“I’m sure she won’t want to be either. You can put the whole subject out of your head.”
Marsden settled himself more comfortably.
“Good! I shall wait till she’s a bit better and then I’ll ask her to marry me. But I tell you again—there’s something odd about her. I was at her place the other night and—when the postman came—she went as white as a sheet. I’m damned if I know what’s wrong.”
This was the first of several conversations, none of which enhanced Rendell’s opinion of Marsden. What did interest him, however, was the news concerning Vera, for Rendell could not imagine what could have produced this new frenzy of fear. She had seemed satisfied that her secret was safe when he had left her that night at her flat. What had happened since? Did she regret her confession to him? Possibly. Anyway she was avoiding him. That was certain.
But, apart from Vera and Marsden, there was Denis Wrayburn—a deeper problem than either and one which touched Rendell’s conscience.
He had only seen Wrayburn two or three times during the last month and, on each occasion, Rendell had made the meeting a brief one. It was easy to explain this neglect by enumerating the demands made by Rosalie, but this explanation would have been more convincing if Rendell had felt that he wanted to see Wrayburn now he was free. But he did not. He saw little of him, despite a deepening premonition that he was necessary to Wrayburn, in some mysterious way.
In the first place, the house in Waldegrave Road depressed him. There it stood, the gloomiest in the gloomy row, in a narrow badly-lit street which seemed eternally shrouded in mist. The high wall opposite the dreary houses made oppression more oppressive. To walk down Waldegrave Road was to experience the monstrous sensation that one was the only mourner at one’s own funeral.
Wrayburn’s room, too, began to affect Rendell unpleasantly. The mathematical precision dominating every detail created a non-human atmosphere. Rendell felt that the room was inhabited by a brain, not a man. And although he attempted to dismiss this new sensibility as an effect of Rosalie’s influence, he became more and more subject to it. Soon, every visit to Waldegrave Road represented a definite act of his will. And every visit created a deeper dislike of the road, the house, and Wrayburn’s room.
But the chief fact was that Wrayburn himself interested him less and less. This discovery shocked Rendell, for their first conversations had been stimulating. Subsequent ones, however, lacked substance. To sit listening to theories, criticism, and abstract ideas made Rendell feel he was suspended in a void haunted by a voice. Every thing familiar disappeared. Wrayburn was the eternal onlooker. He stood, remote and removed from the arena-watching, assessing, defining. He was not alive, he was a commentary on life. He haunted the human scene, notebook in hand. He saw everything—and felt nothing.
Often, Rendell ceased to listen. The pedantic voice went on, but Rendell would begin to think about Rosalie. Sometimes he seemed to see her beauty hovering behind the chair in which the inert Wrayburn sprawled. Then he would marvel that one world could house two beings so dissimilar.
The first meeting after Rosalie’s departure bored Rendell. This fact emerged like a mountain from a sea of mist. But, to Rendell’s dismay, he somehow knew that Wrayburn had expected and feared the advent of this boredom. And, knowing this, Rendell realised that the experience was not a new one for Wrayburn. It had happened again and again. He had had hosts of acquaintances—but to-day he was alone. Rendell knew, although he was never told, that he was Wrayburn’s only visitor. And this knowledge disturbed him, for it imposed a responsibility for which he felt totally inadequate.
But it did more than this. During the last year Rendell had imagined that he had experienced loneliness. A glance at Wrayburn convinced him that he was a stranger to it. Rendell had only felt lonely. Wrayburn was loneliness. It enclosed him like a coffin of ice.
So although Rendell visited him two or three times after Rosalie’s departure, it was at the prompting of pity. But Wrayburn was not deceived. He had known that Rendell was bored long before the latter had realised it. Wrayburn was familiar with recurring decimals.
But he said nothing. He withdrew into himself as if making a final demand on inner reserves.
Then, one night, Rendell received a postcard. It was the first communication he had had from Wrayburn. It consisted of a line, written in a thin spidery hand.
Come, to-morrow at eight—for five minutes.
Precisely at eight o’clock Rendell reached 4, Waldegrave Road and pulled the bell, then stood listening to its sepulchral summons in the dark depths of the basement.
In due course, the barrel-shaped landlady appeared. She was breathless, as usual, but somehow her round puffy face with its red patches seemed especially repellent.
Rendell attempted to hurry by her, but she planted herself resolutely in the narrow hall, thereby barring the way very effectually.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, you can tell young Touch-Me-Not that he can’t kid me. See? I know he’s ill—and won’t say so. Shivering up there like a rat, he is, although that gas fire of his is going fit to roast an ox.”
She scowled malignantly at Rendell.
“Take the trouble, I did, to go up all them stairs yesterday to see what had happened to him. Door locked, if you please! It’s only me,’ I calls out. But no reply from Hoity-Toity. It’s me—Mrs. Munnings!’ I fair shouted. I did straight. And what do you think he says? ‘Go away.’”
Her little eyes flashed with anger.
“‘Go away!’ There’s a gentleman for you! I’ll go,’ I says, ‘but don’t say I didn’t come, when you get worse.’ I was put about, I can tell you. I know his sort. Snake in the grass, if you ask me.”
Rendell escaped and hurried to Wrayburn’s room, the door of which had been unlocked at eight o’clock precisely.
Wrayburn was in bed. He did not speak, or give any sign of greeting when Rendell entered the room, the atmosphere of which was that of an oven. Rendell glanced at him, at first casually, then apprehensively. Illness had accentuated the narrowness of the face to an alarming degree. He lay motionless, staring through Rendell with cold implacable eyes, while the latter fully realised what a stick of a man Wrayburn was. The bedclothes did not reveal the contour of a body. The head on the pillow was the only evidence that the bed was occupied.
“What’s wrong with you?” Rendell began, but he got no further.
“Just one moment.”
Wrayburn raised himself, slowly and with difficulty, then produced a notebook from under his pillow, which he handed to Rendell.
“I want you to get the things listed there—and to bring them here to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”
The list related chiefly to food, with precise details of the shops at which it was to be procured and the price to be paid.
“I’ll do that, of course, but——”
“I shall then be independent of that animal downstairs. Tell her if she comes to this room again, I shall instantly give her a week’s notice.”
He leaned back on the pillow and closed his eyes.
“But look here—I can’t leave you like——”
“Please go now. Lock the door after you, then push the key under it.”
The tone was so final that Rendell obeyed. He glanced again at Wrayburn. He seemed like a man whose will was turned wholly inward.
Rendell went out, locked the door, pushed the key under it, then went downstairs. He gave Mrs. Munnings Wrayburn’s message, ignored her angry comments, and left the house. The next morning he returned at ten o’clock with the stores Wrayburn required. He accepted them in silence, then waved Rendell out of the room.