Dent

“ And almost from the first step Doherty was loud in his denunciation of every word the hawker had uttered, not one of which was Denis to believe for an instant. But there was no Denis left to embrace this view; the leave-taking of the morning and the hawker in the afternoon had reduced him between them to unmitigated Dent, a dogged fellow ready for the worst, though more than ever bent upon the best.
"There are two sides to everything, and give me the dark side first," said he; "besides, a lift for nothing is a lift for nothing. ”

“ Meredith sat regarding' her elder son with incredulity and distress. The shock of the news was for certain reasons even greater to him; so that he could not yet command himself sufficiently to comfort her. After a few moments she resumed: "I did not know that Dent had begun to think about girls. He never said so. He has never cared for society. He has seemed absorbed in his studies. And now—Dent in love. Dent engaged, Dent to be married in the autumn—why, Rowan, am I dreaming, am I in my senses? And to this girl! She has entrapped him—poor, innocent, unsuspecting Dent! ”

“ It was, indeed, "as though another candle had been lighted," although in this young man's case a dozen candles could not have made so great a difference. And if it would be understood how impossible it was for anybody not to like Jim Dent it is only necessary to say that when he—the son of Isabel—reached Aunt Clara and kissed her heartily on her fair cheek she did not repulse him. Repulse him? One might as well try to repulse a summer breeze!
"Clear a space, all of you!" commanded James Dent, Junior. "I want a chance at Uncle Stephen. Be off! ”

“ Mr. Merridew smiled through his spectacles, pleased with his conceit, not altogether disposed to regard it as such, but incontinently interested in a personality to which he had [Pg 7] been so clever as to supply the key. The heart of the discoverer warmed toward his own. There was an attractiveness in Denis, a solid worth in Dent. Denis might win the girl. Dent would deserve her. And Denis Dent might have carried her own father with him, had he been the only young man in the case, or even on the poop of the North Foreland as she drove through the haze on the last night of her voyage. ”

“ Still a considerable number of people seemed willing enough to pay fifty centimes for the pleasure of indicating elaborate expeditions on it with their fore-fingers, and appeared to derive pleasure from gazing on a pasteboard misrepresentation when they could by looking out of window see the real thing for nothing. We abandoned the carte en relief and took Jaun and Kaspar Maurer into our confidence. The [pg 141] only suggestions that they could make were the Aiguille des Charmoz and the Dent du Géant. ”

“ She is proud—a great deal prouder than Dent. To her, life means work and duty; more than that, it means love. She is ambitious, and ambition, in her case, would be indispensable. She did not claim Dent: I appreciate that. She is a perfectly brave girl, and it is cowardice that makes so many women hypocrites. She will improve—she improved while she was here. But oh, everything else! No figure, no beauty, no grace, no tact, no voice, no hands, no anything that is so much needed! Dent says there are cold bodies which he calls planets without atmosphere: he has found one to revolve about him. ”

“ John Dent, and the two went to the white picket fence around the graveyard, which he had built and cared for, and stood at its little gate to meet him.
"Mr. Dent," said the minister, when he had shaken the farmer's hand, and as they all turned to look at the steeple top, "I have had a lesson, and I must acknowledge that it was needed. Our vision is limited, and we often know not even how to pray! I am content to leave all to God, nor to wrestle for His special interposition in my behalf. The doctrine of special providences is presuming—of the earth, earthy. ”

“ But the tenacity of the Dents was now uppermost in Denis, if indeed he had any other quality left, and he was back in the boat when she eventually struck upon the cliff. The shock hurled him overboard for the last time, yet was so much [Pg 16] less terrific than he had anticipated, that he sought and found the reason as he swam clear. A minute ago the boat had been within a few fathoms of the full face of the cliffs; at the last instant a mouth had opened, and all she had done was to cannon off the perpendicular wall of a strait so narrow as to be practically invisible from without. ”

“ Between Miss Dent and Conrad there was from the first a mutual liking, which quickly developed into confidential friendship. On his last day in town, while helping Lucy water the plants in her conservatory, he spoke to her admiringly of Miss Dent.
“I’m so glad you like my Dearie!” she responded warmly, looking up at him with a glow of pleasure. “She’s the dearest, sweetest woman! And you always feel you can depend on her. If you put your hand out you always know just where you can find Louise Dent, and you know she’ll be as firm as a rock. ”

“ Dent, and you'll see the way I've been used!"
He turned his face into the level moonbeams; an eye was closed and discoloured; a lip was swollen and cut, and the coat was almost torn off the steward's back, hanging in ribbons from the shoulders only.
"Some one's been knocking you about," remarked Denis, dispassionately.
"Some one has," the steward agreed, grimly: "some one as ought to have known better—some one not half as old as me, and more than twice as strong! But it was my fault. I might have known! I seen it coming from the first; it was bound to come when the luck gave out. ”

“ It was nevertheless a new type to Denis; he did not belong to it himself, neither did Moseley, nor yet Ralph Devenish with all his airs. But it was as a digger of transparent parts that the tall man returned to a mind from which the general impression soon blotted the particular.
The general impression on the banks of the Yarrowee was a strident chaos in extreme tints. The rocking of the countless cradles made a distracting chorus at close quarters. The vividness of the picture helped to daze a newcomer. The sky was bright blue overhead; the mud on all sides was the very brightest mud ”

“ The hairy miners shone with their own moisture and their own sunshine of enthusiasm, for the gold-light lit up every face. Nor was it an ignoble face as Denis saw it over and over again. It was full of the hearty virile hope that expanded his own soul. And it was every vivid tint of red and brown, as the mud was every bright shade of brown and yellow; and to each red face there was a redder shirt, and to every red shirt a pair of moleskin trousers, often snow-white, never the less picturesque for the clots of splendid mud that plastered and spattered it. ”

“ It did not require this generous (and evidently genuine) discharge to retain their services to the death. In Denis the Celt had long been uppermost, and, like Doherty, he was in a glow for the glowing work. Apart from that, Denis was rather fascinated by the rueful humour and the chuckle-headed courage of a temperament at once opposite and congenial to his own.
"Either we stand by you, Moseley," he muttered, "or we all three run for it; and I'll be shot if we do that just yet! Luckily, one of us can supply the firearm, and the other can use it if the worst comes to the worst." ”

“ The wreck was never mentioned in the sick-room, nor did Nan guess that an inquest on the bodies was held within a few yards of where she lay. Yet it was she who eventually broke the ice.
"Is Mr. Dent still here?" she asked, but in a tone so magnificently offhand that a less astute person than Mrs. Kitto would have detected its anxiety as soon.
"He was this morning," replied Mrs. Kitto, smiling. ”

“ Feeling that nothing could be better for that heavy heart of his uncle Stephen's than the application of such balm as lay in a girl's sweetness, Jim Dent conducted his adorable cousin in to spend the next half-hour beside the invalid's chair. In this act he showed the difference between himself and the average young man—between the sheep-dog, so to speak, always under the sway of a sense of duty to send his charges where they belong, and the sportive terrier, who thinks of nothing but his own diversion. ”

“ And gave the prize, a silver cup, to a more common dog,
Who lay so still and quiet that he might have been a log.
But when that evening our Lord Dent beheld with great surprise
That a less blooded terrier had won the noble prize,
He felt so very angry that he wished to beat Pup Kent,
[4] And ordered that the beastly dog should quickly home be sent.
But while poor Kent was going home so sad and in disgrace,
He got away from Higgens and he found another place
Far, far away from kennels of the great and wealthy Dent,
Near to a peaceful village, the runaway he went. ”

“ Merridew, with interest. "Well, I know that name, anyhow; one of our partners—Captain Devenish's father—he's Denis Devenish, you know."
"Indeed," said Denis Dent, and there was a strange light in his spare eye. "Well, so much for my mother; my father was a Yorkshire dalesman, as his father and his father's father were before him. I am the first of them to leave the land."
"May I ask why?"
"It isn't our land any more. My father gave up everything to take my mother abroad, when her life was despaired of in England, and when her people—her own people—I can't trust myself to speak of them!" ”

“ And I have my Drilgoes, the inferior race, to serve me. They worship me because they know I am a god. Join me, Dent, and taste the joys of being one of the supreme rulers of the world."
n spite of his undoubted madness, there was such power in Tode's voice that Jim could not help believe what he had said.
"Well," snarled Tode. "You hesitate to give me your answer, Dent?"
"Lucille and I are engaged to be married," answered Jim, and the words were drawn from his lips almost against his will. "We love each other. I am not going to lie to you and then betray you, Tode." ”

“ It's the hand that matters, not the material. Mr. Steward, give me yours!"
"His name is Jewson," remarked Denis; and his heart sank in spite of him as he saw the young hand join the old across the empty plates.
"But you called me steward, Mr. Dent, and I like to be called steward," rejoined Jewson, adroitly. "It reminds me of times you may think I'd like to forget; but I wouldn't and shall I tell you why? Because I'd like to make up for 'em, sir, if only you'd give me the chance. I'm out of a job. Wild hosses wouldn't take me back to Captain Devenish. ”

“ I won't take advantage of either of them. Let me make that money. I can, and I will. Then she shall give me her answer—not before."
And yet he had an uneasy conscience about his new resolve, plausible as it became in words; but the qualm only hardened it within him; and he lay in the twilight with set teeth and dogged jaw, quite a different Denis from the one who had leaned forward to listen to Jimmy Doherty, but every inch a Dent. ”

“ Now a certain feeling of confident elation began to creep over me. The fact is, that we gradually worked ourselves up into the right mental condition, and the aspect of a mountain varies marvellously according to the beholder’s frame of mind. These same crags had been by each of us independently, at one time or another, deliberately pronounced impossible. ”

“ That night, as Christopher Dent sat in his laboratory, his big spectacles on his nose, a candle beside him and the usual bulky black-letter volume in his hands, Anthony came in. The young man sat down in a chair and lighted his long-stemmed clay; and the little apothecary talked of the problems that rise up in one's daily path and make life, if not a vexation, at least an uncertainty.
"It is the time of year for dandelions and other soft, early herbs," said Christopher. "The sun has been gentle; the earth is mellow and seems full of gifts ”

“ Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got loose. ”

“ Ralph had an open and yet silent ally in Mr. Merridew; of old he had always wanted this marriage, and now he wanted it more than ever. Nan was not happy; it was the one thing to make her happy. He would have told her so every day but for a plain word in the beginning from Ralph himself. "Din me in her ears," said he, "and I am done; leave it to her, and there is a chance for me. [Pg 262] But never another word against Denis Dent; if his name comes up, make excuses for him. You don't know women as I know them, sir, or I wouldn't presume to offer you such advice." ”

“ As Dent turned away, Bet's attention was arrested by the girl called Jenny, who had been standing by during this colloquy, and plucked her by the sleeve.
"Yer a rare 'un!" she said, in a tone of sincere admiration. "Don't you mate with him. He ain't fit for the likes of you. Break your word with him,—what's a lie or two?"
"I hate lies," said Bet in a voice of scorn. "Let me be, Jenny—you're right in what you say of Isaac Dent; but he have my promise, and I ain't one as lies, ef it's only myself I have to think on." ”

“ I have never seen her except when we have passed them on the turnpike. I never spoke to her father but once and that was years ago when he came here one cold winter afternoon to buy a shock of fodder from your father."
She was a white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gains by being necked with blackness. "How can he treat me with so little consideration? It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning, mother. I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but I know you will be delighted—-good morning.'"
"You forget that Dent does not think he will disgrace the family. ”