Read Online A White Room by Stephanie Carroll - Free Book Online Page A

angled roofs. Almost every structure looked alike, with two windows on the upstairs floor and two more flanking a single door. I’d thought people avoided painting buildings white for fear that they’d show filth, but everything here looked cleaned and pressed. Perhaps this little town had discovered the secret to being rid of things like dirt.
    Fridays were lonely, too, but I had to labor only on chores I hadn’t completed during the week. I had fewer chores than women in the past because factory production made it possible to buy ready-made clothing, and food preparation and storage was easier. My mother used to badger me to be grateful that I didn’t have to spin my own thread or grind coffee without a hand-cranked grinder—not that she’d ever ground coffee in her life. I usually had a lot of extra time on Fridays, so I set it aside to receive callers, but in such a small town, calls were infrequent. I’d spend much of Friday mending mindlessly, reading, or just dreaming of faraway places and occasionally jerking around to see if a noise behind me had in fact been made by a living creature skulking among the figurines.
    Or I faced my correspondence:
Dear Emeline,
My darling child, your father would be so proud. Thanks to the Dorrs, your sisters and I are not living in the desperate conditions we feared. Now family, they have offered an extraordinary amount of kindness, resources, and connections that will allow us to prosper. Mrs. Dorr introduced several well-bred young ladies to your brother, and she is sure she knows a young man who will show an interest in Florence.
Emeline, your husband has given you and your family so much more than we could ever expect in our situation. He could have married a woman of much higher worth and standing, but he chose you. Do not risk disappointing him. We wouldn’t want to lose all that we have been blessed with again. Sometimes marriage can be difficult. You will not always be happy or comfortable, but you must always remember what your husband sacrificed for you.
    With all the love in the heavens,
    Your Mother
    Unfortunately, I had little options for distraction. I never settled on any accomplishments. I didn’t paint or etch wood or play the pianoforte. I’d never found meaning in such things. I tried making crafts from seashells, but they never came out right, and my floral arrangements were deplorable. Thankfully, society considered reading an acceptable way for a woman to improve herself. Even if society did not approve of the literary subjects I chose.
    I developed a talent for locating and consuming writing deemed unsuitable for a young lady, such as Dickens, Wuthering Heights , sensations like The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, and various science and medical texts. Although I found the house distasteful, the library brimmed with books I had never heard of, and John brought even more, many of them professional volumes I inquisitively thumbed through in his absence. When we first arrived, John had said he wouldn’t work Saturdays and Sundays, but he did. I spent those days bored and anxious. It didn’t take me long to go through all his books, but they were mostly about law, which I found a terrible read. Nothing made sense in law books. Still, there were some masculine finds—Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Civil Disobedience , Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, A History, and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species .
    When John did stay home, he would spend the day working in the library. I wish I could say his presence was a comfort to me, but it often made things worse, specifically because when he was home he insisted we close all the doors. Light still filled the rooms we were in, but there was something about traveling through dark halls and the knowledge that darkness hid behind every door.
    Sundays we attended services. John had once mentioned committing Sundays to a leisure activity like cycling or tennis. I internally leapt at the idea,