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,