“Well, you can marry him at once, if you want to. He’s got a special licence and——”
“Do you like him?” she asked suddenly.
Rendell hesitated.
“Do you like him?” she demanded irritably.
“No.”
“I knew you didn’t, but I wanted to make you say it. He’s weak, mean, and vain. Did you think I didn’t know that? But I’m not going to marry him if he’s going to cross-examine me about Ivor.”
“He won’t want to.”
“How do you know? Are you certain?”
“Quite certain,” Rendell replied. “He’s afraid that you will want to cross-examine him about Trent. You needn’t worry about that, but——”
He broke off.
“Well, but—what?” she demanded.
“I was going to say that, frankly, to live with Marsden in a cottage isn’t going to be too easy.”
“I know that. But there might be a child.”
She rose and began to wander about the room. Some minutes passed, then she paused near him and asked:
“You know I met Rosalie Vivian?”
“Yes. Why did you mention her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s very lovely.”
Then, after a pause, she added:
“You think she’s lovely, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’d give anything to have her beauty. It’s power, and I worship power as only the weak can worship it. Will you see her again?”
“I’m joining her in Italy soon.”
She turned quickly to him.
“You’re—you’re joining her in Italy?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh nothing! Then, you’re very fond of her?”
“Yes.”
She began to wander about the room again.
At last Rendell said he thought he had better go. He rose and she came over to him.
“You’re certain about Captain Frazer?”
“Quite certain. I will bring you that statement lo-morrow.”
“No, seal it, and drop it through the letter-box. I—I can’t see you again after to-night.”
“Very well. And I’ll tell Marsden.”
She went to the hall with him, waited while he put on his overcoat, then took his hands impulsively.
“You’ve saved me. You know that?”
“Oh well——”
“Yes, you have. And, somehow, I don’t mind what you know about me. I could tell you everything.”
She leaned down, kissed his hand, then ran back into the sitting-room, leaving the door open.
Rendell hesitated, then went out and down into the street.
XI
Two days later Rendell was alone.
As he had anticipated, the interview with Frazer was brief and conclusive. A hint that he had blackmailed Vera—a suggestion as to possible consequences—so frightened the Captain that he wrote a statement at Rendell’s dictation and signed it. The only difficulty was to convince him that, having done so, he had nothing to fear.
Rendell was back in London by six o’clock, and went straight to his room, where he found Marsden waiting for him. The latter, however, left directly he learned that Vera’s answer was favourable.
Rendell did not see him again. Marsden gave up his room the following day and went to the country—without saying good-bye, and without leaving a message.
At first this lack of courtesy puzzled Rendell, but eventually it made him appreciate the subtle demands of Marsden’s vanity.
It had been necessary to state his position before asking Vera to marry him, but this he had been unable to do in person. To stand revealed on the background of the facts was too humiliating. He wanted to dominate Vera, not to plead with her. He wanted her to regard him as he would like to have been, not as he was. But to tell the truth about himself was not the only indignity which menaced him. A darker shadow gloomed across his imagination—she might refuse him. Marsden winced at the possibility of hearing himself rejected.
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.