The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "What was it?" queried Mark. "It was discovering his utter worthlessness. He's like a cut-glass bottle, all sparkle, but empty inside. It hurt me to learn that, because I was different then; Harbin. Canton, Singapore, and Shene's Cove all seemed like way-stations to America. I was hopeful; you see."

  "I don't think you looked quite to the bottom of the bottle, or the flashes blinded you."

  "They blind you!" said the girl impatiently.

  “Percy Loring of Abbeycroft," mused Mark. "That's how he introduced himself."

  "Doubtless a lie," said Vanya. "Neither of us knows his story, though I've heard him tell a dozen to sailors. He's a mystery we'll never solve, and I for one am less interested in it than in doing my daily washing, which I'm going to do."

  She sprang erect, charmingly boyish in her whipcord breeches and black boots.

  "Do you have to go?" asked Mark, dragging his tall frame reluctantly erect.

  "It mustn't accumulate," said the girl with a smile. "I haven't enough to spare."

  Mark followed her down the ridge that topped the coral reef. They picked their way carefully along, sending small showers of dislodged pebbles bounding down the sheer sides. Suddenly Vanya paused with a little cry of surprised interest. "Look!”

  Mark followed her finger's direction. Below them, on the shelving strip of sand that fringed the inner side of the reef, a train of small moving dark objects caught his eye. Tiny sea-turtles, and just hatching. He saw the disturbed sand, well above tide-water level, where the little creatures were digging their way up from the buried nest where the eggs had lain, until the heat of the tropical sun, beating down through the covering sand, had hatched them.

  One by one the awkward little creatures, no larger than a watch, struggled out of the sand, and made their way unerringly directly to the green water's edge. Not one hesitated or started in a false direction; each followed an infallible instinct that led it straight to its native element.

  Minute by minute, the parade of tiny amphibians continued to emerge. They had watched at least a dozen claw their way out of the sand and drag themselves laboriously to the sea. But there they were at home! There they were in their natural environment, no longer at the mercy of creatures of land and air, protected by their shells against aquatic enemies.

  "How sure they are!" exclaimed Vanya. "They're born knowing exactly where they belong, and what to do to get there. I think instinct is wiser than reason; human beings blunder about the business of living, and more often than not, make a miserable failure of it, but turtles never blunder."

  "Never?" said Mark. "Look there!"

  He pointed to the strip of beach below them. One of the tiny creatures had fallen into a funnel-like depression in the sand, and was struggling vainly to release itself. It could not climb the yielding slope, which crumbled before it and threw it again to the bottom. Time after time it fought its war half to the top, and slid helplessly again into the little pit. They watched its unreasoning, instinct-driven efforts.

  "See!" said the girl. "It could get out on this side. This side is lower; if it would only turn around!"

  "It never will," said Mark. "It will keep trying to climb the side toward the sea; its instinct tells it to move toward the water, and unless some outside force intervanes. it will struggle against that side—the ocean side—until it dies."

  He lowered himself to a projecting rock, and dropped to the sand. He seized the turtle, and turned, holding it at arm's length toward Vanya. Smiling at her shriek of refusal, he turned toward the water, and placed the diminutive amphibian at the ocean's edge. It disappeared at once, with frantically beating feet, into the green depths that had already welcomed its brothers. Mark watched it vanish in silence, and clambered back up the ten-foot cliff to Vanya's side.

  "That was a kind thing to do!" she said. "I shouldn't have imagined that you'd think of it."

  "Animals—young, helpless animals—deserve protection at human hands," said Mark briefly.

  "You don't care for hunting, then?"

  "Not some kinds. I suppose big game hunting is fun, where the quarry conceivably has a chance to turn the tables on the hunter, but fox hunting, or rabbit or deer—not for me! I shot down foemen in the War, and loved the thrill of it, but they had the same arms and the same chance I did."

  "Yes," said Vanya. "You can be cruel to human beings without a qualm, can't you?"

  "Human beings can fight back!"

  "Can they?" she said slowly. "Always? But never mind," she continued in a changed voice. "I used to enjoy hunting; my father hunted bear and wolves."

  "From his lodge at Lake Baikal?" asked Mark, smiling.

  "I don't care whether you believe me!" snapped Vanya, turning again toward the shore extremity of the point.

  "But I do believe you!" cried Mark.

  "You know you don't!"

  "I do! I've believed it for days."

  CHAPTER XXIX

  "Mark," said Vanya, again stopping, "if you really believed what I've told you, you couldn't — you simply couldn't—have acted as you have toward me! You're not just naturally cruel; you're not a sadist —or you wouldn't have rescued that crawling little reptile just now."

  "Vanya, I have been kinder—as gentle as I could be! You know it!"

  "Kind—gentle! Yes, if you mean not beating me, or if you mean that—that disgusting offer of charity! Is that what you mean? Is that your conception of kindness? Because it isn't mine!"

  "Dear," said Mark, "don't let's work into one of those bitter quarrels of ours. I tell you I believe your story; I'm convinced that you told me the truth."

  "But not the whole truth, I suppose! That's what you're trying to imply, isn't it? You mean I've left out—details—of my life in Canton or Singapore, or here. Don't you? Don't you?"

  "Honey, I haven't asked you—"

  "No, you haven't! But you wanted to know how I paid for my passage to San Francisco! You'd have doubted my story about Bill Torkas if it weren't for Loring—your dear, worthless friend Loring! And then —!" She paused, almost choking with indignation.

  "Yes! Then! Then what?" bristled Mark. His own none too easy temper was beginning to raise its head.

  “Then—then you had the unspeakable audacity to throw up to me the fact that I accepted your damnable proposal! And to top it all off—to add the last sneer, the final insult—you tell me casually that you made me the proposition as a test! That you'd have taken me anyway!"

  "And so I did make it! So I would have! I wanted you to refuse me!" Vanya was crying now; tears rolled from her eyes down her brown cheeks, despite the desperate blinking of her eyes to withhold them. It was the first time Mark had seen her really weep; she was giving way unrestrainedly to her anger and unhappiness, and even through his own anger a trace of pity awakened.

  "Vanya!" he cried. "Listen a moment! It's all true, what you're saying. I've been an utter cad. But can't you see why? Can't you understand my reasons? You did accept the bargain! Could I tell my mother or my sister—"

  "Mother and sister!" stormed the girl. "I had a mother and a father and a brother—and any of them would have shot you to death, eagerly and gladly, for much less than you've done to me! And after all this, you tricked me into admitting I loved you! I wish—" Her voice broke; she choked back a sob, while Mark stared speechless at her.

  "Why don't you withdraw your offer?" she sobbed. "Your test worked! You found out what you wanted to know! Does a promise made to a woman like me bind a—gentleman?"

  REVULSION

  "Loring," said Mark, staring at the empty bay, "Would you like to go back to England ?"

  "About as much as I'd like to walk right into Paradise—and it's just as impossible." The beachcomber twisted his brown toes in the moonlight.

  "I could help."

  "So you could, if I were willing; which I'm not. I have my reasons."

  "They must be strong ones to keep you here."

  "Maybe I'm wanted for murder," observed Loring cheerfully. />
  "Then you wouldn't be here. Tonga's British." Mark paused, then continued. "I've a mind to get in touch with your family. Perhaps they'll do something if you won't!"

  "Go ahead," said the beachcomber complacently. "You'll be chagrined to learn that Loring isn't my name, and that Abbeycroft doesn't exist."

  "You're determined on utter ruin!" Mark exclaimed in exasperation. "Would you take money, as a sort of parting gift? Or I could send a few dollars each month."

  "Great idea,” said Loring. “On a few American dollars I could soon drink myself to death."

  "In other words, you won't take help."

  "You caught my subtle meaning. But I appreciate your intentions; I'm really grateful." He glanced at the hotel. "Here's your boy."

  "My boy? Oh, the native I sent to Nuku for the prau." Mark turned to the young native glistening brown in the moonlight. “My boat come?" he asked.

  "Boat come tomorrow," confirmed the lad. "Big pearl boat come, too."

  "A ship!" said Loring in surprise. "That's a miracle—three ships in as many weeks during the dry months. Shene'll grow affluent, the dog! What name?"

  "Ker'dec," responded the native.

  "The Kermadec," interpreted the beachcomber. "Captain Horsten, as ugly a brute as you'll find under the equator."

  "He'll do without Vanya," said Mark grimly, fishing among the change in his pocket and tossing the boy a silver dollar.

  The native caught it and departed. Mark called a good-night to Loring and wandered after him, noting the yellow oil-light glowing in Vanya's window. It had been hours since he'd seen her, not since their argument of the morning.

  He felt no desire for renewed argument. He walked slowly toward the point, thinking of the problems that had harassed him ever since his departure from San Francisco. He had set out with high hopes of adventurous events and a romantic life; yet ever since that first day, his wanderings had been inextricably tangled in the career of the black-haired Russian girl whom he had seen on the dock and met in the steerage.

  Vanya! Loring, shrewd and clever and satyric, had told him that he was in love with her; well, he was. He might as well admit the fact to himself. He didn't want to be; the admission was reluctant, unpleasant, and yet—in another way he was glad to face it. Not that it simplified his problem to name the emotion love, rather than calling it infatuation or obsession; if anything, it complicated the mess. And Vanya's reciprocal emotion—what did even that count against the bald fact that she had accepted his infamous offer?

  Mark stared at the lighted square of window, and turned away toward the deserted point. He picked his way out on the coral spit, and paused as he reached the spot from which they bad watched the hatching of the turtles. There he sat with his legs hanging over the edge of the little cliff, staring down at the still ruffled sand whence the newborn amphibians had emerged.

  The wind would smooth it out eventually, of course, but as yet the small mounds and hollows where the turtles had struggled to the surface were visible as a reminder. The turtles had met their problems, Mark thought, with a directness and a certainty that should give an example to him. They wasted no efforts in futile speculation as to which way lay the sea; they were born and knew it at once.

  Mark was, he thought, like the little turtle who had strayed into the sand-pit. He could not change direction, but struggled helplessly against the sandy walls of his life's training. Loring had different ideals, different standards; no matter—Mark realized that it was too late to change his own.

  He sat perhaps half an hour on the shelf of the reef. The moon, rising a little later each night, had nearly reached the zenith, and its silver luminosity cast a kind of magic beauty over the island. Mark almost regretted departing on the morrow; the place had a haunting loveliness by moonlight.

  Then another sort of loveliness awoke in his consciousness. He thought of Vanya, of her features pale with anger, or smiling one of her rare, grave smiles, or—as he seen her once—laughing. And he began to realize that the beauty in the scene of silver moonlight was not entirely due to the charm of the tropical island; part of it, at least, was bound up with the presence on that island of the dark-haired girl he had followed so tenaciously and so far. Tongatabu, lacking Vanya's presence, would have seemed no more beautiful than the islands of the Carolines, or Fiji, or Samoa, or a dozen others he had visited and left. It was not the island at all, he concluded; it was Vanya — Vanya, who half-loved, half-hated him, and whom he half-despised and half-worshiped.

  Back in the clearing, he could still see the lighted rectangle of her window in the Diver's Helmet. Suddenly he wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be gentle and kind, and to forget the bitterness that ever lay between them. He rose abruptly, and made his way back along the reef to the clearing, and into the oil-lit bar-room.

  CHAPTER XXX

  Shene and Hong were leaning on the bar together. Shene nodded as he entered, removing an odorous pipe from his mouth.

  "Leaving tomorrow?" he said.

  "Yes," answered Mark shortly.

  “We'll be sorry to lose Vanya," said Shene, with a yellow-toothed smirk. "We'll be sorry to lose her," he repeated.

  Something in Mark resented Shene's use of the girl's name. "She'll be happier in the States," he said.

  "Doubtless—doubtless!" rumbled Shene. "This is a hard life for a girl."

  Mark passed on, and mounted the stairs. Vanya's door was closed; he rapped softly on the panel, and entered at her low reply.

  She was sitting on the bed, engaged in her interminable mending; she looked up gravely as Mark entered. Without a word, his mood of romance still upon him, he stepped to her side, leaned over her, and kissed her. Her arms stole about his shoulders; she held him tightly to her for a moment.

  "Dear Mark!" she said very softly as she released him, and he stood erect. It was then that he noticed what garment she had been mending—the loose crimson blouse that was a part of her dancing costume.

  "Vanya!" he said. "Why bother to mend that? You'll have no more use for it here."

  "A ship comes in tomorrow," she replied, still gazing at him with serious eyes. "I shall have to dance."

  "No, honey! Whether you've promised or not, about the dancing, you won't have to dance here tomorrow night. You've forgotten that the mail packet sails day after tomorrow. Tomorrow we go to Taulanga; I've ordered a prau here to take us."

  "I haven't forgotten the mail packet, Mark."

  "Then why bother mending that? We'll be gone before evening."

  "We won't," said Vanya. "I'm going to dance tomorrow.”

  "I tell you we'll be gone!"

  "You will, Mark. I can't go through with it."

  "Go through with it! Vanya, what do you mean?"

  "Our bargain," she said gravely. "Mark, I can't do it! I'm not going!"

  DEPARTURE DAY

  "She won't get away with it!" muttered Mark, finally giving up the attempt to sleep as dawn lightened his windows. He swung out of the rumpled bed and set about the routine of dressing.

  Vanya hadn't yielded. Endless arguments of the preceding night had left both sides exhausted, but Vanya had won. She wouldn't even answer questions save to reiterate that she couldn't go. Yes, she hated the Cove, but she couldn't go. Yes, she wanted to enter the States, but her end of the bargain was off. And indeed yes, she still loved Mark —but she couldn't go. And that was all.

  "She's bluffing!" raged Mark as he laced his boots. "She wants to bargain, and it's unworthy of her. She wants—I suppose—marriage!"

  He slipped into the empty hall, where the daylight dimmed the pale oil-lamp, and at Vanya's door ventured a faint rap.

  "Won't wake her if she's asleep,' he thought.

  But her voice came instantly. "Mark?"

  "Yes."

  Her muffled footsteps sounded, a key—his own latch-key, twisted creakily, and Vanya peeped out wrapped in her flowered robe. She looked out at him questioningly Her features betrayed as sleepless a night as Mark's had
been; het dark eyes were heavy, and a tinge of red colored the lids, as if from weeping.

  "What is it?" she whispered. "Let me come in."

  She opened the door a trifle wider; Mark entered, and she closed and re-locked it. She dropped to the edge of the rumpled bed, and Mark sat on the chair, surveying her. For all that she looked tired, sleepless, weary, he thought her intensely beautiful.

  "What's the matter?" she repeated. "Oh, Mark, you haven’t come to renew that useless, heartbreaking argument of last night!"

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I gave up trying to sleep, and I wanted a walk to—to help clear things up in my mind; and as I passed your door, I thought you might be awake. I knocked lightly, not to disturb you if you were sleeping."

  "I was awake," she said. "I couldn't sleep either."

  "This is what I came to say," Mark said, still in a low, almost whispering tone. "I'm going to leave you alone today—all day. I'm going on a long walk, or I'll hobnob with Loring—at any rate, I'll not be near you. And I want you to think this over, carefully and finally. The prau should he here by the middle of the afternoon; I'll return then for your final answer."

  "There's no need, Mark. I can't change what I've said. I can't go through with it!"

  "But you'll do what I ask?" he murmured. "You'll think it over?"

  "Of course. Could I help thinking of it? Do you believe it means so little to me that I could forget it?"

  "No. I don't think that, Vanya. I think you want something more of me—something I can't give."

  "I suppose you’re right," said the girl dully. “I suppose you can't give what I want—the only thing that would make this unholy bargain possible to me!"

  "And then, Vanya, it wouldn't be an unholy bargain?"

  "No—not then! But I'll think of it, if that will satisfy you, though I can tell you now that the answer will be the same."

  "I promised not to argue, dear, but—"

  "But you promised not to argue," cut in the girl. "Please, Mark, don't let's get into another bitter quarrel. It can't help matters, and I—I simply can't stand another battle."