This Was Ivor Trent

I

A yellow fog brooded over the city like a curse.

It was about six o’clock of a Sunday evening in October, 1933. For over an hour Ivor Trent had stood by the undrawn curtains in his sitting-room, looking down on desolation. No one was visible: every sound was muffled. The church bells seemed to be summoning the ghosts of a forsaken city to worship.

Some minutes passed, but Ivor Trent remained motionless. Anyone entering the room would have been startled by this immobility, which was that of a waxwork. But moments of deep interior intensity have a physical reflection, and such a moment now possessed him—elevating him to an eminence from which the pattern of his life was clearly discernible.

And Ivor Trent saw that he had reached a final frontier: that he stood, not on a high-road, but at the end of a cul-de-sac. The future would hold only repetitions, not unique experiences. He would become the plagiarist of his own past.

But his will rebelled against this discovery. His plans had been made, and he decided to execute them. His friends believed he was leaving England, to write another book, and that in all probability he would not return to London for a year. Every detail had been arranged—he had let the flat for nine months; letters were to be forwarded to his bank; the luggage was now piled in the hall. He was leaving almost immediately.

The flat was at the top of a comparatively modern block near Cork Street, and Trent lived in it only when he was not working. He had never written a line in it. Each of his books had been created in very different surroundings, for, although his friends had been told he was leaving England, and although they believed he always went abroad to work, it was nevertheless a fact that every one of his books had been written in a house quite near the flat—a queer, dilapidated house, which became more strange each time he visited it. It was in Chelsea, and stood at the end of a street which ran down to the Embankment. The river could be seen from the upper windows.

Ten years ago this house had been the home of an experiment. A number of writers and artists had decided to live a communal life in it. Each had taken a room, or a couple of rooms, decorated and furnished them, rents being assessed according to the size and desirability of the accommodation selected. The communal element had been provided by the dining-room on the ground floor and a library, next to it, to which anyone could go at any time in search of companionship.

This experiment had demanded a capitalist to finance it, and eventually someone had discovered a Captain Frazer. He was an odd, proud, nervous man—then about thirty—who had been badly wounded in the war and had recently recovered from a serious nervous collapse. He had just married a strong, vigorous woman, five years his junior, who had nursed him through his illness.

For some curious reason the experiment had appealed to Captain Frazer, and he invested every penny he possessed in it. Possibly he felt he must do something in the world, and realised that he was incapable of doing much. Perhaps he believed he was serving the higher aspirations of humanity. One thing is certain, however—the idea of owning an ordinary lodging-house would have dismayed him. His ideal was to be military and extremely correct. But this hive of geniuses was entirely different. It flattered him with the promise of a reflected immortality.

Of course the experiment failed. In less than a year the house was a miniature Bedlam. Quarrels and disputes were perpetual. Wives ran away with lovers: one husband committed suicide: rents were months in arrear. Eventually, the inmates decided to sub-let their rooms, selling their furniture to the new tenants, with the result that a number of persons—in no way related to the higher aspirations of humanity—began to invade the house. Finally, only two of the original pioneers remained: Ivor Trent, and a man in a small room on the first floor, who believed he was a reincarnation of Nietzsche.

So Captain Frazer discovered that he was the owner of an ordinary lodging-house. One effect of this degradation was to make him even more military in his bearing; another was that he disassociated himself entirely from the establishment, explaining to those who did not know the facts that the venture was an eccentric whim of his wife’s. The latter, however, welcomed the failure of the experiment and directed her great energy and practical ability to the task confronting her. The house was their only asset—it must be made to yield them a living. She transformed the dining-room and the library into bed-sitting rooms, letting the former to a commercial traveller and the latter to the manager of a local picture palace. She then revealed to Nietzsche her opinion of him, which had been maturing for many months. He disappeared a few hours later, owing sixteen weeks’ rent.

Eventually, the only remaining traces of the experiment were the decorative effects in the various rooms, and numerous pieces of furniture which—having had a succession of owners—finally became Mrs. Frazer’s property. These latter were allocated to different apartments, where they stood in gay isolation, like ambassadors from a happier world, surrounded by drab pieces from a second-hand dealer which had been bought to supplement them.

This was the house to which Ivor Trent was going on this particular Sunday in October. Ten years ago, he had taken two rooms at the top, facing the river. He still had them—and every one of his books had been written there.

II

“The taxi is waiting, sir.”

Trent had not heard the servant enter the room, consequently the sound of her voice startled him.

He went into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat, then looked round the flat for the last time. Just as he was about to leave, the telephone-bell rang. He told the servant to say he was away, then followed the luggage out of the flat. When it had been loaded on to the taxi, he tipped the porter and dismissed him, then gave the driver the Chelsea address, asking him to tell Mrs. Frazer that he would arrive at about nine o’clock.

The taxi drove slowly away, leaving Trent on the pavement.

The fog had descended. It drifted through the streets, or eddied round the buildings, like fine yellow smoke. Blurred patches of light defined the immediate obscurity, but the intimate character of everything was obliterated. All was shrouded in fantastic anonymity. The recognisable had become a grotesque counterfeit of the familiar.

Trent started to walk automatically, careless of direction, fascinated by the phantom aspect of the streets. Each slowly emerging scene might have been the work of an artist who had subdued the actual to his own chaotic vision. In Piccadilly, the traffic was almost at a standstill: the headlights of buses and cars probed the drifting gloom like eyes of invisible monsters. Electric signs blazoned their legends from the void. Shouts and cries rose intermittently, and once—in the near distance—he heard the crash of glass.

He walked to Piccadilly Circus, crossed Leicester Square, only to find himself a minute later in a chaos of obscurity. For nearly an hour he groped about, becoming progressively irritable, till at last he emerged in the Strand.

A number of questions then besieged his mind simultaneously. Why had he not gone to Chelsea with the luggage? Why had he decided to dine out? And what in the name of God had induced him to lose himself in this desert of desolation! He had been ill recently, and a return of that illness would undermine every plan he had made. It was imperative to escape from himself; to work month after month on his novel; to identify himself so wholly with the creations of his imagination that his own name would convey less to him than that of one of his characters. This, and only this, was deliverance—and he was jeopardising it by wandering about fog-shrouded streets like a somnambulist!

He began to walk rapidly towards Fleet Street, having remembered a venerable tavern where he could dine, and where the risk of encountering anyone he knew—on such a night—was negligible.

The Strand was deserted. Every now and again he emerged into an oasis of clarity, but Fleet Street was a drifting darkness, and he had great difficulty in discovering the narrow alley leading to the tavern. At last, however, he detected an ochreous blur which proved to be the solitary light over the entrance.

He went into a room, the character and furniture of which has remained unchanged for centuries. It had heavily-timbered grimed windows, a low-planked ceiling, a floor covered with sawdust. Flames flickered merrily in a projecting fireplace. On one side was a long oak table: on the other were high stiff-backed partitions, sombre with age—resembling old-fashioned pews, with hard cushionless seats—which boxed off half-a-dozen diners to each ancient table. The room was as brown as an old meerschaum and rich with the aroma of ages. It is said that Charles II ate a chop here with Nell Gwynne.

The place was empty. Trent chose the inmost seat of the first partition on the left, the back of which was surmounted by a brass rail from which hung a short green curtain. Immediately behind him was a box, designed for greater privacy, containing a table for four.

Whether it was the result of wandering through wraith-like streets, or the effect of the time-haunted atmosphere of the tavern, or the beginning of illness, he was unable to determine, but gradually his surroundings seemed remote and he experienced a strange mental isolation which alienated him even from his memories. He dined, feeling like a man who knows he is dreaming, then—just after the waiter had brought his black coffee—he heard two men enter the box immediately behind him.

Something unusual in the sound of their movements arrested his attention, but this was soon explained, for he heard one say to the other:

“Bit of a tight fit. Can you manage? Give me those things. That’s more like it.”

Evidently his companion had crutches. A moment later he sank heavily on to the bench. He had chosen the corner seat, consequently only the green curtain separated him from Trent.

“That’s better! Put my crutches in the corner. Not surprised the place is empty. It’s a hell of a night. We’d better have a drink, Rendell.”

The two men continued to talk, but Trent ceased to listen. He felt ill and irritable. Then, just after the waiter had served them with drinks, he heard the crippled man say:

“Well, when are you going to tell me why you, of all people, have suddenly become interested in Ivor Trent?”

The sound of his own name seemed to widen, like an expanding circle, till it filled the room.

“It’s like this, Marsden. As you know, I’m a consulting mining engineer—I’ve done very well out of it in my day. I’ve no need to work, and, anyway, there isn’t much doing. So I draw retaining fees nowadays while waiting for things to get going again. I tell you that to show you that I’ve leisure. But the essential fact is this: I lost my wife nearly a year ago and——”

“My dear fellow, I’m dreadfully sorry! I’d no idea——”

“Nearly a year ago,” Rendell repeated. “I had a pretty bad time and I’m having a pretty bad one still. Well, in June, someone gave me Trent’s last novel. I was in Germany. I read a good deal, but I don’t read fiction as a rule. Anyway, this book rang my bell. I’ve read it three times and I’m interested in the man who wrote it. That’s why I sent you a line after all these years. I knew you’d know everything about him.”

“Don’t you believe it. I know all about his books. Oddly enough, I’ve just attempted a critical study of him as a novelist, but I don’t know him really well as a man.”

“I thought you’d known him for years?”

“So I have, on and off. I suppose, nowadays, we meet about once a year. I owe him a lot, but that’s another story. Incidentally, I rang him up to-night, hoping he’d be able to come along, but he’s away. Anyhow, this is what I want to know. Why did Trent’s last novel interest you so much?”

After a long pause, Rendell said slowly:

“I suppose it was this, really. The man who wrote that book knows all about loneliness.”

Marsden laughed.

“Only as the result of observation.”

“That may be,” Rendell replied doggedly, “but he knows all about it nevertheless. I’ve been down the road and I know the scenery.”

There was a long silence, then they began to discuss what they would eat, consulting the waiter at some length.

Trent remained motionless in his corner. Had he been well enough, he would have paid the bill and gone. It would be simple enough to leave unobserved. But he felt dizzy and knew, from recent experience, that the slightest additional exertion might have unpleasant results. To stay, and to overhear, were therefore inevitable. Marsden was, literally, only a few inches from him. So Trent remained, huddled in his corner.

A few minutes later, Rendell asked:

“What sort of age is Trent?”

“About forty.”

“What’s he look like?”

“You’d notice him anywhere. He’s tall, dark, powerful—broad forehead, and odd penetrating eyes. But a physical inventory only describes him, it doesn’t convey him. Directly you see him, you feel he’s exceptional.”

“Does he know a lot of people?”

“Oh yes, no end.” Then, after a pause, Marsden added: “Did you say you’d read only one book of his?”

“Yes, the last one.”

“Well, as you’re interested in him, you’d better get his first novel. That tells you all about him till he was twenty-one. It’s called Two Lives and a Destiny.”

“That’s an odd title.”

“It’s an odd book. Roughly, this is the story. Ivor was an only child. When he was seven he was told that his mother had died. She was very lovely and he had worshipped her. The description of their last meeting is one of the best things in the book. But that’s by the way. The legend of his mother’s death held good till he was twenty-one.”

“The legend!” Rendell exclaimed.

“Well, these were the facts. She had gone to Italy with her lover. It ended disastrously, for, three years later, she died in poverty. She wrote to her husband on her deathbed, begging him to come and to bring Ivor. He did not answer the letter. She died—and a year or two later her lover committed suicide.”

“Good God! And what sort of man was the husband?”

“You’ll find a first-rate portrait of him in Two Lives and a Destiny. He was fifteen years older than she was. He must have been about forty when she left him. He was a distinguished-looking man, rich, independent, and proud as the devil.”

“Did you know him, Marsden, or are you quoting the novel?”

“I knew him, but my knowledge of him comes from the novel. Ivor and I were at school together and I often spent part of the holidays with the Trents, as my people were in India. Old Trent was devilish impressive: cultured, aristocratic, self-sufficient. Seemed to look down on life, if you know what I mean. No use for emotional people. But I’ll say this for him: he had great physical courage. There’s a description in the novel of how he stopped a bolting horse in the Row when Ivor was ten. We thought he was God Almighty when we were kids.”

“But do you mean that he never referred to Ivor’s mother for fourteen years?”

“Never! There wasn’t a photograph of her in the house. He cut himself off from everyone who had known her. He moved to London after she left him. Before then, they had lived in Suffolk. He took the most elaborate precautions to ensure that Ivor should not learn the truth. And he did everything to widen and deepen his influence over him. Above all, he instilled his own contempt for women into him. And he did it with great subtlety.”

“To prejudice Ivor’s reaction to the facts when the inevitable disclosure came?”

“Yes. Ivor learned the facts when he was twenty-one. That was in 1914. They had spent the last two years abroad. You read the description of the scene between the father and the son in Two Lives and a Destiny. It’s amazing. As Trent told Ivor the history of his marriage, he became a stranger—a spiteful, writhing, humiliated being. Fear, hatred, tortured pride, and above all sexual jealousy, were the realities behind Trent’s façade. The fact that it was fourteen years ago; that she was dead; that he was talking to her son—counted for nothing. He flung insult after insult at her, used the foulest language, stamped and gesticulated like a madman. And behind this frenzied figure Ivor saw—in a kind of vision—the woman whose loveliness had haunted his childhood.”

“How did it end?”

“There was a terrible quarrel between them. Ivor cleared out. A few months later the war came. His father refused to see him when he left for the front. And before Ivor had been in France a month, Trent fell dead in the street.”

“And that’s the story of Two Lives and a Destiny?”

“That’s the story, Rendell. The book ends with an analysis of Ivor’s sensations on going into action for the first time. But the significant fact is this. When he was twenty-one, he was confronted by two crises in swift succession: he discovered that the man he believed his father to be was a fake; and a few months later he found himself in the inferno of the war.”

“But you said just now——”

“Here’s the food,” Marsden interrupted. “Let’s eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

They spoke only in isolated sentences during the next twenty minutes. Trent remained in his corner, a crowd of memories stampeding through his mind. Gradually, however, an unreasoning hatred of Marsden possessed him although, simultaneously, he was amused by the discovery that Marsden was one man with his own friends and another with him. There was an independence, a hint of patronage, in his attitude to Rendell which were unknown in their relations. But what chiefly disturbed Trent was the knowledge that he was still unable to leave the tavern. Any attempt to rise instantly provoked a sensation of dizziness. But one thing was definite—he had no curiosity. He knew the limits of Peter Marsden’s knowledge.

“Well, what do you think? Just coffee?”

“That’s all I want,” Rendell replied. “And now I’m going to revert to Ivor Trent.”

Marsden laughed.

“You’re very interested in him.”

“So are you,” Rendell retorted bluntly.

“I’m very full of him at the minute, I admit. But then I’ve been doing nothing but read and re-read his books for the last few weeks.”

“Yes, but apart from that,” Rendell insisted.

“He’s an interesting person, of course,” Marsden replied irritably, after a just perceptible pause.

“You said, earlier on, that you owed him a lot. Any objection to telling me in what way?”

“No, I’ve no objection, but I’d rather you kept it to yourself. It began like this. I’ve told you that Ivor and I were at school together. Well, he delivered me from a bully. I don’t know if you’ve any idea of the fanatical devotion that inspires in a schoolboy?”

“I can imagine it.”

“No, you can’t. It’s one of those things you have to experience. Ivor became my hero. I thought God must be exactly like him. But it was not only that he delivered me—it was the way he did it.”

“Don’t understand,” Rendell said abruptly.

“It was like this. The bully was twice Ivor’s size, but the latter simply obliterated him by the might of his spirit. He gave him a look, told him to clear off—and he cleared off. It was astonishing. I became a fervent believer in miracles.”

“And that was the start of your friendship?”

“Yes. A year or two after the bullying incident we drifted apart. I suddenly became pretty burly and mad-keen on games. Eventually I went up to Cambridge while Ivor was travelling all over the place with his father. I didn’t see him for a hell of a time. In fact, not till 1923—just after Two Lives and a Destiny had been published.”

“What happened to Trent in the war?”

“He was decorated for bravery and was slightly wounded in 1917. Our next meeting was rather dramatic. I’d been badly smashed up just before the Armistice. Since then I’d had treatment of all kinds, operations, and God knows what. Finally, I was told that I’d go on crutches for the rest of my life. It’s probable that I should have done myself in if I hadn’t run into Ivor again.”

“You’d not seen him for years?”

“Not since we left school. I ran into him one night in Regent Street, quite by chance. I was just getting out of a taxi with great difficulty as Ivor emerged from a restaurant with a woman—an imperious lady with a disdainful stare and a magnificent figure. He put her in the taxi I had just left and let her wait while he talked to me. She was very impatient and clearly resented the delay. I believe it amused him to keep her waiting. Anyway, he soon discovered that I was at the end of things. I told him I was living in a cottage in Surrey. A few days later he came down and stayed with me.”

Marsden broke off and remained silent for some moments, then added:

“I admit I was flattered by his visit, Rendell. Ivor was then thirty, very handsome, very much in demand. Two Lives and a Destiny had just been published and had had an instantaneous success. But the real point is this: he brought me back to life!”

“Brought you back to life!”

“Yes. He stayed some weeks. He talked a lot about literature and read a number of books to me. He’s a first-rate critic. I’d always read a fair amount but he opened another world. He revealed the spiritual structure of the books we read. Well—to cut the story short—he eventually got me a job as a publisher’s reader. Later, I became a reviewer. And now I do a good deal of free-lance journalism.”

“You certainly owe him a lot, Marsden. Everything—it seems to me. I suppose you see him pretty frequently nowadays.”

“No, I don’t. I told you, about once a year. For one thing, he frequently goes abroad for long periods to work. He writes a book every two or three years, and, when he’s working, no one hears a word from him.”

“I take it his work means everything to him?”

There was a long silence, then Marsden said slowly:

“I’m damned if I know.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I sometimes think, Rendell, that his books are only a by-product of an intense interior activity. He never discusses them and he does not mix with literary people. You hear queer odds and ends about him occasionally.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh I don’t know! They are probably all nonsense. I doubt if anyone knows more about him than I do—and I don’t know much.”

“Do you know many of his friends?”

“Scarcely any. I met a woman, quite by chance, a year or two ago in Paris, who knew him. I told her very much what I’ve just told you. Her only comment was that I had a greater gift for fiction than Ivor Trent.”

Marsden laughed, then added:

“And now you tell me that Ivor’s an expert in loneliness. That’s quite a new angle on him. I can only repeat that he knows lots of people in all sorts of worlds. Also, he’s rich and famous.”

There was a long silence, then Rendell said deliberately:

“I’ve a question to ask, but I doubt if you’d like it.”

“I’ll risk it”

“Are you jealous of Trent?”

“Not in the least.”

“You’re certain?”

“Certain!”

“You’re resentful then.”

Marsden’s attempt at a laugh was a failure. Evidently he recognised it, for there was no bravado in his tone when he asked:

“How did you guess?”

“So it’s true?”

“Of course it’s true! I told you just now about that bullying incident, but I only revealed what it meant to me at the time. I’ve regarded it from a less romantic level for a number of years.”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Marsden.”

“I believe Ivor was concerned wholly with himself—not with me.”

“I still don’t follow you.”

“I didn’t think you would. Well, let’s put it this way. To Ivor, that bully was an opportunity to test himself. He wanted to prove the power of his own will. The fact that I was being knocked about was entirely secondary.”

“How the hell can you know that?”

“I don’t know it,” Marsden replied with intense irritability. “I’m telling you what I feel. And I feel it, too, about that visit of his to my cottage. It was another opportunity to demonstrate his power. Here was a man at the end of things. It interested Ivor to identify himself with my state—and then deliver me from it. I believe he regards me in exactly the same way as he regards a character he’s created in one of his books.”

Rendell gave a short laugh.

“Well, you’ve certainly made me want to meet him. The trouble is, I should probably bore him to death.”

“I doubt it,” Marsden replied slowly. “He’s been faithless to many of his ideas, but he’s always stuck to one of them. And it makes him interested in everyone to some extent.”

“And what’s that?”

“It’s rather uncanny. He’s convinced that man contains the potentiality of a new being. I’ll repeat that in order to emphasise it. He’s convinced that man contains the potentiality of a new being.”

Rendell made some reply—but Trent did not hear it. To remain an instant longer suddenly became impossible.

He rose unsteadily, hesitated for a moment, then left the tavern unobserved by Marsden and Rendell.

III

The character of the fog had altered. It no longer drifted through the streets like pestilence made visible, but infested certain areas with a static and pall-like gloom. Everywhere was dripping desolation. The City had become its own caricature.

Trent stood irresolute for some moments, surprised to discover that all trace of physical weakness had vanished. He began to walk rapidly, unconscious of direction, aware only of a necessity for movement. Ten minutes later he found himself on the Embankment.

Again he hesitated. Sentences from the conversation he had just overheard drifted through his mind, but they seemed to relate to a stranger. He felt that a new consciousness possessed him—a luminous awareness hitherto unknown. Thought, emotion, and will had attained a flame-like unity which illuminated new and mysterious horizons. The landscape of his old life was vanishing.

Almost immediately, however, fear captured him. He rebelled against the dominion of this consciousness which reduced all experience to a dream. It must be the herald of illness, and he would combat it by clinging to the concrete and the known.

He walked on quickly.

In order to re-establish the normal, he began to recapitulate his plans. He was on his way to the Frazers. For many months he would live in his rooms, converting night into day, while he wrote the novel which had challenged his imagination for nearly a year. He would cease to be Ivor Trent. He would become the instrument of that mysterious power which could create a world more real than that of actuality. This was his programme. And yet, the more he analysed it, the less substantial it became. It was what he had planned, but it was not what was destined to be. He had reached a final frontier. Either he would never write again—or he would write a book different in kind from any he had written.

He made an angry gesture. Why did every thought turn traitor to his plans? What was happening to him? It was perilous to surrender to weakness. If illness menaced him, he must confront it with the whole might of his will. But, now, he must be patient. The first essential was to escape from these spectral streets into the seclusion of his rooms.

He looked round in search of a taxi, but the Embankment was deserted, and after a few moments’ hesitation he hurried on in the direction of Chelsea. More than once he entered a region of deeper darkness, emerging later into relative clarity, but—as he approached his destination—the fog’s dominion became more generally established, and it was only intimate knowledge of this part of the Embankment which enabled him to identify it. Finally, he stopped opposite the street leading to the Frazer’s house.

He leaned over the low Embankment wall and gazed into the vapoury void below. Several minutes passed, but he remained motionless, listening to the life of the swiftly-flowing invisible river. In the near distance, the blast of a siren suddenly gave desolation a voice. A moment later, a ruby-coloured light slowly emerged, glowed for a second, and vanished. Then all was still and dark again.

Gradually, a deep hypnotic stupor possessed him, depriving him of all sense of personality. An interior indolence lulled him to yield to this trance-like state in which only dreams had substance. But the remnant of his will rebelled, and he sought to regain contact with actuality by recalling the conversation he had overheard in the tavern. To his dismay, however, he discovered that he could only remember Marsden’s final sentence:

“He’s convinced that man contains the potentiality of a new being.”

The words circled in his brain till repetition robbed them of the last vestige of meaning. Then, with a final effort to attain normality, he turned abruptly, determined to seek sanctuary in the Frazers’ house.

Instantly he gave a cry.

He saw a shrouded figure confronting him. The face was fully revealed and Trent knew—with a certainty deeper than knowledge—that this was the countenance of a new order of being. It reflected thoughts and emotions unknown to present-day humanity. The glance of the eyes transmitted a secret wisdom. The forehead was crested with serenity.

Trent knew that a man from the Future confronted him.

It seemed to him that they stood facing each other in the timeless realm of destiny.

Then terror overwhelmed him like an avalanche, till he was conscious only of the necessity for flight. He started to run towards the Frazers’ house, and continued to run until he reached the top of the steps. Then he glanced fearfully over his shoulder. Nothing was to be seen but the drifting chaos of the fog.

Nevertheless, terror swept him again and he began to beat with clenched fists on the door.

It was opened almost immediately by Mrs. Frazer.

“Mr. Trent! You are ill!”

He just heard the words, saw the white blur of a face, then fell senseless at her feet.