Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

They parted without more words. The Archdeacon, hardly master of his thoughts, walked on until he reached the corner of Oxford Street. There he paused, and seeing girls pass, young, graceful, soft-eyed, leaning back in carriages with parcels round them, ay, and thinking that Jack might have chosen out of all these, while he had chosen in Sidmouth Street--Sidmouth Street, Gray's Inn Road--he could not stifle a groan. He plunged recklessly across and found himself presently in St. James' Square, and round and round this he walked, fighting the battle with himself. His poor wife, that was the burden of his cry. His poor wife, and the shock it would be to her, and the downfall of hopes! He knew that she a woman would recoil from such a daughter-in-law far more than he did, who had known Grissel's mother, and knew that actresses may be good and true women. It would be dreadful for her, with her old-world notions; the Archdeacon knew it. But he valued one thing above even the peace of his home, and that was his honour. It was not in sarcasm we called him a good man. To break his word to the dead woman who had trusted him; to leave this girl, whom it behooved him to protect, in the hands of her wretched father, and so to leave her with her faith in goodness shattered--this he could not do.

But he was tempted to think hard things of Jack, to think that Jack, who had never given him the heartache before, had better not have been born than bring this trouble on them. It went no farther than temptation; and he was marvellously thankful next morning that he had not framed the thought in words; for, as he entered the breakfast-room, looking a year older than he had looked, chipping his egg yesterday, the hall-porter put a telegram into his hands. "Come at once--Jack," were the words that first made themselves intelligible to him; and then, a few seconds later, the address "St. Thomas's Hospital."

How swiftly does a great misfortune, a great loss, a great pain, expel a less! I have known a man lose his wife and go heavily for a month, and then losing a thousand pounds become as oblivious of her as if she had never been born. But the Archdeacon was not such a man, and rattling towards Westminster in a cab he felt not only that a thousand pounds would be a small price to pay for his son's safety, but that, if Providence should take him at his thought, he might have worse news for his wife than those tidings which had almost aged him in a night.

His son, however, met him at the great gates, whole and sound, but with a grave face. "You are too late, sir," he said quietly. But he flushed a little at the grasp of his father's hand, and a little more when the Archdeacon told him to pay the cabman a double fare. "I have brought you here for nothing. He died a quarter of an hour ago, sinking very rapidly after I sent to you."

"Who? Who died?" the Archdeacon asked, pressing one hand heavily on the other's shoulder, as they walked back towards the bridge.

"Mr. Kent."

The elder man said nothing for a while--aloud at least. But presently he asked Jack to tell him about it.

"There is little to tell. After we left him he went out. Going home late last night, and not I fear sober, he was run down by a road-car. When they brought him to the hospital he was hopelessly injured, but quite sensible. They fetched his daughter, and then he asked for me--as your son. He did not know my address, but the assistant-surgeon happened to be a friend of mine, and did, and he sent a cab for me."

And really that seemed all. "It is very, very sudden; but--Heaven forgive me!--I cannot regret his death," the clergyman said. "It is impossible."

They had reached the corner of the bridge. "There is something else I should tell you," Jack said nervously. "When he had sent for me he had a lawyer brought, and made his will."