The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

When Peace came back to her work, Mr. Brandreth, in admiration of her / spirit, confided to Ray that she had refused to take pay for the time / she had been away, and that no arguments availed with her.

"They must have been at unusual expense on account of this sickness, and / I understand that the son-in-law hasn't earned anything for a month. But / what can you do?"

"You can't do anything," said Ray. Their poverty might be finally / reached from without, and it was not this which made him chiefly anxious / in his futile sympathy for Peace. He saw her isolated in the presence of / troubles from which he was held as far aloof as her father lived in his / dream of a practicable golden age. Their common sorrow, which ought to / have drawn the mother and father of the dead children nearer together, / seemed to have alienated them. After the first transports of her grief, / Mrs. Denton appeared scarcely to miss the little ones; the cat, which / they had displaced so rarely, was now always in her lap, and her idle, / bantering talk went on, about anything, about everything, as before, but / with something more of mockery for her husband's depressions and / exaltations. It might have been from a mistaken wish to rouse him to / some sort of renewed endeavor that she let her reckless tongue run upon / what he had done with his process; it might have been from her / perception that he was most vulnerable there; Ray could not decide. For / the most part Denton remained withdrawn from the rest, a shadow and a / silence which they ignored. Sometimes he broke in with an irrelevant / question or comment, but oftener he evaded answering when they spoke to / him. If his wife pressed him at such times he left them; and then they / heard him talking to himself in his room, after an old habit of his; now / and then Ray thought he was praying. If he did not come back, Peace / followed him, and then her voice could be heard in entreaty with him.

"She's the only one that can do anything with Ansel," her sister lightly / explained one evening. "She has so much patience with him; father hasn't / any more than I have; but Peace can persuade him out of almost anything / except his great idea of sacrifice."

"Sacrifice? " Ray repeated.

"Yes. I don't know what he means. But he thinks he's been very wicked, / trying to invent that process, and he can't get forgiveness without some / kind of sacrifice. He's found it in the Old Testament somewhere. _I_ / tell him it's a great pity he didn't live in the days of the prophets; / he might have passed for one. I don't know what he's going to do. He / says we must make some sacrifice; but I can't see what we've got left / to sacrifice. We might make a burnt offering of the chairs in father's / stove; the coal's about gone."

She stopped, and looked up at Denton, who had come in with a book in his / hand; Peace glided in behind him.

"Oh, are you going to read us something, Ansel? " his wife asked with her / smile of thoughtless taunting. "I don't see why you don't give public / readings. You could read better than the elocutionists that used to read / to us in the Family. And it wouldn't be taking the bread out of any one / else's mouth. " She turned to Ray: "You know Ansel's given up his place / so as to let another man have his chance. It was the least he could do / after he had tried to take away the livelihood of so many by inventing / that wicked process of his."

Denton gave no sign of having heard her. He fixed his troubled eyes on / Ray. "Do you know that poem? " he asked, handing him the open book.

"Oh, yes," said Ray.

"It's a mistake," said Denton, "all a mistake. I should like to write to / Tennyson and tell him so. I've thought it out. The true sacrifice would / have been the best, not the dearest; the best."

The next day was Sunday, and it broke, with that swift, capricious heat / of our climate, after several days of cloudy menace. The sun shone, and / the streets were thronged with people. They were going to church in / different directions, but there was everywhere a heavy trend toward the / stations of the elevated road, and the trains were crammed with men, / women and children going to the Park. When Ray arrived there with one of / the throngs he had joined, he saw the roads full of carriages, and in / the paths black files of foot-passengers pushing on past the seats / packed with those who had come earlier, and sat sweltering under the / leafless trees. The grass was already green; some of the forwarder / shrubs were olive-gray with buds.

Ray walked deep into the Park. He came in sight of a bench near a shelf / of rock in a by-path, with a man sitting alone on it. There was room for / two, and Ray made for the place.

The man sat leaning forward with his heavy blonde head hanging down as / if he might have been drunk. He suddenly lifted himself, and Ray saw / that it was Denton. His face was red from the blood that had run into / it, but as it grew paler it showed pathetically thin. He stared at Ray / confusedly, and did not know him till he spoke.

Then he said, "Oh! " and put out his hand. A sudden kindness in Ray, more / than he commonly felt for the man whom he sometimes pitied, but never / liked, responded to the overture.

"May I have part of your bench? " he asked.

"Yes," said Denton. "Sit down," and he made way for him. "It isn't mine; / it's one of the few things in this cursed town that belongs to every / one."

"Well," said Ray, cheerfully, "I suppose we're all proprietors of the / Park, even if we're not allowed to walk on our own grass."

"Yes; but don't get me thinking about that. There's been too much of / that in my life. I want to get away -- away from it all. We are going into / the country. Do you know about those abandoned farms in New England? / Could we go and take up one of them?"