The Yellow Sign & Other Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I—I will, Trent, but it’s an obligation that perhaps I can never even in part repay, I’m poor and—” “Of course you’ll pay me! If I were a usurer I would take your talent for security. When you are rich and famous—”

  “Don’t, Trent—”

  “All right, only no more monkey business.”

  He slipped a dozen gold pieces into the purse and tucking it again under the mattress smiled at Braith.

  “How old are you?” he demanded.

  “Sixteen.” Trent laid his hand lightly on his friend’s shoulder. “I’m twentytwo, and I have the rights of a grandfather as far as you are concerned. You’ll do as I say until you’re twenty-one.”

  “The siege will be over then I hope,” said Braith trying to laugh, but the prayer in their hearts: “How long, O Lord, how long!” was answered by the swift scream of a shell soaring among the stormclouds of that December night.

  II West, standing in the doorway of a house in the rue Serpente, was speaking angrily. He said he didn’t care whether Hartman liked it or not; he was telling him, not arguing with him.

  “You call yourself an American!” he sneered; “Berlin and hell are full of that kind of American. You come loafing about Colette with your pockets stuffed with white bread and beef, and a bottle of wine at thirty francs and you can’t really afford to give a dollar to the American Ambulance and Public Assistance, which Braith does, and he’s half starved!”

  Hartman retreated to the curbstone, but West followed him, his face like a thunder-cloud. “Don’t you dare to call yourself a countryman of mine,” he growled,—”no,—nor an artist either! Artists don’t worm themselves into the service of the Public Defense where they do nothing but feed like rats on the people’s food! And I’ll tell you now,” he continued, dropping his voice, for Hartman had started as though stung, “you might better keep away from that Alsatian Brasserie and the smug-faced thieves who haunt it. You know what they do with suspects!”

  “You like, you hound!” screamed Hartman, and flung the bottle in his hand straight at West’s face. West had him by the throat in a second, and forcing him against the dead wall shook him wickedly.

  “Now you listen to me,” he muttered, through his clenched teeth. “You are already a suspect and—I swear—I believe you are a paid spy! It isn’t my business to detect such vermin, and I don’t intend to denounce you, but understand this! Colette doesn’t like you and I can’t stand you, and if I catch you in this street again I’ll make it somewhat unpleasant. Get out, you sleek Prussian!”

  Hartman had managed to drag a knife from his pocket but West tore it from him and hurled him into the gutter. A gamin who had seen this, burst into a peal of laughter, which rattled harshly in the silent street. Then everywhere windows were raised and rows of haggard faces appeared demanding to know why people should laugh in the starving city.

  “Is it a victory?” murmured one. “Look at that,” cried West as Hartman picked himself up from the pavement, “look! you miser! look at those faces!” But Hartman gave him a look which he never forgot, and walked away without a word. Trent, who suddenly appeared at the corner, glanced curiously at West, who merely nodded toward his door saying, “come in; Fallowby’s upstairs.”

  “What are you doing with that knife?” demanded Fallowby, as he and Trent entered the studio. West looked at his wounded hand which still clutched the knife, but saying: “cut myself by accident,” tossed it into a corner and washed the blood from his fingers.

  Fallowby, fat and lazy, watched him without comment, but Trent, half divining how things had turned, walked over to Fallowby smiling.

  “I’ve a bone to pick with you!” he said.

  “Where is it? I’m hungry,” replied Fallowby with affected eagerness, but Trent, frowning, told him to listen.

  “How much did I advance you a week ago?”

  “Three hundred and eighty francs,” replied the other, with a squirm of contrition.

  “Where is it?”

  Fallowby began a series of intricate explanations which were soon cut short by Trent. “I know; you blew it in;—you always blow it in. I don’t care a rap what you did before the siege; I know you are rich and have a right to dispose of your money as you wish to, and I also know that, generally speaking, it is none of my business. But now it is my business as I have to supply the funds until you get some more which you won’t until the siege is ended one way or another. I wish to share what I have, but I won’t see it thrown out of the window. Oh, yes, of course I know you will reimburse me, but that isn’t the question; and, anyway, it’s the opinion of your friends, old man, that you will not be worse off for a little abstinence from fleshly pleasures. You are positively a freak in this famine—cursed city of skeletons!”

  “I am rather stout,” he admitted.

  “Is it true you are out of money?” demanded Trent.

  “Yes, I am,” sighed the other.

  “That roast suckling pig on the rue St. Honoré,—is it there yet?” continued Trent.

  “Wh-at?” stammered the feeble one.

  “Ah—I thought so! I caught you in ecstasy before that suckling pig at least a dozen times!” Then laughing, he presented Falloway with a roll of twenty franc pieces saying: “If these go for luxuries you must live on your own flesh,” and went over to aid West, who sat beside the wash-basin binding up his hand.

  West suffered him to tie the knot, and then said: “You remember, yesterday, when I left you and Braith to take the chicken to Colette.” “Chicken! Good Heavens!” moaned Fallowby. “Chicken,” repeated West, enjoying Fallowby’s grief;—”I—that is, I must explain that things are changed. Colette and I—are to be married—”

  “What—what about the chicken?” groaned Fallowby. “Shut up!” laughed Trent, and slipping his arm through West’s, walked to the stairway. “The poor little thing,” said West, “just think, not a splinter of firewood for a week and wouldn’t tell me because she thought I need- ed it for my clay figure. Whew! When I heard it I smashed that smirk- ing clay nymph to pieces, and the rest can freeze and be hanged!” After a moment he added timidly:—”Won’t you call on your way down and say bon soir? It’s no. 17.”

  “Yes,” said Trent, and he went out softly closing the door behind.

  He stopped on the third landing, lighted a match, scanned the numbers over the row of dingy doors, and knocked at No. 17. “C’est toi George?” The door opened. “Oh, pardon, Monsieur Jack, I thought it was Monsieur West;” then blushing furiously: “oh, I see you have heard! Oh, thank you so much for your wishes, and I’m sure we love each other very much,— and I’m dying to see Sylvia and tell her and—”

  “And what,” laughed Trent.

  “I am very happy,” she sighed.

  “He’s pure gold,” returned Trent, and then gayly: “I want you and George to come and dine with us to-night. It’s a little treat—you see to-morrow is Silvia’s fête. She will be nineteen. I have written to Thorne, and the Guernalecs will come with their cousin Odile. Fallowby has engaged not to bring anybody but himself.”

  The girl accepted shyly, charging him with loads of loving messages to Sylvia, and he said good-night. He started up the street, walking swiftly for it was bitter cold, and cutting across the rue de la Lune he entered the rue de Seine. The early winter night had fallen, almost without warning, but the sky was clear and myriads of stars glittered in the heavens. The bombardment had become furious—a steady rolling thunder from the Prussian can- non punctuated by the heavy shocks from Mont Val&eacure;rien.

  The shells streamed across the sky leaving trails like shooting stars, and now, as he turned to look back, rockets blue and red flared above the horizon from the Fort of Issy, and the Fortress of the North flamed like a bonfire.

  “Good news!” a man shouted over by the Boulevard St. Germain. As if by magic the streets were filled with people,—shivering, chat- tering people with shrunken eyes.

  “Jacques!” cried one,—”The Army of the Loire!
”

  “Eh! mon vieux, it has come then at last! I told thee! I told thee! To-morrow—to-night—who knows?”

  “Is it true? Is it a sortie?”

  Someone said: “Oh, God—a sortie—and my son?”Another cried: “to the Seine They say one can see the signals of the Army of the Loire from Pont Neuf.”

  There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: “Mamma, Mamma, then to-morrow we may eat white bread?” and beside him, an old man swaying, stumbling, his shrivelled hands crushed to his breast, muttering as if insane.

  “Could it be true? Who has heard the news? The shoemaker on the rue de Buci had it from a Mobile who had heard a Franctireur repeat it to a captain of the National Guard.”

  Trent followed the throng surging through the rue de Seine to the river. Rocket after rocket clove the sky, and now, from Montmartre, the cannon clanged, and the batteries on Montparnasse joined in with a crash. The bridge was packed with people.

  Trent asked: “who has seen the signals of the Army of the Loire?”

  “We are waiting,” was the reply. He looked toward the north. Suddenly the huge silhouette of the Arc de Triomphe sprang into black relief against the flash of a can- non. The boom of the gun rolled along the quay and the old bridge vibrated.

  Again over by the Pont du Jour a flash and heavy explosion shook the bridge, and then the whole eastern bastion of the fortifications blazed and crackled, sending a red flame into the sky.

  “Has any one seen the signals yet?” he asked again.

  “We are waiting,” was the reply.

  “Yes, waiting,” murmured a man behind him, “waiting, sick, starved, freezing, but waiting. Is it a sortie? They go gladly. Is it to starve? They starve. They have no time to think of surrender. Are they heroes,—these Parisians? answer me, Trent!”

  The American Ambulance surgeon turned about and scanned the parapets of the bridge.

  “Any news, doctor?” Trent asked mechanically.

  “News?” said the doctor; “I don’t know any;—I haven’t time to know any. What are these people after?”

  “They say that the Army of the Loire has signalled Mont Valérien.” “Poor devils.” The doctor glanced about him for an instant, and then: “I’m so harried and worried that I don’t know what to do. After the last sortie we had the work of fifty ambulances on our poor little corps. To-morrow there’s another sortie and I wish you fellows could come over to headquarters. We may need volunteers. How is madame?” he added abruptly.

  “Well,” replied Trent, “but she seems to grow more nervous every day. I ought to be with her now.” “Take care of her,” said the doctor, then with a sharp look at the people: “I can’t stop now—good-night!” and he hurried away mutter- ing, “poor devils!”

  Trent leaned over the parapet and blinked at the black river surging through the arches. Dark objects, carried swiftly on the breast of the current, struck with a grinding tearing noise against the stone piers, spun around for an instant, and hurried away into the darkness. The ice from the Marne.

  As he stood staring into the water a hand was laid on his shoulder. “Hello, Southwark!” he cried, turning around; “this is a queer place for you!”

  “Trent, I have something to tell you. Don’t stay here,—don’t be - lieve in the Army of the Loire;” and the attaché of the American Legation slipped his arms through Trent’s and drew him toward the Louvre.

  “Then it’s another lie!” said Trent bitterly. “Worse—we know at the Legation—I can’t speak of it. But that’s not what I have to say. Something happened this afternoon. The Alsatian Brasserie was visited and an American named Hartman has been arrested. Do you know him?”

  “I know a German who calls himself an American;—his name is Hartman.” “Well, he was arrested about two hours ago. They mean to shoot him.”

  “What!”

  “Of course we at the Legation can’t allow them to shoot him offhand, but the evidence seems conclusive.”

  “Is he a spy?” “Well, the papers seized in his rooms are pretty damning proofs, and besides, he was caught, they say, swindling the Public Food Committee. He drew rations for fifty, how, I don’t know. He claims to be an American artist here and we have been obliged to take notice of it at the Legation. It’s a nasty affair.”

  “To cheat the people at such a time is worse than robbing the poor-box,” cried Trent angrily. “Let them shoot him!”

  “He’s an American citizen.” “Yes, oh yes,” said the other with bitterness. “American citizenship is a precious privilege when every goggle-eyed German—” His anger choked him.

  Southwark shook hands with him warmly. “It can’t be helped, we must own the carrion. I am afraid you may be called upon to identify him as an American artist,” he said with a ghost of a smile on his deep-lined face; and walked away through the Cours a Reine.

  Trent swore silently for a moment and then drew out his watch. Seven o’clock. “Sylvia will be anxious,” he thought, and hurried back to the river. The crowd still huddled shivering on the bridge, a sombre pitiful congregation, peering out into the night for the signals of the Army of the Loire: and their hearts beat time to the pounding of the guns, their eyes lighted with each flash from the bastions, and hope rose with the drifting rockets.

  A black cloud hung over the fortifications. From horizon to hori - zon the cannon smoke stretched in wavering bands, now capping the spires and domes with cloud, now blowing in streamers and shreds along the streets, now descending from the house-tops, enveloping quays, bridges, and river, in a sulphurous mist. And through the smoke pall the lightning of the cannon played while from time to time a rift above showed a fathomless black vault set with stars.

  He turned again in to the rue de Seine, that sad abandoned street, with its rows of closed shutters and desolate 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 ratkiller of the day before. “H’m! I thought so,” he muttered.

  “Tiens, cest toi?” said the gamin tranquilly.

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

  “Do you know, you young stranger,” 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 do 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?”

&nb
sp; 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 chasse-pot, Canned Pease Gravelotte, Potatoes Irlandaises,

  Miscellaneous.

  Cold Corned Beef à la Thiers, Stewed Prunes à la Garibaldi. Dessert.

  Dried prunes—White bread, Currant Jelly,

  Tea—Café,