The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

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"It's yours, Tessie."

"Mine?" she faltered.

"Yours. Now go and pose," Then with a radiant smile she ran behind the
screen and presently reappeared with a little box on which was written my
name.

"I had intended to give it to you when I went home to-night," she said,
"but I can't wait now."

I opened the box. On the pink cotton inside lay a clasp of black onyx, on
which was inlaid a curious symbol or letter in gold. It was neither
Arabic nor Chinese, nor, as I found afterwards, did it belong to any
human script.

"It's all I had to give you for a keepsake," she said timidly.

I was annoyed, but I told her how much I should prize it, and promised to
wear it always. She fastened it on my coat beneath the lapel.

"How foolish, Tess, to go and buy me such a beautiful thing as this," I
said.

"I did not buy it," she laughed.

"Where did you get it?"

Then she told me how she had found it one day while coming from the
Aquarium in the Battery, how she had advertised it and watched the
papers, but at last gave up all hopes of finding the owner.

"That was last winter," she said, "the very day I had the first horrid
dream about the hearse."

I remembered my dream of the previous night but said nothing, and
presently my charcoal was flying over a new canvas, and Tessie stood
motionless on the model-stand.

III

The day following was a disastrous one for me. While moving a framed
canvas from one easel to another my foot slipped on the polished floor,
and I fell heavily on both wrists. They were so badly sprained that it
was useless to attempt to hold a brush, and I was obliged to wander about
the studio, glaring at unfinished drawings and sketches, until despair
seized me and I sat down to smoke and twiddle my thumbs with rage. The
rain blew against the windows and rattled on the roof of the church,
driving me into a nervous fit with its interminable patter. Tessie sat
sewing by the window, and every now and then raised her head and looked
at me with such innocent compassion that I began to feel ashamed of my
irritation and looked about for something to occupy me. I had read all
the papers and all the books in the library, but for the sake of
something to do I went to the bookcases and shoved them open with my
elbow. I knew every volume by its colour and examined them all, passing
slowly around the library and whistling to keep up my spirits. I was
turning to go into the dining-room when my eye fell upon a book bound in
serpent skin, standing in a corner of the top shelf of the last bookcase.
I did not remember it, and from the floor could not decipher the pale
lettering on the back, so I went to the smoking-room and called Tessie.
She came in from the studio and climbed up to reach the book.

"What is it?" I asked.

"_The King in Yellow._"

I was dumfounded. Who had placed it there? How came it in my rooms? I had
long ago decided that I should never open that book, and nothing on earth
could have persuaded me to buy it. Fearful lest curiosity might tempt me
to open it, I had never even looked at it in book-stores. If I ever had
had any curiosity to read it, the awful tragedy of young Castaigne, whom
I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages. I had always
refused to listen to any description of it, and indeed, nobody ever
ventured to discuss the second part aloud, so I had absolutely no
knowledge of what those leaves might reveal. I stared at the poisonous
mottled binding as I would at a snake.

"Don't touch it, Tessie," I said; "come down."

Of course my admonition was enough to arouse her curiosity, and before I
could prevent it she took the book and, laughing, danced off into the
studio with it. I called to her, but she slipped away with a tormenting
smile at my helpless hands, and I followed her with some impatience.

"Tessie!" I cried, entering the library, "listen, I am serious. Put that
book away. I do not wish you to open it!" The library was empty. I went
into both drawing-rooms, then into the bedrooms, laundry, kitchen, and
finally returned to the library and began a systematic search. She had
hidden herself so well that it was half-an-hour later when I discovered
her crouching white and silent by the latticed window in the store-room
above. At the first glance I saw she had been punished for her
foolishness. _The King in Yellow_ lay at her feet, but the book was
open at the second part. I looked at Tessie and saw it was too late. She
had opened _The King in Yellow_. Then I took her by the hand and led
her into the studio. She seemed dazed, and when I told her to lie down on
the sofa she obeyed me without a word. After a while she closed her eyes
and her breathing became regular and deep, but I could not determine
whether or not she slept. For a long while I sat silently beside her, but
she neither stirred nor spoke, and at last I rose, and, entering the
unused store-room, took the book in my least injured hand. It seemed
heavy as lead, but I carried it into the studio again, and sitting down
on the rug beside the sofa, opened it and read it through from beginning
to end.

When, faint with excess of my emotions, I dropped the volume and leaned
wearily back against the sofa, Tessie opened her eyes and looked at
me....

We had been speaking for some time in a dull monotonous strain before I
realized that we were discussing _The King in Yellow_. Oh the sin of
writing such words,--words which are clear as crystal, limpid and musical
as bubbling springs, words which sparkle and glow like the poisoned
diamonds of the Medicis! Oh the wickedness, the hopeless damnation of a
soul who could fascinate and paralyze human creatures with such
words,--words understood by the ignorant and wise alike, words which are
more precious than jewels, more soothing than music, more awful than
death!

We talked on, unmindful of the gathering shadows, and she was begging me
to throw away the clasp of black onyx quaintly inlaid with what we now
knew to be the Yellow Sign. I never shall know why I refused, though even
at this hour, here in my bedroom as I write this confession, I should be
glad to know _what_ it was that prevented me from tearing the Yellow
Sign from my breast and casting it into the fire. I am sure I wished to
do so, and yet Tessie pleaded with me in vain. Night fell and the hours
dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the
Pallid Mask, and midnight sounded from the misty spires in the
fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda, while outside the
fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the cloud waves roll and
break on the shores of Hali.

The house was very silent now, and not a sound came up from the misty
streets. Tessie lay among the cushions, her face a grey blot in the
gloom, but her hands were clasped in mine, and I knew that she knew and
read my thoughts as I read hers, for we had understood the mystery of the
Hyades and the Phantom of Truth was laid. Then as we answered each other,
swiftly, silently, thought on thought, the shadows stirred in the gloom
about us, and far in the distant streets we heard a sound. Nearer and
nearer it came, the dull crunching of wheels, nearer and yet nearer, and
now, outside before the door it ceased, and I dragged myself to the
window and saw a black-plumed hearse. The gate below opened and shut, and
I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks,
could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign. And now
I heard him moving very softly along the hall. Now he was at the door,
and the bolts rotted at his touch. Now he had entered. With eyes starting
from my head I peered into the darkness, but when he came into the room I
did not see him. It was only when I felt him envelope me in his cold soft
grasp that I cried out and struggled with deadly fury, but my hands were
useless and he tore the onyx clasp from my coat and struck me full in the
face. Then, as I fell, I heard Tessie's soft cry and her spirit fled: and
even while falling I longed to follow her, for I knew that the King in
Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to
now.

I could tell more, but I cannot see what help it will be to the world. As
for me, I am past human help or hope. As I lie here, writing, careless
even whether or not I die before I finish, I can see the doctor gathering
up his powders and phials with a vague gesture to the good priest beside
me, which I understand.

They will be very curious to know the tragedy--they of the outside world
who write books and print millions of newspapers, but I shall write no
more, and the father confessor will seal my last words with the seal of
sanctity when his holy office is done. They of the outside world may send
their creatures into wrecked homes and death-smitten firesides, and their
newspapers will batten on blood and tears, but with me their spies must
halt before the confessional. They know that Tessie is dead and that I am
dying. They know how the people in the house, aroused by an infernal
scream, rushed into my room and found one living and two dead, but they
do not know what I shall tell them now; they do not know that the doctor
said as he pointed to a horrible decomposed heap on the floor--the livid
corpse of the watchman from the church: "I have no theory, no explanation.
That man must have been dead for months!"

I think I am dying. I wish the priest would--

THE DEMOISELLE D'YS

"Mais je croy que je
Suis descendu on puiz
Tenebreux onquel disoit
Heraclytus estre Verete cachee."

"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I
know not:

"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the
way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."

I

The utter desolation of the scene began to have its effect; I sat down to
face the situation and, if possible, recall to mind some landmark which
might aid me in extricating myself from my present position. If I could
only find the ocean again all would be clear, for I knew one could see
the island of Groix from the cliffs.

I laid down my gun, and kneeling behind a rock lighted a pipe. Then I
looked at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock. I might have wandered far
from Kerselec since daybreak.

Standing the day before on the cliffs below Kerselec with Goulven,
looking out over the sombre moors among which I had now lost my way,
these downs had appeared to me level as a meadow, stretching to the
horizon, and although I knew how deceptive is distance, I could not
realize that what from Kerselec seemed to be mere grassy hollows were
great valleys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked like
scattered boulders were in reality enormous cliffs of granite.

"It's a bad place for a stranger," old Goulven had said: "you'd better
take a guide;" and I had replied, "I shall not lose myself." Now I knew
that I had lost myself, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blowing
in my face. On every side stretched the moorland, covered with flowering
gorse and heath and granite boulders. There was not a tree in sight, much
less a house. After a while, I picked up the gun, and turning my back on
the sun tramped on again.

There was little use in following any of the brawling streams which every
now and then crossed my path, for, instead of flowing into the sea, they
ran inland to reedy pools in the hollows of the moors. I had followed
several, but they all led me to swamps or silent little ponds from which
the snipe rose peeping and wheeled away in an ecstasy of fright I began
to feel fatigued, and the gun galled my shoulder in spite of the double
pads. The sun sank lower and lower, shining level across yellow gorse and
the moorland pools.

As I walked my own gigantic shadow led me on, seeming to lengthen at
every step. The gorse scraped against my leggings, crackled beneath my
feet, showering the brown earth with blossoms, and the brake bowed and
billowed along my path. From tufts of heath rabbits scurried away through
the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsy
quack. Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drink
at a hurrying rill, a heron flapped heavily from the reeds beside me. I
turned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain.
When at last I decided that it was useless to go on, and that I must make
up my mind to spend at least one night on the moors, I threw myself down
thoroughly fagged out. The evening sunlight slanted warm across my body,
but the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through me
from my wet shooting-boots. High overhead gulls were wheeling and tossing
like bits of white paper; from some distant marsh a solitary curlew
called. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenith
flushed with the after-glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold to
pink and then to smouldering fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, and
high in the calm air a bat dipped and soared. My eyelids began to droop.
Then as I shook off the drowsiness a sudden crash among the bracken
roused me. I raised my eyes. A great bird hung quivering in the air above
my face. For an instant I stared, incapable of motion; then something
leaped past me in the ferns and the bird rose, wheeled, and pitched
headlong into the brake.

I was on my feet in an instant peering through the gorse. There came the
sound of a struggle from a bunch of heather close by, and then all was
quiet. I stepped forward, my gun poised, but when I came to the heather
the gun fell under my arm again, and I stood motionless in silent
astonishment A dead hare lay on the ground, and on the hare stood a
magnificent falcon, one talon buried in the creature's neck, the other
planted firmly on its limp flank. But what astonished me, was not the
mere sight of a falcon sitting upon its prey. I had seen that more than
once. It was that the falcon was fitted with a sort of leash about both
talons, and from the leash hung a round bit of metal like a sleigh-bell.
The bird turned its fierce yellow eyes on me, and then stooped and struck
its curved beak into the quarry. At the same instant hurried steps
sounded among the heather, and a girl sprang into the covert in front.
Without a glance at me she walked up to the falcon, and passing her
gloved hand under its breast, raised it from the quarry. Then she deftly
slipped a small hood over the bird's head, and holding it out on her
gauntlet, stooped and picked up the hare.

She passed a cord about the animal's legs and fastened the end of the
thong to her girdle. Then she started to retrace her steps through the
covert As she passed me I raised my cap and she acknowledged my presence
with a scarcely perceptible inclination. I had been so astonished, so
lost in admiration of the scene before my eyes, that it had not occurred
to me that here was my salvation. But as she moved away I recollected
that unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had better
recover my speech without delay. At my first word she hesitated, and as I
stepped before her I thought a look of fear came into her beautiful eyes.
But as I humbly explained my unpleasant plight, her face flushed and she
looked at me in wonder.

"Surely you did not come from Kerselec!" she repeated.

Her sweet voice had no trace of the Breton accent nor of any accent which
I knew, and yet there was something in it I seemed to have heard before,
something quaint and indefinable, like the theme of an old song.

I explained that I was an American, unacquainted with Finistere, shooting
there for my own amusement.

"An American," she repeated in the same quaint musical tones. "I have
never before seen an American."

For a moment she stood silent, then looking at me she said. "If you
should walk all night you could not reach Kerselec now, even if you had a
guide."

This was pleasant news.

"But," I began, "if I could only find a peasant's hut where I might get
something to eat, and shelter."

The falcon on her wrist fluttered and shook its head. The girl smoothed
its glossy back and glanced at me.

"Look around," she said gently. "Can you see the end of these moors?
Look, north, south, east, west. Can you see anything but moorland and
bracken?"

"No," I said.

"The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they
who enter never leave it. There are no peasants' huts here."

"Well," I said, "if you will tell me in which direction Kerselec lies,
to-morrow it will take me no longer to go back than it has to come."

She looked at me again with an expression almost like pity.

"Ah," she said, "to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different--and
may take centuries."

I stared at her in amazement but decided that I had misunderstood her.
Then before I had time to speak she drew a whistle from her belt and
sounded it.

"Sit down and rest," she said to me; "you have come a long distance and
are tired."

She gathered up her pleated skirts and motioning me to follow picked her
dainty way through the gorse to a flat rock among the ferns.

"They will be here directly," she said, and taking a seat at one end of
the rock invited me to sit down on the other edge. The after-glow was
beginning to fade in the sky and a single star twinkled faintly through
the rosy haze. A long wavering triangle of water-fowl drifted southward
over our heads, and from the swamps around plover were calling.

"They are very beautiful--these moors," she said quietly.

"Beautiful, but cruel to strangers," I answered.

"Beautiful and cruel," she repeated dreamily, "beautiful and cruel."

"Like a woman," I said stupidly.

"Oh," she cried with a little catch in her breath, and looked at me. Her
dark eyes met mine, and I thought she seemed angry or frightened.

"Like a woman," she repeated under her breath, "How cruel to say so!"
Then after a pause, as though speaking aloud to herself, "How cruel for
him to say that!"

I don't know what sort of an apology I offered for my inane, though
harmless speech, but I know that she seemed so troubled about it that I
began to think I had said something very dreadful without knowing it, and
remembered with horror the pitfalls and snares which the French language
sets for foreigners. While I was trying to imagine what I might have
said, a sound of voices came across the moor, and the girl rose to her
feet.

"No," she said, with a trace of a smile on her pale face, "I will not
accept your apologies, monsieur, but I must prove you wrong, and that
shall be my revenge. Look. Here come Hastur and Raoul."

Two men loomed up in the twilight. One had a sack across his shoulders
and the other carried a hoop before him as a waiter carries a tray. The
hoop was fastened with straps to his shoulders, and around the edge of
the circlet sat three hooded falcons fitted with tinkling bells. The girl
stepped up to the falconer, and with a quick turn of her wrist
transferred her falcon to the hoop, where it quickly sidled off and
nestled among its mates, who shook their hooded heads and ruffled their
feathers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man stepped
forward and bowing respectfully took up the hare and dropped it into the
game-sack.

"These are my piqueurs," said the girl, turning to me with a gentle
dignity. "Raoul is a good fauconnier, and I shall some day make him grand
veneur. Hastur is incomparable."

The two silent men saluted me respectfully.

"Did I not tell you, monsieur, that I should prove you wrong?" she
continued. "This, then, is my revenge, that you do me the courtesy of
accepting food and shelter at my own house."

Before I could answer she spoke to the falconers, who started instantly
across the heath, and with a gracious gesture to me she followed. I don't
know whether I made her understand how profoundly grateful I felt, but
she seemed pleased to listen, as we walked over the dewy heather.

"Are you not very tired?" she asked.

I had clean forgotten my fatigue in her presence, and I told her so.

"Don't you think your gallantry is a little old-fashioned?" she said; and
when I looked confused and humbled, she added quietly, "Oh, I like it, I
like everything old-fashioned, and it is delightful to hear you say such
pretty things."

The moorland around us was very still now under its ghostly sheet of
mist. The plovers had ceased their calling; the crickets and all the
little creatures of the fields were silent as we passed, yet it seemed to
me as if I could hear them beginning again far behind us. Well in
advance, the two tall falconers strode across the heather, and the faint
jingling of the hawks' bells came to our ears in distant murmuring
chimes.

Suddenly a splendid hound dashed out of the mist in front, followed by
another and another until half-a-dozen or more were bounding and leaping
around the girl beside me. She caressed and quieted them with her gloved
hand, speaking to them in quaint terms which I remembered to have seen in
old French manuscripts.

Then the falcons on the circlet borne by the falconer ahead began to beat
their wings and scream, and from somewhere out of sight the notes of a
hunting-horn floated across the moor. The hounds sprang away before us
and vanished in the twilight, the falcons flapped and squealed upon their
perch, and the girl, taking up the song of the horn, began to hum. Clear
and mellow her voice sounded in the night air.

"Chasseur, chasseur, chassez encore,
Quittez Rosette et Jeanneton,
Tonton, tonton, tontaine, tonton,
Ou, pour, rabattre, des l'aurore,
Que les Amours soient de planton,
Tonton, tontaine, tonton."

As I listened to her lovely voice a grey mass which rapidly grew more
distinct loomed up in front, and the horn rang out joyously through the
tumult of the hounds and falcons. A torch glimmered at a gate, a light
streamed through an opening door, and we stepped upon a wooden bridge
which trembled under our feet and rose creaking and straining behind us
as we passed over the moat and into a small stone court, walled on every
side. From an open doorway a man came and, bending in salutation,
presented a cup to the girl beside me. She took the cup and touched it
with her lips, then lowering it turned to me and said in a low voice, "I
bid you welcome."

At that moment one of the falconers came with another cup, but before
handing it to me, presented it to the girl, who tasted it. The falconer
made a gesture to receive it, but she hesitated a moment, and then,
stepping forward, offered me the cup with her own hands. I felt this to
be an act of extraordinary graciousness, but hardly knew what was
expected of me, and did not raise it to my lips at once. The girl flushed
crimson. I saw that I must act quickly.

"Mademoiselle," I faltered, "a stranger whom you have saved from dangers
he may never realize empties this cup to the gentlest and loveliest
hostess of France."

"In His name," she murmured, crossing herself as I drained the cup. Then
stepping into the doorway she turned to me with a pretty gesture and,
taking my hand in hers, led me into the house, saying again and again:
"You are very welcome, indeed you are welcome to the Chateau d'Ys."

II

I awoke next morning with the music of the horn in my ears, and leaping
out of the ancient bed, went to a curtained window where the sunlight
filtered through little deep-set panes. The horn ceased as I looked into
the court below.

A man who might have been brother to the two falconers of the night
before stood in the midst of a pack of hounds. A curved horn was strapped
over his back, and in his hand he held a long-lashed whip. The dogs
whined and yelped, dancing around him in anticipation; there was the
stamp of horses, too, in the walled yard.

"Mount!" cried a voice in Breton, and with a clatter of hoofs the two
falconers, with falcons upon their wrists, rode into the courtyard among
the hounds. Then I heard another voice which sent the blood throbbing
through my heart: "Piriou Louis, hunt the hounds well and spare neither
spur nor whip. Thou Raoul and thou Gaston, see that the _epervier_
does not prove himself _niais_, and if it be best in your judgment,
_faites courtoisie a l'oiseau. Jardiner un oiseau_, like the
_mue_ there on Hastur's wrist, is not difficult, but thou, Raoul,
mayest not find it so simple to govern that _hagard_. Twice last
week he foamed _au vif_ and lost the _beccade_ although he is
used to the _leurre_. The bird acts like a stupid _branchier.
Paitre un hagard n'est pas si facile."_

Was I dreaming? The old language of falconry which I had read in yellow
manuscripts--the old forgotten French of the middle ages was sounding in
my ears while the hounds bayed and the hawks' bells tinkled accompaniment
to the stamping horses. She spoke again in the sweet forgotten language:

"If you would rather attach the _longe_ and leave thy _hagard au
bloc_, Raoul, I shall say nothing; for it were a pity to spoil so fair
a day's sport with an ill-trained _sors_. _Essimer abaisser_,--it is
possibly the best way. _Ca lui donnera des reins._ I was perhaps hasty
with the bird. It takes time to pass _a la filiere_ and the exercises
_d'escap_."

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