Laid up in Lavender. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ for a day or two, and this sent the doctor on his rounds in high spirits. Pleasance herself, moving upstairs about her domestic business, felt more charitable. There might be something in what her father said about leaving the poor man to himself. She would go down presently, and talk to him, preserving a due distance.

      She had scarcely made up her mind to this when she chanced to look through the window, and saw the stranger walking slowly across the lawn. She watched him for a moment in idle curiosity, wondering in what class he had moved, and what had brought him to this. Then she noticed the direction he was taking, and on the instant a dreadful fear flashed into the girl's mind, and made her heart stand still. Below the lawn the rivulet formed a pool among the trees He was going that way, glancing sombrely about him as he went.

      Pleasance did not stay to think-to add up the chances. She flung the door open, and ran down the stairs. She reached the lawn. He was not to be seen, but she knew which way he had gone, and she darted down the path that led to the water. She turned the corner-she saw him! He was standing gazing into the dark pool, his back towards her, in an attitude of profound melancholy. She ran on unfaltering until she reached him, and laid her hand on his arm.

      "What are you doing?" she cried, on the impulse of her great fear.

      He turned with a violent start, and found the girl's pale face and glowing eyes close to his. He looked ghastly enough. There was a bandage round his head, under the soft hat which the doctor had lent him; and in the surprise of the moment the colour had fled from his face. "Doing?" he muttered, trembling in her grasp. And his eyes dilated-his nerves were still suffering from the shock of his wound, and probably from some long strain which had preceded it. "Doing? Yes, I understand you."

      He uttered the last words with a groan and a distortion of the features. "Come away!" she cried, pulling at his arm.

      He let her lead him away. He was so weak that apparently he could not have returned without her help. Near the upper end of the walk there was a rustic seat, and here he signed to her to let him sit down, and she did so. When he had somewhat recovered himself he said faintly, "You are mistaken; I came here by chance."

      She shook her head, looking down at him solemnly. She was still excited, taken out of herself by her terror.

      "It is true," he said feebly. "I swear it."

      "Swear that you will not think of it again," she responded.

      "I swear," he answered.

      She gazed at him awhile. Then she said, "Wait!" She went quickly back to the house, and returned with some wine. "Perhaps I startled you without cause," she said, smiling on him. He had not seen her smile before. "I must make amends. Drink this."

      He obeyed. "Now," she said, "you must take my arm and go back to your chair."

      He assented as a child might, and when he reached the chair he sank into it with a sigh of relief. She stood beside him. The back of his seat was towards the house, and before him an opening in the shrubbery disclosed a shoulder of the ravine rolling upwards, the gorse on one rugged spur in bloom, the sunshine everywhere warming the dull browns and lurking purples into brilliance.

      "See!" she said, with an undertone of reproach in her voice, "is not that beautiful? Is not that a thing one would regret?"

      "Yes, beautiful now," he replied, answering her thought rather than her words. "But I have seen it under another aspect. Stay!" he continued, seeing she was about to answer. "Do not judge me too hastily. You cannot tell what reason I had-what-"

      "No!" she retorted, "I cannot. But I can guess what grief you would have caused to others, what a burden you would have shifted to weaker shoulders, what duties you would have avoided, what a pang you would have inflicted on friends and relations! For shame!" She stopped for lack of breath.

      "I have no relatives," he answered slowly, "and few friends. I have no duties that others would not perform as well. My death would cause sorrow to some, joy to as many. My burden would die with me."

      She glanced at him with compressed lips, divining that he was reciting arguments he had used a score of times to his own conscience. But she was puzzled how to answer him. "Take all that for granted," she said at last. "Are there no reasons higher than these which should have deterred you?"

      "It may be so," he replied. "Perhaps I think so now."

      She felt the admission a victory, and, seeing he had recovered his composure, she left him and went into the house. But the incident had one lasting effect. It broke down the wall between them. She felt that she knew him well-better than many whom she had owned as acquaintances for years. The confidence surprised in a moment of emotion cannot be recalled. It seemed idle for her to affect to keep him at arm's length when she knew, if she did not acknowledge, that he had confessed his sin, and been forgiven.

      So when she saw him walking feebly from the house next day she went with him, and showed him where he could rest and where obtain a view without climbing. Afterwards she fell naturally into the habit of going with him; and little by little, as she saw more of him, she owned the spell of a new perplexity. Who was he? He talked of things in a tone novel to her. He seemed to have thought deeply and read much. He spoke of visits to this country, to that country. One day her father found him reading their day-old Times, and took it from him. "You must not do that yet," the doctor said. "My daughter can read to you, if you like, but not for long."

      She asked what she should read. He chose a review of a historical work, and gently rejected the passing topics-even a speech by Lord Hartington. This gave her an idea, and she privately searched the back numbers of the paper, but could not find that any one who resembled him was missing. Yet he had been with them almost three weeks; he had received no letters, he had sent none. How could such a man pass from his circle and cause no inquiry? Here at the Old Hall they knew no more of him than on his coming. He had not offered to disclose his name, and his host, who had fallen under his spell, had not plucked up courage to ask for it, or for an explanation-had come, indeed, to no understanding with him at all.

      It is possible that of himself the doctor might have gone on unsuspicious to the last. But one afternoon, as he made up his books at the old bureau in the hall-the door being open and a flood of sunshine pouring through it-he was aware on a sudden of a shadow cast across the boards. He looked up. A middle-sized fair man, with a goatee beard and a fresh complexion, was setting down a bag on the floor and beginning to take off his gloves. "Why, Woolley!" exclaimed the doctor, gazing at him feebly, "is it you? We did not expect you until Monday."

      "No, but you see I have come to-day," the traveller answered. It was a peculiarity of this young man-he was not very young, say thirty-eight-that when he was not well pleased he smiled. He smiled now.

      The doctor rubbed his hands to hide a little embarrassment. "Yes, I see you have come," he said. "But how? Did you walk from Sheffield?"

      "I came with Nickson."

      The doctor stopped rubbing, then went on faster, as his thoughts flew from Nickson to the tall gentleman, and for some mysterious reason from the tall gentleman to Pleasance. He had never consciously traced this connection before, but something in his assistant's face helped him to it now.

      "He tells me," Woolley continued, making a neat ball of his gloves and smiling at the floor, "that you had a strange case here, a case he was mixed up with, and that you made a cure of it."

      "Yes."

      "The fellow has cleared out, I suppose?"

      "Well, no," the doctor stammered, feeling warm. How odd it was that he had never seen into what a pit of imprudence he was sinking! He had been СКАЧАТЬ