Page:The Making of Americans, 1925.djvu/26

Mr. Dehning had never concerned himself very much with the management of the family's way of living and the social life of his wife and children. These things were all always arranged by Mrs. Dehning and he was well content to let her do it though he often grumbled at the foolishness and the expense and at his children always having everything they ever wanted and so being sure to be always good for nothing.

But always he was very proud of his wife and of his children, though, a little, he always felt it was not right, their new fangled ways of doing, and yet, truly, he was very proud of them always, and indeed they were a group to gratify the pride that he had in him, they were so vigorous prosperous and good-looking, and honest, and always respectful to him, and surely they had good hope of later winning for themselves all the happiness and success he could wish them.

Julia Dehning at eighteen had lived through much of the experience that can prepare a girl for womanhood and marriage.

I have said, there were a number of young men and boys connected with the Dehning family, uncles and cousins, generous decent considerate fellows, frank and honest in their friendships, and simple in the fashion of the elder Dehning. With this kindred Julia had always lived as with the members of one family. These men did not supply for her the training and experience that helps to clear the way for an impetuous woman through a world of passions, they only made a sane and moral back-ground on which she in her later life could learn to lean.

With any member of this kindred there would be, in a young and ardent mind, no thought of love or marriage; nor were the sober business men, young, old, or middle-aged, who came a great deal to the house, attractive to her temper, for Julia was ambitious for passion and position and she needed, too, a strain of romance. No such kind of a man had really come to her and Julia was all ripe for real experience, for even with her well guarded life she had found the sickened sense that comes with learning that some men do wrong. Passionate tempers have greatly this advantage of the unpassionate variety; you can never guard them with such care but that they find themselves full up with real experience and with the after-taste of disillusion, but vitally as they are always hit they always rise and plunge once more, while their poorly passionate fellows who receive a vital blow never rise to faith again.

Julia as a little girl had had the usual experiences of governess guarded children. She was first the confidant, then the advisor, and last the arranger of the love affairs of her established guardians. Then at her finishing school she became acquainted with that dubious character, the adventuress, the type to be found always in all kinds of places, a character eternally attractive in its mystery and daring, and always able to attach unto itself the most intelligent and honest of its comrades and introduce them to queer vices.