Love's Will Read Online Free PDF Page B

felt obliged to point out. “Your father still has position in Stratford. He’s been Bailiff for years, after all. And he has a good business and a very fine house. And a certain amount of money, at least.” She touched the sleeve of his doublet. John Shakspere might restrict his son’s activities, but he didn’t stint on money for clothes. In the last few years London fashions had reached the country, and William wasn’t the only young man laughing at out-dated sumptuary laws and going about embroidered Holland shirts, the best woollen cloth, even velvet and silk. His father dealt in wool and leather, so probably his elegant boots had cost nothing, or had been paid for in trade, but it was doubtful that he wore his best to visit Anne, yet that doublet was the sort of subtle green you didn’t buy in a country town’s market.
    “I bought my clothes out of my Lancashire wages. But of course you are right; many people are much worse off.” He took another swig of ale. “Perhaps you are.”
    “Most people would say I too have little to complain of. But consider my life, William. My father died last year and my family seemed to fall apart. My stepmother and I are barely on speaking terms. Bartholomew and Catherine both married as fast as they could, to get away. The four little children, my father’s second family, are dears but they are much younger than me. My stepmother is an excellent housewife and taught me to be the same, but she sincerely believes that’s all a woman can want or should expect in life; marry a man with a good house and a little money, have children, run the house and the farm.
    “Nothing wrong with that. Except that I am twenty-five and bored. Lonely, too. Bart and Kate gone, my stepmother preaching Puritanism at me and sure that books are the Devil’s work. Perhaps they are; perhaps I only prove her point. What makes me different from any other woman? – Nothing except that I’ve turned my brain with book-reading. I’m not even sure I want anything different. I’ll marry one day, probably soon. I’ve a little money that my father left me. I’m a good catch. I would like children. It’s just that I love going to plays and having pretty clothes and reading books and listening to you talking about that sort of thing. All the people I know talk about the harvest, too. And cooking. Worthy, ordinary, and dull.”
    “You a good cook?”
    “Not bad. You a good glover?”
    “Not bad. But Anne, you have friends like Davy Jones and his mummers; his wife your cousin.”
    “So do you.”
    “True. So you’re bored and I am caged. What’s to do?”
    “Nothing, probably. I do realise that most of my troubles are not troubles at all and it is just that too many things have happened too quickly in my life. A year ago I wasn’t discontented. Perhaps in another year I shan’t be. Time cures most things.”
    “And in a little less than three years I will be twenty-one and can kiss Stratford and the glover’s shop goodbye. But in three years I probably won’t want to. I’ll be reconciled to my lot. Resigned, at least.”
    “Who knows. And you’re lucky, you can go away if you want to, do what you like. I can’t. Anyway, could your father actually stop you if you left? Could he bring you back?”
    “In law I think he could. And somehow I can’t quite bring myself just to leave. For all my complaints, I love my family. My father is proud of me and glad I am here to help him. He knows, dimly, that I am not happy, and he often curses himself that he was foolish with money and I can’t go to university. It is very hard to walk out on a well-meaning, kind man who blames himself that he cannot make you happy.”
    The silence stretched, but more comfortably now. At last Anne said, “This isn’t getting that play improved for Davy Jones.”
    “No.” But he made no move to take up the papers or his pen. “I’ve no money,” he said sadly.
    “I could lend you a little.”
    “No! No no no no