Chapter
7
It was not long, you may
be sure, before we had a second conference upon the same subject; when, as if
she had been willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to
suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began to tell them with
alterations and omissions; but I refreshed her memory and set her to rights in
many things which I supposed she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely
with the whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and then
she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the severity of her
misfortunes. When these things were a little over with her, we fell into a
close debate about what should be first done before we gave an account of the
matter to my husband. But to what purpose could be all our consultations? We
could neither of us see our way through it, nor see how it could be safe to
open such a scene to him. It was impossible to make any judgment, or give any
guess at what temper he would receive it in, or what measures he would take
upon it; and if he should have so little government of himself as to make it
public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the whole family, and
expose my mother and me to the last degree; and if at last he should take the
advantage the law would give him, he might put me away with disdain and leave
me to sue for the little portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the
suit, and then be a beggar; the children would be ruined too, having no legal
claim to any of his effects; and thus I should see him, perhaps, in the arms of
another wife in a few months, and be myself the most miserable creature alive.
My mother was as
sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole, we knew not what to do. After some
time we came to more sober resolutions, but then it was with this misfortune
too, that my mother’s opinion and mine were quite different from one another,
and indeed inconsistent with one another; for my mother’s opinion was, that I
should bury the whole thing entirely, and continue to live with him as my
husband till some other event should make the discovery of it more convenient;
and that in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us together again,
and restore our mutual comfort and family peace; that we might lie as we used
to do together, and so let the whole matter remain a secret as close as death.
‘For, child,’ says she, ‘we are both undone if it comes out.’
To encourage me to this,
she promised to make me easy in my circumstances, as far as she was able, and
to leave me what she could at her death, secured for me separately from my
husband; so that if it should come out afterwards, I should not be left
destitute, but be able to stand on my own feet and procure justice from him.
This proposal did not
agree at all with my judgment of the thing, though it was very fair and kind in
my mother; but my thoughts ran quite another way.
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 live 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 so 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 my 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.’
This a little amazed
him, and he wrote down the words distinctly, but read them over and over before
he signed them, hesitating at them several times, and repeating them: “My
mother’s prejudice! and your prejudice!
What mysterious thing can this be?’ However, at last he signed it.
‘Well, says I,
‘my dear, I’ll ask you no more under your hand; but as you are to hear the most
unexpected and surprising thing that perhaps ever befell any family in the
world, I beg you to promise me you will receive it with composure and a
presence of mind suitable to a man of sense.’
‘I’ll do my utmost,’ says
he, ‘upon condition you will keep me no longer in suspense, for you terrify
me with all these preliminaries.’
“Well, then,’ says I,
‘it is this: as I told you before in a heat, that I was not your lawful wife, and
that our children were not legal children, so I must let you know now in
calmness and in kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own
sister, and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of our
mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it, in a
manner not to be denied or contradicted.’
I saw him turn pale and
look wild; and I said, ‘Now remember your promise, and
receive it with presence of mind; for who could have said more to prepare you
for it than I have done? However, I called a servant, and got him a little
glass of rum (which is the usual dram of that country), for he was just
fainting away.
When he was a little
recovered, I said to him, ‘This story, you may be sure, requires a long
explanation, and therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear it out,
and I’ll make it as short as I can’; and with this, I told him what I thought
was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother came to discover it to
me, as above. ‘And now, my dear,’ says I, ‘you will see reason for my
capitulations, and that I neither have been the cause of this matter, nor could
be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now.’
‘I am fully satisfied of
that,’ says he, ‘but ’tis a dreadful surprise to me; however, I know a
remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put an end to your difficulties,
without your going to
But things were not come
to their height with him, and I observed he became pensive and melancholy; and
in a word, as I thought, a little distempered in his head. I endeavoured to
talk him into temper, and to reason him into a kind of scheme for our
government in the affair, and sometimes he would be well, and talk with some
courage about it; but the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and, in
short, it went so far that he made attempts upon himself, and in one of them
had actually strangled himself and had not his mother come into the room in the
very moment, he had died; but with the help of a Negro servant she cut
him down and recovered him.
Things were now come to
a lamentable height in the family. My pity for him now began to revive that
affection which at first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by
all the kind carriage I could, to make up the breach; but, in short, it had
gotten too great a head, it preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a
long, lingering consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this
distress I did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I
might perhaps have married again there, very much to my advantage; it had been
certainly my business to have stayed in the country, but my mind was restless
too, and uneasy; I hankered after coming to England, and nothing would
satisfy me without it.
In short, by an
unwearied importunity, my husband, who was apparently decaying, as I observed,
was at last prevailed with; and so my own fate pushing me on, the way
was made clear for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good
cargo for my coming to England.
When I parted with my
brother (for such I am now to call him), we agreed that after I arrived he
should pretend to have an account that I was dead in
I came away for
We had an indifferent
good voyage till we came just upon the coast of
I got to London
in about three weeks, where I heard a little while after that the ship was
arrived in Bristol, but at the same time had the misfortune to know that
by the violent weather she had been in, and the breaking of her main-mast, she
had great damage on board, and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled.
I had now a new scene of
life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance it had. I was come away with a
kind of final farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable, had it
come safe, and by the help of it, I might have married again tolerably well;
but as it was, I was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the
whole, and this without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends,
nay, even so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely
necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my subtle friend that
set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her husband also; as I was
informed, upon sending a person unknown to inquire.
The looking after my
cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and
during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to the Bath,
for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay,
continued so to an extreme; and being now, as it were, a woman of
fortune though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other
might happen in my way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case
before.
The
Here I stayed the whole
latter season, as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy
acquaintances, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than
fortified me against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company, that
is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement to find this way
of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending
upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and
this gave me many sad reflections in the interval of my other thoughts.
However, I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or other
might offer for my advantage.
But I was in the wrong
place for it. I was not now at Redriff, where,
if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain or other might have
talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I was at the Bath,
where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife; and
consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect to make there
must have some tendency that way.
I had spent the first season
well enough; for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who
came to the
However, I went this
length the first season, viz. I contracted an acquaintance with a woman
in whose house I lodged, who, though she did not keep an ill house, as we
call it, yet had none of the best principles in herself. I had on all
occasions behaved myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my
reputation on any account whatever, and all the men that I had conversed with
were of so good reputation that I had not given the least reflection by
conversing with them; nor did any of them seem to think there was room for a
wicked correspondence, if they had any of them offered it; yet there was one
gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my
company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very
agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it.
I had many melancholy
hours at the Bath after the company was gone; for though I went to Bristol
sometime for the disposing my effects, and for recruits of money, yet I chose
to come back to Bath for my residence, because being on good terms with
the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer, I found that during the winter
I lived rather cheaper there than I could do anywhere else. Here, I say,
I passed the winter as heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but
having contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose house I
lodged, I could not avoid communicating to her something of what lay hardest
upon my mind and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances, and the loss
of my fortune by the damage of my goods at sea. I told her also, that I had a
mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and as I had
really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition, and
the great loss I had received, which indeed came to almost
My new friend appeared
sensibly affected with my condition, and indeed was so very kind as to reduce
the rate of my living with her to so low a price during the winter, that she
convinced me she got nothing by me; and as for lodging, during the winter I
paid nothing at all.
When the spring season
came on, she continued to be as king to me as she could, and I lodged with her
for a time, till it was found necessary to do otherwise. She had some persons
of character that frequently lodged in her house, and in particular the
gentleman who, as I said, singled me out for his companion the winter before;
and he came down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants,
and lodged in the same house. I suspected that my landlady had invited him
thither, letting him know that I was still with her; but she denied it, and
protested to me that she did not, and he said the same.
In a word, this
gentleman came down and continued to single me out for his peculiar confidence
as well as conversation. He was a complete gentleman, that must be confessed,
and his company was very agreeable to me, as mine, if I might believe him,
was to him. He made no professions to be but of an extraordinary respect, and
he had such an opinion of my virtue, that, as he often professed, he
believed if he should offer anything else, I should reject him with contempt.
He soon understood from me that I was a widow; that I had arrived at Bristol
from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at Bath till
the next Virginia Fleet should arrive, by which I expected considerable
effects. I understood by him, and by others of him, that he had a wife, but
that the lady was distempered in her head, and was under the conduct of her own
relations, which he consented to, to avoid any reflections that might (as
was not unusual in such cases) be cast on him for mismanaging her cure; and
in the meantime he came to the Bath to divert his thoughts from the
disturbance of such a melancholy circumstance as that was.
My landlady, who of her
own accord encouraged the correspondence on all occasions, gave me an
advantageous character of him, as a man of honour and of virtue, as well as of
great estate. And indeed I had a great deal of reason to say so of him too; for
though we lodged both on a floor, and he had frequently come into my chamber,
even when I was in bed, and I also into his when he was in bed, yet he never
offered anything to me further than a kiss, or so much as solicited me to
anything till long after, as you shall hear.
I frequently took notice
to my landlady of his exceeding modesty, and she again used to tell me, she
believed it was so from the beginning; however, she used to tell me that she
thought I ought to expect some gratification from him for my company, for
indeed he did, as it were, engross me, and I was seldom from him. I told her
I had not given him the least occasion to think I wanted it, or that I would
accept of it from him. She told me she would take that part upon her,
and she did so, and managed it so dexterously, that the first time we were
together alone, after she had talked with him, he began to inquire a little
into my circumstances, as how I had subsisted myself since I came on shore, and
whether I did not want money. I stood off very boldly. I told him that though
my cargo of tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite lost; that the
merchant I had been consigned to had so honestly managed for me that I had not
wanted, and that I hoped, with frugal management, I should make it hold out
till more would come, which I expected by the next fleet; that in the meantime
I had retrenched my expenses, and whereas I kept a maid last season, now I
lived without; and whereas I had a chamber and a dining-room then on the first
floor, as he knew, I now had but one room, two pair of stairs, and
the like. ‘But I live,’ said I, ‘as well satisfied now as I did
then’; adding, that his company had been a means to make me live much
more cheerfully than otherwise I should have done, for which I was much obliged
to him; and so I put off all room for any offer for the present. However, it
was not long before he attacked me again, and told me he found that I was
backward to trust him with the secret of my circumstances, which he was
sorry for; assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy
his own curiosity, but merely to assist me, if there was any occasion; but
since I would not own myself to stand in need of any assistance, he had but one
thing more to desire of me, and that was, that I would promise him that when I
was any way straitened, or like to be so, I would frankly tell him of it, and
that I would make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer; adding,
that I should always find I had a true friend, though perhaps I was afraid to
trust him. I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely
obliged, to let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness; and indeed
from that time I did not appear so much reserved to him as I had done before,
though still within the bounds of the strictest virtue on both sides; but how
free soever our conversation was, I could not arrive
to that sort of freedom which he desired, viz. to tell him I wanted
money, though I was secretly very glad of his offer.
Some weeks passed after
this, and still I never asked him for money; when my landlady, a cunning
creature, who had often pressed me to it, but found that I could not do it,
makes a story of her own inventing, and comes in bluntly to me when we were
together. ‘Oh, widow!’ says she, ‘I have bad news to tell you this morning.’
‘What is that?’ said I; ‘are the
Now I could by no means
like her project; I though it looked too much like prompting him, which indeed
he did not want, and I clearly that I should lose nothing by being backward to
ask, so I took her up short. ‘I can’t image why he should say so to you,’ said
I, ‘for I assure you he brought me all the money I sent him for, and here
it is,’ said I (pulling out my purse with about twelve guineas in it);
and added, ‘I intend you shall have most of it by and by.’
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