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.