The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

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"What are you doing with that knife?" demanded Fallowby, as he and Trent
entered the studio.

West looked at his wounded hand, which still clutched the knife, but
saying, "Cut myself by accident," tossed it into a corner and washed the
blood from his fingers.

Fallowby, fat and lazy, watched him without comment, but Trent, half
divining how things had turned, walked over to Fallowby smiling.

"I've a bone to pick with you!" he said.

"Where is it? I'm hungry," replied Fallowby with affected eagerness, but
Trent, frowning, told him to listen.

"How much did I advance you a week ago?"

"Three hundred and eighty francs," replied the other, with a squirm of
contrition.

"Where is it?"

Fallowby began a series of intricate explanations, which were soon cut
short by Trent.

"I know; you blew it in;--you always blow it in. I don't care a rap what
you did before the siege: I know you are rich and have a right to dispose
of your money as you wish to, and I also know that, generally speaking, it
is none of my business. But _now_ it is my business, as I have to supply
the funds until you get some more, which you won't until the siege is
ended one way or another. I wish to share what I have, but I won't see it
thrown out of the window. Oh, yes, of course I know you will reimburse me,
but that isn't the question; and, anyway, it's the opinion of your
friends, old man, that you will not be worse off for a little abstinence
from fleshly pleasures. You are positively a freak in this famine-cursed
city of skeletons!"

"I _am_ rather stout," he admitted.

"Is it true you are out of money?" demanded Trent.

"Yes, I am," sighed the other.

"That roast sucking pig on the rue St. Honore,--is it there yet?"
continued Trent.

"Wh--at?" stammered the feeble one.

"Ah--I thought so! I caught you in ecstasy before that sucking pig at
least a dozen times!"

Then laughing, he presented Fallowby with a roll of twenty franc pieces
saying: "If these go for luxuries you must live on your own flesh," and
went over to aid West, who sat beside the wash-basin binding up his hand.

West suffered him to tie the knot, and then said: "You remember,
yesterday, when I left you and Braith to take the chicken to Colette."

"Chicken! Good heavens!" moaned Fallowby.

"Chicken," repeated West, enjoying Fallowby's grief;--"I--that is, I must
explain that things are changed. Colette and I--are to be married--"

"What--what about the chicken?" groaned Fallowby.

"Shut up!" laughed Trent, and slipping his arm through West's, walked to
the stairway.

"The poor little thing," said West, "just think, not a splinter of
firewood for a week and wouldn't tell me because she thought I needed
it for my clay figure. Whew! When I heard it I smashed that smirking
clay nymph to pieces, and the rest can freeze and be hanged!" After a
moment he added timidly: "Won't you call on your way down and say _bon
soir_? It's No. 17."

"Yes," said Trent, and he went out softly closing the door behind.

He stopped on the third landing, lighted a match, scanned the numbers over
the row of dingy doors, and knocked at No. 17.

"C'est toi Georges?" The door opened.

"Oh, pardon, Monsieur Jack, I thought it was Monsieur West," then blushing
furiously, "Oh, I see you have heard! Oh, thank you so much for your
wishes, and I'm sure we love each other very much,--and I'm dying to see
Sylvia and tell her and--"

"And what?" laughed Trent.

"I am very happy," she sighed.

"He's pure gold," returned Trent, and then gaily: "I want you and George
to come and dine with us to-night. It's a little treat,--you see to-morrow
is Sylvia's _fete_. She will be nineteen. I have written to Thorne, and
the Guernalecs will come with their cousin Odile. Fallowby has engaged not
to bring anybody but himself."

The girl accepted shyly, charging him with loads of loving messages to
Sylvia, and he said good-night.

He started up the street, walking swiftly, for it was bitter cold, and
cutting across the rue de la Lune he entered the rue de Seine. The early
winter night had fallen, almost without warning, but the sky was clear and
myriads of stars glittered in the heavens. The bombardment had become
furious--a steady rolling thunder from the Prussian cannon punctuated by
the heavy shocks from Mont Valerien.

The shells streamed across the sky leaving trails like shooting stars, and
now, as he turned to look back, rockets blue and red flared above the
horizon from the Fort of Issy, and the Fortress of the North flamed like a
bonfire.

"Good news!" a man shouted over by the Boulevard St. Germain. As if by
magic the streets were filled with people,--shivering, chattering people
with shrunken eyes.

"Jacques!" cried one. "The Army of the Loire!"

"Eh! _mon vieux_, it has come then at last! I told thee! I told thee!
To-morrow--to-night--who knows?"

"Is it true? Is it a sortie?"

Some one said: "Oh, God--a sortie--and my son?" Another cried: "To the
Seine? They say one can see the signals of the Army of the Loire from the
Pont Neuf."

There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: "Mamma, Mamma,
then to-morrow we may eat white bread?" and beside him, an old man
swaying, stumbling, his shrivelled hands crushed to his breast, muttering
as if insane.

"Could it be true? Who has heard the news? The shoemaker on the rue de
Buci had it from a Mobile who had heard a Franctireur repeat it to a
captain of the National Guard."

Trent followed the throng surging through the rue de Seine to the river.

Rocket after rocket clove the sky, and now, from Montmartre, the cannon
clanged, and the batteries on Montparnasse joined in with a crash. The
bridge was packed with people.

Trent asked: "Who has seen the signals of the Army of the Loire?"

"We are waiting for them," was the reply.

He looked toward the north. Suddenly the huge silhouette of the Arc de
Triomphe sprang into black relief against the flash of a cannon. The boom
of the gun rolled along the quay and the old bridge vibrated.

Again over by the Point du Jour a flash and heavy explosion shook the
bridge, and then the whole eastern bastion of the fortifications blazed
and crackled, sending a red flame into the sky.

"Has any one seen the signals yet?" he asked again.

"We are waiting," was the reply.

"Yes, waiting," murmured a man behind him, "waiting, sick, starved,
freezing, but waiting. Is it a sortie? They go gladly. Is it to starve?
They starve. They have no time to think of surrender. Are they
heroes,--these Parisians? Answer me, Trent!"

The American Ambulance surgeon turned about and scanned the parapets of
the bridge.

"Any news, Doctor," asked Trent mechanically.

"News?" said the doctor; "I don't know any;--I haven't time to know any.
What are these people after?"

"They say that the Army of the Loire has signalled Mont Valerien."

"Poor devils." The doctor glanced about him for an instant, and then: "I'm
so harried and worried that I don't know what to do. After the last sortie
we had the work of fifty ambulances on our poor little corps. To-morrow
there's another sortie, and I wish you fellows could come over to
headquarters. We may need volunteers. How is madame?" he added abruptly.

"Well," replied Trent, "but she seems to grow more nervous every day. I
ought to be with her now."

"Take care of her," said the doctor, then with a sharp look at the people:
"I can't stop now--goodnight!" and he hurried away muttering, "Poor
devils!"

Trent leaned over the parapet and blinked at the black river surging
through the arches. Dark objects, carried swiftly on the breast of the
current, struck with a grinding tearing noise against the stone piers,
spun around for an instant, and hurried away into the darkness. The ice
from the Marne.

As he stood staring into the water, a hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Hello, Southwark!" he cried, turning around; "this is a queer place for
you!"

"Trent, I have something to tell you. Don't stay here,--don't believe in
the Army of the Loire:" and the _attache_ of the American Legation slipped
his arm through Trent's and drew him toward the Louvre.

"Then it's another lie!" said Trent bitterly.

"Worse--we know at the Legation--I can't speak of it. But that's not what
I have to say. Something happened this afternoon. The Alsatian Brasserie
was visited and an American named Hartman has been arrested. Do you know
him?"

"I know a German who calls himself an American;--his name is Hartman."

"Well, he was arrested about two hours ago. They mean to shoot him."

"What!"

"Of course we at the Legation can't allow them to shoot him off-hand, but
the evidence seems conclusive."

"Is he a spy?"

"Well, the papers seized in his rooms are pretty damning proofs, and
besides he was caught, they say, swindling the Public Food Committee. He
drew rations for fifty, how, I don't know. He claims to be an American
artist here, and we have been obliged to take notice of it at the
Legation. It's a nasty affair."

"To cheat the people at such a time is worse than robbing the poor-box,"
cried Trent angrily. "Let them shoot him!"

"He's an American citizen."

"Yes, oh yes," said the other with bitterness. "American citizenship is a
precious privilege when every goggle-eyed German--" His anger choked him.

Southwark shook hands with him warmly. "It can't be helped, we must own
the carrion. I am afraid you may be called upon to identify him as an
American artist," he said with a ghost of a smile on his deep-lined face;
and walked away through the Cours la Reine.

Trent swore silently for a moment and then drew out his watch. Seven
o'clock. "Sylvia will be anxious," he thought, and hurried back to the
river. The crowd still huddled shivering on the bridge, a sombre pitiful
congregation, peering out into the night for the signals of the Army of
the Loire: and their hearts beat time to the pounding of the guns, their
eyes lighted with each flash from the bastions, and hope rose with the
drifting rockets.

A black cloud hung over the fortifications. From horizon to horizon the
cannon smoke stretched in wavering bands, now capping the spires and domes
with cloud, now blowing in streamers and shreds along the streets, now
descending from the housetops, enveloping quays, bridges, and river, in a
sulphurous mist. And through the smoke pall the lightning of the cannon
played, while from time to time a rift above showed a fathomless black
vault set with stars.

He turned again into the rue de Seine, that sad abandoned street, with its
rows of closed shutters and desolate ranks of unlighted lamps. He was a
little nervous and wished once or twice for a revolver, but the slinking
forms which passed him in the darkness were too weak with hunger to be
dangerous, he thought, and he passed on unmolested to his doorway. But
there somebody sprang at his throat. Over and over the icy pavement he
rolled with his assailant, tearing at the noose about his neck, and then
with a wrench sprang to his feet.

"Get up," he cried to the other.

Slowly and with great deliberation, a small gamin picked himself out of
the gutter and surveyed Trent with disgust.

"That's a nice clean trick," said Trent; "a whelp of your age! You'll
finish against a dead wall! Give me that cord!"

The urchin handed him the noose without a word.

Trent struck a match and looked at his assailant. It was the rat-killer of
the day before.

"H'm! I thought so," he muttered.

"Tiens, c'est toi?" said the gamin tranquilly.

The impudence, the overpowering audacity of the ragamuffin took Trent's
breath away.

"Do you know, you young strangler," he gasped, "that they shoot thieves of
your age?"

The child turned a passionless face to Trent. "Shoot, then."

That was too much, and he turned on his heel and entered his hotel.

Groping up the unlighted stairway, he at last reached his own landing and
felt about in the darkness for the door. From his studio came the sound of
voices, West's hearty laugh and Fallowby's chuckle, and at last he found
the knob and, pushing back the door, stood a moment confused by the light.

"Hello, Jack!" cried West, "you're a pleasant creature, inviting people to
dine and letting them wait. Here's Fallowby weeping with hunger--"

"Shut up," observed the latter, "perhaps he's been out to buy a turkey."

"He's been out garroting, look at his noose!" laughed Guernalec.

"So now we know where you get your cash!" added West; "vive le coup du
Pere Francois!"

Trent shook hands with everybody and laughed at Sylvia's pale face.

"I didn't mean to be late; I stopped on the bridge a moment to watch the
bombardment. Were you anxious, Sylvia?"

She smiled and murmured, "Oh, no!" but her hand dropped into his and
tightened convulsively.

"To the table!" shouted Fallowby, and uttered a joyous whoop.

"Take it easy," observed Thorne, with a remnant of manners; "you are not
the host, you know."

Marie Guernalec, who had been chattering with Colette, jumped up and took
Thorne's arm and Monsieur Guernalec drew Odile's arm through his.

Trent, bowing gravely, offered his own arm to Colette, West took in
Sylvia, and Fallowby hovered anxiously in the rear.

"You march around the table three times singing the Marseillaise,"
explained Sylvia, "and Monsieur Fallowby pounds on the table and beats
time."

Fallowby suggested that they could sing after dinner, but his protest was
drowned in the ringing chorus--

"Aux armes!
Formez vos bataillons!"

Around the room they marched singing,

"Marchons! Marchons!"

with all their might, while Fallowby with very bad grace, hammered on the
table, consoling himself a little with the hope that the exercise would
increase his appetite. Hercules, the black and tan, fled under the bed,
from which retreat he yapped and whined until dragged out by Guernalec and
placed in Odile's lap.

"And now," said Trent gravely, when everybody was seated, "listen!" and he
read the menu.

Beef Soup a la Siege de Paris.

Fish.
Sardines a la pere Lachaise.
(White Wine).

Roti (Red Wine).
Fresh Beef a la sortie.

Vegetables.
Canned Beans a la chasse-pot,
Canned Peas Gravelotte,
Potatoes Irlandaises,
Miscellaneous.

Cold Corned Beef a la Thieis,
Stewed Prunes a la Garibaldi.

Dessert.
Dried prunes--White bread,
Currant Jelly,
Tea--Cafe,
Liqueurs,
Pipes and Cigarettes.

Fallowby applauded frantically, and Sylvia served the soup.

"Isn't it delicious?" sighed Odile.

Marie Guernalec sipped her soup in rapture.

"Not at all like horse, and I don't care what they say, horse doesn't
taste like beef," whispered Colette to West. Fallowby, who had finished,
began to caress his chin and eye the tureen.

"Have some more, old chap?" inquired Trent.

"Monsieur Fallowby cannot have any more," announced Sylvia; "I am saving
this for the concierge." Fallowby transferred his eyes to the fish.

The sardines, hot from the grille, were a great success. While the others
were eating Sylvia ran downstairs with the soup for the old concierge and
her husband, and when she hurried back, flushed and breathless, and had
slipped into her chair with a happy smile at Trent, that young man arose,
and silence fell over the table. For an instant he looked at Sylvia and
thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

"You all know," he began, "that to-day is my wife's nineteenth birthday--"

Fallowby, bubbling with enthusiasm, waved his glass in circles about his
head to the terror of Odile and Colette, his neighbours, and Thorne, West
and Guernalec refilled their glasses three times before the storm of
applause which the toast of Sylvia had provoked, subsided.

Three times the glasses were filled and emptied to Sylvia, and again to
Trent, who protested.

"This is irregular," he cried, "the next toast is to the twin Republics,
France and America?"

"To the Republics! To the Republics!" they cried, and the toast was drunk
amid shouts of "Vive a France! Vive l'Amerique! Vive la Nation!"

Then Trent, with a smile at West, offered the toast, "To a Happy Pair!"
and everybody understood, and Sylvia leaned over and kissed Colette, while
Trent bowed to West.

The beef was eaten in comparative calm, but when it was finished and a
portion of it set aside for the old people below, Trent cried: "Drink to
Paris! May she rise from her ruins and crush the invader!" and the cheers
rang out, drowning for a moment the monotonous thunder of the Prussian
guns.

Pipes and cigarettes were lighted, and Trent listened an instant to the
animated chatter around him, broken by ripples of laughter from the girls
or the mellow chuckle of Fallowby. Then he turned to West.

"There is going to be a sortie to-night," he said. "I saw the American
Ambulance surgeon just before I came in and he asked me to speak to you
fellows. Any aid we can give him will not come amiss."

Then dropping his voice and speaking in English, "As for me, I shall go
out with the ambulance to-morrow morning. There is of course no danger,
but it's just as well to keep it from Sylvia."

West nodded. Thorne and Guernalec, who had heard, broke in and offered
assistance, and Fallowby volunteered with a groan.

"All right," said Trent rapidly,--"no more now, but meet me at Ambulance
headquarters to-morrow morning at eight."

Sylvia and Colette, who were becoming uneasy at the conversation in
English, now demanded to know what they were talking about.

"What does a sculptor usually talk about?" cried West, with a laugh.

Odile glanced reproachfully at Thorne, her _fiance_.

"You are not French, you know, and it is none of your business, this war,"
said Odile with much dignity.

Thorne looked meek, but West assumed an air of outraged virtue.

"It seems," he said to Fallowby, "that a fellow cannot discuss the
beauties of Greek sculpture in his mother tongue, without being openly
suspected."

Colette placed her hand over his mouth and turning to Sylvia, murmured,
"They are horridly untruthful, these men."

"I believe the word for ambulance is the same in both languages," said
Marie Guernalec saucily; "Sylvia, don't trust Monsieur Trent."

"Jack," whispered Sylvia, "promise me--"

A knock at the studio door interrupted her.

"Come in!" cried Fallowby, but Trent sprang up, and opening the door,
looked out. Then with a hasty excuse to the rest, he stepped into the
hall-way and closed the door.

When he returned he was grumbling.

"What is it, Jack?" cried West.

"What is it?" repeated Trent savagely; "I'll tell you what it is. I have
received a dispatch from the American Minister to go at once and identify
and claim, as a fellow-countryman and a brother artist, a rascally thief
and a German spy!"

"Don't go," suggested Fallowby.

"If I don't they'll shoot him at once."

"Let them," growled Thorne.

"Do you fellows know who it is?"

"Hartman!" shouted West, inspired.

Sylvia sprang up deathly white, but Odile slipped her arm around her and
supported her to a chair, saying calmly, "Sylvia has fainted,--it's the
hot room,--bring some water."

Trent brought it at once.

Sylvia opened her eyes, and after a moment rose, and supported by Marie
Guernalec and Trent, passed into the bedroom.

It was the signal for breaking up, and everybody came and shook hands with
Trent, saying they hoped Sylvia would sleep it off and that it would be
nothing.

When Marie Guernalec took leave of him, she avoided his eyes, but he spoke
to her cordially and thanked her for her aid.

"Anything I can do, Jack?" inquired West, lingering, and then hurried
downstairs to catch up with the rest.

Trent leaned over the banisters, listening to their footsteps and chatter,
and then the lower door banged and the house was silent. He lingered,
staring down into the blackness, biting his lips; then with an impatient
movement, "I am crazy!" he muttered, and lighting a candle, went into the
bedroom. Sylvia was lying on the bed. He bent over her, smoothing the
curly hair on her forehead.

"Are you better, dear Sylvia?"

She did not answer, but raised her eyes to his. For an instant he met her
gaze, but what he read there sent a chill to his heart and he sat down
covering his face with his hands.

At last she spoke in a voice, changed and strained,--a voice which he had
never heard, and he dropped his hands and listened, bolt upright in his
chair.

"Jack, it has come at last. I have feared it and trembled,--ah! how often
have I lain awake at night with this on my heart and prayed that I might
die before you should ever know of it! For I love you, Jack, and if you go
away I cannot live. I have deceived you;--it happened before I knew you,
but since that first day when you found me weeping in the Luxembourg and
spoke to me, Jack, I have been faithful to you in every thought and deed.
I loved you from the first, and did not dare to tell you this--fearing
that you would go away; and since then my love has grown--grown--and oh! I
suffered!--but I dared not tell you. And now you know, but you do not know
the worst. For him--now--what do I care? He was cruel--oh, so cruel!"

She hid her face in her arms.

"Must I go on? Must I tell you--can you not imagine, oh! Jack--"

He did not stir; his eyes seemed dead.

"I--I was so young, I knew nothing, and he said--said that he loved me--"

Trent rose and struck the candle with his clenched fist, and the room was
dark.

The bells of St. Sulpice tolled the hour, and she started up, speaking
with feverish haste,--"I must finish! When you told me you loved
me--you--you asked me nothing; but then, even then, it was too late, and
_that other life_ which binds me to him, must stand for ever between you
and me! For there _is another_ whom he has claimed, and is good to. He
must not die,--they cannot shoot him, for that _other's_ sake!"

Trent sat motionless, but his thoughts ran on in an interminable whirl.

Sylvia, little Sylvia, who shared with him his student life,--who bore
with him the dreary desolation of the siege without complaint,--this
slender blue-eyed girl whom he was so quietly fond of, whom he teased or
caressed as the whim suited, who sometimes made him the least bit
impatient with her passionate devotion to him,--could this be the same
Sylvia who lay weeping there in the darkness?

Then he clinched his teeth. "Let him die! Let him die!"--but then,--for
Sylvia's sake, and,--for that _other's_ sake,--Yes, he would go,--he
_must_ go,--his duty was plain before him. But Sylvia,--he could not be
what he had been to her, and yet a vague terror seized him, now all was
said. Trembling, he struck a light.

She lay there, her curly hair tumbled about her face, her small white
hands pressed to her breast.

He could not leave her, and he could not stay. He never knew before that
he loved her. She had been a mere comrade, this girl wife of his. Ah! he
loved her now with all his heart and soul, and he knew it, only when it
was too late. Too late? Why? Then he thought of that _other_ one, binding
her, linking her forever to the creature, who stood in danger of his life.
With an oath he sprang to the door, but the door would not open,--or was
it that he pressed it back,--locked it,--and flung himself on his knees
beside the bed, knowing that he dared not for his life's sake leave what
was his all in life.

III

It was four in the morning when he came out of the Prison of the Condemned
with the Secretary of the American Legation. A knot of people had gathered
around the American Minister's carriage, which stood in front of the
prison, the horses stamping and pawing in the icy street, the coachman
huddled on the box, wrapped in furs. Southwark helped the Secretary into
the carriage, and shook hands with Trent, thanking him for coming.

"How the scoundrel did stare," he said; "your evidence was worse than a
kick, but it saved his skin for the moment at least,--and prevented
complications."

The Secretary sighed. "We have done our part. Now let them prove him a spy
and we wash our hands of him. Jump in, Captain! Come along, Trent!"

"I have a word to say to Captain Southwark, I won't detain him," said
Trent hastily, and dropping his voice, "Southwark, help _me_ now. You know
the story from the blackguard. You know the--the child is at his rooms.
Get it, and take it to my own apartment, and if he is shot, I will provide
a home for it."

"I understand," said the Captain gravely.

"Will you do this at once?"

"At once," he replied.

Their hands met in a warm clasp, and then Captain Southwark climbed into
the carriage, motioning Trent to follow; but he shook his head saying,
"Good-bye!" and the carriage rolled away.

He watched the carriage to the end of the street, then started toward his
own quarter, but after a step or two hesitated, stopped, and finally
turned away in the opposite direction. Something--perhaps it was the sight
of the prisoner he had so recently confronted nauseated him. He felt the
need of solitude and quiet to collect his thoughts. The events of the
evening had shaken him terribly, but he would walk it off, forget, bury
everything, and then go back to Sylvia. He started on swiftly, and for a
time the bitter thoughts seemed to fade, but when he paused at last,
breathless, under the Arc de Triomphe, the bitterness and the wretchedness
of the whole thing--yes, of his whole misspent life came back with a pang.
Then the face of the prisoner, stamped with the horrible grimace of fear,
grew in the shadows before his eyes.

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