In these days, the Studdifords were househunting in all of Jim's free
hours; confining their efforts almost entirely to the city, although a
trip to San Mateo or Ross Valley made a welcome change now and then. It
was not until late in October that the right house was found, on Pacific
Avenue, almost at the end of the cable-car line. It was a new house,
large and square, built of dignified dark-red brick, and with a roomy
and beautiful garden about it. There was a street entrance, barred by an
iron gate elaborately grilled, and giving upon three shallow brick steps
that led to the heavily carved door. On the side street was an entrance
for the motor car and tradespeople, the slope of the hill giving room
for a basement kitchen, with its accompanying storerooms and laundries.
Upstairs, the proportions of the rooms, and their exquisite finish, made
the house prominent among the city's beautiful homes. Even Jim could
find nothing to change. The splendid dark simplicity of the drawing-room
was in absolute harmony with the great main hall, and in charming
contrast to the cheerful library and the sun-flooded morning-room. The
dining-room had its own big fireplace, with leather-cushioned ingle
seats, and quaint, twinkling, bottle-paned windows above. On the next
floor the four big bedrooms, with their three baths and three
dressing-rooms and countless closets, were all bright and sunny, with
shining cream-coloured panelling, cretonne papers in gay designs of
flowers and birds, and crystal door knobs. Upstairs again were maids'
rooms, storerooms lined in cedar, and more baths.
"Perfect!" said Jim radiantly, on the afternoon when, the Studdifords
first inspected the house. "It's just exactly right, and I'm strong for
it!" He came over to Julia, who was thoughtfully staring out of a
drawing-room window. Her exquisite beauty was to-day set off by a long
loose sealskin coat, for the winter was early, and a picturesque little
motor bonnet, also of seal, with a velvet rose against her soft hair.
"Little bit sad to-day, sweetheart?" Jim asked, kissing the tip of her
ear.
"No--o. I was just thinking what a lovely, sheltered backyard!" Julia
said sensibly, raising her blue eyes. But she had brightened perceptibly
at his tenderness. "I love you, Jim," she said, very simply.
"And I adore you!" Jim answered, his arms about her. "I've been thinking
all day how rotten that sounded this morning!" he added in a lower tone.
"I'm so sorry!"
"As if it was your fault!" Julia protested generously. And a moment
later she charmed him by declaring herself to be entirely satisfied with
this enchanting house, and by entering vigorously upon the question of
furnishings.
The little episode to which Doctor Studdiford had made a somewhat
embarrassed allusion had taken place in their rooms at the hotel that
morning, while they were breakfasting. Plans for a little dinner party
were progressing pleasantly, over the omelette and toast, when Jim
chanced to suggest that a certain Mrs. Pope be included among the
guests.
"Oh, Jim--not Mrs. Jerry Pope?" Julia questioned, wide eyed.
"Yes, but she calls herself Mrs. Elsie Carroll Pope now. Why not?"
"Oh, Jim--but she's divorced!"
"Well, so are lots of other people!"
"Yes, I know. But it was such a horrid divorce, Jim!"
"Horrid how?"
"Oh, some other man, and letters in the papers, and Mr. Pope kept both
the children! It was awful!"
"Oh, come, Ju--she's a nice little thing, awfully witty and clever. Why
go out of your way to knock her!"
"I'm not going out of my way," Julia answered with dignity. "But she was
a great friend of Mary Chetwynde, who used to teach at The Alexander,
and she came out there two or three times, and she's a noisy, yelling
sort of woman--and her hair is dyed--yes, it _is_, Jim!"
"Lord, you women do love to rip each other up the back!" Jim smiled
lazily, as he wheeled his chair about, and lighted a cigarette.
"I'm not ripping her up the back at all," Julia protested with spirit.
"But she's not a lady, and I hate the particular set she goes with--"
"Not a lady--ha!" Jim ejaculated. "She was a Cowdry."
Julia leaned back in her chair, and opened a fat letter from Sally
Borroughs in Europe, that had come in her morning's mail.
"Ask her by all means to dinner," she said calmly. "Only don't expect me
to admire her and approve of her, Jim, for I won't do it; I know too
much about her!"
"It's just possible Mrs. Pope isn't waiting for your admiration and
approval, my dear," Jim said, nettled "But I doubt, whatever she knew of
you, if she would speak so unkindly about _you_!"
Julia turned as scarlet as if a whip had fallen across her face. She
stared at him for a moment with fixed, horrified eyes, then crushed her
letter together with a spasmodic gesture of the hands, and let it fall
as she went blindly toward the bedroom door. Jim sat staring after her,
puzzled at first, then with the red blood surging into his face. He
dropped his cigarette and his newspaper, and for perhaps three minutes
there was no sound in the apartment but the coffee bubbling in the
percolator, and the occasional clank of the radiator.
Then Jim jumped up suddenly and flung open the door of the bedroom.
Julia was sitting at her dressing-table, one elbow resting upon it, and
her head dropped on her hand. She raised heavy eyes and looked at him.
"Don't be a fool, Ju," Jim said, solicitous and impatient. "You know I
didn't mean anything by that. I wouldn't be such a cad. You know I
wouldn't say a thing like that--I couldn't. Come on back and finish your
coffee."
But he did not kiss her; he did not put his arm about her; and Julia
felt curiously weary and cold as she came slowly back to her place. Jim
immediately lighted a fresh cigarette, and began to rattle away somewhat
nervously of his plans for the day. He was going over to the Oakland
Hospital to look at his man with the spine--better not try to meet for
lunch. But how about that Pacific Avenue house? If Julia took the motor
and stopped at the agent's for the key, he would meet her there at
four--how about it?
Agreed. Gosh! It was nearly ten o'clock, and Jim had to get out to the
Children's Hospital before he went to Oakland. Julia had a quick kiss,
and was advised to take good care of herself. Then Jim was gone, and she
could fling her arm across the table and sob as if her heart would
break.
Julia cried for a long time. Then she stopped resolutely, and spent a
long half hour in serious thought, her fingers absently tracing the
threads of the tablecloth with a fork, her thoughts flying.
Presently she roused herself, telephoned Jim's chauffeur and the agent
of the Pacific Avenue house, bathed her reddened eyes, and inspected her
new furs, just home from the shop. Now and then her breast rose with a
long sigh, but she did not cry again.
"I'll wear my new furs," she decided soberly. "Jim loves me to look
pretty. And I _must_ cheer up; he hates me to be blue! Who can I lunch
with, to cheer up? Aunt Sanna! I'll get a cold chicken and some cake,
and go out to The Alexander!"
So the outward signs of the storm were obliterated, and no one knew of
the scar that Julia carried from that day in her heart. Only a tiny,
tiny scar, but enough to remind her now and then with cold terror that
even into her Paradise the serpent could thrust his head, enough to
prove to her bitter satisfaction that there was already something that
Jim's money could not buy.
The furnishing of the Pacific Avenue house proceeded apace--it was an
eminently gratifying house to furnish, and Jim and Julia almost wished
their labours not so light. All rugs looked well on those beautiful
floors; all pictures were at their best against the dull rich tones of
the walls. Did Mrs. Studdiford like the soft blue curtains in the
library, or the dull gold, or the coffee-coloured tapestry? Mrs.
Studdiford, an exquisite little figure of indecision, in a great
Elizabethan chair of carved black oak, didn't really know; they were all
so beautiful! She wondered why the blue wouldn't be lovely in the
breakfast room, if they used the gold here? Then she wouldn't use the
English cretonne in the breakfast room? Oh, yes, of course, she had
forgotten the English cretonne!
At last it was all done, from the two stained little Roman marble
benches outside the front door, to the monogrammed sheets in the attic
cedar closet. The drawing-room had its grand piano, its great mahogany
davenport facing the fire, its rich dark rugs, its subdued gleam of
copper and crystal, dull blue china and bright enamel. The little
reception room was gay with yellow-gold silk and teakwood; Jim's library
was severely handsome with its dark leather chairs and rows of dark
leather bindings. A dozen guests could sit about the long oak table in
the dining-room; the great sideboard with its black oak cupids and
satyrs, and its enormous claw feet, struck perhaps the only pretentious
note in the house. A wide-lipped bowl, in clear yellow glass, held rosy
pippins or sprawling purple grapes on the table in the window, the
sideboard carried old jugs and flagons in blackened silver or dull
pottery.
Upstairs the sunny perfection of the bedrooms was not marred by the need
of so much as a cake of violet soap. Julia revelled in details here:
flowers in the bedrooms must match the hangings; there must be so many
fringed towels and so many plain, in each bathroom. She amused as well
as edified Jim with her sedate assurance in the matter of engaging
maids; her cheeks would grow very pink when interviews were afoot, but
she never lost her air of calm.
"We are as good as they are," said Julia, "but how hard it is to
remember it when you are talking to them!"
Presently Foo Ting was established supreme in the kitchen, Lizzie
secured as waitress, and Ellie, Lizzie's sister, engaged to do upstairs
work. Chadwick, Jim's chauffeur, was accustomed occasionally to enact
also the part of valet, so that it was with a real luxury of service
that the young Studdifords settled down for the winter.
Julia had anticipated this settling as preceding a time of quiet, when
she and Jim should loiter over their snug little dinners, should come to
know the comforts of their own chairs, at each side of the library fire,
and laugh and cry over some old book, or talk and dream while they
stared into the coals. The months were racing about to her first wedding
anniversary, yet she felt that she really knew Jim only in a certain
superficial, holiday sense--she knew what cocktail he liked best, of
course, and what seats in the theatre; she was quite sure of the effect
of her own beauty upon him. But she longed for the real Jim, the soul
that was hidden somewhere under his gay mask, under the trim,
cleanshaven, smiling face. When there was less confusion, less laughing
and interrupting and going about, then she would find her husband, Julia
thought, and they would have long silent hours together in which to
build the foundation of their life.
Her beautiful earnest face came to have a somewhat strained and wistful
look, as the weeks fled past without bringing the quiet, empty time for
which she longed. All about her now stretched the glittering spokes of
the city's great social wheel, every mail brought her a flood of notes,
every quarter hour summoned her to the telephone, every fraction of the
day had its appointed pleasure. Julia must swiftly eliminate from her
life much of the rich feminine tradition of housewifery; it was not for
her to darn her husband's hose, to set exquisite patches in thinning
table linen, to gather flowers for jars and vases. Julia never saw Jim's
clothing except when he was wearing it, the table linen was Ellie's
affair, and Lizzie had the entire lower floor bright and fragrant with
fresh flowers before Jim and Julia came down to breakfast. Young Mrs.
Studdiford found herself readily assuming the society woman's dry, brief
mannerisms. Jim used to grin sometimes when he heard her at the
telephone:
"Oh, that would be charming, Mrs. Babcock," Julia would say, "if you'll
let me run away at three, for I must positively keep an appointment with
Carroll at three, if I'm to have my gown for dear Mrs. Morton's bal
masque Friday night. And if I'm just a tiny bit late you won't be cross?
For we all do German at twelve now, you know, and it _will_ run over the
hour! Oh, you're very sweet! Oh, no, Mrs. Talcott spoke to me about it,
but we can't--we're both _so_ sorry, but this week seems to be just
_full_--no, she said that, but I told her that next week was just as bad,
so she's to let me know about the week after. Oh, I know she is. And I
_did_ want to give her a little tea, but there doesn't seem to be a
_moment_! I think perhaps I'll ask Mrs. Castle to let us dine with her
some other time, and give Betty a little dinner Monday--"
And so on and on, in the quick harassed voice of one who must meet
obligations.
"You're a great social success, Ju," Jim said, smiling, one morning.
Julia made a little grimace over her letters.
"Oh, come off, now!" her husband railed good-naturedly. "You know you
love it. You know you like to dress up and trot about with me and be
admired!"
"I like to trot about with you," Julia conceded, sighing in spite of her
smile. "But I get very tired of dinners. Some other woman gets you, and
some other woman's husband gets me, and we say such _flat_ things, about
motor cars, or the theatre--nothing friendly or intimate or
interesting!"
"Wait until you know them all better, Ju. Besides, you couldn't get
intimate at a dinner, very well. Besides"--Jim defended the institutions
of his class--"you didn't look very gay when young Jo Coutts seemed
inclined to get very friendly at dinner the other night!"
"Jo Coutts was drunk," Julia asserted briefly. "As they very often are,"
she added severely. "Not raging drunk, but just silly, or sentimental
and important, you know."
"I know," Jim laughed.
"And it makes me furious!" Julia said. "As for knowing them better, they
aren't one bit more interesting when they're old friends. They're more
familiar, I admit that, but all this cheeky yelling back and forth isn't
interesting--it's just tiresome! 'I'm holding your husband's hand,
Alice!' 'All right, then I'm going to kiss your husband!'" Her voice
rose in mimicry. "And then Kenneth Roberts tells some little shady
story, and every one screams, and every one goes on telling it over and
over! Why, that little silly four-line verse Conrad Kent had last
night--every one in the room had to learn it by heart and say it six
hundred times before we were done with it!"
"You're a cynic, woman," Jim said, kissing his wife, who by this time
had come around to his chair. "It's all too easy for you, that's the
trouble! They've accepted you with open arms; you're the rage! You ought
to have been kept for a while on the anxious seat, like the poor Groves,
and Mrs. McCann; then you'd appreciate High Sassiety!"
"Well, I wouldn't make myself ridiculous and pathetic like the Groves,
trying to burst into society, and giving people a chance to snub me!"
Julia said thoughtfully. "Never mind," she added, "next month Lent
begins, and then there must be some let-up!"
However, Lent had only begun when the Studdifords made a flying trip to
Honolulu, where Jim had a patient. The great liner was fascinating to
Julia, and, as usual, her beauty and charm, and the famous young
surgeon's unostentatious bigness, made them friends on all sides, so
that the life of cocktail mixing and card playing and gossip went on as
merrily as it had in San Francisco. Julia could not spend the empty days
staring dreamily out at the rolling green Pacific; every man on board
was anxious to improve her acquaintance, from the Captain to the
seventeen-year-old little English lad who was going out to his father in
India, and to not one of them did it ever occur that lovely little Mrs.
Studdiford might prefer to be left alone.
But the sea air shook Julia into splendid health and energy, and she was
her sweetest self in Honolulu; she and Jim both seemed to recapture here
some of the exquisite tenderness of their honeymoon a year ago. Neither
would admit that there had been any drifting apart, they had never been
less than lovers, yet now they experienced the delights of a
reconciliation. Julia, in her delicate linens and thin embroidered
pongees, with a filmy parasol shading her bright hair, seemed more
wonderful than ever before, and lovely Hawaii was a setting for one of
their happiest times together.
On the boat, coming home, however, there occurred a little incident that
darkened Julia's sky for a long time to come. On the very day of
starting she and Jim, with some other returning San Franciscans, were
standing, a laughing group on the deck, when a dark, handsome young
woman came forward from a nearby cabin doorway, and held out her hand.
"Do you remember me, Julia?" said she, smiling.
Julia, whose white frock was draped with a dozen ropes of brilliant
flowers, and who looked like a little May Queen in her radiant bloom,
looked at the newcomer for a few moments, and then said, with a clearing
face:
"Hannah! Of course I know you. Mrs. Palmer, may I present Doctor
Studdiford?"
Jim smilingly shook hands, and as the rest of the group melted away,
Mrs. Palmer explained that her husband's business was in Manila, but she
was bringing up her two little children to visit her parents in Oakland.
"She's extremely pretty," Jim said, when he and Julia were alone in
their luxurious stateroom. "Who is she?"
"I don't know why I supposed you knew that she is one of Mark's
sisters," Julia said, colouring. "I saw something of them all,
after--afterward, you know."
"Oh!" Jim's face, which he chanced to be washing, also grew red; he
scowled as he plunged it again into the towel. Julia proceeded with her
own lunch toilet in silence, humming a little now and then, but the
brightness was gone from the day for her; the swift-flying green water
outside the window had turned to lead, the immaculate little apartment
was bleak and bare. Jim did not speak as they went down to lunch, nor
was he himself when they met again, after a game of auction, at dinner.
In fact, this marked Julia's first acquaintance with a new side of his
character.
For Jim's sunny nature was balanced by an occasional mood so dark as to
make him a different man while it lasted. Barbara had once lightly
hinted this to Julia--"Jim was glooming terribly, and did nothing but
snarl"--and Miss Toland had confirmed the hint when she asked him, at
Christmas dinner, when he and Julia had been eight months man and wife:
"Well, Jim, never a blue devil once, eh?"
"Never a one. Aunt Sanna!" Jim had responded gayly.
"What should he have blue devils about?" Julia had demanded on this
occasion, presenting herself indignantly to them, and looking in her
black velvet and white lace like a round-eyed child.
She thought of that happy moment this afternoon, with a little chill at
her heart. For there was no doubt that Jim had blue devils now. When she
came back to her stateroom at six o'clock, he was already there, flung
across the bed, his arms locked under his head, his sombre eyes on the
ceiling, where green water-lights were playing.
"Jim, don't you feel well, dear?"
"Perfectly well, thank you!" Jim said coldly.
Slightly angered by his tone, Julia fell silent, busied herself with her
brushes, hooked on a gown of demure cherry colour and gray, caught up a
great silky scarf.
"Anything I can do for you, Jim?" she said then, politely.
"Just--_let me alone_!" Jim answered, without stirring.
Hurt to the quick, and with sudden colour in her face, Julia left the
room. She held her head high, but she felt almost a little sick with the
shock. Five minutes later she was the centre of a chattering group on
the deck. A milky twilight held the sea, the skyline was no longer to be
discerned in the opal spaces all about them, the ship moved over a vast
plain of pearl-coloured smooth waters. Where staterooms were lighted,
long fingers of rosy brightness fell across the deck; here and there in
the shelter of a bit of wall were dark blots that were passengers,
wrapped and reclining, and unrecognizable in the gloom.
Julia and a young man named Manners began to pace the deck. Mr. Manners
was a poet, and absorbed in the fascinating study of his own
personality, but he served Julia's need just now, and never noticed her
abstraction and indifference. He described to Julia the birth of his own
soul, when he was what the world considered only a clumsy, unthinking
lad of seventeen, and Julia listened as a pain-racked fever patient
might listen with vague distress to the noise of distant hammers.
Presently they were all at dinner; soup, but no Jim; fish, but no Jim.
Here was Jim at last, pale, freshly shaven, slipping into his place with
a muttered apology and averted eyes. With a sense of impending calamity
upon her, Julia struggled through her dinner; after a while she found
herself holding cards, under a bright light; after a while again, she
reached her stateroom.
Julia turned up the light. The room was close and empty, littered with
the evidences of Jim's hasty toilet. She opened a window, and the sweet
salt air filtered in, infinitely soothing and refreshing. She began to
go about the room, picking up Jim's clothes, and putting the place in
order. Once or twice her face twitched with pain, and once she stopped
and pressed Jim's coat to her heart with both hands, as if to stop a
wound, but she did not cry, and presently began her usual preparations
for bed in her usual careful fashion. The cherry-coloured gown had been
put away, and Julia, in an embroidered white kimono almost stiff enough
to stand alone, was putting her rings into their little cases when Jim
came in. She looked at him over her shoulder.
"Where have you been, Jim?" she asked quietly, noticing his white face,
his tumbled hair, and a certain disorder in his appearance. Jim did not
answer, and after a puzzled moment Julia repeated her question.
"Up on deck," Jim said, a bitter burst of words breaking through his
ugly silence. He dropped into a chair, and put his head in his hands.
Julia watched him for a few moments in silence, while she went on with
her preparations. She wound her little watch and put it under her
pillow; she folded the counterpanes neatly back from both beds, and got
out her slippers. Then she sat down to put trees into the little satin
slippers she had been wearing, and carried them to the closet.
Suddenly Jim sat up, dropped his hands, and stared at her haggardly.
"Julia," said he hoarsely, "I've been up there thinking--I'm going mad,
I guess--"
He stopped, and there was silence. Julia stood still, looking at him.
"Tell me," Jim said, "was it Mark?"
The hideous suddenness of it struck Julia like a bodily blow; she stood
as if she had been turned to ice. A great weight seemed to seize her
limbs, a sickening vertigo attacked her. She had a suffocating sense
that time was passing, that ages were going by in that bright, glaring
room, with the sea air coming in a shuttered window, and the two beds,
with their smooth white pillows, so neatly turned down--Still, she could
not speak--not yet.
"Yes, it was Mark," she said tonelessly and gently, after a long
silence. "I thought you knew."
"Oh, my God!" Jim said, choking. He flung his hands madly in the air and
got on his feet. Then, as if ashamed, through all the boiling surge of
his emotions, at this loss of control, he rammed his hands into the
pockets of his light overcoat, and began to pace the room.
"You--you--you!" he said, in a sort of wail, and in another moment,
muttering some incoherency about air, he had snatched up his cap and was
gone again.
Julia slowly crossed the room, and sat down on her bed. She felt as a
person who had swallowed a dose of poison might feel: agonies were soon
to begin that would drive the life from her body, but she could not feel
them yet. Instead she felt tired, tired beyond all bearing, and the
lights hurt her eyes. She slipped her kimono from her, stepped out of
her slippers, and plunged the room into utter darkness. Like a tired
child she crept into bed, and with a great sigh dropped her head on the
pillow.
The ship plowed on, its great lights cutting a steady course over the
black water, its whole bulk quivering to the heartbeat of the mighty
engines; whispered good-nights and laughing good-nights were said in the
narrow, hot hallways. Lights went out in cabin after cabin. The decks
were dark and deserted. Below stairs the world that never slept hummed
like a beehive; squads of men were washing floors, laying tables; the
kitchen was as hot and busy as at midday; the engine rooms were filled
with silhouetted forms briskly coming and going. Up on one of the dark
decks, with the soft mist blowing in his face, Jim spent the long night,
his folded arms resting on the rail, his sombre eyes following the
silent rush of waters, and in her cabin Julia lay wide awake and
battling with despair.
She had thought the old dim horror over and done with. Now she knew it
never would be that; now she knew there was no escape. The happy little
castle she had builded for herself fell about her like a house of cards;
she was dishonoured, she was abased, she was powerless. In telling Jim
her whole history, on that terrible night at the settlement house, she
had flung down her arms; there was no new extenuating fact to add to the
story; it was all stale and unchangeable; it must stand before their
eyes forever, a hideous fact. And it seemed to Julia, tossing restlessly
in the dark, that a thousand sleeping menaces rose now to terrify her.
Perhaps Hannah Palmer knew! Julia's breath stopped, her whole body shook
with terror. And if Hannah, why not others? A letter of Mark's to some
one--to any one--might be in existence now, waiting its hour to appear,
and to disgrace her, and Jim, and all who loved them!
And was it for this, she asked herself bitterly, that she had so risen
from the past, so studied and struggled and aspired? Had she been mad
all these years to forget the danger in which she stood, to imagine that
she had buried her tragedy too deep for discovery? Had she been mad to
marry Jim, her dear, sweet, protecting old Jim, who was always so good
to her?
But at the thought of him, and of her bitter need of him in this
desolate hour, Julia fell to violent crying, and after her tears she
drifted into a deep sleep, her lashes wet, and her breast occasionally
rising with a sharp sigh as a child's might.
When she awakened, dawn was breaking, the level waste of the sea was
pearl colour and rose under a slowly rising mist. Julia bathed and
dressed, and went out to the deck, where, with a great plaid wrapped
about her, she might watch the miracle of the birth of day. And as the
warming rays of the sun enveloped her, and the newly washed decks dried
under its touch, and as signs of life began to be heard all about,
slamming doors and gay greetings, laughter and the crisp echoes of feet,
hope and self-confidence crept again into her heart. She was young,
after all, and pretty, and Jim's very agony of jealousy only proved that
he loved her. She had never deceived him, he could not accuse her of one
second's weakness there. He had only had a sudden, terrible revelation
of the truth he had known so long; it could not affect him permanently.
"Going down?" said a voice gayly.
Julia turned to smile upon a group of cheerful acquaintances.
"Thinking about it," she smiled.
"Where's Himself?" somebody asked.
"Still asleep--the lazy bones!" Julia answered calmly. They all went
downstairs together, and Julia was perhaps a little ashamed to find the
odours of coffee and bacon delightful, and to enjoy her breakfast.
Afterward she went straight to her room, not at all surprised to find
Jim there, flung, dressed as he was, across his bed, and breathing
heavily. Julia studied him for a moment in silence. Then she set about
the somewhat difficult task of rousing him, quite her capable wifely
little self when there was something she could do for him.
"Jim! You'll have to get these damp things off, dear! Come, Jim, you
can't sleep this way. Wake up, Jim!"
Drowsily, heavily, he consented to be partially undressed, and covered
with a warm rug. Julia grew quite breathless over her exertions, tucked
him in carefully.
"I'm going to tell the chambermaid not to come in until I ring, Jim. But
shall I send you in a cup of coffee?"
"Ha!" Jim said, already asleep.
"Do you want some coffee, Jim?"
"No--no coffee!"
Julia tiptoed about the room a moment more, took her little sewing
basket and a new magazine, and giving a departing look at her husband,
found his eyes wide open and watching her. Instantly a rush of tears
pressed behind her eyelids, and she felt herself grow weak and confused.
"Thank you for fixing me up so nicely, darling," Jim said meekly.
"Oh, you're welcome!" Julia answered, with a desperate effort to appear
calm.
"Will you kiss me, Julie?" Jim pursued, and a second later she was on
her knees beside him, their arms were locked together, and their lips
met as if they had never kissed each other before.
"You little angel," Jim said, "what a beast I am! As if life hadn't been
hard enough for you without my adding to it! Oh, but what a night I've
had! And you'll forgive me, won't you, sweetheart, for I _love_ you so?"
Julia put her face down and cried stormily, her wet face pressed against
his, his arms holding her close. After a while, when the sobs lessened,
they began to talk together, and then laugh together in the exquisite
relief of being reconciled. Then Jim went to sleep, and Julia sat beside
him, his hand in hers, her eyes idly following the play of broken bright
lights that quivered on the wall.
She leaned back in her big chair, feeling weary and spent, broken, but
utterly at peace. From that hour life was changed to her, and she dimly
felt the change, accepted it as stoically as an Indian might the loss of
a limb, and adjusted herself to all it implied. If Jim was a little less
her god, he was still hers, hers in some new relationship that appealed
to what was protective and maternal in her. And if the burden of her
secret had grown inconceivably heavy for her to bear, she knew by some
instinct that this burst of jealous frenzy had somehow lightened its
weight for Jim; she, not he, would henceforth pay the price.
"And life isn't easy and gay, say what you will," thought Julia
philosophically. "There is no use grumbling and groaning, and saying to
yourself, 'Oh, if only it wasn't just this or that thing worrying me!'
for there is always this or that. Kennedy and Bab think I am the most
fortunate girl in the world, and yet, to be able to go back ten years,
and live a few weeks over again, I'd give up everything I have, even
Jim. Just to start _square_! Just to feel that wretched thing wasn't there
like a layer of mud under everything I do, making it a farce for me to
talk of uplifting girls by settlement work, as people are eternally
making me talk! Or if only every one _knew_ it, it would be easier, for
then I would feel at least that I stood on my own feet! But now, of
course, that's impossible, on Jim's account. What a horrible scandal it
would be, what a horrible thing it _is_, that any girl can cloud her own
life in this way!
"As for boys, I suppose mighty few of them are pure by the time they're
through college, by the time they're through High School, perhaps! It's
all queer, for that involves girls and women, too, thousands of them!
And how absurd it would be to bring such a charge as this against a man,
ten years after it happened, when he was married and a respectable
citizen!
"Well, society is very queer; civilization hasn't got very far;
sometimes I think virtue is a good deal of an accident, and that people
take themselves pretty seriously!" And so musing, Julia dozed, and
wakened, and dozed again. But in her heart had been sowed the seed that
was never to be uprooted, the little seed of doubt: doubt of the social
structure, doubt of its grave authorities, its awe-inspired
interpreters. What were the mummers all so busy about and how little
their mummery mattered! This shall be permitted, this shall not be
permitted; what is in your heart and brain concerns us not at all; where
your soul spends its solitudes is not our affair; so that you keep a
certain surface smoothness, so that you dress and talk and spend as we
bid you, you--for such time as we please--shall be one of us!