Thomas Danby

“ Danby received from her an earnest, and almost angry, reprimand. She was, she wrote, the Prince's wife; she had no other wish than to be subject to him; the most cruel injury that could be done to her would be to set her up as his competitor; and she never could regard any person who took such a course as her true friend. [86] The Tories had still one hope. Anne might insist on her own rights, and on those of her children. No effort was spared to stimulate her ambition, and to alarm her conscience. Her uncle Clarendon was especially active. ”

“ The persons who preferred this scheme to any other were few; and it was certain to be opposed, both by all who still bore any good will to James, and by all the adherents of William. Yet Danby, confident in his own knowledge of parliamentary tactics, and well aware how much, when great parties are nearly balanced, a small flying squadron can effect, was not without hopes of being able to keep the event of the contest in suspense till both Whigs and Tories, despairing of complete victory, and afraid of the consequences of delay, should suffer him to act as umpire. ”

“ At these meetings the sense of the Tory party was chiefly spoken by the Earls of Danby and Nottingham. Though more than eight years had elapsed since Danby had fallen from power, his name was still great among the old Cavaliers of England; and many even of those Whigs who had formerly persecuted him were now disposed to admit that he had suffered for faults not his own, and that his zeal for the prerogative, though it had often misled him, had been tempered by two feelings which did him honour, zeal for the established religion, and zeal for the dignity and independence of his country. ”

“ William, on principle, thought it desirable to divide the power and patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from the beginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the hands of a single subject. Danby was offered his choice between the Presidency of the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the Presidency, and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, hardly attempted to conceal his anger at not having been placed higher. ”

“ He improved greatly on the plan of the first inventors. They had merely purchased orators: but every man who had a vote, might sell himself to Danby. Yet the new minister must not be confounded with the negotiators of Dover. He was not without the feelings of an Englishman and a Protestant; nor did he, in his solicitude for his own interests, ever wholly forget the interests of his country and of his religion. He was desirous, indeed, to exalt the prerogative: but the means by which he proposed to exalt it were widely different from those which had been contemplated by Arlington and Clifford. ”

“ He began to practice drawing at the Royal Dublin Society’s schools; and under an erratic young artist named O’Connor he began painting landscape. Danby also made acquaintance with George Petrie, and all three left for London together in 1813. This expedition, undertaken with very inadequate funds, quickly came to an end, and they had to get home again by walking. At Bristol they made a pause, and Danby, finding he could get trifling sums for water-colour drawings, remained there working diligently and sending to the London exhibitions pictures of importance. ”

“ Thank you, my dear Keightley, for fetching me. Had I known——"
"I say, there isn't a moment to lose, do get Ince."
"Your dear mother not unwell, I hope?"
"She is decidedly better," Dr. Ince began, exactly as Sir Audley had done.
"I don't care a damn," was Keightley's quick reply. "Oh! I don't mean that. But I want to talk to you. I want you to come upstairs with me at once."
Dr. Ince marvelled at his excitement.
"None of you have got any sense; if you only had my flair for this sort of thing ..." was how Keightley Wilbur began when he and Dr. Ince were alone. ”

“ A merry heart wags all the day. Who wouldn't be happy among the golden corn, in touch with Nature, with the field-bugs gambolling over one's back!"
"Eh?"
Danby laughed.
"You find me a little flowery; I am flying too high for you. I am indulging in aeroplanics. I'll come down to the good red earth. Marnin', matey. How's t'crops?"
The imitation of the country accent was ridiculously exaggerated. The farm-hand examined the town man searchingly and suspiciously.
"Eh?" he said again.
"Beat again!" said Danby, with a shriek of laughter.
Pippard went closer, but slowly. ”

“ Danby kept it up.
“Do you find the glare of the electric light too much for you? Shall I complain about the orchestra?”
“One must endure these things in these places, your lordship. Were you riding in the Row this morning?”
“Yaas.” Danby twirled an imaginary moustache. “I had a canter. My mare cast a shoe—sixteen buttons. I rode her so hard that she strained her hemlock. She’s a good little mare. Has fourteen hands, and plenty of action. She’s a bit of a roarer, but then her mother was ridden by a Cabinet Minister.”
“You haven’t taken to a car, then?” ”

“ Eight of the little Danbys, including Charity with Baby Jamie in her arms, had assembled to wash their hands and faces at the battered green pump under the shed, where, on a long, low bench, were two yellow earthenware basins, and a saucer containing a few fragments of brown soap, while on the wall hung a roller-towel that already was on very familiar terms with Danby faces and hands. ”

“ Mr Arbuthnot strove to bear his wife from the apartment, but she would not be forced away, and kept imploring with frenzied vehemence that Robert—that her boy should not be taken from her.
'I have no wish to do so—far from it,' said Danby with gleeful exultation. 'Only folk must be reasonable, and not threaten their friends with the hulks'——
'Give him anything, anything!' broke in the unhappy lady. ”

“ Danby followed him up to the gate, and stood watching him curiously and admiringly, and as he watched he spoke his thoughts aloud.
“Good day, giant,” he said. “Good day, simple son of the soil, who eats 87hearty, drinks like a fish, and digests everything. Good-bye, man who knows nothing, and doesn’t want to know anything. I’d give ten years of my life for five of yours any day. Well, well.”
He turned with a sigh, took off his hat and hung it on a twig of the hedge, and then divested himself of his knapsack. ”

“ Beyond these last-quoted virtues Ralph Danby had few. He was rather lethargic and decidedly clumsy. His six-feet-three of flesh and blood was knotty with muscle, but, in the garments of the polite, the muscularity showed like adipose tissue and spoilt him. In feature he was pronounced perfect.
"Perfect as regenerate man can well be," raved a lady artist, who, before he had been in Hampstead a week, had implored him to pose for a painting of early Scandinavian classicism. ”

“ I'm no good as a blackmailer. I shall have to take lessons."
In Eaton Square the blinds were down and everyone trod softly. Keightley asked for his mother and was told she was with her ladyship, that Sir Audley was still in the library, and would see no one. Mrs. Wilbur appeared at the top of the stairs while Keightley was talking to the butler, and he went up to her, two steps at a time.
"No! I can't say I've exactly succeeded," he replied to a hurriedly whispered question. "I expect there will have to be some sort of an inquiry. I want to see Veda. Can I go in?" ”

“ He was so buoyant that he walked all the way home, thinking of how he would triumph over David Devenish, win his bet, spread himself over that column and leader. In justice to him, however, it must be admitted that he never thought of what his discovery might be going to mean to poor Stanley Dacre, or what would be the upshot.
Keightley had to talk, every man had a weakness, and that was admittedly his. Because David must not know until the last minute, and he could not talk to his mother of Inez B. Mott, Roger Macphail seemed marked out for his confidant. ”

“ Sir Audley left the box as if a long array of ancestors were behind him and he was leading them.
The coroner leaned forward and said a few words to his officer.
"Idiot!" commented Keightley to his mother. "He has told the man not to lose sight of him!"
Dr. Ince was the next witness called.
"Now watch," said Keightley excitedly. "See him practise the art of suppressio veri. I coached him myself. He mustn't fail me."
Keightley's excitement was manifest, culminating.
"After Ince it will be my turn. Watch, mater: watch, listen! "
Dr. Ince, duly sworn, proved comparatively uninteresting. ”

“ Danby, a conveyancer, who, in some way not very consonant with the usual etiquette of his profession, has been mixed up with her father's affairs—a man middle-aged, apparently dry as his own parchments, and quite unversed in society. ”

“ Am I not beginning to interest you?"
"Every man is interesting when on his hobby." David leaned back in his chair and used his tooth-pick. "I am going to have an omelette au rhum, so you may bolt along, over any obstacles or tracts of flat commonplaces. What else have you learnt from Milly about Ince's wife? By the way, Ince will not materially improve his position if he made a funeral pyre for his wife in order to marry Milly!"
"You think badly of her?" Keightley asked with uplifted eyebrows. ”

“ I said, 'If it is true I will kill him—kill them both. But I could not kill my mother ...’" He lay still, his breathing loud and difficult.
"I could not kill my mother," came through again, more hoarsely.
Keightley, who talked in paradox and lived by epigram, felt a choke in his throat. Then the boy's eyes opened, and he went on again, through his difficult breath.
"She loved me when I was little, kissed me once when I lay in my cot. I could not kill her. But all our name was stained. Here I live under a different name, and watch and watch, not knowing what to do ... there were always men. ”

“ On the east side of the monument are engraved some curious lines written by his kinsman, George Herbert, who paid a long visit at Dauntsey in 1629, when threatened with consumption. As Herbert died in 1633, the epitaph must have been written many years before Danby's death. He never married, and upon his death the barony of Danvers and the earldom of Danby became extinct. On 12 March 1622 he conveyed to the university of Oxford five acres of land, opposite Magdalen College, which had formerly served as a burying-place for the Jews, for the encouragement of the study of physic and botany. ”

“ Wilbur's voice dropped—"the baby was dead! He had been suffocated. ..."
"The pillows, bedclothes?"
"His dear little face was clear of them all."
Keightley would not let her cry, he put a consoling hand on her shoulder. "Buck up, mater. Tell me some more. How about the nurse?"
"Trustworthy, reliable."
"Who had been in the nursery?"
"Veda, perhaps Audley. No one else. Veda cannot bear the thought of an inquest. Can't you see Dr. Ince and persuade him to give a certificate? He is under an obligation to you. You never said anything of what you found out from that dreadful Dr. Boyne." ”

“ All the household had been up already. Such are the easy pleasures of the servants' hall.
The nursery was full of the scent of flowers, lilies and orchids, gardenias and tuberoses. The blinds were down. The swinging cot, white painted and hung with muslin and lace, was nothing but a mound of flowers in the gloom. Keightley dismissed his guide:
"Thank you. Get out now. I want to be alone."
Keightley stood beside the cot. The little waxen figure lay stiff and unreal amid the lilies—one had been put in the tiny hand. Then Keightley Wilbur did a strange thing, an unaccountable thing. ”

“ But how am I to account for my mother's share in the matter?"
"She did it for you."
"We should have to find a jury of altruists to believe the truth, and then they wouldn't. The very moment she sees my name in the papers she will rush back ..."
"Mrs. Mott's identification will go for nothing if Guy Dacre persists in his."
"The more brilliant a fellow is the greater the danger of his eclipsing his own path."
Keightley, although gloomy, was better when he began to make phrases, and Roger got a little reassured about him. ”

“ Wilbur, don't say or think it—it's—it's impossible! Don't look like that: everyone will be staring at us. Pull yourself together. This is not what you came here to tell me. What did you come to tell me?"
Keightley answered dully, "I came to tell you Stanley Dacre shot Harry Maingaye, that he was intriguing with Inez at the time. But it isn't true: of course it isn't true."
The magnetism of the picture drew him. He looked again into the light, visionary eyes of a boy of high lineage, holding himself proudly, the son of Inez B. Mott.
"Stanley Dacre!" repeated Roger in a bewildered manner. ”

“ Danby, however, and a small knot of Tories supported the Whigs, and the proposal was rejected. Danby had, indeed, a plan of his own. James, he held, had really abdicated, and the crown had therefore passed to the next heir. That heir was not, according to him, the supposititious infant, but the eldest daughter of James, Mary Princess of Orange, who was now in her own right queen of England. It was an ingenious theory, but two circumstances were against its being carried into practice. In the first place, Mary scolded Danby for (p. 647) daring to set her above her husband. ”