The Red Book Magazine/Volume 40/Number 3/The Smile

by John Galsworthy

 

The celebrated author of “The Forsyte Saga” and numerous other famous works, here contributes a fiction gem which has many scintillating facets.

 

The Smile

By⁠John
Galsworthy

 

MR. JUSTICE BELLIVER, divested of wig, sat in the armchair of his retiring-room, at close of his day's work, twisting up one of his still dark eyebrows between his thumb and finger. He usually sat for ten minutes in this manner, reviewing the case in hand before throwing it off his mind till after dinner. His pepper-and-salt knees were crossed, and his other hand, thin, with darkish hair on it, rubbed them without seeming purpose. About sixty-five, and if not handsome, at least impressive, he still had on his face the somewhat dehumanized look of the last six hours. Owing to the pressure of divorce proceedings, he had been dissolving marriages all the week—it was not his general game, and he had rather enjoyed it for a change; but today there was a point of irritation in his mind, such as a hair unlocated causes in a mouth. He had just pronounced decree nisi in a suit where Counsel had made an appeal that, in spite of her guilt, the respondent should be allowed to keep the child of the marriage. In his judgment he had made it plain that no talk of temptation, no throwing of the blame on the co-respondent, was to the point; she was a married woman who had been false to her vows, and he had felt no hesitation in following the usual practice, giving custody of the child to the party not in error.

He had no doubt about his judgment, but he was uneasy, because he could not, as it were, put his finger on that vague spot of irritation. And, searching for it, his mental eye reviewed the figures of the parties: the petitioner, cold and well-dressed; the respondent, in black, perhaps twenty-six, slim, pretty, fair-haired, seated beside a tall, large woman with a full-blown face, also in black, and evidently her mother.

He rose impatiently, and, going to a drawer, took out some brushes and began brushing his gray hair vigorously.

Ah! He had it! Somebody had smiled while he was delivering judgment. His tongue had found the hair—a sort of contempt of court. But who—where? In the gallery—body of the court—Counsel's bench? No—no! That large woman with the full blown face—the mother—she had smiled! Hardly the moment for a mother to smile; and the smile itself—his mental eye isolated it on those full lips and swimming blue eyes; it had a queer, concentrated meaning, a sort of threatening quizzicality, a—yes, altogether, a piece of infernal impertinence! If it had occurred again, he would have had the court cleared of—h'm—well!—a smile!

He opened his toilet cabinet and washed his face and hands, as if rubbing off a smear. Then, taking his top hat, with a few words to his attendant, he made his way out of the Law Courts. It was fine weather, and, beckoning up his chauffeur, he sent the car away—he would walk.

While he was turning out of Lincoln's Inn Fields into Long Acre, a closed car passed him, moving very slowly. Mr. Justice Belliver looked up. The window space was filled by a lady's face under a large black hat. So slowly was the car moving, that for almost half a minute the face, full-colored, full-blown, with blue swimming eyes, was turned toward him, and on the face was that smile. It seemed to travel up and down him, to quiz him from the soles of his boots to the top of his hat; it rested on his angry eyes, burrowed, dug into them with a clinging deviltry, annoying and puzzling him so intensely that he could not take his eyes off! it. Men's glances are supposed sometimes to divest women of their clothes; this woman's smile divested Mr. Justice Belliver, not exactly of his clothes, but of his self-possession, self-importance, almost of his self-control. He was ashamed to stop, turn round or cross the road; he just walked and stood it, his nerves quivering, his face flushed; and all the time he could see that the woman was extremely pleased with the effect of her smile. Then the car suddenly speeded, and he was alone, using a most unjudicial word.

[Illustration: He was awakened by voices. Two women were talking somewhere close to him. “And he doesn't know me from Eve—isn't it priceless? He—of all men!”]

What was the meaning of it? He racked his brains to remember the woman's name—it had been mentioned in the case; Mac—Mac—something—quite unfamiliar to him; and her face—no—unless—no, quite unknown!

Again he used the unjudicial word, and with the power that his life had given him, turned his mind to other things—almost.

Before taking his seat in court next morning, he perused the shorthand report of the case; the names of the parties conveyed nothing to him. Toward lunch-time, while he was pronouncing his second decree nisi, his eyes, roving over the court, were arrrested by a large black hat in the front row of the gallery. Beneath it—yes!—that woman's face, and smiling! The impudence of it! By heaven, he would have her removed! Removed! He lowered his eyes, broke a pen angrily against his desk, and with an effort finished his judgment and adjourned the court.

He sat before his lunch without eating, enraged. At that distance, the smile, endowed as if with enchantment, had been more irritating, baffling, damnably quizzing than ever. It was such contempt of court as he had never known, and yet there was nothing to be done about it! He was exposed to her impudence whenever he sat in public, so long as she wished. Well, who cared? It was absurd—a smile! And yet—there was something behind that smile—it had some cursed meaning that he could not reach. Had he said anything foolish in his judgment yesterday? He took up the report a second time. Nothing! Nothing but what he would say again this minute; he agreed with every word of it! Well, one thing was clear, if he couldn't commit her for contempt of court, he must ignore her.

He attacked his risotto, nearly cold by now, drank his glass of claret; brushed his hair, put on his wig and again went into court.

When Counsel sat down after opening the new case, Mr. Justice Belliver saw in the gap made by the dropping of the gowned figure, that woman under her large black hat—smiling, with the same meaning deviltry, the same quizzing, burrowing seizure on his face. His stare, fierce for a moment, became grim and stony. He leaned back, gripping his chair with both hands. He had been on the point of saying: “If a certain person in court cannot behave with the respect due to justice, I shall have her removed.”

Phew! What an escape! This was a question of will-power! One would see whether a woman could beat him at that! It was clear to him now that she was bent on a petty persecution. If that were so—he would see! And he did. For whenever his eyes in the business of the case were raised, there was that woman's face, and at once the smile broke out.

Never—not even after influenza—had it been so great a strain to keep his mind on the business of the court. When at last he adjourned, he beckoned the usher. He would point out the woman, give instructions for her exclusion.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“The ventilation was not all it might be this afternoon. See to it, will you?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

And my Lord rose, and as he rose, the woman rose, and smiled.

Driving home that day, he sat back with his eyes closed. Not a particularly unimaginative man, he was unimaginative enough to see that he was making a fool of himself. The woman was annoying him in revenge for his judgment about her daughter's child, but if a judge had not the strength of mind to disregard such petty persecutions, he was not fit for his job! He smiled best, anyway, who smiled last! Yet, racking his brains for a way of smiling last, he could not find one.

Next morning he forced himself at once to scrutinize every corner of the court. No woman—no smile! She did not appear. The next day was Sunday. By Monday morning the matter had almost passed from his mind, leaving the unpleasant dent of a sinister dream. He was back in King's Bench, too, with his old work; and he reflected sardonically that no woman would put up with the boredom of Common Law cases for the pleasure of annoying him.

But her smile was almost the first thing he saw when he entered, and he was alarmed by the effect it had on him. The consciousness that it was ready to pounce the moment his eyes strayed, seemed to deprive him of that serenity and patience so necessary for the trial of Common Law cases.

And the next day it was the same, and the next.

SITTING in his club that third evening before dinner, he seriously reviewed the courses open to him to abate this nuisance. It was less than a fortnight to the Easter vacation, but he felt as if a fortnight of this daily irritation would make him ill. The idea of having her removed, or committed for contempt of court, did not seriously return to him—it was too like the Red King in “Alice in Wonderland;” and what if like the Cheshire Cat, she left her smile behind—for it was not so much the woman, as what her smile meant, which was now so on his nerves. Something it meant—and he could not reach that meaning! What courses then were left? To go to the woman's house and confront her point blank? Impossible! The dignity of his office forbade it.

Equally undignified to write!

To go sick and begin his vacation at once? That was to leave her with the victory!

To get a friend to interfere? He could not confide his weakness to a friend.

To take to smoked glasses? They would merely blur his view of Counsel and witnesses, and leave the smile undimmed; it was a “haunt” now, too mental in its effect to be removed that way. Besides—the woman would rejoice!

To laugh—at himself, at her! All very well if it were just a revengeful trick; but one could not laugh at something that one could not understand.

He rose from that session of sweet, silent thought, powerless, devoid of remedy or anodyne. He must just stick it out and trust to time to wear the woman down. And with a deep sigh he went in to dinner.

The woman missed no single one of the ten days that followed; for two to three hours, morning or afternoon, she sat in his court and smiled whenever he gave her a chance; and that was far more often than he wished, God knew; for when a rider has a weak spot, out of sheer nervousness he always falls on it.

By this time he had almost lost consciousness of how the thing began; the woman and her smile were as unreal, and yet as hopelessly painful, as a recurrent nightmare. When he adjourned his court for the Easter vacation, his face had a jaundiced look, his eyes were restless and unhappy, his dark, twisting eyebrows seemed to have lost their attractive bristle. And the woman looked as freshly full-blown, as meaningful, as mocking under her large black hat as on the first day he saw her. She had battened on him.

Never had he entered train for his vacation with such intense relief. Brighton air would set him up, remove all this silly nerve trouble and exasperation. He drove up from the station to his hotel with the buoyant feeling of a man out for the first time after an illness. Walking up to the desk through the hall lounge, he passed two ladies. One of them turned and smiled. For a moment he felt positively faint; then, with the thought: “Ha! but I'm not a judge here: I'm a man!” he stepped up to the desk and registered. Here she was no privileged harpy, he no helpless official butt. He was a man, she a woman—and she should know it!

HE spent the hour before dinner maturing his resolve to dog her to some quiet nook and give her the half-hour of her life.

“Madam,” he would begin, “I think I have reason to know your face. I think you have been so good as to favor me with certain smiles these last three weeks.” By heaven, his tongue should tear the skin off her!

In the coffee-room he searched every table, looking at every face; she was not there. Perhaps she had an inkling of what was before her; perhaps she had repented of her rashness in pursuing him down here.

After dinner he continued his restless searching of every face; he could not see her anywhere, and at last, tired out, sat down in the lounge, where a screen kept off the draft, and lay back in his chair drawing feebly at his cigar. Unnerved, exhausted by this spurt of savage feeling, he dozed.

He was awakened by voices. Two women were talking somewhere close to him.

“And he doesn't know me from Eve—isn't it priceless? My dear, I've had the time of my life. From the moment he said that Kathleen shouldn't have the child, and sneered at her, and wouldn't have it that Charles pursued her, I made up my mind to get back on him. He—he—of all men! Why, do you know, twenty-seven years ago, in my first marriage, when I was twenty-three, slim and pretty as an angel—my dear, I was, though you wouldn't think it!——he—he—a barrister he was then, and quite a buck——he made violent love to me; wanted me to go off with him. And I should have, my dear, if it hadn't been that Kathleen was on the way! He—he! He's clean forgotten that he ever was flesh and blood! And now! Oh, my God! What a humbug! What a humbug, in his precious wig!⁠—Hallo!"

The screen was tottering. Mr. Justice Belliver, risen from his hastily pushed-back chair, stood with one hand grasping the falling screen and his other hand crisped on the lapel of his evening coat, as if to conceal the feelings in his chest. His lips quivered, thin and bloodless from compression; with eyes deep in his head, he looked at the woman who had spoken, and as he looked, she smiled.

He bowed slightly, let go of the screen and walked shakily away; and in a mirror he saw her smile slowly fade, and a look of compunction, almost of compassion, take its place.