the goings on with the 'girls' Ducane simply could not imagine; but he now understood enough about the mystery of married couples to know that there is practically nothing with which those extraordinary organisms cannot deal. Mrs Radeechy might well have been entirely tolerant about the girls. McGrath had described her as a 'very cheerful lady' and this agreed with other testimony. McGrath himself would, of course, have to be interrogated again and very much more ruthlessly and scientifically. This had been just a preliminary shaking of hands. It should not be too difficult, Ducane thought, to break McGrath down entirely, to threaten him and frighten him. But Ducane did not want to do this until he had made certain whether or not the newspaper could be persuaded to hand over the story. George Droysen had been despatched to conduct this delicate negotiation.
At this point Ducane began to think about Jessica. The connexion of thought was as follows. It is impossible to be a barrister without imagining oneself a judge, and Ducane's imagination had often taken this flight. However, and this was another reason for Ducane's ultimate disgust with life in the courts, the whole situation of 'judging' was abhorrent to him. He had watched his judges closely, and had come to the conclusion that no human being is worthy to be a judge. In theory, the judge represents simply the majesty and impartiality of the law whose instrument he is. In practice, because of the imprecision of law and the imperfection of man, the judge enjoys a considerable area of quite personal power which he may or may not exercise wisely. Ducane's rational mind knew that there had to be law courts and that English law was on the whole good law and English judges good judges. But he detested that confrontation between the prisoner in the dock and the judge, dressed so like a king or a pope, seated up above him. His irrational heart, perceptive of the pride of judges, sickened and said it should not be thus; and said it the more passionately since there was that in Ducane which wanted to be a judge.
Ducane knew, and knew it in a half-guilty, half-annoyed way as if he had been eavesdropping, that there were moments when he had said to himself, 'I alone of all these people am good enough, am humble enough, to be a judge'. Ducane was capable of picturing himself as not only aspiring to be, but as actually being, the just man and the just judge. He did not rightly know what to do with these visions. Sometimes he took them, now that he had removed himself from the possibility of actually becoming a real judge, for a sort of harmless idealism.
Sometimes they seemed to him the most corrupting influences in his life.
What Ducane was experiencing, in this form peculiar to him of imagining himself as a judge, was, though this was not entirely clear in his mind, one of the great paradoxes of morality, namely that in order to become good it may be necessary to imagine oneself good, and yet such imagining may also be the very thing which renders improvement impossible, either because of surreptitious complacency or because of some deeper blasphemous infection which is set up when goodness is thought about in the wrong way. To become good it may be necessary to think about virtue; although unreflective simple people may achieve a thoughtless excellence. Ducane was in any case highly reflective and had from childhood quite explicitly set before himself the aim of becoming a good man; and although he had little of thA demoniac in his nature there was a devil of pride, a stiff Calvinistic Scottish devil, who was quite capable of bringing Ducane to utter damnation, and Ducane knew this perfectly well.
This metaphysical dilemma was present to him at times not in any clear conceptual form but rather as an atmosphere, a feeling of bewildered guilt which was almost sexual in quality and not altogether unpleasant. If Ducane had believed in God, which he had not done since he abandoned, at the age of fifteen, the strict low church Glaswegian Protestantism in which he had been brought up, he would have prayed, instantly and hard, whenever he perceived this feeling coming on. As it was he endured it grimly, as it were with his eyes tight shut, trying not to let it proliferate into something interesting. This feeling, which came to him naturally whenever he experienced power, especially rather formal power, over another person, had now been generated by his questioning of McGrath. And his faintly excited sense of having power over McGrath put him in mind of another person over whom he had power, and that was Jessica.
Ducane was ruefully aware that his remorse about his behaviour to Jessica was at least partly compounded of distress at cutting, as Jessica's rather muddled lover, a figure which was indubitably not that of the good man. In fact Ducane had long ago made up his mind that he was a man who simply must not have love affairs, and the adventure with Jessica was really, as he now forced himself sternly to see, a clear case of seeing and approving the better and doing the worse. However, as he also believed, the only point of severity with the past is improvement of the future. Given all this muddle, what was the right thing to do now? Could he, involved as he was in this mess of his own creating, be or even intelligibly attempt to be, the just judge where poor Jess was concerned? How could he sufficiently separate himself from it, how could he judge the mistake when he was the mistake? Ducane's thoughts were further confused here by the familiar accusing voice which informed him that he was only so anxious now to simplify his life in order to have a clear conscience, or more grossly a clear field, for his highly significant commitment to tor it might be, to breaK absolutely Wltn Jessica to see her no more? Poor Jessica, he thought, oh God, poor Jessica.
'I say, may I come in for a moment?'
Ducane's thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Richard Biranne, who had just put his head round the door.
'Come in, come in,' said Ducane pleasantly, checking with a quick physical twitch the instant hostility which had gripped his whole body at the appearance of Biranne.
Biranne came in and sat down opposite to Ducane. Ducane looked at his visitor's clever face. Biranne had a long handsome slightly tortured-looking intellectual head. His stiff wiry hair, colourlessly fair, stood up in a wavy crest, elongated his face.
His shapeless-looking mouth was twisted and rather mobile.
He had a high-pitched donnish voice which was physically disturbing, as if it made objects in his vicinity vibrate and do their best to break. Ducane could well imagine that he was attractive to women.
'Droysen told me about McGrath,' said Biranne. 'I was wondering if you had seen that sinner and got anything out of him, if that's not an indiscreet question.'
Ducane did not see why he should not discuss the matter with Biranne, who had after all seen the opening of the drama. He said, 'Yes, I saw him. He told me a few things. I've got the beginnings of a picture.'
'Oh. What did you get out of him?'
'He says he did the shopping for Radeechy's magical goingson.
He says the magic involved naked girls. That, with a few trimmings, is supposed to be what he spilled to the press.'
