Delancy

“ Delancy. "In that lies the danger. When the enemy gets into the citadel, who can say that he will ever be dislodged? There is no safety but in keeping him out."
"Still too serious, father," said Irene. "There is no danger to be feared from any formidable enemy. All these are very little things."
"It is the little foxes that spoil the tender grapes, my daughter," Mr. Delancy replied; "and if the tender grapes are spoiled, what hope is there in the time of vintage? Alas for us if in the later years the wine of life shall fail!" ”

“ Delancy saw this with a feeling of regret, and often interposed to restore some broken links in the chain of harmony.
"You must be more conciliating, Irene," he would often say to his daughter. "Hartley is earnest and impulsive, and you should yield to him gracefully, even when you do not always see and feel as he does. This constant opposition and standing on your dignity about trifles is fretting both of you, and bodes evil in the future." ”

“ But she struggled hard to preserve a calm exterior.
"Will Hartley be up to-day?"
Irene tried to say "No," but could not find utterance.
Mr. Delancy looked at her curiously, and now in a slightly troubled way. Then he let his eyes fall, and sat holding his cup like one who was turning perplexed thoughts in his mind.
"You are not well this morning, father," said Irene, speaking only because silence was too oppressive for endurance.
"I don't know; perhaps I'm not very well;" and Mr. Delancy looked across the table at his daughter very earnestly. ”

“ Delancy, speaking very seriously. "Between those who love a cloud should never interpose; and I pray you, Irene, as you value your peace and that of the man who is about to become your husband, to be wise in the very beginning, and dissolve with a smile of affection every vapor that threatens a coming storm. Keep the sky always bright."
"I will do everything that I can, father, to keep the sky of our lives always bright, except give up my own freedom of thought and independence of action. ”

“ I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am thinking about it with—with a certain re—" She was going to say regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting to him.
She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of the awkwardness with which he moved—a great, big powerful machine, continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own power might break loose and smash things. ”

“ Delancy spoke the word with the fine scorn of one who was looking forward complacently to the celebration of a golden wedding anniversary in the near future.
Cicily, however, was impervious to the sarcasm of the repetition.
"Yes," she repeated gloomily, "a whole year. Think of it.... And all the women in my family live to be seventy. Mamma would have been alive if she hadn't been drowned. A good many live to be eighty. Why, you're not seventy yet. Poor dear! You may have ten or a dozen more years of it!"
Mrs. Delancy was actually horrified by her niece's commiseration. ”

“ God keeping and guiding us, Rose, we may find our way safely through this world. But we will soon lose ourselves if we trust in our own wisdom."
Thus they talked—that old man and gentle-hearted girl—as they moved about the garden-walks, every new flower, or leaf, or opening bud they paused to admire or examine, suggesting themes for wiser words than usually pass between one so old and one so young. At Mr. Delancy's earnest request, Rose stayed to dinner, the waiting-man being tent to her father's, not far distant, to take word that she would not be at home until in the afternoon. ”

“ Delancy, betrayed a feeling of doubt.
"He will not, surely, put it off later," said the father.
"I don't know," said Irene. "He may be prevented from leaving early enough to reach here before Christmas morning. If there should be a cold snap, and the river freeze up, it will make the journey difficult and attended with delay."
"I think the winter has set in;" and Mr. Delancy turned his ear toward the window, against which the snow and hail were beating with violence. "It's a pity Hartley didn't come up with you." ”

“ Delancy snorted contemptuously.
"You haven't got any principles," he declared, baldly. "No woman has."
At this brutal statement on the part of her husband, Mrs. Delancy stiffened, and an exclamation of shocked amazement burst from her. Cicily smiled cynically, as she addressed her aunt:
"Well, Aunt Emma," she said amusedly, "you [209] see now what your attitude has led to. You began with no backbone. So, now, you have no principles. Oh, you nice, sweet-faced, gray-headed, deceiving old-lady reprobate, you!"
But Mrs. Delancy refused to see any element of humor in the situation. ”

“ You're probably scared to death. This is my son, Delancy, who is going to take you in, and I'm wondering about you, because Delancy doesn't get on with débutantes, but that can't be helped. If he's pig enough not to talk to you, it wouldn't surprise me—and it's just as well, too, for if he likes anybody he compromises them, but it's no use your ever liking a Grandcourt, for all the men make rotten husbands—I'm glad Rosalie Dysart threw him over for poor Jack Dysart ”

“ I've a pair of daughters myself, and I'm trying to shoo away every sort of man and keep 'em for myself a little longer."
Williams smiled:
"Well, you listen to what those two did to John Delancy. It was some."
I lit my cigar; he lit his; and I settled back, looking at him attentively as he began with a wave of [Pg 17] his gloved hand, a story of peculiar interest to a man with two unusually attractive daughters:
Now, although Harroll had been refused a dozen times—not by Miss Delancy, but by her father—the young man's naturally optimistic spirits suffered only temporary depression ”

“ Come at once. Why linger a week or even a day longer? We have been all in all to each other these many years, and ought not to be separated now."
But Mr. Delancy was not ready to exchange the pure air and widespreading scenery of the Highlands for a city residence, even in the desolate winter, and so wrote back doubtingly. Irene and her husband then came up to add the persuasion of their presence at Ivy Cliff. It did not avail, however. The old man was too deeply wedded to his home. ”

“ Delancy didn't hear Shiv. He was twisted around in the front seat, looking over the heads of Squid Murphy and the two other gunsels in the back seat. Through the rear window, Delancy saw twin swords of light from the lamps of another car not so far behind them.
"We're tailed now," he said hoarsely.
"Aw nuts!" Murphy said from the back seat. "We ought to make you get out and walk. Every time you see a car behind you, you get the ants."
Delancy drew his tongue over dry lips. He said, "Take a look for yourself, Murphy. That guy behind is burning asphalt off the road." ”

“ On the next day the anxious members of this party made their appearance at Ivy Cliff, not having, up to this time, received any intelligence of the fugitive bride. Mr. Delancy did not attempt to excuse to them the unjustifiable conduct of his daughter, beyond the admission that she must have been temporarily deranged. Something was said about resuming the bridal tour, but Mr. Delancy said, "No; the quiet of Ivy Cliff will yield more pleasure than the excitement of travel." ”

“ Things are distinctly seen in a room which have no existence in nature; and the illusion is so perfect that it seems impossible for eyes to be mistaken."
"Well, well, child," said Mr. Delancy, "this is curious, and a little bewildering. Perhaps it is all just as you say about Irene; but I feel very heavy here;" and he laid his hand on his breast and sighed deeply.
At this moment the library door was pushed gently open, and the form of a woman stood in the presence of Mr. Delancy and Rose. She was dressed in a dark silk, but had on neither bonnet nor shawl. Both started; Mr. ”

“ Whispered malice is most intense. Delancy and his son added assertion to suspicion, and revelled in the idea of a broken-hearted father, and a disgraced, degraded son, being forced by the awkward circumstances, magnified and industriously disseminated, to abandon, one, the coveted representation of the Goldsmiths' Guild, and the other, the pursuit in which all the affections of his heart and the energies of his mind were concentrated—the love of Mary Tudor.
In a few days Christian Wilson returned to Dublin. ”

“ The summer and fall passed away without any serious rupture between the sensitive couple, although there had been seasons of great unhappiness to both. Irene had been up to Ivy Cliff many times to visit her father, and now she was, beginning to urge his removal to the city for the winter; but Mr. Delancy, who had never given his full promise to this arrangement, felt less and less inclined to leave his old home as the season advanced. Almost from boyhood he had lived there, and his habits were formed for rural instead of city life. ”

“ Delancy, in a voice of irrepressible sadness. "You have left your husband a second time. It is not every man who would forgive the first offence; not one in twenty who would pardon the second. You are in great peril, Irene. This storm that you have conjured up may drive you to hopeless shipwreck. You need not expect Hartley to-day. He will not come. I have studied his character well, and know that he will not pass this conduct over lightly." ”

“ Who fired, Geraldine?"
She said: "I waited as long as I dared, Delancy. They go like lightning, you know. I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire."
"Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the shaggy brown heap, knife glittering.
But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar.
"Nice tusks. Miss Seagrave," commented the old man. "He's fat as butter, too. I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!" ”

“ Primarily, her desire was to work out some alteration in the status of all concerned by which the domestic ideal might be maintained in all its splendid integrity. But her tentative efforts in this direction, made lightly in order that their purport might not be guessed by the husband, were destined to ignominious failure. Mrs. Delancy, a week after the melancholy anniversary occasion, made mention of the fact that she had cautiously spoken to Charles in reference to his neglect of the young wife. ”

“ And that was the way John Corlear Delancy was initiated in the string business in the old house of Fletcher & Co.
XXII
Few battles are decisive, and perhaps least of all those that are won by a sudden charge or an accident, and not as the result of long-maturing causes. Doubtless the direction of a character or a career is often turned by a sudden act of the will or a momentary impotence of the will. But the battle is not over then, nor without long and arduous fighting, often a dreary, dragging struggle without the excitement of novelty.
It was comparatively easy for Jack Delancy in Mr. ”

“ She leaned forward and glanced across the line at Miller, who caught her eye and signalled significantly with one hand.
"Be ready, Delancy," she whispered. "There's a boar somewhere ahead."
"How can you tell?"
"I can scent him. It's strong enough in the wind," she added, wrinkling her delicate nose with a smile.
Grandcourt sniffed and sniffed, and finally detected a slight acrid odour in the light, clear breeze. He looked wisely around him; Geraldine was skirting a fallen tree on her skis ”

“ Delany, a man known to his contemporaries as a profound scholar and an eloquent preacher, but remembered in our time chiefly as one of that small circle in which the fierce spirit of Swift, tortured by disappointed ambition, by remorse, and by the approaches of madness, sought for amusement and repose. Doctor Delany had long been dead. His widow, nobly descended, eminently accomplished, and retaining, in spite of the infirmities of advanced age, the vigour of her faculties and the serenity of her temper, enjoyed and deserved the favour of the royal family. ”

“ Delany is, as he always used to be, cheerful in himself, and agreeable to all that know him; and that he, by this time, is convinced, that the world is not worthy of so much speculation as he has bestowed upon some matters. Lady Worsley, my wife, and daughters, to whom I have shown your letter, not forgetting my mother, present their humble service to you. And I desire to recommend the whole family, as well as myself, to the continuance of your favour. ”

“ Delany still wept and sobbed till her bosom was like to rend, and begged to be taken away from the castle, or to be killed [118] and put in her grave. The friar tried, with all the fair and kind speeches he was master of, to comfort her; but when she saw the poet pale, bleeding, and sitting still unable to rise, she only waxed worse, and hid herself from the eye of the wretch behind the friar's frock.
"Daughter of my love, and child of many misfortunes, be thou comforted," said the friar; "for though the wicked triumph for a space in their iniquity, yet shall they not thrive. ”

“ Under the qualities revealed in Swift and Delany by that characteristic scene, is also revealed a deeply-marked distinction between two orders of mankind, and the two speakers stand as their types. Dr. Delany we all know. He may be met in any agreeable society—himself agreeable and tolerant, unwilling to judge lest he be judged, solicitous to please, careful not to lose esteem, always welcome among his numerous acquaintances, sweetly reasonable, and devoutly confident that the tale of hideous wrong will right itself without his stir. ”