But by now, Simon went on, pursuing his idea, Robert Berger had exhausted the amusement he was capable of getting out of the smaller varieties of evil-doing. During one of the periods he spent in jail awaiting trial he had made friends with an old lag, and had listened to his stories with fascinated interest. The man was a cat burglar who specialized in jewellery and he made an exciting tale of some of his exploits. First there was the marking down of the prey, then the patient watching to discover her habits, the examination of the premises; you had to find out not only where the jewels were kept and how to get into the house, but also what were the chances of making a quick get-away if necessary; and after you had made sure of everything there was the long waiting for the suitable opportunity. Often months elapsed between the time when you made up your mind to go after the stuff and the time when at last you had a whack at it. That was what choked Berger off; he had the nerve, the agility and the presence of mind that were needed, but he would never have had the patience for the complicated business that must precede the burglary.
Simon likened Robert Berger to a man who has shot partridge and pheasant for years, and having ceased to find diversion in the exercise of his skill, craves for a sport in which there is an element of danger and so turns his mind to big game. No one could say when Berger began to be obsessed with the idea of murder, but it might be supposed that it took possession of him gradually. Like an artist heavy with the work demanding expression in his soul, who knows that he will not find peace till he has delivered himself of the burden, Berger felt that by killing he would fulfil himself. After that, having expressed his personality to its utmost, he would be at rest and then could settle down with Lydia to a life of humdrum respectability. His instincts would have been satisfied. He knew that it was a monstrous crime, he knew that he risked his neck, but it was the monstrousness of it that tempted him and the risk that made it worth the attempt.
Here Charley put the article down. He thought that Simon was really going too far. He could just fancy himself committing murder in a moment of ungovernable rage, but by no effort of imagination could he conceive of anyone doing such a thing—doing it not even for money, but for sport as Simon put it—because he was driven to it by an urge to destroy and so assert his own being. Did Simon really believe there was anything in his theory, or was it merely that he thought it would make an effective article? Charley, though with a slight frown on his handsome face, went on reading.
Perhaps, Simon continued, Robert Berger would have been satisfied merely to toy with the idea if circumstances had not offered him the predestined victim. He may often, when drinking with one of his boon companions, have considered the feasibility of killing him and put the notion aside because the difficulties were too great or detection too certain. But when chance threw him in contact with Teddie Jordan he must have felt that here was the very man he had been looking for. He was a foreigner, with a large acquaintaince, but no close friends, who lived alone in a blind alley. He was a crook; he was connected with the dope traffic; if he were found dead one day the police might well suppose that his murder was the result of a gangsters’ quarrel. If they knew nothing of his sexual habits, they would be sure to find out about them after his death and likely enough to assume that he had been killed by some rough who wanted more money than he was prepared to give. Among the vast number of bullies, blackmailers, dope-peddlers and bad hats who might have done him in, the police would not know where to look, and in any case he was an undesirable alien and they would think he was just as well out of the way. They would make enquiries and if results were not soon obtained quietly shelve the case. Berger saw that Jordan had taken a fancy to him and he played him like an angler playing a trout. He made dates which he broke. He made half-promises which he did not keep. If Jordan, thinking he was being made a fool of, threatened to break away, he exercised his charm to induce him to have patience. Jordan thought it was he who pursued and the other who fled. Berger laughed in his sleeve. He tracked him as a hunter day after day tracks a shy and suspicious beast in the jungle, waiting for his opportunity, with the knowledge that, for all its instinctive caution, the brute will at last be delivered into his hands. And because Berger had no feeling of animosity for Jordan, neither liking him nor disliking him, he was able to devote himself without hindrance to the pleasure of the chase. When at length the deed was done and the little bookmaker lay dead at his feet, he felt neither fear nor remorse, but only a thrill so intense that he was transported.
Charley finished the essay. He shuddered. He did not know whether it was Robert Berger’s brutal treachery and callousness that more horrified him or the cool relish with which Simon described the workings of the murderer’s depraved and tortuous mind. It was true that this description was the work of his own invention, but what fearful instinct was it in him that found delight in peering into such vile depths? Simon leaned over to look into Berger’s soul, as one might lean over the edge of a fearful precipice, and you had the impression that what he saw filled him with envy. Charley did not know how he had got the impression (because there was nothing in those careful periods or in that half-flippant irony actually to suggest it) that while he wrote he asked himself whether there was in him, Simon Fenimore, the courage and the daring to do a deed so shocking, cruel and futile. Charley sighed.
“I’ve known Simon for nearly fifteen years. I thought I knew him inside out. I’m beginning to think I don’t know the first thing about him.”
But he smiled happily. There were his father and his mother and Patsy. They would be leaving the Terry-Masons next day, tired after those strenuous days of fun and laughter, but glad to get back to their bright, artistic and comfortable house.
“Thank God, they’re decent, ordinary people. You know where you are with them.”
He suddenly felt a wave of affection for them sweep over him.
But it was growing late; Lydia would be getting back and he did not want to keep her waiting, she would be lonely, poor thing, by herself in that sordid room; he stuffed the essay into his pocket with the other cuttings and walked back to the hotel. He need not have fashed himself. Lydia was not there. He took Mansfield Park, which with Blake’s Poems was the only book he had brought with him, and began to read. It was a delight to move in the company of those well-mannered persons who after the lapse of more than a hundred years seemed as much alive as anyone you met to-day. There was a gracious ease in the ordered course of their lives, and the perturbations from which they suffered were not so serious as to distress you. It was true that Cinderella was an awful little prig and Prince Charming a monstrous pedant; it was true that you could not but wish that instead of setting her prim heart on such an owl she had accepted the proposals of the engaging and witty villain; but you accepted with indulgence Jane Austen’s determination to reward good sense and punish levity. Nothing could lessen the delight of her gentle irony and caustic humour. It took Charley’s mind off that story of depravity and crime in which he seemed to have got so strangely involved. He was removed from the dingy, cheerless room and in fancy saw himself sitting on a lawn, under a great cedar, on a pleasant summer evening; and from the fields beyond the garden came the scent of hay. But he began to feel hungry and looked at his watch. It was half-past eight. Lydia had not returned. Perhaps she had no intention of doing so? It wouldn’t be very nice of her to leave him like that, without a word of explanation or farewell, and the possibility made him rather angry, but then he shrugged his shoulders.
“If she doesn’t want to come back, let her stay away.”
He didn’t see why he should wait any longer, so he went out to dinner, leaving word at the porter’s desk where he was going so that if she came she could join him. Charley wasn’t quite sure if it amused, flattered or irritated him, that the staff should treat him with a sort of confidential familiarity as though they got a vicarious satisfaction out of the affair which, naturally enough, they were convinced he was having. The porter was smilingly benevolent and the youn
g woman at the cashier’s desk excited and curious. Charley chuckled at the thought of their shocked surprise if they had known how innocent were his relations with Lydia. He came back from his solitary dinner and she was not yet there. He went up to his room and went on reading, but now he had to make a certain effort to attend. If she didn’t come back by twelve he made up his mind to give her up and go out on the loose. It was absurd to spend the best part of a week in Paris and not have a bit of fun. But soon after eleven she opened the door and entered, carrying a small and very shabby suitcase.
“Oh, I’m tired,” she said. “I’ve brought a few things with me. I’ll just have a wash and then we’ll go out to dinner.”
“Haven’t you dined? I have.”
“Have you?”
She seemed surprised.
“It’s past eleven.”
She laughed.
“How English you are! Must you always dine at the same hour?”
“I was hungry,” he answered rather stiffly.
It seemed to him that she really might express some regret for having kept him waiting so long. It was plain, however, that nothing was farther from her thoughts.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, I don’t want any dinner. What a day I’ve had! Alexey was drunk; he had a row with Paul this morning, because he didn’t come home last night, and Paul knocked him down. Evgenia was crying, and she kept on saying: ‘God has punished us for our sins. I have lived to see my son strike his father. What is going to happen to us all?’ Alexey was crying too. ‘It is the end of everything,’ he said. ‘Children no longer respect their parents. Oh, Russia, Russia!’ ”
Charley felt inclined to giggle, but he saw that Lydia was taking the scene in all seriousness.
“And did you cry too?”
“Naturally,” she answered, with a certain coldness.
She had changed her dress and now wore one of black silk. It was plain enough but well cut. It suited her. It made her clear skin more delicate and deepened the colour of her blue eyes. She wore a black hat, rather saucy in shape, with a feather in it, and much more becoming than the old black felt. The smarter clothes had had an effect on her; she wore them more elegantly and carried herself with a graceful assurance. She no longer looked like a shop-girl, but like a young woman of some distinction, and prettier than Charley had ever seen her, but she gave you less than ever the impression that there was anything doing, as the phrase goes; if she had given before the effect of a respectable workgirl who knew how to take care of herself, she gave now that of a modish young woman perfectly capable of putting a too enterprising young man in his place.
“You’ve got a different frock on,” said Charley, who was already beginning to get over his ill humour.
“Yes, it’s the only nice one I’ve got. I thought it was too humiliating for you to have to be seen with such a little drab as I was looking. After all, the least a handsome young man in beautiful clothes can ask is that when he goes into a restaurant with a woman people shouldn’t say: how can he go about with a slut who looks as though she were wearing the cast-off clothes of a maid of all work? I must at least try to be a credit to you.”
Charley laughed. There was really something rather likeable about her.
“Well, we’d better go out and get you something to eat. I’ll sit with you. If I know anything about your appetite you could eat a horse.”
They started off in high spirits. He drank a whiskey and soda and smoked his pipe while Lydia ate a dozen oysters, a beefsteak and some fried potatoes. She told him at greater length of her visit to her Russian friends. She was greatly concerned at their situation. There was no money except the little the children earned. One of these days Paul would get sick of doing his share and would disappear into that equivocal night life of Paris, to end up, if he was lucky, when he had lost his youth and looks, as a waiter in a disreputable hotel. Alexey was growing more and more of a soak and even if by chance he got a job would never be able to hold it. Evgenia had no longer the courage to withstand the difficulties that beset her; she had lost heart. There was no hope for any of them.
“You see, it’s twenty years since they left Russia. For a long time they thought there’d be a change there and they’d go back, but now they know there’s no chance. It’s been hard on people like that, the revolution; they’ve got nothing to do now, they and all their generation, but to die.”
But it occurred to Lydia that Charley could not be much interested in people whom he had not even seen. She could not know that while she was talking to him about her friends he was telling himself uneasily that, if he guessed aright what was in Simon’s mind, it was just such a fate that he was preparing for him, for his father, mother and sister, and for their friends. Lydia changed the subject.
“And what have you been doing with yourself this afternoon? Did you go and see any pictures?”
“No. I went to see Simon.”
Lydia was looking at him with an expression of indulgent interest, but when he answered her question, she frowned.
“I don’t like your friend Simon,” she said. “What is it that you see in him?”
“I’ve known him since I was a kid. We were at school together and at Cambridge. He’s been my friend always. Why don’t you like him?”
“He’s cold, calculating and inhuman.”
“I think you’re wrong there. No one knows better than I do that he’s capable of great affection. He’s a lonely creature. I think he hankers for a love that he can never arouse.”
Lydia’s eyes shone with mockery, but, as ever, there was in it a rueful note.
“You’re very sentimental. How can anyone expect to arouse love who isn’t prepared to give himself? In spite of all the years you’ve known him I wonder if you know him as well as I do. He comes a lot to the Sérail; he doesn’t often go up with a girl and then not from desire, but from curiosity. Madame makes him welcome, partly because he’s a journalist and she likes to keep in with the press, and partly because he sometimes brings foreigners who drink a lot of champagne. He likes to talk to us and it never enters his head that we find him repulsive.”
“Remember that if he knew that he wouldn’t be offended. He’d only be curious to know why. He has no vanity.”
Lydia went on as though Charley had said nothing.
“He hardly looks upon us as human beings, he despises us and yet he seeks our company. He’s at ease with us. I think he feels that our degradation is so great, he can be himself, whereas in the outside world he must always wear a mask. He’s strangely insensitive. He thinks he can permit himself anything with us and he asks us questions that put us to shame and never sees how bitterly he wounds us.”
Charley was silent. He knew well enough how Simon, with his insatiable curiosity, could cause people profound embarrassment and was only surprised and scornful when he found that they resented his inquiries. He was willing enough to display the nakedness of his soul and it never occurred to him that the reserves of others could be due, not to stupidity as he thought, but to modesty. Lydia continued:
“Yet he’s capable of doing things that you’d never expect of him. One of our girls was suddenly taken ill. The doctor said she must be operated on at once, and Simon took her to a nursing home himself so that she shouldn’t have to go to the hospital, and paid for the operation; and when she got better he paid her expenses to go away to a convalescent home. And he’d never even slept with her.”
“I’m not surprised. He attaches no importance to money. Anyhow it shows you that he’s capable of a disinterested action.”
“Or do you think he wanted to examine in himself what the emotion of goodness exactly was?”
Charley laughed.
“It’s obvious that you haven’t got much use for poor Simon.”
“He’s talked to me a great deal. He wanted to find out all I could tell him about the Russian Revolution, and he wanted me to take him to see Alexey and Evgenia so that he could ask them. You know he reported Robe
rt’s trial. He tried to make me tell him all sorts of things that he wanted to know. He went to bed with me because he thought he could get me to tell him more. He wrote an article about it. All that pain, all that horror and disgrace, were no more to him than an occasion to string clever, flippant words together; and he gave it me to read to see how I would take it. I shall never forgive him that. Never.”
Charley sighed. He knew that Simon, with his amazing insensitiveness to other people’s feelings, had shown her that cruel essay with no intention of hurting, but from a perfectly honest desire to see how she reacted to it and to discover how far her intimate knowledge would confirm his fanciful theory.
“He’s a strange creature,” said Charley. “I daresay he has a lot of traits which one would rather he hadn’t, but he has great qualities. There’s one thing at all events that you can say about him: if he doesn’t spare others, he doesn’t spare himself. After not seeing him for two years, and he’s changed a lot in that time, I can’t help finding his personality rather impressive.”
“Frightening, I should have said.”