Miss Langton

“ For the first few weeks of the tour Aubrey saw very little of Miss Langton. She had taken his advice and drawn back, as civilly as she could, from the proposal of living with Miss West, whom she soon found out to be a coarse woman of not too reputable life, whose beauty and a certain rough good-humor made her dangerous to many men. She saw through the motive of Annie’s shyness at once, and said, with a laugh:
“I suppose I am not good enough for you, little Puritan?” ”

“ And so at last the good little girl got quite saucy; and—I really must beg you to restrain your mirth at your own private thoughts, Miss Langton. It is not courteous when a gentleman is doing his best to be entertaining—and instructive as well. To resume. And so the ogre wondered to himself whether the good little girl would feel quite sure for the future that he didn’t want to eat her up, and whether she would think he was not such a bad fellow after all and not half a bad cook at a pinch. That is all, Miss Langton, unless you would like the moral. ”

“ Am I to blush for my—husband?"
A subtle thrill, he cannot tell whether it be of pain or pleasure, it is so intense, shoots through him as the low word falls from her lips. A passionate shame, evoked by her proud scorn, tingles through all his frame, yet he says, mockingly:
"So you own the tie that binds us? I thought not, as when I came just now and inquired for Mrs. Charteris I was told there was no such person staying in the hotel. I had to ask for Miss Langton."
"I am traveling as Miss Langton," she explains, simply, yet coloring crimson under his keen, cool gaze. ”

“ He was not much less than eighty, when to a man of rank who modestly asked his age, he answered, "Go look;" though he was in general a man of civility and elegance.
'The ladies, I find, are at your house all well, except Miss Langton, who will probably soon recover her health by light suppers. Let her eat at dinner as she will, but not take a full stomach to bed. Pay my sincere respects to dear Miss Langton in Lincolnshire, let her know that I mean not to break our league of friendship, and that I have a set of Lives for her, when I have the means of sending it.'
April 8. ”

“ So Maud Langton muses drearily.
Out of all the throng of defaulting friends only one remains to her—the girl she hates with cordial good-will, the rival who has spoiled all her hopes, who has married her lover, and who reigns at Langton Villa in her stead. What bitterness to acknowledge that slight, dark-eyed girl she has always despised, as the only human being who clings to her, and is kind to her in this, her dark hour.
But it is true. It is Reine who takes her by the hand when others fail her ”

“ Then he displayed a new side of his character: the rather strenuous passion for the beautiful was momentarily put aside and he showed himself quite absurdly boyish. His laughter rang out joyously, and, feeling less shy now that Miss Langton was his guest, he talked unrestrainedly of a hundred topics that sprang up one after another in his mind.
“Will you have a cigarette?” he asked when they had finished their tea, and, on Bella’s laughing refusal: “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I can talk better.” ”

“ There are a hundred people, guests of the grand wedding at Langton villa last night, who remember Maud Langton's abrupt entrance a little after nine o'clock, and her frank confession that she had gone away to marry Mr. Clyde, but had repented, and left him in spite of his threats.
These facts are communicated to the coroner. He looks exceedingly grave.
"It will be quite necessary to examine Miss Langton on the subject," he declares.
Someone is found who remembers to have heard [Pg 25] that Miss Langton is at the hotel in the village, near by. ”

“ February 19th, Friday.—No phenomena last night. We have spent the day in A——, the neighbouring town, where I had a fall and hurt my foot, so that I was obliged to drive home, and could not go to the glen. Miss Langton and Mr. "Q." went down about seven o'clock. Mr. "Q." saw the outline of a figure of which he has written the description. Miss Langton heard the usual voices on the other side of the burn; they seemed to her to be interrupted by a third voice, in deeper tones; and she also heard the footsteps of a man passing behind her, a heavy tread, "not like a gentleman." ”

“ A dusky, piquante face, arch, sparkling, bright, as only brunette faces can be, dark, waving hair, and pansy-dark eyes with golden lights in their soft depth, delicious lips, tinted with the velvety crimson of the rose, a slight girlish figure, unformed as yet, but with a willowy grace all its own—Reine Langton. ”

“ Langton and Vane Charteris coming into the deserted parlor, find her standing with one of the maids before the long table, on which the numerous and costly bridal presents have been displayed. Friends have vied with each other in the elegance and beauty of their gifts to Mr. Langton's heiress. Silver and gold, and precious stones flash back the expiring light of the flickering lamps. The house-maid has brought in a large box, and she and Reine are deftly restoring the wrappers to the various articles, and packing them carefully into its capacious recesses. ”

“ With a vivacity very different from Lady Di Beauclerk’s, she kept herself the spring and centre of Langton’s tranquil domestic circle: a more womanly woman historiographers cannot find. His own charm of character, after his marriage, slipped more and more into the underground channels of home-life, and so coursed on beneficently in silence. ”

“ I got nothin' against him."
"You'd better not have," said Langton, implacably. "Come here." He took him out into the doctor's front office and talked to him for some little time while I told the doctor of my adventure.
"Who is Langton when he is at home?" I asked him.
He chuckled. "He is the best man for you to have in this city if Coll McSheen is your enemy. He is a retainer of Mr. Leigh's."
Just then Langton and the thug came in.
"Say, I'm sorry I took a hand in that job," said the latter. "But that skunk that runned away, he put 't up, and he said 's another friend of his got him to do it." ”

“ But who will care for poor Reine Langton, anyway?"
But when the pretty bride's-maid dress, Mr. Langton's gift, is on, and the dark, curling tresses are looped back with pale rose-buds and some long, trailing sprays of feathery white, she is well worth looking at.
The mellow brune tint of her skin is brightened by the [Pg 8] vivid, yet changeful rose-flush on the round, dimpled cheeks; the dark eyes are none the less dazzling for the new touch of dreaminess that has come into their subtle depths beneath the drooping lashes, "like to rays of darkness." ”

“ Flowers are lavishly arranged everywhere. Trained domestics hurry to and fro, bent on perfecting every arrangement, for the wedding of Mr. Langton's beautiful niece is a very grand occasion indeed, and every honor must be paid to the heiress, and the husband of her uncle's providing.
Mr. Langton himself was an old man, old and peculiar to the verge of whimsicality, as was proved by the fact of his adopting one orphan niece as the heiress to all his possessions, and leaving the other, a frail, weak girl, to fight her battle with the cold world alone. ”

“ Langton's favorite axiom: "Delays are dangerous," which he had quoted so effectively to Reine, would seem to have made less impression on his own mind. The new will, which was to have disinherited Maud Langton and made Vane Charteris and his wife his sole heirs, had been carelessly and fatally postponed. Beautiful Maud, but yesterday penniless, imprisoned, suspected, goes back to-day, free, joyous, triumphant, to her old home, the undisputed mistress of Langton Hall and her uncle's great wealth. ”

“ Miss Langton is quite convinced I am. I believe I saw her looking suspiciously at my boots the other day; but then she's a trifle hard on me. My worst fault is that I don't happen to understand children. I'd got into a way of saying extravagant things; you know the way one does talk rubbish to children; well, of joking in that sort of way with little What's-her-name. She always seemed to understand it well enough, and I should have thought she was old enough to see the simpler kind of joke, at all events. One day I chanced to chaff her about a stamp she took off some envelope. ”

“ It is a pity you are to marry Maud Langton!"
He colors, and asks:
"Why?"
"Because she is as lazy as you are. When you marry her and come into Uncle Langton's money, you'll both be too lazy to breathe, just that! You will die for lack of energy to live."
She has stopped beside the hammock-chair, and leaning against the tree looks down into the handsome, debonair face with a gleam of audacious levity in the dusky eyes. He starts up to a sitting posture, thoroughly aggravated. ”

“ How much did Langton know, and what was the extent of the knowledge of that friend of his, the specialist in diseases of the throat and nose?
For a few moments I sat in silence, longing for the return of the bogus Professor, the man whom I had followed through Edinburgh and Glasgow, yet who had so very cleverly escaped my vigilance.
I was anxious to meet him, and to see what kind of man he could be. As an impostor he was, it seemed, shameless and bold beyond human credence. ”

“ When we regained the avenue (in silence) Miss Moore asked Miss Langton, "What did you see?" (She had been told nothing, except that the Colonel, who did not know details then, had said in her presence something about "a couple of nuns".) She said, "I saw nothing, but I heard a low talking." Questioned further, she said it seemed close behind. The glen is so narrow, that this might be quite consistent with what I saw and heard. Miss Moore heard a murmuring voice, and is quite certain it was not the burn. She is less suggestible than almost any one I know. ”

“ Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders.
“You know, to achieve great success in literature you must have a certain coarseness in your composition, and that I don’t think Basil has. Really to move and influence men you must have complete understanding, and you can only get that if you have in you something of the common clay of humanity. . . . But now I really must go to bed. You’re such a chatterbox, Bella, I believe you would keep me up all night.”
This was somewhat hard on Miss Langton, who for an hour had barely opened her mouth. ”

“ He is a jilted man. How shall he face the sneering world again? that world that but a little while ago fawned upon him because he was going to marry Mr. Langton's heiress.
Mr. Langton waits impatiently, watch in hand, for the stipulated five minutes to pass. He is very anxious to have his way and spite Maud for her falsehood and disobedience. Inwardly he curses Vane's Quixotic foolishness in refusing a fortune, no matter how burdened.
"The time is up," he says, impatiently. "Yes or no. Marry Reine to-night and I will make my will to-morrow, and leave everything to you and your wife. ”

“ Langton entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1757, at the age of sixteen. [46] The Doctor, who [176] had known him about three years, followed his career at the university with interest, writing to Langton’s tutor, then “dear Tom Warton,” just appointed to the professorship of poetry held by his father, and afterwards poet-laureate: “I see your pupil: his mind is as exalted as his stature,” and to Langton’s self the sweet generality: “I love, dear sir, to think of you.” He even paid his Freshman a visit, and swam sportively across a dangerous pool in the Isis, in the teeth of his warning ”

“ Langton laughed. "That's a little humorous, padre," he said. "What about the Ten Commandments?"
Peter thought of Julie. He kicked a stone viciously. "Commandments are no use," he said—"not out here."
"Nor anywhere," said Langton, "nor ever, I think, too. Why do you suppose I keep moderately moral? Chiefly because I fear natural consequences and have a wife and kiddies that I love. Why does Jenks do the opposite? Because he's more of a fool or less of a coward, and chiefly loves himself. That's all, and that's all there is in it for most of us." ”

“ I know a young man in Tercanbury who writes poetry,”
“I never knew a young man who didn’t. You’re not in love with a pale, passionate curate, Bella?”
“I’m in love with no one,” answered Miss Langton, with the shadow of a blush. “At my age it would be ridiculous. But I should like to tell you about this boy. He’s only twenty, and he’s a clerk in the bank there.”
“Bella!” cried Miss Ley, with mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re philandering with a person who isn’t county. What would the Dean say? And for heaven’s sake take care of poetical boys ”

“ Langton, who would not discompose her beauty by dancing, stooped over me, and gently whispered:—
"You little flirt, one would think you had received world incense all your life. Look opposite," she added, in a still lower tone. I followed the direction of her gaze, and saw in the embrasure of a door, standing and looking at me, with sorrowful attention, Cornelius. ”

“ He wrote, in 1760, a little book of essays entitled Rustics, which never got beyond the passivity of manuscript. The year before, under the date of July 28th, Langton contributed to the pages of The Idler the paper numbered 67 and entitled A Scholar’s Journal. It is a pleasant study of procrastination and of shifting plans, a gentle bit of humor to be ranked as autobiographic. There is an indorsement of Montrose in its heroic advice to “risk the certainty of little for the chance of much.” But Langton’s [183] graceful academic pen was not destined to a public career. ”