Danvers

“ Still keeping his eyes on Danvers's face, Bruce went on: “Brabant is a valued friend of mine. He is as unsuspecting and confiding a man as ever lived, but he is a dangerous man to be trifled with. Do you understand me?”
“I'm hanged if I do,” replied Danvers, though the angry flash of his clear blue eyes belied his words; “what are you driving at? Just say in plain words what you have to say, and be done with it.”
“Right. Plain words. And as few as possible. You have paid Mrs. Brabant such attention that her husband is like to hear of it. Isn't that enough?” ”

“ Friends, relations, guardians interpose, obstacles of every kind arise, which can only be overcome by gaining that wealth and station, the want of which is the impediment."
"Not so, not so!" replied Lady Danvers, eagerly. "Let her he loves be nobly firm, and bold in affection. Let her do as your mother did; and, if there be competence, there will be happiness; but really, let us look about us. ”

“ The spring warmed into summer, the summer melted into autumn. Autumn, in turn, chilled into the white world of winter. All thoughts of the little girl on the Far West had slipped from the mind of Danvers, and even the memory of Miss Thornhill became faint—obliterated by the strenuous life of the service. Promotion came in his third year of service as a reward for intelligence and efficiency. Danvers was offered and accepted a commission. He felt that life was good. ”

“ Danvers swallowed.
"To an old-fashioned Club," he said.
"I thought—women weren't allowed—in men's Clubs."
"There's an annex," said Danvers. "I've never used it before."
"You mean, I'm the first? How funny." She wiped her eyes and presented a tearful face. "Do I look as if I'd been crying?"
"You—you do a little," said Danvers. "Your eyes——"
"Is my nose swollen?"—tremulously.
"Oh, no. It's only your eyes. If you don't cry any more..."
The girl averted her face and straightened her hat.
"I think I shall like you," she said. "You're rather like me."
"I hope you will," said Danvers. ”

“ Danvers was a herald. He respected his office and delighted in his work at the College of Arms. In an age when traditions were dying of violence and neglect, he found himself happy in maintaining the fairest of them all. For this his profession he had his father to thank. From his mother he had inherited a little house in Westminster and a fortune which was sufficient, because he was content to live quietly and to be outrun by the times. He went out little, except to dine at his Club. ”

“ Men, drowning, see their whole lives as in a flashlight's glare. So did Danvers see his past. He was again a boy, embarking on the Far West, and he breathed the wet spring air, blowing over prairie and river. He was with the men on the upper deck, and noted their glances of curiosity. Their youth seemed never to have faded, as he remembered the delicate face of the joyous Latimer, the kind glance of the doctor, the western breeziness of Toe String Joe and the quieter manner of Scar Faced Charlie; while the debonair arrogance of Sweet Oil Bob stirred his fighting blood afresh. ”

“ Danvers could not resist asking.
"I hardly think so. I always had an idea that her heart—what there is of it—was captured by an army officer." He looked slyly at his companion as they walked through the gloom.
"Nothing so low in rank as a second lieutenant!" evaded Danvers.
"You were fortunate, after all, Philip, though it would have been better for Eva. She needed a master—and she took our gentle, sensitive, chivalrous Arthur! He will break; break like fine tempered steel when the strain becomes too great."
[125]
The summer sped hot and with but little rain. ”

“ I've heard that the Brabant family have always had a strain of insanity running through it.”
Bruce started. He knew that what Danvers had said was perfectly true, but had thought that he himself was the one man in Fiji who did know. Brabant had himself told him that several of his family on the father's side had “gone a bit wrong,” as he put it.
The contemptuous tone of Danvers stung him to the quick.
“That's a beastly thing to say of a man whose house you visit almost daily—and visit when you have never even met him. You must have been brought up in a blackguardly school.” ”

“ The bed on which the unconscious man had been placed was narrow and hard. Its coverlet was a patchwork affair of depressing hue.
Mr. Danvers bent to his work with a full appreciation of the tragedy which had happened. His face was solemn, and expressive of the most tender solicitude for the injured man. In a whisper he dispatched his assistant for warm water and bandages, whilst he unfastened and removed the fur coat. Inside the clothing was saturated with still warm blood. ”

“ Danvers hates boys, except in school, and then he's always jacketing them. Danvers is a classic, and I've no turn for classics. It—it'll kill me, Maurice."
"What a cad you are to think of yourself!" said Maurice; "it won't kill you any more than the rest of us. I'm glad you've got more stuff in you, Jimmy, and Teddy knows better than to stand in his sister's light. Come along out, all three of you; we'll thrash the thing bare, and come back prepared to help Cecil in every way. ”

“ Danvers was acutely suspicious, saved from cynicism and misanthropy by his vanity only. He was the familiar combination of credulity and incredulity, now trusting not at all and again trusting with an utter incapacity to judge. Had he been far more attractive personally, he might still have failed to find genuine affection. To be liked for one’s self alone or even chiefly is rarely the lot of any human being who has a possession that is all but universally coveted—wealth or position or power or beauty.
Danvers and Marian had known each the other from childhood. ”

“ Humanity and honesty, and everything that is good, have gone out of it. The world was not so when I knew it first.'
"'Well! well!' cried old Danvers; 'if the world be as bad as you say it is, it is one comfort that I shall not be long in it; for I cannot live to know that my wife and child are beggars, and that I am a prisoner, starving in a jail.'
"At this moment, Wates entered the room, and addressing Mr. Danvers, said—'I have but this morning heard of your misfortunes, Mr. Danvers, and have not lost a moment in hastening to offer my assistance. ”

“ His brother Henry, lord Danby, an enthusiastic royalist, died early in 1644, and left his property to his sister Lady Gargrave. Still in pecuniary difficulties, Danvers resisted this disposition of his brother's property, and his influence with the parliamentary majority led the House of Commons to pass a resolution declaring that he was deprived of his brother's estate 'for his affection and adhering to the parliament' (14 June 1644) , and that Danvers's eldest son Henry was entitled to the property. ”

“ Danvers was no Don Quixote, but he was a decent man. His tastes were simple and his life was quiet, but he was no fool. By no means worldly, he was yet a man of the world—that is to say, he could expect, recognise and contemplate without horror the failings of mankind. He had all the man of the world's flair for letting ill alone. No one knew better than he that chivalry is stone-dead and that such as seek to revive it are riding for a fall. Yet in Stephanie's case he was going to interfere. ”

“ When a week had gone by and no word had come from Stephanie, Danvers wrote her three letters and tore the lot of them up. This demonstrates pretty well his condition of mind. He had also become sharply suspicious of the telephone-clerk employed at the College of Arms. Finally, he cancelled a visit which he was to have paid to an aunt. This upset the aunt and his housekeeper: Danvers would not have cared if it had occasioned a war. Until he knew where he was, the man was not going to leave Town. ”

“ As he spoke, Ralph Danvers, a square, ruddy man in gray knickerbockers, came triumphantly round from the shrubbery, holding by its tail a minute corpse with out-stretched arms and legs. [Pg 114]
"Got him!" he said, smiling, and wiping his brow with honest pride. "See, Charles? See, Molly? Got him!"
"Don't bring it here, Ralph, please. We are going to have tea," came Evelyn's gentle voice from the lawn; and Ralph and the terrier Vic retired to hang the body of the slain upon a fir-tree on the back premises, the recognized long home of stoats and weasels at Atherstone. ”

“ I have to go down with two or three men to Richmond. We are to dine at the Star and Garter, and afterward Philip [198] Danvers has asked me to go home with him. The Danvers are charming people—have a beautiful house on the river, and everything in the best possible style. I should rather like to cultivate them. It is never a good plan to throw over friends who may be influential; still, if you really wish it, Hilda, I'll come home to-night and make some sort of excuse to Danvers—wire to him that I am ill, or something of the kind. ”

“ It was a beautiful thing, and there was a mint of money in it if it had gone straight—a mint of money;" and he shook his head regretfully. "But the luck is bound to change in the end," he went on, after a moment of mournful retrospection. "You'll see, I shall make my pile yet, Danvers. One can't go on turning up tails all the time."
"You will turn them up once too often," said Charles, "and get your affairs wound up for you some day in a way you won't like. ”

“ Your request for what you call an 'advance' is absurd. So far from 'advancing' you anything I shall have to cut short the allowance I have been making you. I have met here a Mrs. and Miss Danvers. I have asked Miss Danvers to do me the honour to marry me. She has consented. When that event comes to pass—which will be very shortly—your allowance will recede to a vanishing point That you will get something to do is, therefore, the advice of your affectionate brother, Cecil Buxton."
"It would be an odd coincidence," reflected Hubert, "if that Miss Danvers is this Miss Danvers." ”

“ They say that every man must be a little in love with every pretty woman he sees. And Danvers at once gave Ellen Fortescue her due. She sat silent beside her mother, looking the personification of innocence, purity and poetry. Her mother continued subtly to poison Danvers against Marian, to make him feel that she had not appreciated him, that she had trifled with him, that she had not treated him as his dignity and importance merited. When she and Mrs. Carnarvon appeared, he joined them tardily, after having made an arrangement with the Fortescues for the next day. ”

“ Our horses laboured up the ascent evidently a little tired by their long and heavy gallop; about half-a-dozen determined riders passed us as we were approaching the wood, where Danvers, with Lady Caroline, and a group of about a score, were standing still, their jaded horses, with outstretched necks and legs, steaming in clouds. The hounds were howling in the wood, and we soon heard that the fox had been run to earth and they disappointed of their prey.
“Well done, Miss Keith; and well done, Templar,” said Mr. Danvers, as we rode up. “You found Rover a good nag, didn’t you?” ”

“ How many a red-cheeked and red-jacketed squire exchanges the early hours of the field for the late hours of the House, from that universal ambition called example! And what but that powerful argument, "why, every body gives them," ever made Mrs. Danvers give parties? Without one of the ordinary inducements which light up the saloon, and cover the supper-table with spun-sugar temples;—she had no son, for whom an heiress was to be drawn from her "bright peculiar sphere" in the mazes of a mazurka—no daughters, making waltzes and window-seats so desirable ”

“ Eccles, Aunt Fanny, and I have come to you for a cup of tea before I go back to Atherstone."
"Why did you walk so far this hot afternoon, my dear? and how are Mrs. Danvers and Lady Mary? and is any one else staying there? and, my dear, are the dolls finished?"
"They are," said Ruth. "They are all outrageously fashionable. Even Molly is satisfied. There is to be a school-feast here to-morrow," she added, turning to Dare, who appeared bewildered at the turn the conversation was taking. "All our energies for the last fortnight have been brought to bear on dolls. ”

“ DANVERS, a township of Essex county, on the coast of Massachusetts, U.S.A., about 19 m. N. by E. of Boston. Pop. (1890) 7454; (1900) 8542, of whom 1873 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 9407. Danvers includes an area of 14 sq. m. of level country diversified by hills. There are several villages or business centres, the largest of which, bearing the same name as the township, is served by the Boston & Maine railway. In the township are a state insane asylum, with accommodation for 1000 patients ”

“ He handed Danvers a piece of pasteboard, about four inches by three. On it in German characters was the following:—
"Yield yourself prisoner: any one can who wishes to do so. Clear out of your path those who lead you to the slaughter-house—they alone are your enemies. Think of your dear ones. Do not sacrifice yourselves for princes and the money bags of Prussia. Help yourselves and God will help you.—Hans von Rippach."
"That shows the way the wind blows in the South German principalities," commented Danvers. "Imagine our Tommies passing round a thing like that. ”