The next time Ray came, he found Denton dreamily picking at the strings of a violin which lay in his lap; the twins were clinging to his knees, and moving themselves in time to the music. “You didn’t know Ansel was a musician?” his wife said. “He’s just got a new violin—or rather it’s a second-hand one; but it’s splendid, and he got it so cheap.”
“I profited by another man’s misfortune,” said Denton. “That’s the way we get things cheap.”
“Oh, well, never mind about that, now. Play the ‘Darky’s Dream,’ won’t you, Ansel? I wish we had our old ferry-boat darky here to whistle!”
After a moment in which he seemed not to have noticed her, he put the violin to his chin, and began the wild, tender strain of the piece. It seemed to make the little ones drunk with delight. They swayed themselves to and fro, holding by their father’s knees, and he looked down softly into their uplifted faces. When he stopped playing, their mother put out her hand toward one of them, but it clung the faster to its father.
“Let me take your violin a moment,” said Ray. He knew the banjo a little, and now he picked out on{224} the violin an air which one of the girls in Midland had taught him.
The twins watched him with impatient rejection; and they were not easy till their father had the violin back. Denton took them up one on each knee, and let them claw at it between them; they looked into his face for the effect on him as they lifted themselves and beat the strings. After a while Peace rose and tried to take it from them, for their father seemed to have forgotten what they were doing; but they stormed at her, in their baby way, by the impulse that seemed common to them, and screamed out their shrill protest against her interference.
“Let them alone,” said their father, gently, and she desisted.
“You’ll spoil those children, Ansel,” said his wife, “letting them have their own way so. The first thing you know, they’ll grow up capitalists.”
He had been looking down at them with dreamy melancholy, but he began to laugh helplessly, and he kept on till she said:
“I think it’s getting to be rather out of proportion to the joke; don’t you, Mr. Ray? Not that Ansel laughs too much, as a rule.”
Denton rose, when the children let the violin slip to the floor at last, and improvised the figure of a dance with them on his shoulders, and let himself go in fantastic capers, while he kept a visage of perfect seriousness.
Hughes was drawn by the noise, and put his head into the room.{225}
“We’ve got the old original Ansel back, father!” cried Mrs. Denton, and she clapped her hands and tried to sing to the dance, but broke down, and mocked at her own failure.
When Denton stopped breathless, Peace took the children from him, and carried them away. His wife remained.
“Ansel was brought up among the Shakers; that’s the reason he dances so nicely.”
“Oh, was that a Shaker dance?” Ray asked, carelessly.
“No. The Shaker dance is a rite,” said Denton, angrily. “You might as well expect me to burlesque a prayer.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Ray. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about it.”
But Denton left the room without visible acceptance of his excuse.
“You must be careful how you say anything about the Shakers before Ansel,” his wife explained. “I believe he would be willing to go back to them now, if he knew what to do with the children and me.”
“If it were not for their unpractical doctrine of celibacy,” said Hughes, “the Shakers, as a religious sect, could perform a most useful office in the transition from the status to better conditions. They are unselfish, and most communities are not.”
“We might all go back with Ansel,” said Mrs. Denton, “and they could distribute us round in the different Families. I wonder if Ansel’s bull is hang{226}ing up in the South Family barn yet? You know,” she said, “he painted a red bull on a piece of shingle when they were painting the barn one day, and nailed it up in a stall; when the elders found it they labored with him, and then Ansel left the community, and went out into the world. But they say, once a Shaker always a Shaker, and I believe he’s had a bad conscience ever since he’s left them.”
Not long after this Ray came in one night dressed for a little dance that he was going to later, and Mrs. Denton had some moments alone with him before Peace joined them. She made him tell where he was going, and who the people were that were giving the dance, and what it would all be like—the rooms and decorations, the dresses, the supper.
“And don’t you feel very strange and lost, in such places?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I can’t always remember that I’m a poor Bohemian with two cents in my pocket. Sometimes I imagine myself really rich and fashionable. But to-night I shan’t, thank you, Mrs. Denton.”
She laughed at the look he gave her in acknowledgment of her little scratch. “Then you wouldn’t refuse to come to a little dance here, if we were rich enough to give one?” she asked.
“I would come instantly.”
“And get your fashionable friends to come?”
“That might take more time. When are you going to give your little dance?{227}”
“As soon as Ansel’s invention is finished.”
“Oh! Is he going on with that?”
“Yes. He has seen how he can do more good than harm with it—at last.”
“Ah! We can nearly always coax conscience along the path of self-interest.”
This pleased Mrs. Denton too. “That sounds like Mr. Kane.”
Peace came in while Mrs. Denton was speaking, and gave Ray her hand, with a glance at his splendor, enhanced by his stylish manner of holding his silk hat against his thigh.
“Who was it told you that Mr. Kane was sick?” Mrs. Denton asked.
Peace answered, “Mr. Chapley.”
“Kane? Is Mr. Kane sick?” said Ray. “I must go and see him.”
He asked Peace some questions about Kane, but she knew nothing more than that Mr. Chapley said he was not very well, and he was going to step round and see him on his way home. Ray thought of the grudge he had borne for a while against Kane, and he was very glad now that there was none left in his heart.
“It’s too late to-night; but I’ll go in the morning. He usually drops in on me Sundays; he didn’t come last Sunday; but I never thought of his being sick.” He went on to praise Kane, and he said, as if it were one of Kane’s merits, “He’s been a good friend of mine. He read my novel all over after Chapley declined it, and tried to find enough good in it to justify{228} him in recommending it to some other publisher. I don’t blame him for failing, but I did feel hard about his refusing to look at it afterwards; I couldn’t help it for a while.” He was speaking to Peace, and he said, as if it were something she would be cognizant of, “I mean when Mr. Brandreth sent for it again after he first rejected it.”
“Yes,” she admitted, briefly, and he was subtly aware of the withdrawal which he noticed in her whenever the interest of the moment became personal.
But there was never any shrinking from the personal interest in Mrs. Denton; her eagerness to explore all his experiences and sentiments was vivid and untiring.
“Why did he send for it?” she asked. “What in the world for?”
Ray was willing to tell, for he thought the whole affair rather creditable to himself. “He wanted to submit it to a friend of mine; and if my friend’s judgment was favorable he might want to reconsider his decision. He returned the manuscript the same day, with a queer note which left me to infer that my mysterious friend had already seen it, and had seen enough of it. I knew it was Mr. Kane, and for a while I wanted to destroy him. But I forgave him, when I thought it all over.”
“It was pretty mean of him,” said Mrs. Denton.
“No, no! He had a perfect right to do it, and I had no right to complain. But it took me a little time to own it.{229}”
Mrs. Denton turned to Peace. “Did you know about it?”
Denton burst suddenly into the room, and stared distractedly about as if he were searching for something.
“What is it, Ansel?” Peace asked.
“That zinc plate.”
“It’s on the bureau,” said his wife.
He was rushing out, when she recalled him.
“Here’s Mr. Ray.”
He turned, and glanced at Ray impatiently, as if he were eager to get back to his work; but the gloomy face which he usually wore was gone; his eyes expressed only an intense preoccupation through which gleamed a sudden gayety, as if it flashed into them from some happier time in the past. “Oh, yes,” he said to his wife, while he took hold of Ray’s arm and turned him about; “this is the way you want me to look.”
“As soon as your process succeeds, I expect you to look that way all the time. And I’m going to go round and do my work in a low-neck dress; and we are going to have champagne at every meal. I am going to have a day, on my card, and I am going to have afternoon teas and give dinners. We are going into the best society.”
Denton slid his hand down Ray’s arm, and kept Ray’s hand in his hot clasp while he rapidly asked him about the side of his life which that costume represented, as though now for the first time he had a{230} reason for caring to know anything of the world and its pleasures.
“And those people don’t do anything else?” he asked, finally.
“Isn’t it enough?” Ray retorted. “They think they do a great deal.”
Denton laughed in a strange nervous note, catching his breath, and keeping on involuntarily. “Yes; too much. I pity them.”
“Well,” said his wife, “I want to be an object of pity as soon as possible. Don’t lose any more time, now, Ansel, from that precious process.” The light went out of his face again, and he jerked his head erect sharply, like one listening, while he stood staring at her. “Oh, now, don’t be ridiculous, Ansel!” she said.{231}