Marriage -- Fiction; Runaway husbands -- Fiction; Social settlements -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
One morning, when Julia slipped into her place in St. Anne's, she saw,
two feet away from her, on an undraped trestle, a narrow coffin, and in
the coffin the rigid form of a girl who had been prayed for a few
mornings earlier as very ill. There was not a flower on the still, flat
young breast, and no kindly artifice beautified the stern face or the
bare, raw little hands that protruded from the blue-green gingham
sleeves. The ruined little tenement that had served some man's pleasure
and been flung aside lay there as little beholden to the world in death
as it had been in life. And as if the usual silence of the chapel would
be too hard to bear, the living girls chanted to-day the "Dies Irae" and
the "Libera me."
When winter came, the little trestle was often in requisition, for the
inmates of St. Anne's were ill-fitted to cope with any sickness. Once it
was a nun, in her black robes, who lay there, her magnificent still face
wearing its usual deep, wise smile, her tired hands locked about her
crucifix. For her there were flowers, masses of flowers, and more than
one black-robed priest, and a special choir, and Julia knew that the
other nuns envied that one of their number who had gone on to other work
in other fields.
She grew grave, who was always grave, thinking of these things, and
talked them over with Kennedy Scott. Kennedy was deeply, even
passionately, concerned for a while, and she and Julia decided to
establish a home some day for girls who were still to be saved.
Time went very swiftly now: years were not as long as they used to be,
one birthday was in sight of another. Sometimes Julia was astonished and
a little saddened, as is the way of youth, at the realization of the
flying months. She was busy, contented, beloved; she was accomplishing
her ambition--but at what a cost of years! The great moment might come
now at any time--Prince Charming might be on his way to her now, but
meantime she must work and eat and sleep--and the birthdays came apace.
Sometimes she grew very restless; this was not life! But a visit to her
grandmother's house usually sent her back to The Alexander with fresh
courage. No possible alternative offered itself anywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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