That is what I have to make clear in this manuscript. I have to reveal how I became the mask which people believed was Ivor Trent. I can do this, and I will do it. I have struggled to the summit of the abyss which is myself. I will look down into it and reveal its secrets.
(Was it Richard of St. Victor who defined Humility as self-knowledge? I do not remember, but it is the greatest definition known to me. I found it in an old book which a priest lent me years ago.)
Marsden also told Rendell the story of my first book,
I will show everything here. Everything!
When I was seven, they told me my mother was dead. The word had no meaning for me. Then they said I should never see her again. I crept away. I wanted to go to her room. I was certain she would be there. Or, if not that, then her dresses would be in the wardrobe. I would look at them, touch them. They would prove that she was still alive, that soon she would come back, that I should see her again and hear her voice.
But the door of her room was locked.
I began to tremble, for I remembered our last meeting.
One night I had wakened to find her kneeling by my bed, her eyes brimming with tears. She was dressed for a journey. In a whisper she begged me not to speak, but to love her always—whatever anyone said. And then she went away.
At the time this had frightened me, but, when I was told she was dead, it terrified me. It had been her farewell.
I said to my father:
“Do people know when they are going to die?”
“No, of course not.”
“Mother knew.”
“What nonsense is this? What do you mean?”
“She knew,” I repeated. “She said good-bye to me. She was dressed for a journey. Is death a long way off? How do you go there?”
Then he was kind to me. He told me to be brave. He said that only courage mattered—and that I must never show my emotions. No matter how deeply I might suffer, I must never reveal it to the world. He said that was the whole secret of life.
Soon after her death, we moved to London. Till then we had lived in Suffolk, but now my father sold the house and its contents. The new London flat contained nothing that had been hers. She was obliterated. He never mentioned her, and he willed that I should never speak of her. I could feel his will freeze the sentence on my lips when suddenly I longed to share a memory of her with him.
In every other way he was kind to me. In Suffolk he had not bothered much about me, but, now, he did everything to capture my affection. We spent whole days together. Soon, I was terribly proud of him. He was distinguished, cultured, and he spoke to people as if their destiny were to obey him. I promised myself that I would be like him when I was a man. Courage was his god—and so it became mine.
And yet, sometimes when I woke in the night, I saw a vision of my mother. She stood before me, radiantly lovely, although she was dressed in rags. Twice I saw her like that. Then, when I was ten, I woke one night suddenly with a great start. She was standing motionless in the middle of the room. A misty light enveloped her, but her features were clear. She stretched out her arms to me. Then she seemed to dissolve till only the misty light remained.
A few days later I noticed that my father was pale and silent. He said he was ill, and that frightened me. I thought he, too, would die. I asked one of the maids what was the matter with him. She said she did not know, but that, a few days ago, a letter had come for him from abroad—and that since then he had been ill.
Nevertheless, he continued to take me for our daily walk in the Park, though he spoke seldom and his eyes had a fixed, steely expression which I had not seen before. Then, perhaps a week after the letter came from abroad, he stopped a bolting horse in the Row. It was an act of stupendous courage, for the animal was thundering along panic-stricken. Everyone regarded him as a hero, and there was a good deal about it in the papers.
Years later I realised that actually he had attempted suicide, but, at the time, I regarded him as a god. Although I was only ten, I tried to emulate him. I willed to fear nothing, and when that proved impossible—as it often did—I hid every sign of cowardice.
I steeled myself against all childish terrors. When I went to school, I tried to behave as if he were watching me. Actually, therefore, it was my father who rescued Marsden from that bully. Marsden now believes that I used the incident as a test for my will. He is right, but he does not know what my triumph cost me. I was ill for days afterwards. Still, I became Marsden’s hero—in the same way as my father was mine.