Lawford

“ Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise, too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of the bluff.
This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank into the full sweep of the gale.
"Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?" ”

“ So interested was Louise in what Mr. Bane said that she scarcely noticed Lawford Tapp who passed and bowed to her, only inclining her head in return. Therefore she did not catch the expression on Lawford's face.
"A fine-looking young fisherman," observed Mr. Bane patronizingly.
"Yes. Some of them are good-looking and more intelligent than you would believe," Louise rejoined carelessly. She had put Lawford Tapp aside as inconsequential. ”

“ She laughed. "Oh, no, Mr. Tapp. I do not work on Sundays. Uncle
Amazon would not even let me wash the dishes."
"I should think not," murmured Lawford with an appreciative glance at her ungloved hands. "He's a pretty decent old fellow, I guess. Will you come aboard? She's perfectly safe, Miss Grayling."
If he had invited her to enter the big touring car he had driven that morning, to go for a "joy ride," Louise Grayling would certainly have refused. To go on a pleasure trip at the invitation of a chauffeur in his employer's car was quite out of consideration. ”

“ But Prue hopped out of the roadster and started down the path immediately. She and Lawford still had a few things in common. Mutual affection was one of them.
"What's happened to him?" she cried. "You're Mrs. Gallup, aren't you?"
"I'm Bet Gallup—yes. You run call up Doc Ambrose from over to
Paulmouth. Your brother's got a bad knock on the head."
"And he's been overboard!" gasped Prue.
"I—I'm all right," stammered Lawford. "Let me lie down for a little while. Don't need a doctor."
"You're as wet as a drowned rat," his sister said. "Come on up and get some dry clothes, Ford. ”

“ The will was to be read by Henry Lawford’s clerk, in the sitting-room, or study, which Maurice de Crespigny had occupied for many years before his death.
There were a great many people who, like Gilbert Monckton, thought they had a right to be present upon this occasion; people who had been kept out of the old man’s house by the rigid watchfulness and the inflexible will of the two maiden ladies for the last twenty years or so, but who were freely admitted now, as no longer capable of doing mischief. ”

“ It was that evening, after his fruitless call at Cap'n Abe's store, that the young man met his father and had it out. Lawford came back to Tapp Point in the motor boat. As he walked up from the dock there was a sudden eruption of voices from the house, a door banged, and the Taffy King began exploding verbal fireworks as he crunched the gravel under foot.
"I'll show him! Young upstart! Settin' the women on me! Ha! Thinks he can do as he pleases forever and ever, amen! ”

“ He gets it in cash—in a pay envelope."
"Mercy, Louise! You are not in earnest?"
"Certainly. My young man is going to earn our living. If he marries me his father will cut him off with the proverbial shilling. I. Tapp has other matrimonial plans for Lawford."
"What?" gasped the horrified Mrs. Conroth. "He does not approve of you?"
"Too true, auntie. I have driven poor Lawford to work in a candy factory."
"That—that upstart!" exploded the lady. But she did not refer to
Lawford.
It was evident that Aunt Euphemia saw nothing but the threat of storm clouds for her niece in the offing. ”

“ When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in this way, he is far gone indeed. Lawford Tapp was very seriously smitten.
He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile. She had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long before he docked the launch. Lawford did not pay much attention to what went on in the big villa. His mother and sisters lived a social life of their own. ”

“ Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one of the injured surfmen. The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about, shouted:
"Ford! Ford! Don't dare do that! I forbid you!"
Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week, dad. I am my own boss."
A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply.
Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:
"Don't stop him, Mr. ”

“ Lawford; “the officer of justice must execute his warrant though it should frighten the criminal to death; these evils are only contingent, not direct and immediate consequences. You must give up the lady, Mr. Gray, though your hesitation is very natural.”
“At least, Mr. Lawford, I ought to be certain that the person in my house is the party they search for.”
“Admit me to her apartment,” replied the man whom the messenger termed Moncada. ”

“ Then Miss Newbury gave a gasp, and Henry Lawford, with a certain stern dignity that he knew how to assume, said——
“A mistake? How so, pray?”
“In doing what he did—sacrificing his life to save the child.”
“Why, Mr. Gorham!” exclaimed the hostess, while everybody turned toward him. He was a young man between thirty and thirty-five, a lawyer beginning to be well thought of in his profession, with a thoughtful, pleasant expression and a vigorous physique.
“It seems to me,” he continued, slowly, seeking his words, “if John Baker had stopped to think, he would have acted differently. ”

“ Look at his Ferguson game. It’s our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of mischief. It reflects all round. There’s no getting out of it; we’re all in it. And tar sticks. And then there’s poor little Alice to consider, and—and you yourself, Mrs. Lawford: I wouldn’t give the fellow—friend though he was, in a way—it isn’t safe to give him five minutes’ freedom. We’ve simply got to save you from yourself, Mrs Lawford ”

“ And as for Captain Donellan, he bungled matters somehow, and was hanged at Warwick in the following spring—an elegant, well-mannered man in black, who displayed much ceremonious punctilio at ascending the scaffold ahead of the sheriff. Ten years later{26} Lawford Hall was pulled down as an accursed thing, and the building before us is all that survives of it. ”

“ Lawford and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton, was a will that left Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune away from Launcelot Darrell. The old man had spoken of a duty which he meant to perform. Surely he must have alluded to his two nieces’ devotion, and the recompense which they had earned by their patient attendance upon him. Such untiring watchers generally succeed in reaping the reward of their labours ”

“ Save one thing. She desired to see Lawford Tapp and talk with him.
But Lawford did not appear at the store on the Shell Road.
Mr. Bane came frequently to call. He was an eager listener to Cap'n Amazon's stories and evidently enjoyed the master mariner hugely. Several of the young people from the cottages along The Beaches called on Louise; but if the girl desired to see Aunt Euphemia she had to go to the Perritons, or meet the Lady from Poughkeepsie in her walks along the sands. Aunt Euphemia could not countenance Cap'n Amazon in the smallest particular. ”

“ He was ordained deacon to the curacy of Church Lawford, Warwickshire, in 1820, and priest in 1821. In 1822 he was curate of Willesden and Kingsbury, near London. In 1824 he accepted the curacy of the fashionable town of Cheltenham. During 1826 his incumbent (the Rev. C. Jervis) died, and he was at once presented to the living. He liberally aided not only societies belonging to the church of England, but also many other societies not in union with the established church. ”

“ He cut the way up the ravine by which the gorge was made accessible. When I was a boy the only method by which it could be explored was by swimming and scrambling in summer, when the water was low. Mr. Radford built Bridge House and restored the church. It was due to him that I undertook, in 1888, to collect the folk-music in Devon and Cornwall; and it is in Lydford churchyard that he lies, awaiting the resurrection of the just. Not without deep feeling can I pen these lines to commemorate one of the best men whom it has been my happiness to know. ”

“ Dean and prebendaries were soon humbled under such discipline.
In court and country, in Church and State, Laud, next to the Earl of Strafford, must be considered to have been the most powerful minister in England. [52] Pledged to a thorough policy of arbitrary kingship, he helped in all things his royal master, and his able fellow-councillor. When Strafford was in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, the Archbishop was the great power at home behind the throne. "He is the man," said courtiers, when they would point out the most favourable medium for approaching royalty. ”

“ Looking quickly from the fire to the face of the Honourable and back again earnestly, as if the full force of what was required came to him, he said: "We shall get the perspective better if we put the tale in the third person. Duke Lawless was the heir to the title and estates of Trafford Court. Next in succession to him was Just Trafford, his cousin. Lawless had an income sufficient for a man of moderate tastes. ”

“ Radford himself was by no means popular in the county. A selfish and a cunning man is almost always speedily found out by the lower classes, even when he makes an effort to conceal it. But Mr. Radford took no such trouble ”

“ If high-church doctrines, however, met with opposition at Oxford, they were relished elsewhere, and Laud obtained rapid advancement. In 1607 he was made vicar of Stanford in Northamptonshire, and in 1608 he became chaplain to Bishop Neile, who in 1610 presented him to the living of Cuxton, when he resigned his fellowship. In 1611, in spite of the influence of Archbishop Abbot and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, Laud was made president of St John’s, and in 1614 obtained in addition the prebend of Buckden, in 1615 the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and in 1616 the deanery of Gloucester. ”

“ He went by the name of Limping Lawry among the people in the village of Wallford. I was going to say companions—but he had not many companions, for he could not move about without pain. Only on a summer’s day he limped out and sat on a bench against the front wall of the cottage. He was a pale-faced lad, with large blue eyes and a broad forehead, and did not look as if he could be long for this world; yet he lived on while others seemingly stronger were taken away. ”

“ The attack not only on the national religion, but on the national independence of Scotland, proved to be the point at which the system, already strained, broke and collapsed. Laud continued to support Strafford’s and the king’s arbitrary measures to the last, and spoke in favour of the vigorous continuation of the war on Strafford’s side in the memorable meeting of the committee of eight on the 5th of May 1640, and for the employment of any means for carrying it on. ”

“ I have no will and no power to punish all the villany I see, otherwise my arm would be tired enough of flogging, in this county of Kent. But I do not understand why I should be called upon to like a great agglomeration of blackguards in a city, when I can have the same diluted in the country. Here we have about a hundred scoundrels to the square mile; in London we have a hundred to the square yard."
"Don't you think, sir, that they may be but the worse scoundrels in the country because they are fewer?" demanded Mr. Radford. ”

“ Layard, who gave himself no airs, but was always a pleasant gentleman, though he was not in the counting-house of the great Welford Gas Company, but in the works, where her own husband was employed.
"Why, don't you consider a man four inches taller than I a tall man?" cried Crawford, drawing brows down over his quick furtive eyes, and looking at the woman as if he was reproaching her with having committed a heinous crime. ”

“ LAVINGTON, GEORGE (1684–1762) , bishop of Exeter, a descendant of a family long resident in Wiltshire, was son of the Rev. Joseph Lavington, who married at Mildenhall in that county, on 27 April 1675, Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Stephen Constable, rector of the parish and prebendary of Slape in Salisbury Cathedral. He was born at Mildenhall rectory and baptised on the same day, 18 Jan. 1683–4. ”

“ It is much better.”
“I certainly prefer it,” said Mrs. Minster. “I am glad to hear you keep separate. I do not know Mr. Tracy, and, indeed, he is very highly spoken of as a lawyer; but certain things I have heard—social matters, I mean—”
The lady broke off discreetly. She could not tell this young man what she had heard about that visit to the Lawton house. Horace listened to her without the remotest notion of her meaning, and so could only smile faintly and give the least suggestion of a sigh. Clearly he must throw Reuben overboard. ”

“ Radford?” he asked.
“You’ll please yourselves,” she said; “but it’s pretty late.”
“A game or so will make us sleepy,” he answered.
Clara brought the cards, and sat spinning her wedding-ring whilst he shuffled them. Mrs. Radford was washing up in the scullery. As it grew later Paul felt the situation getting more and more tense.
“Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and two’s eight——!”
The clock struck one. Still the game continued. Mrs. Radford had done all the little jobs preparatory to going to bed, had locked the door and filled the kettle. Still Paul went on dealing and counting. ”