Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House by Stephanie Barron Read Free Book Online Page A

the worst occasions we have not ventured out-of-doors even to attend Sunday service. Such a moral lapse in the wife and daughters of a clergyman should be deemed inexcusable, did we possess a team of horses and the conveyance suitable to our station; but we do not, and a slippery progress through the ice and mire of the streets is not to be thought of. My brother ventures out to skate in the frozen marshes, and kneel alone in his Sabbath pew; on every street corner he may meet with a friend, and learn all the most urgent naval gossip.
    In returning from church, Frank will often carry in his train a solicitous acquaintance, come to comment on his wife's blooming looks, and enquire about his mother's health. These occasional bursts of friendship and information do much to break the monotony of our routine and loosen the stranglehold of winter; but they are too brief and narrow in their content. Our acquaintance in Southampton is mostly derived from Frank's professional circle, and though I possess a fine naval fervour, and will assert that sailors are endowed with greater worth than any set of men in England, I must admit to a certain weariness in their society. They are entirely taken up with battle and ships, and with the advancement of themselves and their colleagues up the Naval List; and though dedicated to the preservation of the Kingdom, and possessed of noble hearts and true, they are, in general, a population whose schooling ended at roughly the age of fourteen. I had forgot, until my chance encounter with Louisa Seagrave, how much I craved the conversation of intelligible people—of those whose world is made large by the breadth of their ideas. As the years advance upon me, and my monetary resources grow ever more slim, I have begun to feel the walls of these rooms—whatever rooms I chance to inhabit, they are all very much of a piece—press inwards upon me. I am stifling from the limitations penury must impose, like a candle shut up in a coffin. I am desperate to lead a different life, and yet know that all possibility of exchange is denied me.
    My heart whispers that I should have been better pleased with my lot, had I never formed an acquaintance with the Great—had I not sampled the dangerous delights of a certain notorious gentleman's world, or shared some particle of his confidence. I am sure that my sister, Cassandra, believes the same. But one cannot wish a hundredth of one's experience undone, any more than one might command the heart and will of another; and though I might lament the change, in having traded the summer beauties of the Peaks and all the elegance of a ducal household in Derbyshire, for the damp and draughty lodgings of winter in Southampton, I could not desire Derbyshire unseen. I might recognise the pernicious hand of regret clutching at my entrails, but I confess that I prefer a sense of loss—and its attendant spirit, depression—to ignorance of my own heart.
    I have heard nothing of Lord Harold Trowbridge since parting from him at Bakewell last September. I have no expectation of a furtherance of our acquaintance. Indeed, in regarding the inner oppression that so often follows a sojourn in his company, I have lately begun to wonder whether I should leave off the acquaintance entirely. But I have not the heart for a formal break in friendship, nor, indeed, the strength. Hope of once more encountering The Gentleman Rogue, I confess, is one of the few impulses that sustains me in such a raw and unlovely February.
    But perhaps, like Louisa Seagrave, I have little right to submit to such weakness. Mine is too sharp a character to invite melancholy; I have always despised those poor honies, who languish in boredom on a procession of sophas, and fancy themselves ill. Such behaviour must argue a lack of inner resources, a sinking of the female mind. And yet what, of a sustaining and nourishing nature, have I sought out this winter in Southampton? I subscribe to a circulating library; I read