Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh and Stormont leaped for it. Then the lout detonation of Quintana’s rifle was echoed by the splintered rip of bullets tearing through the closed door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail.

  Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody’s stolen lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering past into the Ghost Lake road.

  As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then, rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the woods.

  In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found his rifle in the corridor outside Eve’s bedroom, was trying to open the shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house frantically for a weapon.

  Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry:

  “He’s gone!” she cried furiously. “He’s in somebody’s lumber-sledge with a pair of horses and he’s driving west like the devil!”

  Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the constabulary at Five Lakes.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with mortification, “what a ghastly business! I never dreamed he was within miles of Clinch’s! It’s the most shameful thing that ever happened to me — —”

  “What could anybody do under that rifle?” said Eve hotly. “That beat would have murdered the first person who stirred!”

  Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his brand-new wife.

  Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out of pretty, bewildered eyes.

  To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: “Is it the same bandit who robbed us before?”

  “Yes; Quintana,” he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features.

  “Ricca,” he said, “I promised I’d find your jewels. … I promise you

  again that I’ll never drop this business until your gems — and the

  Flaming Jewel — are in your possession — —”

  “But, Jim — —”

  “I swear it!” he exclaimed violently. “I’m not such a stupid fool as I seem — —”

  “Dear!” she protested excitedly, “you have done what you promised. My gems are in my possession — I believe — —”

  She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom hard, — thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes of an equilateral triangle.

  There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the alarm in a repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached itself and came away in the palm of her hand.

  And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay the Esthonian jewels — the true ones — deep hidden, always doubly guarded by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above.

  And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem — the magnificent Flaming

  Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire.

  Nobody stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as though stunned.

  Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and laughed.

  “Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean? Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you think it was for these that I followed you?”

  She laughed again, turned to Eve:

  “You understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have followed him like a gypsy. … They say there is gypsy blood in us. … God knows. … I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real women — —” Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her heart— “In all women — perhaps — a Flaming Jewel imbedded here — —”

  Her eyes, tender and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case, closed it, and placed it in his hands.

  “Now,” she said, “you have everything in your possession; and we are safe — we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I.”

  Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders.

  “Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go — home?”

  Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve’s snow-shoes.

  Darragh was performing like office for his wife, and the State Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve’s slim hands and kissed them, looking up at her where he was kneeling.

  Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so long, so long ago, when this man’s lips first touched her hands.

  As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the shy girl’s soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.

  * * * * *

  Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses through the primeval pines.

  Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.

  Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence — creep out, lie his way out, shoot his way out — it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth living for — the keys to power, to pleasure, — the key to everything on earth!

  In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and laughed aloud.

  “The keys to the world!” he cried. “Let him stop me and take them who is better than I!” Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his horses.

  Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State Trooper on snow-shoes, — saw the upflung arm warning him — screamed curses at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that dared menace him — this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to snatch from him the keys of the world ——

  * * * * *

  For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There was no use following; they’d have to run till they dropped.

  Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.

  * * * * *

  THE END

  The Short Story Collections

  The Art Students’ League, New York City, where Chambers studied during the 1880’s

  THE KING IN YELLOW

  This short story collection is widely considered to be Chambers’ masterpiece. The first four stories are linked by three elements, most notable a fictional play, The King in Yellow, whose readers are invariably driven mad by the terrible cosmic truths revealed to them. More specific information on the play is not given, with the emphasis being not so much on plot, but on the eerie and disturbing atmosphere. Another linking theme in the first four stories is a malevolent supernatural entity, also known as the King in Yellow, and an occult symbol, known as the Yellow Sign (which was also the name of a 2001 film inspired by the collection).

  In these fascinating early tales, Chambers developed a brand of weird fiction that influenced later practitioners of the genre such as Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft, who used elements of Chambers’ tales for his ‘Cthulu’ mythology. In his turn, Chambers was himself influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and a number of French symbolists and ‘decadents’.

  This sequence of stories is followed by two stand-alone macabre tales, while the last three stories are non-supernatural, featuring characters and
settings from Chambers’ fin de siècle novel, In the Quarter.

  Cover of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS

  THE MASK

  IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON

  THE YELLOW SIGN

  THE DEMOISELLE D’YS

  THE PROPHETS’ PARADISE

  THE STREET OF THE FOUR WINDS

  THE STREET OF THE FIRST SHELL

  THE STREET OF OUR LADY OF THE FIELDS

  RUE BARRÉE

  The mysterious ‘yellow sign’, one of the linking motifs in the first four stories

  THE KING IN YELLOW

  IS DEDICATED

  TO

  MY BROTHER

  Along the shore the cloud waves break,

  The twin suns sink beneath 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.

  THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS

  I

  “Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence.”

  Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself.

  But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed in the throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one.

  In the city of New York the summer of 1899 was signalized by the dismantling of the Elevated Railroads. The summer of 1900 will live in the memories of New York people for many a cycle; the Dodge Statue was removed in that year. In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.

  I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer’s house on Madison Avenue, where I had been as a mere formality. Ever since that fall from my horse, four years before, I had been troubled at times with pains in the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent, and the doctor sent me away that day saying there was nothing more to be cured in me. It was hardly worth his fee to be told that; I knew it myself. Still I did not grudge him the money. What I minded was the mistake which he made at first. When they picked me up from the pavement where I lay unconscious, and somebody had mercifully sent a bullet through my horse’s head, I was carried to Dr. Archer, and he, pronouncing my brain affected, placed me in his private asylum where I was obliged to endure treatment for insanity. At last he decided that I was well, and I, knowing that my mind had always been as sound as his, if not sounder, “paid my tuition” as he jokingly called it, and left. I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake, and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.

  The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and above all — oh, above all else — ambitious. There was only one thing which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled me.

  During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth — a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow
. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.

  It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue. The block which had formerly consisted of a lot of shabby old buildings, used as cafés and restaurants for foreigners, had been acquired by the Government in the winter of 1898. The French and Italian cafés and restaurants were torn down; the whole block was enclosed by a gilded iron railing, and converted into a lovely garden with lawns, flowers and fountains. In the centre of the garden stood a small, white building, severely classical in architecture, and surrounded by thickets of flowers. Six Ionic columns supported the roof, and the single door was of bronze. A splendid marble group of the “Fates” stood before the door, the work of a young American sculptor, Boris Yvain, who had died in Paris when only twenty-three years old.

  The inauguration ceremonies were in progress as I crossed University Place and entered the square. I threaded my way through the silent throng of spectators, but was stopped at Fourth Street by a cordon of police. A regiment of United States lancers were drawn up in a hollow square round the Lethal Chamber. On a raised tribune facing Washington Park stood the Governor of New York, and behind him were grouped the Mayor of New York and Brooklyn, the Inspector-General of Police, the Commandant of the state troops, Colonel Livingston, military aid to the President of the United States, General Blount, commanding at Governor’s Island, Major-General Hamilton, commanding the garrison of New York and Brooklyn, Admiral Buffby of the fleet in the North River, Surgeon-General Lanceford, the staff of the National Free Hospital, Senators Wyse and Franklin of New York, and the Commissioner of Public Works. The tribune was surrounded by a squadron of hussars of the National Guard.