Conyers

“ Conyers tore open the coat and placed his hand upon Skelton’s heart. There was not the slightest flutter. The discoloured face was set—he had been dead some little time. Sylvia neither wept nor lamented. Her terrible calmness made Conyers’s blood run chill.
“Carry him to the house,” she said, after a moment, in which she had leaned down and touched his cold forehead. “He is quite dead. It is not worth while to send for a doctor. See, this terrible blow upon the head stunned him—perhaps killed him. I never saw a dead person before, but I tell you there is nothing to be done for him.” ”

“ But in the embrasure of a window Gabrielle Conyers looked up reproachfully into the dark, lean face of Michael Berrington.
"You're quite a stranger, sir," said she, with some asperity.
"I have been in town, Mistress Conyers."
"Ah yes! I know what that means." The child assumed an air of worldly wisdom. "Gambling, drinking, duelling, and playing all sorts of foolish pranks to amuse your master."
"My master?"
"The Prince, of course. You're in his set now, I suppose, like Morry and Lord Denningham. No wonder the country palls." ”

“ The trumpet-call for the mess had just sounded as Conyers gained the door of the Colonel's quarters, and Hunter taking Fred's arm, they crossed the barrack-square together.
“I have a great deal to say to you, Conyers,” said he, hurriedly; “part of it unpleasant,—none of it, indeed, very gratifying—”
“I know you are going to leave us, sir,” said Fred, who perceived the more than common emotion in the other's manner. “And for myself, I own I have no longer any desire to remain in the regiment. ”

“ If Conyers was as impatient as Darby represented, he had, at least, surrounded himself with every appliance to allay the fervor of that spirit He had dined under a spreading sycamore-tree, and now sat with a table richly covered before him. Fruit, flowers, and wine abounded, with a profusion that might have satisfied several guests; for, as he understood that he was to consider himself at an inn, he resolved, by ordering the most costly things, to give the house all the advantage of his presence. ”

“ Conyers still took comfort in the tender emotional religion of some of the women, but Sylvia Shapleigh, whose restless mind traversed mental depths and heights unknown to most women, was the one, single, solitary person in the world who really understood why it was that Conyers was not a happy man. ”

“ Morice Conyers forgot caution and wisdom both.
With a curse he sprang forward, dashing his hand into the other's face.
"Fools for the punch-bowl," he shouted. "You may drown your coward whines in it if you're afraid to be a man. But I tell you I've done with your traitor Societies, and the rest of 'em. I've been knave and villain long enough. Heaven knows I was both, with my fool's eyes shut to what I was doing. You brought me here to whistle to your tunes; you'll find I have one of my own to sing—a song that won't sully the lips of a Marquis de Varenac, nor those of an honest Englishman." ”

“ Conyers, coming up.
"He asks half-a-crown, sir," said Ida Mara, turning round, "for carrying this parcel hither from Lambeth, where it was forgotten this morning."
"You had better give it him," replied Mr. Conyers, smiling; "it is a long way."
The fair Italian put the half-crown into Markham's hand, saying, "Well, take it up to the house, then. I will come after you, and carry it up to the lady's room."
"Stay a moment," said Mr. Conyers, as she was about to follow the seeming porter, who took up the package and walked on; "a word with you, pretty one. ”

“ They laid it upon the grass, and lifted the body of James Conyers on to it, with his handsome face—ghastly and horrible in the fixed agony of sudden death—turned upward to the moonlit sky. It was wonderful how mechanically and quietly they went to work, promptly and silently obeying the colonel's orders.
John Mellish and Mr. Lofthouse searched the slippery grass upon the bank, and groped amongst the fringe of fern, without result. There was no weapon to be found anywhere within a considerable radius of the body. ”

“ Steeve Hargraves muttered some sulky apology, and shuffled out of the room. Mr. Conyers's handsome eyes followed him with a dark frown. It is not a pleasant state of health which succeeds a drunken debauch; and the trainer was angry with himself for the weakness which had taken him to Doncaster upon the preceding evening, and thereby inclined to vent his anger upon other people. ”

“ Mr. Conyers explained that he was the new trainer, and that he wished to see the housekeeper; but he had hardly finished doing so, when a door in an angle of the hall was softly opened, and Mrs. Walter Powell peeped out of the snug little apartment sacred to her hours of privacy.
"Perhaps the young man will be so good as to step in here," she said, addressing herself apparently to space, but indirectly to James Conyers.
The young man took off his hat, uncovering a mass of luxuriant brown curls, and limped across the hall in obedience to Mrs. Powell's invitation. ”

“ Conyers did not know well how to answer her. He was not willing to jar a thoughtful mind with a trite common-place, and therefore he only inquired, "Pray, how did you settle the question, dear lady?"
"I asked myself if liberty was all that I wanted," continued Arabella; "that bright spectre, the reality of which man can never know on earth; for, if we be not slaves to others, we are still slaves to our own infirmities ”

“ But it would be quite incorrect for him to simply place Conyers in pretence, because he has not married a Miss Conyers. What he must do is to charge the arms of Conyers with a dexter canton of the arms of Darcy and place this upon his escutcheon of pretence. [1] The children will quarter the arms of Conyers with the canton of Darcy and inherit likewise all the quarterings to which Mary Conyers succeeded, but the Conyers arms must be always thereafter charged with the arms of Darcy on a canton, and no right accrues to the Darcy quarterings. ”

“ Old Tom Shapleigh, who was a vestryman, embodied the prevailing sentiment in his reply to Conyers when the clergyman tried to find out old Tom’s spiritual attitude.
“Now, look here, Conyers, I’ve known you ever since you were born, and I was a regular communicant in Abingdon church before your father married your mother. I was married by a bishop—yes, zounds, sir, by a bishop!—and pretty dear it cost me in more ways than one. I don’t ill-treat my wife, or starve my negroes, or cheat my neighbour, and, further than that, you have nothing to do. Spiritual attitude be hanged! ”

“ D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers."
"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers—'Cuckoo' Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up my new Machine——"
"The Fiancée again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane." ”

“ Welcome, sir, aboard the City of Cawnpore; and I hope that when next you see Gravesend you will have fully recovered the health and strength you are going to sea to look for. It is not often, Mr Conyers, that I have a brother sailor upon my passenger list, so when I am so fortunate I make the most of him by providing him—as in your case—with a berth at the table as nearly alongside me as possible. Allow me to make you known to your neighbours. Miss Onslow, permit me to introduce Lieutenant Conyers of our Royal Navy. Lady O’Brien—General Sir Patrick O’Brien—Lieutenant Conyers. ”

“ He is thinking of his losses on the Chester Cup, the wages he is to get from John Mellish, and the perquisites likely to appertain to the situation. You give him credit for thoughts to match with his dark, violet-hued eyes, and the exquisite modelling of his mouth and chin; you give him a mind as æsthetically perfect as his face and figure, and you recoil on discovering what a vulgar, every-day sword may lurk under that beautiful scabbard. Mr. James Conyers is, perhaps, no worse than other men of his station; but he is decidedly no better. He is only very much handsomer ”

“ Conyers stood up.
"I am an old man," he said, "but I still have some strength. If I can by any means get together the money for an expedition, I will not rest till I have made every possible effort to find the treasure and to endow my clinic."
"Then, sir, I hope you'll let me give a hand to the good work," said Lord Peter. ”

“ When people begin to wonder about you, you never know what they won't find out. So I'd packed the whole lot into my best handbag, and was taking them along to a place I had seen in the Friedrichstrasse—one of those shops, with windows protected by wire netting, where they show bowls full of louis and sovereigns and all different kinds of foreign paper money. You know! Conyers had one once, and got rid of a truck-load of false stuff during the old Paris Exhibition."
"Conyers is a great man," remarked Mr. Neuman. ”

“ You might make it known that Mr Conyers shows signs of returning consciousness, and that I have every hope of saving him. I fancy the intelligence will be not altogether unwelcome to at least one of the cuddy party. ”

“ Conyers was provoked at the little willingness shown to meet his offer,—an offer he felt to be a very courteous piece of condescension on his part,—and now both sat in silence. At last Tom Dill, long struggling with some secret impulse, gave way, and in a tone far more decided and firm than heretofore, said, “Maybe you think, from seeing what sort of a fellow I am, that my sister ought to be like me; and because I have neither manners nor education, that she 's the same? But listen to me now; she 's just as little like me as you are yourself. You 're not more of a gentleman than she's a lady!” ”

“ Conyers had gravely given Mrs. Vreeland a few words of caution as to the late “envied of all his set.”
“I thank you, sir,” calmly said the marble-faced woman. “I have buried his past forever, and your [341] protecting counsels are not in vain; for, I unfortunately, knew him as he was. I shall leave New York forever, for, penniless as I am, I will have now to earn my bitter daily bread, but at least in some other place than here.”
Conyers gazed wonderingly at her. “Did you not know that Senator Garston has left you half his fortune? You will be a rich woman. ”

“ Conyers was surprised at this, and said so. It seemed to him that men who dared to meddle with so vast a subject must be of gigantic strength and heroic mould. Through the mists of his own ignorance and inexperience their figures loomed large, but when he expressed this in halting language, Bulstrode shouted with laughter.
“You think a man must be a second Plato to start a new philosophic system—a new religion, in fact! ”

“ Yes, sir, I guess the horses are wise to that crack there. Horses have a sense we don't have about some things, I guess. They're scared of getting off the wagon road and down that bit of precipice we can't see for bush. Never knew it was there myself."
Though Bill thought Conyers' explanation very lame, compared with his own, he did not think that Conyers was exactly fruitful soil for his nebulous theory, so he left it unspoken. But he took special note that the next time he passed the bend the horses seemed hardly to know they had arrived at the spot of their terrors. ”

“ Who has fallen? Who survive?”
“Miss Conyers, it seems to me, speaking broadly, that all who are not killed are promoted. Among the killed, Miss Conyers, is that gallant young fellow they used to call the ‘Destroying Angel,’ on account of his fiery impetuosity.”
“Who?” inquired Britomarte. ”

“ Then Alex Conyers said:
“It sounds like a health resort in Germany. Were you there?”
“It isn’t a health resort,” laughed Mr. Trevor. “It’s a man’s name. But, in a way he might be called a health reviser, for it is this man who is making so many strong vigorous gentlemen out of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of English boys. And it is this [75] man who has set all young England camping out and learning the country and the ways of outdoor-things and playing games that injure no one. He has even made it unpopular and even unnecessary for boys to fight each other to find fun.” ”

“ She'll say nothing to you, man, when she sees who the letter comes from."
The "Softy" looked darkly at his new employer; but Mr. James Conyers rather piqued himself upon a quality which he called determination, but which his traducers designated obstinacy, and he made up his mind that no one but Steeve Hargraves should carry the letter.
"Come," he said, "no nonsense, Mr. Stephen! Remember this: if I choose to employ you, and if I choose to send you on any errand whatsoever, there's no one in that house will dare to question my right to do it. Get along with you!" ”

“ When his soul craved a knowledge of the Christian religion from its beginning, and when he would have studied it from the point of sincere belief in regard to its scope, design, and its effect on man, he was expected to confine his investigations within an inconceivably narrow range. Although knowing instinctively the difference between moral practices and religious beliefs, Conyers was too earnest a lover of moral beauty to put faith in any except a good man, and he early found that some very bad men were the fountain head of certain of his beliefs. ”