The Story of Julia Page Part 2

George was a bad patient. He had a great many needs, and he mentioned one after another in the weighty, serious tone of a person imparting valuable information.

"Ice--ice," said George, moving hot eyes to meet his wife's glance as she came in. "And take that extra blanket off, Emeline, and--no hurry, but I'll try the soup again whenever you say--I seem to feel weak. I must have more air, dear. Help me sit up, Em, and you can shake these pillows up again. I think I'm a good deal sicker man than Allan has any idea----"

Emeline got very tired of it, especially as George was much better on the third day, and could sit up. He developed a stiff neck, which made him very irritable, and even Julia "got on his nerves" and was banished for the day to the company of the cheerful Jewish family who lived on an upper floor. He sat in an armchair, wrapped in blankets, his rigid gaze roving a pitifully restricted perspective of street outside the window, an elaborate cough occasionally racking him.

Emeline had gotten a fairly tempting dinner under way. She could cook some things well, and at five o'clock she came in from the kitchen with an appetizing tray.

"Gosh, is it dinner time?" asked George.

"After five," Emeline said, flitting about the bed-room. Julia had come home now, sweet and tired, and was silently eating slice after slice of bread and jelly. Emeline opened out the bed lounge, spread sheets and blankets smoothly, and flung a clean little nightgown for Julia across the foot. Darkness had fallen outside; she lighted the gas and drew the shades.

"This is comfortable!" said George. "I wouldn't mind being sick now and then at this rate! Come over here and undress near Pop, Julie. I'll tell you what, Em--you call down the air shaft to Ca.s.s, and tell him to send Henny up to make us a nice little coal fire here. I'll give Henny a quarter."

"She's gone into the bathroom to fix her hair and wash her face," Julia observed, as Emeline did not answer. A second later the child jumped up to answer a sharp knock on the door.

To George's disgust it was Emeline's friend, Mrs. Marvin Povey, who came in. Mrs. Povey was a tightly corseted, coa.r.s.e-voiced, highly coloured little blonde, breathless now from running upstairs. Her sister, Myrtle Montague, was an ingenue in the little stock company at the Central Theatre, and Mrs. Povey kept house for her and Mr. Povey, who spent all his waking hours at the racetrack. The Poveys' flat was only a block away from the Pages'.

George was furious to have this woman, whom he particularly detested, come in upon him thus informally, and find him at so great a disadvantage. His neck was better, but he could not move it very easily still; he was trapped here in blankets like a baby; he was acutely conscious of his three days' beard, of Julia's bed made up in the middle of the drawing-room, and of Julia's self, partly disrobed, and running about in the general disorder.

"Well, how does the other feller look?" said Mrs. Povey, laughing good-naturedly. "You look like you'd broke out of San Quentin, George, with that face! h.e.l.lo, darlin'," she added, waylaying Julia. "When are you going to come and be Aunt Mame's girl, huh? Going to come home with me to-night?"

"Em!" bellowed George, with only a sickly smile for the guest. "_Em_!"

"My G.o.d, what is it now?" said Emeline sweetly, popping in her head.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Mame!" she added, coming in. "Where's the rest of the girls?"

"They've all blew up to the house with Myrt," said Mrs. Povey, staring blankly at Emeline. "But say, ain't you going, dear?"

"Wait till I get my dress on, and we'll talk it over while I hook up,"

Emeline said, disappearing again. She did not glance at George.

"Myrt's in a new show, and a few of us girls are going to see that she gets a hand," Mrs. Povey said. "We're going to have supper at my house.

Mary will have some of the boys there."

"I guess Emeline will have to wait till the next time," George said coldly. "She wouldn't get much pleasure out of it, leaving me here as sick as I am!"

"Oh, I don't know!" Mrs. Povey half sang, half laughed. "Emeline likes a good time, like all the rest of us, George, and it don't do to keep a pretty girl shut up all the time!"

"Shut up? She's never here," George growled.

"Well, we'll see!" Mrs. Povey hummed contentedly. A moment later Emeline came in, wrenching the hooks of her best gown together. She had her hat on, and looked excited and resolute.

"I forgot I'd promised to go out with the girls, George," she began.

"You don't care, do you? You've had your supper, and all Julia's got to do is get into bed."

George looked balefully from one to the other. Mrs. Povey chanced a quick little wink of approval and encouragement at Emeline, and he saw it.

"A lot you forgot!" he said harshly to his wife. "You've been getting ready for the last hour. Don't either of you think that you're fooling me--I see through it! I could lay here and die, and a lot you'd care!

You forgot--ha!"

The blood rushed instantly to Emeline's face, she turned upon him her ugliest look, and the hand with which she was b.u.t.toning her glove trembled.

"Now, I'll tell you something, Mr. George Page!" said she, in an intense and pa.s.sionate tone, "there _are_ things I'd rather do than set around this house and hear you tell how sick you are! You think I'm a white chip in this family, but let me tell you something--there's plenty of lovely friends I got who think I'm a fool to keep it up! I had an offer to go on the stage, not a month ago, from a manager who didn't even know I was married; didn't I, Mame? And if it wasn't for Julie there----"

"You've not got anything on me, Em," George said, breathing hard, his face blood red with anger. "Do you think that if it wasn't for this kid, I'd----"

"Oh, folks--folks!" Mrs. Povey said, really concerned.

"Well, I don't care!" Emeline said, panting. She crossed the floor, still panting, kissed Julia, and swept from the room. Mrs. Povey, murmuring some confused farewell, followed her.

Julia climbed out of her big chair. Like all children, she was frightened by loud voices and domestic scenes; she was glad now that the quarrel was over, and anxious, in a small girl's fas.h.i.+on, to blot the recent unpleasantness from her father's mind.

She sat on his knee and talked to him, she sang, she patted his sore neck with sleek, dirty little fingers. And finally she won him. George laughed, and entered into her mood. He thought her a very smart little girl, as indeed she was. She had a precocious knowledge of the affairs of her mother's friends, sordid affairs enough, and more sordid than ever when retailed by a child's fresh mouth. Julia talked of money trouble, of divorce, of dressmaker's bills, of diseases; she repeated insolent things that had been said to her in the street, and her insolent replies; her rich, delicious laugh broke out over the memory of the "drunk" that had been thrown out of Ca.s.sidy's.

George laughed at it all; it sounded very funny to him, coming from this very small person, with her round, serious eyes, and her mop of gold. He asked her what she wanted him to bring her next time he came home, and Julia said black boots with white tops and ta.s.sels, and made him laugh again.

Thus early did Julia act as a mediator between her parents, but of this particular occasion she had no recollection, nor of much that followed it. Had she been a few years older she might really have affected a lasting reconciliation between them, for all that was best in George made him love his daughter, and Emeline was intensely proud of the child. As it was, Julia was too young. She might unconsciously be the means of reuniting them now and then, but she could not at all grasp the situation, and when she was not quite seven a decree of divorce, on the ground of desertion, set both Emeline and George free, after eight years of married life.

Emeline was too frightened at the enormity of the thing to be either glad or sorry. She had never meant to go so far. She had threatened George with divorce just as George had threatened her, in the heat of anger, practically since her wedding day. But the emotion that finally drove Emeline to a lawyer was not anger, it was just dull rebellion against the gray, monotonous level of her days. She was alone when George was away on trips; she was not less alone when he was in town. He had formed the habit of joining "the boys" in the evening; he was surly and noncommittal with his wife, but Julia, hanging about the lower hall door or playing with children in the street, always heard a burst of laughter as he joined his friends; everybody in the world--except Emeline--liked George!

Poor Emeline--she could easily have held him! A little tenderness toward him, a little interest in her home and her child, and George would have been won again. Had he but once come home to a contented wife and a clean house, George's wavering affection would have been regained. But Emeline was a loud-mouthed, a.s.sertive woman now, noisily set upon her own way, and filled with a sense of her own wrongs. She had discussed George too often with her friends to feel any possible interest in him except as a means of procuring sympathy. George bored her now; as a matter of fact, Emeline had almost decided that she would prefer alimony to George.

Goaded on by Mrs. Povey, and a young Mrs. Sunius, affectionately known as Maybelle, Emeline went to see a lawyer. The lawyer surprised her by his considerate brevity. Getting a divorce was a very simple affair, much better done than not. There were ways to make a man pay his alimony regularly, and the little girl would stay with her mother, of course; at her age no other solution was possible. Emeline felt that she must know how much expense she would be put to, and was gratified to find that it would cost her not more than fifty dollars. The lawyer asked her how soon she could get hold of her husband.

"Why, he'll let me know as soon as he's in town," Emeline said vaguely; "he'll come home."

"Come home, eh?" said the lawyer, with a shrewd look. "He knows your intentions, of course?"

"He ought to!" said Emeline with spirit, and she began again: "I don't think there's a person in the world could say that I'm not a good wife, Mr. Knowles! I never so much as looked at another man--I swear to G.o.d I never did! And there's no other man in the case. If I can have my dolling little girl, and just live quiet, with a few friends near me, that's all I ask! If Mr. Page had his way, I'd never put foot out of doors; but mind you, _he'd_ be off with the boys every night. And that means drink, you know--"

"Well, well," the young lawyer said soothingly, "I guess you've been treated pretty mean, all right."

Emeline went home to find--somewhat to her embarra.s.sment--that George had come in, and was in his happiest mood, and playing with Julia. Julia had somehow lost her babyish beauty now; she was thin and lanky, four teeth were missing, and even her glorious mop of hair seemed what her mother called "slinky."

"I landed the Fox order right over Colton's head!" said George.

Emeline said: "I wish to the Lord you'd quit opening that window, leaving the wind blow through here like a cave!"

"Well, the place smelled like a j.a.p's room!" George retorted, instantly aggressive.

"We're going to the Park!" Julia chanted.

"How d'ye mean you're going to the Park?" Emeline asked, as she slammed down the offending window.

"Well, I thought maybe I'd take her there; kinder fun walking round and seeing things, what?" George submitted.

Emeline shrugged. "I don't care what you do!"