50+ Space Action Adventure Classics. Жюль Верн

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СКАЧАТЬ man would have approved of what we did. That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of position and used them basely. That mattered not at all.”

      “Yes,” I said; “it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, swept me on to follow. With that revolver — and blubbering with hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? ‘Give?’ Hurl yourself down the steep?”

      Nettie’s hands fell upon the table. “I can’t tell what it was,” she said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. “Girls aren’t trained as men are trained to look into their minds. I can’t see it yet. All sorts of mean little motives were there — over and above the ‘must.’ Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes.” She smiled — a flash of brightness at Verrall. “I kept thinking of being like a lady and sitting in an hotel — with men like butlers waiting. It’s the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner than that!”

      I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning.

      “It wasn’t all mean,” I said slowly, after a pause.

      “No!” They spoke together.

      “But a woman chooses more than a man does,” Nettie added. “I saw it all in little bright pictures. Do you know — that jacket — there’s something — — — You won’t mind my telling you? But you won’t now!”

      I nodded, “No.”

      She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very earnestly, seeking to give the truth. “Something cottony in that cloth of yours,” she said. “I know there’s something horrible in being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round. In the old time — to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton — and the grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother’s dreadful kitchen! And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn’t understand you and I did him. It’s different now — but then I knew what he meant. And there was his voice.”

      “Yes,” I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, “yes, Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that before!”

      We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions.

      “Gods!” I cried, “and there was our poor little top-hamper of intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire, these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like — like a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas.”

      Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. “A week ago,” he said, trying it further, “we were clinging to our chicken coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a week ago. But to-day — — —?”

      “To-day,” I said, “the wind has fallen. The world storm is over. And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that makes head against the sea.”

      Section 4

      “What are we to do?” asked Verrall.

      Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete.

      “Well,” said I, “the matter seems fairly simple. You two” — I swallowed it — “love one another.”

      I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence.

      “You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at it

       from many points of view. I happened to want — impossible things.

       … I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you.” I turned to

       Verrall. “You hold yourself bound to her?”

      He nodded assent.

      “No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearness in the air — for that might happen — will change you back …?”

      He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, “No, Leadford, no!”

      “I did not know you,” I said. “I thought of you as something very different from this.”

      “I was,” he interpolated.

      “Now,” I said, “it is all changed.”

      Then I halted — for my thread had slipped away from me.

      “As for me,” I went on, and glanced at Nettie’s downcast face, and then sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, “since I am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, since that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me — I must turn about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you… . We must divide the world like Jacob and Esau… . I must direct myself with all the will I have to other things. After all — this passion is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?”

      I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall’s pose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke. “But — — — ” she said, and ceased.

      I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair.

       “It is perfectly simple,” I smiled, “now that we have cool heads.”

      “But IS it simple?” asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of being.

      I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. “You see,” she said, “I like Willie. It’s hard to say what one feels — but I don’t want him to go away like that.”

      “But then,” objected Verrall, “how — — —?”

      “No,” said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back into a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quickly into one long straight line.

      “It’s so difficult — — — I’ve never before in all my life tried to get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I’ve not treated Willie properly. He — he counted on me. I know he did. I was his hope. I was a promised delight — something, something to crown life — better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride… . He lived upon me. I knew — when we two began to meet together, you and I — — — It was a sort of treachery to him — — — “

      “Treachery!” I said. “You were only feeling your way through all these perplexities.”

      “You thought it treachery.”

      “I don’t now.”

      “I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me.”

      I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking.

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