Place of Confinement Read Online Free PDF

pew and a half in his church.
    There was no longer a Mrs Jeremiah Prowdlee. She had died (possibly of exhaustion and depressed spirits, in Dido’s opinion) some months before her husband came to Upper Marwell.
    When the doctor arrived in their midst during the previous autumn, Dido had, perhaps, been insufficiently alert to the danger of a man with a dead wife and a pew and a half full of children. For she was at that time very much occupied with other concerns.
    Retrospectively she was keenly aware of how very often Doctor Prowdlee had, at Margaret’s invitation, intruded upon their evenings with his wheezing breath and his awkward compliments. (‘I hear that it is to your fair hand that I may attribute the excellence of this seed cake, Miss Kent.’ And ‘Your sister has been telling me of your invaluable assistance in sewing for her little boys.’) But, at the time, it had not seemed alarming at all. And, even when her neighbours began to enquire rather often after ‘dear Doctor Prowdlee’ as if she had some privileged knowledge of the man’s state of health, she attributed it to nothing more than that kind of solidarity which is generally supposed to exist among clergy families.
    But the true peril of her situation had burst upon her one fine spring morning when her brother, Francis, was struck down by a bad sore throat and Doctor Prowdlee (most obligingly) rode over to Badleigh to ‘do the duty of the day’.
    The sermon had been very long and of that sort which suggests the speaker only is in accord with the will of God and all the rest of the world in error. The doctor’s text was taken from the Book of Proverbs. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman?’ he intoned solemnly, his eyes sweeping the assembled bonnets and upturned faces. ‘For her price is far above rubies.’ And then he was launched upon an impassioned condemnation of the ‘independence of spirit’ which was abroad in young women today, the result, apparently, of their reading ‘disgusting and revolutionary books’ – and dancing too much. By Doctor Prowdlee’s account, the men of today were as hard-pressed to find a virtuous woman as the patriarchs of the Old Testament …
    Though, mused Dido as she listened with but half an ear, today’s men had the advantage, for they had only to find one virtuous wife apiece, whereas the patriarchs had had to secure two or three – to say nothing of concubines … But perhaps virtue was not required in a concubine …
    She blushed and upbraided herself for the thought. Such ideas were, no doubt, the product of excessive dancing and reading – though she could not recall ever having read anything very dangerous or revolutionary.
    She was watching a bumblebee blundering about the stained-glass sandals of a saint in the window beside her, and thinking that its stout body, thin black legs and persistent self-important drone made it rather resemble the doctor, when she became aware that her sister-in-law was looking at her – and smiling. Margaret rarely smiled – and never in Dido’s direction.
    Rather alarmed, Dido looked about for a cause and discovered Doctor Prowdlee leaning over the pulpit, his broad face pink and shining with emotion above his black whiskers and white surplice. ‘A virtuous woman,’ he was saying, in a rather softened tone, ‘“looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness”. Fortunate is the man, my friends, who finds such a woman!’
    And he was looking directly at Dido.
    ‘In point of fact, the entire congregation was looking at me,’ she cried distractedly to her sister-in-law afterwards. ‘At least, the female half of the congregation was looking at me.’
    ‘But of course it was,’ said Margaret impatiently, ‘for everyone has noticed his attentions to you this past month. They have all been waiting for him to make you an offer – and have been crying out upon your good luck! As well they might!’
    She need not say more –