The Story of Julia Page

The Story Of Julia Page

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story Of Julia Page, by Kathleen
Norris #7 in our series by Kathleen Norris
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Title: The Story Of Julia Page Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V
Author: Kathleen Norris
Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4787] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 19,
2002]
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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
VOLUME V

THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE
KATHLEEN NORRIS

CHAPTER I
To Emeline, wife of George Page, there came slowly, in her thirtieth
year, a sullen conviction that life was monstrously unfair. From a
resentful realization that she was not happy in her marriage, Emeline's
mind went back to the days of her pert, precocious childhood and her
restless and discontented girlhood, and she felt, with a sort of
smouldering fury, that she had never been happy, had never had a fair
chance, at all!
It took Mrs. Page some years to come to this conclusion, for, if she was
shrewd and sharp among the women she knew, she was, in essential
things, an unintelligent woman, and mental effort of any sort was
strange to her. Throughout her entire life, her mind had never been
truly awakened. She had scrambled through Grammar School, and had
followed it with five years as saleswoman in a millinery store, in that
district of San Francisco known as the Mission, marrying George Page
at twenty-three, and up to that time well enough pleased with herself
and her life.

But that was eight years ago. Now Emeline could see that she had
reached--more, she had passed--her prime. She began to see that the
moods of those early years, however violent and changing, had been
fed upon secret springs of hope, hope vague and baseless enough, but
strong to colour a girl's life with all the brightness of a thousand dawns.
There had been rare potentialities in those days, anything might happen,
something WOULD happen. The little Emeline Cox, moving between
the dreary discomfort of home and the hated routine of school, might
surprise all these dull seniors and school-mates some day! She might
become an actress, she might become a great singer, she might make a
brilliant marriage.
As she grew older and grew prettier, these vague, bright dreams
strengthened. Emeline's mother was an overworked and shrill-voiced
woman, whose personality drove from the Shotwell Street house
whatever small comfort poverty and overcrowding and dirt left in it.
She had no personal message for Emeline. The older woman had never
learned the care of herself, her children, her husband, or her house. She
had naturally nothing to teach her daughter. Emeline's father
occasionally thundered a furious warning to his daughters as to certain
primitive moral laws. He did not tell Emeline and her sisters why they
might some day consent to abandon the path of virtue, nor when, nor
how. He never dreamed of winning their affection and confidence, or of
selecting their friends, and making home a place to which these friends
might occasionally come. But he was fond of shouting, when Emeline,
May, or Stella pinned on their flimsy little hats for an evening walk,
that if ever a girl of his made a fool of herself and got into trouble, she
need never come near his door again! Perhaps Emeline and May and
Stella felt that the virtuous course, as exemplified by their parents, was
not all of roses, either, but they never said so, and always shuddered
dutifully at the paternal warning.
School also failed with the education of the inner Emeline, although
she moved successfully from a process known as "diagramming"
sentences to a serious literary analysis of "Snow- Bound" and
"Evangeline," and passed