The Judge

by Rebecca West

The ringing of her own voice and his answering clamour recalled something to her that was dyed with a sunset light and yet was horrible. She drew her hands across her face and tried to remember what it was; and found herself walking in memory along a street in Edinburgh towards a sunset which patterned the west with sweeping lines of little golden feathers as if some vain angel, forbidden to peacock it in heaven, had come to show his wings to earth. On the other side, turned to the colour of a Gloire de Dijon rose, towered the height of the MacEwan Hall, that Byzantine pile which she always thought had an air as if it were remembering beautiful music that had been played within it at so many concerts; and at its base staggered a quarrelling man and woman. The woman was not young and wore a man's cloth cap and a full, long, filthy skirt. They were moving sideways along the empty pavement about a yard apart, facing one another, shouting and making threatening gestures across the gap. At last they stopped, put their drink-ulcerated faces close together, and vomited coarse cries at one another; and she had looked up at the pale golden stone that was remembering music, and at the bright golden sky that was promising that there was more than terrestrial music, as one might look at well-bred friends after some boor had stained some pleasant occasion with his ill manners. Then she had been sixteen. Now she was seventeen, and she and a man were shouting across a space. Could it be that vileness was not a state which one could choose or refuse to enter, but a phase through which, being human, one must pass? If that were so, life was too horrible. She cried out through his vehemence: "No, I'm not going to marry you."

"Don't be stupid. You're being exactly like all other women, silly and capricious. Go and put your things on."

"I will not. I'm going away."

"Don't talk nonsense! Where are you going?"

"Back to Edinburgh." She made a hard line of her trembling mouth. "My mind's made up."

He made a sound that expressed pure exasperation untouched with tenderness, and his eyes darted about her face in avaricious appraisement of this property that was trying to detach itself from him with a display of free will that might not be tolerated in property. She could see him resolving to take it lightly, and thought to herself: "Maybe it's just as well that it's to be broken off, for I doubt I'm too clever for marriage. I would read him like a book and, considering what's in him"—a convulsion of rage shook her—"he'd be annoyed at that."

He had been saying with deliberate flippancy: "Oh, you silly little Ellen," but at that convulsion a change came over him. Delight transfigured him. He jerked his head back as she had done, as if he would like to continue the violent rhythm of her movement through his own body, and blood and laughter rushed back to his face. Taking a step towards her, he called softly: "Oh, my Ellen, don't let us quarrel! Come here."

But she remembered then how that scene at the base of the golden stone had ended. The pair had swung apart and had staggered their several ways, shrieking over their shoulders; and had suddenly pivoted round and stood looking at each other in silence. Then they had run together and joined in a rocking embrace, a rubbing of their bodies, and had put their mouths to each other's faces so munchingly that it had looked as if they must turn aside some time and spit out the cores of their kisses. She would have no such reconciliation. "I won't! I tell you I hate you!" she cried, and escaped his arm.

Rage came into his face without displacing his intention to make love to her. That was against nature, unless nature was utterly perverse! She could not bear it. She struck him across the mouth and ran out of the room.

There was a moment of confusion on the landing when she could not tell which of the white doors on the right and left led into her bedroom. The first one she opened showed her a table piled with heavy books; a vast wardrobe with glass doors showing a line of dresses coloured like autumn and of fabrics so exquisite that they might be imagined sentient; under a shelf beneath it a long straight line, regular as the border plants in a parterre, of glossy wooden shoe-trees rising out of rather large shoes made from many kinds of leather and velvets and satins; and in the carpets and the hangings a profound and vibrant blue. Accusingly she exclaimed into the emptiness, "Marion!" and darted into her own room just as Richard burst out into the passage. She flung herself on the bed and lay quite still while he knocked on the door. Twice he called her name. Nothing in her desired to answer. That was both relief and the loss of all. Three times again he knocked, and there penetrated through the panels one of those wordless noises that had been disgusting her all the afternoon. After a moment's silence she heard him go downstairs. She leaped up and dragged her trunk from a corner into the middle of the room, but instead of beginning to pack she fell on her knees and wept on to the comfortingly cool and smooth black surface.