The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK ®: 25 Golden Age Science Fiction and Mystery Tales. Ray Cummings
you, Jack.”
Eena again stood in the doorway and said something to her mistress. “The tree is ready,” said Lylda.
The Chemist rose to his feet. “Come on, everybody; let’s go trim it.”
They crowded gaily into the dining-room, leaving the Very Young Man and Aura sitting alone by the fire. For some time they sat silent, listening to the laughter of the others trimming the tree.
The Very Young Man looked at the girl beside him as she sat staring into the fire. She had taken off her heavy coat, and her figure seemed long and very slim in the clothes she was wearing now. She sat bending forward, with her hands clasped over her knees. The long line of her slender arm and shoulder, and the delicacy of her profile turned towards him, made the Very Young Man realize anew how fragile she was, and how beautiful.
Her mass of hair was coiled in a great black pile on her head, with a big, loose knot low at the neck. The iridescence of her skin gleamed under the flaming red of her cheeks. Her lips, too, were red, with the smooth, rich red of coral. The Very Young Man thought with a shock of surprise that he had never noticed before that they were red; in the ring there had been no such color.
In the room adjoining, his friends were proposing a toast over the Christmas punch bowl. The Chemist’s voice floated in through the doorway.
“To the Oroids—happiness to them.” Then for an instant there was silence as they drank the toast.
Aura met the Very Young Man’s eyes and smiled a little wanly. “Happiness—to them! I wonder. We who are so happy tonight—I wonder, are they?”
The Very Young Man leaned towards her. “You are happy, Aura?”
The girl nodded, still staring wistfully into the fire.
“I want you to be,” the Very Young Man added simply, and fell silent.
A blazing log in the fire twisted and rolled to one side; the crackling flames leaped higher, bathing the girl’s drooping little figure in their golden light.
The Very Young Man after a time found himself murmuring familiar lines of poetry. His memory leaped back. A boat sailing over a silent summer lake—underneath the stars—the warmth of a girl’s soft little body touching his—her hair, twisted about his fingers—the thrill in his heart; he felt it now as his lips formed the words:
“The stars would be your pearls upon a string,
The world a ruby for your finger-ring,
And you could have the sun and moon to wear,
If I were king.”
“You remember, Aura, that night in the boat?”
Again the girl nodded. “I shall learn to read it—some day,” she said eagerly. “And all the others that you told me. I want to. They sing—so beautifully.”
A sleigh passed along the road outside; the jingle of its bells drifted in to them. The Very Young Man reached over and gently touched the girl’s hand; her fingers closed over his with an answering pressure. His heart was beating fast.
“Aura,” he said earnestly. “I want to be King—for you—this first Christmas and always. I want to give you—all there is in this life, of happiness, that I can give—just for you.”
The girl met his gaze with eyes that were melting with tenderness.
“I love you, Aura,” he said softly.
“I love you, too, Jack,” she whispered and held her lips up to his.
THE SILVER VEIL (1921)
Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, May 1921.
I
He was one of those unusual characters whom it has always been my pleasure to make and hold as friends. I had not seen him for several years when, quite by chance, I came upon him again in New York—three thousand miles from the city where I had first made his acquaintance.
He was what you might call a seer—a professional mystic, whose powers over the occult, even in those old days in San Francisco, when he was beginning his career, brought many a trusting believer to his feet, and many a dollar of their money into his pocket.
Perhaps you may think him merely a charlatan, playing upon a credulous public with the cleverness of a born trickster. Undoubtedly he was that, to a degree; and yet the line of demarkation between his chicanery and his true psychic power was always, to me, quite indistinguishable. I was sure the trickery was there. Indeed, he once laughingly admitted as much when I accused him; yet never could I separate the dross from the gold, or determine the proportion of each.
But whether seer or trickster, he was likable enough to be any man’s friend. When I met him in New York, he was about thirty-five years old, tall and lean—thin, almost—but wiry with an unconscious, lithe grace. He was smooth-shaven; his skin was unusually white—a pallor, however, that suggested nothing of ill-health. His features were masculinely strong, yet of almost a feminine delicacy of mold. He wore his black, wavy hair a trifle long; his dark eyes looked out through lashes heavy as a girl’s.
The strong feeling of friendship we had built up during those former years sprang readily into the hearts of both of us at this chance meeting. He insisted on taking me immediately to his studio on Central Park South; and I could see, even before I reached the luxurious rooms where he both lived and conducted his business, that the man had prospered.
“Life is evidently treating you very kindly, Dorian,” I said.
He smiled one of his rare smiles.
“You shall see,” he answered, a boyish note of pride in his voice. “Things are somewhat different from the old days, Carl!”
We entered his somber, dimly lighted reception room. Luxury and refinement showed on every hand. That always was Dorian’s way. There never had been about him or his methods a hint of the garish, of the cheap and melodramatic striving for effect that is so often characteristic of the professed mystic.
My eager questions about his work met with ready response.
“For years, Carl, I have been in daily contact with one great desire of the human mind—the desire to look into the future. It is a universal desire—you know that as well as I. Every human being feels it at one time or another. To know what the future holds—to lift its silver veil and stand face to face with destiny—who has not longed for that?”
I remembered his crystal-gazing, the fortune-telling of his earlier years, and all those other devices and methods of foretelling the future that he and others of his profession must of necessity put to constant use. I mentioned them.
“Of course,” he exclaimed. “But neither I nor anyone else has ever done more, by crystal-gazing or any other method that you name, than to draw back a corner of the veil for an instant. That is not what I mean. I mean looking into the future from the present moment to the very instant of death itself; spreading out the remaining span of life like a panorama to be examined in detail, so that one’s destiny need no longer remain an unfathomable secret of nature.”
For the moment he seemed to be carried away by the thoughts his words inspired. He spoke almost as a crusader of the Middle Ages might have spoken of his holy wars of conquest.
To some, Carl, this desire to look into the future comes only as an idle wish, idly dwelt upon, forgotten with a sigh of resignation; but to others—and these others are the ones who come to me—it becomes an obsession. It causes the greatest mental anguish, and in these extreme cases it must be satisfied. Can’t you understand that, man? It must be satisfied, or it will destroy. Why, Carl, I know of many a suicide who hurried forward into eternity because he was afraid to face the coming of death at its appointed but unknown hour!”
I knew he presented a true picture. He had named a desire which no human heart has escaped.
“Can