The Story of Julia Page | Page 4

sides and its shining contents--berry saucers and almond
dishes in pressed glass, and other luxuries to which the late Miss Cox
had been entirely a stranger. Emeline was intoxicated with the freedom
and the pleasures of her new life; George was out of town two or three
nights a week, but when he was at home the two slept late of mornings,
and loitered over their breakfast, Emeline in a loose wrapper, filling
and refilling her coffee cup, while George rattled the paper and filled
the room with the odour of cigarettes.
Then Emeline was left to put her house in order, and dress herself for
the day--her corsets laced tight at the waist, her black hair crimped
elaborately above her bang, her pleated skirts draped fashionably over
her bustle. George would come back at one o'clock to take her to lunch,
and after lunch they wandered up and down Kearney and Market streets,
laughing and chatting, glad just to be alive and together. Sometimes
they dined downtown, too, and afterward went to the "Tivoli" or
"Morosco's," or even the Baldwin Theatre, and sometimes bought and
carried home the materials for a dinner, and invited a few of George's
men friends to enjoy it with them. These were happy times; Emeline,
flushed and pretty in her improvised apron, queened it over the three or
four adoring males, and wondered why other women fussed so long
over cooking, when men so obviously enjoyed a steak, baked potatoes,
canned vegetables, and a pie from Swain's. After dinner the men
always played poker, a mild little game at first, with Emeline eagerly
guarding a little pile of chips, and gasping over every hand like a happy
child; but later more seriously, when Emeline, contrary to poker
superstition, sat on the arm of her husband's chair, to bring him luck.
Luck she certainly seemed to bring him; the Pages would go yawning
to bed, after one of these evenings, chuckling over the various hands.
"I couldn't see what you drew, George," Emeline would say, "but I
could see that Mack had aces on the roof, and it made me crazy to have
you go on raising that way! And then your three fish hooks!"

George would shout with pride at her use of poker terms--would laugh
all the harder if she used them incorrectly. And sometimes, sinking
luxuriously into the depths of the curly-maple bed, Emeline would
think herself the luckiest woman in the world. No hurry about getting
up in the morning; no one to please but herself; pretty gowns and an
adoring husband and a home beyond her maddest hopes--the girl's
dreams no longer followed her, happy reality had blotted out the dream.
She felt a little injured, a little frightened, when the day came on which
she must tell George of some pretty well-founded suspicions of her
own condition. George might be "mad," or he might laugh.
But George was wonderfully soothing and reassuring; more, was
pathetically glad and proud. He petted Emeline into a sort of reluctant
joy, and the attitude of her mother and sisters and the few women she
knew was likewise flattering. Important, self- absorbed, she waited her
appointed days, and in the early winter a wizened, mottled little
daughter was born. Julia was the name Emeline had chosen for a girl,
and Julia was the name duly given her by the radiant and ecstatic
George in the very first hour of her life. Emeline had lost interest in the
name--indeed, in the child and her father as well--just then; racked,
bewildered, wholly spent, she lay back in the curly-maple bed, the first
little seed of that general resentment against life that was eventually to
envelop her, forming in her mind.
They had told her that because of this or that she would not have a
"hard time," and she had had a very hard time. They had told her that
she would forget the cruel pain the instant it was over, and she knew
she never would forget it. It made her shudder weakly to think of all the
babies in the world--of the schools packed with children--at what a
cost!
Emeline recovered quickly, and shut her resentment into her own breast.
Julie, as she was always called, was a cross baby, and nowadays the
two front rooms were usually draped with her damp undergarments,
and odorous of sour bottles and drying clothes. For the few months that
Emeline nursed the child she wandered about until late in the day in a
loose wrapper, a margin of draggled nightgown showing under it, her

hair in a tumbled knot at the back of her head. If she had to run out for
a loaf of bread or a pound of coffee, she slipped on a street skirt, and
buttoned