The Sword and the Net полностью

Otto wandered uncomfortably from one vast, crowded room to another. He was tired and worried and uncomfortable. He felt, although he sneered at himself for so feeling, embarrassed by the lionization he had received and acutely, ridiculously self-conscious of the special sort of prominence he was achieving visually by being in ordinary clothes. He seemed forever to be slipping out of Nils Jorgensen’s way of thought and forcing himself back into it.

It was after the grand auction that it all grew too much for him and he decided to slip quietly away, as he had seen many do even while newcomers kept arriving. He found his way, down stairs and through chattering throngs, to the main entrance hall, but he had not yet decided how and where to find his hat when a hand fell upon his arm and the troubling faint perfume came to his nostrils and a voice spoke in his ear.

“Traitor!” said Mrs. Van Teller—and he turned sharply to see her standing a little above him on the first tread of the wide, sweeping stairway. She looked amazingly beautiful, with the ripe, un-ageing beauty of Olympus, and the strange, almost blue-white hair seemed, as he looked up at her, the only possible crown for the face beneath it.

She stepped down from the slight eminence and stood beside him, her hand still on his arm. She said:

“I know it’s all very dull and stupid, Nils. But think of the money we’ll be sending to Athens!”

Otto murmured something. He was looking at her eyes and finding, for the fifth or sixth time in the three days he had known her, that they were not quite as he had remembered them.

“Don’t tell me!” she said, smiling at him. “You were going to leave! You know you were! . . . Don’t. Wait just a little while. They’ll all go soon; then well have a chat and a drink together—just you and I. I want to thank you—and talk to you about your plans, and . . .”

She broke off, catching sight of a group, about to depart, who were looking towards her expectantly. She moved towards them, talking as she went, but Otto could still feel the pressure of her fingers upon his arm.

He turned back as if to go up the stairs again. He would stay. He would, if such a thing proved possible, find himself a solitary corner and sit there, with a glass of champagne, until she found him. The waiting would probably be long, but wass denn—be had much to think about.

He went slowly up the stairs, past a steady flow of people coming down. It was a long and tedious journey, for all of them stared and many paused to speak with him and shake his hand. But he reached the second floor at last and the open doors of the huge so-called music room. It was still seething with people—and their senseless clattering suddenly filled him with rage.

He turned abruptly away, afraid he might not be able to keep his feelings from his face—and he came into hard collision with a hurrying man.

“Hey!” said Karl Etter. “Oh, hello, Jorgensen, glad to see you. Say, you went over big to-night—nice going!” He hurried away, throwing a “See you later!” over his shoulder as he went, a lean, shambling figure in dinner clothes only redeemed from disreputability by his unstudied disregard for them.

Otto stared after him without moving, smitten suddenly by an idea which, the longer he considered it, grew more and more into certainty. It explained everything—the strange delay of the Machine in approaching him, the inescapable and growing feeling that he was going through a period of test—everything!

He became conscious that someone was addressing him, and found himself looking down at a small and elderly woman who, by reason of her simple gown and crutched ebony cane, might have stepped out of another century. On the lined old face was a shy and sweet and determined smile, and the eyes which looked up at him were bright and blue and impossibly young.

“You must forgive me,” she was saying. “But I had to speak to you. I don’t know many people here and there was no one to present us to each other.” Her voice was shy, like her smile—and Otto was irresistibly reminded, despite the absence of any similarity in feature or voice or manner, of the mother he could barely remember.

He did not, this time, have to force the smile which came to his face. He bowed, perhaps a little more gracefully than Nils Jorgensen should have bowed. He said:

“I am happy that you spoke.” He waited, cutting off unborn a pleasant little phrase far too polished for any young seaman, however heroic.

She said: “I heard you speak, in the theatre. And I have been watching you.” The words came shyly and the lined face was tinted with a little flush, but the youthful eyes were steady with brave purpose.

She said: “You have suffered. They have killed the people you love. But you are going to fight them—you have fought them already: you saved one life they would have taken.”

Otto looked at her. He thought he was not hearing what she said.