The Old Gray Homestead

by Frances Parkinson Keyes

"Austin—when it's in you to say such nice things as you have several times to-night, why do you waste time saying disagreeable ones—the way you usually do to everybody?"

"I've just told you, I don't know, but I'm going to do better."

"Well—there was once a girl, whose father had died when she was a baby and who lived with her mother and a maid in a tiny flat in New York City. It was a pretty little flat, and they had plenty to eat and to wear, and a good many pleasant friends and acquaintances; but they didn't have much money—that is, compared to the other people they knew. This girl went to a school where all her mates had ten times as much spending money as she did, who possessed hundreds of things which she coveted, and who were constantly showering favors upon her which she had no way of returning. So, from the earliest time that she could remember, she felt discontented and dissatisfied, and regarded herself as having been picked out by Providence for unusual misfortunes; and her mother agreed with her.

"I fancy it is never very pleasant to be poor. But if one can be frankly poor, in calico and overalls, the way you've been, I don't believe it's quite so hard as it is to be poor and try 'to keep up appearances'; as the saying is. This girl learned very early the meaning of that convenient phrase. She gave parties, and went without proper food for a week afterwards; she had pretty dresses to wear to dances, and wore shabby finery about the house; she bought theatre tickets and candy, but never had a cent to give to charity; she usually stayed in the sweltering city all summer, because there was not enough money to go away for the summer, and still have some left for the next winter's season; and she spent two years at miserable little second-rate 'pensions' in Europe—that pet economy of fashionable Americans who would not for one moment, in their own country, put up with the bad food, and the unsanitary quarters, and the vulgar associates which they endure there.

"Before she was sixteen years old this girl began to be 'attractive to men,' as another stock phrase goes. I may be mistaken, and I'll never have a chance now to find out whether I am or not, but I believe if I had a daughter like that, it would be my earnest wish to bring her up in some quiet country place where she could dress simply, and spend much time outdoors, and not see too many people until she was nineteen or twenty. But the mother I have been talking about didn't feel that way. She taught her daughter to make the most of her looks—her eyes and her mouth, and her figure; she showed her how to arrange her dress in a way which should seem simple—and really be alluring; she drilled her in the art of being flippant without being pert, of appearing gentle when she was only sly, of saying the right thing at the right time, and—what is much more important—keeping still at the right time. The pupil was docile because she was eager to learn and she was clever. She made very few mistakes, and she never made the same one twice.

"Of course, all this education had one aim and end—a rich husband. 'I hope I've brought you up too sensibly,' the mother used to say, 'for you to even think of throwing yourself away on the first attractive boy that proposes to you. Your type is just the kind to appeal to some big, heavy, oversated millionaire. Keep your eyes open for him.' The daughter was as obedient in listening to this counsel as she had been in regard to the others, for it fell in exactly with her own wishes; she was tired of being poor, of scrimping and saving and 'keeping up appearances.' The innumerable young bank clerks and journalists and teachers and college students who fluttered about her burnt their moth-wings to no avail. But that rara avis, a really rich man, found her very kind to him.

"Well, you can guess the result. When she was not quite eighteen, a man who was beyond question a millionaire proposed to her, and she accepted him. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, and was certainly big, heavy, and oversated. Her uncle—her father's brother—came to her mother, and told her certain plain facts about this man, and his father and grandfather before him, and charged her to tell the child what she would be doing if she married him. Perhaps if the uncle had gone to the girl herself, it might have done some good—perhaps it wouldn't have—you see she was so tired of being poor that she thought nothing else mattered. Anyway, he felt a woman could break these ugly facts to a young girl better than a man, and he was right. Only, you see, the mother never told at all; not that she really feared that her daughter would be foolish and play false to her excellent training—but, still, it was just as well to be on the safe side. The millionaire was quite mad about his little fiancée; he was perfectly willing to pay—in advance—all the expenses for a big, fashionable wedding, with twelve bridesmaids and a wedding-breakfast at Sherry's; he was eager to load her with jewels, and settle a large sum of money upon her, and take her around the world for her honeymoon journey; he loved her little soft tricks of speech, the shy way in which she dropped her eyes, the curve of the simple white dress that fell away from her neck when she leaned towards him; and though she saw him drink—and drank with him more than once before her marriage—he took excellent care that it was not until several nights afterwards that she found him—really drunk; and they must have been married two months before she began to—really comprehend what she had done.

"There isn't much more to tell—that can be told. The woman who sells herself—with or without a wedding ring—has probably always existed, and probably always will; but I doubt whether any one of them ever has told—or ever will—the full price which she pays in her turn. She deserves all the censure she gets, and more—but, oh! she does deserve a little pity with it! When this girl had been married nearly a year, she heard her husband coming upstairs one night long after midnight, in a condition she had learned to recognize—and fear. She locked her bedroom door. When he discovered that, he was furiously angry; as I said before, he was a big man, and he was very strong. He knocked out a panel, put his hand through, and turned the key. When he reached her, he reminded her that she had been perfectly willing to marry him—that she was his wife, his property, anything you choose to call it; he struck her. The next day she was very ill, and the child which should have been born three months later came—and went—before evening. The next year she was not so fortunate; her second baby was born at the right time—her husband was away with another woman when it happened—a horrible, diseased little creature with staring, sightless eyes. Thank God! it lived only two weeks, and its mother, after a long period of suffering and agony during which she felt like a leper, recovered again, in time to see her husband die—after three nights, during which she got no sleep—of delirium tremens, leaving her with over two million dollars to spend as she chose—and the degradation of her body and the ruin of her soul to think of all the rest of her life!"

"Sylvia!"—the cry with which Austin broke his long silence came from the innermost depths of his being—"Sylvia, Sylvia, you shan't say such things—they're not true. Don't throw yourself on the ground and cry that way." He bent over her, vainly trying to keep his own voice from trembling. "If I could have guessed what—telling this—this hideous story would mean to you, I never should have let you do it. And it's all my fault that you felt you ought to do it—partly because of those vile speeches I made the other evening, partly because I've let you see how wickedly discontented I've been myself, partly because you must have heard me urging my own sister to make practically this same kind of a marriage. Oh, if it's any comfort to you to know it, you haven't told me in vain! Sylvia, do speak to me, and tell me that you believe me, and that you forgive me!"

She managed to give him the assurance he sought, her desperate, passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and drew closer to her to listen to her breathing; at first there was a little catch in it, betraying sobs not yet wholly controlled, then gradually it grew calm and even; she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.