Hence he had made Rendell his ambassador. And he bitterly regretted the fact directly he learned that Vera had accepted him. For—now—he instantly assumed that she loved him desperately, and that, therefore, there had been no necessity either to state the facts or to employ an advocate. He had humiliated himself unnecessarily, and he regarded Rendell as the cause of that humiliation. He was determined, therefore, not to see him again. Hence his hurried departure from Potiphar Street.
So Rendell was alone, and this solitude gradually revealed past and present in clearer perspective.
In the first place, he discovered that he had been at No. 77 for nearly seven weeks. Also, that his experiences there grouped themselves roughly into four distinct periods. The first concerned his arrival; the mystery of Trent’s presence in this extraordinary house; and adventures with visitors. This first period had occupied just over a week. The second was the month he had spent with Rosalie. Wrayburn’s tragedy was the third. And the fourth related to his dealings with Marsden and Vera.
Nearly seven weeks!
And all this had happened to him because of Ivor Trent! Trent—whom he had almost forgotten! Yet all this time he had been in those rooms at the top of the house. No one had seen him, no word had come from him. He had remained as invisible and as mute as destiny.
Why should this stranger have altered the map of his world?
The question found no answer, but others jostled on its heels. If he had known what had awaited him at No. 77 would he have come? Was it madness even to consider marrying Rosalie? Had his mental balance been destroyed as a result of suddenly finding himself in the vortex of Trent’s relations with others?
But as these questions, too, remained unanswered, Rendell now tried to assess his own responsibility for what had happened to him.
In one mood, it seemed that two impulses had altered his life. The first had been his letter to Marsden, which had resulted in their dining together on that fog-shrouded Sunday in order to discuss Trent. The second was his sudden determination—that night in the club—to go to No. 77 and inquire about him.
But, in another mood, these impulses seemed secondary, for a prior event had occasioned them. That event was the reading of one of Trent’s books. He had read it in Germany, when he was alone and lonely, and it was because he had discovered a deep knowledge of loneliness in the novel that he had become interested in its author.
Often, however, these guesses as to the origin of his experiences at Potiphar Street seemed childish. They had happened. That was the fact. How and why they had happened was a mystery as deep as life itself.
But Rendell was not concerned only with the past during this period of solitude. The present situation in the house intrigued him, chiefly because he heard nothing of Trent. He knew that Mrs. Frazer had been his nurse for some weeks but, even so, it was curious that he never saw her. Rendell realised that this was less extraordinary than it appeared, as he had practically only slept in his room during the last few weeks. But, now that he was in most of the day, there was no sign of her.
As to the lodgers, the majority were recent arrivals, and it was doubtful whether they knew that Trent was in the house. The servant, Mary, had left. There remained only Elsa, the model, who had taken over Mrs. Frazer’s duties, but it seemed to Rendell that she avoided him. He encountered her only on rare occasions and then she passed him with only a formal greeting.
One morning when he was pacing the room a sudden thought brought him to a standstill. Soon, he was leaving for Italy. He would bring Rosalie back to London for a time, then, possibly, they would marry—and live abroad. If that happened, he would probably never meet Trent, never unravel the mystery of his relations with others, never discover why he came in secret to Potiphar Street to work. He would remain in his present ignorance. He would never even see the man who had altered the whole of his life.
“It
In the evening he went to the long bar of the Cosmopolitan, hoping to see Rummy. He had been in twice since his first visit, but on this occasion he learned that she had been off duty for some days as she was ill.
Rendell decided he would walk back to Chelsea, and then write to Rosalie. Since her departure she had written two or three times a week and although these letters consisted only of a single sheet, they evoked her image so vividly that Rendell seemed to see her confronting and claiming him.
He reached home at about nine o’clock, then sat by the fire to smoke a cigarette before writing to Rosalie.
The cigarette was half-finished when the door opened slowly.
He looked up and saw Elsa. She stood motionless, watching him intently, her lips slightly parted.