The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "Then, you know, the Czar fell. There was a short time under Kerensky when we thought our property was safe. But only a short time. There came the Red Revolution, and of course we were White Russians."

  "Siberia was white for a while, wasn't it?"

  "Just for a few months, under the Cossack rule. Then the peasants, the moujiks, that I had played with, that I knew by name, turned against us—my mother and I. We had to leave, smuggled out at night by a few friendly ones. We managed to get to the Chinese border safely, but we brought almost nothing of value. We couldn't—things happened too fast."

  "I should think so!" said Mark.

  "We got to Harbin, in Manchuria. There was a colony of White Russians there, but all, like ourselves, ruined by the Revolution, and barely managing to exist.

  "Well, we had to live somehow. I was nineteen, and I loved dancing. I'd studied it in London and Paris, and I managed to find work n a sort of cabaret, a French place. But Mother wasn't well, and after almost a year, she died."

  "Was she all your family?" asked Mark.

  "All. And after a while, I worked in Canton, and then in Singapore—it's not a life I like to recall.”

  "But how did you end up here?"

  "I had an offer from Pearly Shene; it sounded like better pay, and I came. It was too late when I discovered his figuring wasn't in gold but Mex."

  "That's the regular currency in these parts," said Mark.

  "I didn't know that then. And so I landed here—the worst place of them all! Even Singapore was better."

  "What about your trip to the States?"

  "I wanted to get into America " said Vanya. "I thought that if I could once enter the States, I'd be safe from—this sort of thing. It seemed almost like Paradise—a great, rich, civilized country where life was so assured, so easy! So I saved the passage money, tried, and—failed."

  "Why?" queried Mark.

  "Don't you see? I'm not a Russian citizen, I'm not an English citizen, I had no passport; I'm literally without a country! I can never get into any civilized nation."

  "But Good Lord!" exclaimed Mark. "Why didn't you try the Governor at Taulanga? Couldn't he certify you? Tonga's British."

  "Do you think I didn't try? I spent days, literally days, at the Residency trying to see him, and when I did, be patted my cheek, and told me very politely that there wasn't a thing he could do. He only exists for British citizens. So—I tried in spite of him, and failed."

  She paused a moment, staring moodily out over the ocean.

  "That's why I was so certain you couldn't help me. Nobody could, less than a President or a Member of Parliament, or whatever you call your law-makers!"

  She rose; the flowered covering fell about her feet, and for a moment she stood with her breath-taking form silhouetted against the ocean horizon. Then she gathered her robe about her, and turned silently towad the Cove.

  Mark followed pondering. At the end of the coral spit he fell into step beside her.

  "That's the best story I've heard in the whole island world," he said. Vanya stopped suddenly, facing him. Her black eyes blazed up at him with sudden anger.

  "You don't believe me!" she cried.

  "Then tell me how you saved money for passage to America!" flared Mark. "Tell me that! On Shene's pay, I suppose!"

  "Oh!" said the girl in a half-sob of anger, "you're—you're unbearable!'

  She fled abruptly toward the Diver's Helmet. Mark turned and walked over to Loring's palm; the beachcomber snored peacefully beneath it. Mark drew back his foot and kicked the sprawled figure sharply; Loring opened a dazed and befuddled eye.

  "I don't know whether to believe her!" said Mark fiercely. "I don't know whether she's lying!"

  "Try the acid test," murmured Loring sleepily, as he resumed his slumbers.

  CHAPTER XIX

  DOUBTS

  The talk was of sudden wealth when Mark, still full of troublesome doubts of Vanya, wandered over to Loring's tree next morning. He found that worthy trading stories with one of the Ellice's crew—rumors of rich finds, giant pearls, treasure on remote islets. Mark listened again—as who hadn't in the islands—to the story of the great black pearl that had made the fortune of "Luckless" Parks, the gem known in the markets as "The Eye of Allah."

  Loring responded with the tale of a pearler trying his luck off lonely Haymet Rock. On the third descent, the diver, he asserted, had brought up a malformed oyster—a freak—and the men in the boat had pried it open immediately. There, in the fleshy folds of the mollusc, for just an instant, had flashed a veritable pearl of pearls! A great pink, radiant gem, perfect in form and gigantic in size, a fortune for its finders. Just an instant, and the great gem, slippery with oyster slime, had flashed elusively out of their fingers, and dropped into the clear waters. Loring told of the desperate faces craned to watch its sinking, and how, drawn by the luminous flash, a great Opah, the original king-fish, had darted in a rose and green streak from beneath the boat, and swallowed the priceless, shining globule! And how the pearler's crew, abandoning diving, had taken to fishing, and had fished the vicinity for weeks in a vain attempt to capture the guilty Opah!

  "And they're still at it!" concluded Loring. "The ships that pass Haymet Rock still bring back stories of the perpetual fisherman, and they say the crew is springing gills and growing scales from a steady fish diet!"

  The story was well received. The seaman guffawed, and departed to repeat it to his shipmates at the bar, and even Mark's moroseness yielded a hearty chuckle.

  "Not even a drink," mourned Loring.

  "I owe you a quart, and I'll stand you a drink. Seen Vanya?"

  "No. And I can't use your quart —not by day-light. No fun at all, getting spiffed by day; the cold light brings out one's deficiencies too clearly."

  "You're a connoisseur of decadence."

  "Just an artist," grinned the beachcomber. "By the way, is this bruise in the shape of a boot-print a memento from you?"

  "I needed your advice," said Mark, smiling in remembrance, "which you gave."

  He thought suddenly of Loring's bemused answer to his query. "Try the acid test!" Might be good advice, at that!

  "Listen here," said the beachcomber abruptly, "My last night's advice, whatever it was, is probably valueless, but I've an opinion or two to render now, and the first is that you're a fool."

  Mark wasn't irritated; the other's manner had a disarming air of banter, underlaid by a serious tone.

  "I've been called so by those better qualified to judge than you," he responded with a grin.

  "No one's better qualified than I," said Loring. "A fool is always a better judge of fools than any wise man. The fool knows his subject from the very fundamentals of his own experience, from the inside, as it were; the wise man gets all his knowledge of fools from hearsay."

  "Then you qualify as an expert indeed," said Mark. "What of it?"

  "Just this: Your particular brand of tomfoolery lies in blinding yourself to certain very obvious facts, because, I suppose, they're unpleasant facts, or because they offend your pride, or some other equally valid reason."

  "For instance?" queried Mark.

  "For instance Vanya. You're in, love with her, you know!"

  "I certainly am not!" exclaimed Mark vehemently. "On the contrary, I dislike her strenuously. Simply because I admire her obvious beauty is no sign I’m in love with her!"

  "No one," said Loring dryly, "could possibly be as beautiful as you seem to think she is. And furthermore, no person but a born artist will chase an impersonal idea of beauty over a whole ocean. It's not the beauty you were pursuing. It's the lady."

  Mark was thoroughly startled by Loring's accusations. The possibility he had never admitted to himself stared him in the face through the other's blunt words, and he hardly knew how to reply.

  "Moreover," continued the beachcomber relentlessly, "I don't care how you describe the emotion to yourself—call it fascination, infatuation, or obsession; it doesn't alter the fact."<
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  "Lord!" groaned Mark. "You're a brutal devil!"

  "Like the surgeon and his knife," said Loring. "For your own good. You Yankees aren't made for the tropics. Your cool, logical characters soften, disintegrate, go to pieces, under the equator, like mine."

  Mark had no reply to make. He was dazed, upset, and thoroughly puzzled.

  "That's your danger," proceeded his tormenter. "Suppose you had her under your familiar temperate sky; suppose this exotic, romantic, poisoning tropic background were lacking. How would you feel then? Would she hold her charm in your eyes? Would a prosaic background destroy her lure? Is she attractive only by virtue of contrast with her undesirable associates, and would the competition of cultured women topple the illusion of her superiority? What do you think?"

  "I don't know," muttered Mark. "What do you think?"

  "What I think doesn't matter. The moral angle, which means so much to you provincials, doesn't affect my opinion, and that makes my likes and dislikes utterly meaningless to you. But personally, I like her, despite her poor estimate of me. In fact, her prejudice does her credit!"

  "Oh Lord!" groaned Mark. "If I only believed her story!"

  "So she told one, then. That's the moral question again, you see. Is she fit for the company of decent women? Could I take her into my home, to meet my sister, my mother? The New England standard!"

  "Haven't you any standard?" flared Mark.

  "I have my code. Didn't I just refuse your offer of a drink? Now feel I've earned the right to one, after this conversation. I'll accept your next offer gracefully."

  "The devil! You're as consoling as an ugly-tongued traffic cop."

  "And I serve a parallel purpose. I point out wherein you've failed to observe certain well-established rules and regulations. The amount of the fine, of course, is up to you."

  "One couldn't believe anything bad of her," muttered Mark, "to look at that lovely face of hers!"

  "How old is the lady?" queried Loring irrelevantly.

  "Fourteen the first year of the war—that makes her twenty-one."

  "Well," mused the beachcomber, "one can fall a long way in twenty-one years. It took me only a decade longer to reach my level."

  "That's a consolation."

  "It is. Vanya can't possibly be assigned to the same level, you see; she must, by logical inference, occupy a higher one, since she looks down on me. That's a self-evident fact, isn't it?"

  "Your cursed verbal pyrotechnics!" snarled Mark. "A lot of help they are!"

  "Have they earned me a drink?" grinned Loring.

  "Come on." Mark paused suddenly. "That's it!" he exclaimed abruptly.

  "That's which?"

  "I've got it! The acid test—the Trial by Fire!"

  "She'd be a sensation on the American stage," observed Mark, watching the flash of Vanya's white supple limbs through the rents of the vagabond-like costume she wore.

  "Wrong as usual," contradicted his cynical companion. "Her features are too delicate to cross the footlights, though she might make the cinema. Still, that hint of intelligence in her face might kill even that chance, judging from some of your screen epics."

  "You're a cold proposition," laughed Mark.

  Vanya was singing now. Her eyes passed coolly over Mark, ignoring his tentative smile as she had done all evening. She finished her song and vanished without a sign of recognition. Loring gave Mark a questioning glance.

  "Yes," said Mark. "Now the Trial by Fire."

  "I'll wager our current quart you lose."

  "I want to lose. If I do, I'll know she's straight."

  "No bet?"

  "I'll do this," said Mark thoughtfully. "I'll stand you a quart if I do lose. If I win—we all lose."

  "Fair enough! Do you mind if I consume the current quart?"

  "Any time at all!" growled Mark.

  "Then," said Loring, draining his glass, "I'm about to bestow on you an ancient and honorable title. I hereby dub you—Easy Mark!"

  " 'Easy Mark' is right," snapped the other as he left the table. "I mean 'Easy Mark' was right."

  CHAPTER XX

  He ascended the stairs to the upper hall. A dim light shone beneath the door of a room half-way down the corridor that must of necessity be Vanya's quarters, since the other two girls were still downstairs. Shene's roam was on the ground floor, and Hong slept, if he slept at all, Heaven knew where. He paused at the door; probably had no more lock than his own, he thought.

  "Trial by Fire!" he murmured, and rapped sharply on the panel.

  "Yes?" called a voice—Vanya's voice!

  He deliberately turned the knob; the door gave and he stepped in. Vanya looked up in startled surprise as he closed the door behind him. He glanced about the room, very similar, save for the single window, to his own—furnished with a narrow bed, a single straight chair, a bureau with a mirror, and a wooden wash-stand with a pitcher and basin. Vanya sat on the bed, with the long evening gown she had worn the preceding night crumpled in her lap; she was apparently mending it. The single chair was bedecked with a scanty litter of other clothes.

  The girl, as she stared wide-eyed at Mark's unceremonious entrance, still wore the tattery costume of her last dance; in the room's heat she had discarded the flowered robe across the foot of the bed. She sprang to her feet and reached for it as if to drape it about her semi-revealed figure.

  "You again!" she exclaimed. "What do you want here?"

  Mark made no answer; as she fumbled with the scarlet-flowered robe, he suddenly advanced a step, swung his arm about her waist, and pressed his lips against her full, pouting ones!

  Vanya neither screamed nor struggled, nor did she yield; her body was pressed rigidly against his by his arm, but her soft lips, except for their warmth, were as unresponsive as those of a stone statue. A moment only Mark held her, then he released her. She pressed her fingers across her lips and backed slowly away from him, sinking to the bed with her eyes fixed dazedly on his face.

  "Well," said Mark, "why don't you call for help? Why don't you scream?"

  "Scream?" said the girl dully. "Who'd come? Your friend Loring? Or Hong? Or Pearly Shene? Aren't you a paying guest?"

  She tried to shift the rags to cover her bare white knees. Mark made no answer to her words, but seated himself on the bed beside her. Suddenly he again drew her to him, bending her back across his knees; he leaned forward and once more pressed his lips to hers.

  There was a violence in this second kiss that he had hardly intended; he was suddenly involved in his own plan in a manner somewhat unexpected. Vanya was rigid and unyielding in his arms, but somehow Mark felt, or thought he felt, a change in her. Then suddenly she was struggling, twisting, writhing in an attempt to escape from the circle of his arms. He withdrew his lips, and she lay motionless, her eyes closed, and her breath sounding in little gasps.

  "Why don't you scream?" Mark repeated.

  "Please," she said in a low voice. "Please—let me go."

  By way of answer, Mark cupped his great brown hand beneath her chin, and holding her firmly against her struggles, kissed her again. And in the midst of this procedure, she ceased to struggle; she was passive in his embrace, and a curious and unexpected thrill moved in Mark's own being.

  Had she responded? Had he imagined a scarcely perceptible flutter of the warm lips? He wondered, for no one, except clever Loring, could have read the real reason for Vanya's hauteur and coldness to him —that her attitude was a mechanism of defense against the love she feared. Out of the bitter circumstances of her life had grown the distrust of men that led her to I erect her shield of disdain, and from her first meeting with Mark had come the fear of the very thing that was now occurring to her. Her defense was cracking, and even though Mark could not know her feelings, he sensed enough to do no more than repeat his kiss with added fierceness.

  This time he was certain! This time he felt her response. And still she lay passive and unresisting in his arms, with those dusky eyes of hers now gazing seriously into
his own! Again he kissed her, with an ardor that was quickly outrunning that carefully engineered plan with which he entered the room.

  He recalled himself. This I wouldn't do! Not while the Trial I by Fire remained to be given. But the warm throb of the girl's half-revealed body, the silky feel of her black hair on his arm —. He pressed one final kiss on her now responsive lips, while her arm slipped softly over his shoulder and drew him still closer.

  He placed her upright on the bed, and stood erect. Vanya sat with her face buried in her hands, her ebony hair cascading across her bare arms.

  "You didn't scream," said Mark in a half-choked voice, "because you didn't want to!"

  She made no answer, but raised her head until the dark eyes met his. She looked at him with a serious, frightened, puzzled face; Mark had to steel himself to continue his designated course.

  "Will you deny that?" he muttered, wondering how to proceed.

  Vanya shook her head silently, with her puzzled eyes still fixed on his. Mark, for his part, was him. self more or less at a loss ; though he had burst in upon the girl determined to carry through his plan, yet her bewildered, half-reluctant yielding to him seemed entirely at variance with the attitude he might have expected. Still, he told himself, what of it? He was here with a definite purpose; he was going; through with it.

  A burst of sound from below interrupted the progress of Mark's plans. There came a racket of shouts and a crashing of chairs and tables — Shene's bellow, sailors' shouts, and keening through the, hubbub, a familiar voice raised in song!

  "I sing a song

  Of men unclean,

  To Ho Li Hong

  And Pearly Shene!

  Their liquor's strong,

  And so's their smell!

  So send them both along

  To Hell!"

  "Oh!" said Vanya, passing her hand dazedly through her black hair. "Again—now! I can't stand this!"

  The hullabaloo rose to a crescendo of shouts, oaths, rending wood, and crashing glasses. Loring's song shrilled again above the brawl.