Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

On that, the two men stood looking at each other, the one neat, clean-shaven, conventional, the other vile with the degradation of drink. Though the windows stood open, the room was full of the smell of spirits, and seemed itself soiled and degraded. Suddenly the younger man sat down at the table, and, burying his face between his hands, fell into a storm of weeping.

His father shifted his feet, and licking his lips nervously, looked at him in maudlin shame; then from him to the sideboard, in search of his supporter under all trials. But the sideboard was bare, the doors closed, the key invisible. Mr. Jones grew indignant. "There, stop that foolery!" he said brutally. "You make me sick."

The rough adjuration restored the young man's nerve, and he looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. Tears in a man are shameful; but this tragedy was one not to be evaded by manliness, or, indeed, by any help of men. "Tell me what it is you want," he said wearily.

"More money," his father snarled. The liquor with which he had primed himself was losing its effect. "I cannot live on what you give me. Glasgow is a dear place. The money ought to be mine; all of it!"

"You have had two hundred a year--one-half of my mother's money."

"I know. I want three."

"Well, you cannot have it," the son answered languidly. "If you must know, I have agreed to settle one-half of my income on my wife now, and the other half at your death. Therefore it will not be in my power to allow you more. You have spent your own fortune, and you have no claim on my mother's money."

"Very well," Mr. Jones answered, his head trembling with rage and weakness. "Then I stay with you. I stay here. Your father-in-law that is to be will be glad to meet his old friend again--I have no doubt. We were at college together. I dare say he will acknowledge me, if my own son is too proud to do so. I shall stay here until I am tired of the country."

The young man looked at him in despair. Supplication he knew would avail him nothing, and the only threat he could use--that he would stop his father's allowance--would have no terrors, for he could not execute it. To let his father go to the workhouse would increase the scandal a hundred times. He rose at last and went out. His housekeeper had come in, and he told her, keeping his burning face averted, to prepare a bed and get supper for two. He shrank--he whose life in Acton had been so full of propriety--from saying who his guest was. Let his father proclaim himself if he would; that would be less painful. The truth must out. Once before, at his first curacy, the young man, younger then and more hopeful, had tried the work of reformation. He had made a home for his father, and done what he could. And the end had been hot, flaming shame, and an exposure which had driven him to the other end of England.

When he left the house next morning, though his mind was made up to go to the squire and tell him all, he lingered on the white dusty road. The sunlight fell about him in dazzling chequers, and, save for the humming of the bees overhead and the whirr of a reaping-machine in a neighbouring field, the stillness of the August noon hung with the haze over the landscape. His heart, despite his resolution, grew hot within him, as he looked around, and contrasted the peacefulness of nature with the tumult of shame and agitation in his own breast. There was the school which he opened with prayers four times a week. Between the trees he caught a grey glimpse of the church--his church. As he looked his secret grew more sordid, more formidable.