The King in Yellow
“To commune with nature?” observed Rowden.
“What’s her name this time?” asked Elliott, and Rowden answered
promptly, “Name, Yvette; nationality, Breton—”
“Wrong,” replied Clifford blandly, “it’s Rue Barrée.”
The subject changed instantly, and Selby listened in surprise to names
which were new to him, and eulogies on the latest Prix de Rome winner.
He was delighted to hear opinions boldly expressed and points honestly
debated, although the vehicle was mostly slang, both English and
French. He longed for the time when he too should be plunged into the
strife for fame.
The bells of St. Sulpice struck the hour, and the Palace of the
Luxembourg answered chime on chime. With a glance at the sun, dipping
low in the golden dust behind the Palais Bourbon, they rose, and
turning to the east, crossed the Boulevard St. Germain and sauntered
toward the École de Médecine. At the corner a girl passed them, walking
hurriedly. Clifford smirked, Elliott and Rowden were agitated, but they
all bowed, and, without raising her eyes, she returned their salute.
But Selby, who had lagged behind, fascinated by some gay shop window,
looked up to meet two of the bluest eyes he had ever seen. The eyes
were dropped in an instant, and the young fellow hastened to overtake
the others.
“By Jove,” he said, “do you fellows know I have just seen the prettiest
girl—” An exclamation broke from the trio, gloomy, foreboding, like
the chorus in a Greek play.
“Rue Barrée!”
“What!” cried Selby, bewildered.
The only answer was a vague gesture from Clifford.
Two hours later, during dinner, Clifford turned to Selby and said, “You
want to ask me something; I can tell by the way you fidget about.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, innocently enough; “it’s about that girl. Who is
she?”
In Rowden’s smile there was pity, in Elliott’s bitterness.
“Her name,” said Clifford solemnly, “is unknown to any one, at
least,” he added with much conscientiousness, “as far as I can learn.
Every fellow in the Quarter bows to her and she returns the salute
gravely, but no man has ever been known to obtain more than that. Her
profession, judging from her music-roll, is that of a pianist. Her
residence is in a small and humble street which is kept in a perpetual
process of repair by the city authorities, and from the black letters
painted on the barrier which defends the street from traffic, she has
taken the name by which we know her,—Rue Barrée. Mr. Rowden, in his
imperfect knowledge of the French tongue, called our attention to it as
Roo Barry—”
“I didn’t,” said Rowden hotly.
“And Roo Barry, or Rue Barrée, is to-day an object of adoration to
every rapin in the Quarter—”
“We are not rapins,” corrected Elliott.
“_I_ am not,” returned Clifford, “and I beg to call to your attention,
Selby, that these two gentlemen have at various and apparently
unfortunate moments, offered to lay down life and limb at the feet of
Rue Barrée. The lady possesses a chilling smile which she uses on such
occasions and,” here he became gloomily impressive, “I have been forced
to believe that neither the scholarly grace of my friend Elliott nor
the buxom beauty of my friend Rowden have touched that heart of ice.”
Elliott and Rowden, boiling with indignation, cried out, “And you!”
“I,” said Clifford blandly, “do fear to tread where you rush in.”
II
Twenty-four hours later Selby had completely forgotten Rue Barrée.
During the week he worked with might and main at the studio, and
Saturday night found him so tired that he went to bed before dinner and
had a nightmare about a river of yellow ochre in which he was drowning.
Sunday morning, apropos of nothing at all, he thought of Rue Barrée,
and ten seconds afterwards he saw her. It was at the flower-market on
the marble bridge. She was examining a pot of pansies. The gardener had
evidently thrown heart and soul into the transaction, but Rue Barrée
shook her head.
It is a question whether Selby would have stopped then and there to
inspect a cabbage-rose had not Clifford unwound for him the yarn of
the previous Tuesday. It is possible that his curiosity was piqued,
for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most
openly curious biped alive. From twenty until death he tries to conceal
it. But, to be fair to Selby, it is also true that the market was
attractive. Under a cloudless sky the flowers were packed and heaped
along the marble bridge to the parapet. The air was soft, the sun
spun a shadowy lacework among the palms and glowed in the hearts of a
thousand roses. Spring had come,—was in full tide. The watering carts
and sprinklers spread freshness over the Boulevard, the sparrows had
become vulgarly obtrusive, and the credulous Seine angler anxiously
followed his gaudy quill floating among the soapsuds of the lavoirs.
The white-spiked chestnuts clad in tender green vibrated with the
hum of bees. Shoddy butterflies flaunted their winter rags among the
heliotrope. There was a smell of fresh earth in the air, an echo of
the woodland brook in the ripple of the Seine, and swallows soared and
skimmed among the anchored river craft. Somewhere in a window a caged
bird was singing its heart out to the sky.
Selby looked at the cabbage-rose and then at the sky. Something in
the song of the caged bird may have moved him, or perhaps it was that
dangerous sweetness in the air of May.
At first he was hardly conscious that he had stopped, then he was
scarcely conscious why he had stopped, then he thought he would move
on, then he thought he wouldn’t, then he looked at Rue Barrée.
The gardener said, “Mademoiselle, this is undoubtedly a fine pot of
pansies.”
Rue Barrée shook her head.
The gardener smiled. She evidently did not want the pansies. She had
bought many pots of pansies there, two or three every spring, and never
argued. What did she want then? The pansies were evidently a feeler
toward a more important transaction. The gardener rubbed his hands and
gazed about him.
“These tulips are magnificent,” he observed, “and these hyacinths—” He
fell into a trance at the mere sight of the scented thickets.
“That,” murmured Rue, pointing to a splendid rose-bush with her furled
parasol, but in spite of her, her voice trembled a little. Selby
noticed it, more shame to him that he was listening, and the gardener
noticed it, and, burying his nose in the roses, scented a bargain.
Still, to do him justice, he did not add a centime to the honest value
of the plant, for after all, Rue was probably poor, and any one could
see she was charming.
“Fifty francs, Mademoiselle.”
The gardener’s tone was grave. Rue felt that argument would be wasted.
They both stood silent for a moment. The gardener did not eulogize his
prize,—the rose-tree was gorgeous and any one could see it.
“I will take the pansies,” said the girl, and drew two francs from
a worn purse. Then she looked up. A tear-drop stood in the way
refracting the light like a diamond, but as it rolled into a little
corner by her nose a vision of Selby replaced it, and when a brush of
the handkerchief had cleared the startled blue eyes, Selby himself
appeared, very much embarrassed. He instantly looked up into the sky,
apparently devoured with a thirst for astronomical research, and as
he continued his investigations for fully five minutes, the gardener
looked up too, and so did a policeman. Then Selby looked at the tips of
his boots, the gardener looked at him and the policeman slouched on.
Rue Barrée had been gone some time.
“What,” said the gardener, “may I offer Monsieur?”
Selby never knew why, but he suddenly began to buy flowers. The
gardener was electrified. Never before had he sold so many flowers,
never at such satisfying prices, and never, never with such absolute
unanimity of opinion with a customer. But he missed the bargaining, the
arguing, the calling of Heaven to witness. The transaction lacked spice.
“These tulips are magnificent!”
“They are!” cried Selby warmly.
“But alas, they are dear.”
“I will take them.”
“Dieu!” murmured the gardener in a perspiration, “he’s madder than most
Englishmen.”
“This cactus—”
“Is gorgeous!”
“Alas—”
“Send it with the rest.”
The gardener braced himself against the river wall.
“That splendid rose-bush,” he began faintly.
“That is a beauty. I believe it is fifty francs—”
He stopped, very red. The gardener relished his confusion. Then a
sudden cool self-possession took the place of his momentary confusion
and he held the gardener with his eye, and bullied him.
“I’ll take that bush. Why did not the young lady buy it?”
“Mademoiselle is not wealthy.”
“How do you know?”
“_Dame_, I sell her many pansies; pansies are not expensive.”
“Those are the pansies she bought?”
“These, Monsieur, the blue and gold.”
“Then you intend to send them to her?”
“At mid-day after the market.”
“Take this rose-bush with them, and”—here he glared at the
gardener—“don’t you dare say from whom they came.” The gardener’s eyes
were like saucers, but Selby, calm and victorious, said: “Send the
others to the Hôtel du Sénat, 7 rue de Tournon. I will leave directions
with the concierge.”
Then he buttoned his glove with much dignity and stalked off, but
when well around the corner and hidden from the gardener’s view, the
conviction that he was an idiot came home to him in a furious blush.
Ten minutes later he sat in his room in the Hôtel du Sénat repeating
with an imbecile smile: “What an ass I am, what an ass!”
An hour later found him in the same chair, in the same position, his
hat and gloves still on, his stick in his hand, but he was silent,
apparently lost in contemplation of his boot toes, and his smile was
less imbecile and even a bit retrospective.
III
About five o’clock that afternoon, the little sad-eyed woman who fills
the position of concierge at the Hôtel du Sénat held up her hands in
amazement to see a wagon-load of flower-bearing shrubs draw up before
the doorway. She called Joseph, the intemperate garçon, who, while
calculating the value of the flowers in _petits verres_, gloomily
disclaimed any knowledge as to their destination.
“_Voyons_,” said the little concierge, “_cherchons la femme_!”
“You?” he suggested.
The little woman stood a moment pensive and then sighed. Joseph
caressed his nose, a nose which for gaudiness could vie with any floral
display.
Then the gardener came in, hat in hand, and a few minutes later Selby
stood in the middle of his room, his coat off, his shirt-sleeves rolled
up. The chamber originally contained, besides the furniture, about two
square feet of walking room, and now this was occupied by a cactus. The
bed groaned under crates of pansies, lilies and heliotrope, the lounge
was covered with hyacinths and tulips, and the washstand supported a
species of young tree warranted to bear flowers at some time or other.
Clifford came in a little later, fell over a box of sweet peas, swore
a little, apologized, and then, as the full splendour of the floral
_fête_ burst upon him, sat down in astonishment upon a geranium. The
geranium was a wreck, but Selby said, “Don’t mind,” and glared at the
cactus.
“Are you going to give a ball?” demanded Clifford.
“N—no,—I’m very fond of flowers,” said Selby, but the statement
lacked enthusiasm.
“I should imagine so.” Then, after a silence, “That’s a fine cactus.”
Selby contemplated the cactus, touched it with the air of a
connoisseur, and pricked his thumb.
Clifford poked a pansy with his stick. Then Joseph came in with the
bill, announcing the sum total in a loud voice, partly to impress
Clifford, partly to intimidate Selby into disgorging a _pourboire_