The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers (latest books to read .txt) 📗

ranks of unlighted lamps. He was a little nervous and wished once or twice for a revolver, but the slinking forms which passed him in the darkness were too weak with hunger to be dangerous, he thought, and he passed on unmolested to his doorway. But there somebody sprang at his throat. Over and over the icy pavement he rolled with his assailant, tearing at the noose about his neck, and then with a wrench sprang to his feet.

“Get up,” he cried to the other.

Slowly and with great deliberation, a small gamin picked himself out of the gutter and surveyed Trent with disgust.

“That’s a nice clean trick,” said Trent; “a whelp of your age! You’ll finish against a dead wall! Give me that cord!”

The urchin handed him the noose without a word.

Trent struck a match and looked at his assailant. It was the rat-killer of the day before.

“H’m! I thought so,” he muttered.

“Tiens, c’est toi?” said the gamin tranquilly.

The impudence, the overpowering audacity of the ragamuffin took Trent’s breath away.

“Do you know, you young strangler,” he gasped, “that they shoot thieves of your age?”

The child turned a passionless face to Trent. “Shoot, then.”

That was too much, and he turned on his heel and entered his hotel.

Groping up the unlighted stairway, he at last reached his own landing and felt about in the darkness for the door. From his studio came the sound of voices, West’s hearty laugh and Fallowby’s chuckle, and at last he found the knob and, pushing back the door, stood a moment confused by the light.

“Hello, Jack!” cried West, “you’re a pleasant creature, inviting people to dine and letting them wait. Here’s Fallowby weeping with hunger—”

“Shut up,” observed the latter, “perhaps he’s been out to buy a turkey.”

“He’s been out garroting, look at his noose!” laughed Guernalec.

“So now we know where you get your cash!” added West; “vive le coup du Père François!”

Trent shook hands with everybody and laughed at Sylvia’s pale face.

“I didn’t mean to be late; I stopped on the bridge a moment to watch the bombardment. Were you anxious, Sylvia?”

She smiled and murmured, “Oh, no!” but her hand dropped into his and tightened convulsively.

“To the table!” shouted Fallowby, and uttered a joyous whoop.

“Take it easy,” observed Thorne, with a remnant of manners; “you are not the host, you know.”

Marie Guernalec, who had been chattering with Colette, jumped up and took Thorne’s arm and Monsieur Guernalec drew Odile’s arm through his.

Trent, bowing gravely, offered his own arm to Colette, West took in Sylvia, and Fallowby hovered anxiously in the rear.

“You march around the table three times singing the Marseillaise,” explained Sylvia, “and Monsieur Fallowby pounds on the table and beats time.”

Fallowby suggested that they could sing after dinner, but his protest was drowned in the ringing chorus—

“Aux armes! Formez vos bataillons!”

Around the room they marched singing,

“Marchons! Marchons!”

with all their might, while Fallowby with very bad grace, hammered on the table, consoling himself a little with the hope that the exercise would increase his appetite. Hercules, the black and tan, fled under the bed, from which retreat he yapped and whined until dragged out by Guernalec and placed in Odile’s lap.

“And now,” said Trent gravely, when everybody was seated, “listen!” and he read the menu.

Beef Soup à la Siège de Paris.

Fish. Sardines à la père Lachaise. (White Wine).

Rôti (Red Wine). Fresh Beef à la sortie.

Vegetables. Canned Beans à la chassepot, Canned Peas Gravelotte, Potatoes Irlandaises, Miscellaneous.

Cold Corned Beef à la Thieis, Stewed Prunes à la Garibaldi.

Dessert. Dried prunes—White bread, Currant Jelly, Tea—Café, 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 finished, 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 neighbours, 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 a France! Vive l’Amérique! 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 horridly 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 hallway 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 their 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 weeping 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 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 for ever between you and me! For there 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