JUDITH POINTS THE WAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 73

JUDITH POINTS THE WAY.

( Copyright.—For the Otago Witness. ) Breakfast was just over at “ The Cedars,” Balham, and Mr Renton had departed hurriedly for the city with a worried look on his face and the morning paper and favourite weekly under his arm.

Mrs Renton and her two daughters still sat round the table talking, and there seemed to be trouble in the discussion. “ I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Mrs Renton plaintively. She hadn’t done her hair yet, and she looked tired and worn. “ It’s ridiculous,” said Judith. “ That’s what you always say,” replied Phyllis crossly, propping her face up on two slim white hands, “ but it doesn’t help much.” Judith got up and pushed her chair under the table with a jerk. “Neither does mooning about it help much,” she returned. “ Dad has got his salary cut short, well—-it’s all in the war, and it hasn’t hurt us much up till now.” “We shan’t be able to entertain,” observed Mrs Renton. “That’s all you are worrying about, I believe,” answered Judith; “if he hadn’t swanked and pretended so much up till now, we should have saved, and there would be some money now to help us.” - • •

Phyllis and her mother looked at each other. They always felt helpless when Judith started speaking her mind. “ Just think of the dinner we gave Mrs Everitt last night,” the girl went on, “ and I am sure we need not have troubled; she knows perfectly well we have bread and cheese and cocoa when we are alone.” “Judith!” protested Phyllis. “ And it isn’t as if we liked Mrs Ever it t ; —we don’t, at least I suppose we don’t, as we criticise, and pull her clothes and her body and her mind to pieces between us when she’s gone. No, she has a big house and lots of money, so we keep in with her. Poof, how tired I am of it all.” “ You were glad enough to know the Camerons,” said Phyllis, and they have money.” Judith coloured. Then she turned round and looked straight at Phyllis. “We were both glad to know Jim and Geoffrey, Phil,” she answered more gently. “ But, Judith,” said her mother, breaking in, “ what are we to do ? We must keep up appearances, and it is so difficult on your father’s income, and with no maids to be had just now ” —she trailed off on to her pet subject—“ not even for twenty pounds a year.” “ I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” said Judith bluntly. “Why can’t we be what we really are—poor people? Oh, it’s ” she stopped short of the familiar remark, “ anyhow it is ridiculous,” she added. “ It’s all very well for you to talk,” said Phyllis. “ Well, look here, Phil, let’s stop it and get some work ourselves.” And Judith drew up her strong, slender body as though it needed action and exercising. “ Don’t talk like that, Judith,” said her mother peevishly. “ You know neither your father nor I wish to see our girls go out to work; we have tried to bring you up as ladies.” And this weak-minded product of middle-class life looked from the dainty, curly-haired Phyllis to the fine, straight figure of her elder and more troublesome daughter. “ And now,” went on Mrs Renton, fumbling for a little soiled lace handkerchief, " now you turn round on me.” There was a break in her voice, and Judith’s tender heart interfered with her mental judgment. She put her arms round the little thin woman. “ Mother dear,” she said, “ even ladies work in war time. I can’t go on like this, it keeps me awake at night, worrying what are Phil and I doing for the war—just nothing.” “ Why, we knitted heaps and heaps of socks,” said Phyllis indignantly, " and don’t I go every Thursday to the hospital to sing? ” . “ Oh, yes,” said Judith, “ and a fine time you have, talking to all the men. For Heaven’s sake don’t call that warwork. I’ve quite made up my mind I’m going to work and make up for the loss in dad’s money, if I can. I can’t make you spend it in the way I want, but at least I won’t share what you do.” And Judith left her mother’s side and walked to the window. " What are you going to do? ” asked Mrs Renton nervously. “ She may get in a Government office,” put in Phyllis, “ plenty of quite good people are doing that.” “ Then that knocks it on the head— I’m tired of the ‘ quite good people,’ ” said the determined voice of the selfwilled young woman at the window. “I want something real—real, true to life, and not another sham that I can avoid.” “ Well, what is it you are thinking of?” said Mrs Renton, seeing the girl had some plan in her head.

“ I’m going on the buses,” she said slowly, “ as a conductress.” “ Good heavens!” said her mother. For Jhalf an hour Judith stood firm against coaxing, threats, and tears. “ You’ve ruined my life!” said Phyllis theatrically. “ What on earth do you mean ? ” demanded Judith.

“ How can you expect an ofliper to want a conductress for a sister-in-law?” answered the younger girl, hotly. “ Are you engaged to an officer ? ” said Judith, and some, of the colour went out of her bright young face. “ Are you talking about Jim Cameron, Phil?” Her sister made no answer.

“A lot you cared for Jim before he became an officer,” went on Judith rather bitterly, “it was all Geoffrey onee; can’t you be seen with a private—-isn’t it good enough ? ” “ You are very unkind, Judith,” said Phyllis, not without a certain dignity of her own. Something was hurting Judith just at present more than her disgust for the art of preserving appearances. Lieutenant Jim Cameron had had once asked for Judith’s friendship with a look in his brown eyes she had never forgotten. It was evidently his forte to ask for friendship with those attractive deep eyes. Well, Phil was welcome to him. She would cut herself off from it all.

“ You can’t do it,” repeated Mrs Kenton for the sixth time.

“ I’ve made up my mind,” was the answer. “ I’m going on the buses. I shall see real life, and that’s what 1 want. I won’t disgrace you by living here. ’ I shall take a room and do the thing properly. You can tell dad I’ve gone—l don’t want to explain it ail over again.”

There was a look of distinct relief on the face of Judith’s mother; at least, there would not be a local scandal, and if the girl insisted on carrying out her mad idea, it could be kept quiet. They could say she had gone away for a change. These thoughts followed each other with surprising quickness through Mrs Renton’s brain. It was so instinctive with her to be on the immediate defensive at the least sign of that dreaded calamity known as “ losing caste.” If her religion had received so much attention she would have been a most devout woman; but that was a secondary matter, to be considered when such affairs as to which was the best social circle at the church, and what were the best clothes to wear there, had been satisfactorily arranged. “Judith, do you really mean it?” asked Phyllis. “ You know I do,” came the brisk answer, “ and I’m not going to waste another day.”

They made no other effort to stop her, and she packed up a box and went.

The new conductress on No. 59 bus from Croydon to Oxford Circus was very trim and smart. Her tall, slender figure looked wonderfully well in the smart uniform, and many people stared curiously at the refined, pretty face and smooth brown hair under the peaked cap.

The women-folk talked in undertones about her as they noted the soft white hands managing the tickets with the touch of a novice.

“ Our girls are doing wonders,” said one middle-aged lady complacently, as she took a halfpenny ticket. Five minutes later she was grumbling at Judith for going past her particular turning, a road which Judith had never heard of in her life.

“ I asked you to put me down there,” said the passenger indignantly. “ Where’s yer hautomobil? ” called out a man sitting in the corner, winking at Judith, “ain’t it agoin’ yet?” “ I’m sorry, madam,” said Judith, and

the lady was left in the road with a vague impression of having been snubbed by a well-bred dignity. Judith began to be known on the road, and someone nicknamed her “ The Duchess,” and certainly the way she managed to collect the fares without raising her voice or losing her self-possession was quite remarkable. All the old ladies liked to travel by her bus, and the children adored Her.

Three weeks passed, and Judith was very tired, but when she remembered the purposeless life at “ The Cedars ” her weariness was forgotten in an intense satisfaction that she had found real life at last.

She lived in one tiny room, and she found that when money had been sent home each week there was scarcely enough left to buy the things one needed to live.

Then it was hard to go home and find no one there, to endure the silence, the peculiar silence, of living the domestic side of life for oneself alone.

Then one evening towards the middle of the fourth week the change came. She was opening the gate of the house where she lodged when she heard light, hurried footsteps behind her, and presently a voice called “ Judith.” “ Who is it ? ” she asked.

“ It’s me—mother,” and the voice was tired.

“ Mother —why ever have you come here ? ”

“ I’ve come for you. I can’t bear it, Judith. I’ve lain awake night after night thinking of you in the cold—and so tired. You weye my baby; come home, Judith, I ran’t bear it.”

The hurried, low voice ceased, but Judith couldn’t speak. She put her arm in her mother’s and drew her into the house. "They went in Judith’s tiny room, and she lit the gas with hands that were not quite steady. The mother looked round hurriedly. “Judith,” she commenced again, “I’ve thought it all out. I’ve been wrong, but I’ll do different; I never knew until you left me. We’ll move if you like, and I’ll work hard—only come home and let me look after you, Judith.” And the great tears rolled down her cheeks.

Judith had her arms tightly round her. “ Mother—my own mother,” she said, “ you don’t know how I’ve wanted you,” “ Let us go home,” said the elder woman. Judith hesitated. Then she said, “ I can’t give it up.”

“ You mean the work—but it is so hard, dear.” “ It won’t be when I get used to it, and if I have you to look after me. It’s my war-work, mother.” “ I’m proud of you, Judith,” said the woman.

When Judith had changed, they went off home together, and “ The Cedars,” Balham, had never seemed such a wonderful, dear place to the girl before. “ Dad is keeping some supper hot,” said Mrs Renton, “ in case—in case you came.”

“ Who is in the drawing room, mother?” broke in Judith, hearing a man’s voice.

“ Phil and Geoffrey. They are engaged now, Judith. Geoffrey has his commission.”

“Geoffrey is an officer?” said Judith, a sudden thought flashing across her mind and filling it with new joyousness. “ Then Phil didn’t mean—that is Phil meant Geoffrey when she said I should disgrace her ? ” “ Phil has changed very much since you left; she won’t be like that now, Judith. It was so much my fault. She is young. She will learn from you, darling.” Judith stooped her tall head to put a kiss on her mother’s forehead. Then she noticed a letter addressed to herself lying on the hall table. “ That came yesterday,” said Mrs Renton, and she vanished into the kitchen. She longed to tell the news to the man waiting patiently there—the husband who seemed so near to her to-night, almost like the young father of eighteen years ago, when their Judith had been first given to them. The girl standing in the hall picked up her letter mechanically. It was in the hand-writing of Lieutenant Jim Cameron, and it reminded her of the promise he had asked from her with a look she had never forgotten. He was coming in a day or two from camp to ask her something else.

Judith walked into the kitchen with her eyes shining with happiness. “ But I’m not coming off the bus yet,” she said to herself.