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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d!" 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 rea.s.suring.
"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, G.o.d bless her!"
But Julia wanted n.o.body 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 rea.s.sure 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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."