Langley

“ Bertram could not see that Wilfred had offered Hugh the faintest shadow of comfort; but in some manner inexplicable to him, Hugh seemed comforted thenceforward.
There was a great stir at Langley in the April of 1389; for the King and Queen stayed there a night on their way to Westminster. Maude was in the highest excitement: she had never seen a live King before, and she expected a formidable creature of the lion-rampant type, who would order every body about in the most tyrannical manner, and command Master Warine to be instantly hanged if dinner were not punctual. ”

“ Mrs. Langley—if it were, indeed, Mrs. Langley?—wore a gown of warm grey shading into lilac with a lace fichu fastened by a large, handsome cameo brooch. Her parted hair was brought back so loosely as considerably to disguise the sharpness of her temples. Her eyes looked softer and her skin less sallow even in the strong light; while, most remarkable of all, the appalling hollows in her cheeks had disappeared, taking with them almost all the grimness of the mouth. And when she actually smiled, partly with her eyes yet also with her lips, Anna lost her head. ”

“ Mr. Langley, after a brief word to Mrs. Lorraine, followed. And despite his haste and excitement and perturbation, he noticed the homelike appearance of the place he recollected as a littered work shop.
But of the upper chamber he noted no detail. As his head rose above the railing of the stair, he saw the men start back from the further end of the place. Peering into the shadows, he saw the figure of a man stretched upon an old couch. Approaching, he saw that he was burning with fever and unconscious. ”

“ Langley swore.
Ghamba drew near until his teeth were within a few inches of Langley’s cheek, and said in a whisper:
“I know where Umhlonhlo is.”
Langley started, and said in an awed voice:
“Where is he?”
“Wait a bit,” said Ghamba; “perhaps I will tell you, and perhaps I won’t. I like you; you have given me tobacco, and you are not too proud to come and talk to a poor old man. Now, you say you would like to make five hundred pounds and buy a farm?” ”

“ Maude obeyed, feeling rather sorry for the Lord Le Despenser, whose loving spouse seemed to regard him as the less of two evils.
The new Duchess proved to be, like most of the Holands, very tall and extremely fair. No one would have supposed her to be only ten years old, and her proud, demure, unbashful bearing helped to make her look older than she was. The whole current of life at Langley changed with her coming. From morning to night every day was filled with feasts, junkets, hawking parties, picnics, joustings, and dances. ”

“ In the second place, both Constance and Maude were no longer children, but women. The Princess was now eighteen years of age, while her bower-maiden had reached twenty.
And in the third place, over the calm horizon of Langley had appeared a little cloud, as yet no more than “a man’s hand,” which was destined in its effects to change the whole current of life there. No one about her had in the least realised it as yet; but the Duchess Isabel was dying.
Very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician, the Lollard Infanta descended to the portals of the grave. ”

“ Like so many other great observers, Langley was not a mathematician, and like most physicists, he believed in physics. Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, he still knew the problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognizing their existence, while doubting their respectability. ”

“ Langley and her room that makes you feel as if you were sitting on the edge of your chair waiting until you can get out where you see sunshine and people that talk and smile. Her eyes, you know, like coals of fire in the Bible, and great hollows in her cheeks and a voice that seems to come from a cave or a tomb. The blinds are drawn down almost to the window sills and there are medicine bottles to burn. There’s air enough, I suppose, but not the kind that’s sweetened by sunshine. ”

“ We see in Langley, as in some of his brother New England inventors, the later flowering of the Puritan ideal stripped of its husk of superstition and harshness—a high sense of duty and of integrity, an intense conviction that the reason for a man's life here is that he may give service, a reserved deportment which did not mask from discerning eyes the man's gentle qualities of heart and his keen love of beauty in art and Nature. ”

“ One was always hearing of people who had been bed-ridden for years getting well, and Mrs. Langley wasn’t so bad as bed-ridden. ‘Neuralagy’ and sleeplessness and headache and the like were what ailed her, and youth saw no reason why these should not be speedily banished. Quite likely it might have been put through long since had anyone taken the matter in hand.
Anna grinned as she said to herself she would now be Charley on-the-spot. Mr. Langley had been goodness itself to Rusty and their father—to all the family, indeed. He was putting Rusty through college. ”

“ Langley, I don’t think we’ll keep little Joe. We all love him—even ma, but we don’t really need him and—don’t you know someone who would like a baby boy that talks?”
Mrs. Langley stared at the girl. The blinds were raised to-day, though not so high, and she wore the pretty gown and becoming arrangement of her hair. She looked even more attractive than she had on Saturday, for she seemed used to the change. It was almost as if she had always let in the sunshine and the rich rosy afterglow which prevailed now and had never resembled Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf in her grandmother’s cap and gown. ”

“ The doctor went down on his knees at the pallet's side, and thrust his hand into the breast of the coarse garments with a half-checked groan.
“Asleep?” broke from Langley's white lips in a desperate whisper. “Not—not”—
“Dead!” said the doctor—“dead for hours!” There was actual anguish in his voice as he uttered the words, but another element predominated in the exclamation which burst from him scarcely a second later. “Good God!” he cried—“good God!”
Langley bent down and caught him almost fiercely by the arm: the exclamation jarred upon him. “What is it?” ”

“ King’s Langley is a large and interesting village. The river Gade flows between the main street and the station, L.&N.W.R. Paper and straw plait are both made largely. The village owes its name to the fact that Henry III. built a palace on a spot still marked by a few fragments of ruin a little W. from the church, and the royal manor became known as Langley Regis, whereas the Langley on the E. side of the river belonged to the Abbey of St. Albans, and was called Abbot’s Langley (q.v.) . Edmund de Langley, fifth son of Edward III., was born in this palace in 1344. ”

“ Langley of his burden, though none was as disinterested as he seemed. The baby was sober—sad, indeed, but he was very comfortable to hold. He never wriggled as many babies do. And plain as he was, there was something appealing about him. And besides, there was always the prospect of being the fortunate one to win his first smile. But Mr. Langley refused all proffers. He wouldn’t even give him up to Miss Penny.
“You may have him when I go, Miss Penny,” he said smiling, “but I want him as long as I stay. You’re all near neighbours and can see little Joe every day, but I seldom get a chance. ”

“ Langley was an able and prudent statesman, and is said to have been a good canonist, and otherwise well educated. He seems to have belonged to the party of the Beauforts and the Prince of Wales, and to have so far at least remained constant to the policy of his old master John of Gaunt {Constitutional History, iii. ”

“ Not to fight, good friend; not to resist nor contend with any man; only to do God’s will. And is that not worth dying for?”
Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days at Langley—to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of two lads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him the greater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram’s heart whispered to him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire, yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. ”

“ Langley, wife of Colonel Langley, British consul at the "Court" of Algiers.
The lady of whom we write was unusually romantic, for her romance consisted of a deep undercurrent of powerful but quiet enthusiasm, with a pretty strong surface-flow of common sense. Her husband was a man of noble mind and commanding presence—a magnificent representative John Bull, with the polish of a courtier and the principles of a Christian; one who had been wisely chosen to fill a very disagreeable post, full of responsibility and danger. ”

“ He is so unselfish," said the sister, proudly. "But there will be no trouble about the army now, thanks to you."
Mr. Langley was touched by this simple girl's great idea of the capabilities of their new income.
"How should I feel?" he thought, "if I were obliged to live on nine hundred a year! Well; this lad's commission may be a means of paying my five hundred pounds."
"You will let me come to-morrow?" he said aloud: "I must see your father, and go over the rectory with him; and I shall see you too, shall I not?"
"Certainly," said Mary; "I don't go back to London until the 20th." ”

“ Langley, in a huff, walked out on the verandah, and began to smoke.
Under the kind care of my good friends I grew rapidly better, and at the end of a week was entirely well; but still I enjoyed the society of Ellen so much, that whenever the skipper called upon me, I feigned myself too weak to go to my duty, and pleaded that Langley might stay ashore to take care of me. [215] Captain Smith, though not deceived by this artifice, granted us liberty from day to day; and Bill and I were the two happiest fellows in the world. But there is an end to every thing. ”

“ Alianora, Countess of March, sister of Kent, and mother of the Mortimers, had died at Powys Castle.
When Custance reached the chamber allotted to her at Westminster, she found there all the personal property which she had left at Langley twelve months earlier.
“Maude!” she said that night, as she laid her head on the pillow.
“Lady?” was the response.
“To-morrow make thou ready for me my widow’s garb. I shall never wear any other again.” ”

“ Plot and Counterplot.
“He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare,
And he that hath one enemy shall find him everywhere.”
On the evening of Constance’s arrival at Langley, two men sat in close conference in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. One of them was a priest, the other a layman. The first priest, and the first layman, in the realm; for the elder was Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the younger was Henry of Bolingbroke, King of England. ”

“ Langley's good-humored laugh had a touch of conscious power in it. If it depended upon “th' missus” he was safe enough. His bright good looks and gay grace of manner never failed with the women. The most practical and uncompromising melted, however unwillingly, before his sunshine, and the suggestion of chivalric deference which seemed a second nature with him. So it was easy enough to parley with “th' missus.”
“A Lancashire lad, Mrs. Janner,” he said, “and so I know you'll take care of him. Lancashire folk have a sort of fellow feeling for each other, you see ”

“ Langley sat almost erect. When it had happened, Anna did not know, but she noticed now for the first time that the hump was gone. “I don’t want you without him,” she cried, “and I want to know the truth. Why should he be afraid of me after I had done all that?”
“Because—O, if everything else was all right, he would be afraid of—your teeth!” the girl cried desperately. “They’re so—far apart—there’s a gap on each side. He hasn’t many, himself, but they’re close up and anyhow he doesn’t know what he looks like. When I hold him up to the mirror, what do you think he does. He looks right at me!” ”

“ Langley. And then Anna laughed out naturally.
“O Mrs. Langley, one would think Joe, Junior, was royalty!” she exclaimed. And then she wanted to cry. Frizzes about that face!
“You’re not well enough anyhow to bother about curl papers. Soft and loose would be just as well,” she murmured with a deepening sense of guilt. She had grown so used to Mrs. Langley that she had forgotten her ugliness until Saturday had impressed it forcibly upon her. She said to herself it was wicked [163] to talk against time as she was. Could that harsh-looking hair ever look smooth? ”

“ He was clad in breast and back piece, and had riding boots reaching above his knee, and in addition to the long sword at his hip, he carried a Jedburgh axe hanging by a thong from his saddle.
"Come forth, Ned Langley," he said, in a great voice, "Wat Armstrong of Bannockbrae has somewhat to say to ye!"
"Get ye gone, Black Wat," replied Long John, derisively, from the interior; "Captain Langley is away, and we like not Scots thieves around the peel, being very particular of our acquaintance." ”

“ Langley felt worried about the faithful old fellow who had saved her life. "I'll see to him to-morrow," she thought and began to plan various things for his comfort and happiness.
A little later a pretty girl with a mandolin, said: "Do you know I feel like having a lark. Excuse the slang, please, but there's no other word that will express my meaning."
"Try a swallow," suggested a young man in a way that was meant to be funny. "There's lots of lemonade left in the pitcher." ”