Mrs. Langley

“ Langley brought her a glass of water.
"I am ashamed of myself," she said, as soon as she could; then his looks of warm interest encouraging her to speak frankly, she went on. "But you don't know the relief! You don't know what life has been all these years for papa and mamma, Cilla and Harry. They will thank you better than I can." She held out her hand, looking up to him with glad tearful eyes. Mr. Langley pressed the hand warmly, as if the thanksgiving look had gone to his heart.
"Nobody need thank me, Heaven knows, except the people of Farley. What would they be without Mr. Mackworth? ”

“ 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? ”

“ Would he come to the likes of me, Miss Anna?”
“Sure, Bell,” said Anna, though Mrs. Langley frowned upon the bold request. But Big Bell held out her great strong arms, and, the baby responding with unusual readiness, gathered him tenderly into them. Mrs. Langley, who yielded him ungraciously, watched Bell suspiciously as she marched about the room with him, showing him the colleen on the parlour clock and the wee people on the silver water-pitcher. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She waited anxiously. Mrs. Langley only stared at her.
“People that haven’t any children or people that have lost children,—lost them when they were babies, ought to jump at such a chance,” she went on, longing to have Mrs. Langley ask some question, however reluctantly, concerning the child. But the invalid held up a protesting hand.
“Anna! I would never have believed that you would speak in that unfeeling way about—the loss of a baby!” she cried.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Anna quickly. “I just wanted—perhaps Mr. Langley might know of some good home where they would take in the little fellow. ”

“ Langley’s watch.”
“If I will have Bell put the blinds up as far as they will go, will you bring him again on Saturday afternoon, Anna?” Mrs. Langley asked almost eagerly, and added, “You’ll have to come early to catch the sunshine, for there isn’t any after the middle of the afternoon.”
“O but Mrs. Langley, you could never stand the strong sunlight all at once. Your poor eyes! You must let it in little by little!” protested the girl.
Mrs. Langley looked hard at her. “Anna Miller! You have made up your mind you won’t bring him,” she declared. ”

“ It will be simply full of husbands; you wouldn't care to try it, at any rate to let us show it you?"
"But my husband," she repeated.
"Is essentially a London man? Madam, we do not wish you to take any of these husbands we shall show you if they do not suit your requirements; but do let us show them you."
"I know that my husband is coming from London," she persisted.
"Believe me, Madam," he protested, "I should not accuse you of being mistaken, even if your husband should prove to be in this train I recommend. He might have deceived you." ”

“ He should recapture it, the Reverend Russell Langley should, before it was beyond recall. He would renew his youth in the companionship of his youthful wife. Mrs. Langley was nearly forty-five, but she wouldn’t look over thirty at the most—probably not over twenty-five. And twenty-five in a wife is quite another thing than in a daughter. It was work and care and fuss and bother that made people grow old, and she hadn’t done a thing or had a care for nearly twenty-five years. ”

“ Whatever may have been the feeling which possessed the mind of Constance on her departure from Langley, the incident was felt by Maude as a wrench and an uprooting, surpassing any previous incident of her life since leaving Pleshy. The old house itself had come to feel like a mute friend; the people left behind were acquaintances of many years ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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,” Anna reminded her.
“Of course. But he isn’t like one’s own child. Anna, will you go out and send Bell in to me. Then please wait until she comes for you.”
Too sore and shocked to protest, Anna complied silently. She guessed that Mrs. Langley was about to consult a mirror. If she hadn’t seen herself since—since the little lamb had been placed in the cemetery, she would—but Anna’s imagination refused to compass the situation. She waited with mingled dread and terror for—she knew not what. ”

“ By-the-bye, how do you get on with Langley Clayton? she is one of the good sort too."
"I think she is one of the best women I ever met," was the enthusiastic reply; "she is almost perfection, so unselfish and so unobtrusive in everything she does."
"Yes; Langley is Langley; but she is a trifle too melancholy for my taste. I don't like people to go through life in a sort of 'patience on a monument' attitude. One suspects all manner of strange back-grounds, and then it is so provoking. Langley is Langley, of course, but I like Cathy best."
"Have you known them long, Miss Cunningham?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mrs. Langley had, as it were, lain upon rose leaves, gazed at the little pictured lamb (that was, alas! so much fairer than the marble image) and thought of all sorts of sweet and lovely things. She had suffered pain, of course, but that is refining and would only [24] add a pensive, perhaps mournful charm to her flower-like beauty.
A week from the day of her visit to the minister’s lot in the cemetery, Mr. Langley passed the Miller house, bound for a conference at the academy, and the other Miller girl set forth for Farleigh, of which village the South Hollow was one end. ”

“ Phelps,” Mrs. Langley persisted.
“For the love of Mike!” cried the girl in utter amazement. “Why, I should as soon think of asking the Lord Mayor of London to run over every Saturday afternoon.”
“Well, there must be someone who lives near,” Mrs. Langley murmured with unusual meekness.
“There isn’t, and anyhow, I wouldn’t trust Junior with ’em!” cried Anna. And suddenly she lost her temper,—something that was extremely rare with the other Miller girl. “I simply can’t come again without the baby and what’s more I won’t, so there! That’s all there is to it. Cash down or no goods delivered!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The last I heard—which wasn’t very lately—the photograph stood on the marble-topped stand in her room close to her bed.”
Anna’s eyes grew round. It seemed strange to hear Mrs. Phelps speak of Mrs. Langley as a person. Until to-day she had been hardly so much as a dim vision, a mere word, this woman who had been an invalid for more years than Anna had lived. She seemed far less a person than Ella May. And now to think of her—or to try to stretch her mind to think of her as Ella May’s mother and Mr. Langley’s wife gave the girl an uncanny feeling. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Langley is the more distingué of the two, I suppose the mother will favor him; but if one can judge from appearances, the daughter prefers Harry Morton."
"I can assure you," interrupted Mr. Foster, an intimate friend of our family, "the daughter has quite as much admiration for the rich Mr. Langley as the mother. There is a little incident connected with that same concert Mrs. Duval speaks of, that convinces me of the daughter's powers of management."
"Shame on you, Philip Foster!" said my mother, "you should not talk thus of any lady, much less of Mary Lee." ”

“ Langley.
""No, not 'lone. Her's got a bootiful cat, an' I means buy her a little nigger boy soon."
Having arranged that Mrs. Langley was to visit his bride on her way to Sidi Omar's wedding the following day, Rais Ali set out on his mission, accompanied by Mr. Flaggan. ”

“ Why he never spoke to me of his love I cannot tell. It might have been that feelings of delicacy restrained him; my father was rich, while he was but a poor young lawyer; then report had made me an heiress in my own right, as well as a belle, to my worldly mother's great content. That he loved me I am sure, though he never told me with his lips.
"One morning my mother said to me, 'Do not make any engagement for to-morrow, Mary; we must dine en famille with dear old Mrs. Langley; we have not been there for a month.'
"Now this Mrs. Langley was a person of great consideration in my mother's eyes. ”

“ 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 would be no cinch, the girl was nevertheless undaunted. It wasn’t natural for her to live in that way. If she weren’t lonely, she ought to be; if she were not wretched, it was because there were no extremes in her life—only one dead level of headache and neuralagy. And constantly Anna came back to the realisation that there was something to appeal to in a woman who had thought of having the three days old lamb carved and who had cherished the picture of it all these years. ”

“ Does not all the city know that Madame Langley has over and over again refused the most costly bribes offered to induce her to use her influence with her husband? and is it not also well-known that if her influence is to be gained at all, it must be by touching her heart? She is so open, too, in her conduct, that her domestics know all she does. ”

“ 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." ”