Darnell

“ Nixon, when, to Darnell's annoyance, the door-bell gave a discordant peal, and Alice with some disturbance of manner came out and announced that a gentleman wished to see the master. Darnell went into the drawing-room, where Alice had lit one gas so that it flared and burnt with a rushing sound, and in this distorting light there waited a stout, elderly gentleman, whose countenance was altogether unknown to him. ”

“ Mr. Mouncey shook his head, and smiled good-temperedly. "He will hardly sympathise with my politics, I fear," he said. "He must be a rich man, and few rich men can tolerate such an out-and-out Radical as I am."
Another one present had caught the name of Philip Darnell, and was no less startled by it than the colonel. Gus stood near enough to hear it, and the sound sent a thrill through his boyish frame. Philip Darnell! His father's enemy! ”

“ Robert Nixon brought in their train consequences strange beyond imagination. It was not that they continued to develop on the somewhat fantastic lines of these first adventures which Mrs. Darnell had related; indeed, when 'Aunt Marian' came over to Shepherd's Bush, one Sunday afternoon, Darnell wondered how he had had the heart to laugh at the misfortunes of a broken-hearted woman.
He had never seen his wife's aunt before, and he was strangely surprised when Alice showed her into the garden where they were sitting on the warm and misty Sunday in September. ”

“ Darnell, finding her husband a little frank, lowering her eyes as she spoke.
'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. A terrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much to believe. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buying cockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come, believed every word of it.'
Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest. ”

“ Darnell looked down and made no answer.
There was silence for some minutes while Darnell smoked his pipe. 'I say, Mary,' he said at length, 'what do you say to our taking a paying guest?' [25]
'A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?'
'Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate your objection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and make money of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to our income. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a large house on purpose. ”

“ But Philip Darnell cared not what might be the feelings cherished towards him by those whom he employed. To him, they were merely the "hands," human machines, out of which he was determined to grind as much work as possible, at the greatest profit to himself. He came with his wife and children to spend the summer at Rayleigh, and they took possession of the Mill House, as it was called, living there in a far more extravagant and showy style than the Gibsons had adopted. ”

“ Darnell had received what is called a sound commercial education, and would therefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulate speech any thought that was worth thinking; ”

“ So, day after day, he lived in the grey phantasmal world, akin to death, that has, somehow, with most of us, made good its claim to be called life. To Darnell the true life would have seemed madness, and when, now and again, the shadows and vague images reflected from its splendour fell across his path, he was afraid, and took refuge in what he would have called the sane 'reality' of common and usual incidents and interests. ”

“ Darnley sees her walking out of Queen Mary’s room, he thinks her an hallucination, discovers that she is real, challenges her, and they fight at Faldonside, by the Tweed, Shakespeare holding Elizabeth’s horse. Elizabeth is wounded, and is carried to the Kirk of Field, and laid in Darnley’s chamber, while Darnley goes out and makes love to my rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, a Kerr. That night Bothwell blows up the Kirk of Field, Elizabeth and all. Darnley has only one resource. ”

“ All might have gone well but for the folly of the idiot Darnley. No long period of domestic intercourse was requisite to convince the unfortunate Queen that she had thrown away her affections, and bestowed her hand upon an individual totally incapable of appreciating the one, and utterly unworthy of the other. Darnley was a low-minded, fickle, and imperious fool—vicious as a colt, capricious as a monkey, and stubborn as an Andalusian mule. ”

“ Sir George Aimwell used to say, that instead of sending poachers to gaol, it would be a better plan to send them to Mr Darnley to be talked to; for the worthy baronet thought that they would not readily expose themselves to the risk of a second infliction. Those of our readers who have never been talked to will not be able to sympathize with Robert Darnley; those who have, will pity him from the bottom of their hearts. ”

“ Darnley was eighteen years of age: he was handsome, well-made, elegant; he talked in that attractive manner of the young nobles of the French and English courts that Mary no longer heard since her exile in Scotland; she let herself be deceived by these appearances, and did not see that under this brilliant exterior Darnley hid utter insignificance, dubious courage, and a fickle and churlish character. It is true that he came to her under the auspices of a man whose influence was as striking as the risen fortune which gave him the opportunity to exert it. We refer to David Rizzio. ”

“ None but a fool or a maniac could have resisted such amicable and generous conduct; but Darnley was one of those impracticable men who cannot bear high fortune. He declared that the queen had never given him any occasion whatever of discontent or displeasure ”

“ Here is proof positive that Crawford does not copy Letter II., but gives Darnley’s words as reported to him by Darnley—words that Darnley was proud of,—while Mary, returning on the second day of writing to the topic, does not quote Darnley’s brave words, but merely contrasts his speaking “very bravely at the beginning” with his pitiful and craven later submission; “he has ever the tear in his eye,” with what follows. ”

“ Darrell’s only son.
“I tell you, Richard,” she said, when the scene-painter argued with her, “that nothing but proof positive of Launcelot Darrell’s absence in India at the date of my father’s death would have dispossessed me of the idea that flashed upon me on the day I left Berkshire. He was not in India at that time. He deceived his mother and his friends. He remained in Europe; and led, no doubt, an idle, dissipated life. He must have lived by his wits, for he had no money from his mother; no one to help him—no profession to support him. ”

“ Darnley soon repented his deed, was reconciled to the queen, fled with her to the Castle of Dunbar, and an army gathered by the Protestant Earl of Bothwell soon suppressed the rising. The rebels and assassins were at Mary’s entreaty almost all pardoned. Darnley, now living in mortal enmity with the heads of the Protestant nobility, and again on bad terms with the queen, fell sick in Dec., A.D. 1566, at Glasgow. On his sick-bed a reconciliation with his wife was effected, and apparently in order that she might the better nurse him, he was brought to a villa near Edinburgh. ”

“ The marriage of Mary and Darnley was now a question of practical politics, and the queen, having nursed her new suitor through an attack of measles, soon made up her mind to wed him, saying he “was the properest and best proportioned long man that ever she had seen.” The attitude of Elizabeth towards this marriage is difficult to understand. She had permitted Darnley to journey to Scotland, and it has been asserted that she entangled Mary into this union ”

“ Wise and penetrating reader, who can’st dive most deeply into human motives, and read the movements of the human heart, we beseech thee not to impute it to stupidity or obtuseness in our friend Robert Darnley, that he could not sooner see the probability of the existence in some quarter or other of a spirit of treachery at work against him. His own mind was of a very unsuspicious cast, and he was not in the habit of looking for deeply-laid schemes, but he gave general credit to appearances and ordinary assertions. ”

“ Meanwhile the conspiracy proceeded, and Douglas and Ruthven, having collected their accomplices and taken their measures, came to Darnley to finish the compact. As the price of the bloody service they rendered the king, they exacted from him a promise to obtain the pardon of Murray and the nobles compromised with him in the affair of the “run in every sense”. Darnley granted all they asked of him, and a messenger was sent to Murray to inform him of the expedition in preparation, and to invite him to hold himself in readiness to reenter Scotland at the first notice he should receive. ”

“ Scotland was filled with rumours of plot and assassination, and civil war was only narrowly avoided. Unable to take any serious part in affairs of state, Darnley soon became estranged from his wife. He believed that Mary’s relations with David Rizzio injured him as a husband, and was easily persuaded to assent to the murder of the Italian, a crime in which he took part. Immediately afterwards, however, flattered and cajoled by the queen, he betrayed his associates to her, and assisted her to escape from Holyrood to Dunbar. ”

“ DAVE DARRIN
ON MEDITERRANEAN SERVICE CHAPTER I GREEN HAT, THE TROUBLE-STARTER
"Dan," whispered Dave Darrin, Ensign, United States Navy, to his chum and brother officer, "do you see that fellow with the green Alpine hat and the green vest?"
"Yes," nodded Dan Dalzell.
"Watch him."
"Why?"
"He's a powerful brute, and it looks as though he's spoiling for a fight."
"You are not going to oblige him, are you?" asked Dalzell in a whisper, betraying surprise.
"Nothing like it," Darrin responded disgustedly. "Danny Grin, don't you credit me with more sense than that? ”

“ Sharpened and attenuated by disease, Darnley's features glimmered in the subdued light, like those of a rigid corpse; and the myriad pustules incident to the hideous ailment under which he suffered, were apparent to the louring eye of Bolton, who, remembering that night in the garden of Holyrood, gazed upon him with sensations akin to those of a tigress robbed of her cubs; and the age was not one when men sat placidly under a sense of wrong, or repressed their impulses either of good or evil. ”

“ After the blowing up of the Kirk of the Field, the only one of Darnley's servants that escaped was brought by the Earl of Murray before the English Council, and there gave evidence, implying that Queen Mary—that ever-interesting princess, who has been doubtlessly both over-decried by her foes and over-praised by her friends—was cognisant of the intended murder of her husband, inasmuch as, beforehand, she ordered an old bed to be placed in Darnley's room, and the richer bed that previously stood in it to be removed. ”

“ Then its eyes seemed to fill with a terrible glare, and the shriek that once rang through the Kirk-of-Field, seemed to rend the massive vault, and to pierce his tingling ears like a poniard. Then he dashed his hands against them, and grovelled down among the straw, to shut out that dreadful sound—the dying cry of Darnley!
"Oh, Father of mercy and of justice!" said the priest, beating himself upon the breast; "how dreadful is thy vengeance, when thou permittest the sinner to mete out the meed of his own sin!"
"A voice! a voice—who spoke?" said the Earl, struck by the unusual sound. "Hah! ”

“ Bothwell’s conscience seldom troubled him much when he had a favourite end in view. He was about to play a hazardous game; but if the risk was great, the glory of winning would be proportionate. Darnley had fallen into general neglect and odium; yet he stood directly in the path of the Earl’s ambition. He was resolved that means should be found to remove him out of it; and as there was no occasion to have recourse to violence until gentler methods had failed, a divorce was the first expedient of which he thought. He knew that the proposal would not be disagreeable to the nobility ”

“ Darnley had not only heard of this, but he had found Bothwell at Jedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn he had heard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him with more than the contempt which all men now showed him, but which from none could wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour accounted Mary's lover. ”

“ Suddenly a distant shout clashed upon Darrell's senses, like a crashing peal of thunder, followed swiftly by another. There was the sound of stones rattling down a slope. Some one snapped out a sharp order, and the crawling motion of the cord ceased, leaving Darrell dazed and wondering.
An instant later, he was conscious of a vague, uneasy movement in the circle of waiting men. Presently he heard the padding of feet; swift, staccato sentences jerked out in a breathless voice; then a sudden uproar all around him. ”

“ In February 1565, Darnley, aged nineteen, crossed the border, to the dismay of the English agents in Scotland. It was soon after Mary had received news that the Spanish match was at an end, and she was ready for a new plan to circumvent Elizabeth. Darnley as a husband would bring to her the support of English Catholics, and a new claim to the English crown. So when her eyes first lit upon the fair stripling at Wemyss Castle, she looked upon him with favour as "the properest tall man she ever saw." He was on his best behaviour, and danced delightfully with the queen. ”