Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

“Then by all means take Jane,” urged my mother, with a friendly nod for Mr. Hill. She was devising a match, I little doubted, between myself and the aging surgeon; like a boy who would shoot fish in a barrel, my mother cannot be in the presence of a single gentleman of any age without hitting upon a marriage. “You cannot keep Jane at home, when there is a gaol or an inquest to be had. I daresay Mr. Hill is exactly the same. It is wonderful, is it not, how alike two strangers' hearts may be? Jane was always such a charitable girl — quite a slave to the sick and downtrodden! She should have made an excellent wife in Bengal, I always said, for they have a vast amount of beggars there. I urged her once to consider a bride-ship — Mr. Austen's sister took passage in one, you know, and was so fortunate as to marry a surgeon! — but Jane could not be persuaded.” [30] Mrs. George Austen refers to her sister-in-law, Philadelphia Austen Hancock, who went out to India in 1752 for the express purpose of finding a husband among the employees of the Honourable East India Company. Philadelphia was the mother of Jane's sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide. — Editor's note.

“Quite right,” said Mr. Hill with a twinkle. “Such a jewel should settle for nothing less than a true physician.” And then he bowed.

GAOLER'S ALLEY DEBOUCHES FROM THE HIGH, FOUR streets below St. Michael's Square. For our achievement of the small prison was required but a few moments' exertion; the sharp air of a bright March morning hastened our steps and brought animation to our looks. Frank swung along as though the breeze tugging at his cockade was fresh from a thousand frigates' sails, while Mr. Hill offended the Sabbath by whistling between his teeth. We were all, I believe, feeling chuffed by our success at spiriting LaForge from beneath the gaze of a murderer; and even the sight of the low-roofed Norman building, with its narrow slits of windows, could not dampen our spirits.

I am no stranger to your modest house of incarceration, having visited no less a prison than Newgate in my time; I have entered the gaols of Lyme and Bath, and glimpsed the exterior of Canterbury's. Though I should never traipse through the dungeons of the Kingdom for a fee, as many a fashionable lady presently does, and call it a lark and a dissipation — I can find no shame in cheering an intimate of the gaol when the occasion arises.

Frank approached the heavy wooden door and peered through a small window barred in iron. “Halloo there, Constable,” he cried. “You have visitors for Captain Seagrave.”

“Captain Seagrave be presently entertaining a visitor, sir,” called a voice laconically from within. “Ye shall have to cool your heels a bit until the lady is done.”

“It must be Louisa,” muttered Frank. “I thought her unlikely to condescend to such a duty. Perhaps her humours are under amendment.”

He stepped back from the doorway and clasped his gloved hands together.

“Were it not Sunday, I should suggest a cup of chocolate at a pastry shop in the High,” said Mr. Hill. “The sun, though bright, quite fails to quell the bite of the cold. Are you well, Miss Austen?”

I had parted my lips to reply, when a rustle at the iron-barred door brought all our heads around. The oak was thrust back and a figure appeared — a woman clothed in black, with a veil about her face. She stepped out into the alley and nodded in acknowledgement of ourselves, but made no attempt to converse.

Phoebe Carruthers.

In another instant she had turned into the High, her carriage superb and her hands encased in a black fur muff. We watched her go in silence.

1 March 1807, cont.

“AUSTEN!”

Tom Seagrave stood with his back to the wall of his prison. His right leg was tethered to an iron ring set into the stone floor. He might travel five feet in every direction; such was the extent of his liberty — a man who had spent his life in roaming the seas. The floor was covered with straw, and smelt strongly of mould. The temperature within the cell was barely higher than in the streets, but the small space offered one advantage, in being sheltered from the wind.

“How d'ye do, Tom?” Frank bowed. “You will recollect my sister, Miss Austen — and perhaps Mr. Hill, Admiral Bertie's surgeon. He was present—”

“—at my court-martial. I remember him well.” Seagrave bowed. “You are come in some state to see me, Austen — and I cannot think that I deserve such attention. I have abused you to your face and behind your back, and still you dance a faithful attendance. I owe you a very great apology, I believe.”

“Not at all,” my brother returned, with all the appearance of awkwardness. “I should be a scrub of the first order, did I expect one.”

Seagrave shifted in his chains, the clink of metal resounding in the small space, and his eyes drifted towards me. “I understand from my wife that I owe you all a considerable debt as well — that it was you, Miss Austen, who discovered the whereabouts of my sons, and your brother who retrieved them from the Star of Bengal. We have put our few friends to decided trouble! I should have urged Louisa to send the children into Kent with her uncle when this dreadful business first broke upon us. They should have been safe and well cared-for.”

“They are charming rogues, Tom,” Frank broke in with warmth, “and you must get them to sea as soon as may be, for they will not consent to stay moored on dry land forever. They are pining for a berth in the orlop, and should do handsomely for all their pluck!”

Seagrave nodded, but without much enthusiasm or attention; his mind, I judged, was decidedly elsewhere. His straight naval figure had lost a good deal of its confidence in the ordeal of the past few days; he was as a sapped trunk, that must soon fall to the axe.

“Then your wife has come to cheer your solitude?” I enquired. “She has borne you the news of Charles and Edward herself?”

“I heard of the boys' misadventure in a note despatched from the Dolphin,” he replied curtly. “No one but Captain Austen has deigned to enter this cell.”

“Captain Austen,” said Mr. Hill delicately, “and … Mrs. Carruthers, I believe?”

Tom Seagrave did not immediately reply. His dark eyes blazed an instant in his haggard face, and then he turned towards the wall of his cell with an abrupt expression of impatience.

“She means to marry Sir Francis Farnham, Frank,” he burst out. “And yet, she cannot lave him!”

“Why not?” my brother enquired in a hardened tone. “Farnham is rich — he is powerful — and his affections have endured these twenty years at least.”

“Sir Francis is not unhandsome, however incongenial his manners,” I added. “Why should Mrs. Carruthers remain a widow, when she might be a baronet's wife?”

“Any woman might do murder I reckon, to secure herself a similar position,” Mr. Hill observed.

If Seagrave found the surgeon's words disturbing, he did not betray the slightest sensibility. Perhaps he'd become inured to shock. “I cannot believe her capable of a loveless union,” he said. “She is too perfect a creature to act upon interest.”

I glanced at Frank. How likely was Seagrave to credit the truth of our suspicions regarding Mrs. Carruthers? Farnham he might hate as a rival — Farnham he could believe capable of the basest infamy — but it might be as well to say nothing of the role Mrs. Carruthers had played, in luring Chessyre to his death.

“Did you meet with Farnham in Bugle Street on Wednesday night?” asked my brother wearily.

Seagrave's eyebrow rose. “I was denied the pleasure,” he answered. “I will admit, now, that I went to Bugle Street — but I found no one at home. Mrs. Carruthers, I was told, had gone out to the theatre. I could not believe it — I thought it a subterfuge to put me off. But apparently she had indeed gone into Society, despite her mourning.” His eyes moved absently over my face. “I had thought her more wretched at Simon's loss.”