Julia

“ Every little girl, every old woman that he passed in the street, made him think of Julia, and when he passed a young man and woman full of concern for, and of shy pride in, their lumpy baby in its embroidered coat, a wave of divine envy swept Mark from head to foot. ”

“ Benches were set in rows under a grove of young maple and locust trees, and Julia and Mark, sauntering well up to the front, found seats, and settled themselves to listen.
Julia, enjoying the sunshine and the good hour, looked lazily at the curiously variegated types about them: young men who lay almost horizontally in their seats, their eyes shut, newspapers blowing about their feet; toddling babies in Sunday white; young fathers and mothers with tiny coats laid across their laps; groups of middle-aged Teutons critically alert, and, everywhere, lovers and lovers and lovers. ”

“ One evening Julia, on entering the theatre, saw her cousin in the box of a duchess famous at that time for her beauty, her discretion, as well as her conquests.
The position which the two occupied, in the rear of the box, and bending toward each other until their cheeks almost touched, the insinuating smile on his face, and the flattered vanity which was expressed in hers, all made on the young girl such an impression that, for the moment, she was afraid of falling, and it was by mere force of will that she managed to reach their seats. ”

“ Life had never been dark to Julia; now she found the days all too short for her various occupations and pleasures. Mark was assuming more and more the attitude of a lover, and Julia was too much of a coquette to discourage him utterly. She really liked him, and loved the stolen hours in Pomeroy and Parke's big piano house, when Mark, flinging his hair out of his eyes, played like an angel, and Julia nibbled caramels and sat curled up on the davenport, watching him. ”

“ Caroline, it appeared, had gone to her own family for the afternoon, and Julia, looking like a child in her short white dress and buckled slippers, was sitting in a low chair with little Anna in her arms. The room was bright with firelight and the soft light from the subdued nursery lamps, and warm russet curtains shut out the dull and dying afternoon. Dolls and blocks were scattered on the hearth rug, and Julia sat her daughter down among them, and jumped up with a radiant face to greet the newcomer. ”

“ I'll make you the happiest woman in the world, Julia. I love you. I'll be so proud of you! You can have a dozen girls under your wing all the time; you can answer the Queen back, and I'll never have even a thought but what you're the finest and sweetest woman in the world!"
The preposterous picture brought a shaky smile to Julia's lips and a hint of tears to her eyes. She suddenly rose from her seat and went down to the garden.
"Our talking it over does no good, Jim," she said, as he followed her, and stood looking at her and at Anna. ”

“ The little Julia flitted about everywhere: watching janitors as they hosed down the sidewalks outside the saloons, or rinsed cuspidors; watching grocers set out their big signs for the day; watching little restaurants open, and first comers sit down to great cups of coffee and plates of hot cakes. Perhaps the sight of food would remind the little girl of her own empty stomach; she would straggle home just as the first sunshine was piercing the fog, and loiter upstairs, and peep into the bedroom to see what the chances of a meal might be. ”

“ Barbara had been kind to her in the matter of Carter Hazzard, had defended her to-day, in her careless, indifferent fashion. Julia's heart ached with fierce envy of Barbara, ached with fierce longing and admiration. She tortured herself with a picture of the charm of Barbara's life: her waking in the sunshine, her breakfast eaten between the old doctor and the young, her hours at her pretty writing-desk, on the porch, at the piano. Always dignified, always sweet and dainty, always adored.
Well, she, Julia, should be an actress, a great actress. ”

“ Julia found the theatricals perilously delightful; the grease paint and the ornate costume seemed like old friends; she was intoxicated and enchanted by the applause. For several days after her most successful performance she was thoughtful: what if she had never joined the "Amazon" caste, never gone to Sausalito, followed naturally in the footsteps of Connie Girard and Rose Ransome? She might have been a great actress; she would have been a great beauty. ”

“ Leave that to me, my son; time and circumstance will do much for us. You have chosen the flower of the Wetherals for your wife. Julia loves me, and is guided by me in every thing which relates to yourself; Lady W. is a ladylike goose, and her eldest daughter resembles the automaton in stillness and insipidity. Clara is very handsome, but I see already the germs of violence in her temper. You have done very wisely in choosing Julia; between ourselves, she is easily guided by the person she loves, and she loves me for your sake, Ennismore. ”

“ Yet did the countenance possess a power over Julia like that of a spell, she could not withdraw her gaze from it. The hollow cheek, the large prominent eye, with hopelessness for its sole expression, the colourless lip, the perfectly white hair, the small and still delicate, while emaciated throat, formed a picture, which could not be contemplated without extreme pain.
Julia half raising herself, exclaimed, “Where am I? where am I? oh, where am I?” each time with increasing earnestness. ”

“ But she's rare, Julia; it's like trying to deal with some delicate frail little lady out of Cranford, like trying to guess what Emily Bronte might like, or Eugenie de Guerin! Julia's got life sized up, she likes it—I don't know whether this conveys anything to you or not!—but she likes it as much as if it was part of a play. You don't matter to her any more; I don't; she sees things too big. She's quite extraordinary; the most extraordinary person I ever knew, I think. There's a completeness, a finish about her. She's not waiting for any self-defence from you, Jim. ”

“ And where, worthy sir, are the houses of the lovely and wealthy ladies who keep you good company in summer sunshine and winter snow? Where dwells the stately Mistress Julia, bright and straight as a garden tulip, a flower which I confess the Roman name of Julia calls always to my sight. Where the sparkling-eyed lady Dianeme, the shy Anthea, the delicate Perilla light as a woodland anemone, and all this shining garden of sweets that your muse commends to our worship? ”

“ Julia could not remove her eyes from the strange and beautiful face of this woman. Deep, but subdued agony was at work in every lineament. There was wildness in her very motion, as she lifted her superb form from the railing, and drew the folds of a cashmere shawl over her bosom, pressing her hand hard upon the rich fabric, as if to relieve some painful feeling that it covered. ”

“ So Julia did what was left to her, for her mother: listened patiently to long complaints, paid bills, and supplemented Jim's generous cheque with many a gold piece pressed into her mother's hand or slipped into her grandmother's dreadful old shopping-bag. She carried off her young cousins to equip them with winter suits and sensible shoes, aware all the while that their high-heeled slippers and flimsy, cheap silk dresses, the bangles that they slipped over dirty little hands, and the fancy combs they pushed into their untidy hair, were infinitely more prized by them. ”

“ With her tight, black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue dress. Her hair was becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered and got excited, her nervous mouth twitched. Her high-pitched, sing-song voice and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre. She twisted a beautiful little fan that a dead artist had given her. ”

“ And it was Richie, so weak in body, so powerful in spirit; so humble in little things, so bold and sure in the things that are great; not rich in money, but rich in wisdom and goodness; Richie, who knew all her pitiful history now, and had long suspected it, who loved her! Julia knew even now that it was an ill-fated love; she knew that deep under this first strangely thrilling current of pride and joy ran the cold waters of renunciation. But cool reason had little to do with this mood; she was as mad as any girl whose senses are suddenly, blindly, set free by a lover's first kiss. ”

“ The lady turned. Her eyes were bent upon the diamond bracelet she was attempting to clasp on her arm. Oh! how different was that face from the tear-stained features Julia had seen that dark night. How radiant, how more than beautiful she was now! Every movement replete with grace; every look brilliant with flashes of exultant loveliness! ”

“ Delicate, fair, and slender and tall beyond the middle height of woman with a waist ‘shaped to love’s wish’ and every graceful outline full of rich rounded symmetry, young Julia was a thing to dream of as the inhabitant of some far bright Elysian, rather than to behold as an inmate of the rude heartless world. ”

“ But if Julia was acting much as the average woman acts during her first hours alone in an immense and inhospitable city, which the sun refuses to shine upon, a city that knows not of her existence and cares less, she was furious with herself, even before she recovered. Where was the poise, the serenity, the grand impersonal attitude, she had learned from her subtle masters in the East? Where the full calm determination with which she had returned to take up her self-elected duties, to gratify a long latent but now full-grown ambition to build a unique pedestal for herself in the world ”

“ And Julia won, as his little wife, would be dearer even than the demure and inaccessible Julia of to-day. Mark fed his hungry heart on love tales; many a man had won a harder fight than his; these cold, shy girls made the best wives in the world!
Julia began seriously to consider the marriage. She visioned a safe and pleasant life, if no very thrilling one. Mark was handsome, devoted, he was making money, he would be faithful to his wife and adore his children. Julia would have no social position, of course. ”

“ Julia tripped away, with a tear in her eye, a dimple in her cheek, and a light heart in her bosom. I thought it the prettiest picture of paternal and filial affection I had ever seen.
When I retired to bed, a new train of thoughts crowded into my brain. "After all," said I to myself, "it is clear this girl has a soul, though she was not moved by my eloquence. She has all the outward signs and evidences of poetic feeling. She paints well, and has an eye for nature. She is a fine musician, and enters into the very soul of song. What a pity that she knows nothing of poetry! ”

“ Julia joined her, dragged out a low, light chair from Barbara's room, and settled herself for a gossip.
"Had breakfast?" Barbara smiled. "Jim downstairs?"
"Oh, hours ago!" Julia said to the first question, and to the second, with the young wife's conscious blush, "Jim's dressing. He's the most impossible person to get started in the morning!" ”

“ Julia said resentfully, two red spots in her cheeks.
Mark moved to lay his hand over hers penitently, and said, in the low, gentle voice Julia dreaded:
"Do you know what's the matter with you, Julie? I'll tell you. You love me and you won't admit it. Girls never will. But that's what makes you so unhappy—you won't let yourself go. Ah, Julia! be fair to yourself, darling! ”

“ Julia went down through the house quietly, a few moments later. Her breath came quick and short until she was fairly on the boat, with Sausalito slipping farther and farther into the background. Even then her mind was awhirl, and fatigue and perhaps hunger, too, made it impossible to think seriously. Far easier to lean back lazily in the sun, and watch the water slip by, and make no attempt to control the confused, chaotic thoughts that wheeled dreamily through her brain. Now and then memory brought her to a sudden upright position, brought the hot colour to her face. ”

“ Oh, Julia my dear, tender Julia, " murmured Bella, as a shudder of keen ecstatic feeling rushed through her, " what delights will be yours; how you will awake to the delicious joys of immortals, and find now that you are approaching that period called puberty, the solaces of which I know you already stand in need of. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Anna was asleep in the upper bed, lying flat on her back, with her lovely hair falling loosely about her flushed little face. The little cabin bedroom was as sweet as the surrounding woodland, wide-open windows admitted the fragrant coolness of the spring night. There was no moon, but the sky that arched high above the little valley was thickly spattered with stars. Richie's cat, a shadow among paler shadows, leaped swiftly over the new grass. Julia got the milky odour of buttercups, the breath of the little Persian lilac that flanked one end of the porch. ”