Читать книгу The Complete Works - Stanley G. Weinbaum - Страница 27

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The dinner was lavish. Connor sat at the left of the Princess. Lines of servitors passed in a steady stream, bearing soups, then fish—Bombay ducks, pompano, a dozen unknown viands—and fowl—ortolan, ptarmigan, pheasant, and nameless others.

Connor was ravenous. He sampled everything, and it was the middle of the meal before he noticed the aghast looks of the crowd, and that he was almost the only one who was eating.

"Have I violated the proprieties?" he asked the Princess.

"You're supposed to eat only of the dishes I taste," she informed coolly.

"But I'm hungry. And you've eaten practically nothing."

It was true. Margaret of Urbs had taken only a little salad, though she had sipped glass after glass of wine.

"I like to tantalize these hogs," she replied in low but audible tones. "This bores me."

"Then why come?"

"A whim."

He chuckled, turning his attention to the entertainment. This, he thought, was excellent. An incredibly skillful juggler succeeded a talented magician; a low–voiced woman sang sweet and ancient tunes; a trio played tinkling melodies. A graceful pair of adagio dancers performed breathtakingly in the square surrounded by the tables, and a contortionist managed unbelievable bodily tangles. The performers came and went in silence. Not one burst of applause rewarded them.

"Unappreciative audience!" Connor growled.

"Is it?" the Princess drawled. "Watch."

The following number, he thought, was the worst of the lot. A frightened, dingy man with a half–trained dancing monkey that chattered and grimaced, but made a sad failure of the dancing. Yet at the conclusion Margaret of Urbs raised her dainty hands, and applauded.

Instantly bedlam broke loose. Applause crashed through the hall; encores were shouted, and the astonished player stumbled once more through the ludicrous performance.

"Well, his fortune's made," observed the Princess. "N'York will want him and Ch'cago, and Singapore as well."

The master of ceremonies was presenting "Homero, the Poet of Personalities," a thin–faced Urban crowned with laurel leaves and bearing a classical harp.

He bowed and smiled.

"And who, Ladies and Lords, shall it be? Of whom do I sing?"

"Her Highness!" roared the crowd. "The Princess of Urbs!"

Homero strummed his harp, and began chanting minstrel–like:

_"The Princess? Adjective and verb

Turn feeble! Glorious? Superb?

Exquisite? None of these can name

The splendor of the Urban Flame._

_"Our Princess! Stars are loath to rise

Lest they be faded by her eyes,

Yet once they've risen, they will not set,

But gaze entranced on Margaret._

_"The continents and oceans seven

Revolve beneath the laws of Heaven;

What limit, law, or cannon curbs

The tongue that speaks the Flame of Urbs?"_

Applause, violent and enthusiastic, greeted the doggerel. Margaret of Urbs lowered her eyes and smiled.

"Who now?" Homero called. "Of whom do I sing?" Unexpectedly, Merimee spoke. "Tom Connor!" he cried. "Tom Connor, the Ancient!"

Romero strummed his harp and sang:

_"Ladies and Lords, you do me honor,

Giving the name of Thomas Connor,

That Ancient, phoenixlike arisen

Out of his cold, sepulchral prison,

Thrust into life—a comet hurled

From the dead past into the world._

_"What poet great enough to sing

The wonderful awakening?

Let golden Science try explain

That miracle—and try in vain;

For only Art, by Heaven inflamed.

Can dream how Death itself was tamed!"_

"He'll turn this into some insipid compliment to me," whispered Margaret of Urbs. The Poet of Personalities sang on:

_"Year after year the strong flesh mouldered,

Dim was the spark of life that smouldered—

Until the Princess glanced that way,

And lo! The cold and lifeless clay,

To Death and Time no longer slave,

Burst out triumphant from the grave!"_

In the roar of applause Connor sat amazed at the reference to his own experience. How did Homero know? He turned to question the Princess.

"I'm tired of this," she said, and rose to depart.

The whole body of guests rose with her. She drew her cape around her and strode to the car.

"Slowly," she ordered the driver, then leaned back gazing at Connor.

"Well?" she murmured.

"Interesting. That Homero—he's clever."

"Bah! Stock verses composed beforehand."

"But—about me?"

"Don't you know you've been a newspaper and vision sensation?"

"The devil!" Connor was shocked.

"This Homero," she went on musingly. "Once, long ago, I knew Sovem, the only great poet of the Enlightenment, he who half seriously, half contemptuously, named me the Black Flame, and the only man—save you, Tom Connor, who ever flaunted me to my face. And one evening he angered me, and I exiled him from Urbs, Urbs that he loved—and too late I found that his bitterness grew out of a love for me.

"So I called him back in time to die, when not even Martin Sair could save him. And dying he said to me—I recall it—`I take my revenge in remembering that you are human, and to be human is to love and suffer. Do not forget it.'" She paused. "Nor have I."

"And was it true?" asked Connor, struck suddenly by this revelation of the fiery, imperious, untameable character beside him.

"I think, lately, that it is true," she murmured, and drew a long breath. "I have slain, I have tortured, for less violence than you have committed against me."

She flung open her cape, baring the marks of his fingers still on the exquisite curve of her throat.

"I cannot—suffer the touch of violence, and yet you have struck me twice and still live. There is a magic about you, Thomas Connor, some laughing ancient strength that has died out of the world. I have never begged anyone—but I fear you and I plead with you." She swayed against him. "Kiss me!" she whispered.

He stared down at the unearthly beauty of her face, but there was a green light in her eyes that puzzled him. Coolly he fought the fascination that was cast netlike about him. This was but another taste of the torment she had promised. He was sure of it.

"I will not," he said. "Each time I have kissed you, you have laughed at me."

"But I will not laugh now."

"You'll not trap me again by the same trick," he said. "Find another way for the torment you threatened. And when you're ready to kill me for the violence I did you, I'll die laughing at you."

"I have forgiven that," she said softly."Then," he said mockingly, "here's more to forgive."

He lifted her slender wrist in his mighty hand, circled it with his powerful fingers, and crushed it in a grasp like contracting steel. It gave him a grim pleasure to thus vent his turbulent emotions on her, and to see her face whiten under pain that must have been excruciating. But save for her pallor she gave no sign of agony.

He dropped her hand, ashamed of his cruelty, though it was not as if he had used his strength against a mortal woman. Margaret of Urbs seemed to him rather a female demon.

But she only said softly, "I thank you for this. It has taught me what I wanted to know, for any other than you would now be dead for it. I love you, Tom."

"Flame!" he retorted, while her eyes widened the merest trifle at the familiarity. "I don't believe you."

"But you must! After all these years upon years I am sure. I swear it, Tom! Say you love me."

"I love—Evanie." But despite his words the doubts that had been constantly creeping in on him assailed him. Evanie was still alien, somehow.

"You love me!" she murmured. "I am the Black Flame, yet 1 plead now. Say it, Tom!"

"I love Evanie!"

"Then will you kiss me?"

He stared down at her. "Why not?" he said savagely. "Do you think I'm afraid of you?"

He spun her against him and her lips burned against his.

"Say you love me!" she repeated in a tense whisper. "Say it!"

"I love—" he began, and the car slid to a stop before the Palace arch. The footman stood holding the car door open.

Margaret of Urbs gazed as if distraught from Connor's face to the silent attendant and back again. Abruptly she thrust herself away, her mouth quivering.

"I wish," she said tensely, "I—wish I had never seen you!"

She struck him a sharp blow across his mouth, clambered unassisted to the ground, and disappeared into the Palace, trailing her black cape behind her.

Back in his room again, Connor was in a turmoil, ashamed, perplexed, bitter.

"Caught!" he swore fiercely. "Burned! God! What a fool—what a weakling!"

For call it what he would—it was true. Fascination, infatuation, anything—the fact faced him that the Black Flame had burned Evanie from his heart. He swore viciously and battered at Evanie's door.

The blows echoed into silence. There was no response.

With a long–drawn sigh, Connor turned away from Evanie's door. Whether absent or simply ignoring him, she had failed him, and he needed her desperately now. He wanted to quench the fires of the Black Flame in her cool simplicity, to reassure himself that what he now felt was an obsession, an infatuation—anything but love.

He wanted to convince himself it was Evanie he loved by telling her so. Better never to have emerged from under the prison than to live again, loving a mask of beauty hiding a daughter of Satan.

He strode to the casement overlooking the Gardens. Dim light from the Palace windows streaked in bars across it, but he saw no sign of Evanie. But could that be Evanie—there where the bushes shadowed the pool?