Denny

“ Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed. I did not know what to do, how to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her. I took refuge in flight. I rushed into the kitchen, on pretence of aiding or hastening Denny’s search. I found him taking up an old pick that stood near the door leading to the compound. I seized it from his hand.
‘Confound you!’ I cried, for Denny laughed openly at me; and I rushed back to the hall. But on the threshold I paused, and said what I will not write.
For, though there came from somewhere the ripple of a mirthful laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! ”

“ Denny, who was always a little shy of the Middlefield butler, avoided the front door and cut across the lawn towards the schoolroom. His course took him past the library. The French windows stood wide open, and within Denny was conscious of the form of a rather dapper little gentleman in tweeds, crouching in a constrained attitude over something in the middle of the room. It was Mr. Bagby. Hearing Denny’s step on the gravel, Mr. Bagby cried out, without moving:
‘Is that you, Leo? Come in here, sir, at once.’
‘It’s me, Mr. Bagby,’ replied Denny, pausing outside and politely removing his cap. ”

“ Denny had set our prisoner down in an armchair, where he sat now, conscious again, but still with a dazed look in his large dark eyes as he glanced from me to the rest and back again to me, finally fixing a long gaze on my face.
‘Well, young man,’ said I, ‘you’ve begun this sort of thing early. Lifting cattle and taking murder in the day’s work is pretty good for a youngster like you. ”

“ Denny, supremely bored, acquiesced. His sole interest in the House of Bagby was centred—and that, as time was to prove, but temporarily—in the female branch. Besides, the morrow, with its unrevealed and half-feared mysteries, was tugging at his thoughts, rendering him even more impervious than usual to the charms of Little Leo’s society. To some of us any company is better than none—which, by the way, accounts for most of the undesirable friendships of this world. Denny was one of the rarer spirits. He desired only the society of the congenial ”

“ One other reason existed, or at least Young Denny imagined that it did, but whenever he stopped to think about it––a thing he had come to do more and more often in the last few months––he never smiled. Instead, his lips straightened until the wistful quirk at the corners disappeared into a straight line and his eyes smouldered ominously.
There was a select circle of white-haired old men––the village old guard––which sat in nightly session about the fat-bellied old wood-stove in the Boltonwood Tavern. ”

“ He thought Denny's explanation of her attitude only too probable. "I've known the dearest fellows in the world—the cleverest, the gamest, the most charming. But they were all like poor Christina—fidgety things, nervous and on edge." Was she thinking of Denny then? "Oblige me by staying where you are!" he said to Denny's back. Denny turned the grim delicacy of his pale face to smile at him and the smile maddened Herrick. He went on, "You must see yourself I can't let you go! Will you come to my rooms for to-night, and in the morning Miss Hope can tell me if this story's true!" ”

“ Young Denny’s grave explanation of his quiet mirth caused him to look closer––made him really wonder now what had been its cause. There was a frankly inquisitive question half-formed behind his lips, but when he turned to find Denny sitting stripped to the waist, waiting for the garments which he held in his hands, he merely stood and stared. Bobby Ogden had seen many men stripped for the ring. It took more than an ordinary man to make him look even once––but he could not take his eyes off this boy before him. ”

“ Don't mistake, Denny: your wife is a magnificent being, a splendid focus of cosmic forces who has a right to be called divine if anything on earth has!'
"I felt a clearing of the situation at this point, for the abstract strangeness of Marsh's expressed sentiment, plus the flattery he was now heaping on Marceline, could not fail to disarm and mollify one as fondly proud of his consort as Denis always was. Marsh evidently caught the change himself, for there was more confidence in his tone as he continued.
"'I must paint her, Denny, must paint that hair, and you won't regret it. ”

“ Uncle Tony lit his cigar reflectively.
‘Are you quite sure it is such a wicked world, Denny?’
‘Well—look at it!’
‘If this world were as wicked as it would have you believe, it would have perished—collapsed upon itself—centuries ago. Humanity—the sort of humanity that you and I mix with—isn’t really depraved. It’s only timid.’
‘Timid?’
‘Yes—timid, and sheep-like. Denny, there are far more good people walking this earth pretending to be bad than bad people pretending to be good. There’s nothing makes a poor human sheep feel so safe as trying to make a noise like a wolf. ”

“ Cradock caught him up quickly.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘You’ve hit it, Denny. So long as a man lives at home he has to conform to the laws of the Medes and Persians, and dance attendance on his womankind—at the end of an apron string, so to speak.’ Denny flinched, visibly. ‘But with all respect to my old friend, your charming mother, it’s possible to overdo that sort of thing. In fact, it’s grossly unfair. A man, a man of the world like you, is bound to feel his oats at times. ”

“ He had grown slovenly in his dress; his every breath bullied the sweet air for ease and comfort; and, to cap all, his temper had grown with his deformities till hardly a man durst meet his eye.
Lying at Whitehall, he had a dream one night which troubled him. He sent for Sir Anthony Denny, always now in close attendance, and, heaving himself on his elbow, glared at the physician through a mist of anguish. ”

“ Denny looked up, surprised.
‘Why?’
‘Because every time we make what is known as a bloomer, we learn something. The man who sits back and never asks a foolish question never gets anywhere, under any circumstances. Denny, promise me something.’
‘Rather, Uncle Tony!’
‘At least half of this globe is peopled by folk whose chief joy in life is to impart information; so don’t disappoint them. They will teach you all you want to know, and gladly, for nothing, if you will let them. The failures of humanity are the people who were too proud and too shy to admit that they did not know ”

“ All understood the maneuver of the Indians and were anxious to hurry the teams unless it was Captain John Denny, who was an old soldier and may have preferred to fight.
Sarah Denny, his wife, looked out and saw the Indians going down the river; no doubt she urged him to whip up. The order was given and after moments that seemed hours, down the long hill they rushed pell-mell, without lock or brake, the prairie schooners tossing like their namesakes on a stormy sea. What a breathless, panting, nightmare it seemed! If an axle had broken or a linchpin loosened the race would have been lost. ”

“ Something to do, to suffer, to dare—some clue—some suggestion—Denny! Had they tried Denny? He who knew so much at the least would set them right, would know and would tell them that she had never deserted his cause of her own free will, that he who knew her believed in her—Wheeler came out into the lobby and took him by the arm. He, too, had bought a paper and now he held it under Herrick's eyes. "This is why I couldn't see him, then!" In the Tombs that afternoon, Denny had again attempted suicide. ”

“ Mrs Bennett Hipgrave’s letter, her wise letter, had broken off my engagement to her daughter. The fact was plain; all that was missing, destroyed by the caution or the carelessness of Mouraki Pasha, was the reason; and the reason I could supply for myself. I reached my conclusion, and looked again at Denny.
‘Allow me to congratulate you,’ said Denny ironically.
Man is a curious creature. I (and other people) may have made that reflection before. I offer no apology for it. The more I see of myself and my friends the more convinced I grow of its truth. ”

“ Gathered in the schoolroom Denny found Mrs. Bagby herself, present in his honour; Miss Groves, Gwen’s governess; Lionel the Terrible, still chanting his song of victory; and the present disturber of his peace, Miss Gwendoline Bagby. Denny shook hands rather shyly all round, that susceptible and elastic organ, his heart, missing a beat or two when he greeted the daughter of the house. Mrs. Bagby took the head, Miss Groves the foot of the table. Master Lionel, who was a dirty feeder and required considerable elbow-room, was accommodated with a side to himself. Denny and Gwen sat together. ”

“ Denny said, “I haven’t got either of you. It’s she who’s got me. And that’s better than nothing. It’s better than anything except the things that don’t happen.”
“Now, Denny,”—Mrs. Mosenthal laid down the stocking-covered hand on her lap, and let the needle-bearing hand fall beside it—“You mustn’t. You know it’s no good.”
“Nothing’s much good.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. It was all very well when you were children, but now she’s a young woman and you’re a young man, and you ought to check such feelings—they’re wrong.” ”

“ Denny, in spite of his poor, misshapen body, tended the garden, raising such vegetables as no one else in all Corinth could—or would, raise. From early morning until late evening the lad dragged himself about among the growing things, and the only objects to mar the beauty of his garden, were Denny himself, and the great rock that crops out in the very center of the little field.
"It is altogether too bad that the rock should be there," the neighbors would say as they occasionally stopped to look over the fence or to order their vegetables for dinner. ”

“ Denny!" said Craven, musing; "yes, Denny is a hard man, but a just one according to his lights. There are plenty worse than he."
Wharton was disagreeably reminded of the Venturist habit of never accepting anything that was said quite as it stood—of not, even in small things, "swearing to the words" of anybody. He was conscious of the quick passing feeling that his judgment, with regard to Denny, ought to have been enough for Craven.
"One thing more," said Craven suddenly, as Wharton looked for his stick—"you see there is talk of arbitration." ”

“ I think a whole heap too much of the Judge to even try to git him into trouble––and––and then the Judge––he might––you understand that I was only jokin’, don’t you, Denny?”
Young Denny nodded his head silently in reply. Long after the shrill falsetto grumbling had ceased to drift back up the hill to him he stood there motionless. After a while the fingers that still clutched the bundle of circulars opened loosely and when he did finally wheel to cross slowly to the kitchen door the papers and catalogues lay unheeded, scattered on the ground where they had fallen. ”

“ We crept downstairs with our boots in our hands. Denny is rather unlucky, though a most careful boy. It was he who dropped his boot, and it went blundering down the stairs, echoing like thunderbolts, and waking up Albert’s uncle. But when we explained to him that we were going to do some gardening he let us, and went back to bed.
Everything is very pretty and different in the early morning, before people are up. I have been told this is because the shadows go a different way from what they do in the awake part of the day. ”

“ Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage across under the opposite hill.
“He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I––I want to come, Denny. I’m lonesome, and––and––” her eyes darkened and swam with fear as she stared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, “why can’t I come now, before some time––when it might be––too late?”
He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them in front of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. She bent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. ”

“ If people would be takin' as good care of their children as Denny does for his cabbage and truck it would be a blessin' to the world."
"It is funny, Doctor," put in Denny, "but do you know those things out there seem just like people to me. I tell mother it ain't so bad after all, not bein' a priest. The minister was a-sayin' yesterday, that the people needed more than their souls looked after. If I can't be tellin' people how to live, I can be growin' good things to keep them alive, and maybe that's not so bad as it might be." ”

“ Though contrary to the keeping and dignity of his position in life, yet did honest Denny then get desperately significant, and his face amazingly argumentative. Many a pretender has he fairly annihilated by a single smile of contempt that contained more logic than a long argument from another man. ”

“ But there isn’t any party now––for us. And––and men don’t buy clothes for women, Denny––not until they’re married!”
Her face was tensely earnest while she waited for 59 the big man before her to answer. And Young Denny turned his head, staring silently out of the opposite window down toward the village, dark now, in the valley below. He cleared his throat uncertainly.
“Do they?” She was leaning forward until her hair brushed his own. “Do they, Denny?” A rising inflection left the words hanging in midair. ”

“ Cradock!’ replied Miss Harding in a shocked voice.
‘Now,’ continued Denny, warming to his work, ‘I simply can’t express to you what a treat it has been to meet you. It is seldom in these days that one en counters a girl with so much—er—laissez faire. You are so beautifully natural—so content to be yourself, and so on. ”

“ Denny, if you rode ‘Matchbox’ yourself straight to Madore across the river, you’d be in time to whip them off!”
“By Jove!” said Dinny Johnny, and was silent. I believe that was the moment at which the identity of the future Mrs. Denny was made clear to him.
“And you’ll have to ride her in my saddle!” went on Mary at lightning speed, taking control of the situation in a manner prophetic of her future successful career as a matron. “There isn’t time to change—”
“The devil I shall!” said Dinny Johnny, and an unworthy thought of what his friends would say flitted across his mind. ”