This Was Ivor Trent полностью

“I knew him, but my knowledge of him comes from the novel. Ivor and I were at school together and I often spent part of the holidays with the Trents, as my people were in India. Old Trent was devilish impressive: cultured, aristocratic, self-sufficient. Seemed to look down on life, if you know what I mean. No use for emotional people. But I’ll say this for him: he had great physical courage. There’s a description in the novel of how he stopped a bolting horse in the Row when Ivor was ten. We thought he was God Almighty when we were kids.”

“But do you mean that he never referred to Ivor’s mother for fourteen years?”

“Never! There wasn’t a photograph of her in the house. He cut himself off from everyone who had known her. He moved to London after she left him. Before then, they had lived in Suffolk. He took the most elaborate precautions to ensure that Ivor should not learn the truth. And he did everything to widen and deepen his influence over him. Above all, he instilled his own contempt for women into him. And he did it with great subtlety.”

“To prejudice Ivor’s reaction to the facts when the inevitable disclosure came?”

“Yes. Ivor learned the facts when he was twenty-one. That was in 1914. They had spent the last two years abroad. You read the description of the scene between the father and the son in Two Lives and a Destiny. It’s amazing. As Trent told Ivor the history of his marriage, he became a stranger—a spiteful, writhing, humiliated being. Fear, hatred, tortured pride, and above all sexual jealousy, were the realities behind Trent’s façade. The fact that it was fourteen years ago; that she was dead; that he was talking to her son—counted for nothing. He flung insult after insult at her, used the foulest language, stamped and gesticulated like a madman. And behind this frenzied figure Ivor saw—in a kind of vision—the woman whose loveliness had haunted his childhood.”

“How did it end?”

“There was a terrible quarrel between them. Ivor cleared out. A few months later the war came. His father refused to see him when he left for the front. And before Ivor had been in France a month, Trent fell dead in the street.”

“And that’s the story of Two Lives and a Destiny?”

“That’s the story, Rendell. The book ends with an analysis of Ivor’s sensations on going into action for the first time. But the significant fact is this. When he was twenty-one, he was confronted by two crises in swift succession: he discovered that the man he believed his father to be was a fake; and a few months later he found himself in the inferno of the war.”

“But you said just now——”

“Here’s the food,” Marsden interrupted. “Let’s eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

They spoke only in isolated sentences during the next twenty minutes. Trent remained in his corner, a crowd of memories stampeding through his mind. Gradually, however, an unreasoning hatred of Marsden possessed him although, simultaneously, he was amused by the discovery that Marsden was one man with his own friends and another with him. There was an independence, a hint of patronage, in his attitude to Rendell which were unknown in their relations. But what chiefly disturbed Trent was the knowledge that he was still unable to leave the tavern. Any attempt to rise instantly provoked a sensation of dizziness. But one thing was definite—he had no curiosity. He knew the limits of Peter Marsden’s knowledge.

“Well, what do you think? Just coffee?”

“That’s all I want,” Rendell replied. “And now I’m going to revert to Ivor Trent.”

Marsden laughed.

“You’re very interested in him.”

“So are you,” Rendell retorted bluntly.

“I’m very full of him at the minute, I admit. But then I’ve been doing nothing but read and re-read his books for the last few weeks.”

“Yes, but apart from that,” Rendell insisted.

“He’s an interesting person, of course,” Marsden replied irritably, after a just perceptible pause.

“You said, earlier on, that you owed him a lot. Any objection to telling me in what way?”

“No, I’ve no objection, but I’d rather you kept it to yourself. It began like this. I’ve told you that Ivor and I were at school together. Well, he delivered me from a bully. I don’t know if you’ve any idea of the fanatical devotion that inspires in a schoolboy?”

“I can imagine it.”

“No, you can’t. It’s one of those things you have to experience. Ivor became my hero. I thought God must be exactly like him. But it was not only that he delivered me—it was the way he did it.”

“Don’t understand,” Rendell said abruptly.

“It was like this. The bully was twice Ivor’s size, but the latter simply obliterated him by the might of his spirit. He gave him a look, told him to clear off—and he cleared off. It was astonishing. I became a fervent believer in miracles.”

“And that was the start of your friendship?”