The Judge

by Rebecca West

He looked at her coldly. "Nothing. What could you have said?" But he went to the window as if he had been told something that had made him hasten, and opened it and stepped outside. Against the moonlight he was only a silhouette; but from the hawkishness of the profile he turned to the west she knew that he was allowing himself to wear again that awful look of rage which had made her cry aloud. He stepped in again and said: "I'm sorry, Ellen, but I must go and look for her."

She might have known that she would not have her evening alone with him. "May I come with you?" she asked through tears.

"No, no, it wouldn't be any fun for you," he answered fussily, "scrambling about these fields in the dark."

"Let me come with you!" she begged; and guilefully, seeing his brows knit sullenly, she waved her hand round the room, which she knew must be to him sombre with the day's events, and cried: "I shall feel afraid, waiting here."

"Very well. Go and put your things on. But be quick."

He had his hat and coat and stick when she came down; and he had grudged the time spent in waiting for her. Wearily she followed him out of the window. From what her mother had told her about men, she had always known that even Richard, since he was male, might forget his habit of worship towards her and turn libellous as husbands are, and pretend that she was being tiresome when she was not. But she would never have believed that it could come so soon. And it was spoiling her. She no longer felt possessed of the perfect control of her actions, nor sure of her own nobility. Only a second or two ago she had betrayed her sex by pretending to be frightened by assuming one of the base qualities which tradition lyingly ascribed to women, because she had to be in his presence no matter at what price. There was no knowing where all this would end.

But in the inventive beauty of the night she found distraction, for it had wrought many fantastical changes in the dull world the day had handed it. The frost had made the soil that had been sodden metal-hard, while preserving its roughness, so that to tread the paths was like walking on beaten silver. Since its rising, the moon had sown and raised a harvest of new plants in the garden; for the rose-trees, emaciated with leaflessness, had each a shadow that twisted on the earth like ground-ivy or climbed the wall like a creeper. Through an orchard piebald with moonbeams and shadow, and a gate, glaring as with new white paint, set in a lichen-grey hedge, they passed out on the grizzled hillside. He did not take her down the path by which she and Marion had gone on to the marshes the previous afternoon, but plunged forward into the short grey fur of the moonlit field, where there was no path, and led her up in a slanting course towards the top of the elm-hedge that striped the hill. It was rough walking over the steep frozen hummocks, and she wished he would not walk so fast. But it was lovely going up like this, and with every step widening the wide, whitely-blazing view. The elm trees stood like chased toys made by silversmiths where the light struck them; and in the darkness seemed like harsh twiggy nets hung on tall poles to catch the stars. Scattered over the polished harbour, the black boats squatted on their shadows and the tide licked towards them with an ebony and silver tongue. But far out in the fairway a liner and some lesser steamers carried their spilling cargo of orange brightness, and the further fringe of the night was spoiled by the comprehensive yellow wink of a lighthouse; and these things tainted the black and white immaculacy of the hour. It was not on earth but overhead that the essence of the night displayed itself. Light rushed from the moon into the sky like a strong wind, carrying before it some shining vapours that might have been angels' clouts blown off a heavenly line. It was as if some horseplay was going on among the ethereal forces; for the stars, dimmed by the violent brilliance of the moon, were like tapers seen through glass, and were held, perhaps, by invisible beings who had been drawn to their windows by the sound of carnival. To its zenith the night was packed with gaiety.

"Richard, Richard, is it not beautiful?" she cried.

"Yes, yes," he answered.

They reached the topmost elm in the row, and opened a gate into a field which stretched inland from the hill's brow. Under the shadow of its seaward edge they still walked westerly, the ploughed earth looking like a patch of grey corduroy lying to their right. It struck her that he was moving now like a hunter stalking his quarry, as if the lightness of his feet were a weapon, as if he were looking forward to an exciting kill. At the corner of the field they stopped before a gap in the hedge. Triple barbed wire crossed a vista of close-cropped grass running to trees that lifted dark spires against the pale meridian starlight.