The King in Yellow
up an Easter lily which Geneviève had brought that morning from
Notre Dame, and dropped it into the basin. Instantly the liquid lost
its crystalline clearness. For a second the lily was enveloped in a
milk-white foam, which disappeared, leaving the fluid opalescent.
Changing tints of orange and crimson played over the surface, and
then what seemed to be a ray of pure sunlight struck through from the
bottom where the lily was resting. At the same instant he plunged his
hand into the basin and drew out the flower. “There is no danger,” he
explained, “if you choose the right moment. That golden ray is the
signal.”
He held the lily toward me, and I took it in my hand. It had turned to
stone, to the purest marble.
“You see,” he said, “it is without a flaw. What sculptor could
reproduce it?”
The marble was white as snow, but in its depths the veins of the lily
were tinged with palest azure, and a faint flush lingered deep in its
heart.
“Don’t ask me the reason of that,” he smiled, noticing my wonder. “I
have no idea why the veins and heart are tinted, but they always are.
Yesterday I tried one of Geneviève’s gold-fish,—there it is.”
The fish looked as if sculptured in marble. But if you held it to the
light the stone was beautifully veined with a faint blue, and from
somewhere within came a rosy light like the tint which slumbers in an
opal. I looked into the basin. Once more it seemed filled with clearest
crystal.
“If I should touch it now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “but you had better not try.”
“There is one thing I’m curious about,” I said, “and that is where the
ray of sunlight came from.”
“It looked like a sunbeam true enough,” he said. “I don’t know, it
always comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps,” he continued,
smiling, “perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the
source from whence it came.”
I saw he was mocking, and threatened him with a mahl-stick, but he only
laughed and changed the subject.
“Stay to lunch. Geneviève will be here directly.”
“I saw her going to early mass,” I said, “and she looked as fresh and
sweet as that lily—before you destroyed it.”
“Do you think I destroyed it?” said Boris gravely.
“Destroyed, preserved, how can we tell?”
We sat in the corner of a studio near his unfinished group of the
“Fates.” He leaned back on the sofa, twirling a sculptor’s chisel and
squinting at his work.
“By the way,” he said, “I have finished pointing up that old academic
Ariadne, and I suppose it will have to go to the Salon. It’s all I have
ready this year, but after the success the ‘Madonna’ brought me I feel
ashamed to send a thing like that.”
The “Madonna,” an exquisite marble for which Geneviève had sat, had
been the sensation of last year’s Salon. I looked at the Ariadne. It
was a magnificent piece of technical work, but I agreed with Boris
that the world would expect something better of him than that. Still,
it was impossible now to think of finishing in time for the Salon that
splendid terrible group half shrouded in the marble behind me. The
“Fates” would have to wait.
We were proud of Boris Yvain. We claimed him and he claimed us on the
strength of his having been born in America, although his father was
French and his mother was a Russian. Every one in the Beaux Arts called
him Boris. And yet there were only two of us whom he addressed in the
same familiar way—Jack Scott and myself.
Perhaps my being in love with Geneviève had something to do with his
affection for me. Not that it had ever been acknowledged between us.
But after all was settled, and she had told me with tears in her
eyes that it was Boris whom she loved, I went over to his house and
congratulated him. The perfect cordiality of that interview did not
deceive either of us, I always believed, although to one at least it
was a great comfort. I do not think he and Geneviève ever spoke of the
matter together, but Boris knew.
Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have
been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod’s Mass. But I was always glad
when she changed that mood for what we called her “April Manœuvres.”
She was often as variable as an April day. In the morning grave,
dignified and sweet, at noon laughing, capricious, at evening whatever
one least expected. I preferred her so rather than in that Madonna-like
tranquillity which stirred the depths of my heart. I was dreaming of
Geneviève when he spoke again.
“What do you think of my discovery, Alec?”
“I think it wonderful.”
“I shall make no use of it, you know, beyond satisfying my own
curiosity so far as may be, and the secret will die with me.”
“It would be rather a blow to sculpture, would it not? We painters lose
more than we ever gain by photography.”
Boris nodded, playing with the edge of the chisel.
“This new vicious discovery would corrupt the world of art. No, I shall
never confide the secret to any one,” he said slowly.
It would be hard to find any one less informed about such phenomena
than myself; but of course I had heard of mineral springs so saturated
with silica that the leaves and twigs which fell into them were turned
to stone after a time. I dimly comprehended the process, how the
silica replaced the vegetable matter, atom by atom, and the result
was a duplicate of the object in stone. This, I confess, had never
interested me greatly, and as for the ancient fossils thus produced,
they disgusted me. Boris, it appeared, feeling curiosity instead of
repugnance, had investigated the subject, and had accidentally stumbled
on a solution which, attacking the immersed object with a ferocity
unheard of, in a second did the work of years. This was all I could
make out of the strange story he had just been telling me. He spoke
again after a long silence.
“I am almost frightened when I think what I have found. Scientists
would go mad over the discovery. It was so simple too; it discovered
itself. When I think of that formula, and that new element precipitated
in metallic scales—”
“What new element?”
“Oh, I haven’t thought of naming it, and I don’t believe I ever shall.
There are enough precious metals now in the world to cut throats over.”
I pricked up my ears. “Have you struck gold, Boris?”
“No, better;—but see here, Alec!” he laughed, starting up. “You and I
have all we need in this world. Ah! how sinister and covetous you look
already!” I laughed too, and told him I was devoured by the desire for
gold, and we had better talk of something else; so when Geneviève came
in shortly after, we had turned our backs on alchemy.
Geneviève was dressed in silvery grey from head to foot. The light
glinted along the soft curves of her fair hair as she turned her cheek
to Boris; then she saw me and returned my greeting. She had never
before failed to blow me a kiss from the tips of her white fingers,
and I promptly complained of the omission. She smiled and held out her
hand, which dropped almost before it had touched mine; then she said,
looking at Boris—
“You must ask Alec to stay for luncheon.” This also was something new.
She had always asked me herself until to-day.
“I did,” said Boris shortly.
“And you said yes, I hope?” She turned to me with a charming
conventional smile. I might have been an acquaintance of the day before
yesterday. I made her a low bow. “J’avais bien l’honneur, madame,” but
refusing to take up our usual bantering tone, she murmured a hospitable
commonplace and disappeared. Boris and I looked at one another.
“I had better go home, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Hanged if I know,” he replied frankly.
While we were discussing the advisability of my departure Geneviève
reappeared in the doorway without her bonnet. She was wonderfully
beautiful, but her colour was too deep and her lovely eyes were too
bright. She came straight up to me and took my arm.
“Luncheon is ready. Was I cross, Alec? I thought I had a headache, but
I haven’t. Come here, Boris;” and she slipped her other arm through
his. “Alec knows that after you there is no one in the world whom I
like as well as I like him, so if he sometimes feels snubbed it won’t
hurt him.”
“À la bonheur!” I cried, “who says there are no thunderstorms in April?”
“Are you ready?” chanted Boris. “Aye ready;” and arm-in-arm we raced
into the dining-room, scandalizing the servants. After all we were not
so much to blame; Geneviève was eighteen, Boris was twenty-three, and I
not quite twenty-one.
II
Some work that I was doing about this time on the decorations for
Geneviève’s boudoir kept me constantly at the quaint little hotel in
the Rue Sainte-Cécile. Boris and I in those days laboured hard but as
we pleased, which was fitfully, and we all three, with Jack Scott,
idled a great deal together.
One quiet afternoon I had been wandering alone over the house examining
curios, prying into odd corners, bringing out sweetmeats and cigars
from strange hiding-places, and at last I stopped in the bathing-room.
Boris, all over clay, stood there washing his hands.
The room was built of rose-coloured marble excepting the floor,
which was tessellated in rose and grey. In the centre was a square
pool sunken below the surface of the floor; steps led down into it,
sculptured pillars supported a frescoed ceiling. A delicious marble
Cupid appeared to have just alighted on his pedestal at the upper end
of the room. The whole interior was Boris’ work and mine. Boris, in his
working-clothes of white canvas, scraped the traces of clay and red
modelling wax from his handsome hands, and coquetted over his shoulder
with the Cupid.
“I see you,” he insisted, “don’t try to look the other way and pretend
not to see me. You know who made you, little humbug!”
It was always my rôle to interpret Cupid’s sentiments in these
conversations, and when my turn came I responded in such a manner, that
Boris seized my arm and dragged me toward the pool, declaring he would
duck me. Next instant he dropped my arm and turned pale. “Good God!” he
said, “I forgot the pool is full of the solution!”
I shivered a little, and dryly advised him to remember better where he
had stored the precious liquid.
“In Heaven’s name, why do you keep a small lake of that gruesome stuff
here of all places?” I asked.
“I want to experiment on something large,” he replied.
“On me, for instance?”
“Ah! that came too close for jesting; but I do want to watch the action
of that solution on a more highly organized living body; there is that
big white rabbit,” he said, following me into the studio.
Jack Scott, wearing a paint-stained jacket, came wandering in,
appropriated all the Oriental sweetmeats he could lay his hands on,
looted the cigarette case, and finally he and Boris disappeared
together to visit the Luxembourg Gallery, where a new silver bronze by
Rodin and a landscape of Monet’s were claiming the exclusive attention
of artistic France. I went back to the studio, and resumed my work.
It was a Renaissance screen, which Boris wanted me to paint for
Geneviève’s boudoir. But the small boy who was unwillingly dawdling
through a series of poses for it, to-day refused all bribes to be good.
He never rested an instant in the same position, and inside of five
minutes I had as many different outlines of the little beggar.
“Are you posing, or are you executing a song and dance, my friend?” I
inquired.
“Whichever monsieur pleases,” he replied, with an angelic smile.
Of course I dismissed him for the day, and of course I paid him for the
full time, that being the way we spoil our models.
After the young imp had gone, I made a few perfunctory daubs at my
work, but was so thoroughly out of humour, that it took me the rest