“Oh, it isn’t at all hot,” said Ray, and in fact the air was blowing
freely in through the plants at the open window. Then he sat down, as if
to prove that it was not too hot; there was no other reason that he
could have given for staying, instead of going back to Kane and her
father.
“We can keep the windows open on this side,” said Mrs. Denton, “but the
elevated makes too much noise in front. When we came here first, it was
warm weather; it was stifling when we shut the windows, and when we
opened them, it seemed as if the trains would drive us wild. It was like
having them in the same room with us. But now it’s a little cooler, and
we don’t need the front windows open; so it’s very pleasant.”
Ray said it was delightful, and he asked, “Then you haven’t been in New
York long?”
“No; only since the beginning of September. We thought we would settle
in New Jersey first, and we did take a house there, in the country; but
it was too far from my husband’s work, and so we moved in. Father wants
to meet people; he’s more in the current here.”
As she talked, Mrs. Denton had a way of looking down at her apron, and
smoothing it across her knees with one hand, and now and then glancing
at Ray out of the corner of her eye, as if she were smiling on the
further side of her face.
“We went out there a little while ago to sell off the things we didn’t
want to keep. The neighbors took them.” She began to laugh, and Ray
laughed, too, when she said, “We found they had taken _some_ of them
before we got there. They might as well have taken all, they paid us so
little for the rest. I didn’t suppose there would be such a difference
between first-hand and second-hand things. But it was the first time we
had ever set up housekeeping for ourselves, and we had to make mistakes.
We had always lived in a community.”
She looked at him for the impression of this fact, and Ray merely said,
“Yes; Mr. Kane told me something of the kind.”
“It’s all very different in the world. I don’t know whether you’ve ever
been in a community?”
“No,” said Ray.
“Well,” she went on, “we’ve had to get used to all sorts of things since
we came out into the world. The very day we left the community, I heard
some people in the seat just in front of me, in the car, planning how
they should do something to get a living; it seemed ridiculous and
dreadful. It fairly frightened me.”
Ray was struck with the literary value of the fact. He said: “I suppose
it would be startling if we could any of us realize it for the first
time. But for most of us there never is any first time.”
Mrs. Denton said: “No, but in the community we never had to think how we
should get things to eat and wear, any more than how we should get air
to breathe. You know father believes that the world can be made like the
Family, in that, and everybody be sure of a living, if he is willing to
work.”
She glanced at Ray with another of her demure looks, which seemed
inquiries both as to his knowledge of the facts and his opinion of them.
“I didn’t know just what your father’s ideas were,” he said; and she
went on:
“Yes; he thinks all you’ve got to do is to have patience. But it seems
to me you’ve got to have money too, or you’ll starve to death before
your patience gives out.”
Mrs. Denton laughed, and Ray sat looking at her with a curious mixture
of liking and misgiving: he would have liked to laugh with her from the
poet in him, but his civic man could not approve of her
irresponsibility. In her quality of married woman, she was more
reprehensible than she would have been as a girl; as a girl, she might
well have been merely funny. Still, she was a woman, and her voice, if
it expressed an irresponsible nature, was sweet to hear. She seemed not
to dislike hearing it herself, and she let it run lightly on. “The
hardest thing for us, though, has been getting used to money, and the
care of it. It seems to be just as bad with a little as a great
deal--the care does; and you have to be thinking about it all the time;
we never had to think of it at all in the Family. Most of us never saw
it, or touched it; only the few that went out and sold and bought
things.”
“That’s very odd,” said Ray, trying the notion if it would not work
somewhere into literature; at the same time he felt the charm of this
pretty young woman, and wondered why her sister did not come back. He
heard her talking with Kane in the other room; now and then her voice,
gentle and clear and somewhat high, was lost in Kane’s laugh, or the
hoarse plunge of her father’s bass.
“Yes,” Mrs. Denton went on, “I think I feel it more than my husband or
my sister does; they just have to earn the money, but I have to take
care of it, and see how far I can make it go. It’s perfectly
distracting; and sometimes when I forget, and do something careless!”
She let an impressive silence follow, and Ray laughed.
“Yes, that’s an anxious time for us, even if we’re brought up with the
advantages of worldly experience.”
“Anxious!” Mrs. Denton repeated; and her tongue ran on. “Why, the day I
went out to New Jersey with my sister to settle up our ‘estate’ out
there, we each of us had a baby to carry--my children are twins, and we
couldn’t leave them here with father; it was bad enough to leave him!
and my husband was at work; and on the train coming home I forgot and
gave the twins my pocket-book to play with; and just then a kind old
gentleman put up the car window for me, and the first thing I knew they
threw it out into the water--we were crossing that piece of water before
you get to Jersey City. It had every cent of my money in it; and I was
so scared when they threw my pocket-book away--we always say _they_,
because they’re so much alike we never can remember which did a thing--I
was so scared that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I just screamed
out all about it.” Ray listened restively; he felt as if he were
eavesdropping; but he did not know quite how, or when, or whether, after
all, to tell her that he had witnessed the whole affair; he decided that
he had better not; and she went on: “My sister said it was just as if I
had begged of the whole carful; and I suppose it was. I don’t suppose
that a person who was more used to money would have given it to a baby
to play with.”
She stopped, and Ray suddenly changed his mind; he thought he ought not
to let her go on as if he knew nothing about it; that was hardly fair.
“The conductor,” he said, “appeared to think _any_ woman would have done
it.”
Mrs. Denton laughed out her delight. “It _was_ you, then. My sister was
sure it was, as soon as she saw you at Mr. Chapley’s.”
“At Mr. Chapley’s?”
“Yes; his store. That is where she works. You didn’t see her, but she
saw you,” said Mrs. Denton; and then Ray recalled that Mr. Brandreth had
sent to a Miss Hughes for the list of announcements she had given him.
“We saw you noticing us in the car, and we saw you talking with the
conductor. Did he say anything else about us?” she asked, significantly.
“I don’t know exactly what you mean,” Ray answered, a little
consciously, and coloring slightly.
“Why,” Mrs. Denton began; but she stopped at sight of her sister, who
came in with the empty tumbler in her hand, and set it down in the room
beyond. “Peace!” she called to her, and the girl came back reluctantly,
Ray fancied. He had remained standing since her reappearance, and Mrs.
Denton said, introducing them, “This is my sister, Mr. Ray;” and then
she cried out joyfully, “It _was_ Mr. Ray!” while he bowed ceremoniously
to the girl, who showed an embarrassment that Mrs. Denton did not share.
“The conductor told him that any woman would have given her baby her
pocket-book to play with; and so you see I wasn’t so very bad, after
all. But when one of these things happens to me, it seems as if the
world had come to an end; I can’t get over it. Then we had another
experience! One of the passengers that heard me say all our money was in
that pocket-book, gave the conductor a dollar for us, to pay our
car-fares home. We had to take it; we _couldn’t_ have carried the
children from the ferry all the way up here; but I never knew before
that charity hurt so. It was dreadful!”
A certain note made itself evident in her voice which Ray felt as an
appeal. “Why, I don’t think you need have considered it as charity. It
was what might have happened to any lady who had lost her purse.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Miss Hughes broke in. “It would have been offered
then so that it could be returned. We were to blame for not making the
conductor say who gave it. But we were so confused!”
“I think the giver was to blame for not sending his address with it. But
perhaps he was confused too,” said Ray.
“The conductor told us it was a lady,” said Mrs. Denton, with a sudden
glance upward at Ray.
They all broke into a laugh together, and the girl sprang up and went
into another room. She came back with a bank-note in her hand, which she
held out toward Ray.
He did not offer to take it. “I haven’t pleaded guilty yet.”
“No,” said Mrs. Denton; “but we know you did it. Peace always thought
you did; and now we’ve got you in our power, and you _must_ take it
back.”
“But you didn’t use it all. You gave a quarter to the old darkey who
whistled. You’re as bad as I am. You do charity, too.”
“No; he earned his quarter. You paid him something yourself,” said the
girl.
“He did whistle divinely,” Ray admitted. “How came you to think of
asking him to change your bill? I should have thought you’d have given
it all to him.”
They had a childlike joy in his railery, which they laughed simply out.
“We did want to,” Mrs. Denton said; “but we didn’t know how we could get
home.”
“I don’t see but that convicts me.” Ray put out his hand as if to take
the note, and then withdrew it. “I suppose I ought to take it,” he
began. “But if I did, I should just spend it on myself. And the fact is,
I had saved it on myself, or else, perhaps, I shouldn’t have given it to
the conductor for you.” He told them how he had economized on his
journey, and they laughed together at the picture he gave of his
satisfaction in his self-denial.
“Oh, I know that _good_ feeling!” said Mrs. Denton.
“Yes, but you can’t imagine how _superior_ I felt when I handed my
dollar over to the conductor. _Good_ is no name for it; and I’ve simply
gloated over my own merit ever since. Miss Hughes, you must keep that
dollar, and give it to somebody who needs it!”
This was not so novel as it seemed to Ray; but the sisters glanced at
each other as if struck with its originality.
Then the girl looked at him steadily out of her serene eyes a moment, as
if thinking what she had better do, while Mrs. Denton cooed her pleasure
in the situation.
“I knew just as _well_, when the conductor said it was a lady passenger
sent it! He said it like a sort of after-thought, you know; he turned
back to say it just after he left us.”
“Well, I will do that,” said the girl to Ray; and she carried the money
back to her room.
“Do sit down!” said Mrs. Denton to Ray when she came back. The community
of experience, and the wonder of the whole adventure, launched them
indefinitely forward towards intimacy in their acquaintance. “We were
awfully excited when my sister came home and said she had seen you at
Mr. Chapley’s.” Her sister did not deny it; but when Mrs. Denton added
the question, “Are you an author?” she protested--“Jenny!”
“I wish I were,” said Ray; “but I can’t say I am, yet. That depends upon
whether Mr. Chapley takes my book.”
He ventured to be so frank because he thought Miss Hughes probably knew
already that he had offered a manuscript; but if she knew, she made no
sign of knowing, and Mrs. Denton said:
“Mr. Chapley gives my sister all the books he publishes. Isn’t it
splendid? And he lets her bring home any of the books she wants to, out
of the store. Are you acquainted in his family?”
“No; I only know Mr. Brandreth, his son-in-law.”
“My sister says he’s very nice. Everybody likes Mr. Brandreth. Mr.
Chapley is an old friend of father’s. I should think his family would
come to see us, some of them. But they haven’t. Mr. Chapley comes ever
so much.”
Ray did not know what to say of a fact which Mrs. Denton did not suffer
to remain last in his mind. She went on, as if it immediately followed.
“We are reading Browning now. But my husband likes Shelley the best of
all. Which is your favorite poet?”
Ray smiled. “I suppose Shelley ought to be. I was named after him.” When
he had said this he thought it rather silly, and certainly superfluous.
So he added, “My father was a great reader of him when he was a young
man, and I got the benefit of his taste, if it’s a benefit.”
“Why, do you hate to be named Shelley?” Mrs. Denton asked.
“Oh, no; except as I should hate to be named Shakespeare; it suggests
comparisons.”
“Yes; but it’s a very pretty name.” As if it recalled him, she said, “My
husband was just going out with the twins when you came in with Mr.
Kane. He was taking them over to the Park. Do you like cats?” She leaned
over and lugged up into her lap a huge Maltese from the further side of
her. “My sister doesn’t because they eat sparrows.” She passed her hand
slowly down the cat’s smooth flank, which snapped electrically, while
the cat shut its eyes to a line of gray light.
“If your cat’s fond of sparrows, he ought to come and live with me,”
said Ray. “I’ve got a whole colony of them outside of my dormer-window.”
Mrs. Denton lifted the cat’s head and rubbed her cheek on it. “Oh, we’ve
got plenty of sparrows here, too. Where do you live? Down town? Mr. Kane
does.”
Ray gave a picturesque account of his foreign hotel; but he had an
impression that its strangeness was thrown away upon his hearers, who
seemed like children in their contact with the world; it was all so
strange that nothing was stranger than another to them. They thought
what he told them of life in Midland as queer as life in New York.
The talk went on without sequence or direction, broken with abrupt
questions and droll comments; and they laughed a good deal. They spoke
of poems and of dreams. Ray told of a fragment of a poem he had made in
a dream, and repeated it; they thought it was fine, or at least Mrs.
Denton said she did. Her sister did not talk much, but she listened, and
now and then she threw in a word. She sat against the light, and her
face was in shadow to Ray, and this deepened his sense of mystery in
her; her little head, so distinctly outlined, was beautiful. Her voice,
which was so delicate and thin, had a note of childish innocence in it.
Mrs. Denton cooed deep and low. She tried to make her sister talk more,
and tell this and that. The girl did not seem afraid or shy, but only
serious. Several times they got back to books, and at one of these times
it appeared that she knew of Ray’s manuscript, and that it was going
through the hands of the readers.
“And what is the name of your story?” Mrs. Denton asked, and before he
could tell her she said, “Oh, yes; I forgot,” and he knew that they must
have talked of it together. He wondered if Miss Hughes had read it.
“Talking of names,” Mrs. Denton went on, “I think my sister’s got the
queerest one: Peace. Isn’t it a curious name?”
“It’s a beautiful name,” said Ray. “The Spanish give it a great deal, I
believe.”
“Do they? It was a name that mother liked; but she had never heard of
it, although there were so many Faiths, Hopes, and Charities. She died
just a little while after Peace was born, and father gave her the name.”
Ray was too young to feel the latent pathos of the lightly treated fact.
“It’s a beautiful name,” he said again.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Denton, “and it’s so short you can’t _nick_ it. There
can’t be anything shorter than Peace, can there?”
“Truce,” Ray suggested, and this made them laugh.
The young girl rose and went to the window, and began looking over the
plants in the pots there. Ray made bold to go and join her.
“Are you fond of flowers?” she asked gently, and with a seriousness as
if she really expected him to say truly.
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought,” he answered, thinking how pretty she
was, now he had her face where he could see it fully. Her hair was of
the indefinite blonde tending to brown, which most people’s hair is of;
her sensitive face was cast in the American mould that gives us such a
high average of good looks in our women; her eyes were angelically
innocent. When she laughed, her lip caught on her upper teeth, and
clung there; one of the teeth was slightly broken; and both these little
facts fascinated Ray. She did not laugh so much as Mrs. Denton, whose
talk she let run on with a sufferance like that of an older person,
though she was the younger. She and Ray stood awhile there playing the
game of words in which youth hides itself from its kind, and which bears
no relation to what it is feeling. The charm of being in the presence of
a lovely and intelligent girl enfolded Ray like a caressing atmosphere,
and healed him of all the hurts of homesickness, of solitude. Their talk
was intensely personal, because youth is personal, and they were young;
they thought that it dealt with the different matters of taste they
touched on, but it really dealt with themselves, and not their
preferences in literature, in flowers, in cats, in dress, in country and
city. Ray was aware that they were discussing these things in a place
very different from the parlors where he used to enjoy young ladies’
society in Midland; it was all far from the Midland expectation of his
career in New York society. He recalled how, before the days of his
social splendor in Midland, he had often sat and watched his own mother
and sisters about their household work, which they did for themselves,
while they debated the hopes and projects of his future, or let their
hearts out in jest and laughter. Afterwards, he would not have liked to
have this known among the fashionable people in Midland, with whom he
wished to be so perfectly _comme il faut_.
From time to time Mrs. Denton dropped the cat out of her lap, and ran
out to pull the wire which operated the latch of the street door; and
then Ray heard her greeting some comer and showing him into the front
room, where presently he heard him greeting her father. At last there
was a sound below as of some one letting himself in with a latch-key,
and then came the noises of the perambulator wheels bumping from step to
step as it was pulled up. Mrs. Denton sat still, and kept on talking to
Ray, but her sister went out to help her husband; and reappeared with a
sleeping twin in her arms, and carried it into the room adjoining. The
husband, with his pale face flushed from his struggle with the
perambulator, came in with the other, and when he emerged from the next
room again, Mrs. Denton introduced him to Ray.
“Oh, yes,” he said; “I saw you with Mr. Kane.” He sat down a moment at
the other window, and put his bare head out for the air. “It has grown
warm,” he said.
“Was the Park very full?” his wife asked.
“Crowded. It’s one of their last chances for the year.”
“I suppose it made you homesick.”
“Horribly,” said the husband, with his head still half out of the
window. He took it in, and listened with the tolerance of a husband
while she explained him to Ray.
“My husband’s so homesick for the old Family place--it _was_ a pretty
place!--that he almost dies when he goes into the Park; it brings it all
back so. Are you homesick, too, Mr. Ray?”
“Well, not exactly for the country,” said Ray. “I’ve been homesick for
the place I came from--for Midland, that is.”
“Midland?” Denton repeated. “I’ve been there. I think those small cities
are more deadly than New York. They’re still trying to get rid of the
country, and New York is trying to get some of it back. If I had my way,
there wouldn’t be a city, big or little, on the whole continent.” He did
not wait for any reply from Ray, but he asked his wife, “Who’s come?”
She mentioned a number of names, ten or twelve, and he said, “We’d
better go in,” and without further parley he turned toward the curtained
avenue to the front room.