The Judge | Page 4

Ellen never
wished to do again. She was filled with terror by the thought that she
should ever again pin brown paper out of _Weldon's Fashions_ on to
stuff that must not on any account run higher than a shilling the yard;
that she should slash with the big cutting-out scissors just as Mrs.
Melville murmured over her shoulder, "I doubt you've read the
instructions right...." What was the good? She was decaying. That was

proven by the present current of her thoughts, which had passed from
the countryside, towards which she had always previously directed her
mind when she had desired it to be happy, as one moves for warmth
into a southern-facing room, and were now dwelling on the mean life of
hopeless thrift she and her mother lived in Hume Park Square. She
recollected admiringly the radiance that had been hers when she was
sixteen; of the way she had not minded more than a wrinkle between
the brows those Monday evenings when she had to dodge among the
steamy wet clothes hanging on the kitchen pulleys as she cooked the
supper, those Saturday nights when she and her mother had to wait for
the cheap pieces at the butcher's among a crowd that hawked and spat
and made jokes that were not geniality but merely a mental form of
hawking and spitting; of the way that in those days her attention used to
leap like a lion on the shy beast Beauty hiding in the bush, the
housewifely briskness with which her soul took this beauty and
simmered it in the pot of meditation into a meal that nourished life for
days. At the thought of the premature senility that had robbed her of
these accomplishments now that she was seventeen she began again to
weep....
The door opened and Mr. Mactavish James lumbered in, treading
bearishly on his soft slippers, and rubbing the gold frame of his
spectacles against his nose to allay the irritation they had caused by
their persistent pressure during the interview he had been holding with
the representative of another firm: an interview in which he had
disguised his sense of his client's moral instability by preserving the
most impressive physical immobility. The air of the room struck cold
on him, and he went to the fireplace and put on some coal, and sat
down on a high stool where he could feel the warmth. He gloomed over
it, pressing his hands on his thighs; decidedly Todd was in the wrong
over this right of way, and Menzies & Lawson knew it. He looked
dotingly across at Ellen, breathed "Well, well!"--that greeting by which
Scot links himself to Scot in a mutual consciousness of a prudent
despondency about life. Age permitted him, in spite of his type, to
delight in her. In his youth he had turned his back on romance, lest it
should dictate conduct that led away from prosperity, or should alter
him in some manner that would prevent him from attaining that

ungymnastic dignity which makes the respected townsman. He had
meant from the first to end with a paunch. But now wealth was
inalienably his and Beauty could beckon him on no strange pilgrimages,
his soul retraced its steps and contemplated this bright thing as an earth
creature might creep to the mouth of its lair and blink at the sun. And
there was more than that to it. He loved her. He had never had enough
to do with pitiful things (his wife Elizabeth had been a banker's
daughter), and this, child had come to him, that day in June, so white,
so weak, so chilled to the bone, for all the summer heat, by her
monstrous ill-usage....
He said, "Nelly, will your mother be feared if you stop and take a few
notes for Mr. Philip till eight? There is a chemist body coming through
from the cordite works at Aberfay who can't come in the day but
Saturday mornings, and you ken Mr. Philip's away to London for the
week-end by the 8.30, so he's seeing him the night. Mr. Philip would be
thankful if you'd stop."
"I will so, Mr. James," said Ellen.
"You're sure your mother'll not be feared?"
"What way would my mother be feared," said Ellen, "and me seventeen
past?"
"There's many a lassie who's found being seventeen no protection from
a wicked world." He emitted some great Burns-night chuckles, and
kicked the fire to a blaze.
She said sternly, "Take note, Mr. James, that I haven't done a hand's
turn this hour or more, and that not for want of asking for work. Dear
knows I have my hand on Mr. Morrison's door-knob half the day."
Mr. James got up to go. "You're a fierce hussy, and mean to be a