The Judge

by Rebecca West

"She's standing there making herself as conspicuous as if she were a street girl!" he screamed to himself, and other shouts filled his ears, and he became aware that a cursing driver had pulled up his horse a foot away and that the loafers at the kerb were lifting jeering cries. He charged it one more offence to Ellen's account that she had caused him to make a fool of himself, and vowed he would never think of her again, and ran among the people to see where she had gone. Yaverland was leading her very quickly along towards the North Bridge, and she was now nothing but a dark shape that might, he thought with a glee that he did not understand, have belonged to some ageing woman with a bony body and a sallow face. But then he saw against the lit pavement her narrow feet treading that gait that was like a grave, slow dance, and he realised with agony that it was no use lying to himself and pretending that this was anybody but Ellen—Ellen, who was far different from every other woman in the world and more desirable. She slowly turned, as if her spirit had felt this rage at the fact of her running at her heels, and wished to have it out with him. He gripped his stick and raised a hand to hide his working mouth, and waited for the moment when she would see his face, but it did not come.

The man Yaverland had put out his great ham of a hand and hailed a cab. When Mr. Philip tried to stop a cab he usually had to run alongside it, and often the driver was most impudent, but this swaggering bully checked the thing on the instant, and handed in Ellen and drove off in style as if he was a duke with his duchess in their own carriage. What did they want in a cab anyway? He followed the black trundling square on its spidery wheels as it turned round by the Register House to cross the North Bridge, and imagined the fine carryings on they were doubtless having in the dark in there. He called Ellen a name he had not thought of before.

There was nothing to be done about it. He stood for a while at the railing of that strange garden of concrete walks and raised parterres and ventilating-shafts that lies at this end of Princes Street, built on the roof of the sunk market. Its rectilinear aspect pleased him. It was not romantic, the gates were locked, and one could be sure that there were no lovers trysting there. Presently he moved along towards the West End, keeping still on the side of the street where there were no men and girls prancing about and grinning at each other like dirty apes under the lights, but only empty gardens with locked gates. What had those two been doing? They had come in by train. Unless they had travelled a very long journey it must have been dark before they started. They had been in the country alone together when it was quite dark. There came to him memories of sounds he had once heard when walking through a twilit wood, the crackling of twigs, a little happy cry of distress, and again the crackling of twigs; he had been compelled by something, which was not specially in him but was a part of the damned way life went, to stand and listen, though he knew it was not decent. He saw before him Ellen's face lying white on her spilt red hair, and it added to his anguish that he could not see it clearly, but had to peer at this enraging vision because he could not make out what her expression would be. He had seen her look a thousand ways during these last few weeks when she had kept on drawing his attention to her with her simpering girl's tricks, but he could not imagine how she would look then. It seemed as if she were defying his imagination as she defied him every day in the office, and he turned his mind away from the matter in a frenzy, but began soon to wonder what those two had been doing. They had come in by train. Unless they had travelled a very long journey it must have been dark before they started....

He knew he must not go on like this, and looked round him. He had passed the classic portico of the Art Gallery and was walking now by the wilder section of the gardens, where the street lights shone back from the shining leaves of bushes and made them look like glazed paper, and with their glare made the trees behind seem such flat canvas trees as they set about the stage at theatres when there is need for a romantic glade for a lovers' meeting. How often had Ellen met Yaverland?

He ran across the road. It would be better among the people. It was not so bad if you did not watch them and see how happy they were. Everybody in the world was happy except him. No doubt Ellen and her Yaverland were just bursting with merriment in that cab. Would they be at home yet? She would be telling him all the office jokes. Well, she might, for all he cared. He knew fine that young Innes called him Mr. Philip Hop-o'-my-Thumb behind his back, and he didn't give a straw for it. He stopped in front of a picture-postcard shop that was hung from top to bottom of its window with strings of actresses' photographs, and stood there with a jaunty rising and falling of the heels, bestowing an exaggerated attention on the glossy black and white patterns that indicated the glittering facades of these charmers' smiles, the milky smoothness of their bean-fed femininity. Ah, these were the really fine women that it was worth troubling your head about, from whose satin slippers, it was well known, dukes and the like drank champagne. Who would bother about a wee typist when there were women like these in the world?

But as he looked at them he perceived that there was not one so beautiful as Ellen, and he walked waveringly on, wrathful at the way she insisted on being valuable when he wanted to despise her. A woman who had been watching him for some time, and who knew from a wide experience that he was in one of those aching miseries which make men turn to such as she, slipped from the shadows and murmured to him. She was taller than he, and had to bend her long slender neck that he might hear. He hated her for being a streetwalker and for being taller than he, and began to swear at her. But before he could get the words out of his mouth she had wiped the smile from her pale oval face with the adeptness of a proud woman who had long preserved her pride in the fields of contempt, and glided away with a dignity that denied what she was and what had happened. That struck him as a monstrous breach of the social contract, for surely if a woman was a bad woman she ought to stay still until one had finished swearing at her.

But all these women were vile. There was no measure to the vileness that Ellen had brought on him. For it was all her fault, since he never would have gone with that woman in London if it had not been for the way she had carried on the evening before. At the thought of that night in Piccadilly he began to hurry along the street, pushing in and out among the people as if he insanely hoped to lose the humiliating memory as one can lose a dog, until he remembered how he had had to hurry along beside the London woman because she was a great striding creature and he found it difficult to keep step, and then he walked slowly. It had all been so ugly, and it was a fraud too. It had been his belief that the advantage of prostitution was that it gave one command over women like Ellen without bringing on one the trouble that would certainly follow if one did ill to Ellen; for even if nobody ever found out, she would look at one with those eyes. But this woman was not in the least like Ellen. He had chosen her rather than the girl in the white boots at the other side of the pavement because he thought she had hair like Ellen, but when she took her hat off he saw that she had not. It was funny stuff, with an iridescence on it as if she had been rubbing it with furniture polish. Her flat, too, was not kept as Ellen would have kept it. And she had not been kind, as Ellen, when she moved softly as a cloud about the office fetching him things, or sat listening, with chin cupped in her hands and a hint of tears, to the story of his disappointment about the Navy; had fraudulently led him to believe what women were to men. She had been a cruel beast. For when she had got him to be so very wicked she might have spared him some of the nastiness, and not said those awful leering things so loud. Never would he forgive Ellen for dragging him down to those depths.

He was walking away from Princes Street to his own home now, and the decent grey vacuity of the streets soothed him. If he only had the sense to stay in the district of orderly houses where he belonged, and behaved accordingly, and did not go talking with people beneath him, he could not come to harm. But that would not alter the fact that he had once come to harm. As he passed the house at the corner of his street he saw that a "To Let" board had been put up since the morning. He wondered why the Allardyces were leaving it. He had been at school with the boys. He and Willie Allardyce had tied tenth in the mile race at the last school sports in which he had taken part before he left the Academy. He remembered how they had all stood at the starting-post in the windy sunshine, straight lads in their singlets and shorts, utterly uninvolved in anything but this clean thing of running a race; the women were all behind the barriers, tolerated spectators, and one was too busy to see them; his clothing had been stiff with sweat, and when he wriggled his body the cool air passed between his damp vest and his damp flesh, giving him a cold, pure feeling. Well, he was not a boy any longer. The Allardyces were moving; everything was changing this way and that; nothing would be the same again....

The solidity of his father's house, the hall into which he let himself, with its olive green wallpaper, its aneroid barometer, an oil-painting of his mother's father, Mr. Laurie of the Bank of Scotland, made him feel better. He reminded himself that he belonged to one of the most respected families in Edinburgh, and that there was no use getting upset about things that nobody would ever find out, and he went into the dining-room and poured himself out a glass of whisky, looking round with deep satisfaction at his prosperous surroundings. There was a very handsome red wallpaper, and a blazing fire that chased the tawny lights and shadows on the leviathanic mahogany furniture and set a sparkle on the thick silver and fine glass on the spread table. "Mhm!" he sighed contentedly, and raised the tumbler to his lips. But the smell of the whisky recalled to him the flavour of that Piccadilly woman's kisses.

The room seemed to contract and break out into soiled pink valances. He put down his glass, groaned, and made his mind blank, and was immediately revisited by the thought of Ellen's face on her spilt red hair. An ingenious thought struck him, and he hurried from the room. He met one of his sisters in the passage, and said, "Away, I want to speak to father." It was true that she was not preventing him from doing so, but the gesture of dominance over the female gave him satisfaction.