This Was Ivor Trent полностью

I put him down at forty-five, but I was far from certain. He was the type that becomes defined at thirty and changes little thereafter. He was heavy, solid, capable. His appearance told you most things about him. You knew what his parents were like, the kind of life he lived, his opinions, his prejudices, and his virtues. I decided that he was a pendulum, rather than a man, and wondered why that “other-world” woman had married him.

I had one minute with Mrs. Laidlaw before they joined us.

“Well? You’ve seen them?”

“Yes, I was in the hall when they arrived.”

“He’s rather like the National Debt, don’t you think? But she’s joyous, isn’t she?”

“I suppose he knows she’s going to be very ill very soon.”

“Don’t be absurd, Ivor! She’s been ill. That’s why they went for that trip. She’s had two nervous breakdowns—and the second one was serious.”

She tapped her forehead significantly.

“I see. Well——”

“They’re coming! I’m counting on you to talk. I can’t say one word to him. Whatever subject you mention, he always says ‘the situation is serious.’ Once I asked him if he had a hobby, and he said he was a Numismatist. What’s that, Ivor? It sounds indecent.”

I shall not forget that dinner. I hardly spoke to her, and I do not believe she looked at me once, but I was aware only of her—and the wordless dialogue between us. She sat motionless and silent, rather like a solitary child at a grown-up party, telling me about herself in a language more subtle than speech.

When she said good-bye, she did not look at me.

The next afternoon I rang her up. I recognised her voice, and said:

“Is that you, Rosalie?’’

“But—who is it?”

“Ivor.”

I heard an odd little sound like a gasp.

“Ivor,” I repeated. “I want you to come to my flat—now.”

“But-but——”

“Now!”

I gave her the address, then added:

“I am waiting for you.”

Half an hour later she arrived.

She made no excuse for coming and gave no explanations. It was some moments before she spoke. On entering the sitting-room, she paused and looked round as if to convince herself that it was real.

I made her rest on a sofa, then she began to talk—rather as if she were continuing an interrupted conversation—and I learned about her parents and the circumstances in which she had married Vivian. Also she told me that she had had two nervous collapses.

I watched rather than listened. Her history was in her appearance—just as her husband’s was in his. The difference between those histories was the gulf which separated them. He was unaware of that gulf. She was poised precariously on the brink of it.

Her gifts were those of an emotional genius. She responded to every nuance of feeling, every vibration in the atmosphere, every fleeting mood. It was because she had the potentiality of a great artist that she utterly failed to be a minor one. But she lacked one quality essential to a great creative synthesis—that of Will. For her to attempt an orthodox life was equivalent to a butterfly attempting the work of a bee.

She had lightning transitions from hysteria to inertia; an amazing gift for surrendering to each emotion that welled up in her. In recounting her history, she isolated with unerring flair the one significant detail which made a scene flash into life. Her descriptions were not catalogues of facts. They were impressionistic evocations. You did not hear them. You saw them.

Her beauty was that of a fey child, mysteriously become a woman. The spirit that inhabited her body seemed remote from it. When she was absent, it was her smile, or a gesture, or her rippling laugh which stabbed your memory—never the line of her figure.

After she had been with me for an hour, she suddenly leaped to her feet.

“I must go!”

“Why?”

“He will be back soon.”

“You will come to-morrow?”

“Yes.”

She came the next day, and the next, and the next.

Within a week we were lovers. Nevertheless, when she was not with me, it was her smile, or a gesture, or her rippling laugh which stabbed my memory—never the white beauty of her body.

Again and again she would lie in my arms sobbing. She clung to me like a child who, till now, had been too frightened to cry.

Endlessly, however, her ever-active imagination tortured her.

Once, when she was dressing, she paused suddenly and pointed to her clothes.

“He paid for these! He’s at his office now—working—getting money for me!”

Instantly she identified herself with him. She saw our relations as he would see them. She became hysterical.

“Ivor! Ivor! Him—think of him! I shall kill myself! I can’t sleep by him, night after night, knowing——”

“Listen to me!”

She stared at me with terrified eyes, her breasts rising and falling as if she had just run a race.

“Our being lovers has saved your marriage. You know that is true.”

“Yes, but—him!”

“It doesn’t matter about him. It matters about you.”

“But if—if I tell him!”

“You won’t tell him.”

“But I may! I may, Ivor! Suddenly—without being able to help it. I shall scream—and tell him!”

“You won’t tell him.”

She came nearer me.

“How can you know?—how can you be so certain?”