He pulled curtains and made sure that the door to the hallway was locked, and walked over to the bed which they had shown him how to pull out of its ingenious hiding-place in the wall. There was a mass of packages on the bed, of all shapes and colours and sizes, the fruits of the two-hour shopping trip upon which the little, bespectacled assistant of the Consul had taken him. He rifled among the parcels until he found what he wanted—a small affair of cheaper appearance than the others.
He ripped it open and brought to light a penknife and a small black and chromium propelling pencil. He was very busy then for fifteen minutes—after which time he was repossessed of the only important thing which the sinking of the
He looked at the chair by the window—but then he looked at the bed, and after a moment went over to it and swept all the packages to the floor and began to rip off his clothes.
In three minutes the lights were out and he was between the covers and deep in the sleep of exhaustion.
“And that,” said Nils Jorgensen carefully, “is all that I can tell you.” He tried not to fix his gaze upon any one face in the hundreds turned up to him. He had been warned against this—not only by Mrs. Van Teller but also by a plump, harassed stage manager and several other well-meaning persons connected in various ways with this expensive hodge-podge of (he thought) inordinately dull ‘entertainment’ whose obviously considerable cash proceeds were for ‘Greek Relief,’ whatever exactly this ambiguous phrase might mean.
“I would like now very much,” said Nils Jorgensen, coming to the peroration upon which he had worked so carefully and which had so much delighted Mrs. Van Teller, “to say to all ‘thank you for the way you have listened’—and to express much and high appreciation of this wonderful country: it is truly a free land of free people.”
He stood straight—almost but not quite at military attention. He bowed with a little, stiff movement which should have been ungraceful but somehow was not. In the discreet but revealing limelight he was pleasing to the eye—tall and lean and wide-shouldered in the new dark clothes which were good but not too good; blond and hard and clean, with deep shadows under the high cheekbones lending a touch almost of asceticism to the frankly Nordic face; slightly constrained and awkward in manner, but saved from gaucherie by simplicity and self-respect.
He walked off the stage to a rolling wave of applause which amazed him by its volume. He smiled inside, with a curling of mental lip: what easily deluded sheep were these, fat and soft and sterile in their self-complacency!
Mrs. Van Teller herself was waiting in the wings. The applause rolled on, undiminished by his disappearance. He stood close to Mrs. Van Teller and found both his hands in hers. A curious little shock travelled up his arms, and he became aware of her perfume and the extraordinary texture of her skin, cool and thick and firm, and alive, he thought, as no other skin he had ever touched; alive as if a current flowed beneath it of some unknown, uncharted potency.
“Nils!” she said. “You were wonderful!” She still held his hands.
“Listen!” she said—and he heard that still the applause went on. She released his hands. “You must go back,” she said. “They want to see you again.” She pushed at his shoulders. “Go back! You needn’t say anything. Bow!”
Otto turned towards the wings again.
“And Nils!” came an imperious whisper.
Otto marched out on to the stage and the spotlight picked him up and held on him. He made his stiff little bow again—and this time, as he straightened, he smiled.
The applause was redoubled as he left the stage, even continuing for several unrequited moments. . . .
There was a party after the performance, and the great Van Teller mansion on Park Avenue, unopened during the last years of the banker’s life but recently used again by his widow, overflowed with guests. All New York was there, said the papers, meaning three hundred men in dress clothes and perhaps more women. There were much gabble, a little unobtrusive music, a quantity oi strong drink—and yet more profit for the admirable Cause.