The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  "I anticipated your recovery," he said. "I am glad to find myself justified."

  Vanny sensed the question. forming on Paul's lips, and felt a flush of embarrassment suffusing her face.

  "Thank you," she said, and cast about for some means of forestalling Paul's question. Walter was nonplussed for the moment; Edmond's reference in Paul's presence to the debacle of the previous evening had surprised him. Edmond himself broke the momentary silence.

  "I stopped by for just a minute or two," he said. "However, I should be honored to have you accompany me to dinner tonight."

  Vanny felt Paul's gaze upon her. She formulated a polite refusal, and heard with genuine surprise the sound of her voice in answer, "I shall be delighted, Edmond."

  "Thank you," he said. "I'll call for you at six-thirty." He moved toward the door.

  "Wait, Hall, I'm leaving too," said Walter suddenly. He felt his duty done with Edmond's departure, and had no stomach for the scene he saw foreshadowed in Paul's face.

  As the door closed, Paul turned to Vanny. His stormy eyes surveyed her.

  "Well!" he said.

  "Let's have it," said the girl.

  "What's that about your recovery? Recovery from what?"

  "I'll tell you! I was soused last night"

  "You—soused?"

  "Well, pickled, then! I don't care what you call it."

  "Vanny! You?"

  "No one else! I didn't enjoy it. I passed out."

  "But why?"

  "You ought to know! I was just trying to forget our scrap. I was only trying to be happy for a little while!"

  "Who was there?"

  "Walter took me to the Venice. Edmond was there alone and he came and sat with us."

  "Walter!" groaned Paul disconsolately, somewhat to Vanny's surprise. She had expected Edmond to furnish most of the fuel to his anger.

  "What's wrong with Walter? He'll never say anything."

  "That fat Philistine! I know he won't say anything! He'll be quiet simply as a favor! He just loves to do favors—the greaseball!"

  "Well, no one'll know!"

  "He'll know, and I'll know! He'll think I ought to be grateful because he's a gentleman! He'll think he's in our confidence!"

  "Oh my Lord!" said Vanny, a little relieved at the turn Paul's anger was taking. "I don't think that's such a vital point."

  "All right! What about this dinner date with that fellow Hall? Why'd you accept that?"

  "I don't know," said Vanny, wondering why she had. "I guess I was just mad at you. Our last fight was over him."

  "You don't care much for my feelings!"

  "You know I do, Paul!"

  "Do you mean you won't go? You'll break the date?"

  "No, I don't mean that," said Vanny, shaking her glistening black head. "I've got to keep the date."

  "You're going with him?" Paul was almost incredulous. She nodded.

  "Bah!" said Paul. He turned and slammed his way out of the door. Vanny watched him go with dark tearful eyes, and turned to bury her face in the deep fur of Eblis who still purred in the corner of the davenport. The great cat felt a touch of moisture; he drew back indignantly and leaped to the floor. Vanny flashed the animal a somber little smile: "Heaven knows you were well named, Eblis."

  CHAPTER IV

  JUPITER AND LEDA

  FOR some reason which she did not analyze, Vanny dressed with considerable care for her dinner with Edmond. With no idea of the type of restaurant he contemplated, she selected a severely tailored costume of wine velvet, with a collar as ebon as her hair, and after some consideration, violated the fashion by choosing sheer black hose and tiny black pumps. Edmond's prompt arrival found her ready.

  The strange amber eyes surveyed her, and she fancied they held a gleam of admiration. Indeed, Edmond, deep lover of all beauty, found her not at all displeasing, but his cool mentality, pursuing its inevitable probing, searched out the reason Vanny had ignored.

  "She previsions the conflict imminent between us, and arrays herself to sustain her own self-confidence. She uses her beauty not as weapon but as armor."

  But aloud he merely greeted her.

  "Will you have a cocktail before we leave?" asked Vanny.

  The other acquiesced, permitting himself a saturnine smile as he noticed that she poured only one. She answered with a little grimace of distaste. "Not for a long time."

  Edmond replaced his emply glass on the tray. "Where are we going?" asked the girl.

  "Have you any preference?"

  "None at all."

  "Then let me take you to a place which will perhaps be novel."

  Vanny was quiet and a little ill at ease on the drive toward town. She felt constrained and embarrassed, the usual topics of conversation seemed thoroughly futile—the "What-have-you-been-doing's" and "Howhave-you-been's" of former schoolmates. The phantom of Paul's anger, too, rode between them and conversation was restrained to simple generalities.

  Edmond drove to a section strange to her, well westward from the Loop, and led her into a plain little second floor restaurant with no more than a dozen tables covered with red-checkered cloths. She glanced around curiously.

  "Oh—Russian!"

  She recognized a giant samovar, symbol to America of things Slavic. Two nondescript men held each a curious stringed instrument in the far corner—balalaikas, she concluded.

  "Muscovite," answered Edmond.

  They chose a table in a deserted corner—easily enough, for only two other tables were occupied. Vanny was charmed by the appearance of a bearded waiter, and amazed when Edmond addressed him in throaty Slavic. She was charmed again by the cuisine, delighted with the appearance as appetizer of apparently unbroken eggs that proved to contain a paste of caviar, a little startled by the borscht, and once more delighted by a curiously creamy, extremely rich pudding.

  "Why, this is a gem of a place!"

  She suddenly realized with what enjoyment she had eaten; she had not dared taste food during the day. With the cigarettes came a sensation of normalcy; she felt quite herself again. She resumed her usual self-assurance, and Paul's difficult temperament ceased to weigh upon her. She felt again her cool mastery of self and situation, and turned her attention to her strange companion. He sat regarding her with a half-smile.

  "If I've made a pig of myself, the blame is yours for so perfect a choice of restaurants!"

  "I hoped you would enjoy it."

  Vanny pressed out her cigarette.

  "Shall we leave?"

  "At your pleasure. Have you the evening free?"

  "Of course. My Sunday evenings have usually been reserved for Paul, but he knows of our date."

  "Shall we try a theatre?"

  "No," said Vanny. "I'm sick of purchased amusement. Let's steal ours. Let's ride. We haven't really talked yet, you know."

  They drove northward through the cool autumnal air. The lake flashed, and a purple night-veil gave back the stars like an echo. Vanny turned to her companion.

  "Why were you anxious to meet me?"

  "Because you offer a certain beauty for which I have been seeking."

  She laughed. The compliment placed her on familiar ground; she felt as easily able to manage this being at her side as Walter, or fierce, sweet, lovable Paul, who always came back apologetic and dejected. Would he tease as easily?

  "Well, that's the first glimmer!"

  "Of what?"

  "Of deviltry. Frankly, Edmond, while you've been a pleasant companion so far this evening, you've not been quite the fiend I've heard."

  "And while you're as lovely at close range as I believed, you've not proved the nymphomaniac women are supposed to be."

  "What's a little better!" the girl teased, "but a bit too personal! Besides, I've been called cold before. I like the reputation."

  Edmond turned his eyes from the road, looking for a moment into hers. "Perhaps the name is less war-ranted than you like to think."

  For a short moment, when her eves met the strange
ones of her companion, Vanny felt a little thrill that was almost fear. Instantly it passed, but a stray chill breeze from the lake seemed to rise. She shivered.

  "Now I'm really cold," she said.

  "Shall we stop somewhere?"

  She considered a moment. "I know! Let's stop at the apartment. We can talk there, and no one's likely to come on Sunday."

  The agile car swung around, driving toward Sheridan and its banks of mountainous dwellings. They entered, and Edmond, recalling the position of the furniture from the preceding night, switched on a single rosy lamp. For a moment they gazed from the window on the distant flow of traffic.

  "I always thrill to this," said Vanny. "Life centers in cities."

  "Civilization," said Edmond. "City-building. The word is its own definition."

  Vanny seated herself on the davenport. The great Eblis bounded into the room; she stretched out her foot to toy with him, then noting the direction of Edmond's gaze, withdrew it, smoothing her skirt in some embarrassment.

  "The lady has a prudish streak," thought Edmond. "I shall take pleasure in violating this inhibition." But aloud he continued the conversation. "This colossus called Chicago, and all of its species, is the outgrowth of power and its application. The cycle is selfperpetuating—great cities demand abundant power, cheap energy favors the expansion of cities."

  "Paul was describing the city of the future to me not long ago," said Vanny. "Not like this, but a clean and beautiful place. He thinks large cities will die out."

  "Being Paul, he is probably wrong," said Edmond. "The future is never explicable in terms of the past, no more than is the tree in terms of its seed. The elements, the germs, are there but the fruition is a thing apart." He was studying the girl as he had Paul, probing her mind and the subtle relations that are called character. Two evenings in her company gave him data; the conflict approached as he prepared tc further his designs.

  "Shall I describe the City of the Future, its glor} and its horror?" he continued.

  "If you think you're qualified," smiled his companion.

  "Let us see," said Edmond with a curiously sardonic smile.

  He began to speak in a low monody that droned in Vanny's ears like a murmur of distant waters. Gradually the sense of them merged into a continuity, but the pictures they evoked lived on, grew into a sort of reality. She wondered momentarily at this phenomenon, then lost herself in the magic imagery; it did not occur to her that she was being lulled into a quasi-hypnotic state.

  "It is hot—sultry, on the ground level. Above us is no sky, but a span of the first tier, the swift stage of the delivery level, and the first level of Palace Avenue. This is the city Urbs, planet-capital, greatest of the world cities of that future era, and here buried in the depths of her steel entrails, lies the forgotten ground that bears her. We hear the muffled roar of traffic above us, the voice of that great Street and the hiss of liquid-air coolers sighs from the walls beside us.

  "You turn to me. `It has been a year since last I have had occasion to walk on the ground.'

  "A great freight-bearer rumbles past, forcing us close to the walls. We walk on, since it is your fancy to walk, past masses of blank masonry, windowless but with many doors that gobble freight. Here in the dimness of the ground level the air of Urbs is foul with the breath of her thirty-five millions. Even the almost negligible costume of the day feels hot and moist about our bodies; you sweep back your black hair from your forehead with a gesture of petulance.

  " `And yet I love it!' you murmur. `This is the city Urbs!' And indeed there is a sort of splendor about the Aino even in its rlrnm-twat vnfr e e hnino its vastness to the depths wherein we plod. There is a shouting behind us, and a crowd surges for a few seconds across the street. We watch for a moment, then move on; there is always rioting on the ground level, but a shade of trouble shows in your eyes.

  "Ahead glows the red sign of the doorway of the Atlas Building, above a little stone-arched portal; for the great gates of the public ways are far above us. We seat ourselves in a lift for the ten-minute ride to Mile-high Gardens, half-a-thousand stories above the ground. The windows drop past, instant glimpses of the tiers that rise along the great Avenue, a moment's flash of a sky serrated by mist-capped towers, interlaced by the spider-web of the monorail. Then open sky and the cloud traffic of the city Urbs, and we step out into the sun and music and coolness of the Gar-dens. It is the hour of luncheon; the tables are well occupied. There comes a sudden burst of applause as we appear, for you are Evanne, called the Black Flame."

  Vanny turned dark dreamy eyes on the narrator. "But part of the applause is for you, Edmond. Tell me why." Edmond smiled his saturnine smile; he perceived that his designs were succeeding, for it mattered little what story he told if only it seemed real to his listener, so that his twin minds could insinuate his appointed thoughts. So he continued.

  "We seat ourselves, and a waiter brings the wines. A performer is singing—your song, Vanny, `The Black Flame'—in queer, clipped Urban English. But we stare down the teeming length of that mighty Street to its far end, where the twin spires of the Palace rise even to our eyes. There is the dwelling of him called in Urbs the Master, and in the outer nations, the Overlord.

  " `An hour—only an hour more,' you say. `Must you leave again so very soon?' and I answer, `There is revolution in Africa, and revolt in China. The structure of the Empire grows top-heavy like its City; some one must dance about on top to balance its teetering.' We stare again at the Palace spires, symbol of the Master loved in Urbs, world-hated."

  Edmond, who until this moment had no more than taken his companion's arm, now drew her closer, until the glistening black head lay unresisting on his shoulder and his arms encircled her. He droned on his story.

  "The quarter hour strikes, and the great fans at our end of the Street spin into a sudden blur, sucking out the fetid accumulations of the past minutes. The city Urbs is breathing, four gasps to the hour. But this is of no import; what both of us watch with bitter smiles is the sinking of an airship between the twin spires of the Palace. It is my Sky-rat, and we know the hour of parting impends. I move my chair close beside yours, the better to embrace you, as is the custom among the rulers of the city Urbs. There is wistful sweetness in the lips you yield; parting grows less bearable."

  Edmond now pressed his thin lips to Vanny's half parted ones; still dream-like she answered his caress, drawing herself closer. Suddenly she stirred, drew back. "Edmond," she whispered, "you are the Master!"

  "Yes," said Edmond in tones quite different from those of his story. "I am the Master!"

  The trance-like slumber dropped away from Vanny's mind, yet she still lay quiescent in his arms. A pleasant languor still held her; she was somehow intensely happy, and somehow contentedly helpless. Her will had been given to Edmond; she felt her old mastery of self and situation slipping from her like outworn armor, and was content. And then both mastery and contentment slipped away indeed!

  Edmond's facile fingers found the catch of her dress above her left shoulder, snapping it open. The wine-colored velvet dropped away from her as he drew her erect; a feeling of horror and violation pervaded her, yet the strange lassitude held. She could not resist, and only her stricken eyes pleaded with her tormentor to withhold from his purpose. For that which shehad decried in others was overtaking her, and she was utterly helpless to forestall disaster.

  But Edmond too was experiencing a revulsion of different sort. He had satisfied his self-given promise to violate Vanny's modesty; the thrill of her half-revealed body was highly pleasing to his senses, but another element appeared—the foreign emotion of pity. He felt the appeal of the girl's frightened eyes and quivering form, and found himself neither as cold nor as ruthless as he had hitherto believed.

  "This is a needless cruelty," he thought. "Let me give her some means of self-justification."

  He drew her close. "You love me, Vanny."

  A straw to grasp at. "Oh, yes! Yes!"

  "You are v
ery beautiful, dear. Dance for me, Vanny!"

  Strangely, without Vanny's being aware of it, the radio was providing a soft melody. Edmond drew back, seated himself, while Vanny half-huddled be-fore him.

  "I must justify her costume to herself," he thought. "Dance for me, Black Flame!"

  Vanny swayed, took a few faltering steps while Edmond watched the flash of light on her black-silk clad limbs. Suddenly she crouched sobbing, with her arms across her face. Edmond sprang to her, raised her in his arms, and bore her to the davenport. Still holding her, he thought, "Something lacks. I have not yet justified her complaisance to herself." He considered a plan. "After all, why not? The form means nothing at all to me, and she is really a very lovely creature."

  He bent over Vanny's head. "When will you marry me, dear?"

  She stirred, looked up at him with tear-bright and serious eyes.

  "I have said I loved you, Edmond. Any time! Now, if you wish it!"

  CHAPTER V

  FRUITION

  THE thrilling drabness of a Crown Point wedding was over; since morning Vanny had been a wife, and it was now mid-afternoon! She' was alone now for the first few moments since the epochal events of the morning. Edmond had given her his car to drive to her apartment for such necessary packing as she had to do—things she would need in the house on Ken-more.

  She ordered her trunk up from the cellar locker-room, and placed her key in the apartment lock with a queer sad little puckering of her lips. Things moved so swiftly! Who could have dreamed it two nights ago—or even last evening? How had Paul taken her scribbled note? Had he told the rest of the bunch? What had they said and thought—especially Walter, who used to call her Vanny the Invulnerable? Invulnerable! The joke was on Walter, and herself, tool How had it all happened, anyway?

  "I don't care," she thought, as she entered the living room. "I just fell hard for him, and that's that!"

  Eblis bounded in with a protesting squall; she had forgotten to feed him in the rush of the morning's events. She rectified the omission, and passed into her bedroom. There she paused at the sight of the wine-velvet dress draped over the foot of the bed, beside the black hose and the diminutive black silk dansetteshe had worn; an embarrassed recollection colored her throat.