John Langdon

“ John Langdon, of New Hampshire, was born on the family farm near Portsmouth in 1740, and "after a mercantile education in the counting room of Daniel Rindge, he entered upon a sea-faring life, but was driven from it by the revolutionary troubles." He must have prospered, however, before the War blighted his trade, for when the news of the fall of Ticonderoga reached Exeter, he rose in the legislature of which he was the speaker and said: "I have a thousand dollars in hard money ”

“ From the first he had felt that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had begun to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning altogether. Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man he had business dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to win, if possible, a race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That Langdon's villainous scheme had borne evil fruit for John Porter was purely a matter of chance selection. There was a Mephistophelean restitution in not striving to wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The Dutchman. ”

“ I will make you rich! I know where there are mines, richer, far richer than the Don Carlos. I have friends, many of them, who will help. You shall be rich—forty thousand dollars paid in gold to-morrow. Let me go, señor, and I will repay you ten thousand times!"
LANDON walked slowly to the door.
"Thompson, Señor Alba complains that he hasn't had enough to eat; bring him double portions hereafter."
"It will be best for you to meet your father alone," he said to Pepita when he returned to the house. "The school car will carry you to town, and Mrs. Thompson will accompany you." ”

“ Now the girl was sitting on a log near the fire, on which her father, at Langdon's command, had heaped wet gulfweed to smudge the hayhennies away. The men, lulled by heat, by the gossip of the brook, by digestion and nicotine, lay in the warm sand, squinting out at the sailless and rolling immensities of a sea pure turquoise as a porcelain tub full of bluing-water on a Monday mom. They drowsed, and so did noontide.
“Quite like the Garden of Eden, eh?” remarked Langdon lazily. “Palms, beach and sea will feed us. Nothing to do but take the goods the gods provide us. ”

“ Miss Barada is here," growled Thompson, rubbing his eyes.
"Ah!" cried Alba, glowering at the woman. "It is as I said." Then, turning upon the caretaker authoritatively: "You will summon her at once, porter. She must resume her journey immediately!"
"Miss Barada has retired and can't be disturbed," Thompson replied, quoting Landon exactly.
"But her father—he will arrive in New York and expect to find his daughter. She must be aroused at once; there is no time to lose!" ”

“ Langdon, when a man that's once started right lives among sick folks for five-and-thirty years, as I've done, if he hasn't got a library of five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head at the end of that time, he'd better stop driving round and sell his horse and sulky. ”

“ Those who love stories of adventure will find a volume to their taste in the “Life and Adventures of John Gladwyn Jebb,” just published, and to which an introduction is furnished by Rider Haggard. The latter says that rarely, if ever, in this nineteenth century, has a man lived so strange and varied an existence as did Mr. ”

“ Langdon confided to Crane, after a period of silent observation; “he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's gone a mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here they come;” for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. “My God! he can move,” muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels, with dogged lope, hung the Bay. ”

“ Now when Langdon had ceased speaking, the people marvelled greatly at his words, seeing that he had been an indweller for many years among those of whom he now spake bitterly, and had not, during all that time, opened his mouth to convince them of the error of their ways. ”

“ He sniffed the invigorating air happily as a motor bore them out of Biltingham and through the hills. Entering the grounds, they wound through a heavy woodland that yielded to a lawn beyond which lay the school. The acting principal received them, and they proceeded at once to the quad, where all was in readiness for the closing exercises. As Landon stepped upon the platform there was a flutter as the students rose. ”

“ Thompson shook his head slowly.
"Very sorry; but it's my orders. I can't waken Miss Barada. She is asleep in my wife's care."
"I tell you it's all a mistake!" cried Alba angrily. "The señorita only returned to wait for us; we are her father's friends. This lady is well known to the school authorities. We must lose no time in returning to New York."
"My wife said Miss Barada would sleep very late; you'll have to come back in the morning!' said Thompson as Landon had coached him. ”

“ There are horse-tamers, born so,—as we all know; there are woman-tamers, who bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of Hamelin; and there are world-tamers, who can make any community, even a Yankee one, get down and let them jump on its back as easily as Mr. Rarey saddled Cruiser.
Whether Langdon was of this sort or not I could not say positively; but he had spirit, and, as I have said, a family-pride which would not let him be dependent. The New England Brahmin caste often gets blended with connections of political influence or commercial distinction. ”

“ Then my father had to go to England, and that made it possible for him to meet me in New York on his way home. Señor Alba had been here to see me just once—once," she repeated spitefully. "He wished me to marry him and remain in your country. It is not the way of my people, as you understand, Señor Landon. My dear father would be very angry—"
THE anger of Juan Maria Barada at any such proceeding on his daughter's part was so poorly indicated by Pepita's gentle tone that Landon with difficulty concealed his mirth. ”

“ As curious and touching a case as any in my experience, says the Professor, was that of young Langdon. I refer to it particularly, because circumstances brought me into unwonted association with some parties to the affair, and to the knowledge, connected with it, of as strange an instance of youthful clairvoyance as might be related.
Young Harry Langdon was the heir presumptive to the Langdon baronetcy and estates, at that time enjoyed—save the irony of the term—by his great-uncle Sir Hugh Langdon, who was a childless widower and paralytic. ”

“ At length we received news that a new parson was coming, and all sorts of speculations were rife as to what sort of parson he would be. Was he young or old? Married or single? Rich or poor? At last the bells were set ringing, and every boy blew his penny whistle and fired his pop-gun, because the Reverend Peter Manonni Scrope Cornwall, M.A., with his two sons, and two daughters, and sister-in-law, Miss Brown, who was his housekeeper, had actually arrived. Mr. Cornwall took the curacy at £80 per year, and an old tumbledown, damp, dismal den of a house to live in. ”

“ And Lee grew purple.
“Every day there'll be something for you,” Langdon inexorably continued. “I never put off till to-morrow the man I can do to-day. And——”
“Why, sir, if you think I—I'm going to be your slave——”
“Suit yourself,” Langdon smiled indifferently. “Only, remember you already owe me a dozen turtles' eggs for that pipe and tobacco, and thirty sticks of wood for the use of my knife. Also, one iguana for the water you and your daughter have already used.” ”

“ Langdon is dying to make a lion of him, and begged to bring him. He is very indifferent on such things and seems intent on his own affairs. Is grave and old for his years, and doesn't seem to care much for pleasure and admiration, as most men would after a youth like his, for he has had a hard time, I believe. For a wonder, he consented to come when Mrs. Langdon asked him, and I flew off at once to tell you and secure you for tonight."
"A thousand thanks. I meant to rest, for Mamma frets about my being so gay; but she won't object to a quiet evening with you. ”

“ Father used to say that he was astonished at the amount of superstition prevailing in the minds of all sorts of people, not only the uneducated. Even well-educated people would ask him if he [Pg 85] could "rule their planets." He would say that he was ashamed to hear them ask such a question. People would come from long distances in the dead of night to have a look through the telescope. When asked how he had achieved so much, and brought up a large family in respectability, his answer was: "It is through the woman that the Almighty gave me; she has done the most." ”

“ Langdon. He is a handsome man, and of noble carriage; he has been a member of Congress, and is now one of the first people of the country; his house is elegant and well furnished, and the apartments admirably well wainscoted” (this reads like Mr. Samuel Pepys) ; “and he has a good manuscript chart of the harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed great courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes’s expedition.” ”

“ Landon replied hastily. "You know I'm not up to much just yet; suppose we let social matters wait a little."
"Certainly; I merely want you to know that you needn't be a hermit unless you want to."
He bade the last of the teachers good-by and lounged about the handsome library where Thompson, the gardener, who had been installed as caretaker during the vacation, came to report that the house was cleared.
"Mr. Phipps said you hadn't been feeling well, sir. I hope we can make you quite comfortable here. You will find your rooms very cool on the hot days. ”

“ Oh, you needn't frown, Langdon; you know it's the truth. He's still a chip off the old block, gentlemen, while his barefoot neighbor, a scion of po' white stock, cooked his brain before a cabin pine-knot fire in studying, like Abe Lincoln did, and finally went forth to conquer the world, and is conquering it as fast as a dog can trot. It's enough, gentlemen, to make us all take our boys from school, give 'em a good paddling, and put 'em at hard toil in the field. ”

“ The reason, then, why I do not intend to have any further contact with Langdon Jesse is that he is one of the most notorious libertines in New York; a man who regards women from a single angle—as his prey. Everybody seems to know that, mother, except you: and you don't know it, do you?" There was a pathos in the eagerness with which the girl asked the question; it spoke of a dim hope she yet had that perhaps, after all, her mother did not know about Langdon Jesse. Her mother's harsh, dodging reply quickly dashed that hope. ”

“ Temple is appointed; such men are needed in the Church very much indeed. He will be the right man in the right place, and he will thoroughly do his duty, and he will be a hard worker. Moreover, he will make the clergy work, and it is a thousand pities that so many churchmen have not yet realized what a strong man they will have amongst them."
Then up spake a countryman, "Then, du yu 'old way un bein' a tay-totler, Mr. Langdon?"
"Why, of course I do," replied father. "That is the essence of the whole matter, and that is just why the [Pg 83] Exeter people are against him ”

“ First his mouth comes open a foot or so as he sees me let a chance slide, and when I misses more openin's he takes on a look like some one had fed him a ripe egg.
Langdon is havin' the time of his life. He can hit as hard as he likes, and he don't get hit back. Must have seemed real homelike to him. Anyway, soon's he dopes it out that there ain't any danger at all, he bores in like a snow plough, and between blockin' and duckin' I has my hands full. ”

“ He has been to the gym to look after the gentleman there. He said to tell you there was nothing to report."
PEPITA ran toward him as he appeared at the edge of the lawn. Her dark cheeks were aglow, and she seemed even lovelier than he had thought her as he watched her from the platform among her fellow students.
"Mrs. Thompson thinks it would be altogether proper for us to breakfast together. If you have no objections, señorita—"
"Oh, I told her I would wait for you! It's very stupid eating alone."
"But it is not the way of your people: a young girl and a strange man—not so very old!" ”

“ Stephen Langton is, no doubt, a good and honest man, as times go, and eager enough for the public weal. But he is heart and soul with Fitzwalter and De Vesci, and is either dictating their measures or doing their bidding. In neither case, credit me, will he ever again admit the king to London, save as the slave or tool of the confederates; and I see clearly that John has pride enough left never to come on such terms. ”

“ EVEN in the busy San Francisco hospital where many curious things happened and were discussed discreetly by internes and nurses, Landon's arrival was enveloped in a haze of mystery that set him apart from the daily run of patients. A man of twenty-eight, bearing the marks of a gentleman; burning up with fever and with an unhealed knife thrust in his ribs, he had driven to the hospital from a South American steamer, even the name of a lawyer in New York as his nearest friend, and collapsed in the receiving room. ”