The King in Yellow
mouse-coloured pigeons came whistling by and alighted on the terrace,
where they bowed and strutted and bobbed and turned until Rue Barrée
laughed in delight, and looking up beheld Clifford before her. His hat
was in his hand and his face was wreathed in a series of appealing
smiles which would have touched the heart of a Bengal tiger.
For an instant Rue Barrée frowned, then she looked curiously at
Clifford, then when she saw the resemblance between his bows and the
bobbing pigeons, in spite of herself, her lips parted in the most
bewitching laugh. Was this Rue Barrée? So changed, so changed that she
did not know herself; but oh! that song in her heart which drowned
all else, which trembled on her lips, struggling for utterance, which
rippled forth in a laugh at nothing,—at a strutting pigeon,—and Mr.
Clifford.
* * * * *
“And you think, because I return the salute of the students in the
Quarter, that you may be received in particular as a friend? I do
not know you, Monsieur, but vanity is man’s other name;—be content,
Monsieur Vanity, I shall be punctilious—oh, most punctilious in
returning your salute.”
“But I beg—I implore you to let me render you that homage which has so
long—”
“Oh dear; I don’t care for homage.”
“Let me only be permitted to speak to you now and
then,—occasionally—very occasionally.”
“And if _you_, why not another?”
“Not at all,—I will be discretion itself.”
“Discretion—why?”
Her eyes were very clear, and Clifford winced for a moment, but only
for a moment. Then the devil of recklessness seizing him, he sat
down and offered himself, soul and body, goods and chattels. And all
the time he knew he was a fool and that infatuation is not love, and
that each word he uttered bound him in honour from which there was no
escape. And all the time Elliott was scowling down on the fountain
plaza and savagely checking both bulldogs from their desire to rush to
Clifford’s rescue,—for even they felt there was something wrong, as
Elliott stormed within himself and growled maledictions.
When Clifford finished, he finished in a glow of excitement, but Rue
Barrée’s response was long in coming and his ardour cooled while the
situation slowly assumed its just proportions. Then regret began to
creep in, but he put that aside and broke out again in protestations.
At the first word Rue Barrée checked him.
“I thank you,” she said, speaking very gravely. “No man has ever before
offered me marriage.” She turned and looked out over the city. After
a while she spoke again. “You offer me a great deal. I am alone, I
have nothing, I am nothing.” She turned again and looked at Paris,
brilliant, fair, in the sunshine of a perfect day. He followed her eyes.
“Oh,” she murmured, “it is hard,—hard to work always—always alone
with never a friend you can have in honour, and the love that is
offered means the streets, the boulevard—when passion is dead. I know
it,—_we_ know it,—we others who have nothing,—have no one, and who
give ourselves, unquestioning—when we love,—yes, unquestioning—heart
and soul, knowing the end.”
She touched the rose at her breast. For a moment she seemed to forget
him, then quietly—“I thank you, I am very grateful.” She opened the
book and, plucking a petal from the rose, dropped it between the
leaves. Then looking up she said gently, “I cannot accept.”
V
It took Clifford a month to entirely recover, although at the end of
the first week he was pronounced convalescent by Elliott, who was an
authority, and his convalescence was aided by the cordiality with
which Rue Barrée acknowledged his solemn salutes. Forty times a day he
blessed Rue Barrée for her refusal, and thanked his lucky stars, and at
the same time, oh, wondrous heart of ours!—he suffered the tortures of
the blighted.
Elliott was annoyed, partly by Clifford’s reticence, partly by the
unexplainable thaw in the frigidity of Rue Barrée. At their frequent
encounters, when she, tripping along the rue de Seine, with music-roll
and big straw hat would pass Clifford and his familiars steering an
easterly course to the Café Vachette, and at the respectful uncovering
of the band would colour and smile at Clifford, Elliott’s slumbering
suspicions awoke. But he never found out anything, and finally gave
it up as beyond his comprehension, merely qualifying Clifford as an
idiot and reserving his opinion of Rue Barrée. And all this time Selby
was jealous. At first he refused to acknowledge it to himself, and
cut the studio for a day in the country, but the woods and fields of
course aggravated his case, and the brooks babbled of Rue Barrée and
the mowers calling to each other across the meadow ended in a quavering
“Rue Bar-rée-e!” That day spent in the country made him angry for
a week, and he worked sulkily at Julian’s, all the time tormented
by a desire to know where Clifford was and what he might be doing.
This culminated in an erratic stroll on Sunday which ended at the
flower-market on the Pont au Change, began again, was gloomily extended
to the morgue, and again ended at the marble bridge. It would never do,
and Selby felt it, so he went to see Clifford, who was convalescing on
mint juleps in his garden.
They sat down together and discussed morals and human happiness, and
each found the other most entertaining, only Selby failed to pump
Clifford, to the other’s unfeigned amusement. But the juleps spread
balm on the sting of jealousy, and trickled hope to the blighted, and
when Selby said he must go, Clifford went too, and when Selby, not
to be outdone, insisted on accompanying Clifford back to his door,
Clifford determined to see Selby back half way, and then finding it
hard to part, they decided to dine together and “flit.” To flit, a verb
applied to Clifford’s nocturnal prowls, expressed, perhaps, as well
as anything, the gaiety proposed. Dinner was ordered at Mignon’s, and
while Selby interviewed the chef, Clifford kept a fatherly eye on the
butler. The dinner was a success, or was of the sort generally termed
a success. Toward the dessert Selby heard some one say as at a great
distance, “Kid Selby, drunk as a lord.”
A group of men passed near them; it seemed to him that he shook hands
and laughed a great deal, and that everybody was very witty. There
was Clifford opposite swearing undying confidence in his chum Selby,
and there seemed to be others there, either seated beside them or
continually passing with the swish of skirts on the polished floor.
The perfume of roses, the rustle of fans, the touch of rounded arms
and the laughter grew vaguer and vaguer. The room seemed enveloped in
mist. Then, all in a moment each object stood out painfully distinct,
only forms and visages were distorted and voices piercing. He drew
himself up, calm, grave, for the moment master of himself, but very
drunk. He knew he was drunk, and was as guarded and alert, as keenly
suspicious of himself as he would have been of a thief at his elbow.
His self-command enabled Clifford to hold his head safely under some
running water, and repair to the street considerably the worse for
wear, but never suspecting that his companion was drunk. For a time he
kept his self-command. His face was only a bit paler, a bit tighter
than usual; he was only a trifle slower and more fastidious in his
speech. It was midnight when he left Clifford peacefully slumbering
in somebody’s arm-chair, with a long suede glove dangling in his hand
and a plumy boa twisted about his neck to protect his throat from
drafts. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, and found
himself on the sidewalk in a quarter he did not know. Mechanically
he looked up at the name of the street. The name was not familiar.
He turned and steered his course toward some lights clustered at the
end of the street. They proved farther away than he had anticipated,
and after a long quest he came to the conclusion that his eyes had
been mysteriously removed from their proper places and had been reset
on either side of his head like those of a bird. It grieved him to
think of the inconvenience this transformation might occasion him, and
he attempted to cock up his head, hen-like, to test the mobility of
his neck. Then an immense despair stole over him,—tears gathered in
the tear-ducts, his heart melted, and he collided with a tree. This
shocked him into comprehension; he stifled the violent tenderness in
his breast, picked up his hat and moved on more briskly. His mouth was
white and drawn, his teeth tightly clinched. He held his course pretty
well and strayed but little, and after an apparently interminable
length of time found himself passing a line of cabs. The brilliant
lamps, red, yellow, and green annoyed him, and he felt it might be
pleasant to demolish them with his cane, but mastering this impulse he
passed on. Later an idea struck him that it would save fatigue to take
a cab, and he started back with that intention, but the cabs seemed
already so far away and the lanterns were so bright and confusing that
he gave it up, and pulling himself together looked around.
A shadow, a mass, huge, undefined, rose to his right. He recognized
the Arc de Triomphe and gravely shook his cane at it. Its size annoyed
him. He felt it was too big. Then he heard something fall clattering
to the pavement and thought probably it was his cane but it didn’t
much matter. When he had mastered himself and regained control of
his right leg, which betrayed symptoms of insubordination, he found
himself traversing the Place de la Concorde at a pace which threatened
to land him at the Madeleine. This would never do. He turned sharply
to the right and crossing the bridge passed the Palais Bourbon at
a trot and wheeled into the Boulevard St. Germain. He got on well
enough although the size of the War Office struck him as a personal
insult, and he missed his cane, which it would have been pleasant
to drag along the iron railings as he passed. It occurred to him,
however, to substitute his hat, but when he found it he forgot what
he wanted it for and replaced it upon his head with gravity. Then he
was obliged to battle with a violent inclination to sit down and weep.
This lasted until he came to the rue de Rennes, but there he became
absorbed in contemplating the dragon on the balcony overhanging the
Cour du Dragon, and time slipped away until he remembered vaguely that
he had no business there, and marched off again. It was slow work.
The inclination to sit down and weep had given place to a desire for
solitary and deep reflection. Here his right leg forgot its obedience
and attacking the left, outflanked it and brought him up against a
wooden board which seemed to bar his path. He tried to walk around
it, but found the street closed. He tried to push it over, and found
he couldn’t. Then he noticed a red lantern standing on a pile of
paving-stones inside the barrier. This was pleasant. How was he to get
home if the boulevard was blocked? But he was not on the boulevard. His
treacherous right leg had beguiled him into a detour, for there, behind
him lay the boulevard with its endless line of lamps,—and here, what
was this narrow dilapidated street piled up with earth and mortar and
heaps of stone? He looked up. Written in staring black letters on the
barrier was
RUE BARRÉE.
He sat down. Two policemen whom he knew came by and advised him to get
up, but he argued the question from a standpoint of personal taste,
and they passed on, laughing. For he was at that moment absorbed in a
problem. It was, how to see Rue Barrée. She was somewhere or other in
that big house with the iron balconies, and the door was locked, but
what of that? The simple idea struck him to shout until she came. This