The Yellow Sign & Other Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

  The colonel sat heavily upon his horse, his bullet-shaped head buried in the astrakan collar of his dolman, his fat legs sticking straight out in the stirrups.

  The buglers clustered about him with the bugles poised, and behind him a staff officer in a pale blue jacket, smoked a cigarette and chatted with a captain of hussars. From the road in front came the sound of furious galloping and an orderly reined up beside the colonel, who motioned him to the rear without turning his head. Then on the left confused murmur arose which ended in a shout. A hussar passed like the wind, followed by another and another, an then squadron after squadron whirled by them into the sheeted mists. At that instant the colonel reared in his saddle, the bugles clanged and the whole battalion scrambled down the embankment. Almost at once Trent lost his cap. Something snatched it from his head, he thought it was a tree branch. A good many of his comrades rolled over in the slush and ice, and he imagined that they had slipped. One pitched right across his path and he stopped to help him up, but the man screamed when he touched him and an officer shouted, “forward, for- ward!” so he ran on again. It was a long jog through the mist, and he was often obliged to shift his rifle. When at last they lay panting be- hind the railroad embankment, he looked about him. He had felt the need of action, of a desperate physical struggle, of killing and crushing. He had been seized with a desire to fling himself among masses and tear right and left. He longed to fire, to use the thin sharp bayo- net on his chasse-pot. He had not expected this. He wished to become exhausted, to struggle and cut until incapable of lifting his arm. Then he had intended to go home. He heard a man say that half the battalion had gone down in the charge, and he saw another examining a corpse under the embankment. The body, still warm, was clothed in a strange uniform, but even when he noticed the spiked helmet lying a few inches further away, he did not realize what had happened. The colonel sat on his horse a few feet to the left, his eyes sparkling under the crimson képi. Trent heard him reply to an officer: “I can hold it, but another charge, and I won’t have enough men left to sound a bugle.”

  “Wee the Prussians here?” Trent asked of a soldier who sat wiping the blood trickling from his hair. “Yes. The hussars cleaned them out. We caught their cross fire.” “We are supporting a battery on the embankment,” said another.

  Then the battalion crawled over the embankment and moved along the lines of twisted rails. Trent rolled up his trousers and tucked them into his woolen socks: but they halted again, and some of the men sat down on the dismantled railroad track. Trent looked for his wounded comrade from the Beaux Arts. He was standing in his place, very pale. The cannonade had become terrific. For a moment the mist lifted. He caught a glimpse of the first battalion motionless on the railroad track in front, of regiments on either flank, and then, as the fog settled again, the drums beat and the music of the bugles began away on the extreme left. A restless movement passed among the troops, the colonel threw up his arm, the drums rolled, and the battalion moved off through the fog. They were near the front now, for the first battalion was firing as it advanced. Ambulances galloped along the base of the embankment to the rear, and the hussars passed and repassed like phantoms. They were in the front at last, for all about them was movement and turmoil, while from the fog, close at hand, came cries and groans and crashing volleys. Shells fell everywhere, bursting along the embankment, splashing them with frozen slush. Trent was frightened. He began to dread the unknown, which lay there cracking and flaming in obscurity. The shock of the cannon sickened him. He could even see the fog light up with a dull orange as the thunder shook the earth. It was near, he felt certain, for the colonel shouted “forward!” and the first battalion was hastening into it. He felt its breath, he trembled, but hurried on. A fearful discharge in front terrified him. Somewhere in the fog men were cheering, and the colonel’s horse streaming with blood plunged about in the smoke.

  Another blast and shock, right in his face, almost stunned him, and he faltered. All the men to the right were down. His head swam; the fog and smoke stupefied him. He put out his hand for a support and caught something. It was the wheel of a gun carriage, and a man sprang from it, aiming a blow at his head with a rammer, but stumbled back shrieking with a bayonet through his neck, and Trent knew that he had killed. Mechanically he stooped to pick up his rifle, but the bayonet was still in the man who lay, beating with red hands against the sod. It sickened him and he leaned on the cannon. Men were fight- ing all around him now and the air was foul with smoke and sweat. Somebody seized him from behind and another in front, but others in turn seized them or struck them solid blows. The click! click! click! of bayonets infuriated him, and he grasped the rammer and struck out blindly until it was shivered to pieces.

  A man threw his arm around his neck and bore him to the ground, but he throttled him and raised himself on his knees. He saw a comrade seize the cannon, and fall across it with his skull crushed in; he saw the colonel tumble clean out of his saddle into the mud, then consciousness fled.

  When he came to himself, he was lying on the embankment among the twisted rails. On every side huddled men who cried out and cursed and fled away into the fog, and he staggered to his feet and followed them. Once he stopped to help a comrade with a bandaged jaw, who could not speak but clung to his arm for a time and then fell dead in the freezing mire; and again he aided another, who groaned: “Trent, c’est moi—Philippe” until a sudden volley in the mist re- lieved him of his charge.

  An icy wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower into the blood-soaked plain.

  IV When Midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army.

  They entered with the night, a sullen horde, spattered with slime, faint with hunger and exhaustion. There was little disorder at first and the throng at the gates parted silently as the troops tramped along the freezing streets. Confusion came as the hours passed. Swiftly and more swiftly, crowding squadron after squadron and battery on battery, horses plunging and caissons jolting, the remnants from the front surged through the gates, a chaos of cavalry and artillery struggling for the right of way. Close upon them stumbled the infantry; here a skeleton of a regiment marching with a desperate attempt at order, there a riotous mob of Mobiles crushing their way to the streets, then a turmoil of horsemen, cannon, troops without officers, officers with- out men, then again a line of ambulances, the wheels groaning under their heavy loads.

  Dumb with misery the crowd looked on. All through the day the ambulances had been arriving, and all day long the ragged throng whimpered and shivered by the barriers. At noon the crowd was increased tenfold, filling the squares about the gates, and swarming over the inner fortifications.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon the German batteries suddenly wreathed themselves in smoke and the shells fell fast on Montparnasse. At twenty minutes after four two projectiles struck a house in the rue de Bac, and a moment later the first shell fell in the Latin Quarter.

  Braith was painting in bed when West came in very much scared. “I wish you would come down; our house has been knocked into a cocked hat, and I’m afraid that some of the pillagers may take it into their heads to pay us a visit to-night.”

  Braith jumped out of bed and bundled himself into a garment which had once been an overcoat.

  “Anybody hurt?” he inquired, struggling with a sleeve full of dilapidated lining. “No. Colette is barricaded in the cellar, and the concierge ran away to the fortifications. There will be a rough gang there if the bombardment keeps up. You might help us—”

  “Of course,” said Braith; but it was not until they had reached the rue Serpente and had turned in the passage which led to West’s cellar, that the latter cried: “have you seen Jack Trent to-day?”

  “No,” replied Braith looking troubled, “he was not at Amb
ulance Headquarters.”

  “He stayed to take care of Sylvia, I suppose.” A bomb came crashing through the roof of a house at the end of the alley and burst in the basement, showering the street with slate and plaster. A second struck a chimney and plunged into the garden, followed by an avalanche of bricks, and another exploded with a deafening report in the next street.

  They hurried along the passage to the steps which led to the cellar. Here again Braith stopped.

  “Don’t you think I had better run up to see if Jack and Sylvia are well intrenched? I can get back before dark.” “No. Go in and find Colette and I’ll go.”

  “No, no, let me go, there’s no danger.”

  “I know it,” replied West calmly; and dragging Braith into the alley pointed to the cellar steps. The iron door was barred. “Colette! Colette!” he called. The door swung inward, and the girl sprang up the steps to meet them. At that instant, Braith, glancing behind him, gave a startled cry, and pushing the two before him into the cellar jumped down after them and slammed the iron door. A few seconds later a heavy jar from outside shook the hinges.

  “They are here,” muttered West, very pale.

  “That door,” observed Colette calmly, “will hold forever.”

  Braith examined the low iron structure, now trembling with the blows rained on it from without. West glanced anxiously at Colette who displayed no agitating, and this comforted him.

  “I don’t believe they will spend much time here,” said Braith; “they only rummage in cellars for spirits, I imagine.” “Unless they hear that valuables are buried there.”

  “But surely nothing is buried here?” exclaimed Braith uneasily.

  “Unfortunately there is,” growled West. “That miserly landlord of mine—” A crash from outside followed by a yell cut him short; then blow after blow shook the doors until there came a sharp snap, a clinking of metal, and a triangular bit of iron fell inwards leaving a hole through which struggled a ray of light.

  Instantly West knelt, and shoving his revolver through the aperture fired every cartridge. For a moment the alley resounded with the racket of the revolver, then absolute silence followed.

  Presently a single questioning blow fell upon the door, and a moment later another and another, and then a sudden crack zigzagged across the iron plate.

  “Here,” said West, seizing Colette by the wrist, “you follow me, Braith!” and he ran swiftly toward a circular spot of light at the further end of the cellar. The spot of light came from a barred man-hole above. West motioned Braith to mount on his shoulders.

  “Push it over. You must!”

  With little effort Braith lifted the barrel cover, scrambled out on his stomach, and easily raised Colette from West’s shoulders. “Quick, old chap!” cried the latter. Braith twisted his legs around a fence chain and leaned down again. The cellar was flooded with a yellow light and the air reeked with the stench of petroleum torches. The iron door still held, but a whole plate of metal was gone, and now as they looked a figure came creeping through holding a torch.

  “Quick!” whispered Braith, “Jump!” and West hung dangling until Colette grasped him by the collar and he was dragged out. Then her nerves gave way and she wept hysterically, but West threw his arms around her and led her across the gardens into the next street, where Braith, after replacing the man-hole cover and piling some stone slabs from the wall over it, rejoined them. It was almost dark. They hurried through the street now only lighted by burning buildings or the swift glare of the shells. They gave wide berth to the fires, but at a distance saw the flitting forms of pillagers among the débris. Sometimes they passed a female fury crazed with drink shrieking anathemas upon the world, or some slouching lout whose blackened face and hands betrayed his share in the work of destruction. At last they reached the Seine and passed the bridge, and then Braith said: “I must go back. I am not sure of Jack and Sylvia.” As he spoke, he made way for a crowd which came trampling across the bridge, and along the river wall by the d’Orsay barracks. In the midst of it West caught the measured tread of a platoon. A lantern passed, a file of bayonets, then an- other lantern which glimmered on a deathly face behind, and Colette gasped, “Hartman!” and he was gone. They peered fearfully across the embankment, holding their breath. There was a shuffle of feet on the quay and the gate of the barracks slammed. A lantern shone for a moment at the postern, the crowd pressed to the grille, then came the clang of the volley from the stone parade.

  Onebyonethepetroleumtorchesflaredupalongtheembankment, and now the whole square was in motion. Down from the Champs Elysées and across the Place de la Concorde, straggled the fragments of the battle, a company here, and a mob there. They poured in from every street followed by women and children, and a great murmur, borne on the icy wind, swept through the Arc de Triomphe and cut down the dark avenue,—”Perdus! perdus!”

  A ragged end of a battalion was pressing past, the spectre of annihilation. West groaned. Then a figure sprang from the shadowy ranks and called West’s name, and when he saw it was Trent he cried out. Trent seized him, white with terror.

  “Sylvia?”

  West stared speechless, but Colette moaned “Oh, Sylvia! Sylvia!—and they are shelling the Quarter!”

  “Trent!” shouted Braith; but he was gone, and they could not overtake him. The bombardment ceased as Trent crossed the Boulevard St. Germain, but the entrance to the rue de Seine was blocked by a heap of smoking bricks. Everywhere the shells had torn great holes in the pavement. The café was a wreck of splinters and glass, the bookstore tottered, ripped from roof to basement, and the little bakery, long since closed, bulged outward above a mass of slate and tin.

  He climbed over the steaming bricks and hurried into the rue de Tournon. On the corner a fire blazed, lighting up his own street, and on the blank wall, beneath a shattered gas lamp, a child was writing with a bit of cinder.

  “HERE FELL THE FIRST SHELL.” The letters stared him in the face. The rat-killer finished and stepped back to view his work, but catching sight of Trent’s bayonet, screamed, and fled, and as Trent staggered across the shattered street, from holes and crannies in the ruins fierce women fled from their work of pillage, cursing him.

  At first he could not find his house, for the tears blinded him, but he felt along the wall and reached the door. A lantern burned in the concierge’s lodge and the old man lay dead beside it. Faint with fright he leaned a moment on his rifle, then, snatching the lantern, sprang up the stairs. He tried to call, but his tongue hardly moved. On the second floor he saw plaster on the stairway, and on the third the floor was torn and the concierge lay in a pool of blood across the landing. The next floor was his, theirs. The door hung from its hinges, the walls gaped. He crept in and sank down by the bed, and there two arms were flung around his neck, and a tear-stained face sought his own.

  “Sylvia!”

  “Oh Jack! Jack! Jack!”

  From the tumbled pillow beside them a child wailed. “They brought it; it is mine,” she sobbed.

  “Ours,” he whispered, with his arms around them both. “Then from the stairs below came Braith’s anxious voice. “Trent! Is all well?”

  The Street of Our Lady of the Fields

  “Et tous les jours passés la tristesse Nous sont comptés comme les jours heureux!”

  I THE STREET is not fashionable neither is it shabby. It is a pariah among streets—a street without a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l’Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at its respectability and regards with disfavor the correctly-costumed students who haunt it. Few strangers go into it. At times, however, the Latin Quarter students use it as a thoroughfare between the rue de Rennes and the Bullier, but except for that and the weekly afternoon visits of parents and guardians of the Convent near the rue Vavin, the street of Our Lady of the Fields is as quie
t as a Passy boulevard. Perhaps the most respectable portion lies between the rue de la Grande Chaumière and the rue Vavin, at least this was the conclusion arrived at by the Reverend Joel Byram, as he rambled through it with Hastings in charge. To Hastings the street looked pleasant in the bright June weather, and he had begun to hope for its selection when the Reverend Byram shied violently at the cross on the Convent opposite.