Two or three minutes passed in silence.
Suddenly Wrayburn leaned towards the fire and rubbed his hands. The light had returned to his eyes. He then consulted his watch and announced:
“Eight minutes past eight. That means we’ve the whole evening. That’s satisfactory, very satisfactory.”
“Time seems to interest you very much,” Rendell remarked. “I’ve noticed it before.”
Wrayburn flushed swiftly, making a convulsive movement with his whole body.
“Time, my good man, is something that has to be organised—like bouts with the world, money, landladies, and other horrors. But before we go on to something else,” he added, with lightning rapidity, “I want to make one or two statements about Ivor Trent. Just one minute, though.”
Wrayburn removed his shoes, put on slippers, then offered Rendell a cigarette.
Now, this last action surprised the latter, for he knew that Wrayburn never smoked, and disliked others doing so in his presence. Also Rendell noted that the cigarette offered was a specimen of the brand he preferred.
“Thanks very much, Wrayburn. You notice everything—even the kind I smoke. Really good of you.”
“And now,” Wrayburn began, with that flick of the hand which signified the dismissal of a subject, “I want to warn you not to form opinions of Trent on those preposterous friends of his you are meeting.”
“Why on earth not?” Rendell demanded.
“Because they represent his time-killing activities.”
“Time-killing activities!” Rendell echoed.
“Do you mind,” Wrayburn replied, separating each word, “not repeating a sentence of mine? I find it peculiarly exasperating. You don’t mind? You’re sure? Excellent! You must understand that Trent amuses himself when he is not writing. And he does that because he refuses to achieve his destiny. Wait! I’ll explain that.”
Wrayburn rose, leaned against the mantelpiece, so as to derive the heat of the fire at its maximum intensity. Then, by way of preface to what he had to say concerning Trent, he gave Rendell a brief summary of the state of the world—as he saw it.
Rendell had never listened to anything in the least like it. He had reason to know, from his own experience, that conditions everywhere were chaotic, but Wrayburn’s lightest assumption went infinitely deeper than that.
He announced as a platitude his belief that the structure of society had collapsed. He stated that dictators, economic theories, and militant nationalistic movements were only the convulsions of a civilisation on its death-bed. He asserted that all talk about “recovery” was the chatter of fools or charlatans. And he ended with the statement that, when the Stock Exchange was regarded as the national pulse, the end was not near—it had come.
“Good God!” Rendell exclaimed, “you do see the writing on the wall.”
Wrayburn writhed. Any hackneyed quotation caused him physical suffering.
“The writing on the wall, my good Rendell, ceased long ago. Writer’s cramp was the reason.” Then, after a brief pause, he added: “Surely all I’ve said is commonplace enough, isn’t it? Do say, of course. But, if not, it’s rather tedious. I mean, really, it is so obvious—so drearily obvious.”
He looked at Rendell with puzzled curiosity.
“You read the papers, reports of public speeches, and so on, don’t you?” he asked at last.
“Yes, I do,” Rendell replied.
“Then surely you’ve detected the death rattle? Anyhow, anyhow,” he exclaimed, moving both arms in a swift horizontal gesture, “assume it, my good man, assume it! I’m only asking you to accept the fact of disintegration—which is yelling for acceptance everywhere.”
“Still,” Rendell objected, “there are some signs of recovery.”
“You think the nations are slowly climbing back to the pinnacle of 1914, do you? Possibly you are right. There is a minor boom in armaments at the moment.”
Rendell put his cigarette out and lit another. The fact that Wrayburn held such opinions interested him more than the opinions themselves. His detachment from the fate of all things human was so absolute that he might have been a spirit from Jupiter, sent to the earth to survey its conditions, who would return in due course and render his report. For, to Rendell, Wrayburn seemed a consciousness, not a man—a consciousness which watched human destiny, untroubled by any feeling for humanity.
He glanced at the slender body, the narrow head, and the dank little beard.
“He’s a dead man, bar his brain,” was Rendell’s final conclusion.
“But what’s all this to do with Trent?” he asked impatiently, hoping to narrow Wrayburn to the personal.
“Just one minute, if you don’t mind,” he replied in a tone which would have been unendurable in anyone else. “You’re so extraordinarily ignorant that certain additional preliminaries are necessary.”
Wrayburn then proceeded to give an account of the activities of different groups of people to-day who, finding themselves confronted by disintegration, are seeking to create some values to give life substance.
He described briefly every type of modern Movement:—every Group, every Cult—sacred, profane, economic, artistic, political—till Rendell’s brain reeled. He revealed their aims, theories, beliefs, dogmas, aspirations with such definite knowledge that it was evident he had been associated with each—either as adherent or investigator. To Rendell many of these Movements seemed fantastic, but Wrayburn convinced him that each and all existed—and that each passionately believed that it held a panacea for all ills of the human spirit.
He ended by saying:
“Nothing new in all this, of course. It must have been very much the same in Alexandria in the year 200.”
“What I can’t make out about you,” Rendell said explosively, “is that you seem to be outside everything. I’d rather you believed in Russian Communism than nothing.”
“Russian Communism, my good man, is only Peter the Great’s experiment carried to its logical confusion.”
Then, a moment later, Wrayburn added:
“Just one minute. Then I’ll come to Trent.”
Wrayburn got a kettle, which he filled and put on a gas-ring, then cups and various utensils. Rendell took this opportunity to move a good yard further away from the enormous gas-fire, which had long since roasted him. Then, having unbuttoned his waistcoat, he watched Wrayburn fascinated.
Intent on his activities, he proceeded with punctilious care. He studied each cup, every spoon, jugs, and so on till convinced of their cleanliness. They were then arranged in logical sequence. At a precise moment, cups, teapot and jugs were warmed. Ingredients were exactly measured. He might have been a priest performing a rite.
Finally, China tea was prepared for himself—and a cup of black coffee handed to Rendell with the statement:
“I know you find this poison innocuous, so I give it to you with equanimity.”
Rendell was astonished. First the cigarettes—and now the black coffee! There could be only one explanation. This was Wrayburn’s method of stating that he welcomed him and wanted him to come again.
This discovery revealed the extent and degree of Wrayburn’s isolation. Rendell lacked vanity, and therefore realised that it could only be his physical presence that Wrayburn needed. Mentally, they spoke different languages. That was definite. What Wrayburn regarded as truisms were nightmares to Rendell. To listen to him was to watch the solid shrink to the spectral—the sane dissolve into the mad—and the living stiffen into the petrified. Yet this wisp of humanity, this mental waif, this unique being wanted him—Rendell!—to sit in his room and to listen to him!