The Yellow Sign & Other Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

  keeping time to the most fantastic and irreverent thoughts. It was not use to sit there any longer: I must get out of doors and shake myself free form this hateful mood. I knew the rudeness I was committing, but still I rose and left the church.

  A spring sun was shining on the rue St. Honoré, as I ran down the church steps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violets from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with my destruction. I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began to dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. It began to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached along way backa long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these years: it was there though, and presently it would rise and confront me. But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could in the rue de Rivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of gray stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys of the Cours la Reine.

  I left the river side, plunged blindly across to the Champs Elysées and turned toward the Arc. The setting sun was sending its rays along the green sward of the Rond-point: in the full glow he sat on a bench, children and young mothers all about him. He was nothing but a Sunday lounger, like the others, like myself. I said the words almost aloud, and all the while I gazed on the malignant hatred of his face. But he was not looking at me. I crept past and dragged my leaden feet up the Avenue. I knew that every time I met him brought him nearer t the accomplishment of his purpose and my fate. And still I tried to save myself.

  The last rays of the sunset were pouring through the great Arc. I passed under it, and met him face to face. I had left him far down the Champs Elysées, and yet he came in with a stream of people who were returning for the Bois de Boulogne. He came so close that he brushed me. His slender frame felt iron inside its loose black covering. He showed not signs of haste, nor of fatigue, nor of any human feeling. His whole being expressed but one thing: the will, and the power to work me evil.

  In anguish I watched him, where he went down the broad crowded Avenue, that was all flashing with wheels and the trappings of horses, and the helmets of the Garde Republicaine.

  He was soon lost to sight; then I turned and fled. Into the Bois, and far out beyond itI know not where I went, but after a long while as it seemed to me, night had fallen, and I found myself sitting at a table before a small café. I had wandered back into the Bois. It was hours now since I had seen him. Physical fatigue, and mental suffering had left me no more power to think or feel. I was tired, so tired! I longed to hide away in my own den. I resolved to go home. But that was a long way off.

  I live in the Court of the Dragon, a narrow passage that leads from the rue de Rennes to the rue du Dragon. It is an “Impasse;” traversable only for foot passengers. Over the entrance of the rue de Rennes is a balcony, supported by an iron dragon. Within the court tall old houses rise on either side, and close the ends that give on the two streets. Huge gates, swung back during the day into the walls of the deep archways, close this court, after midnight, and one must enter then by ringing at certain small doors on the side. The sunken pavement collects unsavory pools. Steep stairways pitch down to doors that open on the court. The ground floors are occupied by shops of second-hand dealers, and by iron workers. All day long the place rings with the clinks of hammers, and the clang of metal bars.

  Unsavory as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard, honest work above. Five flights up are the ateliers of architects and painters, and the hiding-places of middle-aged students like myself who want to live alone. When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone.

  I had to walk awhile before any conveyance appeared, but at last, when I had almost reached the Arc de Triomphe again, an empty cab came along and I took it.

  From the Arc to the rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour, especially when one is conveyed by a tired cab horse that had been at the mercy of Sunday fête makers.

  There had been time I passed under the Dragon’s wings, to meet my enemy over and over again, but I never saw him once, and now refuge was close at hand.

  Before the wide gateway a small mob of children were playing. Our concierge and his wife walked about among them with their black poodle, keeping order; some couples were waltzing on the side-walk. I returned their greetings and hurried on.

  All the inhabitants of the court had trooped out into the street. The place was quite deserted, lighted by a few lanterns hung high up, in which the gas burned dimly.

  My apartment was at the top of the house, halfway down the court, reached by a staircase that descended almost into the street, with only a bit of passage-way intervening. I set my foot on the threshold of the open door, the friendly, old ruinous stairs rose before me, leading up to rest and shelter. Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw him, ten paces off. He must have entered the court with me.

  He was coming straight on, neither slowly, nor swiftly, but straight on to me. And now he was looking at me. For the first time since our eyes encountered across the church they met now again, and I knew that the time had come.

  Retreating backward, down the court, I faced him. I meant to escape by the entrance on the rue du Dragon. His eyes told me that I never should escape.

  It seemed ages while we were going, I retreating, he advancing, down the court in perfect silence; but at last I felt the shadows of the archway, and the next step brought me within it. I had meant to turn here and spring through into the street. But the shadow was not that of an archway; it was that of a vault. The great doors on the rue du Dragon were closed. I felt this by the blackness which surrounded me, and at the same instant I read it in his face. How his face gleamed in the darkness, drawing swiftly nearer! The deep vaults, the huge closed doors, their cold iron clamps were all on his side. The thing which he had threatened had arrived: it gathered and bore down on me from the fathomless shadows; the point from which it would strike was his infernal eyes. Hopeless I set my back against the barred doors and defied him.

  There was a scraping of chairs on the stone floor, and a rustling as the congregation rose. I could hear the Suisse’s staff in the south aisle, preceding Monseigneur C to the sacristy.

  The kneeling nuns, roused from their devout abstraction, made their reverence and went away. The fashionable lady, my neighbor, rose also, with graceful reserve. As she departed her glance just flit- ted over my face in disapproval.

  Half dead, or so it seemed to me, yet intensely alive to every trifle, I sat among the leisurely moving crowd, then rose too and went toward the door.

  I had slept through the sermon. Had I slept through the sermon? I looked up and saw him passing along the gallery to his place. Only his side I saw; the thin bent arm in its black covering looked like one of those devilish, nameless instruments which lie in the disused torture chambers of mediæval castles.

  But I had escaped him, though his eyes had said I should not. Had I escaped him? That which gave him the power over me came back out of oblivion, where I had hope to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent himthey had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine. I had recognized him almost from the first; I had never doubt- ed what he was come to do; and now I knew that while my body sat safe in the cheerful little church, he had been hunting my soul in
the Court of the Dragon.

  I crept to the door; the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the Lake of Hail chilled my face.

  And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon.

  Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!”

  The Yellow Sign

  “Along the shore the cloud waves breaks,

  The twin suns sink behind the lake,

  The shadows lengthen

  In Carcosa.

  Strange is the night where black stars rise,

  And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is

  Lost Carcosa.

  Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

  Where flap the tatters of the King,

  Must die unheard in

  Dim Carcosa.

  Song of my soul, my voice is dead,

  Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

  Shall dry and die in

  Lost Carcosa.”

  Cassilda’s Song in The King in Yellow. Act I. Scene 2. “Let the red dawn surmise

  What we shall do,

  When this blue starlight dies

  And all is through.”

  I. BEING THE CONTENTS OF AN UNSIGNED LETTER SENT TO THE AUTHOR

  There are so many things which are impossible to explain! Why should certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile send my thoughts wandering among the caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o’clock that flashed before my eyes the pic- ture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring fo- liage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: “To think that this also is a little ward of God!”

  When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I paid no more attention to him than I had to any other man who lounged through Washington Square that morning, and when I shut my window and turned back into the my studio I had forgotten him. Late in the afternoon, the day being warm, I raised the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air. A man was standing in the courtyard of the church, and I noticed him again with as little interest as I had that morning. I looked across the square to where the fountain was playing and then, with my mind filled with vague impressions of trees, as- phalt drives, and the moving groups of nursemaids and holiday-makers, I started to walk back to my easel. As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in the churchyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that re- pelled me I did not know, but the impression of a plump white graveworm was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression, for he turned his puffy face away with a movement which made me think of a disturbed grub in a chestnut.

  I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose. After working awhile I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had down as rapidly as possible, and I took up a palette knife and scrapedthecoloroutagain.Thefleshtonesweresallowandunhealthy, and I did not understand how I could have painted such sickly color into a study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.

  I looked at Tessie. She had not changed, and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.

  “Is it something I’ve done?” she said.

  “No, I’ve made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me I can’t see how I came to paint such mud as that into the canvas,” I replied. “Don’t I pose well?” she insisted.

  “Of course, perfectly.”

  “Then isn’t not my fault?”

  “No. It’s my own.”

  “I’m very sorry,” she said.

  I told her she could rest while I applied rag and turpentine to the plague spot on my canvas, and she went off to smoke a cigarette and look over the illustrations in the Courier Français.

  I did not know whether it was something in the turpentine or a defect of the canvas, but the more I scrubbed the more that gangrene defect seemed to spread. I worked like a beaver to get it out, and yet the disease appeared to creep from limb to limb of the study before me. Alarmed I strove to arrest it, but now the color on the breast changed and the whole figure seemed to absorb the infection as a sponge soaks up water. Vigorously I plied palette knife, turpentine, and scraper, thinking all the time what a séance I should hold with Duval who had sold me the canvas; but soon I noticed that it was not the canvas which was defective nor yet the colors of Edward. “It must be the turpentine,” I thought angrily, “or else my eyes have become so blurred and confused by the afternoon light that I can’t see straight.” I called Tessie, the model. She came and leaned over my chair blowing rings of smoke into the air.

  “What have you been doing to it?” she exclaimed.

  “Nothing,” I growled, “it must be this turpentine!”

  “What a horrible color it is now,” she continued. “Do you think my flesh resembles green cheese?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said angrily, “did you ever know me to paint like that before?” “No, indeed!”

  “Well, then!”

  “It must be the turpentine, or something,” she admitted.

  She slipped on a Japanese robe and walked to the window. I scraped and rubbed until I was tired and finally picked up my brush- es and hurled them through the canvas with a forcible expression, the tone alone of which reached Tessie’s ears.

  Nevertheless she promptly began: “That’s it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes! You have been three weeks on that study, and now look! What’s the good of ripping the canvas? What creatures artists are!”

  I felt about as much ashamed as I usually did after such an outbreak, and I turned the ruined canvas to the wall. Tessie helped me clean my brushes, and then danced away to dress. From the screen she regaled me with bits of advice concerning whole or partial loss of temper, until, thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented sufficiently, she came out to implore me to button her waist where she could not reach it on the shoulder.

  “Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the window and talked about that horrid-looking man you saw in the churchyard,” she announced.

  “Yes, he probably bewitched the picture,” I said, yawning. I looked at my watch.

  “It’s after six, I know,” said Tessie, adjusting her hat before the mirror. “Yes,” I replied, “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” I leaned out of the window but recoiled with disgust, for the young man with the pasty face stood below in the churchyard. Tessie saw my gesture of disapproval and leaned from the window.

  “Is that the man you don’t like?” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “I can’t see his face, but he does look fat and soft. Someway or other,” she continued, turning to look at me, “he reminds me of a dream, an awful dream I once had. Or,” she mused, looking down at her shapely shoes, “was it a dream after all?”

  “How should I know?” I smiled.

  Tessie smiled in reply.

  “You were in it,” she said, “so perhaps you might know something about it.”

  “Tessie! Tessie!” I protested, “don’t you dare flatter by saying you dream about me!”

 
; “But I did,” she insisted; “shall I tell you about it?”

  “Go ahead,” I replied, lighting a cigarette. Tessie leaned back on the open window-sill and began very seriously. “One night last winter I was lying in bed thinking about nothing at all in particular. I had been posing for you and I was tired out, yet it seemed impossible for me to sleep. I heard the bells in the city ring ten, eleven, and midnight. I must have fallen about midnight because I don’t remember hearing the bells after that. It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when I dreamed that something impelled me to go to the window. I rose, and raising the sash, leaned out. Twenty-fifth Street was deserted as far as I could see. I began to be afraid; everything outside seemed so so black and uncomfortable. Then the sound of wheels in the distance came to my ears, and it seemed to me as though that was what I must wait for. Very slowly the wheels approached, and, finally, I could make out a vehicle moving along the street. It came nearer and nearer, and when it passed beneath my window I saw it was a hearse. Then, as I trembled with fear, the driver turned and looked straight at me. When I awoke I was standing by the open window shivering with cold, but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream again in March last, and again awoke beside the open window. Last night the dream came again. You remember how it was raining; when I awoke, standing at the open window, my night-dress was soaked.”

  “But where did I come into the dream?” I asked.

  “You you were in the coffin; but you were not dead.” “In the coffin?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know? Could you see me?”

  “No; I only knew you were there.”

  “Had you been eating Welsh rarebits, or lobster salad?” I began laughing, but the girl interrupted me with a frightened cry. “Hello! What’s up?” I said, as she shrank into the embrasure by the window.

  “The the man below in the churchyard; he drove the hearse.” “Nonsense,” I said, but Tessie’s eyes were wide with terror. I want to the window and looked out. The man was gone. “Come, Tessie,” I urged, “don’t be foolish. You have posed too long; you are nervous.”