The Judge

by Rebecca West

Yet she remained for some seconds longer with her face pressed close to the window. She was peering into the room with an expression of wanting to fix its contents and its appearance in her memory, which was odd in the owner of the house. Ellen moved aside in order not to impede her vision, and stood disliking her for her pervasive inexplicability and for her extreme plainness. She had been very ugly all that evening since she came down to dinner, and now the shining glass in front of her face was acting in its uncomeliness like a magnifying lens. Her hair had suddenly become greasy during the last few hours, and it showed in lank loops where her hat had been carelessly jammed down on her head. In the same short space of time her face seemed to have grown fatter, and her skin had taken on the pallor of unhealthy obesity. Against it the dark down on her upper lip looked like dirt. Her eyes were not magnificent to-night. After she had stared round the room she looked again at Ellen, and gave her a forced smile that looked the more unpleasant because the corners of her mouth were joined to her nose by deep creases. It so manifestly did not spring from any joy, that Ellen could not answer it save by just such another false grin. Her honesty hated this woman who had thus negotiated her into insincerity, and she turned away. When she looked back the face had gone.

She went back to the fire and sat thinking bitterly what a daft thing it was for a wife to go wandering round her own house in the night like a thief. But Marion was altogether an upsetting woman. She had kept the dinner waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour, and when she came down it was revealed that she had caused this delay, which must have inconvenienced the kitchen and was sheer cruelty to Richard, who had made next to nothing of a tea, by dressing herself up in a black and gold brocade affair that it was sheer madness to waste wearing when there was no company, and putting on jewels which made her stricken plainness look the more soiled and leaden. Then, once they sat down to the meal she had done her best to spoil, she had eaten so slowly that it dragged on interminably; and all the while had kept her great eyes fixed on Richard's face, so that though he sometimes turned aside and spoke to Ellen, he was always drawn away from her by his sense of that strong, exigent gaze. The minute they had finished, when there seemed a chance of their settling down in some more easy grouping by the fire, Marion had curtly and disagreeably asked him if he had gone through the papers about the mortgage; and when he answered that he had not been able to keep his mind on them she had told him to go upstairs and finish them just as if he were a child.

Ellen raised her upper lip over her teeth at the thought of Marion's subsequent awkwardness. There had not, when she announced her plan of taking Richard and Ellen up to town the next morning and spending the day shopping and going to a theatre, been the least real party-giving joy in her tone. Her will seemed to be holding her voice in its hands like a concertina and waving it to and fro and squeezing out of it all sorts of notes; but the sound of generous happiness would not come. And when Ellen tried to tell her that it was very kind of her, but for herself she would rather stay quietly in the country and go for a walk with Richard, the woman had simply lifted her voice to a higher pitch and said: "Oh, but it'll be great fun. We must go before Sunday is on us." She was evidently one of those managing bodies who are accustomed to ride rough-shod over the whole world, and often do it under the pretence of kindness. It was most cunning the way she rang for the cook to try and make it seem that there was a pressing domestic reason for her taking this jaunt. But cook had let her down badly, staring in such ingenuous amazement, and blurting out: "Oh Lor', mum, I don't want no aluminium set now. All I said was I thought our copper saucepans would need re-coppering in a year or so, and that, considering the trouble and expense that meant, we might as well restock with aluminium." There had been a hysterical stridency about the way in which Marion had flouted the woman's protests by repeating over and over again: "Yes, you shall have them now. There's not the smallest reason why you should wait for them. I shall go up to Harrod's to-morrow morning."

Indeed, Marion was a queer woman in all respects, from her broad face and squat body to her forced, timbreless voice and her unconvincing gestures. It was only her clumsiness that had prevented her from opening the French window; the lock was all right. Ellen felt that she would die if she did not have an hour alone with Richard to relearn that life could be lived easily and with grace. But it would be just like the creature's untimeliness and awkwardness to be still hanging about the garden in readiness and pop in just when everything was being lovely. Ellen crossed to one of the small leaded windows which were on each side of the French window and looked out of the open pane in its centre. It was as she feared. The light streaming from the room showed her Marion standing half-way across the lawn, looking up at the top storey of the house. As the ray found her she lowered her head and made a jerky, embarrassed movement in the direction of Ellen, who, feeling merciless, continued to hold back the curtain. Marion drew her cloak collar up about her ears and stepped aside into the darkness. Ellen went and sat down by the fire. From something in Marion's bearing, she knew that she would not be back for some time.

It would be beautiful when Richard came down to her. Now that the room was purged of its late occupant she felt herself becoming again the miracle that Richard's love had made her in the days before they left Edinburgh. Her heart beat quicker, she was sustained by a general mirth and needed no particular joke to make her smile. She felt the equal of the tall flame that was driving through the fire. It did not worry her that Richard was not with her, for she knew that at each moment she was recovering more and more of that joy in life which had previously come to her every morning, though those were greyer than here: which had been a real possession, since Richard had often, when he was tired, found such restoration in reading its signs on her as a footsore man might find in throwing himself in long grass: which had been gradually going from her ever since the house had begun to draw her into its affairs. Now she was regaining it; though, indeed, ever to have become conscious of it, as she had during the time of being without it, was to have lost the glad essence of it. She quailed and rejoiced like a convalescent who sets out to put his strength to the test, when she heard the slamming of a door overhead.

He did not come to her at once, but looked round the room and said: "Where's Marion?"

It would be as well not to speak of the plain face pressed against the window, of the dark loiterer in the garden. Murmuring, "Oh, she'll be back in a minute," she opened her arms to him.

He swung her out of the chair and sat down himself, gathering her very close. "Oh, my Ellen, you are the very colour of that red deer I saw run across the road!" he whispered in her ear. She knew immediately, from the peace that fell on his deep, driving breath, from the way that his lips lifted and let the splendour of his eyes shine out again, that he too was aware of her recovery of normal joy and was refreshing himself with it. She drooped down towards his mouth, but at the last minute he avoided her kiss and said irritably: "I wonder if Roger made an awful ass of himself preaching to-night?"

"I've no doubt," answered Ellen, "that he made Jesus most dislikeable. But with all the attention Christianity gets, it can put up with a setback here and there."

"It's not that I'm worrying about," he told her. "I can't bear having mother's name bandied about again after the hell of a time she's had." He stared in front of him with obsessed eyes.