The Old Gray Homestead

by Frances Parkinson Keyes

"I say it to make you realize the truth, because I'm honest."

Molly and Katherine were busy at the Homestead in those days, Sally and Ruth in their own little houses; but Edith was at the brick cottage a great deal. In spite of all Peter's loving care, and the treatment of a great doctor whom Sylvia had insisted she should see in London, she was not very strong, and found that she must still let the long days slip by quietly, while the white hands, that had once been so plump and brown, grew steadily whiter and slimmer. She came upon Sylvia one sultry afternoon, folding and sorting little clothes, arranging them in neat, tiny piles in the scented, silk-lined drawers of a new bureau, and after she had helped her put them all in order, with hardly a word, she leaned her head against Sylvia's and whispered:

"I do wish there were some for me."

"I know, dear; but you're very young yet. Many wives are glad when this doesn't happen right away. Sally is."

"I know. But, you see, I feel that perhaps there never will be any for me—and that seems really only fair—doesn't it?"

Sylvia was silent. Her sympathy would not allow her to tell all the London doctor had said to her about her young sister-in-law; neither would it allow her to be untruthful. But certain phrases he had used came back to her with tragic intensity.

"Many a woman who can recuperate almost miraculously from organic disease fails to rally from shock—we've been overlooking that too long."—"Every sleepless night undoes the good that the sunshine during the daytime has wrought, and after many sleepless nights the days become simply horrible preludes to more terrors."—"I can't drug a child like that to a long life of uselessness—make her as happy as you can, but let her have it over with as quickly as Nature will allow it—or take her to some other man—I can't in charity to her tell you anything else."

So Sylvia and Peter made her "as happy as they could," and that they hoped at times was very happy, indeed; but the look of dread never left her eyes for long, and the tired smile which had replaced her ringing laugh came less and less often to her pale lips.

There was another faithful visitor at the brick cottage that summer, for after the end of June, Thomas, who came home from college at that time, seemed to be on hand a good deal. He, as well as Austin, had proved false to Uncle Mat's prophecy; for far from falling in love with another girl within a year, he showed not the slightest indication of doing so, but seemed to find perfect satisfaction in the society of his own family, especially that portion of it in which Sylvia was, for the moment, to be found. Austin at first marvelled at the ease with which he had accepted her for a sister; but the boy's perfect transparency of behavior made it impossible to feel that the new and totally different affection which he now felt for her was a pose. Gradually he grew to depend on Thomas to "look after Sylvia" when, for one reason or another, he was called away. His interests at the bank took him more and more frequently to Wallacetown; there were cattle auctions, too important to neglect, a day's journey from home; there was even a tiny opening beginning to loom up on the political horizon. Austin was too bound by every tie of blood and affection to the Homestead ever to build his hearth-fire permanently elsewhere; but he was also rapidly growing too big to be confined by it to the exclusion of the new opportunities which seemed to be offering themselves to him in such rapid succession in every direction.

Coming in very late one evening in August after one of these necessary absences, he found Sylvia already in bed, their room dark. She had never failed to wait up for him before. He felt a sudden pang of anxiety and contrition.