The Price She Paid | Page 7

``How can you be so frivolous?'' reproached her mother.
Mildred was used to being misunderstood by her mother, who had long
since been made hopelessly dull by the suffocating life she led and by
pain from her feet, which never left her at ease for a moment except
when she had them soaking in cold water. Mrs. Gower had been born
with ordinary feet, neither ugly nor pretty and entirely fit for the uses
for which nature intended feet. She had spoiled them by wearing shoes
to make them look smaller and slimmer than they were. In steady
weather she was plaintive; in changeable weather she varied between

irritable and violent.
Said Mildred to her brother: ``How much--JUST how much is there?''
``I can't say exactly,'' replied her brother, who had not yet solved to his
satisfaction the moral problem of how much of the estate he ought to
allow his mother and sister and how much he ought to claim for
himself --in such a way that the claim could not be disputed.
Mildred looked fixedly at him. He showed his uneasiness not by
glancing away, but by the appearance of a certain hard defiance in his
eyes. Said she:
``What is the very most we can hope for?''
A silence. Her mother broke it. ``Mildred, how CAN you talk of those
things--already?''
``I don't know,'' replied Mildred. ``Perhaps because it's got to be done.''
This seemed to them all--and to herself--a lame excuse for such
apparent hardness of heart. Her father had always been
SENDER-HEARTED--HAD NEVER SPOKEN OF MONEY, OR
ENCOURAGED HIS FAMILY IN SPEAKING OF IT.
A LONG AND PAINFUL SILENCE. THEN, THE WIDOW
ABRUPTLY:
``YOU'RE SURE, Frank, there's NO insurance?''
``Father always said that you disliked the idea,'' replied her son; ``that
you thought insurance looked like your calculating on his death.''
Under her husband's adroit prompting Mrs. Gower had discovered such
a view of insurance in her brain. She now recalled expressing it--and
regretted. But she was silenced. She tried to take her mind of the sub-
ject of money. But, like Mildred, she could not. The thought of
imminent poverty was nagging at them like toothache. ``There'll be
enough for a year or so?'' she said, timidly interrogative.
``I hope so,'' said Frank.
Mildred was eying him fixedly again. Said she: ``Have you found
anything at all?''
``He had about eight thousand dollars in bank,'' said Frank. ``But most
of it will go for the pressing debts.''
``But how did HE expect to live?'' urged Mildred.
``Yes, there must have been SOMETHING,'' said her mother.
``Of course, there's his share of the unsettled and unfinished business of
the firm,'' admitted Frank.

``How much will that be?'' persisted Mildred.
``I can't tell, offhand,'' said Frank, with virtuous reproach. ``My mind's
been on--other things.''
Henry Gower's widow was not without her share of instinctive
shrewdness. Neither had she, unobservant though she was, been within
sight of her son's character for twenty-eight years without having
unconfessed, unformed misgivings concerning it. ``You mustn't bother
about these things now, Frank dear,'' said she. ``I'll get my brother to
look into it.''
``That won't be necessary,'' hastily said Frank. ``I don't want any rival
lawyer peeping into our firm's affairs.''
``My brother Wharton is the soul of honor,'' said Mrs. Gower, the elder,
with dignity. ``You are too young to take all the responsibility of
settling the estate. Yes, I'll send for Wharton to-morrow.''
``It'll look as though you didn't trust me,'' said Frank sourly.
``We mustn't do anything to start the gossips in this town,'' said his wife,
assisting.
``Then send for him yourself, Frank,'' said Mildred, ``and give him
charge of the whole matter.''
Frank eyed her furiously. ``How ashamed father would be!'' exclaimed
he.
But this solemn invoking of the dead man's spirit was uneffectual. The
specter of poverty was too insistent, too terrible. Said the widow:
``I'm sure, in the circumstances, my dear dead husband would want me
to get help from someone older and more experienced.''
And Frank, guilty of conscience and an expert in the ways of
conventional and highly moral rascality, ceased to resist. His wife,
scenting danger to their getting the share that ``rightfully belongs to the
son, especially when he has been the brains of the firm for several
years,'' made angry and indiscreet battle for no outside interference.
The longer she talked the firmer the widow and the daughter became,
not only because she clarified suspicions that had been too hazy to take
form, but also because they disliked her intensely. The following day
Wharton Conover became unofficial administrator. He had no difficulty
in baffling Frank Gower's half-hearted and clumsy efforts to hide two
large fees due the dead man's estate. He discovered clear assets
amounting in all to sixty- three thousand