Deep channel

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.