But this patient, loving pity for their erring child was an attitude not easily supposable, and Denasia did not suppose it. She knew from Roland’s report that her appearance as a public singer had caused her parents great sorrow and anger, and she could only imagine a still deeper anger when she added the sin of dancing to other causes of offence. But this alienation from her own people was the bitter drop in all her success and in all her pleasure. For now that the illusions and selfishness of her bride-days were past, the faithful home affection that never wounded and never deceived resumed its importance, and she longed for her father’s kiss and her mother’s breast.
But every day the day’s work is to face, and Denasia’s days were fully occupied by their obvious duties. So week after week and month after month wore on in alternations of hope and despair, happiness and vexation, loving and quarrelling. Roland certainly, with his discontent and abiding sense of wrong, threw a perpetual shadow over life. She did not even dare to take, with any show of pleasure, such poor satisfaction as her passing fame awarded. A man may be jealous of the praise given to his own wife, and there were times when Roland could not understand Denasia’s success and his own failure––bitter hours in which the poor girl felt that whether she pleased her audience or did not please them, her husband was sure to be offended and angry.
She was almost glad when, at the close of the season, 214 the company disbanded and she was at liberty to retire. She had saved money and was resolved to resume her studies. There was at least nothing in that to irritate her husband, and she had a strong desire to improve her talent in every direction. One evening Roland entered their sitting-room in that hurry of hope and satisfaction once common enough to him, but of which he had shown little during the past winter. Denasia looked up from her writing with a smile, to meet his smile.
“Denasia,” he cried impulsively, “what do you think? We are going to America! The United States is the place for me. How soon can you be ready?”
“But, Roland? What?”
“It is true, dear. Whom are you writing to?”
“I was writing to Mr. Harrison and to madame. I want to know if they are going to Broadstairs this summer, for where they go I wish to go also; that is, if they can give me lessons.”
“A waste of money, Denasia. I have had a long talk with some of the men who are here with the American company. Splendid fellows! They tell me that my Shakespearian ideas will set New York agog. New Yorkers give every one a fair hearing; at least ‘there’s nothing beats a trial!’ That is a New York motto, and these people are sure I would have a fair trial there. And the country is so big! So big, Denasia, that the parts you know will last you for years. There is not a bit of need for you to study new songs and dances. Sing the old ones in new places. Why, you may travel thousands 215 of miles in all directions––big cities everywhere, little ones scattered thick as blackberries on all the railroad routes, and railroad routes are spread like spider-webs all over the United States! That is the country for us! New York first of all, then Chicago, St. Louis, Salt Lake, San Francisco, New Orleans––oh, hundreds of cities! And money, my dear! Money for the picking up––that is, for the singing for.”
“I do not believe a word of it, Roland. It is all talk. I am going to Broadstairs to spend the summer in study.”
Roland looked a moment at the handsome, resolute woman who had resumed her writing, and he wondered how this Denasia had sprung from the sweetly obedient little maid he had once manipulated to his will with a look or a word. However, he could not spare her. It was not only her earnings he required; her beauty and talent gave him a kind of reflected importance, and he expected great things from their united efforts in the wonderful new world of which he had just begun to think.