Darnel

“ However that might be, the Nixons grew wealthy to excess, and Mary had often told her husband of the state in which they dwelt, of their liveried servants, of the glories of their drawing-room, of their broad lawn, shadowed by a splendid and ancient cedar. And so Darnell had somehow been led into conceiving the lady of this demesne as a personage of no small pomp. He saw her, tall, of dignified port and presence, inclining, it might be, to some measure of obesity, such a measure as was not unbefitting in an elderly lady of position, who lived well and lived at ease. ”

“ Darnell, finding her husband a little frank, lowering her eyes as she spoke.
'Dickenson might amuse you,' Darnell went on. 'He's always got a joke. A terrible liar, though. When he tells a tale we never know how much to believe. He swore the other day he'd seen one of the governors buying cockles off a barrow near London Bridge, and Jones, who's just come, believed every word of it.'
Darnell laughed at the humorous recollection of the jest. ”

“ Nixon, when, to Darnell's annoyance, the door-bell gave a discordant peal, and Alice with some disturbance of manner came out and announced that a gentleman wished to see the master. Darnell went into the drawing-room, where Alice had lit one gas so that it flared and burnt with a rushing sound, and in this distorting light there waited a stout, elderly gentleman, whose countenance was altogether unknown to him. ”

“ Mr. Mouncey shook his head, and smiled good-temperedly. "He will hardly sympathise with my politics, I fear," he said. "He must be a rich man, and few rich men can tolerate such an out-and-out Radical as I am."
Another one present had caught the name of Philip Darnell, and was no less startled by it than the colonel. Gus stood near enough to hear it, and the sound sent a thrill through his boyish frame. Philip Darnell! His father's enemy! ”

“ Darnell had received what is called a sound commercial education, and would therefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulate speech any thought that was worth thinking; ”

“ It seems to me as if the sunbeams were always looking under the water for me. Ah, I am so fine that my own mother cannot find me! If I had my old eye which broke off, I believe I could weep; but I can’t—it is not fine to weep!’
One day two street-urchins were playing and wading in the gutter, picking up old nails, pennies, and such things. It was rather dirty work, but it was a great delight to them.
‘Oh, oh!’ cried out one, as he pricked himself with the Darning-needle; ‘he is a fine fellow though!’
‘I am not a fellow; I am a young lady!’ said the Darning-needle ”

“ All might have gone well but for the folly of the idiot Darnley. No long period of domestic intercourse was requisite to convince the unfortunate Queen that she had thrown away her affections, and bestowed her hand upon an individual totally incapable of appreciating the one, and utterly unworthy of the other. Darnley was a low-minded, fickle, and imperious fool—vicious as a colt, capricious as a monkey, and stubborn as an Andalusian mule. ”

“ As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be?”
“I wish I were going myself,” said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.
“Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry. “You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor.” ”

“ Such things are not of Darrell Standing's experience in the world. Yet I, Darrell Standing, found these things within myself in solitary in San Quentin by means of mechanical self-hypnosis. No more were these experiences Darrell Standing's, than was the word "Samaria" Darrell Standing's when it leaped to his child lips at sight of a photograph.
One cannot make anything out of nothing. In solitary I could not so make thirty-five pounds of dynamite. Nor in solitary, out of nothing in Darrell Standing's experience, could I make these wide, far visions of time and space. ”

“ Darrell’s only son.
“I tell you, Richard,” she said, when the scene-painter argued with her, “that nothing but proof positive of Launcelot Darrell’s absence in India at the date of my father’s death would have dispossessed me of the idea that flashed upon me on the day I left Berkshire. He was not in India at that time. He deceived his mother and his friends. He remained in Europe; and led, no doubt, an idle, dissipated life. He must have lived by his wits, for he had no money from his mother; no one to help him—no profession to support him. ”

“ DAVE DARRIN
ON MEDITERRANEAN SERVICE CHAPTER I GREEN HAT, THE TROUBLE-STARTER
"Dan," whispered Dave Darrin, Ensign, United States Navy, to his chum and brother officer, "do you see that fellow with the green Alpine hat and the green vest?"
"Yes," nodded Dan Dalzell.
"Watch him."
"Why?"
"He's a powerful brute, and it looks as though he's spoiling for a fight."
"You are not going to oblige him, are you?" asked Dalzell in a whisper, betraying surprise.
"Nothing like it," Darrin responded disgustedly. "Danny Grin, don't you credit me with more sense than that? ”

“ None but a fool or a maniac could have resisted such amicable and generous conduct; but Darnley was one of those impracticable men who cannot bear high fortune. He declared that the queen had never given him any occasion whatever of discontent or displeasure ”

“ Darnley was eighteen years of age: he was handsome, well-made, elegant; he talked in that attractive manner of the young nobles of the French and English courts that Mary no longer heard since her exile in Scotland; she let herself be deceived by these appearances, and did not see that under this brilliant exterior Darnley hid utter insignificance, dubious courage, and a fickle and churlish character. It is true that he came to her under the auspices of a man whose influence was as striking as the risen fortune which gave him the opportunity to exert it. We refer to David Rizzio. ”

“ Suddenly a distant shout clashed upon Darrell's senses, like a crashing peal of thunder, followed swiftly by another. There was the sound of stones rattling down a slope. Some one snapped out a sharp order, and the crawling motion of the cord ceased, leaving Darrell dazed and wondering.
An instant later, he was conscious of a vague, uneasy movement in the circle of waiting men. Presently he heard the padding of feet; swift, staccato sentences jerked out in a breathless voice; then a sudden uproar all around him. ”

“ After the blowing up of the Kirk of the Field, the only one of Darnley's servants that escaped was brought by the Earl of Murray before the English Council, and there gave evidence, implying that Queen Mary—that ever-interesting princess, who has been doubtlessly both over-decried by her foes and over-praised by her friends—was cognisant of the intended murder of her husband, inasmuch as, beforehand, she ordered an old bed to be placed in Darnley's room, and the richer bed that previously stood in it to be removed. ”

“ DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES, By Irving Bacheller With illustrations by Arthur Keller.
“Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit, philosopher, and man of mystery. Learned, strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a giant above the people among whom he lives. It is another tale of the North Country, full of the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos and high thinking are in this book.”—Boston Transcript. ”

“ Darnley sees her walking out of Queen Mary’s room, he thinks her an hallucination, discovers that she is real, challenges her, and they fight at Faldonside, by the Tweed, Shakespeare holding Elizabeth’s horse. Elizabeth is wounded, and is carried to the Kirk of Field, and laid in Darnley’s chamber, while Darnley goes out and makes love to my rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, a Kerr. That night Bothwell blows up the Kirk of Field, Elizabeth and all. Darnley has only one resource. ”

“ A slight, muscular figure flung itself forward like a diver taking the surf, and Darrell felt two arms gripping his right leg tenaciously, while eager hands clutched him on every side. A fierce kick ended in the crunch of leather against flesh. There was a gasping grunt, and the clinging hold relaxed. The secret-service agent grasped a wrist, and, with a practiced twist, a heave of his splendid shoulder muscles and taut biceps, he sent another little man spinning through the air to land a dozen feet away with a dull, bone-cracking thud. ”

“ Sharpened and attenuated by disease, Darnley's features glimmered in the subdued light, like those of a rigid corpse; and the myriad pustules incident to the hideous ailment under which he suffered, were apparent to the louring eye of Bolton, who, remembering that night in the garden of Holyrood, gazed upon him with sensations akin to those of a tigress robbed of her cubs; and the age was not one when men sat placidly under a sense of wrong, or repressed their impulses either of good or evil. ”

“ Sir George Aimwell used to say, that instead of sending poachers to gaol, it would be a better plan to send them to Mr Darnley to be talked to; for the worthy baronet thought that they would not readily expose themselves to the risk of a second infliction. Those of our readers who have never been talked to will not be able to sympathize with Robert Darnley; those who have, will pity him from the bottom of their hearts. ”

“ Wise and penetrating reader, who can’st dive most deeply into human motives, and read the movements of the human heart, we beseech thee not to impute it to stupidity or obtuseness in our friend Robert Darnley, that he could not sooner see the probability of the existence in some quarter or other of a spirit of treachery at work against him. His own mind was of a very unsuspicious cast, and he was not in the habit of looking for deeply-laid schemes, but he gave general credit to appearances and ordinary assertions. ”

“ You saw her turn pale the other day when she mentioned Launcelot Darrell’s name. You know what the young man’s mother told you. You can do the commonest sum in logical arithmetic, I suppose. You can put two and two together. Your wife has been wearied to death of the North, and the sea, and the sands, and you. She is in high spirits to-day, and it is very easy to account for the change in her manner. She is glad to go back to Berkshire—she is glad to go back there, because she will see Launcelot Darrell. ”

“ Darrin," announced the commandant, "from experience and observation, through a rather long life in the Navy, I am able to state that the kind of courage which enables a man go down in drowning with a comrade, sooner than leave the comrade to his fate, is the highest type of courage known among brave men!"
"You must have been aware, Mr. Darrin," added Lieutenant Edgecombe, "that you were taking at least ninety-nine chances in a hundred of offering up your life." ”

“ Making another low bow, Darrin answered:
“I am grateful to have been permitted to render some service to their Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress of Japan.”
Dan’s face, at first fiery red, went pale as he in turn made another low bow. He could think of nothing to say. His mind seemed blank. He felt he was going to make a fool of himself. But his head was now as low as he could make it, and he knew he must say something. ”

“ Here is proof positive that Crawford does not copy Letter II., but gives Darnley’s words as reported to him by Darnley—words that Darnley was proud of,—while Mary, returning on the second day of writing to the topic, does not quote Darnley’s brave words, but merely contrasts his speaking “very bravely at the beginning” with his pitiful and craven later submission; “he has ever the tear in his eye,” with what follows. ”

“ Honour was dangerously ill.
In the dusk of evening, when the house was quiet, and Mrs. Darling sat by the bedside, her brain almost as busy as the one she was there to guard, the thought arose to her that she would put at rest (as far as it could be put to rest) a question that troubled her. In closing the nursery-door quietly--as it had been represented the unfortunate child did close it--would the bolt slip into its groove? Was it possible that it could do so? Mrs. Darling had pondered the doubt that day more than she would have cared to tell. ”

“ Scotland was filled with rumours of plot and assassination, and civil war was only narrowly avoided. Unable to take any serious part in affairs of state, Darnley soon became estranged from his wife. He believed that Mary’s relations with David Rizzio injured him as a husband, and was easily persuaded to assent to the murder of the Italian, a crime in which he took part. Immediately afterwards, however, flattered and cajoled by the queen, he betrayed his associates to her, and assisted her to escape from Holyrood to Dunbar. ”

“ Darnley was very tall and slim, but his limbs were so well-proportioned, his hands and feet so small and beautifully shaped, that his excessive height only gave him an air of peculiar grace and distinction above ordinary men. Even in the riding-dress of the period, though we may be sure that the handsome young noble wore one of the richest material, and of the most tasteful fashion such a costume allowed, he betrayed those habits of refinement almost bordering on coxcombry, which, when they accompany a fine manly person, have such an attraction for the other sex. ”

“ Grace joyfully kissed her father, and he began to prepare.
"What will your mother say, Grace?" he asked the next moment.
The loving girl dreaded her more than the waves. Mrs. Darling, when she heard of it, could not give her consent.
"Oh, William, I cannot believe that you will be so mad! If there has been a shipwreck, and lives lost, what is the use of your adding your own death to the number? Nothing can save you. The boat will not live ten minutes in such a sea." ”