Charley hesitated. He had no particular religious feelings. He had been brought up to believe in God, but not to think of him. To do that would be—well, not exactly bad form, but rather priggish. It was difficult for him now to say what he had in mind, but he found himself in a situation where it seemed almost natural to say the most unnatural things.
“Your husband committed a crime and was punished for it. I daresay that’s all right. But you can’t think that a—a merciful God demands atonement from you for somebody else’s misdeeds.”
“God? What has God to do with it? Do you suppose I can look at the misery in which the vast majority of the people live in the world and believe in God? Do you suppose I believe in God who let the Bolsheviks kill my poor, simple father? Do you know what I think? I think God has been dead for millions upon millions of years. I think when he took infinity and set in motion the process that has resulted in the universe, he died, and for ages and ages men have sought and worshipped a being who ceased to exist in the act of making existence possible for them.”
“But if you don’t believe in God I can’t see the point of what you’re doing. I could understand it if you believed in a cruel God who exacted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Atonement, the sort of atonement you want to make, is meaningless if there’s no God.”
“You would have thought so, wouldn’t you? There’s no logic in it. There’s no sense. And yet, deep down in my heart, no, much more than that, in every fibre of my body, I know that I must atone for Robert’s sin. I know that that is the only way he can gain release from the evil that racks him. I don’t ask you to think I’m reasonable. I only ask you to understand that I can’t help myself. I believe that somehow—how I don’t know—my humiliation, my degradation, my bitter, ceaseless pain, will wash his soul clean, and even if we never see one another again he will be restored to me.”
Charley sighed. It was all strange to him, strange, morbid and disturbing. He did not know what to make of it. He felt more than ever ill-at-ease with that alien woman with her crazy fancies; and yet she looked ordinary enough, a prettyish little thing, not very well dressed; a typist or a girl in the post-office. Just then, at the Terry-Masons’, they would probably have started dancing; they would be wearing the paper caps they’d got out of the crackers at dinner. Some of the chaps would be a bit tight, but hang it all, on Christmas Day no one could mind. There’d have been a lot of kissing under the mistletoe, a lot of fun, a lot of ragging, a lot of laughter; they were all having a grand time. It seemed very far away, but thank God, it was there, normal, decent, sane and real; this was a nightmare. A nightmare? He wondered if there was anything in what she said, this woman with her tragic history and her miserable life, that God had died when he created the wide world; and was he lying dead on some vast mountain range on a dead star or was he absorbed into the universe he had caused to be? It was rather funny, if you came to think of it, Lady Terry-Mason rounding up all the house party to go to church on Christmas morning. And his own father backing her up.
“I don’t pretend I’m much of a church-goer myself, but I think one ought to go on Christmas Day. I mean, I think it sets a good example.”
That’s what he would say.
“Don’t look so serious,” said Lydia. “Let’s go.”
They walked along the forbidding, sordid street that leads from the Avenue du Maine to the Place de Rennes, and there Lydia suggested that they should go to the news reel for an hour. It was the last performance of the day. Then they had a glass of beer and went back to the hotel. Lydia took off her hat and the fur she wore round her neck. She looked at Charley thoughtfully.
“If you want to come to bed with me you can, you know,” she said in just the same tone as she might have used if she had asked him if he would like to go to the Rotonde or the Dôme.
Charley caught his breath. All his nerves revolted from the idea. After what she had told him he could not have touched her. His mouth for a moment went grim with anger; he really was not going to have her mortify her flesh at his expense. But his native politeness prevented him from uttering the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
“Oh, I don’t think so, thank you.”
“Why not? I’m there for that and that’s what you came to Paris for, isn’t it? Isn’t that why all you English come to Paris?”
“I don’t know. Anyhow I didn’t.”
“What else did you come for?”
“Well, partly to see some pictures.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s just as you like.”
She went into the bathroom. Charley was a trifle piqued that she accepted his refusal with so much unconcern. He thought at least she might have given him credit for his delicacy. Because perhaps she owed him something, at least board and lodging for twenty-four hours, he might well have looked upon it as a right to take what she offered; it wouldn’t have been unbecoming if she had thanked him for his disinterestedness. He was inclined to sulk. He undressed, and when she came in from the bathroom, in his dressing-gown, he went in to wash his teeth. She was in bed when he returned.
“Will it bother you if I read a little before I go to sleep?” he asked.
“No. I’ll turn my back to the light.”
He had brought a Blake with him. He began to read. Presently from Lydia’s quiet breathing in the next bed he knew she was asleep. He read on for a little and switched off the light.
Thus did Charley Mason spend Christmas Day in Paris.
vi
THEY DID NOT WAKE till so late next morning that by the time they had had their coffee, read the papers (like a domestic couple who had been married for years), bathed and dressed, it was nearly one.
“We might go along and have a cocktail at the Dôme and then lunch,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”
“There’s a very good restaurant on the boulevard in the other direction from the Coupole. Only it’s rather expensive.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure?” She looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t want you to spend more than you can afford. You’ve been very sweet to me. I’m afraid I’ve taken advantage of your kindness.”
“Oh, rot!” he answered, flushing.
“You don’t know what it’s meant to me, these two days. Such a rest. Last night’s the first night for months that I’ve slept without waking and without dreams. I feel so refreshed. I feel quite different.”
She did indeed look much better this morning. Her skin was clearer and her eyes brighter. She held her head more alertly.
“It’s been a wonderful little holiday you’ve given me. It’s helped me so much. But I mustn’t be a burden to you.”
“You haven’t been.”
She smiled with gentle irony.
“You’ve been very well brought up, my dear. It’s nice of you to say that, and I’m so unused to having people say nice things to me that it makes me want to cry. But after all you’ve come to Paris to have a good time; you know now you’re not likely to have it with me. You’re young and you must enjoy your youth. It lasts so short a while. Give me lunch to-day if you like and this afternoon I’ll go back to Alexey’s.”
“And to-night to the Sérail?”
“I suppose so.”
She sighed, but she checked the sigh and with a little gay shrug of the shoulders gave him a bright smile. Frowning slightly in his uncertainty Charley looked at her with pained eyes. He felt awkward and big, and his radiant health, his sense of well-being, the high spirits that bubbled inside him, seemed to himself in an odd way an offence. He was like a rich man vulgarly displaying his wealth to a poor relation. She looked very frail, a slim little thing in a shabby brown dress, and after that good night so much younger that she seemed almost a child. How could you help being sorry for her? And when you thought of her tragic story, when you thought—oh, unwillingly, for it was ghastly and senseless, yet troubling so that it haunted you—of that crazy idea of
hers of atoning for her husband’s crime by her own degradation, your heart-strings were wrung. You felt that you didn’t matter at all, and if your holiday in Paris, to which you’d looked forward with such excitement, was a wash-out—well, you just had to put up with it. It didn’t seem to Charley that it was he who was uttering the halting words he spoke, but a power within him that acted independently of his will. When he heard them issue from his lips he didn’t even then know why he said them.
“I don’t have to get back to the office till Monday morning and I’m staying till Sunday. If you care to stay on here till then, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
Her face lit up so that you might have thought a haphazard ray of the winter sun had strayed into the room.
“Do you mean that?”
“Otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it.”
It looked as though her legs suddenly gave way, for she sank on to a chair.
“Oh, it would be such a blessing. It would be such a rest. It would give me new courage. But I can’t, I can’t.”
“Why not? On account of the Sérail?”
“Oh, no, not that. I could send them a wire to say I had influenza. It’s not fair to you.”
“That’s my business, isn’t it?”
It seemed a bit grim to Charley that he should have to persuade her to do what it was quite plain she was only too anxious to do, and what he would just as soon she didn’t. But he didn’t see how else he could act now. She gave him a searching look.
“Why should you do this? You don’t want me, do you?” He shook his head. “What can it matter to you if I live or die, what can it matter to you if I’m happy or not? You’ve not known me forty-eight hours yet. Friendship? I’m a stranger to you. Pity? What has one got to do with pity at your age?”
“I wish you wouldn’t ask me embarrassing questions,” he grinned.
“I suppose it’s just natural goodness of heart. They always say the English are kind to animals. I remember one of our landladies who used to steal our tea took in a mangy mongrel because it was homeless.”
“If you weren’t so small I’d give you a smack on the face for that,” he retorted cheerfully. “Is it a go?”
“Let’s go out and have lunch. I’m hungry.”
During luncheon they spoke of indifferent things, but when they had finished and Charley, having paid the bill, was waiting for his change, she said to him:
“Did you really mean it when you said I could stay with you till you went away?”
“Definitely.”
“You don’t know what a boon it would be to me. I can’t tell you how I long to take you at your word.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“It won’t be much fun for you.”
“No, it won’t,” he answered frankly, but with a charming smile. “But it’ll be interesting.”
She laughed.
“Then I’ll go back to Alexey’s and get a few things. At least a toothbrush and some clean stockings.”
They separated at the station and Lydia took the Metro. Charley thought that he would see if Simon was in. After asking his way two or three times he found the Rue Campagne Première. The house in which Simon lived was tall and dingy, and the wood of the shutters showed gray under the crumbling paint. When Charley put in his head at the concierge’s loge he was almost knocked down by the stink of fug, food and human body that assailed his nostrils. A little old woman in voluminous skirts, with her head wrapped in a dirty red muffler, told him in rasping, angry tones, as though she violently resented his intrusion, where exactly Simon lived, and when Charley asked if he was in bade him go and see. Charley, following her directions, went through the dirty courtyard and up a narrow staircase smelling of stale urine. Simon lived on the second floor and in answer to Charley’s ring opened the door.
“H’m. I wondered what had become of you.”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“No. Come in. You’d better keep on your coat. It’s not very warm in here.”
That was true. It was icy. It was a studio, with a large north light, and there was a stove in it, but Simon, who had apparently been working, for the table in the middle was littered with papers, had forgotten to keep it up and the fire was almost out. Simon drew a shabby armchair up to the stove and asked Charley to sit down.
“I’ll put some more coke on. It’ll soon get warmer. I don’t feel the cold myself.”
Charley found that the armchair, having a broken spring, was none too comfortable. The walls of the studio were a cold slate-gray, and they too looked as though they hadn’t been painted for years. Their only ornament was large maps tacked up with drawing-pins. There was a narrow iron bed which hadn’t been made.
“The concierge hasn’t been up to-day yet,” said Simon, following Charley’s glance.
There was nothing else in the studio but the large dining-table, bought second-hand, which Simon wrote at, some shelves with books in them, a desk-chair such as they use in offices, two or three kitchen chairs piled up with books, and a strip of worn carpet by the bed. It was cheerless and the cold winter light coming in through the north window added its moroseness to the squalid scene. A third-class waiting-room at a wayside station could not have seemed more unfriendly.
Simon drew a chair up to the stove and lit a pipe. With his quick wits he guessed the impression his surroundings were making on Charley and smiled grimly.
“It’s not very luxurious, is it? But then I don’t want luxury.” Charley was silent and Simon gave him a coolly disdainful look. “It’s not even comfortable, but then I don’t want comfort. No one should be dependent on it. It’s a trap that’s caught many a man who you would have thought had more sense.”
Charley was not without a streak of malice and he was not inclined to let Simon put it over on him.
“You look cold and peaked and hungry, old boy. What about taking a taxi to the Ritz Bar and having some scrambled eggs and bacon in warmth and comfortable armchairs?”
“Go to hell. What have you done with Olga?”
“Her name’s Lydia. She’s gone home to get a toothbrush. She’s staying with me at the hotel till I go back to London.”
“The devil she is. Going some, aren’t you?” The two young men stared at one another for a moment. Simon leant forward. “You haven’t fallen for her, have you?”
“Why did you bring us together?”
“I thought it would be rather a joke. I thought it would be a new experience for you to go to bed with the wife of a notorious murderer. And to tell you the truth, I thought she might fall for you. I should laugh like a hyena if she has. After all, you’re rather the same type as Berger, but a damned sight better-looking.”
Charley suddenly remembered a remark that Lydia had made when they were having supper together after the Midnight Mass. He had not understood what she meant at the time, but now he did.
“It may surprise you to learn that she tumbled to that. I’m afraid you won’t be able to laugh like a hyena.”
“Have you been together ever since I left you with her on Christmas Eve?”
“Yes.”
“It seems to agree with you. You look all right. A bit pale, perhaps.”
Charley tried not to look self-conscious. He would not for the world have had Simon know that his relations with Lydia had been entirely platonic. It would only have aroused his derisive laughter. He would have looked upon Charley’s behaviour as despicably sentimental.
“I don’t think it was a very good joke to get me off with her without letting me know what I was in for,” said Charley.
Simon gave him a tortured smile.
“It appealed to my sense of humour. It’ll be something to tell your parents when you go home. Anyhow you’ve got nothing to grouse about. It’s all panned out very well. Olga knows her job and will give you a damned good time in that way, and she’s no fool; she’s read a lot and she can talk much more intelligently than most women. It’ll be a liberal education,
my boy. D’you think she’s as much in love with her husband as ever she was?”
“I think so.”
“Curious, human nature is, isn’t it? He was an awful rotter, you know. I suppose you know why she’s at the Sérail? She wants to make enough money to pay for his escape; then she’ll join him in Brazil.”
Charley was disconcerted. He had believed her when she told him that she was there because she wanted to atone for Robert’s sin, and even though the notion had seemed to him extravagant there was something about it that had strangely moved him. It was a shock to think that she might have lied to him. If what Simon said were true she had just been making a fool of him.
“I covered the trial for our paper, you know,” Simon went on. “It caused rather a sensation in England because the fellow that Berger killed was an Englishman, and they gave it a lot of space. It was a snip for me; I’d never been to a murder trial in France before and I was pretty keen to see one. I’ve been to the Old Bailey, and I was curious to compare their methods with ours. I wrote a very full account of it; I’ve got it here; I’ll give it you to read if you like.”
“Yes, I would.”
“The murder created a great stir in France. You see, Robert Berger wasn’t an apache or anything like that. He was by way of being a gent. His people were very decent. He was well-educated and he spoke English quite passably. One of the papers called him the Gentleman Gangster and it caught on; it took the public fancy and made him quite a celebrity. He was good-looking too, in his way, and young, only twenty-two, and that helped. The women all went crazy over him. God, the crush there was to get into the trial! It was a real thrill when he came into the court-room. He was brought in between two warders for the press photographers to have a go at him before the judges came in. I never saw anyone so cool. He was quite nicely dressed and he knew how to wear his clothes. He was freshly shaved and his hair was very neat. He had a fine head of dark brown hair. He smiled at the photographers and turned this way and that, as they asked him to, so that they could all get a good view of him. He looked like any young chap with plenty of money that you might see at the Ritz Bar having a drink with a girl. It tickled me to think that he was such a rogue. He was a born criminal. Of course his people weren’t rich, but they weren’t starving, and I don’t suppose he ever really wanted for a hundred francs. I wrote a rather pretty article about him for one of the weekly papers, and the French press printed extracts from it. It did me a bit of good over here. I took the line that he engaged in crime as a form of sport. See the idea? It worked up quite amusingly. He’d been almost a first-class tennis-player and there was some talk of training him for championship play, but oddly enough, though he played a grand game in ordinary matches, he had a good serve and was quick at the net, when it came to tournaments he always fell down. Something went wrong then. He hadn’t got power of resistance, determination or whatever it is, that the great tennis-player has got to have. An interesting psychological point, I thought. Anyhow his career as a tennis-player came to an end because money began to be missed from the changing-room when he was about, and though it was never actually proved that he’d taken it everyone concerned was pretty well convinced that he was the culprit.”