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Frank R. Stockton - "Rudder Grange"

J. W. Mackail - "Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology"

Andrew Lang - "Books and Bookmen"

Edward Gibbon - "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

The Price She Paid

D >> David Graham Phillips >> The Price She Paid




``I see that you have turned over all your money to
mother,'' said Frank to Mildred a few days after the
settlement.

``Of course,'' said Mildred. She was in a mood of
high scorn for sordidness--a mood induced by the
spectacle of the shameful manners of Conover, Frank,
and his wife.

``Do you think that's wise?'' suggested Frank.

``I think it's decent,'' said Mildred.

``Well, I hope you'll not live to regret it,'' said her
brother.

Neither Mrs. Gower nor her daughter had ever had
any experience in the care of money. To both forty-
seven thousand dollars seemed a fortune--forty-seven
thousand dollars in cash in the bank, ready to issue
forth and do their bidding at the mere writing of a
few figures and a signature on a piece of paper. In
a sense they knew that for many years the family's
annual expenses had ranged between forty and fifty
thousand, but in the sense of actuality they knew
nothing about it--a state of affairs common enough
in families where the man is in absolute control and
spends all he makes. Money always had been forthcomcoming;{sic}
therefore money always would be forthcoming.

The mourning and the loss of the person who had
filled and employed their lives caused the widow and
the daughter to live very quietly during the succeeding
year. They spent only half of their capital. For
reasons of selfish and far-sighted prudence which need
no detailing Frank moved away to New York within
six months of his father's death and reduced communication
between himself and wife and his mother and
sister to a frigid and rapidly congealing minimum.
He calculated that by the time their capital was con-
sumed they would have left no feeling of claim upon
him or he feeling of duty toward them.

It was not until eighteen months after her father's
death, when the total capital was sunk to less than
fifteen thousand dollars, that Mildred awakened to the
truth of their plight. A few months at most, and
they would have to give up that beautiful house which
had been her home all her life. She tried to grasp
the meaning of the facts as her intelligence presented
them to her, but she could not. She had no practical
training whatever. She had been brought up as a rich
man's child, to be married to a rich man, and never to
know anything of the material details of life beyond
what was necessary in managing servants after the
indifferent fashion of the usual American woman of the
comfortable classes. She had always had a maid; she
could not even dress herself properly without the maid's
assistance. Life without a maid was inconceivable;
life without servants was impossible.

She wandered through the house, through the
grounds. She said to herself again and again: ``We
have got to give up all this, and be miserably poor--
with not a servant, with less than the tenement people
have.'' But the words conveyed no meaning to her.
She said to herself again and again: ``I must rouse
myself. I must do something. I must--must--
must!'' But she did not rouse, because there was nothing
to rouse. So far as practical life was concerned
she was as devoid of ideas as a new-born baby.

There was but the one hope--marriage, a rich
marriage. It is the habit of men who can take care of
themselves and of women who are securely well taken
care of to scorn the woman or the helpless-bred man
who marries for money or even entertains that idea.
How little imagination these scorners have! To marry
for a mere living, hardly better than one could make
for oneself, assuredly does show a pitiful lack of self-
reliance, a melancholy lack of self-respect. But for
men or women all their lives used to luxury and with
no ability whatever at earning money--for such persons
to marry money in order to save themselves from
the misery and shame that poverty means to them is the
most natural, the most human action conceivable. The
man or the woman who says he or she would not do it,
either is a hypocrite or is talking without thinking.
You may in honesty criticize and condemn a social system
that suffers men and women to be so crudely and
criminally miseducated by being given luxury they did
not earn. But to condemn the victims of that system
for acting as its logic compels is sheer folly or sheer
phariseeism.

Would Mildred Gower have married for money? As
the weeks fled, as the bank account dwindled, she would
have grasped eagerly at any rich man who might have
offered himself--no matter how repellent he might
have been. She did not want a bare living; she did not
want what passes with the mass of middle-class people
for comfort. She wanted what she had--the beautiful
and spacious house, the costly and fashionable clothing,
the servants, the carriages and motors, the thousand
and one comforts, luxuries, and vanities to which she
had always been used. In the brain of a young woman
of poor or only comfortably off family the thoughts
that seethed in Mildred Gower's brain would have been
so many indications of depravity. In Mildred Gower's
brain they were the natural, the inevitable, thoughts.
They indicated everything as to her training, nothing
as to her character. So, when she, thinking only of a
rich marriage with no matter whom, and contrasting
herself with the fine women portrayed in the novels and
plays, condemned herself as shameless and degraded,
she did herself grave injustice.

But no rich man, whether attractive or repulsive,
offered. Indeed, no man of any kind offered. Instead,
it was her mother who married.

A widower named James Presbury, elderly, with an
income of five to six thousand a year from inherited
wealth, stumbled into Hanging Rock to live, was
impressed by the style the widow Gower maintained,
believed the rumor that her husband had left her better
off than was generally thought, proposed, and was
accepted. And two years and a month after Henry
Gower's death his widow became Mrs. James Presbury
--and ceased to veil from her new husband the truth
as to her affairs.

Mildred had thought that, than the family quarrels
incident to settling her father's estate, human nature
could no lower descend. She was now to be disillusioned.
When a young man or a young woman blunders
into a poor marriage in trying to make a rich
one, he or she is usually withheld from immediate and
frank expression by the timidity of youth. Not so
the elderly man or woman. As we grow older, no mat-
ter how timidly conventional we are by nature, we
become, through selfishness or through indifference to the
opinion of others or through impatience of petty
restraint, more and more outspoken. Old Presbury
discovered how he had tricked himself four days after the
wedding. He and his bride were at the Waldorf in
New York, a-honeymooning.

The bride had never professed to be rich. She had
simply continued in her lifelong way, had simply acted
rich. She well knew the gaudy delusions her admirer
was entertaining, and she saw to it that nothing was
said or done to disturb him. She inquired into his affairs,
made sure of the substantiality of the comparatively
small income he possessed, decided to accept him
as her best available chance to escape becoming a
charge upon her anything but eager and generous
relatives. She awaited the explosion with serenity.
She cared not a flip for Presbury, who was a soft and
silly old fool, full of antiquated compliments and so
drearily the inferior of Henry Gower, physically and
mentally, that even she could appreciate the difference,
the descent. She rather enjoyed the prospect of a
combat with him, of the end of dissimulating her
contempt. She had thought out and had put in
arsenal ready for use a variety of sneers, jeers, and
insults that suggested themselves to her as she
listened and simpered and responded while he was
courting.

Had the opportunity offered earlier than the fourth
day she would have seized it, but not until that fourth
morning was she in just the right mood. She had
eaten too much dinner the night before, and had
followed it after two hours in a stuffy theater with an
indigestible supper. He liked the bedroom windows
open at night; she liked them closed. After she fell
into a heavy sleep, he slipped out of bed and opened
the windows wide--to teach her by the night's happy
experience that she was entirely mistaken as to the
harmfulness of fresh winter air. The result was that
she awakened with a frightful cold and a splitting
headache. And as the weather was about to change
she had shooting pains like toothache through her
toes the instant she thrust them into her shoes.
The elderly groom, believing he had a rich bride,
was all solicitude and infuriating attention. She
waited until he had wrought her to the proper pitch of
fury. Then she said--in reply to some remark of
his:

``Yes, I shall rely upon you entirely. I want you
to take absolute charge of my affairs.''

The tears sprang to his eyes. His weak old mouth,
rapidly falling to pieces, twisted and twitched with
emotion. ``I'll try to deserve your confidence,
darling,'' said he. ``I've had large business experience--
in the way of investing carefully, I mean. I don't
think your affairs will suffer in my hands.''

``Oh, I'm sure they'll not trouble you,'' said she in
a sweet, sure tone as the pains shot through her feet
and her head. ``You'll hardly notice my little mite in
your property.'' She pretended to reflect. ``Let me
see--there's seven thousand left, but of course half
of that is Millie's.''

``It must be very well invested,'' said he. ``Those
seven thousand shares must be of the very best.''

``Shares?'' said she, with a gentle little laugh. ``I
mean dollars.''

Presbury was about to lift a cup of cafe au lait to
his lips. Instead, he turned it over into the platter of
eggs and bacon.

``We--Mildred and I,'' pursued his bride, ``were
left with only forty-odd thousand between us. Of
course, we had to live. So, naturally, there's very
little left.''

Presbury was shaking so violently that his head and
arms waggled like a jumping-jack's. He wrapped his
elegant white fingers about the arms of his chair to
steady himself. In a suffocated voice he said: ``Do
you mean to say that you have only seven thousand
dollars in the world?''

``Only half that,'' corrected she. ``Oh, dear, how
my head aches! Less than half that, for there are some
debts.''

She was impatient for the explosion; the agony of
her feet and head needed outlet and relief. But he
disappointed her. That was one of the situations in which
one appeals in vain to the resources of language. He
shrank and sank back in his chair, his jaw dropped,
and he vented a strange, imbecile cackling laugh. It
was not an expression of philosophic mirth, of sense
of the grotesqueness of an anti-climax. It was not an
expression of any emotion whatever. It was simply a
signal from a mind temporarily dethroned.

``What are you laughing at?'' she said sharply.

His answer was a repetition of the idiotic sound.

``What's the matter with you?'' demanded she.
``Please close your mouth.''

It was a timely piece of advice; for his upper and
false teeth had become partially dislodged and
threatened to drop upon the shirt-bosom gayly showing
between the lapels of his dark-blue silk house-coat. He
slowly closed his mouth, moving his teeth back into
place with his tongue--a gesture that made her face
twitch with rage and disgust.

``Seven thousand dollars,'' he mumbled dazedly.

``I said less than half that,'' retorted she sharply.

``And I--thought you were--rich.''

A peculiar rolling of the eyes and twisting of the
lips gave her the idea that he was about to vent that
repulsive sound again. ``Don't you laugh!'' she cried.
``I can't bear your laugh--even at its best.''

Suddenly he galvanized into fury. ``This is an
outrage!'' he cried, waving his useless-looking white fists.
``You have swindled me--SWINDLED me!''

Her head stopped aching. The pains in her feet
either ceased or she forgot them. In a suspiciously
calm voice she said: ``What do you mean?''

``I mean that you are a swindler!'' he shouted,
banging one fist on the table and waving the other.

She acted as though his meaning were just dawning
upon her. ``Do you mean,'' said she tranquilly, ``that
you married me for money?''

``I mean that I thought you a substantial woman, and
that I find you are an adventuress.''

``Did you think,'' inquired she, ``that any woman
who had money would marry YOU?'' She laughed
very quietly. ``You ARE a fool!''

He sat back to look at her. This mode of combat in
such circumstances puzzled him.

``I knew that you were rich,'' she went on, ``or you
would not have dared offer yourself to me. All my
friends were amazed at my stooping to accept you.
Your father was an Irish Tammany contractor, wasn't
he?--a sort of criminal? But I simply had to marry.
So I gave you my family and position and name in
exchange for your wealth--a good bargain for you,
but a poor one for me.''

These references to HIS wealth were most disconcerting,
especially as they were accompanied by remarks about
his origin, of which he was so ashamed that he had
changed the spelling of his name in the effort to clear
himself of it. However, some retort was imperative.
He looked at her and said:

``Swindler and adventuress!''

``Don't repeat that lie,'' said she. ``You are
the adventurer--despite the fact that you are very
rich.''

``Don't say that again,'' cried he. ``I never said or
pretended I was rich. I have about five thousand a
year--and you'll not get a cent of it, madam!''

She knew his income, but no one would have suspected
it from her expression of horror. ``What!'' she
gasped. ``You dared to marry ME when you were a--
beggar! Me--the widow of Henry Gower! You
impudent old wreck! Why, you haven't enough to pay
my servants. What are we to live on, pray?''

``I don't know what YOU'LL live on,'' replied he.
``_I_ shall live as I always have.''

``A beggar!'' she exclaimed. ``I--married to a
beggar.'' She burst into tears. ``How men take
advantage of a woman alone! If my son had been near
me! But there's surely some law to protect me. Yes,
I'm sure there is. Oh, I'll punish you for having
deceived me.'' Her eyes dried as she looked at him.
``How dare you sit there? How dare you face me, you
miserable fraud!''

Early in her acquaintance with him she had discovered
that determining factors in his character were
sensitiveness about his origin and sensitiveness about his
social position. On this knowledge of his weaknesses was
securely based her confidence that she could act as she
pleased toward him. To ease her pains she proceeded
to pour out her private opinion of him--all the
disagreeable things, all the insults she had been storing
up.

She watched him as only a woman can watch a man.
She saw that his rage was not dangerous, that she was
forcing him into a position where fear of her revenging
herself by disgracing him would overcome anger at
the collapse of his fatuous dreams of wealth. She did
not despise him the more deeply for sitting there, for
not flying from the room or trying to kill her or somehow
compelling her to check that flow of insult. She
already despised him utterly; also, she attached small
importance to self-respect, having no knowledge of what
that quality really is.

When she grew tired, she became quiet. They sat
there a long time in silence. At last he ran up the white
flag of abject surrender by saying:

``What'll we live on--that's what I'd like to know?''

An eavesdropper upon the preceding violence of
upward of an hour would have assumed that at its end this
pair must separate, never to see each other again
voluntarily. But that idea, even as a possibility, had not
entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time;
they were practical people. They knew from the outset
that somehow they must arrange to go on together.
The alternative meant a mere pittance of alimony for
her; meant for him social ostracism and the small
income cut in half; meant for both scandal and confusion.

Said she fretfully: ``Oh, I suppose we'll get along,
somehow. I don't know anything about those things.
I've always been looked after--kept from contact with
the sordid side of life.''

``That house you live in,'' he went on, ``does it
belong to you?''

She gave him a contemptuous glance. ``Of course,''
said she. ``What low people you must have been used
to!''

``I thought perhaps you had rented it for your
bunco game,'' retorted he. ``The furniture, the horses,
the motor--all those things--do they belong to
you?''

``I shall leave the room if you insult me,'' said she.

``Did you include them in the seven thousand dollars?''

``The money is in the bank. It has nothing to do
with our house and our property.''

He reflected, presently said: ``The horses and
carriages must be sold at once--and all those servants
dismissed except perhaps two. We can live in the house.''

She grew purple with rage. ``Sell MY carriages!
Discharge MY servants! I'd like to see you try!''

``Who's to pay for keeping up that establishment?''
demanded he.

She was silent. She saw what he had in mind.

``If you want to keep that house and live comfortably,''
he went on, ``you've got to cut expenses to the
bone. You see that, don't you?''

``I can't live any way but the way I've been used to
all my life,'' wailed she.

He eyed her disgustedly. Was there anything equal
to a woman for folly?

``We've got to make the most of what little we
have,'' said he.

``I tell you I don't know anything about those
things,'' repeated she. ``You'll have to look after them.
Mildred and I aren't like the women you've been used to.
We are ladies.''

Presbury's rage boiled over again at the mention of
Mildred. ``That daughter of yours!'' he cried.
``What's to be done about her? I've got no money to
waste on her.''

``You miserable Tammany THING!'' exclaimed she.
``Don't you dare SPEAK of my daughter except in the
most respectful way.''

And once more she opened out upon him, wreaking
upon him all her wrath against fate, all the pent-up
fury of two years--fury which had been denied such
fury's usual and natural expression in denunciations of
the dead bread-winner. The generous and ever-kind
Henry Gower could not be to blame for her wretched
plight; and, of course, she herself could not be to blame
for it. So, until now there had been no scapegoat.
Presbury therefore received the whole burden. He,
alarmed lest a creature apparently so irrational, should
in wild rage drive him away, ruin him socially, perhaps
induce a sympathetic court to award her a large part of
his income as alimony, said not a word in reply. He
bade his wrath wait. Later on, when the peril was over,
when he had a firm grip upon the situation--then he
would take his revenge.

They gave up the expensive suite at the Waldorf that
very day and returned to Hanging Rock. They alternated
between silence and the coarsest, crudest quarrelings,
for neither had the intelligence to quarrel wittily or the
refinement to quarrel artistically. As soon as they
arrived at the Gower house, Mildred was dragged into the
wrangle.

``I married this terrible man for your sake,'' was the
burden of her mother's wail. ``And he is a beggar--
wants to sell off everything and dismiss the servants.''

``You are a pair of paupers,'' cried the old man.
``You are shameless tricksters. Be careful how you
goad me!''

Mildred had anticipated an unhappy ending to her
mother's marriage, but she had not knowledge enough
of life or of human nature to anticipate any such
horrors as now began. Every day, all day long the vulgar
fight raged. Her mother and her stepfather withdrew
from each other's presence only to think up fresh insults
to fling at each other. As soon as they were armed
they hastened to give battle again. She avoided
Presbury. Her mother she could not avoid; and when her
mother was not in combat with him, she was weeping
or wailing or railing to Mildred.

It was at Mildred's urging that her mother
acquiesced in Presbury's plans for reducing expenses
within income. At first the girl, even more ignorant
than her mother of practical affairs, did not appreciate
the wisdom, not to say the necessity, of what he
wished to do, but soon she saw that he was right, that
the servants must go, that the horses and carriages and
the motors must be sold. When she was convinced
and had convinced her mother, she still did not realize
what the thing really meant. Not until she no longer
had a maid did she comprehend. To a woman who has
never had a maid, or who has taken on a maid as a
luxury, it will seem an exaggeration to say that Mildred
felt as helpless as a baby lying alone in a crib before it
has learned to crawl. Yet that is rather an understatement
of her plight. The maid left in the afternoon.
Mildred, not without inconveniences that had in the
novelty their amusing side, contrived to dress that
evening for dinner and to get to bed; but when she awakened
in the morning and was ready to dress, the loss of
Therese became a tragedy. It took the girl nearly four
hours to get herself together presentably--and then,
never had she looked so unkempt. With her hair, thick
and soft, she could do nothing.

``What a wonderful person Therese was!'' thought
she. ``And I always regarded her as rather stupid.''
Her mother, who had not had a maid until she was
about thirty and had never become completely dependent,
fared somewhat better, though, hearing her moans,
you would have thought she was faring worse.

Mildred's unhappiness increased from day to day, as
her wardrobe fell into confusion and disrepair. She
felt that she must rise to the situation, must teach
herself, must save herself from impending dowdiness and
slovenliness. But her brain seemed to be paralyzed.
She did not know how or where to begin to learn. She
often in secret gave way to the futility of tears.

There were now only a cook and one housemaid and
a man of all work--all three newcomers, for Presbury
insisted--most wisely--that none of the servants of
the luxurious, wasteful days would be useful in the new
circumstances. He was one of those small, orderly men
who have a genius for just such situations as the one
he now proceeded to grapple with and solve. In his
pleasure at managing everything about that house, in
distributing the work among the three servants, in
marketing, and, in inspecting purchases and nosing into
the garbage-barrel, in looking for dust on picture-
frames and table-tops and for neglected weeds in the
garden walks--in this multitude of engrossing delights
he forgot his anger over the trick that had been
played upon him. He still fought with his wife and
denounced her and met insult with insult. But that,
too, was one of his pleasures. Also, he felt that on the
whole he had done well in marrying. He had been lonely
as a bachelor, had had no one to talk with, or to quarrel
with, nothing to do. The marriage was not so expensive,
as his wife had brought him a house--and it such
a one as he had always regarded as the apogee of
elegance. Living was not dear in Hanging Rock, if one
understood managing and gave time to it. And socially
he was at last established.

Soon his wife was about as contented as she had ever
been in her life. She hated and despised her husband,
but quarreling with him and railing against him gave
her occupation and aim--two valuable assets toward
happiness that she had theretofore lacked. Her living
--shelter, food, clothing enough--was now secure.
But the most important factor of all in her content was
the one apparently too trivial to be worthy of record.
From girlhood she could not recall a single day in which
she had not suffered from her feet. And she had been
ashamed to say anything about it--had never let anyone,
even her maid, see her feet, which were about the
only unsightly part of her. None had guessed the
cause of her chronic ill-temper until Presbury, that
genius for the little, said within a week of their marriage:

``You talk and act like a woman with chronic corns.''

He did not dream of the effect this chance thrust had
upon his wife. For the first time he had really
``landed.'' She concealed her fright and her shame as
best she could and went on quarreling more viciously
than ever. But he presently returned to the attack.
Said he:

``Your feet hurt you. I'm sure they do. Now that
I think of it, you walk that way.''

``I suppose I deserve my fate,'' said she. ``When a
woman marries beneath her she must expect insult and
low conversation.''

``You must cure your feet,'' said he. ``I'll not live
in the house with a person who is made fiendish by corns.
I think it's only corns. I see no signs of bunions.''

``You brute!'' cried his wife, rushing from the room.

But when they met again, he at once resumed the
subject, telling her just how she could cure herself--and
he kept on telling her, she apparently ignoring but
secretly acting on his advice. He knew what he was
about, and her feet grew better, grew well--and she
was happier than she had been since girlhood when she
began ruining her feet with tight shoes.

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