Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

The Archdeacon shuddered. He dropped his napkin and picked it up again, to hide his dismay. Then he plunged into a fresh subject. When his son upon some excuse left him early, he was glad to be alone. He had now a course laid down for him, and acting upon it, he next day saw the landlady in Sidmouth Street and requested her to take charge of the young lady in the event of the mother's death and to guard her from intrusion until other arrangements could be made. "You will look to me for all expenses," the Archdeacon added, seizing with eagerness the only ground on which he felt himself at home. To which the landlady gladly said she would, and accepted Mr. Yale's address at the Athenæum Club as a personal favour to herself.

So the Archdeacon, free for the moment, went down to Studbury, and as he walked about his shrubberies with the scent of his wife's old-fashioned flowers in the air, or sat drinking his glass of Leoville '74 after dinner while Vinnells the butler, anxious to get to his supper, rattled the spoons on the sideboard, he tried to believe it a dream. What, he wondered, would Vinnells say if he knew that master had a ward, and that ward a play-actress? Or, as Studbury would prefer to style her, a painted Jezebel? And what would Mrs. Yale say, who loved lavender, and had seen a ballet--once? Was Archdeacon ever, he asked himself, in a position so--so anomalous before?

"My dear," his wife remarked when he had read his letters one morning, a week or two later, "I am sure you are not well. I have noticed that you have not been yourself since you were in London."

"Nonsense," he replied tartly.

"It is not nonsense. There is something preying on your mind. I believe," she persisted, "it is that visitation, Cyprian, that is troubling you."

"Visitation? What visitation?" he asked incautiously. For indeed he had forgotten all about that very important business, and could think only of a visitation more personal to himself. Before his wife could hold up her hands in astonishment, "What visitation! indeed!" he had escaped into the open air. Mrs. Kent was dead.

Yes, the blow had fallen; but the first shock over, things were made easy for him. He wrote to his ward as soon after the funeral as seemed decent, and her answer pleased him greatly. Ready as he was to scent misbehaviour in the air, he thought it a proper letter, a good girl's letter. She did not deny his right to give advice. She had not, she said, seen the gentleman he mentioned since her mother's death, although Mr. Charles Williams--that was his name--had called several times. But she had given him an appointment for the following Tuesday, and was willing that Mr. Yale should see him on that occasion.

All this in a formal and precise way; but there was something in the tone of her reference to Mr. Williams which led the Archdeacon to smile. "She is over head and ears in love," he thought. And in his reply, after saying that he would be in Sidmouth Street on Tuesday at the hour named, he added that if there appeared to be nothing against Mr. Charles Williams he, the Archdeacon, would have pleasure in forwarding his ward's happiness.

"I am going to London to-morrow, my dear, for two nights," he said to his wife on the Sunday evening. "I have some business there."

Mrs. Yale sat silent for a moment, as if she had not heard. Then she laid down her book and folded her hands. "Cyprian," she said, "what is it?"