第 二十 章 · 第20章

As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain

as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could

think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother. In the

next place, I told her that her being alive was the only support of the

discovery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to

be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she

should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent

creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or

should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how he had

threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had

been in about it, and how that was the thing that drove me to the

necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.

From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious reflections

I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped

she would like, as a medium between both, viz. that she should use her

endeavours with her son to give me leave to go to England, as I had

desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in

goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along

suggesting that he might one time or other think it proper to come over

to me.

That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and after first

obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to secrecy, discover the

case to him, doing it gradually, and as her own discretion should guide

her, so that he might not be surprised with it, and fly out into any

passions and excesses on my account, or on hers; and that she should

concern herself to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying

again, unless he had a certain account of my being dead.

This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really alienated

from him in the consequences of these things; indeed, I mortally hated

him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that riveted aversion

I had to him. At the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous

living, added to that aversion, and though I had no great concern about

it in point of conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with

him the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily it

was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have

embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that kind to me, for

which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets

with him. I cannot say that I was right in point of policy in carrying

it such a length, while at the same time I did not resolve to discover

the thing to him; but I am giving an account of what was, not of what

ought or ought not to be.

In their directly opposite opinion to one another my mother and I

continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile our

judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could never either of

us yield our own, or bring over the other.

I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother, and she

insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent to my going

from him to England; and in this uncertainty we continued, not

differing so as to quarrel, or anything like it, but so as not to be

able to resolve what we should do to make up that terrible breach that

was before us.

At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother my

resolution, viz. that, in short, I would tell him of it myself. My

mother was frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts of it; but

I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually and softly, and

with all the art and good-humour I was mistress of, and time it also as

well as I could, taking him in good-humour too. I told her I did not

question but, if I could be hypocrite enough to feign more affection to

him than I really had, I should succeed in all my design, and we might

part by consent, and with a good agreement, for I might love him well

enough for a brother, though I could not for a husband.

All this while he lay at my mother to find out, if possible, what was

the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he called it, which

I mentioned before: namely, that I was not his lawful wife, nor my

children his legal children. My mother put him off, told him she could

bring me to no explanations, but found there was something that

disturbed me very much, and she hoped she should get it out of me in

time, and in the meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more

tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him of his

terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending me to a

madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make a woman desperate

on any account whatever.

He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure me that he

loved me as well as ever, and that he had no such design as that of

sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might say in his passion; also he

desired my mother to use the same persuasions to me too, that our

affections might be renewed, and we might lie together in a good

understanding as we used to do.

I found the effects of this treaty presently. My husband’s conduct was

immediately altered, and he was quite another man to me; nothing could

be kinder and more obliging than he was to me upon all occasions; and I

could do no less than make some return to it, which I did as well as I

could, but it was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was

more frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being

with child again by him was ready to throw me into fits; and this made

me see that there was an absolute necessity of breaking the case to him

without any more delay, which, however, I did with all the caution and

reserve imaginable.

He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month, and we began

to live a new kind of life with one another; and could I have satisfied

myself to have gone on with it, I believe it might have continued as

long as we had continued alive together. One evening, as we were

sitting and talking very friendly together under a little awning, which

served as an arbour at the entrance from our house into the garden, he

was in a very pleasant, agreeable humour, and said abundance of kind

things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good agreement,

and the disorders of our past breach, and what a satisfaction it was to

him that we had room to hope we should never have any more of it.

I fetched a deep sigh, and told him there was nobody in the world could

be more delighted than I was in the good agreement we had always kept

up, or more afflicted with the breach of it, and should be so still;

but I was sorry to tell him that there was an unhappy circumstance in

our case, which lay too close to my heart, and which I knew not how to

break to him, that rendered my part of it very miserable, and took from

me all the comfort of the rest.

He importuned me to tell him what it was. I told him I could not tell

how to do it; that while it was concealed from him I alone was unhappy,

but if he knew it also, we should be both so; and that, therefore, to

keep him in the dark about it was the kindest thing that I could do,

and it was on that account alone that I kept a secret from him, the

very keeping of which, I thought, would first or last be my

destruction.

It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the

double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him. He told

me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not be faithful to

him if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought so too, and yet I

could not do it. He went back to what I had said before to him, and

told me he hoped it did not relate to what I had said in my passion,

and that he had resolved to forget all that as the effect of a rash,

provoked spirit. I told him I wished I could forget it all too, but

that it was not to be done, the impression was too deep, and I could

not do it: it was impossible.

He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in anything, and

that therefore he would importune me no more about it, resolving to

acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only begged I should then agree,

that whatever it was, it should no more interrupt our quiet and our

mutual kindness.

This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me, for I

really wanted his further importunities, that I might be prevailed with

to bring out that which indeed it was like death to me to conceal; so I

answered him plainly that I could not say I was glad not to be

importuned, thought I could not tell how to comply. “But come, my

dear,” said I, “what conditions will you make with me upon the opening

this affair to you?”

“Any conditions in the world,” said he, “that you can in reason desire

of me.” “Well,” said I, “come, give it me under your hand, that if you

do not find I am in any fault, or that I am willingly concerned in the

causes of the misfortune that is to follow, you will not blame me, use

me the worse, do me any injury, or make me be the sufferer for that

which is not my fault.”

“That,” says he, “is the most reasonable demand in the world: not to

blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a pen and ink,”

says he; so I ran in and fetched a pen, ink, and paper, and he wrote

the condition down in the very words I had proposed it, and signed it

with his name. “Well,” says he, “what is next, my dear?”

“Why,” says I, “the next is, that you will not blame me for not

discovering the secret of it to you before I knew it.”

“Very just again,” says he; “with all my heart”; so he wrote down that

also, and signed it.

“Well, my dear,” says I, “then I have but one condition more to make

with you, and that is, that as there is nobody concerned in it but you

and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world, except

your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the

discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent

as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice

or to your mother’s prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.”