Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

The Dean shook his head gloomily.

"You will see it turn out better than you expect," the lawyer assured him. "Let me whisper something to you. There is an action begun against him for shutting up a road across one of his farms at Middleton and it will be stoutly fought. One suit at a time will satisfy even Mr. Swainson."

"You don't say so? This is good news!" the Dean cried, with unmistakable pleasure. "Certainly, I will be there."

"And--I am sure I need not doubt it--you will be ready to meet Mr. Swainson halfway?"

The Dean looked gloomy again. But at this moment a long howl, more frenzied, more fiendish than any which had preceded it, seemed to proclaim that the dog knew that his reign was menaced, and, like Sardanapalus, was determined to go out right royally. It was more than the Dean could stand. With an involuntary movement of his hands to his ears, he nodded and fled in haste to a place less exposed, where he could in a seemly and decanal manner relieve his feelings.

The best-laid plans even of lawyers will go astray, and when they do so, the havoc is generally of a singularly wide-spread description. The meeting in the Chapter-house proved stormy from the first. Whether it was that the writ in the right-of-way case had not yet reached Mr. Swainson, so that he clung to his only split-straw, or that the Dean was soured by want of sleep, or that the Bishop was not thorough enough--whatever was the cause, the spirit of compromise was absent; and the discussion across the Chapter-house table threatened to make matters worse and not better. Whether the Dean first called Mr. Swainson's enclosure the "toadstool of a night," or Mr. Swainson took the initiative by styling the Dean the "mushroom of a day" (the Dean was not of old family), was a question afterwards much and hotly debated in Bicester circles. Be that as it may, the high powers rose from the table in dudgeon and much confusion.

There was behind the Dean at the end of the Chapter-house a large window. It looked immediately-upon what he, in the course of the discussion, had termed "The Profanation," and since the eventful day of Mr. Swainson's match at croquet it had been, by the Dean's order, kept shuttered, that he might not, when occupied in the Chapter-house, have the Profanation directly before his eyes. At the meeting the shutter remained closed; it may be that this phenomenon had weakened Mr. Swainson's doubtful inclination towards peace.

The Dean was a choleric man. As the party rose, he stepped to this shutter and flung it back. He turned to the others and cried with indignation--

"Look, sir; look, my lord! Is that a sight becoming the threshold of a cathedral? Is that a thing to be endured on consecrated ground?"

They stepped towards the window, a wide low-browed Tudor casement, and looked out. The Dean himself stood aside, grasping the shutter with a hand which shook with passion. His eyes were on the others' faces. He expected little show of shame or contrition on that of Mr. Swainson, but he did wish to bring this hideous thing home to the Bishop, who had not been as thorough in the matter as he should have been. Yet surely, as a bishop, he could not see that thing in its horrid reality and be unmoved!