The Yellow Sign & Other Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

  Liqueurs,

  Pipes and Cigarettes.

  Fallowby applauded frantically, and Sylvia served the soup. “Isn’t it delicious?” sighed Odile.

  Marie Guernalec sipped her soup in rapture.

  “Not at all like horse, and I don’t care what they say, horse doesn’t taste like beef,” whispered Colette to West. Fallowby, who had fin- ished, began to caress his chin and eye the tureen.

  “Have some more, old chap?” inquired Trent. “Monsieur Fallowby cannot have any more,” announced Sylvia; “I am saving this for the concierge.” Fallowby transferred his eyes to the fish.

  The sardines, hot from the grille, were a great success. While the others were eating Sylvia ran downstairs with the soup for the old concierge and her husband, and when she hurried back, flushed and breathless, and had slipped into her chair with a happy smile at Trent, that young man arose, and silence fell over the table. For an instant he looked at Sylvia and thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

  “You all know,” he began, “that to-day is my wife’s nineteenth birthday—” Fallowby, bubbling with enthusiasm, waved his glass in circles about his head to the terror of Odile and Colette, his neighbors, and Thorne, West and Guernalec refilled their glasses three times before the storm of applause which the toast of Sylvia had provoked, subsided.

  Three times the glasses were filled and emptied to Sylvia, and again to Trent who protested.

  “This is irregular,” he cried, “the next toast is to the twin Republics, France and America!” “To the Republics! To the Republics!” they cried, and the toast was drunk amid shouts of “Vive la France! Vive l’Amerique! Vive la Nation!”

  Then Trent, with a smile at West offered the toast, “To a Happy Pair!” and everybody understood, and Sylvia leaned over and kissed Colette while Trent bowed to West.

  The beef was eaten in comparative calm, but when it was finished and a portion of it set aside for the old people below, Trent cried: “Drink to Paris! May she rise from her ruins and crush the invader!” and the cheers rang out, drowning for a moment the monotonous thunder of the Prussian guns.

  Pipes and cigarettes were lighted, and Trent listened an instant to the animated chatter around him, broken by ripples of laughter from the girls or the mellow chuckle of Fallowby. Then he turned to West.

  “There is going to be a sortie to-night,” he said, “I saw the American Ambulance surgeon just before I came in and he asked me to speak to you fellows. Any aid we can give him will not come amiss.”

  Then dropping his voice and speaking in English, “As for me, I shall go out with the ambulance to-morrow morning. There is of course no danger, but it’s just as well to keep it from Sylvia.”

  West nodded. Thorne and Guernalec, who had heard, broke in and offered assistance, and Fallowby volunteered with a groan. “All right,” said Trent rapidly,—”no more now, but meet me at Ambulance headquarters to-morrow morning at eight.” Sylvia and Colette, who were becoming uneasy at the conversation in English, now demanded to know what they were talking about.

  “What does a sculptor usually talk about?” cried West, with a laugh.

  Odile glanced reproachfully at Thorne, her fiancé

  “You are not French, you know, and it is none of your business, this war,” said Odile with much dignity.

  Thorne looked meek, but West assumed an air of outraged virtue. “It seems,” he said to Fallowby, “that a fellow cannot discuss the beauties of Greek sculpture in his mother tongue, without being openly suspected.”

  Colette placed her hand over his mouth and turning to Sylvia, murmured, “They are horribly untruthful, these men.”

  “I believe the word for ambulance is the same in both languages,” said Marie Guernalec saucily; “Sylvia, don’t trust Monsieur Trent.” “Jack,” whispered Sylvia, “promise me—”

  A knock at the studio door interrupted her.

  “Come in!” cried Fallowby, but Trent sprang up, and opening the door, looked out. Then with a hasty excuse to the rest, he stepped into the hall-way and closed the door.

  When he returned he was grumbling.

  “What is it, Jack?” cried West.

  “What is it?” repeated Trent savagely; “I’ll tell you what it is. I have received a dispatch from the American Minister to go at once and identify and claim, as a fellow-countryman and a brother artist, a rascally thief and a German spy!”

  “Don’t go,” suggested Fallowby.

  “If I don’t they’ll shoot him at once.”

  “Let them,” growled Thorne.

  “Do you fellows know who it is?”

  “Hartman!” shouted West, inspired.

  Sylvia sprang up deathly white, but Odile slipped her arm around her, and supported her to a chair, saying calmly, “Sylvia has fainted,—it’s the hot room,—bring some water.”

  Trent brought it at once.

  Sylvia opened her eyes, and after a moment rose, and supported by Marie Guernalec and Trent, passed into the bedroom. It was the signal for breaking up, and everybody came and shook hands with Trent, saying they hoped Sylvia would sleep it off and that it would be nothing.

  When Marie Guernalec took leave of him, she avoided his eyes, but he spoke to her cordially and thanked her for her aid. “Anything I can do, Jack?” inquired West, lingering, and then hurried downstairs to catch up with the rest. Trent leaned over the banisters, listening to the footsteps and chatter, and then the lower door banged and the house was silent. He lingered, staring down into the blackness, biting his lips; then with an impatient movement, “I am crazy!” he muttered, and lighting a candle, went into the bedroom. Sylvia was lying on the bed. He bent over her, smoothing the curly hair on her forehead.

  “Are you better, dear Sylvia?” She did not answer, but raised her eyes to his. For an instant he met her gaze, but what he read there sent a chill to his heart and he sat down covering his face with his hands.

  At last she spoke in a voice changed and strained,—a voice which he had never heard, and he dropped his hands and listened, bolt upright in his chair.

  “Jack, it has come at last. I have feared it and trembled,—ah! how often have I lain awake at night with this on my heart and prayed that I might die before you should ever know of it! For I love you, Jack, and if you go away I cannot live. I have deceived you;—it happened before I knew you, but since that first day when you found me weep- ing in the Luxembourg and spoke to me, Jack, I have been faithful to you in every thought and deed. I loved you from the first, and did not dare to tell you this—fearing that you would go away; and since then my love has grown—grown—and oh! I suffered!—but I dared not tell you. And now you know, but you do not know the worst. For him,— now—what do I care? He was so cruel—oh so cruel!”

  She hid her face in her arms.

  “Must I go on? Must I tell you —can you not imagine, oh! Jack— ”

  He did not stir; his eyes seemed dead.

  “I—I was so young, I knew nothing, and he said—said that he loved me—”

  Trent rose and struck the candle with his clenched fist, and the room was dark. The bells of St. Sulpice tolled the hour, and she started up, speaking with feverish haste,—”I must finish! When you told me you loved me—you—you asked me nothing; but then, even then, it was too late, and that other life which binds me to him, must stand forever between you and me! For the is another whom he has claimed, and is good to. He must not die,—they cannot shoot him, for that other’s sake!”

  Trent sat motionless but his thoughts ran on in an interminable whirl. Sylvia, little Sylvia, who shared with him his student life—who bore with him the dreary desolation of the siege without complaint,— this slender blue-eyed girl whom he was so quietly fond of, whom he teased or caressed as the whim suited, who sometimes made him the least bit impatient with her passionate devotion to him,—could this be the same Sylvia who lay weeping there in the darkness?

  Then he clenched his teeth. “Let him die! Let him die!”—but t
hen,—for Sylvia’s sake, and,—for that other’s sake,—Yes, he would go,—he must go,—his duty was plain before him. But Sylvia,—he could not be what he had been to her, and yet a vague terror seized him, now all was said. Trembling, he struck a light.

  She lay there, her curly hair tumbled about her face, her small white hands pressed to her breast. He could not leave her, and he could not stay. He never knew before that he loved her. She had been a mere comrade, this girl wife of his. Ah! he loved her now with all his heart and soul, and he knew it, only when it was too late. Too late? Why? Then he thought of that other one, binding her, linking her forever to the creature, who stood in danger of his life. With an oath he sprang to the door, but the door would not open,—or was it that he pressed it back,—locked it,—and flung himself on his knees beside the bed, knowing that he dared not for his life’s sake leave what was his all in life.

  III It was four in the morning when he came out of the Prison of the Condemned with the Secretary of the American Legation. A knot of people had gathered around the American Minister’s carriage, which stood in front of the prison, the horses stamping and pawing in the icy street, the coachman huddled on the box, wrapped in furs. Southwark helped the Secretary into the carriage, and shook hands with Trent, thanking him for coming.

  “How the scoundrel did stare,” he said; “your evidence was worse than a kick, but it saved his skin for the moment at least,—and pre- vented complications.”

  The Secretary sighed; “we have done our part. Now let them prove him a spy and we wash our hands of him. Jump in, Captain! Come along, Trent!”

  “I have a word to say to Captain Southwark, I won’t detain him,” said Trent hastily, and dropping his voice, “Southwark, help me now. You know the—the child is at his rooms. Get it, and take it to my apartment, and if he is shot, I will provide a home for it.”

  “I understand,” said the Captain gravely.

  “Will you do this at once?”

  “At once,” he replied.

  Their hands met in a warm clasp and then Captain Southwark climbed into the carriage motioning Trent to follow; but he shook his head saying, “good-bye!” and the carriage rolled away.

  He watched the carriage to the end of the street, then started toward his own quarter, but after a step or two, hesitated, stopped and finally turned away in the opposite direction. Something—perhaps it was the sight of the prisoner he had so recently confronted nauseated him. He felt the need of solitude and quiet to collect his thoughts. The events of the evening had shaken him terribly, but he would walk it off, forget, bury everything, and then go back to Silvia. He started on swiftly and for a time the bitter thoughts seemed to fade, but when he paused at last, breathless, under the Arc de Triomphe, the bitterness and the wretchedness of the whole thing—yes, of his whole misspent life came back with a pang. Then the face of the prisoner, stamped with the horrible grimace of fear, grew in the shadows before his eyes.

  Sick at heart he wandered up and down under the great Arc, striving to occupy his mind, peering up at the sculptured cornices to read the names of the heroes and battles which he knew were engraved there, but always the ashen face of Hartman followed him, grinning with terror!—or was it terror?— was it not triumph?—At the thought he leaped like a man who feels a knife at his throat, but after a savage tramp around the square, came back again and sat down to battle with his misery.

  The air was cold, but his cheeks were burning with angry shame. Shame? Why? Was it because he had married a girl whom chance had made a mother? Did he love her? Was this miserable bohemian existence then his end and aim in life? He turned his eyes upon the secrets of his heart, and read an evil story,—the story of the past, and he cov- ered his face for shame, while, keeping time to the dull pain throbbing in his head, his heart beat out the story for the future. Shame and disgrace.

  Roused at last from a lethargy which had begun to numb the bitterness of his thoughts, he raised his head and looked about. A sudden fog had settled in the streets, the arches of the Arc were choked with it. He would go home. A great horror of being alone seized him. But he was not alone. The fog was peopled with phantoms. All around him in the mist they moved drifting through the arches in lengthening lines, and vanished, while from the fog others rose up, swept past and were engulfed. He was not alone, for even at his side they crowded, touched him, swarmed before him, beside him, behind him, pressed him back, seized, and bore him with them through the mist. Down a dim avenue, through lanes and alleys white with fog, they moved, and if they spoke their voices were dull as the vapor which shrouded them. At last in front, a bank of masonry and earth cut by a massive iron barred gate towered up in the fog. Slowly and more slowly they glided, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh. Then all movement ceased. A sudden breeze stirred the fog. It wavered and eddied. Objects became more distinct. A pallor crept above the horizon, touching the edges of the watery clouds, and drew dull sparks from a thousand bayonets. Bayonets—they were everywhere, cleaving the fog or flowing beneath it in rivers of steel. High on the wall of masonry and earth a great gun loomed, and around it figures moved in silhouettes. Below a broad torrent of bayonets swept through the iron barred gateway, out into the shadowy plain. It became lighter. Faces grew more distinct among the marching masses and he recognized one.

  “You, Philippe!”

  The figure turned its head.

  Trent cried,—”is there room for me?” but the other only waved his arm in a vague adieu and was gone with the rest. Presently the cavalry began to pass, squadron on squadron, crowding out into the darkness, then many cannon, then an ambulance, then again the endless lines of bayonets. Beside him a cuirassier sat on his streaming horse, and in front, among the group of mounted officers he saw a general, with the astrakan collar of his dolman turned up about his bloodless face.

  Some women were weeping near him and one was struggling to force a loaf of black bread into a soldier’s haversack. The soldier tried to aid her, but the sack was fastened, and his rifle bothered him, so Trent held it, while the woman unbuttoned the sack and forced in the bread, now all wet with her tears. The rifle was not heavy. Trent found it wonderfully manageable. Was the bayonet sharp? He tried it. Then a sudden longing, a fierce, imperative desire took possession of him.

  “Chouette!” cried a gamin, clinging to the barred gate; “encore toi mon vieux?” Trent looked up, and the rat-killer laughed in his face. But when the soldier had taken the rifle again, and thanking him, ran hard to catch his battalion, he plunged into the throng about the gateway.

  “Are you going?” he cried to a marine who sat in the gutter bandaging his foot.

  “Yes.” Then a girl,—a mere child caught him by the hand and led him into the café which faced the gate. The room was crowded with soldiers, some, white and silent, sitting on the floor, others groaning on the leather-covered settees. The air was sour and suffocating.

  “Choose!” said the girl with a little gesture of pity; “they can’t go!”

  In a heap of clothing on the floor he found a capote and képi. She helped him buckle his knapsack, cartridge box, and showed him how to load the chasse-pot rifle, holding it on her knees. When he thanked her she started to her feet.

  “You are a foreigner!”

  “American,” he said, moving toward the door, but the child barred his way.

  “I am a Bretonne. My father is up there with the cannon of the marine. He will shoot you if you are a spy.” They faced each other for a moment. Then sighing, he bent over and kissed the child. “Pray for France, little one,” he murmured, and she repeated with a pale smile: “for France and you, beau Monsieur.”

  He ran across the street and through the gateway. Once outside, he edged into line and shouldered his way along the road. A corporal passed, looked at him, repassed, and finally called an officer. “You belong to the 60th,” growled the corporal looking at the number on his képi.

  “We have no use for Franc-tireurs,” added the officer, catchi
ng sight of his black trousers.

  “I wish to volunteer in the place of a comrade,” said Trent, and the officer shrugged his shoulders and passed on. Nobody paid much attention to him, one or two merely glancing at his trousers. The road was deep with slush and mud ploughed and torn by wheels and hoofs. A soldier in front of him wrenched his foot in an icy rut and dragged himself to the edge of the embankment groaning. The plain on either side of them was gray with melting snow. Here and there behind dismantled hedge-rows stood wagons bearing white flags with red crosses. Sometimes the driver was a priest in rusty hat and gown, sometimes a crippled Mobile. Once they passed a wagon driven by a Sister of Charity. Silent empty houses with great rents in their walls, and every window blank, huddled along the road. Further on, within the zone of danger, nothing of human habitation remained except here and there a pile of frozen bricks or a blackened cellar choked with snow.

  For some time Trent had been annoyed by the man behind him who kept treading on his heels. Convinced at last that it was intentional he turned to remonstrate and found himself face to face with a fellow-student from the Beaux Arts. Trent stared.

  “I thought you were in the hospital!”

  The other shook his head, pointing to his bandaged jaw. “I see, you can’t speak. Can I do anything?”

  The wounded man rummaged in his haversack and produced a crust of black bread.

  “He can’t eat it, his jaw is smashed, and he wants you to chew it for him,” said the soldier next to him.

  Trent took the crust, and grinding it in his teeth, morsel by morsel, passed it back to the starving man. From time to time, mounted orderlies sped to the front covering them with slush. It was a chilly silent march through sodden meadows wreathed in fog. Along the railroad embankment across the ditch, another column moved parallel to their own. Trent watched it, a sombre mass, now distinct, now vague, now blotted out in a puff of fog. Once for half an hour he lost it, but when again it came into view, he noticed a thin line detach itself from the flank, and, bellying in the middle, swing rapidly to the west. At the same moment a prolonged crackling broke out in the fog in front. Other lines began to slough off from the column, swinging east and west, and the crackling became continuous. A battery passed at full gallop and he drew back with his comrades to give it way. It went into action a little to the right of his battalion, and as the shot from the first rifled piece boomed through the mist, the cannon from the fortifications opened with a mighty roar.An officer galloped by shouting something which Trent did not catch, but he saw the ranks in front suddenly part company with his own, and disappear in the twilight. More officers rode up and stood beside him peering into the fog. It was dreary waiting. Trent chewed some bread for the man behind, who tried to swallow it, and after a while shook his head, motioning Trent to eat the rest of it himself. A corporal offered him a little brandy and he drank it, but when he turned around to return the flask, the corporal was lying on the ground. Alarmed, he looked at the soldier next to him, who shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth to speak, but something struck him and he rolled over and over into the ditch below. At that moment the horse of one of the officers gave a bound and backed into the battalion, lashing out with his heels. One man was ridden down; another was kicked in the chest and hurled through the ranks. The officer sank his spurs into the horse and forced him to the front again, where he stood trembling. The cannonade seemed to grow nearer. A staff officer, riding slowly up and down the battalion suddenly collapsed in his saddle and clung to his horse’s mane. One of his boots dangled, crimsoned and dripping, from the stirrup. Then out of the mist in front, men came running. The roads, the fields, the ditches were full of them, and many of them fell. For an instant he imagined he saw horsemen riding about like ghosts in the vapors beyond, and a man behind him cursed horribly, declaring he too had seen them and that they were Uhlans; but the battalion stood inactive and the mist fell again over the meadows.