DEEP CHANNEL

BY
MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON

DEEP CHANNEL

I

Where shall we pick up the thread of Julie Rose’s life? It runs, a hidden strand, back and back into the past, crossed and recrossed by the threads of other lives,—all weaving a pattern of humanity on an unseen loom,—deflected sometimes by the pull of natures stronger than her own, widened here and narrowed there by circumstance, winding itself for the most part along the muddy streets of Hart’s Run, to the shops on errands for her mother, to the schoolhouse, and on Sundays to the Methodist church; sometimes, more rarely, running out of the village by the main street, which so quickly turns itself into a rutty highway, up the sides of the surrounding mountains on excursions for chestnuts in the autumn, or for bloodroot and anemone blossoms in the spring.

Following the thread, one may see Julie Rose as a little girl—such a meagre, anxious, and correct little girl!—out on the streets in hood and little shawl in winter or in a checked wash-dress in summer, weaving her pattern of life through the village. An uncertain pattern, deflected as it is by the constant necessity for sudden crossings of the street to avoid encounters which frighten her, yet at the same time to give the impression that she changed her course for other reasons. Here she crosses, one might suppose, to speak to old Mrs. Brewster; in reality it is to escape a group of rough boys who would be sure to taunt her, or even give her hair a jerk, did she dare to pass them. There she recrosses, apparently to peep at a bed of zinnias but really to avoid a cow, which, blocking the sidewalk, might swoop its horns at her were she to face it. Always there is the fear and always the compulsion of concealment, for worse even than being afraid is to have one’s fear uncovered by the laughter of people. But though a little nervous pulse flutters in her neck, and her eyes darken constantly with apprehension, yet her whole face can light up amazingly whenever life is gracious to her: when some one gives her a red apple, for instance, or when her teacher is kind.

One sees her conscientiously hopping over the mud puddles on the way to school to avoid soiling her shoes and stockings, because that would worry her mother; yet one may also see that a paper doll, whose pink cheeks and blue eyes fill her with a maternal delight, is snuggled under her shawl. Alas! at this point, following her thread of life, one sees very distinctly the look in her eyes the day that Edward Black snatched that paper doll away from her, and there before the whole school at playtime wrenched its head off, and flung its decapitated body into a snow-bank. That was a gray winter day with dirty yellowed snow upon the ground and fresh flakes drifting down from a heavily close and sullen sky. Julie is paralyzed when that big bully snatches her doll, powerless to move or cry out; she can only stand and look, her eyes wide and stricken, her hands clutched together. Not so Henr’etta Wilkins, Julie’s deskmate. She flew at Edward Black, and slapped him full and stingingly upon the face with her competent hand. It was Henr’etta’s dramatic act which precipitated a general scuffle and free fight among the children. They fought back and forth through the snow and over the tattered remnants of the paper doll. Julie took no part in the conflict, but under its cover her tension of horror relaxed sufficiently for her to creep over and collect the torn bits that had been her doll. The other children knocked her about as she did so, and when she picked up the last bit, one of the big boys stepped square upon her hand. But Julie hardly noticed that. In a daze, she turned out of the school-yard and made for home, slipping and stumbling through the snow, the fragments of the doll pressed tight against her breast, and the forbidding sky hanging low upon her.

At home she could only hold out the torn pieces dumbly to her mother.

“What’s the matter, honey?” her mother cried, nervously. “Oh, what did they do to its doll baby?”

Then at last Julie could speak. “Edward Black did it!” she gasped. “He—he tore her head right off and flung it in the snow. I couldn’t stop him—I couldn’t do anything. I—couldn’t—” her voice squeaked out impotently in a flood of tears.

“Never mind! never mind! It shall have another doll baby,” her mother comforted her.

But a question struggled convulsively to the surface through Julie’s sobs. “What—what made Ed act so mean? I wasn’t doing a thing. I was—I was just standing there.”

“I don’t know,” her mother shook her head with a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. Folks do that way—I reckon it’s all you can expect in this world.”

“All you can expect in this world,” Julie repeated with a broken gasp.

Afterward her mother bathed her face and hands, tied up her bruised fingers, and giving her a cookie fresh and warm from the oven, made her go back to school, for “What’ll folks think if you stay home?” she said. “All the children will laugh at you.”

So Julie went back, the cookie, fragrant and comforting, in her hand, but a poignant disillusioned throb still in her heart, driven in so deep that it was beyond the relief of tears; and the two phrases her mother had used, “That’s all you can expect in this world,” and “What’ll folks think?” turned themselves over and over, burrowing down into her mind and intrenching themselves there. She took a little tentative nibble of the cookie to comfort herself. It was good, very good.

Good? What did that remind Julie of? Oh, yes! Last Sunday’s Golden Text: “Overcome evil with good.” Ed Black was certainly evil in Julie’s eyes—then ought she to do good to him? A sudden idea jumped in her mind, choking her and making her clutch her cookie fast. It was an awful idea. She could not possibly do it. It would be a dreadful thing to do. How all the children would laugh! But just because it was so awful, and would bring public opinion so down on her, a stern compulsion to do it seized her.

A tyrant within rose up and challenged her: “You don’t dare to do it,” the tyrant taunted. “All the children will laugh at you—you don’t dare—” “I do dare! I do!” Julie cried back at the tyrant, a cold perspiration breaking out.

The bell was ringing for the afternoon session when she reached the schoolhouse, and the children were flocking up the steps to the door. Edward Black, big and untidy, stood on the top step. His hair was tousled, his coat torn; his hands were chapped and grimy with dirt. Through the parti-colored surge of children Julie pressed up to him, and held out her cookie.

“What’s that?” he demanded, bringing his scornful eyes down upon her.

“A cookie,” Julie wavered. “It’s—it’s good.”

“A cookie?” He snatched it from her. “Well, if you ain’t the biggest little fool! Look a’ here!” he shouted. “Look what Julie Rose give me. A cookie! Haw! Haw! Haw!” He waved the gift for all to see, and his hoarse mirth ran down the line of children, in surprise, contemptuous laughter, and ejaculation. And only Julie’s shrinking and inadequate little body stood between her soul and the stabs of the other children’s derision. “Here—I don’t want anything from you!” Edward cried, and flung the cookie in her face. It struck her cheek and bounded from thence down to the dirty steps, where the oncoming children kicked at it, deriding it and trampling it into a pulp with the mud and snow on their shoes, while Edward Black went haw-hawing loudly into school.

“Julie! You are the biggest little idiot!” Henr’etta whispered, sharply, when they were seated at their desks, and the school was quieting down. “What in the name of common sense made you go and give your cookie to that hateful piece when he’d been so mean to you?”

“It—it was the text,” Julie stammered.

“The text? What text? Quit shaking so, Julie! What text?”

“Last Sunday’s,” Julie gasped.

Henr’etta considered a moment. “Oh, that!” she said. “Well, you cer’nly are a goody-goody.”

“I’m not! I’m not!” Julie panted. “It wasn’t that—I—I had to do it.”

“Why? Why did you have to? Quit shaking, I tell you!”

“I had to because I was scared to,” Julie confessed miserably.

But this was beyond Henr’etta’s comprehension. It was really beyond Julie’s own. She did not know that she was already beginning to feel herself caught in the terrifying net of her own fears, and had made a futile leap for freedom. She only knew that something had made her do a dreadful thing at which all the children had laughed, just as she had known they would.

“Oh here, don’t cry, Julie!” Henr’etta whispered hastily. “For the mercy sakes! Don’t go and cry now, right before the whole school. Here, look at the geography lesson—here, listen: ‘Principal rivers in West Virginia’—Oh, for goodness sake!”

For, despite the principal rivers, Julie had dropped her head upon the desk in front of her, bursting into a flood of tears; and again the eyes of all the school stabbed straight through her body, and down into her soul.

One may also see this fragile thread of life running back into Julie’s babyhood, mothered by her delicate and shrinking mother, and fathered by her big blustering father. Those were the days when Mr. Rose kept a small shop in the village, and when Julie’s earliest baby recollections were concerned with the many-colored things in the shop, and the mingled smell of raisins, tobacco, and peppermint candy, together with the dreadful tradition that a witch lived in the ginger-cake barrel, ready to snap out at a little girl who even so much as thought of helping herself in passing. That appeared to be the reason for their being called ginger-snaps.

But big and boastful as her father was, he was not a success at storekeeping, and by the time little Julie was five or six, her mother was taking table boarders “to help out.” She had been a school-teacher from one of the smaller cities in Virginia, and had trained herself to a rather prim mode of speech. Julie usually spoke as she did, but in moments of stress she was apt to break away to the mountain phraseology of her father’s people.

Julie’s father boasted largely of the things he meant to do in the business way, but always as the table boarders increased, the customers in the shop decreased, until finally, when Julie was ten or eleven, the shop was closed altogether, and her father had gone across the State line into West Virginia, to work in the lumber camps. There he made good money, for people said that Emmet Rose was a mighty fine hand in the woods; and he himself bragged that he could drop a tree within a foot of any spot he named. Thereafter, with the money coming regularly from the lumber camp, Mrs. Rose gave up most of the table boarders, and so had leisure to do fancy sewing, and to make pretty, sober little clothes for Julie. The stitches in them were exquisite and sincere, but she never dressed Julie in bright colors. “No, I don’t like bright colors,” she was wont to say.

“But why, mother? Why?” Julie questioned.

“They’re so gay—” her mother hesitated; “I—I don’t know, but someway I don’t think they’re respectful to the Lord.”

Thereafter Julie went in fear of a jealous surveillance from on high. God became somewhat confused in her child mind with a chicken hawk. “Grandmaw Rose,” who had a little farm on the top of Slatty Mountain, said she didn’t hold with white chickens: they was too easy a mark for the hawk. This seemed to accord with her mother’s fear of bright colors. Apparently, up there in the wide stretches of the deep sky that Julie had always liked, there lurked a terrifying Power that might pounce dreadfully at any moment. Evidently the safest way to get through life was to slip by as unnoticed as possible, clad, if one were a chicken, in speckled gray feathers that faded easily from sight in the grass; or; if one were a little girl, ordering one’s self in the same humble and unobtrusive manner.

Julie felt worried about her father, there was so little of the discreet coloration about him. His necktie, when he wore one, could be seen half a mile, an easy mark for hawk or deity. His friends described him as a great big two-fisted Jim-bruiser of a man. He was boastful and loud, and would come roaring down the river with the log drives in spring, boisterous, gay, and apparently unafraid. During the summer months, when he was in Hart’s Run, their reserved little house rocked with his Homeric laughter, accompanying great stories of “Tony Beaver” who lives up “Eel River,”—where all the impossible things of the West Virginia lumber camps happen,—who is blood brother to “Paul Bunyan” of the Northern woods and who owns a yoke of oxen so big it takes a crow a week to wing the distance between the horns of one of them. But just because of his recklessness and daring laughter, Julie adored her father. Those were good days on the whole—her mother and herself snug and well provided for in the village, building up a gentle home-life, with the lumber-jack’s big personality off in the woods to roof it over securely.

But when Julie was sixteen, this period came to an abrupt end on a day in the woods, when a tree which Emmet Rose was felling failed to drop on the spot he had named, but fell instead upon him. They brought him home, out of the woods, to Hart’s Run—a painful journey—by way of tram cars and rough frozen roads with ice and skifts of snow in the ruts, with Sam Fletcher, who drove, feeling in his own body every dreadful jolt of the wagon; for, as he confided to his intimates, if there was one thing he did naturally despise, it was haulin’ a crippled hand out of the woods.

Julie and her mother were dazed by the shock. Their scared faces fell into a mould of horror that did not lighten or relax when they spoke or even when they tried to smile. Their little hands shook, but they went on and did things efficiently and bravely. Emmet Rose watched them sadly out of his big face that was gaunt and curiously stretched with pain to a wider apprehension. Once when her mother was out of the room, he put out his uninjured hand to Julie and spoke darkly.

“It’s got me. I allus knew it would.”

Julie’s heart jumped violently. “What’s got you, pappy, honey?” she questioned, putting her hand in his.

“Life,” he answered. “It’s got me down at last. I allus knew it would. It gits every feller in the end. I stood up aginst it an’ fought it like a two-fisted man, but it’s got me, an’ now I’ll jist have to lay down on you women-folks. Don’t tell mammy—she’s scary enough anyhow.”

This admission was the climax of terror to Julie. She had always sheltered in her father’s loud confidence. To have him broken in body was frightful enough; to see his broken spirit laid bare, to know that always that sinister dread had lurked in the back of his mind, and that all his big bluster was just a cloak for it, seemed to take the roof from over her head, leaving her uncovered in a bleak world. Her heart beat so fearfully that the thin material of her blouse fluttered up and down. Nevertheless, she put her other hand, cold as it was, steadfastly over her father’s. “Never mind, pappy, honey!” she said. “Never mind. We’ll manage someway.”

He looked dimly at her white face with the big eyes, and felt the tremor of her fingers.

“Poor Julie,” he said. “Poor little Julie. I kind of hate to have life git a-hold of you.”

But after all Emmet Rose did not have to “lay down” long on his women-folks. A broken rib had pierced one lung, pneumonia set in, and five days after they brought him out of the woods his great body was stiff and tenantless, and Julie and her mother, two terrified little people, were left alone. Yet, for all their fear, with a dogged pertinacity they rebuilt their lives and struggled on, like a chess-player, who having lost his best piece still fights on with what the game has left to him.

Later on, when death swooped again and her mother was gone, Julie, frightened and alone, nevertheless rebuilt her life once more, and went on spinning her web of existence, supported by dressmaking and millinery which she had established in her father’s old shop, and protected from being quite alone by Aunt Sadie Johnson who rented one half of the house, and who was not Julie’s aunt at all, but was so old a friend of her mother’s that Julie had always called her so.

This is the thread of Julie Rose’s life, running on narrow and timorous lines back into the past to her birth in Hart’s Run, and forward into the future, at the command of existence; and all along its pathway of the past and future one may see her small figure faring forth, as she weaves her strand in the pattern of humanity. All of it is of interest and of value in that pattern, but for the sake of winding some of the thread into a ball of narrative, one must pick it up definitely at one point and break off at another; therefore, to begin, let us pick it up on a June night in the summer of 1918, the year that Julie was thirty-two.

II

It was a soft and gracious evening early in the month. The dusk, drenched by dew, which brought out the fragrance of locust blossoms, of peonies, roses, and cut grass in the dooryards up and down the street, fell over Hart’s Run in breath after breath of oncoming darkness, obliterating the sordid aspect of the village—except where the electric lights glaringly defied it—so that the cheap lines of the new garage were gathered into obscurity, the telegraph poles disappeared, and looking up one saw the wide, tumbled outline of mountains, with a remote young moon sailing the sky.

Some of the night’s fragrance drifted in through Julie’s back door, but she was unconscious of its appeal, having gone into her shop to see if everything was in order and safely locked up, before she started out for the week-night prayer-meeting.

She had already seen to everything once, but she returned nervously this second time just to be quite sure that all was safe. Snapping on the light, she stood a moment, and looked all about the neat little place; then she stepped across and tried the handle of the door. She was just turning away, when a sudden rasping noise jumped her heart into her throat, and stiffened all the nerves at the back of her neck. She stood transfixed, frozen with terror. She was all alone in her part of the house. What could the noise be? A snake? Once, as a little girl, she had almost stepped on a rattlesnake, and ever since any sudden rasping sound threw her into an agony of fear. Again the sound broke forth, constricting her with renewed terror. But now she realized that it came from the old disused fireplace, and she knew distressfully well what it was; though her fear left her, revulsion and discomfort took its place. It was the chimney swallows. Their nest had come down and the young birds were in the fireplace. Julie crept over, and pulling forward the board screen which she had covered with wall paper, peered into the hearth. There was only one, a naked little fledgling with blind eyes and gaping mouth. The sight of it nauseated Julie, and yet filled her with unhappy compassion.

“Poor little thing! Poor little thing!” she shuddered. “What in the world am I going to do with you?”

“Julie! Aw, Julie!” a strident voice called all at once from the back door, making Julie jump again.

It was Mrs. Dolly Anderson, Julie knew. She had stopped on her way to prayer-meeting. Julie wished she had not come until she had decided what to do about the chimney-swallow.

“Julie! Where are you?” the rasping voice persisted. Mrs. Anderson was coming in through the back way, and was already in the kitchen. Julie hastily replaced the screen, and met her at the shop door.

“There you are, dearie,” the visitor proclaimed. “I been bawling my head off for you. I come by to go with you to prayer meetin’—but you look’s white as a sheet. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I’m all right,” Julie said, nervously.

“Something’s scared you,” the other stated, her stalwart figure settling firmly back upon her heels, as she surveyed Julie with a relentless stare. “I never knowed any person to get scared as easy as you do, Julie. What’s happened now? I’ll bet a hopper-grass jumped at you! Or,” with sudden elephantine playfulness, “I caught you up to something you hadn’t ought to do. Now then!” she admonished, shaking a stubby and roguish finger, and pouncing inexorably upon Julie’s self-conscious look. “Tell its mammy what it’s been doin’.—Oh, for the mercy sake! What’s that?”

The young swallow had broken out stridently once more.

“It’s a chimney-swallow,” Julie confessed. “I was just trying to think what to do with it.”

“Where is it—over in the fireplace?” Mrs. Anderson, with a tread that made the boards complain under her, went over and pulled the screen away, with large competent hands. “Ugh! How I despise little naked birds!” she ejaculated. “Here, where’s the cat?”

“Oh, I don’t want the cat to get it.”

“Yes, you do. There ain’t a thing else to do. Here, kitty! Puss, puss, puss!”

“But I tell you I don’t want—”

“Yes you do, too, Julie. Here, kitty, kitty! You got to do it, Julie! There ain’t another thing to do with ’em. Pus-sie! Puss, puss!”

Julie’s big black cat came running in on soft eager feet.

“Here, pussie!” Mrs. Anderson called.

“No, don’t! Please don’t!” Julie begged. “Scat! scat out of here, Blackie!”

But as the cat paused in the doorway, looking uncertainly from one to the other, half crouched, with green eyes glinting and tail lashing, Mrs. Anderson dragged it forward by the scruff of the neck, and in an instant the combination was effected. There was a pounce, a last shriek of supreme agony from the fledgling, and with a growl the cat ran out of the room, the bird in its mouth.

Julie leaned against the counter, swallowing convulsively.

“Julie! for mercy sake! you know that was the onliest thing to do. When they come down the chimney like that, you just have to give ’em to the cat. There ain’t another thing to do.”

“I—I might have tried to raise it,” Julie said, weakly.

“No, you could not,” Mrs. Anderson retorted. “You don’t know what to feed it; an’ even s’posing you did, you ain’t got time to waste pokin’ fishin’ worms down a nasty little naked bird’s throat—specially now in the war when our boys needs every single thing we can do for ’em.”

“I know, but—”

“Well, but what?”

“It sounded so awful when the cat got it!”

“Julie! I never did see any person take things as hard as you do. I reckon it’s because you’re so thin. Just look at your arms!” Mrs. Anderson took one of Julie’s hands, and pushed the loose sleeve up above her elbow. “Looks about the size of a toothpick to me. If you were fleshier, things wouldn’t get to you so quick. Look at me, now,” she commanded, drawing up her frank proportions. “Things have to go through about six inches of grease ’fore they can reach me. But you—why you’re pretty near as naked to the world as that nasty little chimney-swallow. You can’t go through life like that. Oh, it’s all right for a real young girl, but you must be over thirty; it’s time you was featherin’ up, dearie.”

Julie snapped off the light in silence, and they passed out of the shop.

“Well, I will say one thing for you, you always look s’ nice,” Mrs. Anderson approved her, as they emerged from Julie’s side door and set out together along the village street. “I never seen you when you didn’t look like you’d stepped right out of a bandbox. That’s a mighty cute little collar you got on, dearie,” she continued, fingering the delicate ruffles at Julie’s neck. Julie was constantly at the mercy of other women’s hands. Her smallness stirred their maternal instincts; they were apt to stroke her and patronize her. “I declare, you don’t seem like nothing but a doll baby to me,” her companion pursued, her large damp hand giving Julie’s shoulder a final pat. “It beats me why you never married, Julie.—Oh my Lord!” she broke off abruptly, clapping her hand to her mouth.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Julie cried, in alarm.

Mrs. Anderson performed some violent mouth-gymnastics behind her palm. “It’s my teeth,” she explained, spasmodically, at last. “I can’t seem to get used to this new set, an’ seems like they’re always a-bitin’ at my tongue. I have to watch ’em all the time. An’ I’m mightily afraid they’ll drop out in company some day.” She withdrew her hand at length, and they started on again. “But as I say,” she continued, “I don’t see why in the name of goodness you never married.”

“I never wanted to marry,” Julie said hastily, an uncomfortable restraint falling upon her.

“Oh yes, that’s just what every old maid says, if you’ll excuse me,” Mrs. Anderson retorted.

“No—but it’s true; I mean it,” Julie protested. “I—I always just hated the idea of getting married. It scares me to think of it.”

They were passing under an electric light, and Mrs. Anderson looked down at her curiously. “Well, now, ain’t that funny? I just believe that’s so,” she stated. “An’ it ain’t for want of chances, neither. There was Sam Dodson—he courted you, didn’t he?”

Julie was silent, but in the street light Mrs. Anderson could see the nervous self-consciousness of her face.

“Oh, all right, don’t tell, then,” she continued. “But everybody knows he did, an’ Pinckney Wayland, too—and wasn’t there a drummer feller from Cincinnati? Why, Julie, you’ve had a heap of chances. Most people would brag about ’em. Scary as you are, I’d think you’d want to be married an’ have a man ’round to look after you—There! there, now!” She stopped again, dramatically.

“What is it? Your teeth?” Julie inquired, with concern.

“No, but I got an idea. It’s come to me all of a sudden. I just believe I’ll make a match between you and the new preacher. Now I think that’d be real suitable. He’s about the right age for you, an’ maybe marrying a widower like that wouldn’t scare you s’ much.”

Julie quickened her pace nervously, walking with averted eyes.

“Widowers, now,” Mrs. Anderson pursued, “They’re broke to double harness already—they ain’t so hard to drive as a colt.”

She suddenly collapsed in mirth. “’Magine you drivin’ a colt husband, Julie!” she giggled. “Don’t walk so fast, dearie; you put me all out er breath. Well, anyhow, I think widowers are real nice. I ain’t got one thing against ’em. I just believe I’ll make the match between you and Brother Seabrook. You like his looks all right, don’t you?”

Julie had fallen into a frozen silence. But her companion was inexorable.

“Don’t you, dearie? Don’t you like his looks?” she persisted.

“I—I haven’t thought anything about how he looks,” Julie stumbled, unhappily.

“I b’lieve he’d like you, too,” Mrs. Anderson went on. “Big men like him are mighty apt to take to little scary women like you. An’ you’d make him a real good wife, Julie. I will say for you, you’re ’bout the best cook in town. You get that from your mother; she always set the prettiest table—you recollect, Julie?”

Again Julie was silent. The remembrance of her mother informed all her life, but it was not possible for her to speak of it to Mrs. Anderson.

“Well, of course Brother Seabrook would rather have you keepin’ his house an’ raisin’ his children for him than that soured-faced old aunt he’s got now. An’ you wouldn’t give him a speck er trouble; you wouldn’t kick over the traces, would you? ’Magine you kickin’ over anything, Julie!” Again Mrs. Anderson was convulsed with mirth, but this time she was interrupted. “Oh, mercy! Them old teeth!” she cried, clapping her hand to her mouth. “My! But they certainly did take a spiteful nip at my tongue that time. Yes, sir,” she continued, “I’m certainly goin’ to make that match if I live. I’ll commence right this evenin’ by bringin’ you to his notice. I’ll tip him off to call on you to pray.”

“Oh, no!” Julie burst out. “Oh, please, Mrs. Anderson—please don’t do anything like that! You know I never do lead in prayer. I can’t do it. I never could. Brother Mead knew I couldn’t—and old Brother Johnston, too—mother told them privately, and they never called on me. I’ll do anything to help the church—anything I can. But I can’t lead in prayer, Mrs. Anderson; you know I can’t! I never could.”

“Well, now, it’s time you learned. You been a member in the Methodist church too long not to be able to pray, Julie. Why, what’ll folks think if it gets about you can’t pray? Why, prayer’s just the very foundation of the church. What’s the matter?”

Julie had stopped. “I’m not going to prayer-meeting this evening,” she faltered. “I’ve got to go back. I—I don’t feel so very well.”

Mrs. Anderson laid firm hands upon her. “That’s perfect nonsense,” she cried. “You got to go. Why, this is Brother Seabrook’s first prayer-meeting. Everybody’ll think it’s awful funny if you ain’t there to welcome him.”

“I’m not going,” Julie protested, trying to twist herself free of the large hand on her wrist. “I—I—Oh, you know I can’t lead in prayer! If he calls on me, I’ll not be able to say one word—an’ everybody’ll laugh.”

“Julie! You a Methodist an’ can’t pray?”

“I’ll die if he calls on me,” Julie cried, on the verge of tears.

“Oh, no, you won’t. Folks don’t die that easy. What’s the matter with you, anyhow, Julie?” Mrs. Anderson interrupted herself suddenly. “Why, now I come to recollect, I heard you pray once, an’ it was just grand. It was the time we had that big revivalist here—remember? Why, you was just wonderful that night.”

“I know—I remember,” Julie returned hurriedly. “But that was different. I was just carried away that night. Something got hold of me—it sort of swept me out of myself. I—I wasn’t there that night. It was his preaching, I reckon. It seemed to set me free.” She broke off, a sudden bravery brought momentarily to her face by the remembrance. “But—but that was different,” she hurried on. “I couldn’t do it now. Please let me go.”

But the other was inexorable.

“You’ve prayed once an’ you can pray again,” she persisted. “An’ it would be awful for you not to be there for Brother Seabrook’s first prayer-meeting. If you struggle now, Julie, it’ll look like I was draggin’ you to church, an’ what’ll folks think of that?”

Julie knew, all through her sensitive being, just how it would look, and so perforce she yielded.

Fortunately, however, they were late, so that when they entered the Sunday-School room, where the week-night services were held, all the front benches were occupied and they were forced to slip into obscure seats, near the door. Hidden away by a broad back in front of her, Julie drew a breath of relief. The agitated beating of her heart began to subside, and during the singing of the first hymn she even dared to peep forth between the other worshipers, letting her eyes rove over the familiar congregation, the plaster walls ornamented by texts, the red runner of carpet in the aisle, and at last up to the front where Brother Seabrook stood by the reading-table, his hymn book stretched away from his farsighted eyes. He was a tall man, and big in proportion. Breathlessly, overpoweringly big he seemed to Julie. A personality that made her feel stifled. His hair was dark, and although flecked with gray, still persisted in a tendency to curl. He had a trick of smoothing it down fiercely from time to time. He smoothed it now as he gave himself to the loud worship of song, his body swaying slightly on his wide-planted legs, and his eyes, as round and dark and almost as expressionless as shoe buttons, alternately dropped to pick up a line of hymn and then raised to sweep over his flock. Peeping forth at him, Julie heard again in her mind Mrs. Anderson’s bold voice as she planned the match between Brother Seabrook and herself, and at the remembrance she blushed. She felt the blush not only in her face but all down into her very being. His eyes terrified her. Once, as she watched him, they came full upon hers, roving down between the channel of the people in front. She looked hastily away, but she knew he had seen her, had marked where she was sitting; and the blush burned through her more violently than ever.

The hymn came to an end, and with a final smooth to his hair Brother Seabrook spread his handkerchief on the floor, and dropped one knee upon it in prayer.

“Seems like he needn’t to be so scary about trustin’ both knees to our floor,” Mrs. Anderson whispered resentfully to Julie, as they bent forward.

Brother Seabrook’s petition was an impassioned plea that his flock might be instructed in prayer—all of them, even the least in their midst—and here Mrs. Anderson dug her elbow into Julie’s ribs. Another hymn followed, and as the congregation sang through “Take it to the Lord in prayer,” Julie tried to fortify herself with the thought that surely none of the women members would be called on at this very first prayer-meeting. But when the hymn died away, Brother Seabrook shattered this forlorn hope by booming out, “Sister Humphries, will you offer a prayer?” Obediently, old Miss Mary Humphries, up at the front, bowed her broad back to the burden. It was more than Julie could face. He was calling on the women, and he had fixed his eyes upon her. It was terrifying to leave. It was impossible to stay. She went. Mrs. Anderson’s face was buried in her hands. She never knew when Julie slipped from her side. None of the worshipers saw her go. She was so far back that a stride or two brought her to the door. It was half open, and she passed through it to freedom and safety, without a sound.

III

As Julie came forth from the Sunday-School room, breathless and trembling, she paused a moment upon the steps, and there the deep serenity of the night received her. She drew a long breath. Her heart still pounded violently, but she had escaped: she was delivered. Inside, Sister Humphries continued to pray, Brother Seabrook speeding the petition upon its way with ejaculations of “Lord, grant it!” “Amen! Amen!” Outside, the sweep of a starlighted sky covered the world. Julie lingered upon the steps, her tense nerves relaxing gradually, as the safety and reassurance outside wrapped her about. From some near garden the fragrance of roses was borne to her by an idle breeze—a little breeze which, having rendered this service, blew away thereafter into the hills. The mountains were there, the stars, the night.

On a sudden impulse she dropped down upon the top step. It half frightened her to do so, because it would “look so funny” if anybody should see her. But the church was a little distance back from the street, and there appeared to be no passers-by. She clasped her hands lightly around her knees, and leaned against a pillar. She had a feeling of daring and adventure, and yet of utter security. She was tired after her agitation, and the peace of the night received her, like the safety of a deep harbor after a tumultuous sea.

In the church they sang another hymn, and then Brother Seabrook fell upon his sermon. His text was, “The truth shall make you free.” Julie could hear every word, and yet she was completely detached. She sat there sheltered from view, a very still little woman, with the congregation just at her back, Brother Seabrook’s discourse pouring out through the half-open door, and the night all about her, as though she were an invisible soul swung between two worlds. Sometimes she listened to the sermon, sometimes she merely let the stream of it flow by her without bestirring her mind to detain the flotsam and jetsam of ideas.

The wraith of a cloud sailed very softly through the sky, trailing behind it a long wisp of vapor. It passed across the stars and was gone. It was immensely tranquilizing. What did all the little hot things of the world matter? Julie had half a mind to go back again into church now and dare whatever might happen. But at the thought her heart stirred and fluttered again. So she did not move, but continued to sit there in the oasis of peace to which she had come. Her eyes were fixed upon the infinite depth of the sky, piercing deeper and deeper into it, until at last it seemed to her as though she were up there above the hills, just below the pattern of stars.

Suddenly, however, she was jerked violently to earth. Her name was being spoken. She froze into a listening terror. Brother Seabrook’s sermon had come to an end, and his voice resounded through the open door: “I will ask Sister Julie Rose to offer the closing prayer,” it said.

Snatched back from the sky, Julie’s clasped hands flew spasmodically up against her breast. Very stiffly she turned and peered over her shoulder. It seemed to her that Brother Seabrook’s eyes must be staring straight at her, but she was still alone, still safely hidden from the congregation.

“Sister, will you please lead us?” the voice insisted. A pause followed, then the voice came again—“I thought I saw Sister Rose. Is she not among us?” it demanded.

Very stiffly and silently Julie arose, and tiptoeing down the steps, fled away in a panic toward the safety of her own home. Hastening desperately through the streets, in a few breathless moments she reached the haven of her own back door. With hands that shook, she inserted her key, and whisking inside, slammed the door and locked it.

Safe within the shelter of her own home, her own roof to cover her and her door fast locked against the outside world, she leaned against the wall and panted. “Oh, you fool! You awful little fool!” she cried in passionate self-contempt. “But—but I reckon I oughtn’t to say ‘fool,’” she faltered.

After a moment, she moved over and turned on the light, and then snapped it off again and stood uncertainly in the dark. She was dreadfully afraid some members of the congregation might stop to question her about her strange disappearance; but if her house was in darkness, they would conclude that she had gone to bed.

This was a vain hope, however. She had not been home very long, sitting cowering in the dark, when a sudden knock came, and a voice cried, “Julie—Aw, Julie!”

Julie waited a hesitant moment, but the voice came again and the knock insisted. It was Mrs. Sam Wicket. When she called, people had to answer and doors had to open. With fingers that were still tremulous, Julie turned the key. Three faces peered in at her, sharp with inquiry, in the flare of electricity that Julie turned on again. Mrs. Wicket had in tow her old aunt, Mrs. Stover, and Miss Mary Humphries also. It was a delegation of inquiry.

“Well,” Mrs. Wicket announced. “I didn’t b’lieve you’d gone to bed this early.”

“Walk in,” Julie said, with dutiful hospitality, which was superfluous, for, headed by Mrs. Wicket, the three were already trooping through to the sitting-room.

“Here, I can’t see a thing. Where’s that hateful button? There, now!” Mrs. Wicket flooded the neat little room with light. “Now, then, Julie, we stopped by to see what was the matter with you,” she announced. She was a thin woman, with dark and snappy eyes, very precise in her brown dress, to which there was not a superfluous ruffle, as there was not an extra ounce of flesh on her spare body. “No’m, thank you, I always prefer a stiff-backed chair; you take the rocker yourself,” she interpolated to Miss Mary Humphries.

Miss Mary sat down in the patent plush rocker,—one that Julie’s father had bought in the old days,—and her square figure firmly established there and her hands clasped upon her Gospel Hymn book, she stared at Julie. “What made you slip away like that, Julie?” she demanded.

“Was you feelin’ bad, honey?” old Mrs. Stover asked. She was a tired old woman whose eighty years found it hard to keep up with her niece’s forty-five energetic ones, but she was afraid to be left alone and so was forced to trail feebly in the other’s wake. She gasped now as she sank upon the sofa, her mouth open and tremulous, although she tried every now and again to shut it. But uncertain and dim as her eyes were, they were the only ones that held any comfort for Julie. “Was you sick?” she repeated.

But Mrs. Wicket, who never paid any attention to what her aunt said, cut her short and demanded again, “What made you slip out of church like that, Julie?”

“I—I felt kind of funny,” Julie parried, her cheeks turning red.

“Mrs. Anderson said you stole out like that because you were afraid Brother Seabrook would call on you to pray,” Miss Humphries announced heavily.

“Mrs. Anderson’s right hot with you, Julie, for givin’ her the slip like that,” Mrs. Wicket stated.

Julie said nothing. She sat with tightly folded hands on her knees and forced herself to look straight at first one inquisitor and then the other, with what might appear to be an air of composure, although the eyes seemed to bore into her soul, and to meet them squarely caused her almost a physical discomfort.

“Were you afraid he was going to call on you to pray, Julie?” Mrs. Wicket repeated all over again.

“Well—well, he did,—” Julie blundered—and knew at once that she was lost. “That is—I—I was afraid he might,” she added, frightened into the truth.

Mrs. Wicket’s eyes snapped wide open. “Why, Julie,” she cried. “Why, how on earth did you know he called on you?”

But Miss Mary Humphries had been caught by the second part of Julie’s statement.

“Why, Julie, are you really afraid to pray in public?” she demanded. “Why! I think that’s just awful.” Her blue eyes stared at Julie out of her wide heavy face.

“But what I want to know is, how on earth you knew Brother Seabrook called on you,” Mrs. Wicket pursued. “Mrs. Anderson said you left before the sermon.”

Miss Mary, however, was not to be thrown off her line of inquiry. “But, Julie! Not to be able to pray!” she expostulated. “Why, I can’t recollect when I couldn’t pray in public.”

“But how did Julie know she was called on?” Mrs. Wicket demanded. “It wasn’t till after the sermon.”

“In my family,” Miss Mary went on, heavily, “my father raised us up to pray an’ give in experience whenever called on, and—”

“How did you know, Julie?”

“And,” Miss Mary drove straight on, not permitting Mrs. Wicket’s excited interruption to throw her off the track, “and none of us ever did think anything of leading in prayer.”

“Well, now, that’s just it,” old Mrs. Stover suddenly came to the surface long enough to remark. “Maybe if you’d’ve thought more of it, it wouldn’t’ve come so easy to you. Some folks prays easy, an’ some don’t. Julie, you look real tired. If I was you, I’d go right to bed, an’ I’ll be over in the mornin’ to see how you air.”

“Oh, thank you,” Julie said, catching gratefully at the one remark that she dared to answer. “But I’ll not be here in the morning. I’m going to Red River.”

This announcement served as an unexpected reprieve.

“Oh, you going to Red River?” “You goin’ there in the morning?” Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary exclaimed together, deflected from their other lines of thought.

“Yes, to do some shopping,” Julie nodded. And now she relaxed a little inside herself, aware that the bait of Red River, which was the county town and a shopping centre, would distract the others for at least a little while.

“Well, then, I certainly would be obliged if you’d do a little errand for me,” Mrs. Wicket said.

“An’ I’ll get you to attend to a little business of mine, too,” Miss Mary added.

“I’ll be real glad to do it,” Julie said, eagerly.

Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary proceeded at once to give her minute directions for the carrying out of their desires, and Julie listened, assenting and suggesting with the nervous ingratiation of a little dog, which, having escaped a whipping, hopes to reinstate itself once more in society.

Having laid their shopping burdens on Julie’s shoulders, the visitors rose at last to go.

“Now, Julie,” Miss Mary charged, “don’t you go and let that smart clerk in at Randal’s persuade you into buying any of that cheap piece of goods. It ain’t the shade I want, and if they ain’t got anything better, I’ll have to send off for it myself.”

“And remember to see Mr. Winter himself in at Winter and White’s,” Mrs. Wicket admonished her.

They were outside in the garden now, starting down the little pathway. Julie called a good-bye, and shut her door hastily. A window was open, however, and halfway down the path she heard Mrs. Wicket exclaim, “Why, there now! We never did find out how Julie knew Brother Seabrook called on her.”

“It’s awful, her being afraid to pray,” Miss Mary rejoined. “I ought to go back an’ speak to her about it.”

Here Julie snapped out the light.

“There!” she heard old Mrs. Stover announce. “She’s goin’ to bed, like I told her to!”

“Well, it certainly was mighty funny, but I’ll find out all about it to-morrow,” Mrs. Wicket said, as their heels clicked away down the cement walk; and Julie knew that her having sat upon the church steps would yet have to be faced and explained.

“Oh, I am such an idiot!” she broke out. And now the nervous tears rushed forth, and she went about her preparations for bed, shaking convulsively, wiping them away, and raging at herself. “You idiot! You idiot!” she stormed. Even after the light was out and she was stretched in bed, the devils of self-hatred continued to tear through her. She tossed unhappily from one side to the other, going over and over the whole miserable evening. Why had she run away? Why hadn’t she stayed and faced it out? Oh, but she couldn’t pray—she just couldn’t! Well then, if she had to go, why hadn’t she come straight home, instead of lingering there on the steps? Of course that was a strange thing to do. Of course people would think it funny if they knew. And they would know. Mrs. Wicket would be sure to find it out, and sure to tell. Julie writhed all through her thin body.

“Oh, you little fool!” she gasped. “What business is it of Mrs. Wicket’s what you do? Why can’t you stand up to her and make her mind her own affairs! Everybody comes an’ bosses you. Mrs. Anderson gave the little bird to the cat, and Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary poking into all you do, an’ you takin’ everything from ’em just because you’re scared to look ’em in the face. Oh, you fool—you fool!—But I mustn’t go on saying ‘fool’!” she wept.

Her shyness, her reserve, and morbid self-consciousness wrapped themselves about her, as intangible as spider webs, but as difficult to break as forged iron. As the night wore on, her having sat upon the church steps assumed an enormity out of all proportion to the fact. She knew that this was an obsession, but all alone in the depths of her self-distrust and sleeplessness, she could not break free from it.

“Oh, what a fool I am to take things so hard!” she panted. “Now everybody’ll know I’m afraid to pray in public. There won’t be one person that goes to the Methodist church that won’t know it. Oh, you silly idiot! Oh, how I hate you!” In a culminating burst of rage, she turned over and set her teeth violently into her thin arm.

The hours writhed away at last, and just before dawn she fell asleep, but, even then she was not delivered. In her dreams she herself became horribly confused with the little chimney-swallow, and Mrs. Anderson, in the shape of Blackie the cat, pounced upon her.

There was another cat also—this one with two heads; one head had the snapping eyes of Mrs. Wicket, and the other the broad and stupid face of Miss Mary Humphries. They gazed on her, and she heard them making a dreadful play on words.

“She can’t pray,” said the Miss Mary Humphries’ head.

“If she can’t pray, she’s my prey,” said the Mrs. Anderson cat, and opened her mouth. Julie saw the jaws, she saw the teeth, she saw the red tongue curled back. In a moment everything else disappeared. In all the world there was nothing but herself that was a little naked bird, and that gaping mouth descending upon her. Closer and closer it came, the tongue curled back, the white teeth in rows. It closed upon her, and she shrieked, only she did not shriek in her own woman’s voice but rather in that last agony that the fledgling emitted when Blackie pounced.

With a violent start, she awoke. It was early daylight and she was in her own bed; but the dream was still upon her, and for a moment she could not shake it off. It seemed as though somewhere in her sleep she had doffed her humanity and for a moment had entered into and known the agony of the captured bird, as though that agony were a real thing, detached and tangible, left alive to blow about through the world and fasten darkly upon any wayfarers of sleep. On the edge of waking, Julie found the tears in her eyes. “Poor little bird! Poor little thing!” she cried pitifully.

Then she came to herself. The mystery of sleep withdrew, she slipped back into her own personality, and knew that it was time for her to get ready for her day in Red River.

IV

When Julie reached the station to take her train for Red River, she found herself the only passenger from Hart’s Run. A couple of traveling men, strangers to her, were walking up and down the platform in the fresh morning air, pulling at their cigars, evidently content and well-breakfasted by the hospitality of the Monroe House in the village. The station master was also there. He was Edward Black, the same bully who had torn Julie’s doll to pieces so long ago. He had grown into a stout and flabby man, with small eyes set in so large an expanse of face that one inevitably thought of his cheeks as jowls. He greeted her with “Mornin’, Julie, goin’ away on Number Twelve?”

“Just to Red River for the day,” she answered. “I hope Twelve’s on time.”

“Hope’s cheap,” Edward retorted. It was his custom not to give away information in regard to the trains too easily. He liked to keep the superior knowledge that his post gave him for the gratification of his own vanity.

Julie would have liked to slip away unnoticed into the station, but she also wanted very much to know whether or not the train was on time, for if it were hours late—as it sometimes was—she would not be able to do much shopping in Red River, and so would put off her trip until the next day. Therefore she mustered courage to put the question direct, although she had a painfully acute inner remembrance of how very forlorn her face had looked in the mirror that morning.

“Is—is Twelve on time?” she asked.

“Is—is Twelve on time,” he mimicked, and turned to wink at the near-by drummers. But it was a wink misplaced. One of the men, who had been teetering gayly up and down on the precarious footing of the iron track, in sheer exuberance of health and the fine morning, turned a sudden flaming red, and removed the cigar abruptly from his mouth.

“The lady’s asked you if the train’s on time. You’re here to tell her!” he blazed.

In sulky surprise, Edward Black attempted to turn away as though called by important business elsewhere, but the drummer came a stride nearer, and curled his fists.

“Tell her!” he commanded.

“Yes, it’s on time,” Edward answered and made a sullen escape.

The drummer turned to Julie, and swept off his hat. “Lady, your train’s on time,” he announced.

“Oh—oh, thank you!” Julie faltered, and retreated into the station in an agony of embarrassment.

As she fled, she heard the drummer comment to his friend, “Oh, Lord, how I do hate that kind of a fat bully! I hope to heavens if I ever get to France all the Germans’ll look just like him. If they do, I’ll not have any trouble at all stickin’ bayonets into ’em.”

Julie knew that the words were perfectly audible to Edward Black and that he would not fail to pay her back for them. She still had her ticket to buy, and when he opened the ticket window she approached in apprehension. They were alone in the station.

“Say, Julie, I got a joke on you,” he jeered. “Say, I know how you go to prayer meetin’.”

The color rushed into Julie’s face.

“Say,” he pursued, watching her from under the drooped lids of his pig eyes, “What was you doin’ sittin’ out on the church steps last night, when everybody else was inside?”

So Edward Black, of all people, had seen her!

“Nothing—it wasn’t anything,” she stumbled, knowing that her voice sounded frightened, and that her cheeks were blazing.

“Oh, yes, it was nothin’! Nothin’ be dogged! Folks don’t turn red like that over nothin’. Well, I’m goin’ to tell people how Julie Rose goes to prayer-meeting!”

But here Number Twelve whistled down the line—a clear burst of sound, cutting joyously through the air. Edward Black had to supply Julie with her ticket, and so she was delivered.

It was on her way back from Red River that Julie first saw Timothy Bixby.

The shopping trips to Red River were always occasions of discomfort to Julie. It was unnerving to her to be shaken out of her accustomed rut of Hart’s Run. Out in the unfamiliar streets of the larger town, she always felt strange and dreadfully conspicuous. Henr’etta Crossman, who had been Henr’etta Wilkinson, Julie’s schoolmate in Hart’s Run, and with whom Julie generally took dinner when she came to Red River, was apt to call jovial attention to Julie’s unhappy self-consciousness. “Come right in to its momma,” she would greet Julie, enfolding her against her large bosom. “Nothing didn’t bite you comin’ up street, did it!”

A day in Red River spent in Henr’etta’s society left Julie limp, crushed by the other’s exuberant self-confidence, with all the delicate antennæ of her personality brushed aside, as a butterfly’s wing is brushed by a too rough touch.

The day in question was no exception. Indeed, after her wretched night, Julie was more than ever drained of all vitality when she boarded the afternoon train for Hart’s Run, squeezing herself and her bundles down into a seat beside a fat woman with a bulging suit-case. “Henr’etta certainly is kind,” she told herself wearily, “but someway, being with her always makes me feel mighty small, she’s so big and sure of herself. And Red River, too, it always makes me feel like I was out naked in the world. Why,” she thought suddenly, “that’s just what Mrs. Anderson said. She said I was pretty nigh as naked as that little bird, and it’s just the truth!”

Halfway down, all the seats on one side of the car were given over to a detachment of men in khaki. They laughed and joked uproariously and burst occasionally into war songs—“We won’t be back ’til it’s over, over there,” and “Keep the home fires burning.” Men in khaki were new and strange phenomena in Julie’s part of the world, and she looked at them curiously. But she was so weary that even they could not engage her interest for long, and closing her eyes, she let herself relax. She could feel the big warm body of the woman beside her heave up and down with each breath. The train was stuffy and hot, filled with disheveled people and fretful children, and over all hung the smell of smoke and cinders and peeled oranges; presently with closed eyes she went almost to sleep in the weary atmosphere. The gray roar of the train pulsed in her ears, making a swaying background of sound before which fantastic thoughts on the verge of dreams spread themselves out. Suddenly, however, against that curtain of sound a woman’s sharp voice detached itself from the other noises and hung for a moment before Julie’s consciousness, as distinct as words on a motion-picture screen.

“Yes, it is in there,” the voice said. “It is, too! I put it there myself just a while back!”

Julie opened her eyes, and looking in the direction of the voice saw Timothy Bixby for the first time. He was one seat ahead of her across the aisle so that she had a clear view of him, a meagre little man, fumbling anxiously through the contents of a suit-case, while a woman in the same seat, her head against a pillow, watched him angrily. It was the woman’s voice that had aroused Julie.

“It is there, too!” she repeated. “Oh, why in the name of common sense can’t you ever find anything? Here—get out of the way!”

She shoved the man aside, and stooping an instant, fished in the suit-case, bringing to light a collapsible drinking-cup.

“There! I told you it was there right along,” she announced, flouncing back into her seat. “Now for mercy sake get me that water, so’s I can take a tablet—my head’s just about to split open.”

The little man took the cup in submissive silence and went forward to the water cooler. Julie watched him go down the aisle. He had sandy hair, and meek, rather drooping shoulders. His progress was zigzag, as he clutched the back of first one seat and then another, tossed from side to side by the speed of the train, which on a down grade now was making up lost time. When, after filling the cup, he turned about, she had a good view of him. He was about thirty years old, with a small spare frame, deprecatory movements, and an anxious frown between his blue eyes. He seemed to be trying desperately hard to cope with life, with a kind of worried patience. But life was against him. Halfway down the car, a small peripatetic child got in his way, and a lurch from the train made him spill the water over its frock.

“Aw—oh!” he cried, a little ejaculation of dismay, and turned helplessly and unhappily to the mother.

“I certainly am sorry, marm,” he apologized, while he fumbled for his handkerchief to wipe the child’s frock. The mother paid no attention whatever to him, but snatching her child to her, removed the small spill of water as though her offspring had been marked by it for life. He repeated, “I’m mighty sorry,” and continued to stand helplessly by, but the woman would not give him even a glance of comfort or forgiveness, so after another uncertain moment he went back for fresh water. As he turned after refilling the cup and again came down the aisle, he was forced to meet the eyes of all the passengers. The small disaster had called momentary attention to him, marking him as it were with an exclamation point, and everybody was staring. The soldiers seized upon him as a butt for their wit.

“Now then, George, steady! Whoa—up! Steady!”

“Mind how you carry yer licker, son!”

“Atta boy!”

He advanced with averted eyes, apparently intent upon the cup, but Julie could see the flush of painful color in his face. The soldiers saw it too and jeered with renewed “Atta boy’s.” Julie knew exactly how he felt. All at once, she knew it so hard, so violently, that suddenly she seemed flowing out of herself to him with a sharp projection of sympathy. He felt her eyes upon him, and just as he reached his seat, looked up with a startled expression. There was a momentary rush of contact between them, close, astonishing, almost suffocating to Julie. An instant they were held in each other’s glance. Then he turned away, and handed the cup to his companion. The woman accepted it ungraciously, and putting a white tablet into her mouth, gulped it down with a swallow of water.

“I never did see anybody as awkward as you,” she said. “Spilling water all over that child! Now for gracious sake, keep still an’ let me be quiet a spell, and see ’f this tablet won’t help my headache some.”

He said nothing, but readjusted her pillow for her, restored the drinking-cup to the bag, and pushed the latter well over to his side to make more room for her, although he was himself uncomfortably squeezed, doing it all with that air of worried endeavor, as though Fate had presented him with a portion of life bigger than he could manage. He had also, Julie observed, a detached manner, a little as though his whole self were not present. It was this aloofness that made her comment inwardly, “Well, he certainly is good to that hateful sister of his.” True, the woman did not look like his sister, but she could not be his wife; surely, she thought, he would have had something different, a fuller, more alive personality, to offer to his mate.

After the suit-case was closed, he looked around again at Julie, but she averted her eyes now, staring away out of the window, and would not let herself glance again at him until the train was nearing Hart’s Run, when she straightened up, and began to gather her bundles together. Then she looked across the aisle, and saw that he and his companion were also making preparations to leave the train. Their suit-case was strapped; the woman had tidied herself up and put on her hat, presenting now an appearance completely in accord with the prevailing style; and when the conductor put his head into the train and shouted “Hart’s Run, Hart’s Run,” they rose and moved out into the aisle. Julie was just behind them as they approached the door. “Well, here we are,” the man said, and both he and his companion stooped down to peer through the windows at Hart’s Run, evidently seeing it for the first time.

“Well, ain’t it the awfulest little hole!” the woman ejaculated.

“Oh, maybe it won’t be so bad,” he offered.

By now they had all three moved out to the platform, waiting for the train to come to a standstill, as the dingy little station slid to meet them.

“Maybe! maybe!” she snorted. “I’m about sick of maybe’s! You’ve been maybe-ing all your life. I just bet before you were born somebody said, ‘Maybe it’ll be a boy,’ an’ that’s just what you are—a kind of a maybe man.” She ended with a burst of laughter, pleased by her own wit.

He made no retort, but Julie, who was standing close beside him now, saw him wince, saw his lips twitch, and his hands tighten spasmodically on the suit-case. For a moment he looked wildly about like a trapped animal seeking escape. As he did so his eyes came full upon Julie’s face. There was such a look of desperation, of trapped and impotent despair in them, that a surge of rage leaped within, sweeping her beyond all the small proprieties, so that she found herself whispering breathlessly behind the woman’s back, “Oh, don’t mind, don’t mind so! I understand—I understand!”

He stared at her a startled, incredulous moment, the color coming up in his face in flood after flood.

The train jerked to a standstill. They were flung together unsteadily for an instant, and then descended the steps.

Julie did not linger. She did not look again at the little man, but stepping past him and his companion, walked quickly along the station platform. Her arms were full of bundles, but she was hardly conscious of them, nor of her feet moving over the boards; the gust of her rage blew her along with a sense of speed and lightness, almost as though she were flying. It was glorious. It lifted her above herself. It set her free. At that moment she was released from all the small constrictions of her life, she was beyond fear of anything, or of any person. Walking thus down the platform she encountered Edward Black. He blocked her way with his great hectoring swagger.

“Oh, I know somep’n, I know somep’n,” he sang.

Julie stopped. She was so angry that her eyes glittered, and a flame seemed to dart out of her white face.

“What do you know?” she demanded.

Edward was surprised and disconcerted. This was not the frightened response he expected from his victim. “Oh, well, never mind,” he muttered, and started to turn away, but Julie stepped quickly after him.

“What do you know?” she repeated furiously.

Again he backed away a step or two. It seemed to him that this enraged little woman might fly at his throat.

“Aw, I was just foolin’, Julie,” he said weakly.

“You saw me sitting out on the church steps last night,” Julie stated clearly and concisely. “Now, what of it?”

“Nothing, Julie, nothing,” he repeated, still retreating sheepishly before her, and uneasily aware that they were attracting attention from the small group of station loafers. But Julie was swept above herself. What people thought, or what they said was a thing beneath her feet now. She did not even hear one of the loafers call out, “That’s right. Miss Julie! Don’t take any foolishness off’n Ed! You got him on the run now. Keep it up!”

“I sat out on the steps because I wanted to,” she continued fiercely. “And what I do is no concern of yours, nor of anybody else’s.”

Edward Black fell away without another word, and Julie continued her progress, still blown along by the gust of her rage. Presently she met Bessie Randolph, who was the wife of Silas Randolph, the president of the bank, a very important person in Hart’s Run.

“See that couple there,” Mrs. Randolph said, joining Julie and pointing out the small man and his companion, who had been met by Wilson McLane, editor of the Hart’s Run News. “The man must be the new printer for the News. Mr. McLane told me he was expecting him by this train. That must be his wife with him.”

“No, it’s his sister,” Julie corrected positively. She was not in the habit of contradicting.

“Oh, then you’re acquainted with them?” the other challenged.

“I never saw them before, but I noticed them on the train, and I know she’s his sister.”

“Well, they don’t either of them look like much,” Mrs. Randolph said with a careless dismissal. “Come on Julie, I’ll ride you home; my car’s right here.”

“I thank you,” Julie responded. “But I reckon I’ll walk.”

Mrs. Randolph stared at her. People did not often so lightly refuse her condescension.

“You better ride with all those bundles,” she urged.

“No—no thank you. I want the walk,” Julie answered. “And besides, I don’t like automobiles. It scares me to ride in them.”

For years Julie had been afraid of motors and for years she had tried to conceal the fact. This was the first time that she had ever dared to acknowledge it, much less to refuse an invitation from the elegant Mrs. Randolph. But now she gave a little indifferent bow of refusal, and went upon her way, still blown along by the gust of her anger, as she saw again in remembrance the incident on the train platform.

“That hateful woman!” she stormed to herself, the sneer on the woman’s face when she had called her companion a “maybe man” still sharp before her mental vision. “The hateful piece!” She found she was repeating over and over: “I know. I understand. I know. Oh, don’t take it so hard! I know how hateful folks are!—He’s as unfeathered as I am,” she whispered to herself. “Things get at him just like they do me, an’ he don’t know any better how to stand up against them. I understand. I know how it is.—Well, anyhow,” she exulted, “I settled that hateful Ed Black for once! Always picking on me. Tore my paper doll up. Tramped on my cookie. Thought he could keep on bullyin’ me forever, but I settled him all right!” The careful speech her mother had trained her to had slipped now, and she was reverting to the mountain phraseology.

“Julie! Oh, Julie, wait just a minute—I want to ask you about that crêpe waist of mine.” It was one of Julie’s customers calling to her from a porch. People were in the habit of stopping Julie as she passed along the street, no matter in how much haste she might be, to have her advice about old and decrepit clothes. Although she resented this, Julie usually meekly responded—but not this time.

“Bring your waist into the shop in the morning, and I’ll attend to it,” she called back, continuing upon her way.

She reached home, and unlocking her door, went into her bedroom, then depositing her bundles, removed her hat before the mirror. The face that looked at her was flushed and alive and recreated. It was not at all the haunted and forlorn little countenance that the glass had given back in the morning. Julie lingered a moment, staring at herself and wondering. She was interrupted by Mrs. Sam Wicket who entered after a preliminary knock.

“You back, Julie?” she said. And after Julie had stated that she was back, “Did you speak to Winter and White’s about the stove?” she inquired.

“I did,” Julie returned, “and they’ll write to you about it.”

“Humph! Writin’ ain’t much good. Well, did you do that other little errand for me? I ain’t got a second to stop; my light bread’s ready to come out of the oven right this minute.”

Julie fished out her especial package from the pile on the bed, and handed it over to her.

“Well, I certainly do thank you for all your trouble,” Mrs. Wicket said, and was just turning away, when she paused, struck by a further thought. “Oh, there!” she exclaimed. “What I wanted to ask you last night was, how you knew Brother Seabrook called on you to pray?”

“I was sitting just outside on the steps and heard him,” Julie returned simply, looking straight at her.

“You—you was sitting on the steps?”

“Yes,” Julie proceeded. “I slipped out because I was afraid to be called on, and after I got outside it was all so sweet and still, I just sat down there for a little bit, till I heard him ask me to lead, an’ then I came home.”

“Well!” Mrs. Wicket ejaculated. She was speechless a moment. Then she burst out. “Well, I think that was the funniest thing!”

“Maybe it was,” Julie interrupted her, “but anyhow I did it.”

“But Julie! Sitting outside on the church steps ’cause you’re afraid to pray?”

“Did you say your bread was in the oven?” Julie inquired.

“Yes, my bread-rolls; yes, that’s right. I got to go.” Mrs. Wicket turned away. “But I do think that’s mighty funny, Julie,” she called back as she went down the walk.

Julie shut her door and sat down in a chair. Suddenly she was extraordinarily limp and exhausted. Her anger with its glorious exaltation had evaporated, leaving her face to face with the appalling things to which it had swept her.

“Why, I told her—I just told her everything right out!” she whispered. “She’ll tell everybody; they’ll all be talking about it now. An’ I was short to Mrs. Silas Randolph, of all people! And look how I answered Kitty Jeffers about her waist. They won’t either of ’em like it. They’ll all be talking about me.” Then her relaxed mind gave back to her—what she had not noticed at the time—the words of encouragement the loafer at the station had cried to her: “That’s right, Julie; don’t take any foolishness off’n Ed! You got him goin’ now!” Why—how awful! Right out there on the station platform! How awful for her to have laid herself open to such conspicuousness! She shuddered, all her nerves tightening once more with self-consciousness, and her cheeks burning. “Oh, what a fool you are! Oh, how they’ll talk about you! They won’t any of ’em understand!” Glancing up, she saw her face again in the mirror, and now it was the same white and anxious reflection that had looked out at her in the morning. Something in its impotent appeal brought back the look of unprotected despair in the face of the little man on the train. “Oh, I understand, I do understand,” she burst out passionately. “Don’t look that way, don’t take it so hard! Folks don’t understand, but I do!” And she hardly knew whether her words were addressed to his tragedy or to her own.

V

It was two days afterward that Julie saw Mr. Bixby again. She knew his name now. The Hart’s Run News had announced that Mr. Timothy Bixby, an expert printer and typesetter, had accepted the position left vacant by the departure of Hobson Jones, who had left for Camp Lee to answer his call to the colors. The News added further, “We are glad to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bixby to our midst.”

So that woman was his wife after all.

Their next meeting occurred when Mr. Bixby made his way to Julie’s little shop, sent by his wife to match some pink yarn for a sweater she was knitting. It was just like her, Julie thought, to be knitting a sweater for herself when all the rest of the women were at work on khaki wool for the soldiers. And like her, too, to send her husband, because she was ashamed to ask for it herself. Julie had time to think of these things because she was busy at the hat counter with a customer, and so had to let Maida Watkins, who sometimes helped her out in the shop, wait on Mr. Bixby.

“Pink wool?” Maida demanded sharply, her cold young eyes piercing him, and her teeth snapping together on her chewing-gum. Maida had been expressing superiority, leisure, and indifference, as she stood behind the counter, ruminating slowly upon her gum, the while she patted her blond hair from time to time, or examined her polished nails; but when Mr. Bixby entered, and holding out the sample made his timid request, she shot “Pink wool” at him, and clenched her teeth so tight on her gum that the muscles stood out on either side of her jaws. The color swept up uncomfortably to his eyes, making his face look blurred and helpless.

“Yes, marm, if you please, marm: to match this sample if you got it,” he stammered.

“No, we ain’t got it,” Maida returned, not even deigning to glance at the wisp of yarn he proffered. “It’s only pro-Germans would keep pink wool these days,” she informed him. After which she returned to her haughty mastication, staring away out of the window over his head.

It was here that Julie abruptly laid down the hat she had been displaying and swept forward. She was animated by the same rage that had assailed her before. As she passed Maida she glared at her. “Show Miss Jenkins that sport hat,” she commanded; and Maida with a startled and indignant toss of her blond puffs melted away to the obscurity of the hat counter.

Julie reached the open door just as Mr. Bixby was starting out of it.

“I’m mighty sorry I haven’t got what you want, Mr. Bixby,” she said. “I hope you’ll call again.”

At her words he turned, and there was a sudden leap of surprise, of recognition, and of release in his eyes. For an instant they stood and looked at one another, the storm-tossed personalities of each finding a harbor and refuge in the being of the other. He spoke first. “I—I didn’t know,” he stumbled. “Is this your shop?”

She nodded. “Yes, I live here.”

But now she knew that Maida was turning to ask her something about the hat she held, and she hastily snatched up the momentarily dropped mantle of conventionality.

“I’m mighty sorry we haven’t any pink wool, Mr. Bixby,” she repeated, although she was aware that Maida was regarding her with outraged contempt.

He replied with a sudden surprising twist of whimsicality, an unexpected twinkle in his blue eyes.

“Oh, well,” he appealed, “ain’t it just like me to ask for pink wool a war year? Ain’t it just the ornary kind of thing I would do?”

He spoke as though she knew him quite well, and would understand perfectly all the small disasters to which he was prone.

“Oh, well,” she said, still offering consolation, “Of course, a man couldn’t be expected to know how hard it is to get any kind of wool these days. Why, the Red Cross Committee has even sent over to Winter’s Gap to see if they can’t get some homespun. Winter’s Gap is in the back part of the county away from the railroad, where some of the old folks still spin,” she explained.

“Is that so?” he said with interest. People were not usually interested in Julie’s small remarks. “Well, I reckon I must be going,” he added, conscious now of Maida’s severe eyes upon them. He made an uncertain gesture toward his hat and turned away. As he raised his arm, Julie caught sight of a rip in his sleeve.

“I don’t see why in the name of goodness that woman can’t keep him mended up!” her thoughts ejaculated angrily.

VI

The following Sunday after service, Julie was formally presented to Mr. and Mrs. Bixby.

She had gone to church in an agony of apprehension. Would Brother Seabrook call on her again to pray? Or did he know now that she was afraid? And did everybody else know? The thought made her feel like an outcast, yet she was so terrified that she would have liked to go to Brother Seabrook before church and beg him not to call upon her. She pictured herself doing it; she even made up in her mind the words with which to clothe her request; but in the end she could not bring herself to do it. Instead, she went late and slipped into a back pew. He did not call upon her, but all through the service she suffered an agony of dread, and when it was over, and she rose with the rest to leave, she felt as though every eye was fixed on her in contempt.

Outside the church she encountered a little group of people who were being introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Bixby. Mrs. Sam Wicket had taken upon herself the responsibility of presenting the strangers to the congregation.

“Miss Rose, make you acquainted with Mis’ Bixby,” she said, catching Julie by the arm as she came down the steps, and holding her firmly before the other, as though she might otherwise escape.

“Miss Rose, pleased to meet you,” the newcomer said; and Julie found herself looking up into the face of Elizabeth Bixby, while their hands touched for a moment.

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VI