The Judge | Page 9

his own bourgeoisie that he felt displeased by his wish. It
was impossible to ask a Miss Melville to a dance unless one could say,
'She's the daughter of old Mr. Melville in Moray Place. Do you not
mind Melville, the wine merchant?' and specially impossible to ask this
Miss Melville unless one had some such certificate to attach to her
vividness. But he wished he could dance with her.
Ellen recalled him to the business of pity. She had thought of dances
for no more than a minute, though it had long been one of her dreams
to enter a ballroom by a marble staircase (which she imagined of a size
and steepness really more suited to a water-chute), carrying a black
ostrich-feather fan such as she had seen Sarah Bernhardt pythoning
about with in "La Dame aux Camélias." This hour she had dedicated to
Mr. Philip, and he knew it. She was thinking of him with an intentness
which was associated with an entire obliviousness of his personal
presence, just as a church circle might pray fervently for some
missionary without attempting to visualise his face; and though he
missed this quaint meaning of her abstraction, he was well content to
watch it and nurse his private satisfaction. He was still aware that he

was Mr. Philip of the firm, so he was not going to tell her that for two
nights after he had heard the decision of the Medical Examiners he had
cried himself to sleep, though he was fourteen past. But it was exquisite
to know that if he had told her she would have been moved to some
glorious gesture of pity. His imagination trembled at the thought of its
glory as she turned to him with a benignity that was really good enough,
and said diffidently, because her ambition was such a holy thing that
she feared to speak of his: "Still, there are lots of things for you to do.
I've heard...."
He was kindly and indulgent. "What have you heard?"
Ellen had, as her mother used to say, a great notion of politics. "Why,
that you're going to stand for Parliament."
"That's true enough," he said, swelling a little.
"Could anything be finer?" she breathed. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll have to contest two-three hopeless seats. Then they'll give me
something safe."
"But what will you do?"
He didn't follow.
"What'll you do after that?" She towered above him, her cheeks flushed
with intellectual passion. "In Parliament, I mean. There's so much to do.
Will it be housing? If it was me it would be housing. But what are you
going to do?"
"I'll sit as a Liberal," he said, with an air of quiet competence. "We've
always been Liberals."
"Ach! _Liberal!_" she said, with the spirit of one who had cried, "Keep
the Liberal out!" at a Leith polling-booth and had been haled
backwards by the hair from the person of Mr. Winston Churchill. Mr.
Philip laughed again and felt a kind of glow. He never could get over a

feeling that to discover a woman excited about an intellectual thing was
like coming on her bathing; her cast-off femininity affected him as a
heap of her clothes on the beach might have done. But the flash in her
eyes died to the homelier fires of a more personal quarrel. "Is yon Mrs.
Powell's heavy feet coming up the stair?" she enquired.
"It is so. I asked her to do a chop for me, so that I won't need to dine on
the train...."
"Mercy me! We'll see the fine cook she is!" She ran out to the landing
(she had never known he was so nice). Mr. Philip found that her
absence acted curiously as a relief to an excitement that was beginning
to buzz in his head. Then she came back with the tray, her cheeks
bright and her mouth pursed, for she and the caretaker had been
sandpapering each other's temperaments with a few words. "Be
thankful she thought to boil a potato. No greens. And I had to ask for a
bit bread. And the reason's not far to seek. She's had a drop again. It
staggers me how your father, who's so particular with the rest of us,
stands such a body in the place."
He did not answer her. The moment had become one of pure enjoyment.
There was no sense of strain in his appreciation of her while she was
putting down the tray, spreading out the plates, and doing things that
were all directed to giving him comfort. Their relationship felt
absolutely right.
"Will you have one of the bottles of Burgundy your father keeps for
when he lunches in?" she said.
"I was just thinking I would," he answered, and went