The Old Gray Homestead

by Frances Parkinson Keyes

"All right, then," burst out Sylvia angrily, "go to your old ball. You seem to think you are an authority on everything. I'm sure I don't want to go, anyway, and dance with a lot of awkward farmers who smell of the cow-stable. I shouldn't think you would care about it either, now that you've had a chance to see things properly done."

"I care a good deal about my sister, Sylvia, and about my friends here, too. There are no better people on the face of the earth—I've heard you say so, yourself! It's only a chance that I'm a little less awkward than some of the others."

The result of this conversation was that Austin did not go near Sylvia for several days. He was deeply hurt, but that was not all. He began to wonder, even more than he ever had before, whether his comparative poverty, his lack of education, his farmer family and traditions and friends, were not very real barriers between himself and a girl like Sylvia. What was more, he questioned whether a strong, passionate, determined man, who felt that he knew his own best course and proposed to take it, could ever make such a delicate, self-willed little creature happy, even if there were no other obstacles in their path than those of warring disposition.

Something of his old sullenness of manner returned, and his mother, after worrying in silence over him for a time finally asked him what the trouble was. At first he denied that there was anything, next stubbornly refused to tell her what it was, and at last, like a hurt schoolboy, blurted out his grievance. To his amazement and grief, Mrs. Gray took Sylvia's part. This was the last straw. He jerked himself away from her, and went out, slamming the front door after him. It was evening, and he was tired and hot and dirty. The rest of the family had almost finished supper when he reached the table, an unexpected delay having arisen in the barn, and he had eaten the unappetizing scraps that remained hurriedly, without taking time to shave and bathe and change his clothes. He had never gone to Sylvia in this manner before; but he strode down the path to her house with a bitter satisfaction in his heart that she was to see him when he was looking and feeling his worst, and that she would have to take him as he was, or not at all. He found her in her garden cutting roses, a picture of dainty elegance in her delicate white fabrics. She greeted him somewhat coolly, as if to punish him for his lack of deference to her on his last visit, and his subsequent neglect, and glanced at his costume with a disapproval which she was at no pains to conceal. Then with a sarcasm and lack of tact which she had never shown before, she gave voice to her general dissatisfaction.

"Really, Austin, don't come near me, please; you're altogether too barny. Don't you think you're carrying your devotion to the nobility of labor a little too far, and your devotion to me—if you still have any—not quite far enough? You're slipping straight back to your old slovenly, disagreeable ways—without the excuse that you formerly had that they were practically the only ways open to you. If you're too proud to accept my money and the freedom that it can give you, and so stubborn that you make a scene and then won't come near me for days because I refuse to go to a cheap little public dance with you—"

She got no farther. Austin interrupted her with a violence of which she would not have believed him capable.

"If! If you're too stubborn to go with me to my sister's graduation ball, and too proud to accept the fact that I'm a farmer, with a farmer's friends and family and work, and that I'm damned glad of it, and won't give them up, or be supported by any woman on the face of the earth, or let her make a pet lap-dog of me, you can go straight back to the life you came from, for all me! You seem to prefer it, after all, and I believe it's all you deserve. If you don't—don't ask my forgiveness for the things you've said the last two times I've seen you, and say you'll go to that party with me, and be just as darned pleasant to every one there as you know how to be—and promise to stop quarrelling, and keep your promise—I'll never come near you again. You're making my life utterly miserable. You won't marry me, and yet you are bound to have me make love to you all the time, when I'm doing my best to keep my hands off you—and I'd rather be shot than marry you, on the terms you're putting up to me at present! You've got two days to think it over in, and if you don't send for me before it's time to start for the ball, and tell me you're sorry, you won't get another chance to send for me again as long as you live. I'm either not worth having at all, or I'm worth treating better than you've seen fit to do lately!"

He left her, without even looking at her again, in a white heat of fury. But before the hot dawn of another June day had given him an excuse to get up and try to work off his feelings with the most strenuous labor that he could find, he had spent a horrible sleepless night which he was never to forget as long as he lived. His anger gave way first to misery, and then to a panic of fear. Suppose she took him literally—though he had meant every word when he said it—suppose he lost her? What would the rest of his life be worth to him, alone, haunted, not only by his senseless folly in casting away such a precious treasure, but by his ingratitude, his presumption, and his own unworthiness? A dozen times he started towards her house, only to turn back again. She hadn't been fair. They couldn't be happy that way. If he gave in now, he would have to do it all the rest of his life, and she would despise him for it. As the time which he had stipulated went by, and no message came, he suffered more and more intensely—hoped, savagely, that she was suffering, too, and decided that she could not be, or that he would have heard from her; but resolved, more and more decidedly, with every hour that passed, that he would fight this battle out to the bitter end.

It was even later than usual when he came in on the night of the ball, and when he entered, every one in the house was hurrying about in the inevitable confusion which precedes a "great occasion." Edith, the only one who seemed to be ready, was standing in the middle of the living-room, fresh and glowing as a yellow rose in her bright dress, Peter beside her buttoning her gloves. She glanced at her grimy brother with a feeble interest.

"Mercy, Austin, you'd better hurry! We're going to leave in five minutes."