Densdeth

“ Densdeth, the brilliant, the accomplished, — who fascinates old and young, who has been everywhere, who has seen everything, who knows the world de profundis, — a very Midas with the gold touch, but without the ass’s ears? ”

“ In fact, the power of deeply analyzing character comes with a maturity that I had not attained. I was to pay price for my knowledge. Densdeth’s shadow was to fall upon me. My danger with evil personified, in such a man as Densdeth, was to sear into me a profound and saving horror of evil. One does not read the moral, until the tale is told.
We played our billiards. One o’clock struck. We left Raleigh to be bored with the world and sick of himself, to knock the balls about, and wish he had been born a blacksmith or a hod-carrier. ”

“ Densdeth laughed. Raleigh and I laughed in answer. Both had caught that mocking tone of his.
“Not only are you the devil of the tapestry,” said Raleigh, “but I see myself among your victims.”
“You flatter me,” said Densdeth, again with his sinister laugh.
“Yes, and Byng too, and certain ladies we know of. I really begin to be lazily superstitious. Don’t make it too hot for me, Densdeth, when you get me below. I’ve only been a negative sinner in this world, — no man’s enemy but my own.” ”

“ The doctor says that it will kill him to see me again for weeks.”
“So Densdeth is respited. Well, I will study him in the interval, and find out for myself whether he is ‘main de fer, sous patte de velours.’”
“Very well, Byng; I see you are resolved to buy your experience. Densdeth has magnetized you. He does most young men.” ”

“ But this ugly sound it was impossible to be much with Densdeth and not first echo and then adopt.
The same general contrast of nature was visible in the costumes of these gentlemen. Even a coat may be one of the outward signs by which we betray the grace or disgrace that is in us.
Churm was in fatigue dress. He looked water-proof, sun-proof, frost-proof. No tenderness for his clothes would ever check him from wading a gutter or storming a slum, if there were man to be aided or woman to be saved. ”

“ Between the acts, I saw Densdeth moving about, welcome everywhere, — the man who had the key of the world. A golden key Densdeth carried. All the salable people, and, alas! that includes all but a mere decimation, threw open their doors to Densdeth. Opera-box and the tenants of the box were free to him.
The drama was nearly done, and he had not been to pay his respects to Emma Denman, though he had bowed and smiled in congratulation. ”

“ As a man of the world, I must know the perilous as well as the safe among my race. How am to become as wise as the serpent, unless I study the serpent? I find Densdeth a most valuable preceptor. He has sounded every man’s heart, in life or history, and can state the depth of evil there in fathoms, feet, and inches. ”

“ But when I saw them so greedy, I could not forbear giving them diet, according to their stomachs.”
“What an infernal humbug you are, Densdeth!” said Raleigh, marking a five-shot; “you love to spoil those boys, and keep the men spoilt. If you were out of the world, they would all reform, and go, to sucking honey, instead of poison.”
“We are all humbugs,” rejoined Densdeth; “I want to put Byng on his guard against me and the rest. He might get some unhappy notion, that in America men are brave and women are pure.” ”

“ The poor wretch has a little shrivelled bit of conscience left. It twinges him sometimes, like a dying nerve in a rotten tooth. He sent for me the other day, by Locksley, saying that he was sick, poor, and penitent for a villany he had done against me, and wanted to confess before he died, and before Densdeth could find him again. This is my third visit. He cannot make up his impotent mind to confession. He must speak soon, or concealment will kill him. I am to come down to-night at eleven and watch with him.”
“Till when you will watch with me in Chrysalis.” ”

“ Denman devised an operation. A crisis came. Denman delayed ruin — what money-men call ruin — by a monstrous fraud. We had expected it, and we alone discovered it. ‘Now,’ said Densdeth to me, ‘I have got the man.’ ‘What more do you want,’ said I, ‘than you have already gained by him?’ ‘I want his daughter Clara,’ he said. ‘She is the most brilliant woman in the world, — the only fit wife for me. But she will not think so, and I shall have to use force. Force is vulgar. ”

“ I had no counter-charm of the fancy to oppose to your actual charm.”
“Your other choice among mentors, Mr. Densdeth, — has he offered you any light upon my qualifications?”
“Not a word! But he is not my choice. He has chosen me, if our companionship is choice, not chance.”
“You accept him?”
“I have not thought of rejecting a man of such peculiar power.”
“Has he mastered you, too?”
“Mastered? I am my own master. He attracts my curiosity greatly. I cannot resist the desire to know him by heart.”
“To know him by heart!” she repeated, with almost a shudder. “To know Densdeth by heart! ”

“ He has shown me much attention.”
“No doubt. He knows men. You have a good name. You are to be somebody on your own account, we hope. Besides, Densdeth was probably aware of your old friendship with the Denmans.” ”

“ Densdeth was a coxcomb, partly by nature, partly for effect. He liked to call attention to himself as the Great Densdeth. He always had special wines, special dainties, and special service.
“It pays to be conspicuous,” he said to me, on board the steamer. “I don’t attempt to humbug fellows like you, Byng,” — and at this I of course felt a little complimented, — “but we must take men as we find them. They are asses. I treat them as such. Ordinary people adore luxury. They love to see it, whether they share it or not. ”

“ It was one of Densdeth’s favorite weaknesses; he loved to make confident ignoramuses talk of horses, wines, pictures, subjects on which a little knowledge generally makes a man a fool. Densdeth had no doubt found Towner’s ambition toward the tastes of a gentleman a mighty ally in mastering the man. ”

“ I am convinced that Denman does not know of this. He still believes his daughter dead. But he would act with Densdeth. I mean to-day to let Huffmire know that the lady has friends, who are not to be trifled with, and that he is held responsible for her safety. ”

“ Antagonistic natures do not necessarily make man and woman hostile, even when they are imprisoned for life in matrimony; domestic life stirs and stirs, slow and steady, and at last the two mix, like the oil and mustard in a mayonnaise. But the more contact, the more repulsion, in two men of such different quality as Churm and Densdeth. ”

“ And Densdeth!”
“Yes; these excited my suspicions. I remembered the impression that Miss Denman had committed suicide rather than be forced into a marriage with Densdeth. Intimate as I have been with him, I can comprehend how to a nature like hers he would be a horror.”
“But,” said I, “this seems almost incredible, this audacious abduction of a young lady.”
“Densdeth knew that she had no friends,” said Churm, bitterly. “He knew that the manner and place of her hiding would favor his charge.”
“It is audacious,” said Raleigh, “and so is Densdeth. Success has made the man overweening. ”

“ The chance had come—it was an extraordinary one—on the day she first met Densher; and it was to the girl's lasting honour that she knew on the spot what she was in the presence of. That occasion indeed, for everything that straightway flowered in it, would be worthy of high commemoration; Densher's perception went out to meet the young woman's and quite kept pace with her own recognition. Having so often concluded on the fact of his weakness, as he called it, for life—his strength merely for thought—life, he logically opined, was what he must somehow arrange to annex and possess. ”

“ You couldn't drop on the poor girl that way without, by the fact, being brutal. Such a visit was a descent, an invasion, an aggression, constituting precisely one or other of the stupid shocks that he himself had so decently sought to spare her. Densher had indeed drifted, by the next morning, to the reflection—which, positively, with the occasion, he might have brought straight out—that the only delicate and honourable way of treating a person in such a state was to treat her as he, Merton Densher, did. ”

“ Everything between our young couple moved today, in spite of their pauses, their margin, to a quicker measure—the quickness and anxiety playing lightning-like in the sultriness. Densher watched, decidedly, as he had never done before. "And the fact you speak of holds you!"
"Of course, it holds me. It's a perpetual sound in my ears. It makes me ask myself if I've any right to personal happiness, any right to anything but to be as rich and overflowing, as smart and shining, as I can be made."
Densher had a pause. "Oh, you might, with good luck, have the personal happiness too." ”

“ The character itself she insisted on as their right, taking that so for granted that it didn't seem even bold; but Densher, though he agreed with her, found himself moved to wonder at her simplifications, her values. Life might prove difficult—was evidently going to; but meanwhile they had each other, and that was everything. This was her reasoning, but meanwhile, for him, each other was what they didn't have, and it was just the point. Repeatedly, however, it was a point that, in the face of strange and special things, he judged it rather awkwardly gross to urge. ”

“ The present taste, the taste that morning in the pictured halls, had been a variation; yet Densher had at the end of a quarter of an hour fully known what to conclude from it. This fairly consoled him for their awkwardness, as if he had been watching it affect her. She might be as nobly charming as she liked, and he had seen nothing to touch her in the States; she couldn't pretend that in such conditions as those she herself believed it enough for him. She couldn't pretend she believed he would believe it enough for herself. ”

“ Densher had for that matter his own view of the amount, to say nothing of the particular sort, of response it might expect from him. He had his own view of the ability of such a personage even to understand such an appeal. To what extent could he be prepared, and what importance in fine could he attach? Densher asked himself these questions, in truth, to put his own position at the worst. He should miss the great man completely unless the great man should come to see him, and the great man could only come to see him for a purpose unsupposable. ”

“ Lady Susan went slowly back to her seat before the fire, and almost immediately Sir Denzil came in again, dusting himself from the sand more vigorously than ever.
"How do you feel now, my dear?" he asked.
"Sick to death," she said quietly.
"You will feel better after a night's rest. The journey has been a trying one. Old Mrs. Lee will make you comfortable here, and I will return the moment I am sure of Denzil's safety. You agree with the necessity for my going?"
"Quite."
"Every moment may be of importance. But the moment he is safe I will hurry back to see to your welfare here. ”

“ Denis's blood froze as he remembered some vague saying that the feet die first; even in the hot sun these looked dead enough; they also must be brought to life, and the arch enemy repulsed at every point, at any sacrifice. In Denis, or rather in the Denis who was least a Dent, the act would almost outstrip the thought; this was the Denis who was saving his darling's life without time to realize what she was to him. Quicker than thought he had tipped up the bottle itself, so that the brandy came out in gulps, first over one pale foot and then the other. ”

“ When I had finished, Flora lifted her tear-dimmed eyes to my face and smiled; she put a trembling arm about my neck and kissed me.
“And I love you, Denzil,” she said softly. “Oh, I am so glad that I can tell you; it seems to take away the sting of death. I would have hidden the truth from you; I would have kept my promise and married Griffith Hawke. But now—now it is different. In death we belong to each other. You made me love you, Denzil—you were so kind, so good, so brave!” ”

“ She balanced an instant during which Densher might have just wondered if pure historic truth were to suffer a slight strain. But she dropped on the right side. "I haven't let it come to that. I've been too discouraging. Aunt Maud," she went on—now as lucid as ever—"considers, no doubt, that she has a pledge from him in respect to me; a pledge that would have been broken if Milly had accepted him. As the case stands that makes no difference."
Densher laughed out. "It isn't his merit that he has failed."
"It's still his merit, my dear, that he's Lord Mark. ”

“ As soon as their friends should go Susie would break out, and what she would break out upon wouldn't be—interested in that gentleman as she had more than once shown herself—the personal fact of Mr. Densher. Milly had found in her face at luncheon a feverish glitter, and it told what she was full of. She didn't care now for Mr. Densher's personal fact. Mr. Densher had risen before her only to find his proper place in her imagination already, of a sudden, occupied. His personal fact failed, so far as she was concerned, to be personal, and her companion noted the failure. ”

“ The person he had wished to hurt could only be the person so unaccountably hanging about. To keep still meanwhile was, for this person, more comprehensively, to keep it all up; and to keep it all up was, if that seemed on consideration best, not, for the day or two, to go back to the palace.
The day or two passed—stretched to three days; and with the effect, extraordinarily, that Densher felt himself in the course of them washed but the more clean. Some sign would come if his return should have the better effect; and he was at all events, in absence, without the particular scruple. ”

“ Densher stood before her as if he wondered what everything she thus promptly, easily and above all amusingly met him with, would have been found, should it have come to an analysis, to "take." Something suddenly, as if under a last determinant touch, welled up in him and overflowed—the sense of his good fortune and her variety, of the future she promised, the interest she supplied. "All women but you are stupid. How can I look at another? ”