Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

"Yes, I do," was the unexpected answer. "Too well!"

"Bah!" Woolley exclaimed, though it was evident that he was ill at ease. "Let us have an end of these heroics! If you have anything to say, say it."

"I will," the tall gentleman answered. He was still quiet, but there was a glitter in his eyes. "I have already outlined my story, now I must ask Dr. Partridge to hear it more at length. Many years ago there was a young man, almost a boy, employed in the offices of a great firm in Liverpool--a poor boy, very poor, but of a good and an old family."

Woolley's smile of derision became fixed, so to speak. But he did not interrupt, and the other after a pause went on. "This lad made the acquaintance of a medical student a little older than himself, and was led by him--I think he was weak and sensitive and easily led--into gambling. He lost more than he could pay. His mother was a widow, almost without means. To meet the debt, small as it was, would have ruined her."

The stranger paused again, overcome, it seemed, by painful memories. There was a flush on Woolley's brow. The girl sitting in the window, her hands clasped on her knees, turned so as to see more of the room. "Now listen," the speaker continued, "to what happened. One day this clerk's friend, to whom the greater part of the money was due, came to the office at the luncheon hour and pressed him to pay. The other clerks were out. The two were alone together, and while they were alone there came in a client of the firm to pay some money. The lad took the money and gave a receipt. He had power to do so. The man left again, after telling them that he was starting to South America that evening. When he was gone"--here his voice sank a little--"the friend made a suggestion. I think you know what it was."

No one spoke.

"He suggested to the clerk to take this money and pay his debts with it--to steal it. The boy resisted for a time, but in the end, still telling himself he did not intend to steal it, he put it away in his desk and locked it up, and gave in no account of it. After that the issue was certain. A day came when, the other still pressing him and tempting him, he took the money and used it, and became a thief."

The silence in the little room was deep indeed. On Woolley a spell had fallen. He would have interrupted the man, but he could not.

"Immediately after this," the speaker continued, "those two parted. Within a week--for the man had not gone to South America--the theft was discovered. The boy's employers were merciful--God reward them! They declined to prosecute; nay, they kept the matter secret, or as secret as it could be kept, and even found him work in their foreign office. He did not forget. He served them faithfully, and in the course of years he repaid the money with interest. Then--God's ways are not our ways--strange news reached this clerk. Three distant kinsmen whom he had never seen had died within three months, and the last of them had left him a large property. The name and the honour"--for the first time the tall gentleman's voice faltered--"of a great family had fallen upon his shoulders to wear and to uphold! And he was a thief!"

"You," he went on--and from this point he directly addressed the man who gazed at him from beyond the table--"you cannot enter into his feelings, nor understand them! It were folly to tell you that the remembrance that he had stained the honour and disgraced the name of his family poisoned his whole life. He tried--God knows he did--to make amends by a life of integrity, and while his mother lived he led that life. But he found no comfort in it. She died, and he lived on alone in the house of his family, and it may be"--again his voice shook--"that he brooded overmuch on this matter, and came to take too morbid a view of it, to let it stand always between him and the sun." He stopped, and looked uncertainly about him.