The Studdifords, with some four hundred other San Francisco society
folk, regarded the Browning dances as quite the most important of the
winter's social affairs, and Julia, who thoroughly liked the host and
the brilliant assembly, really enjoyed them more than the smaller and
more select affairs. The Brownings were a beloved and revered
institution; very few new faces appeared there from year to year, except
the very choice of the annual crop of debutantes. Little Mrs. Studdiford
had made a sensation when she first came, at her handsome husband's
side, a year ago, her dazzling prettiness set off by the simplest of
milk-white Paris gowns, her wonderful crown of hair wound about with
pearls. Now she was a real favourite, and at the January ball, in her
second winter in society, a score of admirers assured her that her gown
was the prettiest in the room.
"That pleases you, doesn't it, Jim?" she smiled, as he put her into a
red velvet armchair, at the end of the long ballroom, and dropped into a
chair beside her.
"Well, it's true," Jim assured her, "and, what's more, you're the most
beautiful woman in the room, too!"
"Oh, Jeemy! What a story! But go get your dances, dear, if we're not
going to stay for supper. Here's Mrs. Thayer to amuse me," said Julia,
as a magnificent old woman came toward her with a smile.
"Not dancing, dear?" said the dowager, as she sank heavily into the seat
Jim left. "Whyn't you dancing with the other girls? I"--she panted and
fanned, idly scanning the room--"I tell Brownie I don't know how he gets
the men!" she added, "lots of 'em; supper brings 'em, probably! Whyn't
you dancing, dear?"
"She's implying that her ankle was sprained," Jim grinned, departing.
Julia dimpled. The dowager brought an approving eye to bear upon her.
"Well--well, you don't say so? Now that's very nice indeed," she said
comfortably; "well, I declare! I hadn't heard a word of it--and you're
glad, of course?"
"Oh, very glad!" Julia assured her, colouring.
"That's nice, too!" Mrs. Thayer rumbled on, her eyes beginning again to
rove the room. "Fuss, of course, and lots of trouble, but you forget all
that! Yes, I love children myself, used to be the most devoted mother
alive, puttin' 'em to bed, and all that, yes, indeed!"
"You had two?" Julia hazarded. The dowager gave her a surprised glance.
"I, me dear? I had five--Rose there, that's Mrs. St. John, and Kate, you
know her? Mrs. Willis, and my boy that's in Canada now, and the boy I
lost, and Lillian--Lily we called her, she was only three. Diphtheria."
"Oh!" Julia said, shocked.
"Yes, indeed, I thought it would break Colonel Thayer's heart," pursued
Mrs. Thayer, fanning regally, and watching the room. "She was the
first--Lily would be nearly forty now! Look, Julia, who is that with
Isabel Wallace? Who? Oh, yes, Mary Chauncey. See if you can see her
husband anywhere. I'd give a good deal to know if she came with him!"
"Mrs. Thayer," said Julia presently, "how long have you been coming to
the Brownings?"
"I? Oh, since they were started, child. There was a little group of us
that used to dance round at each other's houses, then some of the men
got together and formed a little club--Brownie was one of them. The
Saunders used to come. Ella was about eighteen, and Sally and Anna
Toland, and the Harts, and the Kirkwoods. Who's that with young Brice,
Julia, me dear? Peter Coleman, is it?"
"Talking to Mr. Carter, yes, that's Mr. Coleman. He's a beautiful
dancer," said Julia.
"Peter is? Yes, well, then, why don't you--But you're not dancing, of
course," Mrs. Thayer said. "There's Gordon Jones and his wife! Why
Brownie ever let them in I don't--Ah, Ella, how are you, dear?"
"Fine, thank you!" said the newcomer, a magnificent woman of perhaps
forty, in a very beautiful gown. "How do you do, Mrs. Studdiford?" she
added cordially, as she sat down. "Dancing, surely?"
"Now she's got the best reason in the world for not dancing," said old
Mrs. Thayer, with a protective motion of her fan.
"Oh--so?" Miss Saunders said, after a quick look of interrogation.
"Well, that's--dutiful, isn't it?" She raised her eyebrows, made a
little grimace, and laughed.
"Now, Ella, don't ye say anything wicked!" Mrs. Thayer warned her, and
the fan was used to tap Miss Saunders sharply on her smooth, big arm.
"Wicked!" Miss Saunders said negligently, watching the dancers, "I think
it's fine. I always said I'd have ten. Is Jim pleased?"
"He's perfectly delighted--yes," Julia assented, suddenly feeling that
this careless talk, in this bright, hot room, was not fair to the little
one she already loved so dearly.
"Is that Mrs. Brock or Vera?" Mrs. Thayer asked. "I declare they look
alike!"
"That's Alice," Ella answered, after a glance, "don't you know that blue
silk? They've got the Hazzards with them."
"Gets worse every year, absolutely," the old lady declared, "doesn't it,
Ella? Emily here?"
"No, she's wretched, poor kid. But Ken's here somewhere. There are the
Geralds," Miss Saunders added, leaning toward the old woman and sinking
her tone to a low murmur. "Have you heard about Mason Gerald and Paula
Billings--oh, _haven't_ you? Not about the car breaking down--_haven't_
you? Well, my _dear_--"
Julia lost the story, and sat watching the room, a vague little smile
curving her lips, her blue eyes moving idly to and fro. She saw Mrs.
Toland come in with her two lovely daughters. Julia had had tea with
them that afternoon at the hotel, where they would spend the night. The
orchestra was silent just now, and the dancers were drifting about the
room, a great brilliant circle. Some of the men were clapping their
hands, all of them were laughing as they bent their sleek heads toward
their partners, and all the girls were laughing, too, and talking
animatedly as they raised wide-open eyes. Julia admired the gowns:
shining pink and cloudy pink, blue with lace and blue with spangles,
white alone, and white with every colour in the world; a yellow and
black gown that was indescribably dashing, and a yellow and black gown
that somehow looked very flat and dowdy. She noticed the Ripley pearls
on Miss Dolly Ripley's scrawny little lean neck, and that charming
Isabel Wallace danced a good deal with her own handsome, shy young
brothers, and seemed eager that they should enjoy what was evidently
their first Browning. She studied the old faces, the hard faces, the
faded faces, the painted cheeks and powdered necks; she read the tragedy
behind the drooping head of some debutante, the triumph in the high
laugh of another. There was poor Connie Fox, desperately eager and
amiable, dancing with the youngest men and the oldest men, glittering
and jolly in her dingy blue silk; and Connie's mother, who was her
chaperon, a little fluttering fool of a woman, nervously eager to
ingratiate, and nervously afraid to intrude her company upon these
demi-gods and goddesses; and Theodora Carleton, handsome in too low cut
a gown, laughing with Alan Gregory, and aware, as every one in the room
was aware, that her husband's first wife was also at the dance. The room
grew warm, the air heavy with delicate perfumes. Men were mopping their
faces; some of the debutantes looked like wilting roses; the faces of
some of the older women were shining. It was midnight, the latest comers
had arrived, the floor was well filled.
"I wonder if I will be doing this twenty years from now," thought Julia.
"I wonder if my daughter will come to the Brownings, then?"
"... which I call disgraceful, don't you, Mrs. Studdiford?" asked Miss
Saunders suddenly.
"I beg your pardon!" Julia said, startled into attention, "I didn't hear
you!"
"I know you didn't," the other said, laughing, "nevertheless, it was a
low trick," she added to Mrs. Thayer, "and Leila Orvis can wait a long
time before she makes the peace with _me_! Charity's all very well, but
when it comes to palming off girls like that upon your friends, it's
just a little too _much_!"
"How's it happen ye didn't ask the girl for any references, me dear?"
asked Mrs. Thayer.
"Because Leila told me she knew all about her!" snapped Miss Saunders.
"What was she, a waitress?" Julia asked, amused.
"No, she was nothing!" Miss Saunders said in high scorn; "she'd had no
training whatever--not that I mind _that_. She was simply supposed to help
with the pantry work and make herself generally useful. Well, one day
Carrie, a maid Mother's had for _years_, told Mother that something this
Ada had said she fancied Ada had been in some sort of reform
school--imagine! Of course poor Mother collapsed, and Emily telephoned
for me--the kid always rises to an emergency, I will say that. So I
rushed home, and got the whole story out of Ada in five minutes. At
first she cried a good deal, and pretended it was an orphans' home;
orphans' home--ha! Finally I scared her into admitting that it was a
place just for girls of her sort--"
"Fancy!" said Mrs. Thayer, fanning. Julia had grown a little pale.
"What did you do, Miss Saunders?" said she.
"Do? I sent her packing, of course!" said that lady, smiling as she
bowed to an acquaintance across the room. "I told her to go straight
back to Mrs. Orvis, and say I sent her. However, she didn't, for I
telephoned Leila at once--Lucy Bacon is trying to bow to you, Mrs.
Studdiford--over there, with your husband!"
"I wonder where she did go?" pursued Julia.
"I really have no idea!" Miss Saunders said.
"You may be sure she knew just where to go, a creature like that!" old
Mrs. Thayer said wisely. "How de do, Peter, Auntie here?" she called to
a smiling man who went by.
"Oh, she wouldn't go utterly bad," Julia protested; "you can't tell, she
may have been decent for years. It may have been years ago--"
"Still, me dear," old Mrs. Thayer said comfortably, "one doesn't like
the idea--one can't overlook that, ye know."
"Of course, it's too bad," Miss Saunders added briskly, "and it's a
great pity, and things ought to be different from what they are, and all
_that_; but at the same time you couldn't have a girl like that in the
house, now could you?"
"Oh, yes, I could!" said Julia, scarlet cheeked, "I was just thinking
how glad I would be to give her a trial!"
She stopped because Jim, very handsome in evening dress and with his
pretty partner beside him, had come up to them.
"Tired, dear?" Jim said, smiling approval of the little figure in white
lace, and the earnest eyes under loosened bright hair.
"Just about time you came up, Jim!" Ella Saunders said cheerfully,
"here's your wife championing the cause of unfortunate girls--_she_
wouldn't care what they'd done, she'd take them right into her home!"
"And very sweet and nice of her," Mrs. Thayer observed, with a
consolatory pat on Julia's arm, "only it isn't quite practical, me dear,
is it, Jim?"
"Julia'd like to take in every cat and dog and beggar and newsboy she
sees," said Jim, with his bright smile. But Julia knew he was not
pleased. "Do you want to come speak to Mother and the girls, dear,
before I take you home?" he added, offering his arm. Julia stood up and
said her good-nights, and crossed the room, a slender and most
captivating little figure, at his side. It was not until she was bundled
into furs and in the motor car that she could say, with an appealing
hand on his arm:
"Don't blame me, Jimmy. I didn't start that topic. Miss Saunders
happened to tell of a poor girl who--"
"I don't care to discuss it," Jim said, removing her hand by the
faintest gesture of withdrawing.
Julia sighed and was silent. The limousine ran smoothly past one lighted
corner after another; turned into Van Ness Avenue. After a while she
said, a little indignation burning through her quiet tone:
"I've said I was not responsible for the conversation, Jim. And it seems
to me merely childish in you to let a casual remark affect you in this
way!"
"All right, then, I'm childish!" Jim said grimly, folding his arms as he
leaned back in his seat.
Julia sighed again. Presently Jim burst out:
"I'm affected by a casual remark, yes, I admit it. But my God, doesn't
it mean anything to you that I have my pride, that when I think of my
wife I want to feel that she is more perfect in every way--in _every_
way--than all the other women in the world?" He stopped, breathing hard,
and resumed, a little less violently: "All I ask is, Julia, that you let
such subjects _alone_. You're not called upon to defend such girls! Surely
that's not too much to ask!"
Julia did not answer; she sat silent and sick. And as Jim did not speak
again, except to mutter "My God!" once or twice, they reached the house
in silence, and separated with a brief "Good-night." Ellie was waiting
for Julia, eager to hear what Miss Jane wore, and Miss Constance wore,
and how "Miss Teddy" looked.
"I am absolutely done, Ellie," said the mistress, when the filmy lace
gown was back in its box, and she was comfortably settled on her
pillows, "so don't come in until I ring."
"And I hope you'll get a long sleep," Ellie said approvingly, "you've
got to take care of yourself now!"
Julia's little daughter was born on a June day in the lovely Ross Valley
house the Studdifords had taken for the summer.
They had moved into the house in April, because Julia's hopes made a
later move unwise, and, delighted to get into the sweet green country so
early in the year, and to have the best of excuses for leading the quiet
life she loved, she bloomed like a rose. She was in splendid health and
in continual good spirits; her exultant confidence indeed lasted until
the very day of the baby's birth.
The day was late, and the pretty nurse, Miss Wheaton, had been in the
house for nearly two weeks before Julia herself came to her door, in the
first pearl dawning to say, still laughingly, that the hour had come. A
swift, well--ordered period of excitement ensued; the maids were silent,
awed, efficient; Miss Wheaton authoritative, crisp, ready with technical
terms; and Jim as nervous and upset as if he were absolutely ignorant of
all things physiological, utterly dependent upon the skill and knowledge
of the nurse, humbly obedient to her will. The telephone rang and rang.
Julia, the centre of this whole thrilling drama, wandered about in her
great plum-coloured silk dressing-gown, commenting cheerfully enough
upon the various rapid changes that were being made in her room. She
picked up the little pink blanket that had been hung upon a
white-enamelled clothes-horse, by the fire, and pressed it to her cheek.
But now and then she stopped walking, and put her hand out toward the
back of a chair as if she needed support, and then an expression crossed
her face that made Jim's soul sicken within him: an expression of fear
and wonderment and childish surprise. At nine o'clock Miss Toland came
in, a little pale, but very cheerful and reassuring.
"I'm afraid--my nerve--will give out, Aunt Sanna!" Julia said, beginning
her restless march again, after a hot quick kiss.
"Hear her!" said the nurse, with a laugh of bright scorn. "Don't talk
any nonsense like that, Mrs. Studdiford. Why, she's the coolest of us
all!"
"Oh, no--I'm not--oh, no--I'm not!" Julia moaned.
"Your doctor says you're doing splendidly, and that another two hours
ought to see everything well over!" Miss Toland said, trying to keep the
acute distress she felt out of her tone.
"I feel so--nauseated!" Julia complained. "So--uncertain!"
"Yes, I know," the nurse said soothingly, whisking out of the room. Miss
Toland followed her into the hall.
"She's in great pain, she won't have much of this?" asked the older
woman anxiously.
"She's not suffering much," the nurse said brightly, after a cautious
glance at Julia's closed door. "This isn't much--yet. She's a little
scared, that's all!"
Hating the nurse from the depth of her heart, Miss Toland went
downstairs to see the doctor. Jim was sitting with a newspaper on the
porch, trying to smoke. He jumped up nervously.
"Where's Doctor Lippincott?" demanded Miss Toland. "He ran in to San
Rafael. Back directly."
"Ran in to San Rafael? And you let him! Why, I don't see how he dared,
Jim!"
"Oh, I guess he knows his business, Aunt Sanna!" Jim said miserably. "Do
you suppose I can go up for a while?"
"Yes, go," said Miss Toland. "I think she wants you, God bless her!"
But Julia wanted nobody and nothing. Jim's presence, his concerned voice
and sympathetic eyes, only vaguely added to her distress. She was
frightened now, terrified at the recurring paroxysms of pain; she
recoiled from the breezy matter-of-factness of the doctor and the nurse;
the elaborate preparations for the crisis offended every delicate
instinct of her nature. She felt that the room was hot, and complained
of the fire; but a few moments later her teeth chattered with a chill,
and Miss Wheaton closed the wide windows through which a June breeze was
wandering.
The day dragged on. The doctor came back, talked to Jim and Miss Toland
during luncheon about mushroom-raising, went upstairs to send Miss
Wheaton down to her lunch, and to watch the patient a little while for
himself. Jim went up, too, but was sent down to reassure Mrs. Toland,
who had arrived, and with Miss Sanna was holding a vigil in the pretty
cretonne-hung drawing-room. He was crossing the hall to go upstairs
again, when a sound from above held him rigid and cold. A long low moan
of utter weariness and anguish drifted through the pleasant silence of
the house, died away, and rose again.
Slowly the sense of tragedy deepened about them. Mrs. Toland was white;
Miss Toland's face was streaked with tears. The moaning was almost
incessant now, but Jim in the hall could hear the nurse murmur above it,
and now and then the doctor's voice, short and sharp.
"I wonder if you could come in and give her a little chloroform, Jim?"
said Doctor Lippincott, a pleasant, middle-aged man in a white linen
suit and cap, appearing suddenly in the door of Julia's room. "I think
we can ease her along a little now, and I need Miss Wheaton."
Jim pushed his hair back with a wet hand; cleared his throat.
"Sure. D'you want me to scrub up?" he asked huskily.
"Oh, no--no, my dear boy! Everything's going splendidly." The doctor
beckoned him in, and shut the door. "Now, Mrs. Studdiford," said he,
"we'll be all right here in no time!"
Julia did not answer; she did not open her eyes even when Jim took her
moist hot hand in one of his, and brushed back the lovely tumbled hair
from her wet forehead. She was breathing deep and violently, as if she
had been running. Presently she beat upon the bed with one clenched
fist, and began to toss her head from side to side. Then the stifled
moan began to escape from her bitten lips again, her face worked
pitifully, and she began to cry.
"Now, crowd it on, Jim!" Doctor Lippincott said, nodding toward the
chloroform.
"Breathe deep, breathe it in, my darling!" Jim urged, pouring the sweet,
choking stuff upon the little mask he held above the tortured face.
"You aren't--helping me--at all!" Julia muttered, in a deep hoarse
voice. But her shrill thin cry sank to a moan again; she stammered
incoherent words.
So struggling and sobbing, now quieter under the anaesthetic, now crying
aloud, the next long hour somehow passed for the helpless, suffering
little animal that was Julia. A climax came, and the kindly chloroform
smothered the last terrible cry.
Julia awoke to a realization that something was snapping brightly, like
wood on a fire; that the cottony fumes in her head were breaking,
drifting away; that commonplace cheerful voices were saying things very
near her. She seemed to have fallen from infinite space to this
wretchedly uncomfortable bed and this wretchedly uncomfortable position.
She wanted a pillow; her head was rocking with pain, and her forehead
was sticky with moisture. Yet under and over all other sensations was
the heavenly relief from the familiar agonies of the day. She felt so
tired that the mere thought of beginning to rest distressed her; she
would not open her eyes; her lids seemed sealed. She felt faintly
worried because she could not seem to intelligently grasp the subject of
Honolulu.
"Honolulu? Honolulu?" This was the doctor's pleasant drawl. "No. I
haven't. Mrs. Lippincott's people live in New York, so our junketings
are usually in that direction."
"Ah, well, you'd like Honolulu," Miss Wheaton's voice answered. A pause.
Then she said, "I put some wood on. It's not so warm to-day as it was
yesterday."
Julia strove in vain to pierce the meaning of these cryptic words.
Presently the doctor said, "Perfectly normal?" more as a statement than
a question, and Miss Wheaton answered in a matter-of-fact voice, "Oh,
absolutely."
Julia opened her eyes, looked up into the nurse's face, and with
returning consciousness came self-pity.
"I couldn't do it, Miss Wheaton," she whispered pitifully, with
trembling lips.
"Hello, little girlie, you're beginning to feel better, aren't you?"
Miss Wheaton said. "Here she is, Doctor, as fine as silk."
Julia's languid eyes found the doctor's kindly face.
"But the baby?" she faltered, with a rush of tears.
"The baby is a very noisy young woman," said Doctor Lippincott
cheerfully. "I wrapped her in her pink thingamagig, and she's right here
in Jim's room, getting her first bath from her granny."
"Really?" Julia whispered. "You wouldn't--fool me?"
"Listen to her!" Miss Wheaton said. "Now, my dear, don't you be nervous.
You've got a perfectly lovely little girl, and you've come through
_splendidly_, and everything's fine. If you want to go look at that baby,
Doctor," she added, "ask Doctor Studdiford to send Ellie in here to me
and we'll straighten this all out. Then we can let him in here to see
this young lady!"
Presently Jim came in, to kneel beside Julia's bed, and gather her
little limp hands to his lips, and murmur incoherent praise of his brave
girl, his darling little mother, his little old sweetheart, dearer than
a thousand babies. Julia heard him dreamily, raised languid eyes, and
after a little while stroked his hair. She was spent, exhausted,
hammered by the agony of a few short hours into this pale ghost of
herself, and he was strong and well, the red blood running confident and
audacious in his veins. Their spirits could not meet to-night. But she
loved his praise, loved to feel his cheek wet against her hand, and she
began to be glad it was all over, that peace at last had found the big
pleasant room, where firelight and the last soft brightness of the June
day mingled so pleasantly on rosy wall paper and rosy curtains.
"She's a little darling," said Jim. "Mother says she's the prettiest
tiny baby she ever saw. Poor Aunt Sanna and Mother had a great old cry
together!"
"Ah!" said Julia hungrily. For Miss Toland had come stepping carefully
in, the precious pink blanket in her arms.
"I'm to bring her to say 'Good-night' to her mother!" said Miss Toland.
"How are you, dear? All forgotten now?"
The pink miracle was laid beside Julia; she shifted her sore body just a
trifle to make room, and spread weak fingers to raise the blanket from
the baby's face. A little crumpled rose leaf of a face, a shock of soft
black hair, and two tiny hands that curved warmly against Julia's
investigating finger. All the rest was delicate lawn and soft wool.
The baby wrinkled her little countenance, her tiny mouth opened, and
Julia heard for the first time her daughter's rasping, despairing,
bitter little cry. A passion of ecstasy flooded her heart; she dropped
her soft pale cheek close to the little creased one.
"Oh, my darling, my _darling_!" she breathed. "Oh, you little perfect,
helpless, innocent thing! Oh, Jim, she's crying, the angel! Oh, I do
thank God for her!" she ended softly.
"I thank God you're so well," said Miss Toland. "Here, you can't keep
her!"
"Anna, go with Aunt Sanna," Julia said weakly.
"Anna, eh?" Miss Toland said, wrapping up the pink blanket.
"Anna Toland Studdiford," Jim answered. "Julia had that all fixed up
weeks ago!"
"Well--now--you children!" Miss Toland said, looking from one to the
other, with her half-vexed and half-approving laugh. "What do you want
to name her that for?"
"_I_ know what for," Julia smiled, as she watched the pink blanket out
of sight.
A little later Mrs. Toland crept in, just for a kiss, and a whimpered,
"And now you must forget all the pain, dear, and just be happy!"
Then Julia was left to her own thoughts.
She watched Miss Wheaton come and go in the soft twilight. A shaded
light bloomed suddenly, where it would not distress her eyes. The
curtains were drawn, and Ellie came softly in with a pitcher of hot milk
on a tray. Now and then the baby's piercing little "Oo-wah-wah!" came in
from the next room, and when she heard it, Julia smiled and said
faintly, "The darling!"
And as a ship that has been blown seaward, to meet the gales and to be
battered upon rocks, might be caught at last by friendlier tides and
carried safely home, so Julia felt herself carried, a helpless little
wreck, too tired to care if the waves flung her far up on shore or drew
her out to their mad embraces again.
"All forgotten?" Miss Toland had asked, from her fifty years of
ignorance, and "Now you must forget all the pain," Mrs. Toland had said,
with her motherly smile.
Queer, drifting thoughts came and went in her active brain during these
quiet days of convalescence. She thought of girls she had known at The
Alexander, girls who had cried, and who had been blamed and ostracised,
girls who had gone to the City and County Hospital for their bitter
hour, and had afterward put the babies in the Asylum! Julia's thoughts
went by the baby in the next room, and at the picture of that tender
helplessness, wronged and abandoned, her heart seemed to close like a
closing hand.
Anna Toland Studdiford would never be abandoned, no fear of that. Never
was baby more closely surrounded with love and the means of protection.
But the other babies, just as dear to other women, what of them? What of
mother hearts that must go through life knowing that there are little
cries they will never hear, tears they may never dry, tired little
bodies that will never know the restfulness of gentle arms? The terrible
sum of unnecessary human suffering rose up like a black cloud all about
her; she seemed to see long hospital wards, with silent forms filling
them day and night, night and day, the long years through; she had
glimpses of the crowded homes of the poor, the sick and helpless
mothers, the crying babies. She suddenly knew sickness and helplessness
to be two of the greatest factors in human life.
"What if Heaven is only this earth, clean and right at last," mused
Julia, "and Hell only the realization of what we might have done, and
didn't do--for each other!" And to Jim she said, smiling, "This
experience has not only given me a baby, and given me my own motherhood,
but it seems to have given me all the mothers and the babies in the
world as well! I wish you were a baby doctor, Jim--the preservation of
babies is the most important thing in the world!"
Slowly the kindly tides brought her back to life, and against her own
belief that it would ever be so, she found herself walking again,
essaying the stairs, taking her place at the table. Miss Wheaton went
away, the capable Caroline took her place, and Julia was well.
Caroline was a silent, nice-looking, efficient woman of forty. She knew
everything there was to know about babies, and had more than one book to
consult when she forgot anything. She had been married, and had two
handsome sturdy little girls of her own, so that little Anna's rashes
and colics, her crying days and the days in which she seemed to Julia
alarmingly good, presented no problems to Caroline. There was nothing
Julia could tell her about sterilizing, or talcum powder, or keeping
light out of the baby's eyes, or turning her over in her crib from time
to time so that she shouldn't develop one-sidedly.
More than this, Anna was a good baby; she seemed to have something of
her mother's silent sweetness. She ran through her limited repertory of
eating, sleeping, bathing, and blinking at her friends with absolute
regularity.
"I'd just like you to leave the door open so that if she _should_ cry at
night--" Julia said.
"But she never _does_ cry at night!" Caroline smiled.
Julia persisted for some time that she wanted to bathe the baby every
day, but before Anna was two months old she had to give up the idea. It
became too difficult to do what nobody in the house wanted her to do,
and what Caroline was only too anxious to perform in her stead. Jim
liked to loiter over his breakfast, and showed a certain impatience when
Julia became restive.
"What is it, dear? What's Lizzie say? Caroline wants you?"
"It's just that--it's ten o'clock, Jim, and Caroline sent down to know
if I am going to give Anna her bath this morning!"
"Oh, bath--nothing! Let Caroline wait--what's the rush?"
"It's only that baby gets so cross, Jim!" Julia would plead.
"Well, let her. You know you mustn't spoil her, Julie. If there's one
thing that's awful it's a house run by a spoiled kid! Do let's have our
breakfast in peace!"
Julia might here gracefully concede the point, and send a message to
Caroline to go on without her. Or she might make the message a promise
to perform the disputed duty herself, "in just a few minutes."
She would run into the nursery breathlessly, and take the baby in her
arms. Everything would be in readiness, the water twinkling in the
little bathtub, soap and powder, fresh little clothes, and woolly bath
apron all in order.
"But _hush_, Sweetest! How cross she is this morning, Caroline!"
"Yes, Mrs. Studdiford. You see she ought to be having her bottle now,
it's nearly eleven! Dear little thing, she was _so_ good and patient."
"Well, darling, Mudder'll be as quick as she can," Julia might console
the baby, and under Caroline's cool eye, and with Anna screaming until
she was scarlet from her little black crown to the soles of her feet,
the bath would somehow proceed. Ellie might put her head in the door.
"Well--oh, the poor baby, were they 'busing Ellie's baby?" she would
croon, coming in. "Don't you care, because Ellie's going to beat 'em all
with sticks!"
Caroline anticipated Julia's every need on these occasions: the little
heap of discarded apparel was whisked away, band and powder were
promptly presented, the bath vanished, the clothes-rack with its tiny
hangers was gone, and Julia had a moment in which to hug the weary,
sleepy, hungry, fragrant little lump of girlhood in her arms.
"Bottle ready, Caroline?"
"Yes, Mrs. Studdiford. She goes out on the porch now, for her nap. Come
to Caroline, darling, and get something goody-good."
And so Julia had no choice but to go, wandering a little disconsolately
to her own room, and wishing the baby took her nap at another hour and
could be played with now.
Presently outside interests began to claim her again, dressmakers and
manicures, shopping and the essential letter writing filled the
mornings, luncheons kept her late into the afternoons, there were calls
and card playing and teas. Julia would have only a few minutes in the
nursery before it was time to dress for dinner; sometimes Jim came in to
feast his eyes on the beautiful, serene little Anna, in her beautiful
mother's arms; more often he was late, and Julia, trailing her evening
gown behind her, would fly for studs, and pull the boot-trees from Jim's
shining pumps.
In September they went to Burlingame for the polo tournament, and here,
on an unseasonably hot day, Jim had an ugly little touch of the sun, and
for two or three days was very ill. They were terrible days to Julia.
Richie came to her at once, and they took possession of the house of a
friend, where Jim had chanced to be carried, and sent to San Rafael for
Julia's servants; but two splendid nurses kept her out of the sickroom,
and the baby was in San Rafael, so that Julia wandered about utterly at
a loss to occupy heart or hands.
On the third day the fever dropped, and Julia crept in to laugh and cry
over her big boy. Jim got well very quickly, and just a week from the
day of the accident he and Julia went home to the enchanting Anna, and
began to plan for a speedy removal to the Pacific Avenue house, so that
the little episode was apparently quite forgotten by the time they were
back in the city and the season opened.
But looking back, months later, Julia knew that she could date a
definite change in their lives from that time. Whether his slight
sunstroke had really given Jim's mind a little twist, or whether the
shock left him unable to throw off oppressing thoughts with his old
buoyancy, his wife did not know. But she knew that a certain sullen,
unresponsive mood possessed him. He brooded, he looked upon her with a
heavy eye, he sighed deeply when she drew his attention to the lovely
little Anna.
Julia knew by this time that marriage was not all happiness, all
irresponsible joy. She had often wondered why the women she knew did not
settle themselves seriously to a study of its phases, when the cloudless
days inevitably gave place to something incomprehensible and disturbing.
Even lovers like Kennedy and her husband had their times of being wholly
out of sympathy with each other, she knew, and she and Jim were not
angels; they must only try to be patient and forbearing until the dark
hour went by.
With a sense of unbearable weight at her heart she resigned herself to
the hard task of endurance. Sometimes with a bitter rush would come the
memory of how they had loved each other, and then Julia surrendered
herself to long paroxysms of tears; it was so hard, so bewildering, to
have Jim cold and quiet, to live in this painful alternation of hope and
fear. But she never let Jim see her tears, and told herself bravely that
life held some secret agony for every one, and that she must bear her
share of the world's burden. How had it all come about, she wondered.
Her thoughts went back to the honeymoon, and she had an aching memory of
Central Park in its fresh green, of Jim laughing at her when she tried
to be very matronly, in her kimono, over their breakfast tray. Oh, the
exquisite happy days, the cloudless, wonderful time!
She left the thought of it for the winter that followed. That had been
happy, too. Not like the New York months, not without its grave
misgivings, not without its hours of bitter pain, yet happy on the
whole. Then Honolulu, all so bright a memory until that hour on the
ship--that first horrible premonition of so much misery that was to
follow. The San Mateo summer had somehow widened the wordless,
mysterious gap between them, and the winter! Julia shuddered as she
thought of the winter. Where was her soul while her body danced and
dressed and dined and slept through those hot hours? Where was any one's
soul in that desperate whirl of amusement?
But she had found her soul again, on the June day of Anna's coming. And
with Anna had come to her what new hopes and fears, what new
potentialities and new sensibilities! She had always been silent,
reserved, stoical by nature, accepting what life brought her
uncomprehendingly, only instinctively and steadily fighting toward that
ideal that had so long ago inspired her girlhood. Now she was awake,
quivering with exquisite emotions, trembling with eagerness to adjust
her life, and taste its full delicious savour. Now she wanted to laugh
and to talk, to sit singing to her baby in the firelight, to run to meet
her husband and fling herself into his arms for pure joy in life, and
joy that she was beautiful and young and mother of the dearest baby in
the world, and wife of the wisest and best of men. The past was blotted
out for Julia now; her place in society was undisputed, not only as the
wife of the rich young consulting surgeon, but for herself as well, and
she could make as little or as much as she pleased of society's claim.
From her sickness she felt as if she had learned that there is suffering
and sorrow enough in the world without the need of deliberately
sustaining the old and long-atoned wrongs. More than that, she had come
to regard her own fine sense of right as a safer guide than any other,
and by this she was absolved of the shadowy sin of her girlhood: the
years, the hours she had prayed, the long interval, absolved her. Julia
felt as if she had been born again.
In this mood Jim did not join her. As the weeks went by his aspect grew
darker and more dark, and life in the Pacific Avenue house became a
thing of long silences and rare and stilted phrases, and for the brief
time daily that they were alone together, husband and wife were
wretchedly unhappy, Jim watching his wife gloomily, Julia feeling that
his look could chill her happiest mood. She had sometimes suspected that
this state of affairs existed between other husbands and wives, and
marvelled that life went smoothly on; there were dinners and dances,
there were laughter and light speech. Jim might merely answer her
half-timid, half-confident "Good-morning" with only a jerk of his head;
he might eat his breakfast in silence, and accord to Julia's brief
outline of dinner or evening engagements only a scowling monosyllable.
Yet the day proceeded, there was the baby to visit, a dressmaker's
appointment to keep, luncheon and the afternoon's plans to be gotten
through, and then there was the evening again, and Jim and herself
dressing in adjoining rooms in utter silence, silently descending to
welcome their guests, or silently whirling off in the limousine.
Sometimes she fancied that when she resolutely assumed a cheerful tone,
and determined to fight this unwholesome atmosphere with honest bravery,
she merely succeeded in making Jim's mood uglier than ever. Often she
tried a shy tenderness, but with no success.
One day when Miss Toland was lunching with her Julia made some allusion
to the subject, in answer to the older woman's comment that she did not
look very well.
"I'm _not_ very well, Aunt Sanna," said Julia, pushing her plate away, and
resting both slim elbows on the table. "I'm worried."
"Not about Anna?" Miss Toland asked quickly.
"No-o! Anna, God bless her, is simply six-months-old perfection!" Julia
said, with a brief smile. "No--about myself and Jim."
Miss Toland gave her a shrewd glance.
"Quarrelled, eh?" she said simply.
"Oh, no!" Julia felt her eyes watering. "No. I almost wish we had.
Because then I could go to him, and say 'I'm sorry!'" she stammered.
"Sorry for what?" demanded Miss Toland.
"For whatever I'd done!" elucidated Julia, with her April smile.
"Yes, but suppose he'd done it, what then?" Miss Toland asked.
"Ah, well," Julia hesitated. "Jim doesn't do things!" she said vaguely.
"Jim's in one of his awful moods, I suppose?" his adopted aunt asked,
after a pause.
"Oh, in a dreadful one!" Julia confessed.
"How long--days?"
"Weeks, Aunt Sanna!"
"Weeks? For the Lord's sake, that's awful!" Miss Toland frowned and
rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What gets into the boy?" she said
impatiently. "You don't know what it's about, I suppose?"
Julia hesitated. "I think it's that he gets to thinking of my old life,
when I was a little nobody, south of Market Street," she hazarded with
as much truth as she could.
"Oh, _really_!" Miss Toland said, in a tone of cold satire. But her look
fell with infinite tenderness and pity upon the drooping little figure
opposite. "Yet there's nothing of the snob about Jim," she mused
unhappily.
"Oh, _no_!" Julia breathed earnestly.
"There isn't, eh?" Miss Toland said. "I'm not so sure. I'm not at all
sure. He isn't working too hard, is he?"
"He isn't working hard at all," Julia said. "Jim doesn't have a case, to
worry over, twice a year. You see it's either City and County cases,
that he just goes ahead and _does_, or else it's rich, rich people who
have one of the older doctors, and just call Jim in to assist or
consult. He was a little nervous over a demonstration before the
students the other day, but at the very last second," Julia's quick
smile flitted over her face, "at the very last second the assisting
nurse dropped the cold bone--as they call it--that Jim was going to
transplant. Doctor Chapman told him he'd bet Jim bribed the girl to do
it!"
"H'm!" Miss Toland said absently. "But his father was just another such
moody fellow, queer as Dick's hatband!" she added, suddenly, after a
pause.
"Jim's father? I didn't know you knew him!"
"Knew him? Indeed I did! We all lived in Honolulu in those days.
Charming, charming fellow, George Studdiford, but queer. He was very
musical, you know; he'd look daggers at you if you happened to sneeze in
the middle of one of his Beethoven sonatas. Tim's mother was very sweet,
beautiful, too, but spoiled, Julia, spoiled!"
"Too much money!" Julia said, shaking her head.
"Exactly--there you have it!" Miss Toland assented triumphantly. "I've
seen too much of it not to know it. There's a sort of dry rot about it;
even a fine fellow like Jim can't escape. But, my dear"--her tone became
reassuring--"don't let it worry you. He'll get over it. Just bide your
time!"
"Well, that's just what I _am_ doing," Julia said, with a rueful laugh.
"But it's like being in a bad dream. There is sorrow that you have to
bear, don't you know, Aunt Sanna, like crippled children, or somebody's
death, or being poor; and then there are these other unnatural trials,
that you just _rebel_ against! I say to myself that I'll just be patient
and sweet, and go on filling my time with Anna and calls and dinner
parties, until Jim comes to his senses and tells me what an angel I am,
but it's awfully hard to do it! Sometimes the house seems like a vault
to me, in the mornings, even the sunshine"--Julia's eyes watered, but
she went steadily on--"even the sunshine doesn't seem right, and I feel
as if I were eating ashes and cotton! I go about looking at other
houses, and thinking, 'I wonder what men and women are being wretchedly
unhappy behind _your_ plate-glass windows!' I watch other men and their
wives together," pursued Julia, smiling through tears, "and when women
say those casual things they are always saying, about not loving your
husband after the first few months, and being disillusioned, and meaning
less and less to each other, I feel as if it would break my heart!"
"Well," Miss Toland said, somewhat distressed, "of course, I'd rather
walk into a bull fight than advise--"
"I know you would," Julia hastened to assure her. "That's why I've been
talking," she added, "and it's been a real relief! Don't think I'm
complaining, Aunt Sanna--"
"No, my dear," Miss Toland said. "I'll never think anything that isn't
good of you, Julie," she went on. "If Jim Studdiford is so selfish as
to--to make his wife unhappy for those very facts that made him first
love her and choose her, well, I think the less of Jim, that's all! Now
give me a kiss, and we'll go and pick out something for Barbara's boy!"
"Well, it may be a pretty safe general rule not to discuss your husband
with your women friends," Julia said gayly. "But I feel as if this talk
had taken a load off my heart! In books, of course," she went on, "the
little governess can marry the young earl, and step right into noble,
not to say royal, circles, with perfect calm. But in real life, she has
an occasional misgiving. I never can quite forget that Jim was a
ten-year-old princeling, with a pony and a tutor and little velvet
suits, and brushes with his little initials on them, when I was born in
an O'Farrell Street flat!"
"Well, if you remember it," said Miss Toland, in affectionate
disapproval, "you're the only person who does!"
Either the confidential chat with Miss Toland had favourably affected
Julia's point of view, or the state of affairs between Jim and herself
actually brightened from that day. Julia noticed in his manner that
night a certain awkward hint of reconciliation, and with it a flood of
tenderness and generosity rose in her own heart, and she knew that,
deeply as he had hurt her, she was ready to forgive him and to be
friends again.
So a not unhappy week passed, and Julia, with more zest than she had
shown in some months, began to plan a real family reunion for
Thanksgiving, now only some ten days off. She wrote to the Doctor and
Mrs. Toland, to the Carletons and Aunt Sanna, and to Richie, who had
established himself in a little cottage on Mount Tamalpais, and who was
somewhat philanthropically practising his profession there. She very
carefully ordered special favours for the occasion, and selected two
eligible and homeless young men from her list of acquaintances to fill
out the table and to amuse Constance and Jane. Jim had to go to
Sacramento on the Saturday before Thanksgiving for an important
operation, but would be home again on Tuesday or Wednesday to take the
head of his own table on the holiday.
Julia offered, when the Friday night before his departure came, to help
him with packing. They had dined very quietly with friends that night,
and found themselves at home again not very long after ten o'clock. But
Jim, sinking into a chair beside the library fire, with an assortment of
new magazines at his elbow, politely declined.
"Oh, no, thank you! Plenty of time for that in the morning. I don't go
until nine."
"Let Chadwick do it, anyway, Jim. Shall I tell Ellie to send him up at
eight?"
"If you will. Thank you! Good-night!"
"Good-night!" And Julia trailed her satins and laces slowly upstairs,
unfastening her jewels as she went. A little sense of discouragement was
fighting for possession; she fought it consciously as she had fought
such waves of despondency a hundred times before. She propped herself
comfortably in pillows, turned on a light, and began to read.
Ellie fussed about the room for a few minutes, and then was gone. The
big house was very still. Eleven o'clock struck from the little mahogany
clock on her mantel, midnight struck, and still Jim's footstep did not
come up the stairs, and there was no welcome sound of occupancy in the
room adjoining her own.
Suddenly terror smote Julia; she flung her book aside and sat up erect
in bed. Her heart was thundering with fear; the silence of the house was
like that that follows an explosion.
For a few dreadful seconds she sat motionless; then she thrust her bare
feet in the slippers of warm white fox that Ellie had put out, and
caught up a Japanese robe of black crepe, in which her figure was quite
lost. Fastening the wide obi with trembling fingers, she slipped out
into the hall, dimly lighted and very still. Then she ran quickly
downstairs.
What sight of horror she expected to find in the library she did not
know, but the shock of revulsion, when the opened door showed her
nothing more terrible than Jim, musing in the firelight, was almost as
bad as a fright could have been.
"Oh, Jim!" she panted, coming in, one hand pressed against her heart, "I
thought something--I got frightened!"
Jim looked up with his old, tender, whimsical smile, the smile for which
she had hungered so long, and held out a reassuring hand.
"Why, no, you poor kid!" he said. "I've been sitting right here!"
"I thought--and it was so still--and you didn't come up!" Julia said,
beginning to sob. And in a moment she was in his arms, clinging to him
in an ecstasy of love and relief. For a long blissful time they remained
so, the soft curve of Julia's cheek against Jim's face, her heart
beating quick above his own, her warm little figure, in its loose, soft
robe, gathered closely to him.
"Feeling better now, old lady?"
"Oh, fine!" But Julia's face quivered with tears again at the tone.
"Well, then, what's this for?" He showed her a drop on the back of his
hand.
"Be--because I love you so, Jim!"
"Well, you needn't cry over it!" said Jim gently. "I'm the one that
ought to do the crying, Judy," he added, with a significant glance at
her lovely flushed face and tear-bright blue eyes.
Julia leaned against him with a long, happy sigh.
"Oh, I'm so glad I came down!" she breathed contentedly.
"'Glad!'" Jim echoed soberly. "God! You don't know what it meant to me
to look up and see my little Geisha coming in. I was going crazy, I
think!"
"Ah, Jimmy, why do you?" she coaxed, one slender arm about his neck.
"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "Made that way, I guess!"
For a while they were silent again, then Julia said softly:
"After all, nothing matters as long as we love each other!"
"No, no! You're right, Julie," he agreed seriously. "That's the only
thing that counts. And you do love me, don't you?"
"Love you!" Julia said, with a shaky laugh.
"I get crazy notions. I nearly go mad, sometimes," Jim confessed. "I get
to brooding--I know how rotten it is!" He fell silent, staring into the
fire. "Happy?" he asked presently, glancing down at her as she rested
quietly in his arms.
"Oh, _happy_!" Julia said, a break in her voice. "I wish I could die here,
Jim. I wish I could go to sleep here and never wake up!"
"Like me as much as that baby, eh?" he asked, in a peculiar tone.
Julia sat up to face him, her cheeks bright under loosening films of
hair, her eyes starry in the firelight.
"Jimmy, you couldn't be jealous of your own baby?"
"Oh, couldn't I? I can be jealous of anything and everything,
sometimes." He fixed troubled eyes on the fire. "I've been unhappy,
Julie," he confessed.
"Unhappy? I've just been _sick_ about it," Julia said. "I can't believe
that we're talking about it, and it's all over!" She sighed luxuriously.
"There's no use of _my_ doing anything when you're this way, Jim--I can't
even remember that you love me," she went on after a silence.
"Everything seems changed and queer. Sometimes I think you hate me,
sometimes you give me such cold looks--oh, you _do_, Jimmy!--they just
make me feel sick and queer all over, if you know what I mean! And oh,"
she sank back again with her head on his shoulder, "oh, if _only_ then I
could dare just come down to you here like this, and make you take me in
your arms, and talk to me this way!"
"Don't!" Jim said briefly, kissing the top of her hair.
"It just seems to _smoulder_ in my heart!" Julia said. "I can't bear it!';
"Don't!" he said again.
"Ah, but what makes you do it, Jim?" she asked, sitting erect to rest
both wrists on his shoulders, and bring her blue eyes very near his own.
Jim's glance did not meet hers, he looked sombrely past her at the fire.
Suddenly she felt his arms tighten about her with a force that almost
hurt her.
"Oh, it's this!" he said harshly, "I love you--you're mine! You're the
thing I live for, the thing I'm proudest of! I can't bear to think there
was a time when I didn't know you, my little innocent girl! I can't
bear--my God!--to think that you cared for some one else--!"
And with swift force he got to his feet, and put her in his chair. Julia
sat motionless while he took a restless brief turn about the room. He
snatched a little jade god from the table, examined it closely, and put
it down again, to come and stand with his back to the fire, one arm
flung across the mantel, and his gloomy eyes fixed on her. Julia met the
rushing, engulfing wave of her own emotion bravely.
"Jim," she said bravely, "does it mean nothing to you that there were
other women in _your_ life before you knew me?"
"Dearest," he answered seriously and quickly, "God knows that I would
cut my hand off to be able to blot that all out of my boyhood. Those
things mean nothing to a man, Ju, and they meant less to me than to most
men. Women can't understand that, but if you knew how men regard it, you
would realize that very few can bring their wives as clean a record as
mine!"
He had said this much before, never anything more. Julia, looking at him
now with all the tragic sorrow of her life in her magnificent eyes, felt
the utter impossibility of convincing him that this accusation on her
part, and bravely boyish and honest confession on his, had any logical
or possible connection with the momentous conversation that they were
having to-night. Her heart recoiled in sick terror from any word that
would hurt or estrange him now, but she might have found that word, and
might have said it, could she have hoped that it would convey her
meaning to him. But Jim's standard of morals, for himself, was, like
that of most men, still the college standard. It was too bad to have
clouded the bright mirror, but it was inevitable, given youth and red
blood. And it was admirable to regret it all now. Any fresh attempt on
Julia's part to bring to his realization the parallel in their
situations, would have elicited from him only fresh, youthful
acknowledgments, until that second when anger and astonishment at her
bold effort to reduce the two distinct codes to one would end this
talk--like so many others!--with new coldnesses and silences. Julia
abandoned this line of argument once and for all.
"I never cared for any one but you in my life, Jim," she said, with dry
lips.
"I know," he muttered, brushing his hair back with an impatient hand. A
second later he came to kneel penitently before her. "I'm sorry,
sweetheart," he said pleadingly. "You're a little angel of forgiveness
to me--I don't deserve it! I know how I make you suffer!"
"Jim," she said, feeling old, and tired, and cold to her heart's core,
"do you think you do?"
"I know how _I_ suffer!" he answered bitterly.
"Jim, suppose it was something you had done long ago that _I_ couldn't
forgive?"
"It isn't a question of forgiveness," he answered quickly.
"Forgiveness--when you are the sweetest and best wife a man ever had!
No, darling," he caught both her hands in his own, "you must never think
that, it's never that! It's only my mad, crazy jealousy. I tell you I'm
ashamed of it, and I _am_! Just be patient with me, Julia!"
Julia stared at him a few moments silently, her hands locked about his
neck.
"Ah, but you _worry_ me so when you're like this, Jim," she said
presently, in the gentle, troubled tone a mother might use. "There seems
to be nothing I can do. I can only worry and wait!"
"I know, I know," he said hastily. "Don't remind me of it! My father was
like that, you know. My father shot at a man once because he was rude to
my mother when he was drunk--shot him right through the shoulder! It
raised the very deuce of a scandal down there in Honolulu! He took
Mother to Europe to get away from the fuss, and paid the man the Lord
knows what to quiet the thing!"
"Yes, but life isn't like that, Jim," Julia protested. "Life isn't so
simple! Shooting at somebody, and buying his silence, and rushing off to
Europe! Why can't you just say to yourself reasonably--"
"'Reasonably,' dearest!" he echoed cheerfully, with a kiss. "When was a
jealous man ever reasonable!"
"But think how wonderfully happy we are, Jim," she persisted wistfully.
"Suppose there _is_ one part trouble, one part of your life that you don't
like, why can't you be happy because ninety-nine parts of it are
perfect?"
"I don't know; talking with you here, I can't understand it," he said.
"But I get thinking--I get thinking, and my heart begins to hammer, and
I lie awake nights, and I'd like to get up and strangle someone--"
His vehemence died into abashed silence before her grave eyes.
"I ought to be the one to stamp and rave over this," Julia said. "I
ought to remind you that you knew my history when you married me; and
you know life, too--you were ten years older than I, and how much more
experienced! All I knew was learned at the settlement house, or from
books. And the reason I _don't_ rave and stamp, Jim," she went on, "is
because I am different from you. I realize that that doesn't help
matters. We must make the best of it now, we must help each other! You
see I have no pride about it. I know I am better than many--than
most--of these society women all about us, but I don't force you to
admit that. They break every other commandment of God, yes, and that
one, too, and they commit every one of the deadly sins! It seems to me
sometimes as if 'gluttony, envy, and sloth' were the very foundation on
which the lives of some of these people rest, and as for pride and anger
and lust, why, we take them for granted! Yet, whoever thinks seriously
of saying so?"
"You make me ashamed, Julie," Jim said, after a pause, during which his
eyes had not moved from her face. "I can only say I'm sorry. I'm very
sorry! Sometimes I think you're a good deal bigger man than I am; but I
can't help it. However, I'm going to try. From to-night on I'm going to
try."
"We'll both try," Julia said, and they kissed each other.