“Oh! Did she give the little dance?”
“No. I dropped in at the Hugheses’ on the way to the dance. But I don’t know how soon she may be doing something of the kind. They’re on the verge of immense prosperity. Her husband has invented a new art process, and it’s going to make them rich. He doesn’t seem very happy about it, but she does. He’s a dreary creature. At first I used to judge her rather severely, as we do with frivolous people. But I don’t know that frivolity is so bad; I doubt if it’s as bad as austerity; they’re both merely the effect of temperament, it strikes me. I like Mrs. Denton, though she does appear to care more for the cat than the twins. Perhaps she thinks she can safely leave them to him. He’s very devoted to them; it’s quite touching. It’s another quality of paternal devotion from Mr. Brandreth’s; it isn’t half so voluble. But it’s funny, all the same, to see how much more care of them he takes than their mother does. He looks after them at table, and he carries them off and puts them to bed with his own hands apparently,” said Ray, in celibate contempt of the paternal tenderness.
“I believe that in David’s community,” Kane suggested, “the male assisted the female in the care of their offspring. We still see the like in some of the feathered tribes. In the process of social evolution the father bird will probably leave the baby bird entirely to the mother bird; and the mother bird, as soon as she begins to have mind and money, will hire in some poor bird to look after them. Mrs. Denton seems to have evolved in the direction of leaving them entirely to the father bird.”
“Well, she has to do most of the talking. Have you ever heard,” Ray asked from the necessary association of ideas, “about her husband’s Voice?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, it seems that Mr. Denton has an inward monitor of some kind, like the demon of Socrates, that they call a Voice, and that directs his course in life, as I understand. I suppose it’s authorized him to go on with his process, which he was doubtful about for a good while, because if it succeeded it would throw a lot of people out of work. Then you’ve never heard of his Voice?”
“No,” said Kane. He added: “I suppose it’s part of the psychical nonsense that they go into in all sorts of communities. And Hughes,” he asked after a moment—“how is Hughes now?”
“He’s generally busy with his writing, and I don’t always see him. He’s a fine old fellow, if he does prefer to call me out of my name; he still addresses me generally as Young Man. Mrs. Denton has tried to teach him better; but he says that names are the most external of all things, and that I am no more essentially Ray than I am Hughes. There’s something in it; I think one might get a kind of story out of the notion.”
Kane lay silent in a pensive muse, which he broke to ask with a smile: “And how is Peace these days? Do you see her?”
“Yes; she’s very well, I believe,” said Ray, briefly, and he rose.