The Price She Paid | Page 3

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David Graham Phillips THE PRICE SHE PAID

I
HENRY GOWER was dead at sixty-one--the end of a lifelong fraud
which never had been suspected, and never would be. With the world,
with his acquaintances and neighbors, with his wife and son and
daughter, he passed as a generous, warm-hearted, good-natured man,
ready at all times to do anything to help anybody, incapable of envy or
hatred or meanness. In fact, not once in all his days had he ever thought
or done a single thing except for his own comfort. Like all intensely
selfish people who are wise, he was cheerful and amiable, because that
was the way to be healthy and happy and to have those around one
agreeable and in the mood to do what one wished them to do. He told
people, not the truth, not the unpleasant thing that might help them, but
what they wished to hear. His family lived in luxurious comfort only
because he himself was fond of luxurious comfort. His wife and his
daughter dressed fashionably and went about and entertained in the
fashionable, expensive way only because that was the sort of life that
gratified his vanity. He lived to get what he wanted; he got it every day
and every hour of a life into which no rain ever fell; he died, honored,
respected, beloved, and lamented.
The clever trick he had played upon his fellow beings came very near
to discovery a few days after his death. His widow and her son and

daughter-in-law and daughter were in the living-room of the charming
house at Hanging Rock, near New York, alternating between
sorrowings over the dead man and plannings for the future. Said the
widow:
``If Henry had only thought what would become of us if he were taken
away!''
``If he had saved even a small part of what he made every year from the
time he was twenty-six--for he always made a big income,'' said his son,
Frank.
``But he was so generous, so soft-hearted!'' exclaimed the widow. ``He
could deny us nothing.''
``He couldn't bear seeing us with the slightest wish ungratified,'' said
Frank.
``He was the best father that ever lived!'' cried the daughter, Mildred.
And Mrs. Gower the elder and Mrs. Gower the younger wept; and
Mildred turned away to hide the emotion distorting her face; and Frank
stared gloomily at the carpet and sighed. The hideous secret of the life
of duplicity was safe, safe forever.
In fact, Henry Gower had often thought of the fate of his family if he
should die. In the first year of his married life, at a time when passion
for a beautiful bride was almost sweeping him into generous thought,
he had listened for upward of an hour to the eloquence of a life
insurance agent. Then the agent, misled by Gower's effusively generous
and unselfish expressions, had taken a false tack. He had descanted
upon the supreme satisfaction that would be felt by a dying man as he
reflected how his young widow would be left in affluence. He made a
vivid picture; Gower saw-- saw his bride happier after his death than
she had been during his life, and attracting a swarm of admirers by her
beauty, well set off in becoming black, and by her independent income.
The generous impulse then and there shriveled to its weak and shallow
roots. With tears in his kind, clear eyes he thanked the agent and said:
``You have convinced me. You need say no more. I'll send for you in a
few days.''
The agent never got into his presence again. Gower lived up to his
income, secure in the knowledge that his ability as a lawyer made him
certain of plenty of money as long as he should live. But it would show
an utter lack of comprehension of his peculiar species of character to

imagine that he let himself into the secret of