This Was Ivor Trent полностью

That gas fire . . . that huge gas fire . . . the bottle of whisky—half empty. . . . He had plugged the cracks in the floor with wadding. . . . The cold grey eyes, intent on their task. The long slender fingers—

Wrayburn!

Long-forgotten incidents flashed upward from his memory, like sparks. That first visit to Wrayburn’s room—the cigarettes, the black coffee. Wrayburn had walked back with him that night. Yes, nearly to Potiphar Street. Then they had parted. And—a few moments later—he had felt a hand on his arm. “I only wanted to know whether you’ve been bored. You haven’t? That’s all right then—that’s all right.”

(The rain was blinding him. He couldn’t see where he was going.)

Lying fully dressed on that bed. Dead for some hours. That’s what the paper said. . . .

When was it he had come for the whisky? Last night? Yes, last night.

“Could you oblige me with a bottle of whisky?”

“Yes, of course, I’ll get it.”

. . . . How many days had passed since he had taken those things to Waldegrave Road at ten o’clock that morning? Four days? Five days? Five days! He had been alone in that room for five days—his body an arena where Will had wrestled with Illness. And yet, had he been ill—physically? Or had his Will had Loneliness for adversary?

Courage! Wrayburn’s courage! To pit himself alone against a world—to make no concessions—to take his stand on himself. What a Will had been sheathed in the fragile scabbard of that body!

. . . . The way he used to flush suddenly . . . the quick flick of his hand to dismiss a subject . . . the slender body . . . the narrow head . . . the dank little beard.

Wrayburn!

There was something rare about him; something beautiful, with a non-human beauty; something unique.

Thrown away on a rubbish heap! A spirit to whom the world was a wilderness. A spirit, seeking its kindred and finding them not. A spirit doomed to come to earth—perhaps to expiate the dark acts of its pride. The Stranger—the Solitary—the Alone.

Wrayburn!

That gas fire—the rugs arranged on the floor in a geometrical pattern—the way he studied each cup to make certain of its absolute cleanliness—the row of dictionaries on that shelf—the divan bed. . . .

And he had become bored by him. He had visited him less and less frequently. Only to listen had been asked of him—but he had refused even to listen. The last human being had deserted Wrayburn. Each day his money grew less. (Three pounds on the little table by the bed!) Every hour the necessity for another “bout with the world” came nearer. For five days he lay on that bed and watched it come nearer—nearer.

And then—his last bout with the world. . . .

The rain must be heavier than ever. He had run into something. It was a tree. He was on the Embankment. His clothes were drenched.

That night at the restaurant! Wrayburn had given his hat and coat to the waiter, telling him precisely how they were to be dried.

His clothes—Wrayburn’s clothes.

“Wouldn’t you guess, from their general neatness and all that, that this rig-out is the only one I possess? Wouldn’t you—wouldn’t you?”

That is what he had said.

Were his clothes still in that room at the top of the house?

Mrs. Munnings!

Wrayburn—Mrs. Munnings. . . .

But, of course, all this would pass. This storm of emotion and memory would not last. He would forget. Days would become weeks, weeks—months. He would go to Italy. (Rosalie! Yes, yes, of course—Rosalie!)

And yet, perhaps, sometimes—suddenly—he would remember a night of rain on the Embankment.

Rain, rain, endless rain—drenching him, blinding him!

Wrayburn!

During the next few days Rendell became the chief actor in the last two scenes of Wrayburn’s tragedy—the inquest and the funeral.

He gave evidence at the former, but was not required to identify the body, as Mrs. Munnings performed that duty with an exuberance which amounted to gusto.

After which, she steeped herself in the grim squalor of the inquest with the liveliest satisfaction.

Nevertheless, unwittingly, she rendered a service, for her evidence revealed a rock-like certainty that insanity was the cause of Wrayburn’s suicide. In fact, she hotly contested the suggestion that his insanity was of a temporary nature. She dogmatically asserted that Wrayburn had been mad the first day she ever set eyes upon him—nearly a year ago.

“The morning he took the room, I said to Mrs. Marks—‘You mark my words,’ I said to her, ‘there’s a screw missing somewhere.’ And she says to me: “Then don’t you take him, but—there!—no good talking to you. Always helping others, you are. But I says to her——”

Mrs. Munnings, being restrained by the coroner at this point, concluded her evidence by giving her account of the five days preceding Wrayburn’s suicide.

Frequently her voice sank to a whisper in order to italicise her more dramatic statements.