The King in Yellow
of the Four Winds, the four winds blow all things evil.’ The sculptor
looked confused, but when he went out with his rolls, he said to me, ‘I
am sure, Monsieur, that she is as good as she is beautiful.’”
The cat had finished her toilet, and now, springing softly to the
floor, went to the door and sniffed. He knelt beside her, and
unclasping the garter held it for a moment in his hands. After a while
he said: “There is a name engraved upon the silver clasp beneath the
buckle. It is a pretty name, Sylvia Elven. Sylvia is a woman’s name,
Elven is the name of a town. In Paris, in this quarter, above all,
in this Street of the Four Winds, names are worn and put away as the
fashions change with the seasons. I know the little town of Elven, for
there I met Fate face to face and Fate was unkind. But do you know that
in Elven Fate had another name, and that name was Sylvia?”
He replaced the garter and stood up looking down at the cat crouched
before the closed door.
“The name of Elven has a charm for me. It tells me of meadows and clear
rivers. The name of Sylvia troubles me like perfume from dead flowers.”
The cat mewed.
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly, “I will take you back. Your Sylvia is
not my Sylvia; the world is wide and Elven is not unknown. Yet in the
darkness and filth of poorer Paris, in the sad shadows of this ancient
house, these names are very pleasant to me.”
He lifted her in his arms and strode through the silent corridors to
the stairs. Down five flights and into the moonlit court, past the
little sculptor’s den, and then again in at the gate of the north wing
and up the worm-eaten stairs he passed, until he came to a closed door.
When he had stood knocking for a long time, something moved behind the
door; it opened and he went in. The room was dark. As he crossed the
threshold, the cat sprang from his arms into the shadows. He listened
but heard nothing. The silence was oppressive and he struck a match.
At his elbow stood a table and on the table a candle in a gilded
candlestick. This he lighted, then looked around. The chamber was vast,
the hangings heavy with embroidery. Over the fireplace towered a carved
mantel, grey with the ashes of dead fires. In a recess by the deep-set
windows stood a bed, from which the bedclothes, soft and fine as lace,
trailed to the polished floor. He lifted the candle above his head. A
handkerchief lay at his feet. It was faintly perfumed. He turned toward
the windows. In front of them was a _canapé_ and over it were flung,
pell-mell, a gown of silk, a heap of lace-like garments, white and
delicate as spiders’ meshes, long, crumpled gloves, and, on the floor
beneath, the stockings, the little pointed shoes, and one garter of
rosy silk, quaintly flowered and fitted with a silver clasp. Wondering,
he stepped forward and drew the heavy curtains from the bed. For a
moment the candle flared in his hand; then his eyes met two other eyes,
wide open, smiling, and the candle-flame flashed over hair heavy as
gold.
She was pale, but not as white as he; her eyes were untroubled as a
child’s; but he stared, trembling from head to foot, while the candle
flickered in his hand.
At last he whispered: “Sylvia, it is I.”
Again he said, “It is I.”
Then, knowing that she was dead, he kissed her on the mouth. And
through the long watches of the night the cat purred on his knee,
tightening and relaxing her padded claws, until the sky paled above the
Street of the Four Winds.
THE STREET OF THE FIRST SHELL
“Be of Good Cheer, the Sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and by:
Look how the Old one, meagre, bent, and wan
With age and Fast, is fainting from the sky.”
I.
The room was already dark. The high roofs opposite cut off what little
remained of the December daylight. The girl drew her chair nearer the
window, and choosing a large needle, threaded it, knotting the thread
over her fingers. Then she smoothed the baby garment across her knees,
and bending, bit off the thread and drew the smaller needle from where
it rested in the hem. When she had brushed away the stray threads and
bits of lace, she laid it again over her knees caressingly. Then she
slipped the threaded needle from her corsage and passed it through a
button, but as the button spun down the thread, her hand faltered, the
thread snapped, and the button rolled across the floor. She raised
her head. Her eyes were fixed on a strip of waning light above the
chimneys. From somewhere in the city came sounds like the distant
beating of drums, and beyond, far beyond, a vague muttering, now
growing, swelling, rumbling in the distance like the pounding of surf
upon the rocks, now like the surf again, receding, growling, menacing.
The cold had become intense, a bitter piercing cold which strained and
snapped at joist and beam and turned the slush of yesterday to flint.
From the street below every sound broke sharp and metallic—the clatter
of sabots, the rattle of shutters or the rare sound of a human voice.
The air was heavy, weighted with the black cold as with a pall. To
breathe was painful, to move an effort.
In the desolate sky there was something that wearied, in the brooding
clouds, something that saddened. It penetrated the freezing city cut
by the freezing river, the splendid city with its towers and domes,
its quays and bridges and its thousand spires. It entered the squares,
it seized the avenues and the palaces, stole across bridges and crept
among the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, grey under the grey of
the December sky. Sadness, utter sadness. A fine icy sleet was falling,
powdering the pavement with a tiny crystalline dust. It sifted against
the window-panes and drifted in heaps along the sill. The light at
the window had nearly failed, and the girl bent low over her work.
Presently she raised her head, brushing the curls from her eyes.
“Jack?”
“Dearest?”
“Don’t forget to clean your palette.”
He said, “All right,” and picking up the palette, sat down upon the
floor in front of the stove. His head and shoulders were in the shadow,
but the firelight fell across his knees and glimmered red on the
blade of the palette-knife. Full in the firelight beside him stood a
colour-box. On the lid was carved,
+-------------------------+
| J. TRENT. |
| École des Beaux Arts. |
| 1870. |
+-------------------------+
This inscription was ornamented with an American and a French flag.
The sleet blew against the window-panes, covering them with stars and
diamonds, then, melting from the warmer air within, ran down and froze
again in fern-like traceries.
A dog whined and the patter of small paws sounded on the zinc behind
the stove.
“Jack, dear, do you think Hercules is hungry?”
The patter of paws was redoubled behind the stove.
“He’s whining,” she continued nervously, “and if it isn’t because he’s
hungry it is because—”
Her voice faltered. A loud humming filled the air, the windows vibrated.
“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “another—” but her voice was drowned in the
scream of a shell tearing through the clouds overhead.
“That is the nearest yet,” she murmured.
“Oh, no,” he answered cheerfully, “it probably fell way over by
Montmartre,” and as she did not answer, he said again with exaggerated
unconcern, “They wouldn’t take the trouble to fire at the Latin
Quarter; anyway they haven’t a battery that can hurt it.”
After a while she spoke up brightly: “Jack, dear, when are you going to
take me to see Monsieur West’s statues?”
“I will bet,” he said, throwing down his palette and walking over to
the window beside her, “that Colette has been here to-day.”
“Why?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide. Then, “Oh, it’s too
bad!—really, men are tiresome when they think they know everything!
And I warn you that if Monsieur West is vain enough to imagine that
Colette—”
From the north another shell came whistling and quavering through the
sky, passing above them with long-drawn screech which left the windows
singing.
“That,” he blurted out, “was too near for comfort.”
They were silent for a while, then he spoke again gaily: “Go on,
Sylvia, and wither poor West;” but she only sighed, “Oh, dear, I can
never seem to get used to the shells.”
He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her.
Her scissors fell jingling to the floor; she tossed the unfinished
frock after them, and putting both arms about his neck drew him down
into her lap.
“Don’t go out to-night, Jack.”
He kissed her uplifted face; “You know I must; don’t make it hard for
me.”
“But when I hear the shells and—and know you are out in the city—”
“But they all fall in Montmartre—”
“They may all fall in the Beaux Arts; you said yourself that two struck
the Quai d’Orsay—”
“Mere accident—”
“Jack, have pity on me! Take me with you!”
“And who will there be to get dinner?”
She rose and flung herself on the bed.
“Oh, I can’t get used to it, and I know you must go, but I beg you not
to be late to dinner. If you knew what I suffer! I—I—cannot help it,
and you must be patient with me, dear.”
He said, “It is as safe there as it is in our own house.”
She watched him fill for her the alcohol lamp, and when he had lighted
it and had taken his hat to go, she jumped up and clung to him in
silence. After a moment he said: “Now, Sylvia, remember my courage
is sustained by yours. Come, I must go!” She did not move, and he
repeated: “I must go.” Then she stepped back and he thought she was
going to speak and waited, but she only looked at him, and, a little
impatiently, he kissed her again, saying: “Don’t worry, dearest.”
When he had reached the last flight of stairs on his way to the street
a woman hobbled out of the house-keeper’s lodge waving a letter and
calling: “Monsieur Jack! Monsieur Jack! this was left by Monsieur
Fallowby!”
He took the letter, and leaning on the threshold of the lodge, read it:
“Dear Jack,
“I believe Braith is dead broke and I’m sure Fallowby is. Braith
swears he isn’t, and Fallowby swears he is, so you can draw your
own conclusions. I’ve got a scheme for a dinner, and if it works, I
will let you fellows in.
“Yours faithfully,
“West.
“P.S.—Fallowby has shaken Hartman and his gang, thank the Lord!
There is something rotten there,—or it may be he’s only a miser.
“P.P.S.—I’m more desperately in love than ever, but I’m sure she
does not care a straw for me.”
“All right,” said Trent, with a smile, to the concierge; “but tell me,
how is Papa Cottard?”
The old woman shook her head and pointed to the curtained bed in the
lodge.
“Père Cottard!” he cried cheerily, “how goes the wound to-day?”
He walked over to the bed and drew the curtains. An old man was lying
among the tumbled sheets.
“Better?” smiled Trent.
“Better,” repeated the man wearily; and, after a pause, “Have you any
news, Monsieur Jack?”
“I haven’t been out to-day. I will bring you any rumour I may hear,
though goodness knows I’ve got enough of rumours,” he muttered to
himself. Then aloud: “Cheer up; you’re looking better.”
“And the sortie?”
“Oh, the sortie, that’s for this week. General Trochu sent orders last
night.”
“It will be terrible.”
“It will be sickening,” thought Trent as he went not into the street
and turned the corner toward the rue de Seine; “slaughter, slaughter,
phew! I’m glad I’m not going.”
The street was almost deserted. A few women muffled in tattered