a kind that is pretty much in your way, and
therefore if you can do anything for her, pray do, for she is a
very civil gentlewoman’; and so she went out of the room.
I really did not understand her, but my Mother Midnight began
very seriously to explain what she mean, as soon as she was
gone. ‘Madam,’ says she, ‘you seem not to understand what
your landlady means; and when you do understand it, you need
not let her know at all that you do so.
‘She means that you are under some circumstances that may
render your lying in difficult to you, and that you are not willing
to be exposed. I need say no more, but to tell you, that if you
think fit to communicate so much of your case to me, if it be so,
as is necessary, for I do not desire to pry into those things, I
perhaps may be in a position to help you and to make you
perfectly easy, and remove all your dull thoughts upon that
subject.’
Every word this creature said was a cordial to me, and put
new life and new spirit into my heart; my blood began to
circulate immediately, and I was quite another body; I ate my
victuals again, and grew better presently after it. She said a
great deal more to the same purpose, and then, having pressed
me to be free with her, and promised in the solemnest manner
to be secret, she stopped a little, as if waiting to see what
impression it made on me, and what I would say.
I was to sensible too the want I was in of such a woman, not
to accept her offer; I told her my case was partly as she
guessed, and partly not, for I was really married, and had a
husband, though he was in such fine circumstances and so