Durrisdeer

“ So you see, Arthur, there is a hellish tradition behind our family. There is a heritage which no sane God would ever have allowed. The future of the Duryeas lies in you, for you are the last of die race. I pray with all of my heart that providence will permit you to live your full share of years, and to leave other Duryeas behind you. And so if ever again I feel that presence as I did in Duryea Castle, I am going to die as François Duryea died, over a hundred years ago. ”

“ I'm a man now; do you understand that? A man, with a man's sense of logic."
"Yes, I understand." Henry Duryea threw his cigar into the fireplace, and placed a hand on his son's shoulder.
"We shall forget Cecilia," he said. "As I told you in my letter, I have rented a lodge in Maine where we can go to be alone for the rest of the summer. We'll get in some fishing and hiking and perhaps some hunting. But first, Arthur, I must be sure in my own mind that you are sure in yours. I must be sure you won't bar your door against me at night, and sleep with a loaded revolver at your elbow. ”

“ In that little lodge there was no electricity, and the glow of the oil lamps played curious tricks with the human expression which frequently resulted in something unhuman. It may have been the dusk of night, the flickering of the lamps, but Arthur Duryea had certainly noticed how his father's eyes had sunken further into his head, and how his cheeks were tighter, and the outline of his teeth pressed into the skin about his lips. ”

“ Raise me from my lowly condition, sire! Who knows? one day you may have no one among your servants more devoted, more enlightened, than your poor John Durer!"
The thing that he pursued, fled—fled. Durer ran after it more wildly as he grew weaker, trying to raise his voice higher and higher, and stretching out his arms more and more eagerly. They were now at the Valley of Bushes. "Sire!" cried he once again.
"John Durer, scholar, of the village near Haerlem," replied a voice from the shadows of the wood, "his Majesty the Emperor does not love people who have lost their memory." ”

“ Henry Duryea nodded his head. His lips were tight together, and the muscles in his throat held back a cry. In that same soft tone of defense he spoke further, doubting words.
"Are you so sure of your subconscious mind, Arthur? Can you be so certain that you are free from all suspicion, however vague? Is there not a lingering premonition—a premonition which warns of peril?"
"No, Dad—no!" Arthur shot to his feet. "I don't believe it. I've never believed it. I know, as any sane man would know, that you are neither a vampire nor a murderer. You know it, too; and Cecilia knew it, only she was mad. ”

“ A few months after a much longed for son came to bless the Pirkheimers, a little boy was born in the goldsmith’s house whom they named, for his father, Albrecht Durer. As the years went by, seventeen other children came to the Durer home. Three only of all these children grew to maturity.
With such a family to support we can easily imagine that the father’s life was a hard one. He was a pious and industrious man whom his illustrious son never tires of praising. ”

“ There are men who will backbite their own country out of sheer hereditary cussedness. They are against everything that is—and Anthony Durrell was such a man.
He came out upon the terrace while Nance was there, and walked up and down under the house with his hands behind his back. There was a restless uncouthness even in the way he moved, for Durrell was one of those men who had been a sop at school, and a greenhorn at college. He had thrown a ball like a girl, and his legs and arms were not made to work like the limbs of a virile male. ”

“ You do not know, you do not dream how much he loves you, Durzil. He is a different person altogether when you are at home—so much gayer, and more sociable! Oh! wherefore must you leave us so quickly, and after so long an absence, too, as your last? Oh, truly, it is unkind, Durzil.”
“And you, Theresa, shall you be sorry?” ”

“ With the passage of every minute he realised more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance. A man not very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always the inheritor of the other places,—how much more it meant to him than to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as clearly? It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa; the sunlight blazed upon desert and river; not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of any bush. Calder drank his brandy-and-soda, and slowly that question forced itself more and more into the front of his mind. ”

“ Durzil, on the other hand, though attaching far more importance to his action, saw plainly that this was not the time or the place for making any comment on it, even if he had been capable of adding to Theresa’s embarrassment; while Jasper, mortified and frustrated by the lady’s scornful self-possession, and the free-trader’s manifest contempt, had no better mode of concealing his disappointment, than by sinking back upon his pillow, as if fatigued or in pain, and feigning to fall gradually asleep—a feint which, as is oftentimes the case, terminated at last in reality. ”

“ There's hardly a pretty wench—well, you know, Durrell. Engaged to marry his cousin, too!"
"Poor young woman."
"She is no fool. Has a thousand a year of her own, and a mouth like a man-trap. She will lead Mr. Benham a godly, straight-up-and-down life. Meanwhile the youngster must not be allowed to hang round here."
Durrell picked up a book, glanced at it, and then threw it back upon the table. His austere face had a kind of hard pride.
"A scholar need not be an owl, De Rothan."
"My good sir, did I suggest it? But sweet Nance has a lonely life here. Not much youth comes her way. ”

“ A few rare references made in unusual moments of confidence by Durrance had only informed Calder of her name, and assured him that his friend would be very glad to change it if he could. He looked at Durrance—a man so trained to vigour and activity that his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than an accident of the country in which he lived; a man, too, who came to the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who comes into an inheritance; a man to whom these desolate tracts were home, and the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads merely the other places ”

“ If it rest with me, go you shall not, Durzil, ever again to sea. And why should you? You have won fame enough, and glory and wealth more than enough to supply your wants so long as you live. Why should you go to sea again, dear Durzil?”
“I will not go again, Theresa, if such seriously be your deliberate desire.” ”

“ It was unfortunate for Durzil, that the good man, into whose care he had fallen, ever of a philosophical and studious, nay, even mystic disposition, had become, since the sad fate of his beloved sister, and the early death of a yet dearer wife, so wholly visionary, so entirely given up to the wildest theorizing, the most abstruse and abstract metaphysical inquiries, that no one could have been devised less fitting for the guardian and instructor of a high-spirited, hot-headed, fiery boy than he was. ”

“ The flint and steel rang against each other, and sparks dropped on to the scorched linen in the tinder-box. A minute passed before Durrell got one of the sulphur matches alight. He shaded it with his hand, and carried the flame to the candle.
"That's better, Durrell. What a howling, wind-swept hell this house of yours is! I suppose Miss Nance will play us no tricks? She suspects nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Wakefulness! Shall we put it down to Mr. Benham?"
Anthony Durrell's room was crowded with books. A truckle-bed stood in one corner, looking meagre, thin, and austere. ”

“ Out of all the foregoing, out of all the mortal and mouldering coverings we have now to shell the real, the immortal Dürer—the Dürer whose mind was longing for truth, whose soul was longing for harmony, and who out of his longings fashioned his Art, as all great men have done and will do until the last. ”

“ While the waters of Venice and the ruins of Rome were sunning themselves for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, and were daily being sketched out of all earthly proportion, lineament, and likeness, by travelling pencils innumerable, the firm of Doyce and Clennam hammered away in Bleeding Heart Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron upon iron was heard there through the working hours.
The younger partner had, by this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. ”

“ An old, somewhat emaciated man lies in bed, tied by the upper arms to the headboard. A younger man in a dressing gown stands behind the bed, recoiling with one arm over his mouth. An avian or bat-like shadow is cast behind the pair. "He lay like a waxen figure tied to his bed."
A cloud came over Doctor Duryea's features. "What did you expect, Arthur?" he demanded quickly. "An evil eye? A shaven head and knotted jowls?"
"Please, Dad—no!" Arthur's words clipped short. "I don't think I ever really visualized you. I knew you would be a splendid man. ”

“ One knows Durrance. Give him a camp-fire in the desert, and a couple of sheiks to sit round it with him, and he'll buck to them for a month and never feel bored at the end. While here there are letters, and there's an office, and there's a desk in the office and everything he loathes and can't do with. You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though he won't hurry about it. ”

“ Or if that was impossible, she must be careful always that by no word let slip in a forgetful moment she betrayed that she had not forgotten.
"No," she said, "two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," and she turned towards Mrs. Adair.
"Are you quite sure, Ethne," said Mrs. Adair, "that the two lives will not be more surely spoilt by this way of yours—the way of marriage? Don't you think that you will come to feel Colonel Durrance, in spite of your will, something of a hindrance and a drag? Isn't it possible that he may come to feel that too? I wonder. I very much wonder." ”

“ The German name of Dürer or Thürer, a door, is quite as likely to be the translation, correct or otherwise, of some Hungarian name, as it is an indication that the family had originally emigrated from Germany. In any case, a large admixture by intermarriage of Slavonic blood would correspond to the unique distinction among Germans, attained in the dignity, sweetness and fineness which signalised Dürer. Of course, in such matters no sane man looks for proof; but neither will he reject a probable suggestion which may help us to understand the nature of an exceptional man. ”

“ If ever a man was a believer irrespective of Church, Creed, or sect—Dürer was he. I confess to a sense of awe in beholding this work, akin to Fra Angelico in its sincerity, akin to Michelangelo in its grandeur, and German wholly in the naturalness of its mystery. With more than photographic sharpness and minuteness of detail does Dürer materialise the vision: God-Father, an aged King—a Charlemagne ”

“ As crows the old game cock, so crows the young game chicken!”
“And why not?” answered Durzil, with a ready smile, for there was something that whispered at his heart, though indeed he knew not wherefore, that it were not so ill done to remove Jasper from that neighborhood for a while. “If Sir Miles judge it well that you should see something of the world, in these piping times of peace, it is never too soon to begin. ”

“ There are so many misconceptions about Dürer. He was a deep-thinking man; he was like the churches of the North—narrow, steep, dimly religious within, full of traceries, lacework, gargoyles, and grotesques without.
I have read that it used to be said in Italy: All the cities of Germany were blind, with the exception of Nuremberg, which was one-eyed. True! True also of Dürer and German Art.
In 1526, two years before his death, Dürer presented a panel to his native city, now cut in two, robbed of its Protestant inscription, and hanging in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich. Dürer's last great work! ”

“ Girls refused men for all sorts of queer reasons which had no sense in them, and very often they were sick and sorry about it afterwards; and very often they meant to accept the men all the time.
"I must answer the letters from Ireland," said Durrance, when he had finished. "The rest can wait."
Calder held a sheet of paper upon the desk and told Durrance when he was writing on a slant and when he was writing on the blotting-pad; and in this way Durrance wrote to tell Ethne that a sunstroke had deprived him of his sight. Calder took that letter away. ”

“ Little Dorrit’s Lover
Little Dorrit had not attained her twenty-second birthday without finding a lover. Even in the shallow Marshalsea, the ever young Archer shot off a few featherless arrows now and then from a mouldy bow, and winged a Collegian or two.
Little Dorrit’s lover, however, was not a Collegian. He was the sentimental son of a turnkey. His father hoped, in the fulness of time, to leave him the inheritance of an unstained key; and had from his early youth familiarised him with the duties of his office, and with an ambition to retain the prison-lock in the family. ”