The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  He paced hotly back and forth. If only Vanya would yield the thing would be simple, no problem at all. And even yet he believed she would; surely her obstinacy couldn't persist to her own destruction.

  But he wasn't so positive a moment later when he glimpsed her in the window. That deliberate gesture with which she revealed her objectionable dancing costume seemed very much like a symbol of farewell. He fell to sullen musing, hardly disturbed by the voice of Loring under his tree, shouting his bitterness in song to the unheeding island. A moment later the beachcomber was beside him.

  "Do you know," he said bluntly to Mark, "that you're a bigger fool than I thought?"

  "I know it!" Mark agreed glumly.

  "Which is saying much! You've managed to tangle things at the last minute, haven't you?"

  "I guess so. Anyway, Vanya's not going."

  "Would you mind telling me why? Not that I'm surprised."

  "Yes, I'll tell you why," said Mark, after a moment. "She wants marriage!"

  "The magnitude of your stupidity grows in my estimation. Of course you couldn't consider that!"

  "I'm damn well considering it!" snapped Mark. "I happen to love her! But it's not such a simple problem to a man of morals."

  "By the way," said Loring, "how do you know she wants marriage?"

  "She said so, of course."

  "She did? That — somehow – doesn't sound like Vanya. If her reason had been as simple as that, she'd have known it long ago."

  "Well, for once, then, you're wrong."

  "That may be; even that’s possible. Did she actually tell you that?"

  "Perhaps not in so many words. Her implication was clear enough."

  "Ah!" said the beachcomber. "Anything less than a literal statement might give your stupidity a chance to operate. Just what did she say?"

  "It came about this way, if you're so bound to have it: I accused her of adopting this attitude of refusal for trading purposes—to drive a better bargain, and I told her I couldn't give her what she wanted, meaning marriage. And she agreed with me. That's plain enough, isn't it?"

  "But did you mention marriage specifically?"

  "No. I didn't. What else could the remark mean? Can you figure out another meaning?"

  "Yes," said Loring. "I can. And so could you if you weren't blinded by your prejudices."

  "I'd like to hear it!"

  "I can think of several. Your statement and her reply might refer to respect, or kindness, or honor, or protection—or love!"

  "Or love?" repeated Mark blankly.

  "That's the term I used. Love, affection, amour, or whatever you choose to call it."

  "But why—?"

  "Did you," interrupted the derelict, "ever happen to tell the lady that you loved her? Did it occur to you that it might—just conceivably might—make a difference to her?"

  "No, I don't think so," said Mark dazedly. "But good Heavens, Loring—!'

  "I know! You mean she should have realized it. But sometimes, comrade, your actions are a little paradoxical. I can faintly imagine her doubting it."

  "Loring," said Mark admiringly, yet half-exasperated, "you're a perfect genius at solving difficulties and building cases out of air and dreams! I've told you that before."

  "Thanks," said the beachcomber dryly. "I have the advantage of knowing Vanya's character, and my theory fits it; yours doesn't."

  "And still—," began Mark.

  "I can guess the rest. And still it doesn't alter the situation. That's the observation you were about to make, I take it."

  "It was! Have you any answer to it?"

  "Haven't I always an answer? Let me recall a little remark of your own. You reminded me not long ago, re the lady, that there were such words in the language as decency, honor, and self-respect. Remember?"

  "I do indeed."

  "Then let me remind you that there are also certain less pleasant words."

  "Do you mean," asked Mark in a low voice, "that you think I'd have —I might have been guilty of seduction? Her first love?"

  "Think? I know!"

  "And how do you know?"

  "Common sense, Comrade. Don't you think the opportunities for dalliance on the primrose path are as great in Shene's Cove as at Singapore or Canton? Or a bit greater?"

  "I—guess so."

  "Then it's obvious that if Vanya played straight here, she must have there as well! And I'll swear to her exemplary conduct at the Cove!"

  "Lord!" said Mark softly. "Lord, I want to believe you, Loring!"

  "That’s your own problem," said the beachcomber. "And now, I've a banana or two under the tree, and I think I'll eat a bite, and then, probably, I'll indulge in that quart I have credited."

  PEARLY SHENE

  Meanwhile Vanya had quietly descended the stairs, immersed in her own troubles. Perhaps, she thought, she could slip out behind the hotel somewhere, sit at the edge of the jungle, where at least there would be color and movement and bird-sounds to solace her and distract her mind from its wretchedness.

  At the foot of the stairs she paused. Shene's rumbling voice came from the bar-room—a fragment of speech.

  "—now or never!" she heard. "It's a cinch she ain't mentioned 'em to him; them kind don't talk about their own business."

  "Plenty quick!" Hong was answering, "I fix!"

  The snatch of conversation meant nothing to her. She stepped into the room, unaware of the startled glances turned on her by the pair. Shene was leaning on the bar; Hong was behind it with a glass of something in his enormous, soft, yellow hand. Immersed in her own turbulent thoughts, she murmured an almost inaudible answer to Shene's rumbled greeting, and continued on her way to the outer door.

  Shene laid a great paw on her arm; she halted, looked at him with dull, questioning eyes. He gave a hoarse chuckle.

  "Listen, girl," he boomed. "I'm wanting to tell you something, by way of friendly parting. I want to tell you that Pearly Shene is sorry to be losing you."

  "Thank you," said Vanya tonelessly. She was too disturbed, too chaotically upset to bother making Shene an explanation. Let him find out this evening, when the men of the Kermadec came ashore! And let him watch her take whatever invitations were called to her! She knew the crew of the Kermadec. Their requests might not be exactly polite; but at least they'd furnish her with a vicarious revenge on Mark. She made as if to pass on.

  Shene rumbled again in his basso pro fundo tones.

  "Hong and I been talking about you," he announced. "We been saying how the place will be different with you gone. These others we got ain't the same type as you."

  Vanya made no answer. She stared mechanically at the tables gray with dust, the chairs, now empty, but soon to be filled with the boisterous forms of seamen on shore leave. The room was dusky, for the afternoon sun was behind the building; darkness would arrive very soon now, and with it the men of the pearling vessel.

  She moved again toward the door, when Shene rumbled once more.

  "Just a word o' goodbye to Hong and me," he growled with an attempt at an amiable smile. "You ain't going without a word!"

  Was the man leading up to something? Vanya wondered disinterestedly; whatever it might be, it had no importance to her. Nothing! could ever be important now; Mark was leaving, and with him the dim glow of happiness, that had gleamed for her occasionally during these last few weeks, was dying—forever.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Then, suddenly, a new sound broke in upon her dismal meditations, a high, wild, bitter sound. Loring was singing. And, fact unprecedented in her experience, he was singing sober by daylight!

  "There is a land where white, clean snow

  In winter falls, and cold winds blow

  Across a hill where pine trees grow,

  But not in Tongatabu!"

  Vanya drew sharply back; she shuddered as the shrill tones continued.

  "There is a land (by Heaven planned!)

  Of kindly face and friendly hand

  And honest men! There
is a land

  But not in Tongatabu!

  There is a land that's cool and green,

  Of valleys fair and rivers clean—

  That prisons men like Hong and Shene,

  But not in Tongatabu!

  A land of neither palm nor Spice,

  But town and moor and cool, grey ice.

  England's its name—or Paradise!—

  But not in Tongatabu!"

  "Oh God!” said Vanya, "Now—now again! I hate that man!"

  "The dirty, rotten bum!" said Shene. "Some day I'll learn him to make songs at me! The sailor scum takes 'em up; I hear 'em clear to Papeete."

  "I can't stand it!" Vanya murmured to herself. "If he sings again—!"

  But the song was not repeated. When she glanced out of the door, Loring's palm was deserted, and only the steadily lengthening shadow of the tree occupied the place where he was accustomed to lie.

  The girl was shaken; the bitter wistfulness of the song had struck her with unusual effect, the more so because of the strain under which she was laboring. She leaned against the corner of the bar, and closed her eyes for a moment; for a little while, she felt, she could not bring herself to step into the clearing, not while Mark was pacing his restless way back and forth along the beach beside the prau. Or was he still waiting? She had no idea how much time had elapsed since his threat. She glanced at the tarnished alarm clock standing behind the bar; less than fifteen minutes had passed. It seemed to her that the laws of time had been suspended, so slowly did the minutes creep by.

  Shene cleared his throat, preparatory to speech. Vanya started at the sound; she had quite forgotten the presence of both the giant and the mountainous Hong.

  "You're wise to go by night," rumbled the great tones of Shene. "It's far the better trip, cooler and pleasanter."

  The girl made no answer; she remained leaning against the bar, her enveloping robe clutched tightly about her body. The shadows, minute by minute, were growing longer, as if the sun were plunging toward the horizon. Half an hour would bring darkness, and darkness would bring the crew of the Kermadec, and she would dance. How could she dance? With Mark moving somewhere out on the Pacific, toward Taulenge, away from her forever! That didn't matter; she'd have to dance. She wouldn't sing tonight —just dance, as a taunt flung after Mark. He couldn't know, of course, but she thought he'd guess. He'd be wondering, imagining; she'd see that his imaginings fell short of the facts! No matter how viciously he pictured her, he'd not be vicious enough. She glanced again at the clock behind the bar.

  So few minutes had passed! Still more than ten minutes of the half hour left, to be suffered through somehow. Shene was rumbling again; his voice sounded like the low mutter of summer thunder among the mountains of her home. Gradually his words penetrated her consciousness.

  "And I was thinking it's only right to show some appreciation,' he was growling. "So I got out a bottle of port; it ain't the kind I sell. I just got the one bottle; there ain't another like it on the islands. I wouldn't open it for many, I tell you."

  She looked at him questioningly. She hadn't heard the remarks leading up to this discussion of his special brand of port.

  "So we'll have a drink of it," he concluded. "You'll have a farewell drink with Pearly Shene!"

  "We'll have a farewell drink together!" repeated Pearly Shene to Vanya. "The best port this side of Ceylon."

  The girl stared at him dully. "Come, girl!" he rumbled. "A farewell drink with Pearly Shone." His words dawned on her; why not? Perhaps a drink of wine might clear the muddled turmoil of her mind; she needed a stimulant of some sort.

  "Yes, of course," she said.

  She moved to one of the outer tables, and sat facing the window that overlooked the bay. The Kermadec was out there, and there was Mark, pacing beside his black paddlers. Someone was approaching him—Loring! She saw Mark glance at the building; she could see him, but doubtless, in the shadow of the room, she herself was invisible to him.

  Shene had dropped ponderously into a chair opposite her; she hardly saw him, and was hardly conscious of Hong's elephantine figure. She realized that he had placed a glass of wine on the table before her.

  "A farewell drink, girl," rumbled Shene, raising his glass. "Here's luck to you!"

  Vanya raised her glass mechanically to her lips, and took a tiny sip of its contents. The wine was good; apparently Shene had chilled the bottle in the spring, for the liquid was deliciously cool. And yet, it hadn't quite the taste of port; there was a cloying sweetness in the smell of it, and a saccharine quality in the taste. One couldn't drink much of this, she thought, watching Mark in his conversation with the beachcomber.

  "My cause won't be helped by Loring," she mused. "He hates me too much to do anything that might help me."

  She placed her almost untouched glass of wine on the table, and watched the tableau on the beach. Mark and Loring were in earnest discussion; she could see Mark's tense and serious face against the green background of the sea; and Loring, with his back toward her, gesticulated in the intensity of his argument.

  "Discussing me, of course," she thought. "Let them! I'll give them something to discuss after tonight!"

  Shene's growl obtruded itself into her field of thought.

  "Good wine to drink while it's cool," he was saying. "Don't spoil it by letting it warm up; there's plenty more of it."

  Vanya indifferently took another sip of the liquor; the sweetish taste seemed more pronounced. It was the taste of no port wine she had ever, in her limited drinking experience, encountered.

  She watched the movements of Mark and Loring on the beach. They talked; they talked interminably. Their long black shadows repeated in accurate detail each pose and gesture that they made; the shadows stood close together, and engaged, it seemed to the girl, in an argument of their own. And inch by inch they grew taller on the sand; they formed a sort of fiendish sundial that told off the passing minutes. She wondered how much time had actually elapsed; it seemed incredible that half an hour could extend itself so impossibly. The bar, with its ticking clock, was behind her, and she felt reluctant, almost fearful, to turn her head and discover the true progression of those infinitely lethargic minutes. Better to learn it from Mark's actions; the denouement couldn't be long delayed now.

  "Would y'like, maybe, a different sort of wine?" Shene was asking. "Maybe you'd like a white wine better than the port?"

  "No, thank you," said Vanya disinterestedly. "I've always preferred port."

  "You'd never think it!" said Shone, eyeing her glass. She had sipped less than a quarter of the tumbler.

  Curiously heady wine, she thought; even the minute quantity she had swallowed had given her a faintly dizzy feeling, not particularly unpleasant. That was probably because she'd hardly touched a bite to eat all day; undoubtedly that was it.

  "Hong!" barked Shene. "Fill it!"

  The ponderous Chinaman refilled Shene's drained glass, and the latter raised it in his gigantic hand. "Here's to luck!" he rumbled. "Drink with me to luck, girl." Luck! Vanya felt a sardonic sort of humor in the word. Luck! One of Fate's nicknames, the force that drained away everything from the luckless, and when one thought there was nothing left to lose, found still another deprivation to inflict. Chance! When it had taken every possible possession from her, then it had sent her Mark, merely to snatch away the dearest of them all. Yes, she'd drink with Shene to the Fickle Goddess, who to her was not fickle at all, but a deadly, persistent nemesis.

  "Luck!" she echoed, and railed her glass to touch his.

  She took a deeper draught of the wine, and again that cloying sweetness struck her palate. It was more or less unpleasant on second or third taste; she set down her glass still less than a third consumed. A slight feeling of nausea at the saccharine taste shook her.

  "What's the matter?" boomed Shene. "That's the best wine in the islands!"

  Why was the man so insistent on her drinking his concoction? He'd never taken any noteworthy interest in her heretofor
e. He hadn't even been ordinarily friendly. Then why this sudden outburst of hospitality?

  Her mind was a trifle befuddled, probably, she thought, from her long, exhausting, emotional arguments with Mark, and the final despair of his departing threat. Yet a suspicion dawned; the wine had been doctored somehow—drugged or poisoned. But why? What possible interest could Shene or Hong have in such an attempt?

  She stared at Shene. Suddenly she saw the explanation—an ironic reason quite in consonance with the whole farcical affair. The pearls! The little chamois bag of pearls that she had dropped on the deck of the Porpoise.

  Shene had seen the accident! It had been Shene, not Loring, who had entered her room that night, and who had ransacked her possessions on that other occasion—when Mark had given her the key. This was an attempt, a last effort, to rob her of her single remaining thing of any tangible value—the last thrust of Fate.

  And the sardonic element in the whole affair brought an hysterical little laugh to her lips. For Mark still had the pearls in his wallet; he had forgotten to return them!

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  The ship's bell of the Kermadec sounded; the tones drew her eyes again to the beach. She saw Mark glance with a spasmodic movement at the declining sun, and then at his watch. And then—the black boys were pushing at the prau, and Mark was stepping into it, and he was moving, followed by a wake of sunset-glowing ripples, out toward the broad Pacific.

  Vanya watched him almost incredulously; that he should desert her now! From the beginning of the argument she had been praying for a miracle, for a revelation to be granted Mark, for anything that might keep him a little longer. Yet there he sailed; he was the same cruel, cold, and heartless Mark Talbot he had been from the beginning.

  She eyed the glass of wine, a mood of desperation came over her.

  "I hope it's poisoned!" she thought wildly. She seized the glass, raised it in a mocking toast. For a moment the fading daylight gleamed amber through it.

  "To decency!" she cried. "To the code of the gentleman!"