Then one of my sisters took me away to the country at once.
At the end of July I went down to my Convent, the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, New Hall, Chelmsford, Essex. It has been full of my relations for six generations, and is like a second home to me. I passed most of my youth in it, and I returned to it with pleasure. There I found a mental and physical tonic. The 1st of September, 1891—the date that we were to have been settled in London together—I came to London, and took a small house in Baker Street, and finding I could never keep away from the mausoleum, I bought a very little cottage close to it, and I set about making them comfortable and pretty, out of my two hundred and four cases from Trieste, and a little second-hand furniture.
During this sad time, death has been alarmingly busy with us. We were four sisters, all married. One sister, exactly like me, died in September; all three sisters lost their husbands in November, January, and September; and one sister lives with me. I was brought to death's door with influenza in January, 1892, but I was spared to do the work I am now doing. I got my books and papers housed in March, 1892. The books are tidied and classified, but my papers are not; but I was afraid to trust to sufficient life if I took six months to put them in order, so I have hurried on to give these pages to the world, and whilst I live I shall transact the rest of his literary work set forth in the preface. The loss of eight immediate relatives and my own wretched health have marked little epochs in the period that has elapsed.
"It is a terrible thing to be innocent, and yet to know yourself suspected. Nobody in such a case can ever act quite naturally. The very sense of innocency, coupled with the knowledge of the suspicions against one, gives rise to an awkward self-consciousness which looks like guilt in the eyes of others."
I must now refer to the episode of "It." In July, 1891, after all my troubles, I was summoned to the death-bed of a lady who I thought was a great friend of mine. I went with great warmth and distress of feeling, and when I went up to her bed to kiss her, she drew away and said, "Do not kiss me. I have sent for you to make a confession, as if it were to a priest; but you must give me a solemn promise never to betray me, after I am dead, that my husband and my girls, who go out a great deal in Society"—naming very high quarters—"may not have to be ashamed of me, and curse my memory." I gave the required promise, for I thought she was going to breathe her last, and she said she could not die in peace. I will never betray her name, but I have a right to tell the substance of what she said, because I have had to suffer bitterly through it, and may still be suffering without knowing it. She asked me not to look at her, and in pity I turned away.
She said then, "I am 'It.' In 1876-7 your husband began mining in Midian, and subsequently in West Africa, and nothing was talked of but the millions that you were then sure of making—£100,000 in six months, so you said, and the rest following quickly. Now, I was awfully fond of money. I was much attracted by your husband. I loved you, and admired you; I hated you, and was jealous of you. I was not in love with him—So-and-so was my lover—but I thought that if I could only conciliate him, and disgust him with you, I should probably get a great deal of that money which I wanted; for my extravagances were far beyond the means of my husband or my lover, and I live very much in the world." She here confessed all she had done against us both, until our mining hopes had come to nothing. "I was dreadfully disgusted," she owned, "finding it impossible to alienate you, as the moment you found out anything you went and told each other; but I was surprised that you never suspected the right person, and you both of you frequently openly joked with me about 'It.' Towards the end I saw that your husband disliked and distrusted me, but he could not fix in his own mind why it was. You were easily deceived, but I dared not do anything except in his absence. I took a wicked pleasure in your perfect trust in me."
She had free access to all my letters, papers, journals, and writings, and knew my every movement. She would send me nice letters in a hand I did not know, but signed with a name I did know, in the hopes I might answer it. If I did answer it, I made a fool of myself, and if I did not answer it, she did, copying from my own writings my style and mode of speech. She was assisted in the forging part of the business (I mean handwriting) by a needy Englishman, with a college education, who was an expert in copying hands.
For a long time I sat crouched up in the room without answering, with my head buried in my hands—my consternation and my humiliation were so great, and I was wrestling with myself—and at last I answered her pitiful entreaties for pardon. I said, "I am sixty years old, I have left the world, I have one foot in the grave, and I have nothing to do with Revenge; but, before I go, I must clear the name I am so proud to bear. No one shall ever know who 'It' was. Your husband and your daughters and the crème of Society shall still bless and regret you; but you must give me the list, as far as you can, of the people you have written to, either in my name or my husband's, and then, if God will forgive you, and if Richard will forgive you, then I will also—and may you rest in peace!" I asked her what sort of letters she had written. "You frequently allowed me to help you to answer your letters. Sometimes I wrote gushing letters, so as to make you seem silly; sometimes I gave your opinions to people in high positions, to make you seem impertinent. Sometimes I wrote you letters myself, in a feigned hand, and answered them in your hand (imitated) to the supposed writers." I did not trust myself to speak, but I wrote down all the names she gave me, and I wrote this history to all those concerned, and, except one, they have all answered me. I left the room quietly, and she eventually died.
"Now, now my frame is old and wan and weary,
And now my years on earth can be but few;
I count the days, when God's voice, calling clearly,
Shall lead me, O my loved one, back to you!"