Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (3 page)

“Are you quite certain you wish to accompany me to Portsmouth, Jane?” enquired my brother Frank anxiously at my elbow.

I turned, the pleasant reverie broken. “I should never have quitted my bed at such an early hour, Fly, for anything less. You could not prevent me from boarding that hoy at anchor, if you were to set upon me with wild dogs.” It was necessary to suggest bravado— the hoy, with a single mast bobbing in the swell, was rather a small coasting vessel when viewed against the backdrop of so much heavy shipping: and I am no sea-woman.

The weather shall certainly be brisk,” my brother persisted doubtfully. “The wind is freshening, and I fancy we shall have rain before the day is out.”

“I do not regard a trifling shower, I assure you—and the air is no warmer in our lodgings. Mrs. Davies is of a saving nature, and does not intend that we shall ever be adequately served if our discomfort might secure her a farthing. My mother felt a spur beyond petulance and imagined ills, when she took to her bed after Christmas. She knows it to be far more comfortable than Mrs. Davies's fire.”

“I must lay in a supply of fuel for our own use,” Frank murmured. “I had done so, in December, but the faggots disappeared at an unaccountable rate.”

“That we shall lay to sister Mary's account,” I replied sardonically. “It cannot be remarkable that so cold-hearted a lady must require a good, steady fire. Her frame should lack animation entirely, Fly, without external application of heat.”

He looked at me in hurt surprise. “Jane!”

“Not
your
excellent creature, my dear,” I said quickly. “I speak entirely of
James's
Mary! You know that I have never borne her any affection, nor she but a pretence of the same for me.” I would to Heaven that my brothers had possessed the foresight to marry women of singularity, in their names at least. Two of the Austen men having chosen Elizabeths, and another two, Marys, we are forever attempting to distinguish them one from the other. My elder brother James had brought his unfortunate wife, Mary, to stay with us in our cramped lodgings over Christmastide. This was meant to be a great treat but my relief at the James Austens' departure far outweighed any pleasure won from their arrival.

Frank grasped my elbow. “Steady, Jane. The skiff approaches.”

A long, low-slung boat with two ruddy-faced fishwives at the oars had swung alongside the Quay. It bobbed like a cockleshell in the tide, and I should as readily have stepped into an inverted umbrella. I summoned my courage, however, so as not to disoblige my excellent brother.

“Pray take my arm,” Frank urged. “It is best not to step heavily—and not directly onto the gunwales, mind, or you shall have us all over! Just so—and there you are settled. Capital.”

Frank stowed himself neatly beside me on the damp wooden slat that served as seat, and began to whistle for wind. I attempted to ease my grip on the skiff.

As the two women bent their backs to the task of conveying us across the water to the single-masted hoy— which, despite its diminutive nature, Frank asserted might serve as a respectable gunboat in any but home waters—I struggled to maintain my composure. I had never crossed the Solent much less been aboard a ship, before; but I refused to earn the contempt of the British Navy. I should throw myself overboard rather than admit to a craven heart, or plead for a return to shore.

It had long been my chief desire to be swung in a chair to the very deck of one of my brothers' commands—the
Canopus,
when Frank captained her, or the
Indian,
should Charles ever return from the North American Station. But we had always lived beyond the reach of naval ports; and our visits to the sea were matters of bathing and Assemblies. My mother's decision to settle with Frank in Southampton, a mere seventeen miles from the great naval yard at Portsmouth, must ensure frequent occasion for familiarising myself with ships, and sailors' customs, and all the ardent matter of my brothers' lives, that have demanded such sacrifice, and conveyed so much of glory and regret.

Charles, my particular little brother, has been Master and Commander of his sloop in the Adantic for nearly three years—but is not yet made Post Captain.
¹
When he will find occasion for an act of brazen daring, a risk to life and limb such as might draw the Admiralty's approval, none can say. Charles may only hope for another American war. The Admiralty's attention has heretofore been trained upon my elder brother Frank—who has been Post Captain these seven years. But of late, the Admiralty appears to have found even him wanting.

Frank suffered the distinction of serving under the Great Man, Admiral Lord Nelson. His third-rate eighty gun ship, the
Canopus,
was destined to meet the combined French and Spanish fleets in 1805; but the Admiral, insensible that he should fall in with the Enemy off the headland of Trafalgar, and being desperately in need of water and stores, despatched my brother to Gibraltar in search of the same. Frank returned several days after the decisive action, to discover some twenty-four hundred British sailors wounded or dead, nineteen of the enemy's vessels captured or destroyed, the remnant of the Combined Fleet under flight—and the Great Man, wounded mortally by a musket shot

Frank's failure to engage the Enemy in so glorious a battle—a day that shall live forever in English hearts— was a bitter blow. Not all his subsequent victory at Santo Domingo, his prize money and silver trophies, his marriage to little Mary Gibson, may supply the want of distinction—though the affectionate hearts of his sisters must rejoice in the intervention of Divine Providence.

The skiff mounted a determined hillock of wave, slapped firmly into the trough beyond, and sent a shower of frigid green water into my lap. I could not suppress a slight exclamation of shock at the sudden wet and cold, and Frank's head came round to stare at me. I smiled weakly in return, my hands still clenched on the rough wood of my seat, and hoped desperately that I should not disgrace myself.

The hoy loomed—the oars were shipped—and Frank's warm hand was reaching for my own. With a deep breath to hide my trepidation, I picked my way across the skiff's slatted bottom—quite in want of caulk, and welling with water—and allowed myself to be hauled upwards by the hoy's master.

A weathered face, pinched and crimson with cold, the eyes two agates against the light of morning—if he was akin to most of the seamen plying the Solent from Southampton to Portsmouth, he would bear his female supercargo litde affection. But his boat, in comparison with the lighter craft I had just quitted, appeared ample and sturdy; I heaved a shuddering sigh of relief and sank against the side. Frank jumped across the widening gap of water between skiff and hoy, clapped the master about the shoulders, and said, “What do you make it, Finley? Two hours, in this wind?”

“She's bearing south-south-east, Captain,” the master replied, with a doubtful eye to his straining canvas. “We're forced to beat and beat, I don't reckon.”

“The wind will shift in another quarter-hour,” my brother replied, “and then we shall see what your poor tub might do. Crack on, Finley!”

With a grin in my direction, Frank swung himself into the bow, as though the frigid spray could not daunt him, nor the February wind cut through his good naval coat. It is a trifle worn, that coat—he is the sort of man who considers of refurbishing his dress only when it is in rags about him—but the gold epaulettes of his rank shone brighdy upon his shoulders. His face was thrust out into the gusts and swell, his whole countenance alight, and his aspect that of a hunting dog let off its lead. My heart leapt with pleasure at the sight of him. It has been many months since Frank was turned onshore, and the landsman's lot does not sit well with him. But on this raw wintry morning he was once again the brave and reckless older brother I adored as a girl—the boy we named
Fly
for his trick of spurring his horses to breakneck speed—the boy who set off alone for Portsmouth at the age of twelve, and could never bear dry land thereafter. Frank has more courage at the bone and more good English common-sense than any other Austen; and though he spares less thought for weighty matters than my brother James, and wastes less on frivolous ones than brother Henry, he is quite the truest heart I have ever known.

The mate hauled anchor, the sails rose up the mast; the canvas swelled with wind; and faster than I could have believed, Southampton slipped away behind us. My involuntary grip on the hoy's gunwales eased; I breathed more steadily, and was capable once more of observation. Never had I been privileged to travel so swiftly, in such relative silence. No wheels rattled, no horses' hooves rang like mallets on the paving-stones; we were sped by merest air, the fresh strong wind buffeting my bonnet. I grinned foolishly at the hoy's master, as though he were an angel bent on conveying me to Paradise.

“How do you like it, Jane?” Frank asked, crouching low as he made his way into the body of the hoy. “Are you warm enough?”

“I shall never be warm enough while winter holds sway in Southampton.” I wrapped my arms more firmly in my cloak. “The south of England provides quite the most penetrating damp of any I have known, though the locals will protest so much. Southampton may be rated high in the esteem of the Fashionable for its bathing and medicinal waters, but the Fashionable, you will allow, are not prone to bathe in February.”

“Not by design, certainly,” Frank returned, “although I recollect some few who have bathed by misadventure. More than one pleasure party has ended with your Fashionable beaux headfirst in the drink. But you are not indisposed? Not queasy in your workings? You do not feel the slightest threat of a fainting fit coming on?”

Poor Fly. He has been closeted too long with his Mary; and as she is increasing, and much prone to swooning after a hearty meal, Frank is grown convinced that all women are prey to it

“Not in the slightest,” I assured him. “I am admirably situated here; you may return to the bow with equanimity.”

“Pray join me,” he urged. “The sensation of wind and movement is delightful. I shall keep one hand firmly on your arm, never fear, Jane; you shall not risk the slightest injury. ”

I found courage enough to attempt it, and soon stood with my brother in the hoy's farthest extent. Here, the views of the Solent and its encircling landscape were unimpeded. Frank's eager hands made figures in the air: to the larboard side, the peaceful settlements of Netley, and Lee-on-Solent, and Gosport spilling down to the sea; to starboard, the last fringe of the New Forest; and ahead, the Isle of Wight looming like another country. Portsmouth commanded the headland directly opposite the island; and beyond them both, roiled the broader waters of the Channel, where Frank had mounted blockade against the French for so many tedious years.

“How diminished is civilisation and comfort, how false the air of security, of a town viewed from such a vantage,” I observed. “What might be taken, on dry land, for the power of commerce and Kingdom, appears the merest foothold at this distance. How greater still the diminishment, when all the wide waters of the ocean are at one's back!”

“I have always believed,” Frank added, “that could kings and emperors reign solely from the seas, and suffer the overruling might of Nature to humble and command them with every gale of wind, they might then regard themselves in the proper light The vastness of the world is an acute corrective, Jane, for over-weening vanity! As it is for many land-borne ills.”

I studied him soberly. “You miss a ship, Frank. Confess as much. You long to put to sea, however near Mary's time and however comfortable your present circumstances.”

“You forget the inadequacy of Mrs. Davies's fire, Jane,” he returned with brusque humour. “There is little of comfort in
that.”

“We shall be gone from hired lodgings in a fortnight,” I said dismissively, “but your malaise shall prove as strong. The lease in Castle Square—that fringe you are so busily knotting for the parlour curtains—the bedsteads you turn, and the conveniences you fashion in your restless, tidy, sailor's way—they are nothing more than make-work, a sop to fill your time. You are unhappy, Frank. I am more convinced of it now, having seen you once again in your element, than I have been for many weeks. Though I have long suspected the cause.”

He offered no reply—only stared across the heaving water, his eyes narrowed. Salt spray had dried in a haphazard pattern of white droplets on his collar, his auburn hair was ruffled into curls by the force of the approaching rain. It is hard for such a man—trained from boyhood in every nerve and sinew to pursue the Enemy, to engage and subdue him—to subdue, rather, his own ardent spirit to the necessities of fortune. Frank is become like a powerful horse, honed for the Oaks or the Derby, that is put to plough the same featureless length of turnip patch day after day. Having won a little prize money, he saw fit to marry at last the lady who had waited so many patient months for his return from sea; and being a gallant son, he required his mother and unwed sisters to take up their abode in his company. Southampton was chosen, the treaty struck for a house in Castle Square; that house entirely refurbished; and our prospects of happiness in our situation, very great—but a plan for domestic happiness must prove inadequate to one of Frank's temperament.

He is a man accustomed to commanding three hundred tars, at least, in the midst of the greatest fleet on earth. He has chased the Enemy across every ocean on the globe, and seen the colours of French ships struck at his desiring. Now he turns and turns without employment, surrounded by too many muslin skirts, and the tiresome frivolities of a watering-place, with its Assemblies and circulating libraries and occasional theatrical play. He slips away to Portsmouth whenever convention will allow, and haunts the naval yard, where constant intelligence of the better fortunes of his brother officers—who possessed the luck to distinguish themselves with Nelson at Trafalgar—must poison his heart like gall. He bears so constant an aspect of forced cheer—such unfailing interest in the tedium of domestic life—that my heart aches for him, as must any heart of discernment and feeling.