The Judge

by Rebecca West

It made Marion laugh angrily, as she lay there in the bed where she had slept so badly in the thirty years that had passed since that afternoon, to remember how she had walked in those woods in a passion of good-will to the world. She dreamed complimentary dreams of life, pretending that it was not always malign. She imagined that Harry would come back before the child was born and would cloak her in protective passion, and his pride in her would make him take her away somewhere so that everyone would see that he really loved her and that he did not think lightly of her. Freely and honestly she forgave him for his present failure to come to her. It was his mother's fault. She had made him marry when he was twenty-one, so that he had been led to commit a physical forgery of the spiritual fact of fatherhood by begetting children who, being born of a woman whom he did not love, were not the children of his soul. With aching tenderness she recalled the extreme poverty of the emotion that showed in his eyes when he spoke of his daughters, or when, as had happened once or twice, they had looked out of the belvedere window and seen the little girls running by on the brow of the hill, white leggy figures against the frieze of the distant shining waters.

It was indeed not so much emotion as a sense that in other circumstances these things might have aroused an emotion which, with his comprehensive greed of all that was lovely in the universe, he regretted being without. If he had only been with her now he would have been given that, and would have found, like her, that it is possible to be ardently in love with an unknown person. She was so sorry he was not here. But she knew that he would come soon, and then he would have the joy of seeing his true child, the child of his soul, and beyond the spiritual joy that must come of that relationship he would have the delight of the exquisite being she knew she was going to bring forth. For she knew then perfectly what Richard was going to be like. She knew she was going to have a son; she knew that he would have black, devout and sensitive eyes. She knew that he would be passionate and intractable and yet held to nobility by fastidiousness and love of her. She imagined how some day in a wood like this, but set in a kinder countryside, Harry would kneel in a sunlit clearing, his special quality of gaiety playing about him like another kind of sunshine, while there staggered towards him their beautiful dark child. He would miss nothing then, except this time of acquaintance with the unborn, and perhaps he would not even miss that, for no doubt he would make her the mother of other children.

At that thought she stood still and leaned back against the trunk of a tree and closed her eyes and smiled triumphantly, and ran her hands down her body, planning that it should perform this miracle again and again and people her world with lovely, glowing, disobedient sons and daughters. She felt her womb as an inexhaustible treasure. Slowly, swimmingly, in a golden drowse of exultation, she moved on among the trees till she came to the wood's end, and looked across the waste patch scattered with knots of bramble and gorse at the yellow brick backs of the houses in Roothing High Street and knew she must go no further. For the feeling against her was very high in the village. They had told the most foul stories of her; it was as if they had been waiting anxiously for an excuse to talk of sexual things that they might let loose the unclean fantasies that they had kept tied up in the stables of their mind, that these might meet in the streets and breed, and take home litters filthier than themselves. Men and women told tales that they could not have believed simply that they might evoke before their minds, and strengthened by the vital force of the listeners' hot-eared excitement, pictures of a strong man and a fine girl living like beasts in the fields. Not only did they tell lies of how they had watched her and Harry among the bracken, they said she had been seduced by the young doctor who had been locum tenens here in February, and that they had seen her in the lanes with the two lads that were being tutored at the Vicarage. These things had been repeated to her by her grandmother in order that she might know what disgrace she had brought on her family, and in the night she had often lain in a sweat of rage, wanting to kill these liars. But that day, standing in the sunshine, she forgave them. She was glad that they had such brave yellow sunflowers in their little wood-fenced gardens: she hoped that all the women would sometimes be as happy as she was. She did not know that this was no day for her to venture forth and forgive her enemies, since it was the Lord's Day, when men ceased to do any manner of work, that they may keep it holy.

The first warning she was given was a sudden impact on a high branch of an oak-tree a yard or two from where she stood, and the falling to earth, delayed by the thick crepitant layers of green-gold, sun-soaked leaves, of a cricket ball. With the perversity of rolling things it dribbled along the broken ground and dropped at last into a mossy pit half filled with dead leaves which marked where a gale had once torn up a young tree by the roots; and the next moment she heard, not distantly, the open-mouthed howl that comes from a cricket-field in a moment of crisis. Then she remembered that it was a habit of the young bloods of Roothing to evade their elders' feeling about Sabbath observance by going in the afternoon to an overlooked wedge of ground that ran into the woods and playing some sort of bat-and-ball game. This must be Sunday. If she did not go home at once she would begin to meet the village lovers, who would not understand how well she wished them, and would look at her with the hostility that the lucky feel for the unlucky. But when she turned to follow the homeward path she heard from all over the wood scattered shouts. The lads were looking for their ball. One she could hear, from the breaking down of brushwood, was quite close to her. Her best plan was to hide. So she stood quite still under the low branches of an elder-tree, while George Postgate doubled by.

Poor George! He was seventeen, and big for that, but his mind had stayed at twelve, and he was perpetually being admitted in probation to the society of lads of his own age, and then for some act of thick-wittedness being expelled again. It was plain from the way that his great horny fingers were scratching his head and his vast mouth was drooping at the corners that it was his fault that the ball crashed so disastrously out of bounds, and that he felt himself on the verge of another expulsion. "Oh, ter dash with the thing!" he exclaimed mournfully, and kicked a root, and lifted his face to the patch of blue sky above and snuffled. Marion's heart dissolved. She could not let this poor stupid thing suffer an ache which she was prevented from relieving only by a fear of rudeness which was probably quite unjustified. "George!" she called softly, staying among the branches. He gaped about him. "George!" she called a little louder. "The ball's in the pit, among the leaves." But he was transfixed by the wonder of the bodyless voice and would not pay any attention to her directions, but continued to gape. She saw that she would have to go and show him herself, and after only half a moment's reluctance she stepped forward. She did not really mind people seeing her, because she knew that it was only a convention that she was ugly because she was going to have a baby. For there was now a richer colour on her cheeks and lips than there had ever been before and her body was like a vase. It was only when they had awful thoughts about her that she hated meeting them, and George would not have awful thoughts about her if she did him a good turn. So she went over to him, pointing to the pit. "I saw it roll down there, George. Look! There it is."

But he did not pick up the ball. He appeared to be petrified by the sight of her. "Make haste," she said, "they'll be waiting for you." At that he dropped his lids, and his lips thickened, and his face grew red. Then he raised his head again and looked at her with eyes that were not dull, as she had always seen them before, but hot and bright, and he began to shift his weight slowly backwards and forwards from one foot to the other. Her heart grew sick, because all the world was like this, and she turned again to the path home. But through the tree-trunks in that direction there came two other boys in search of the ball—Ned Turk, who to-day was the station-master at Roothing station, and Bobbie Wickes; and at the sight of her they stood stock-still as George Postgate had done, and, like him, dropped their heads and flushed and lifted lewd faces. A horror came on her. It was as if they had assumed masks to warn her that they had some secret and sinister business with her. Then one pointed his hand at her and made an animal noise, and the other laughed with his mouth wide open. Neither said anything. Their minds were evidently engaged in processes beneath those which find expression in language. She stiffened herself to face them, though she felt frightened that these two boys, whom she had known all her life, with whom she had ridden on the hay-wains in summer and caught stickle-backs in the marsh dykes, should change to these speechless beings with red leering masks who meant her ill.

For the first time she felt herself too young for her destiny. "I am only nineteen," she cried silently. Tears might have disgraced her but that the child moved in her as if it had looked out at the frightening figures through her eyes, and she suddenly hated Harry for leaving her and his son unprotected from such brutes as people seemed to be, and was vivified by the hatred. She made to walk past the boys back towards Yaverland's End, but as she moved they sent up shrill wordless calls to their fellows who were still in the fields, which were immediately answered. She realised that any minute the woods would be full of lads whom the sight of her would change to obscene creatures, and that being consolidated in this undisturbed place they would say and do things that would hurt her so much that they would hurt her child. There was nothing for it but to leave the cover of the wood and cross the waste space and walk down Roothing High Street and go back to Yaverland's End by the lane. Her mood of forgiving love for the village, which the cricket-ball had interrupted, had been so real that she felt as if a pact had been established between it and her, and she was quite sure that she would be safe from the boys there. If they were tiresome and followed her, no doubt somebody like Mrs. Hobbs, who kept the general stores, would take her in and let her rest till it was dark, and then see her home. She turned round and walked out of the wood, and because she could not, in her heavy-footed state, trample through the undergrowth, she had to follow the path that led her to within a yard or two of George Postgate. She could see from the workings of his large face that he was forming some plan of action. And sure enough, when she passed him, he cried out "Dirty Marion!" and twitched the sun-bonnet from her head. The sudden movement made her start violently, for though she had not known what fear was until she conceived, she now knew a panic-terror at anything that threatened her body. That made the boys shout with laughter and call to their friends to hurry up and see the fun.

The sunshine that beat down on the unshaded field was hot on her bare head. It would be awkward too, going into the village hatless and with ruffled hair. But she must not be angry with George Postgate, for indeed the incident had been to him only a means of gaining that popularity with the fellows that his poor stupid soul so longed for and had so often been refused, and he could not know that the fright would make her feel so ill. Since the first agonising months of her pregnancy, when nausea and faintness had pervaded her days, she had never felt as ill as this. A sweat had broken out on her face and her hands; she had to pant for breath and her limbs staggered under her. But she would be all right if she could sit down for one moment. There was a hawthorn stump a little way off, and to this she made her way, but as she sunk down on it a clod of earth struck her in the shoulder. She spun round, and another broke on her face. Grit filled her mouth, which was open with amazement. She had been deaf with physical distress, so she had not heard that the boys had gathered together on the wood's edge and were now marching after her in a shouting crowd. Something in her attitude when she turned on them made them fall dumb and stock-still for a moment. But as a gust of wind ruffled her hair and blew her skirts about her body a roar of laughter went up from them, and earth and dry dung flew through the air at her.

As she set her face towards the High Street again, which still seemed very far away, she sobbed with relief to see that old Mr. Goode, the carrier, had come down to the end of his garden to see what the noise meant, and that he had almost at once gone back into his house. Of course he would come out and save her. In the meantime she pushed on towards the houses, that because of her sickness and her fear rocked and wavered towards her flimsily like a breaking wave. A heavy clod struck her in the back, and she shrieked silently with terror. If they hurt her she might give birth to her baby and it would not live. She had not had it quite seven months yet, so it would not live. At that thought anguish pierced her like a jagged steel and she began to try to run, muttering little loving names to her adored and threatened child. She looked towards the road to see if old Mr. Goode was coming, and was surprised to see that he was standing at the gate of the field with two other men and a boy. And though they were all looking towards her, they made no movement to come to her help. Perhaps they did not see what was happening to her. It did not matter. She would be there in a few moments. One of the boys had found a tin can and was beating on it, and the sounds made her head feel bad. She staggered on, looking on the ground because of the sun's strong glare.

When she found that her feet had reached the patch of rutted ground that was around the gate, she sobbed with thankfulness. She threw out her hands to the multitude of people who had suddenly gathered there, and cried out imploringly, for if someone would only take her to a place where she could lie down she would be all right and she would keep her child. But none of them came to her, and her deafened ears caught a sound of roaring. She could not see who they were and what they were doing, for all things looked as if she saw them through flowing water. But she knew the tall figure by the gatepost must be Mr. Goode, so she stumbled to him and raised her head and tried to find his kind face. But, like the boys, he wore a mask. Veins that she had never noticed before stood out red on his forehead and his beard twitched, and the funny lines that darted about his eyes, which had become small and winking, made his face a palimpsest in which an affected disgust overlaid some deep enjoyment. He did not seem to be looking at her; indeed, he averted his eyes from her, but thoughts about her made him laugh and send out a jeering cry—wordless like the call of the boys. She realised that he and these people whom she could not see, but who must be people who had known her all her life, had come out not to save but to see her ill-treated and to rejoice. She stood stock-still and groaned. Her head felt wet, and she put up her hand and found that a stone had drawn blood behind her ear. The boys pressed close about her and beat the tin can in her ears, and one stretched out a stick and touched her, which made Mr. Goode and the unseen enemies laugh. But at that she shrieked. She shrieked with such terrible anger at those who insulted the mother of her child, that all their jaws fell and they shrank back and let her pass.