THE LANGLEYS
That same day there was a luncheon party at the new town house of the
Langleys, Prince's Gate. The Langleys were two in number all told,
father and daughter.
Sir Rupert Langley was a remarkable man, but his daughter, Helena
Langley, was a much more remarkable woman. The few handfuls of people
who considered themselves to constitute the world in London had at one
time talked much about Sir Rupert, but now they talked a great deal more
about his daughter. Sir Rupert was once grimly amused, at a great party
in a great house, to hear himself pointed out by a knowing youth as
Helena Langley's father.
There was a time when people thought, and Sir Rupert thought with them,
that Rupert Langley was to do great deeds in the world. He had entered
political life at an early age, as all the Langleys had done since the
days of Anne, and he made more than a figure there. He had travelled in
Central Asia in days when travel there or anywhere else was not so easy
as it is now, and he had published a book of his travels before he was
three-and-twenty, a book which was highly praised, and eagerly read. He
was saluted as a sort of coming authority upon Eastern affairs in a day
when the importance of Eastern affairs was beginning to dawn dimly upon
the insular mind, and he made several stirring speeches in the House of
Commons' which confirmed his reputation as a coming man. He was very
dogmatic, very determined in his opinions, very confident of his own
superior knowledge, and possessed of a degree of knowledge which
justified his confidence and annoyed his antagonists. He formed a little
party of his own, a party of strenuous young Tories who recognised the
fact that the world was out of joint, but who rejoiced in the conviction
that they were born for the express purpose of setting it right. In Sir
Rupert they found a leader after their own heart, and they rallied
around him and jibed at their elders on the Treasury Bench in a way that
was quite distressing to the sensitive organs of the party.
Sir Rupert and his adherents preached the new Toryism of that day--the
new Toryism which was to work wonders, which was to obliterate
Radicalism by doing in a practical Tory way, and conformably to the best
traditions of the kingdom, all that Radicalism dreamed of. Toryism, he
used to say in those hot-blooded, hot-headed days of his youth, Toryism
is the triumph of Truth, and the phrase became a catchword and a
watchword, and frivolous people called his little party the T. T.s--the
Triumphers of Truth. People versed in the political history of that day
and hour will remember how the newspapers were full of the T. T.s, and
what an amazing rejuvenescence of political force was supposed to be
behind them.
Then came a general election which carried the Tory Party into power,
and which proved the strength of Langley and his party. He was offered a
place in the new Government, and accepted it--the Under-Secretaryship
for India. Through one brilliant year he remained the most conspicuous
member of the Administration, irritating his colleagues by daring
speeches, by innovating schemes; alarming timid party-men by a Toryism
which in certain aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the
reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the
comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal
for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as he had
acted always, impetuously.
One morning the 'Times' contained a long, fierce, witty, bitter letter
from Rupert Langley assailing the Government, its adherents, and, above
all, its leaders in the Lords. That same afternoon members coming to the
Chamber found Langley sitting, no longer on the Treasury Bench, but in
the corner seat of the second row below the gangway. It was soon known
all over the House, all over town, all over England, that Rupert Langley
had resigned his office. The news created no little amazement, some
consternation in certain quarters of the Tory camp, some amusement among
the Opposition sections. One or two of the extreme Radical papers made
overtures to Langley to cross the floor of the House, and enter into
alliance with men whose principles so largely resembled his own. These
overtures even took the form of a definite appeal on the part of Mr.
Wynter, M. P., then a rising Radical, who actually spent half an hour
with Sir Rupert on the terrace, putting his case and the case of
youthful Radicalism.
Sir Rupert only smiled at the suggestion, and put it gracefully aside.
'I am a Tory of the Tories,' he said; 'only my own people don't
understand me yet. But they have got to find me out.' That was
undoubtedly Sir Rupert's conviction, that he was strong enough to force
the Government, to coerce his party, to compel recognition of his
opinions and acceptance of his views. 'They cannot do without me,' he
said to himself in his secret heart. He was met by disappointment. The
party chiefs made no overtures to him to reconsider his decision, to
withdraw his resignation. Another man was immediately put in his place,
a man of mediocre ability, of commonplace mind, a man of routine,
methodical, absolutely lacking in brilliancy or originality, a man who
would do exactly what the Government wanted in the Government way. There
was a more bitter blow still for Sir Rupert. There were in the
Government certain members of his own little Adullamite party of the
Opposition days, T. T.s who had been given office at his insistence, men
whom he had discovered, brought forward, educated for political success.
It is certain that Sir Rupert confidently expected that these men, his
comrades and followers, would endorse his resignation with their own,
and that the Government would thus, by his action, find itself suddenly
crippled, deprived of its young blood, its ablest Ministers. The
confident expectation was not realised. The T. T.s remained where they
were. The Government took advantage of the slight readjustment of places
caused by Sir Rupert's resignation to give two of the most prominent T.
T.s more important offices, and to those offices the T. T.s stuck like
limpets.
Sir Rupert was not a man to give way readily, or readily to acknowledge
that he was defeated. He bided his time, in his place below the gangway,
till there came an Indian debate. Then, in a House which had been roused
to intense excitement by vague rumours of his intention, he moved a
resolution which was practically a vote of censure upon the Government
for its Indian policy. Always a fluent, ready, ornate speaker, Sir
Rupert was never better than on that desperate night. His attack upon
the Government was merciless; every word seemed to sting like a poisoned
arrow; his exposure of the imbecilities and ineptitudes of the existing
system of administration was complete and cruel; his scornful attack
upon 'the Limpets' sent the Opposition into paroxysms of delighted
laughter, and roused a storm of angry protest from the crowded benches
behind the Ministry. That night was the memorable event of the session.
For long enough after those who witnessed it carried in their memories
the picture of that pale, handsome young man, standing up in that corner
seat below the gangway and assailing the Ministry of which he had been
the most remarkable Minister with so much cold passion, so much fierce
disdain. 'By Jove! he's smashed them!' cried Wynter, M.P., excitedly,
when Rupert Langley sat down after his speech of an hour and a quarter,
which had been listened to by a crowded House amidst a storm of cheering
and disapproval. Wynter was sitting on a lower gangway seat, for every
space of sitting room in the chamber was occupied that night, and he had
made this remark to one of the Opposition leaders on the front bench,
craning over to call it into his ear. The leader of the Opposition heard
Wynter's remark, looked round at the excited Radical, and, smiling,
shook his head. The excitement faded from Wynter's face. His chief was
never wrong.
The usual exodus after a long speech did not take place when Rupert sat
down. It was expected that the leader of the House would reply to Sir
Rupert, but the expectation was not realised. To the surprise of almost
everyone present the Government put up as their spokesman one of the men
who had been most allied with Sir Rupert in the old T.T. party, Sidney
Blenheim. Something like a frown passed over Sir Rupert's face as
Blenheim rose; then he sat immovable, expressionless, while Blenheim
made his speech. It was a very clever speech, delicately ironical,
sharply cutting, tinged all through with an intolerable condescension,
with a gallingly gracious recognition of Langley's merits, an irritating
regret for his errors. There was a certain languidness in Blenheim's
deportment, a certain air of sweetness in his face, which made his
satire the more severe, his attack the more telling. People were as much
surprised as if what looked like a dandy's cane had proved to be a sword
of tempered steel. Whatever else that night did, it made Blenheim's
reputation.
Langley did not carry a hundred men with him into the lobby against the
Government. The Opposition, as a body, supported the Administration; a
certain proportion of Radicals, a much smaller number of men from his
own side, followed him to his fall. He returned to his seat after the
numbers had been read out, and sat there as composedly as if nothing had
happened, or as if the ringing cheers which greeted the Government
triumph were so many tributes to his own success. But those who knew, or
thought they knew, Rupert Langley well said that the hour in which he
sat there must have been an hour of terrible suffering. After that great
debate, the business of the rest of the evening fell rather flat, and
was conducted in a House which rapidly thinned down to little short of
emptiness. When it was at its emptiest, Rupert Langley rose, lifted his
hat to the Speaker, and left the Chamber.
It would not be strictly accurate to say that he never returned to it
that session; but practically the statement would be correct. He came
back occasionally during the short remainder of the session, and sat in
his new place below the gangway. Once or twice he put a question upon
the paper; once or twice he contributed a short speech to some debate.
He still spoke to his friends, with cold confidence, of his inevitable
return to influence, to power, to triumph; he did not say how this would
be brought about--he left it to be assumed.
Then paragraphs began to appear in the papers announcing Sir Rupert
Langley's intention of spending the recess in a prolonged tour in India.
Before the recess came Sir Rupert had started upon this tour, which was
extended far beyond a mere investigation of the Indian Empire. When the
House met again, in the February of the following year, Sir Rupert was
not among the returned members. Such few of his friends as were in
communication with him knew, and told their knowledge to others, that
Sir Rupert was engaged in a voyage round the world. Not a voyage round
the world in the hurried sense in which people occasionally made then,
and frequently make now--a voyage round the world, scampering, like the
hero of Jules Verne, across land and sea, fast as steam-engine can drag
and steamship carry them. Sir Rupert intended to go round the world in
the most leisurely fashion, stopping everywhere, seeing everything,
setting no limit to the time he might spend in any place that pleased
him, fixing beforehand no limit to chain him to any place that did not
please him. He proposed, his friends said, to go carefully over his old
ground in Central Asia, to make himself a complete master of the
problems of Australasian colonisation, and especially to make a very
profound and exhaustive study of the strange civilisations of China and
Japan. He intended further to give a very considerable time to a
leisurely investigation of the South American Republics. 'Why,' said
Wynter, M.P., when one of Sir Rupert's friends told him of these plans,
'why, such a scheme will take several years.' 'Very likely,' the friend
answered; and Wynter said, 'Oh, by Jove!' and whistled.
The scheme did take several years. At various intervals Sir Rupert wrote
to his constituents long letters spangled with stirring allusions to the
Empire, to England's meteor flag, to the inevitable triumph of the New
Toryism, to the necessity a sincere British statesman was under of
becoming a complete master of all the possible problems of a
daily-increasing authority. He made some sharp thrusts at the weakness
of the Government, but accused the Opposition of a lack of patriotism in
trading upon that weakness; he almost chaffed the leader in the Lower
House and the leader in the Lords; he made no allusion to Sidney
Blenheim, then rapidly advancing along the road of success. He concluded
each letter by offering to resign his seat if his constituents wished
it.
His constituents did not wish it--at least, not at first. The
Conservative committee returned him a florid address assuring him of
their confidence in his statesmanship, but expressing the hope that he
might be able speedily to return to represent them at Westminster, and
the further hope that he might be able to see his way to reconcile his
difficulties with the existing Government. To this address Sir Rupert
sent a reply duly acknowledging its expression of confidence, but taking
no notice of its suggestions. Time went on, and Sir Rupert did not
return. He was heard of now and again; now in the court of some rajah in
the North-West Provinces; now in the khanate of some Central Asian
despot; now in South America, from which continent he sent a long letter
to the 'Times,' giving an interesting account of the latest revolution
in the Gloria Republic, of which he had happened to be an eye-witness;
now in Java; now in Pekin; now at the Cape. He did not seem to pursue
his idea of going round the world on any settled consecutive plan.
Of his large means there could be no doubt. He was probably one of the
richest, as he was certainly one of the oldest, baronets in England, and
he could afford to travel as if he were an accredited representative of
the Queen--almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth
class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began
to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir
Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a
disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had
their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble.
The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing
a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him
to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of
their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert
telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the
present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the
suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close
personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted
by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the
poll by a slightly decreased majority.
Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he
had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many
places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It
began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at
all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but
wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in
the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable,
interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his
manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his
old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable,
impartial composure.
At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States
during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington,
when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young
girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was
wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed
her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after
the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at
the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of
the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman tower still held
itself erect amidst the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Victorian additions to
the ancient place. It was called Queen's Langley now, had been so called
ever since the days when, in the beginning of the Civil War, Henrietta
Maria had been besieged there, during her visit to the then baronet, by
a small party of Roundheads, and had successfully kept them off. Queen's
Langley had been held during the Commonwealth by a member of the family,
who had declared for the Parliament, but had gone back to the head of
the house when he returned with his king at the Restoration.
At Queen's Langley Sir Rupert and his wife abode for a while, and at
Queen's Langley a child was born to them, a girl child, who was
christened after her mother, Helena. Then the taste for wandering, which
had become almost a passion with Sir Rupert, took possession of Sir
Rupert again. If he had expected to re-enter London in any kind of
triumph he was disappointed. He had allowed himself to fall out of the
race, and he found himself almost forgotten. Society, of course,
received him almost rapturously, and his beautiful wife was the queen of
a resplendent season. But politics seemed to have passed him by. The New
Toryism of those youthful years was not very new Toryism now. Sidney
Blenheim was a settled reactionary and a recognised celebrity. There was
a New Toryism, with its new cave of strenuous, impetuous young men, and
they, if they thought of Sir Rupert Langley at all, thought of him as
old-fashioned, the hero or victim of a piece of ancient history.
Nevertheless, Sir Rupert had his thoughts of entering political life
again, but in the meantime he was very happy. He had a steam yacht of
his own, and when his little girl was three years old he and his wife
went for a long cruise in the Mediterranean. And then his happiness was
taken away from him. His wife suddenly sickened, died, unconscious, in
his arms, and was buried at sea. Sir Rupert seemed like a broken man.
From Alexandria he wrote to his sister, who was married to the Duke of
Magdiel's third son, Lord Edmond Herrington, asking her to look after
his child for him--the child was then with her aunt at Herrington Hall,
in Argyllshire--in his absence. He sold his yacht, paid off his crew,
and disappeared for two years.
During those two years he was believed to have wandered all over Egypt,
and to have passed much of his time the hermit-like tenant of a tomb on
the lovely, lonely island of Phylæ, at the first cataract of the Nile.
At the end of the two years he wrote to his sister that he was returning
to Europe, to England, to his own home, and his own people. His little
girl was then five years old.
He reappeared in England changed and aged, but a strong man still, with
a more settled air of strength of purpose than he had worn in his wild
youth. He found his little girl a pretty child, brilliantly healthy,
brilliantly strong. The wind of the mountain, of the heather, of the
woods, had quickened her with an enduring vitality very different from
that of the delicate fair mother for whom his heart still grieved. Of
course the little Helena did not remember her father, and was at first
rather alarmed when Lady Edmond Herrington told her that a new papa was
coming home for her from across the seas. But the feeling of fear passed
away after the first meeting between father and child. The fascination
which in his younger days Rupert Langley had exercised upon so many men
and women, which had made him so much of a leader in his youth, affected
the child powerfully. In a week she was as devoted to him as if she had
never been parted from him.
Helena's education was what some people would call a strange education.
She was never sent to school; she was taught, and taught much, at home,
first by a succession of clever governesses, then by carefully chosen
masters of many languages and many arts. In almost all things her father
was her chief instructor. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he was
a good linguist, and his years of wandering had made his attainments in
language really colloquial; he had a rich and various store of
information, gathered even more from personal experience than from
books. His great purpose in life appeared to be to make his daughter as
accomplished as himself. People had said at first when he returned that
he would marry again, but the assumption proved to be wrong. Sir Rupert
had made up his mind that he would never marry again, and he kept to his
determination. There was an intense sentimentality in his strong nature;
the sentimentality which led him to take his early defeat and the
defection of Sidney Blenheim so much to heart had made him vow, on the
day when the body of his fair young wife was lowered into the sea,
changeless fidelity to her memory. Undoubtedly it was somewhat of a
grief to him that there was no son to carry on his name; but he bore
that grief in silence. He resolved, however, that his daughter should be
in every way worthy of the old line which culminated in her; she should
be a woman worthy to surrender the ancient name to some exceptional
mortal; she should be worthy to be the wife of some great statesman.
In those years in which Helena Langley was growing up from childhood to
womanhood, Sir Rupert returned to public life. The constituency in which
Queen's Langley was situated was a Tory constituency which had been
represented for nearly half a century by the same old Tory squire. The
Tory squire had a grandson who was as uncompromisingly Radical as the
squire was Tory; naturally he could not succeed, and would not contest
the seat. Sir Rupert came forward, was eagerly accepted, and
successfully returned. His reappearance in the House of Commons after so
considerable an interval made some small excitement in Westminster,
roused some comment in the press. It was fifteen years since he had left
St. Stephen's; he thought curiously of the past as he took his place,
not in that corner seat below the gangway, but on the second bench
behind the Treasury Bench. His Toryism was now of a settled type; the
Government, which had been a little apprehensive of his possible
antagonism, found him a loyal and valuable supporter. He did not remain
long behind the Treasury Bench. An important vacancy occurred in the
Ministry; the post of Foreign Secretary was offered to and accepted by
Sir Rupert. Years ago such a place would have seemed the highest goal of
his ambition. Now he--accepted it. Once again he found himself a
prominent man in the House of Commons, although under very different
conditions from those of his old days.
In the meantime Helena grew in years and health, in beauty, in
knowledge. Sir Rupert, as an infinite believer in the virtues of travel,
took her with him every recess for extended expeditions to Europe, and,
as she grew older, to other continents than Europe. By the time that she
was twenty she knew much of the world from personal experience; she knew
more of politics and political life than many politicians. After she was
seventeen years old she began to make frequent appearances in the
Ladies' Gallery, and to take long walks on the Terrace with her father.
Sir Rupert delighted in her companionship, she in his; they were always
happiest in each other's society. Sir Rupert had every reason to be
proud of the graceful girl who united the beauty of her mother with the
strength, the physical and mental strength, of her father.
It need surprise no one, it did not appear to surprise Sir Rupert, if
such an education made Helena Langley what ill-natured people called a
somewhat eccentric young woman. Brought up on a manly system of
education, having a man for her closest companion, learning much of the
world at an early age, naturally tended to develop and sustain the
strongly marked individuality of her character. Now, at
three-and-twenty, she was one of the most remarkable girls in England,
one of the best-known girls in London. Her independence, both of thought
and of action, her extended knowledge, her frankness of speech, her
slightly satirical wit, her frequent and vehement enthusiasms for the
most varied pursuits and pleasures, were much commented on, much admired
by some, much disapproved of by others. She had many friends among women
and more friends among men, and these were real friendships, not
flirtations, nor love affairs of any kind. Whatever things Helena
Langley did there was one thing she never did--she never flirted. Many
men had been in love with her and had told their love, and had been
laughed at or pitied according to the degree of their deserts, but no
one of them could honestly say that Helena had in any way encouraged his
love-making, or tempted him with false hopes, unless indeed the
masculine frankness of her friendship was an encouragement and a
treacherous temptation. One and all, she unhesitatingly refused her
adorers. 'My father is the most interesting man I know,' she once said
to a discomfited and slightly despairing lover. 'Till I find some other
man as interesting as he is, I shall never think of marriage. And really
I am sure you will not take it in bad part if I say that I do not find
you as interesting a man as my father.' The discomfited adorer did not
take it amiss; he smiled ruefully, and took his departure; but, to his
credit be it spoken, he remained Helena's friend.