Julia The Apostate Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  JULIA THE APOSTATE

  By Josephine Daskam

  Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons

  "You don't think it's too young for me, girls?"

  "Young for you--_par exemple!_ I should say not," her niece replied,perking the quivering aigrette still more obliquely upon her aunt'shead. Carolyn used _par exemple_ as a good cook uses onion--a hint of itin everything. There were those who said that she interpolated it in theLitany; but Carolyn, who was born Caroline and a Baptist, was too muchimpressed by the liturgy of what she called The Church to insert even anuncanonized comma.

  "Now don't touch it, Aunt Julia, for it's deliciously chic, and if youhad your way you'd flatten it down right straight in the middle--youknow you would."

  Miss Trueman pursed her lips quizzically.

  "I've always thought, Carrie--_lyn_," she added hastily, as her niecescowled, "that they put things askew to make 'em different--for achange, as you might say. Now, if they're _never_ in the middle, it'sabout as tiresome, isn't it?"

  Elise, whose napkin-ring bore malignant witness to her loving aunt,Eliza Judd, laughed irrepressibly: she had more sense of humor than hersister. It was she who, though she had assisted in polishing the oldcopper kettle subsequently utilized as a holder for the tongs andshovel, had refused to consider the yet older wash-boiler in the lightof a possible coal-scuttle, greatly to the relief of her aunt, whoblushed persistently at any mention of the hearth.

  She patted the older woman encouragingly.

  "That's right, Aunt Ju-ju, argue it out!" she advised.

  Miss Trueman winced. She had never accustomed herself to those senselessmonosyllables that parodied her name; nor could she understand the frameof mind that found them preferable to the comfortable "Aunt Jule" of theold days.

  "Ju-ju!" Strips of unwholesome flesh-colored paste, sugar-sprinkled,dear to her childish heart but loathed by a maturer palate, rose to hermind. There had been another haunting recollection: for months shehad been unable to define it perfectly, though it had always brought athrill of disgust with its vague appeal. One day she caught it and toldthem.

  "It was that dreadful creature Mr. Barnum exhibited," she declared,"that we didn't allow the children to go to see--Jo-jo, the Dog-facedBoy! You remember?"

  Their cold horror, briefly expressed, had shown her that she hadtrespassed too far on their indulgence, and she spoke of it no more, butthe memory rankled.

  "It's so strange you don't see how cunning it is," Carolyn complained;"everybody does it now. The whole Chatworth family have those names,Aunt Ju, and it is the dearest thing to hear the old doctor call CaptainArthur 'Ga-ga.' You know that dignified sister with the lovely silveryhair? Well, they all call her 'Looty.' And nobody thinks of HunterChatworth's real name--he's always 'Toto.'"

  "And he has three children!"

  Miss Trueman sighed; the constitution of the modern family amazed herendlessly. Ga-ga, indeed!

  "Do the children call him Toto, too?" she demanded, with an attempt atsarcasm, a conversational form to which she was by nature a stranger.

  "Oh, I don't know about that," Carolyn answered carelessly. "I supposenot. Though plenty of children do, you know. Mrs. Ranger's little girlalways calls her mother Lou."

  "Mrs. Ranger--you mean the woman that smokes?"

  Miss Trueman's tone brought vividly to the mind a person dangling fromdisgusted finger-tips a mouse or beetle.

  "For heaven's sake, Aunt Jule"--in moments of intense exasperation theyreverted unconsciously to the old form--"don't speak of her as if shesmoked for a living!"

  "I should rather not speak of her at all," said Miss Trueman severely.

  They raised their eyebrows helplessly: Carolyn's irritation was sounfeigned that she omitted a justly famous shrug.

  For two years they had devoted an appreciable part of their busy hoursto modifying Aunt Julia's antique prejudices, developing in her thelatent aesthetic sense that their Wednesday art class taught themexisted in every one, cajoling her into a tolerance of certain phasesof modern literature considered seriously and weekly by the MondayAfternoon Club, and incidentally utilizing her as a chaperon andhousekeeper in their modest up-town apartment.

  The first six months of her sojourn had been almost entirely occupiedwith accustoming herself to the absence of an attic and a cellar; longdays of depression they learned, finally, to trace to this incrediblesource. Later she dealt with the problem of subsisting from eight tillone on two rolls and a cup of coffee; successfully, in the ultimateissue, as surreptitious bits of fried ham and buckwheat cakes, withsuspicious odors, winked at discreetly by her nieces, witnessed. Itwould have been unkind, as Elise suggested, to criticise Aunt Ju-ju'sperformances at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning, when their owncorrectly Continental repast, flanked by a chrysanthemum in a tallvase, not only tallied so accurately with their digestive and aestheticnecessities, but appeared, moreover, with such gratifying regularity onehour later.

  Both Carolyn and her sister had inherited from their mother, MissTrue-man's older sister, a real gift for teaching, and this, rather thantheir respective abilities in art and music, enabled them to impartvery successfully the elements of these necessary branches to the youngladies of a fashionable boarding-school just outside the city.

  It was politely regretted by their friends that they were unable togive themselves unreservedly to the exercise of their art without thecramping necessity for teaching; but it is probable that both the girlsestimated their not too extraordinary talents very sensibly, though farfrom displeased by a more flattering judgment.

  Miss Trueman, who possessed the characteristic veneration of the bredand born New Englander for his native or imported school-ma'am, resentedpersistently their somewhat patronizing attitude toward the professionsecond only to the ministry in her stanch respect. A little of thesimple grandeur of those childhood days when "the teacher boarded withthem" clung with the ineradicable force of habit to her mind, and shecould not understand their restive attitude at "the fine positions asteachers Hattie's girls have got."

  "I'm sure you make more money than that Miss Seymour that gets her ownmeals in her room--she said so herself."

  "Oh, well, there are other things to be considered, Aunt Ju; and,anyway, she's a real bohemian, Polly Seymour. There's a fascination init."

  "There's no fascination in being hungry that I can see, and she admittedthat, L--Elise," Miss Trueman insisted severely. "I don't understand howshe could have done it--I would have died first. And she seemed to thinkit was a great joke to have her friends give her a dinner--I think itwas terrible."

  "Why, Aunt Jule, how ridiculous! We were delighted to do it--it wasperfectly dear of her to let us, too. And think of the people we metthere--Rawlins and Mr. Ware! You don't mind being poor if such men willcome just out of interest in you, I tell you. Do you remember, Elise,how Mr. Rawlins called her 'little girl'? Mr. Ware lets her use hismodels whenever she likes, too," Carolyn added respectfully.

  "Oh, she's bound to arrive!" Elise agreed.

  Aunt Ju-ju sniffed uncontrolledly.

  "I should hope she'd arrive at the point where she could buy her owndinners," she remarked. "To be beholden for your bread"...

  Here were two points of view as little likely to coincide as theparallel lines of science, and at some such stage as this thediscussions were wont to cease.

  To-day the apartment was swept and garnished for a social functionlong planned by the nieces. Carnations leaned from tall glass vases,intricate little cakes jostled carefully piled sandwiches, and a hugebrass samovar, borrowed for the occasion, gave dignity to the smallparlor. Miss Trueman had learned by now the unwritten law that preventedthe various objects in the once pro
udly segregated "drawing-room set"from association with each other, and made no attempt to correct theirintentional isolation. The samovar she refused utterly to meddle with,assuring them that she would as soon think of running a locomotive.

  As the guests began to arrive Miss Trueman found herself regarding themeven more critically than usual; an argumentative spirit rose in her,and her calm contradiction of Mrs. Ranger, who discussed with greatsubtlety the notable advantages--even from the artistic point ofview--of the approaching spring when experienced in the city, incomparison with that be-rhymed season's vaunted country beauties,startled more than one person.

  "Just because they're