Chương Chương 65 · 第65章

It is easy to believe that I was strangely affected with this story,

but ’tis impossible to describe the nature of my disturbance. I seemed

astonished at the story, and asked her a thousand questions about the

particulars, which I found she was thoroughly acquainted with. At last

I began to inquire into the circumstances of the family, how the old

gentlewoman, I mean my mother, died, and how she left what she had; for

my mother had promised me very solemnly, that when she died she would

do something for me, and leave it so, as that, if I was living, I

should one way or other come at it, without its being in the power of

her son, my brother and husband, to prevent it. She told me she did not

know exactly how it was ordered, but she had been told that my mother

had left a sum of money, and had tied her plantation for the payment of

it, to be made good to the daughter, if ever she could be heard of,

either in England or elsewhere; and that the trust was left with this

son, who was the person that we saw with his father.

This was news too good for me to make light of, and, you may be sure,

filled my heart with a thousand thoughts, what course I should take,

how, and when, and in what manner I should make myself known, or

whether I should ever make myself know or no.

Here was a perplexity that I had not indeed skill to manage myself in,

neither knew I what course to take. It lay heavy upon my mind night and

day. I could neither sleep nor converse, so that my husband perceived

it, and wondered what ailed me, strove to divert me, but it was all to

no purpose. He pressed me to tell him what it was troubled me, but I

put it off, till at last, importuning me continually, I was forced to

form a story, which yet had a plain truth to lay it upon too. I told

him I was troubled because I found we must shift our quarters and alter

our scheme of settling, for that I found I should be known if I stayed

in that part of the country; for that my mother being dead, several of

my relations were come into that part where we then was, and that I

must either discover myself to them, which in our present circumstances

was not proper on many accounts, or remove; and which to do I knew not,

and that this it was that made me so melancholy and so thoughtful.

He joined with me in this, that it was by no means proper for me to

make myself known to anybody in the circumstances in which we then

were; and therefore he told me he would be willing to remove to any

other part of the country, or even to any other country if I thought

fit. But now I had another difficulty, which was, that if I removed to

any other colony, I put myself out of the way of ever making a due

search after those effects which my mother had left. Again I could

never so much as think of breaking the secret of my former marriage to

my new husband; it was not a story, as I thought, that would bear

telling, nor could I tell what might be the consequences of it; and it

was impossible to search into the bottom of the thing without making it

public all over the country, as well who I was, as what I now was also.

In this perplexity I continued a great while, and this made my spouse

very uneasy; for he found me perplexed, and yet thought I was not open

with him, and did not let him into every part of my grievance; and he

would often say, he wondered what he had done that I would not trust

him with whatever it was, especially if it was grievous and afflicting.

The truth is, he ought to have been trusted with everything, for no man

in the world could deserve better of a wife; but this was a thing I

knew not how to open to him, and yet having nobody to disclose any part

of it to, the burthen was too heavy for my mind; for let them say what

they please of our sex not being able to keep a secret, my life is a

plain conviction to me of the contrary; but be it our sex, or the man’s

sex, a secret of moment should always have a confidant, a bosom friend,

to whom we may communicate the joy of it, or the grief of it, be it

which it will, or it will be a double weight upon the spirits, and

perhaps become even insupportable in itself; and this I appeal to all

human testimony for the truth of.

And this is the cause why many times men as well as women, and men of

the greatest and best qualities other ways, yet have found themselves

weak in this part, and have not been able to bear the weight of a

secret joy or of a secret sorrow, but have been obliged to disclose it,

even for the mere giving vent to themselves, and to unbend the mind

oppressed with the load and weights which attended it. Nor was this any

token of folly or thoughtlessness at all, but a natural consequence of

the thing; and such people, had they struggled longer with the

oppression, would certainly have told it in their sleep, and disclosed

the secret, let it have been of what fatal nature soever, without

regard to the person to whom it might be exposed. This necessity of

nature is a thing which works sometimes with such vehemence in the

minds of those who are guilty of any atrocious villainy, such as secret

murder in particular, that they have been obliged to discover it,

though the consequence would necessarily be their own destruction. Now,

though it may be true that the divine justice ought to have the glory

of all those discoveries and confessions, yet ’tis as certain that

Providence, which ordinarily works by the hands of nature, makes use

here of the same natural causes to produce those extraordinary effects.

I could give several remarkable instances of this in my long

conversation with crime and with criminals. I knew one fellow that,

while I was in prison in Newgate, was one of those they called then

night-fliers. I know not what other word they may have understood it by

since, but he was one who by connivance was admitted to go abroad every

evening, when he played his pranks, and furnished those honest people

they call thief-catchers with business to find out the next day, and

restore for a reward what they had stolen the evening before. This

fellow was as sure to tell in his sleep all that he had done, and every

step he had taken, what he had stolen, and where, as sure as if he had

engaged to tell it waking, and that there was no harm or danger in it,

and therefore he was obliged, after he had been out, to lock himself

up, or be locked up by some of the keepers that had him in fee, that

nobody should hear him; but, on the other hand, if he had told all the

particulars, and given a full account of his rambles and success, to

any comrade, any brother thief, or to his employers, as I may justly

call them, then all was well with him, and he slept as quietly as other

people.

As the publishing this account of my life is for the sake of the just

moral of very part of it, and for instruction, caution, warning, and

improvement to every reader, so this will not pass, I hope, for an

unnecessary digression concerning some people being obliged to disclose

the greatest secrets either of their own or other people’s affairs.

Under the certain oppression of this weight upon my mind, I laboured in

the case I have been naming; and the only relief I found for it was to

let my husband into so much of it as I thought would convince him of

the necessity there was for us to think of settling in some other part

of the world; and the next consideration before us was, which part of

the English settlements we should go to. My husband was a perfect

stranger to the country, and had not yet so much as a geographical

knowledge of the situation of the several places; and I, that, till I

wrote this, did not know what the word geographical signified, had only

a general knowledge from long conversation with people that came from

or went to several places; but this I knew, that Maryland,

Pennsylvania, East and West Jersey, New York, and New England lay all

north of Virginia, and that they were consequently all colder climates,

to which for that very reason, I had an aversion. For that as I

naturally loved warm weather, so now I grew into years I had a stronger

inclination to shun a cold climate. I therefore considered of going to

Carolina, which is the only southern colony of the English on the

continent of America, and hither I proposed to go; and the rather

because I might with great ease come from thence at any time, when it

might be proper to inquire after my mother’s effects, and to make

myself known enough to demand them.

With this resolution I proposed to my husband our going away from where

we was, and carrying all our effects with us to Carolina, where we

resolved to settle; for my husband readily agreed to the first part,

viz. that was not at all proper to stay where we was, since I had

assured him we should be known there, and the rest I effectually

concealed from him.

But now I found a new difficulty upon me. The main affair grew heavy

upon my mind still, and I could not think of going out of the country

without somehow or other making inquiry into the grand affair of what

my mother had done for me; nor could I with any patience bear the

thought of going away, and not make myself known to my old husband

(brother), or to my child, his son; only I would fain have had this

done without my new husband having any knowledge of it, or they having

any knowledge of him, or that I had such a thing as a husband.

I cast about innumerable ways in my thoughts how this might be done. I

would gladly have sent my husband away to Carolina with all our goods,

and have come after myself, but this was impracticable; he would never

stir without me, being himself perfectly unacquainted with the country,

and with the methods of settling there or anywhere else. Then I thought

we would both go first with part of our goods, and that when we were

settled I should come back to Virginia and fetch the remainder; but

even then I knew he would never part with me, and be left there to go

on alone. The case was plain; he was bred a gentleman, and by

consequence was not only unacquainted, but indolent, and when we did

settle, would much rather go out into the woods with his gun, which

they call there hunting, and which is the ordinary work of the Indians,

and which they do as servants; I say, he would rather do that than

attend the natural business of his plantation.