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The King In Yellow

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"Sylvia!"

"O 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 tout les jours passés dans la tristesse
Nous sont comptés comme des 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 disfavour 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 to the Convent near the rue
Vavin, the street of Our Lady of the Fields is as quiet 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.

"Jesuits," he muttered.

"Well," said Hastings wearily, "I imagine we won't find anything better.
You say yourself that vice is triumphant in Paris, and it seems to me that
in every street we find Jesuits or something worse."

After a moment he repeated, "Or something worse, which of course I would
not notice except for your kindness in warning me."

Dr. Byram sucked in his lips and looked about him. He was impressed by the
evident respectability of the surroundings. Then frowning at the Convent
he took Hastings' arm and shuffled across the street to an iron gateway
which bore the number 201 _bis_ painted in white on a blue ground. Below
this was a notice printed in English:

1. For Porter please oppress once.
2. For Servant please oppress twice.
3. For Parlour please oppress thrice.

Hastings touched the electric button three times, and they were ushered
through the garden and into the parlour by a trim maid. The dining-room
door, just beyond, was open, and from the table in plain view a stout
woman hastily arose and came toward them. Hastings caught a glimpse of a
young man with a big head and several snuffy old gentlemen at breakfast,
before the door closed and the stout woman waddled into the room, bringing
with her an aroma of coffee and a black poodle."

"It ees a plaisir to you receive!" she cried. "Monsieur is Anglish? No?
Americain? Off course. My pension it ees for Americains surtout. Here all
spik Angleesh, c'est à dire, ze personnel; ze sairvants do spik, plus ou
moins, a little. I am happy to have you comme pensionnaires--"

"Madame," began Dr. Byram, but was cut short again.

"Ah, yess, I know, ah! mon Dieu! you do not spik Frainch but you have come
to lairne! My husband does spik Frainch wiss ze pensionnaires. We have at
ze moment a family Americaine who learn of my husband Frainch--"

Here the poodle growled at Dr. Byram and was promptly cuffed by his
mistress.

"Veux tu!" she cried, with a slap, "veux tu! Oh! le vilain, oh! le
vilain!"

"Mais, madame," said Hastings, smiling, "il n'a pas l'air très féroce."

The poodle fled, and his mistress cried, "Ah, ze accent charming! He does
spik already Frainch like a Parisien young gentleman!"

Then Dr. Byram managed to get in a word or two and gathered more or less
information with regard to prices.

"It ees a pension serieux; my clientèle ees of ze best, indeed a pension
de famille where one ees at 'ome."

Then they went upstairs to examine Hastings' future quarters, test the
bed-springs and arrange for the weekly towel allowance. Dr. Byram appeared
satisfied.

Madame Marotte accompanied them to the door and rang for the maid, but as
Hastings stepped out into the gravel walk, his guide and mentor paused a
moment and fixed Madame with his watery eyes.

"You understand," he said, "that he is a youth of most careful bringing
up, and his character and morals are without a stain. He is young and has
never been abroad, never even seen a large city, and his parents have
requested me, as an old family friend living in Paris, to see that he is
placed under good influences. He is to study art, but on no account would
his parents wish him to live in the Latin Quarter if they knew of the
immorality which is rife there."

A sound like the click of a latch interrupted him and he raised his eyes,
but not in time to see the maid slap the big-headed young man behind the
parlour-door.

Madame coughed, cast a deadly glance behind her and then beamed on Dr.
Byram.

"It ees well zat he come here. The pension more serious, il n'en existe
pas, eet ees not any!" she announced with conviction.

So, as there was nothing more to add, Dr. Byram joined Hastings at the
gate.

"I trust," he said, eyeing the Convent, "that you will make no
acquaintances among Jesuits!"

Hastings looked at the Convent until a pretty girl passed before the gray
façade, and then he looked at her. A young fellow with a paint-box and
canvas came swinging along, stopped before the pretty girl, said something
during a brief but vigorous handshake at which they both laughed, and he
went his way, calling back, "À demain Valentine!" as in the same breath
she cried, "À demain!"

"Valentine," thought Hastings, "what a quaint name;" and he started to
follow the Reverend Joel Byram, who was shuffling towards the nearest
tramway station.




II

"An' you are pleas wiz Paris, Monsieur' Astang?" demanded Madame Marotte
the next morning as Hastings came into the breakfast-room of the pension,
rosy from his plunge in the limited bath above.

"I am sure I shall like it," he replied, wondering at his own depression
of spirits.

The maid brought him coffee and rolls. He returned the vacant glance of
the big-headed young man and acknowledged diffidently the salutes of the
snuffy old gentlemen. He did not try to finish his coffee, and sat
crumbling a roll, unconscious of the sympathetic glances of Madame
Marotte, who had tact enough not to bother him.

Presently a maid entered with a tray on which were balanced two bowls of
chocolate, and the snuffy old gentlemen leered at her ankles. The maid
deposited the chocolate at a table near the window and smiled at Hastings.
Then a thin young lady, followed by her counterpart in all except years,
marched into the room and took the table near the window. They were
evidently American, but Hastings, if he expected any sign of recognition,
was disappointed. To be ignored by compatriots intensified his depression.
He fumbled with his knife and looked at his plate.

The thin young lady was talkative enough. She was quite aware of Hastings'
presence, ready to be flattered if he looked at her, but on the other hand
she felt her superiority, for she had been three weeks in Paris and he, it
was easy to see, had not yet unpacked his steamer-trunk.

Her conversation was complacent. She argued with her mother upon the
relative merits of the Louvre and the Bon Marché, but her mother's part of
the discussion was mostly confined to the observation, "Why, Susie!"

The snuffy old gentlemen had left the room in a body, outwardly polite and
inwardly raging. They could not endure the Americans, who filled the room
with their chatter.

The big-headed young man looked after them with a knowing cough,
murmuring, "Gay old birds!"

"They look like bad old men, Mr. Bladen," said the girl.

To this Mr. Bladen smiled and said, "They've had their day," in a tone
which implied that he was now having his.

"And that's why they all have baggy eyes," cried the girl. "I think it's a
shame for young gentlemen--"

"Why, Susie!" said the mother, and the conversation lagged.

After a while Mr. Bladen threw down the _Petit Journal_, which he daily
studied at the expense of the house, and turning to Hastings, started to
make himself agreeable. He began by saying, "I see you are American."

To this brilliant and original opening, Hastings, deadly homesick, replied
gratefully, and the conversation was judiciously nourished by observations
from Miss Susie Byng distinctly addressed to Mr. Bladen. In the course of
events Miss Susie, forgetting to address herself exclusively to Mr.
Bladen, and Hastings replying to her general question, the _entente
cordiale_ was established, and Susie and her mother extended a
protectorate over what was clearly neutral territory.

"Mr. Hastings, you must not desert the pension every evening as Mr. Bladen
does. Paris is an awful place for young gentlemen, and Mr. Bladen is a
horrid cynic."

Mr. Bladen looked gratified.

Hastings answered, "I shall be at the studio all day, and I imagine I
shall be glad enough to come back at night."

Mr. Bladen, who, at a salary of fifteen dollars a week, acted as agent for
the Pewly Manufacturing Company of Troy, N.Y., smiled a sceptical smile
and withdrew to keep an appointment with a customer on the Boulevard
Magenta.

Hastings walked into the garden with Mrs. Byng and Susie, and, at their
invitation, sat down in the shade before the iron gate.

The chestnut trees still bore their fragrant spikes of pink and white, and
the bees hummed among the roses, trellised on the white-walled house.

A faint freshness was in the air. The watering carts moved up and down the
street, and a clear stream bubbled over the spotless gutters of the rue de
la Grande Chaumière. The sparrows were merry along the curb-stones, taking
bath after bath in the water and ruffling their feathers with delight. In
a walled garden across the street a pair of blackbirds whistled among the
almond trees.

Hastings swallowed the lump in his throat, for the song of the birds and
the ripple of water in a Paris gutter brought back to him the sunny
meadows of Millbrook.

"That's a blackbird," observed Miss Byng; "see him there on the bush with
pink blossoms. He's all black except his bill, and that looks as if it had
been dipped in an omelet, as some Frenchman says--"

"Why, Susie!" said Mrs. Byng.

"That garden belongs to a studio inhabited by two Americans," continued
the girl serenely, "and I often see them pass. They seem to need a great
many models, mostly young and feminine--"

"Why, Susie!"

"Perhaps they prefer painting that kind, but I don't see why they should
invite five, with three more young gentlemen, and all get into two cabs
and drive away singing. This street," she continued, "is dull. There is
nothing to see except the garden and a glimpse of the Boulevard
Montparnasse through the rue de la Grande Chaumière. No one ever passes
except a policeman. There is a convent on the corner."

"I thought it was a Jesuit College," began Hastings, but was at once
overwhelmed with a Baedecker description of the place, ending with, "On
one side stand the palatial hotels of Jean Paul Laurens and Guillaume
Bouguereau, and opposite, in the little Passage Stanislas, Carolus Duran
paints the masterpieces which charm the world."

The blackbird burst into a ripple of golden throaty notes, and from some
distant green spot in the city an unknown wild-bird answered with a frenzy
of liquid trills until the sparrows paused in their ablutions to look up
with restless chirps.

Then a butterfly came and sat on a cluster of heliotrope and waved his
crimson-banded wings in the hot sunshine. Hastings knew him for a friend,
and before his eyes there came a vision of tall mulleins and scented
milkweed alive with painted wings, a vision of a white house and
woodbine-covered piazza,--a glimpse of a man reading and a woman leaning
over the pansy bed,--and his heart was full. He was startled a moment
later by Miss Byng.

"I believe you are homesick!" Hastings blushed. Miss Byng looked at him
with a sympathetic sigh and continued: "Whenever I felt homesick at first
I used to go with mamma and walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. I don't know
why it is, but those old-fashioned gardens seemed to bring me nearer home
than anything in this artificial city."

"But they are full of marble statues," said Mrs. Byng mildly; "I don't see
the resemblance myself."

"Where is the Luxembourg?" inquired Hastings after a silence.

"Come with me to the gate," said Miss Byng. He rose and followed her, and
she pointed out the rue Vavin at the foot of the street.

"You pass by the convent to the right," she smiled; and Hastings went.




III

The Luxembourg was a blaze of flowers. He walked slowly through the long
avenues of trees, past mossy marbles and old-time columns, and threading
the grove by the bronze lion, came upon the tree-crowned terrace above the
fountain. Below lay the basin shining in the sunlight. Flowering almonds
encircled the terrace, and, in a greater spiral, groves of chestnuts wound
in and out and down among the moist thickets by the western palace wing.
At one end of the avenue of trees the Observatory rose, its white domes
piled up like an eastern mosque; at the other end stood the heavy palace,
with every window-pane ablaze in the fierce sun of June.

Around the fountain, children and white-capped nurses armed with bamboo
poles were pushing toy boats, whose sails hung limp in the sunshine. A
dark policeman, wearing red epaulettes and a dress sword, watched them for
a while and then went away to remonstrate with a young man who had
unchained his dog. The dog was pleasantly occupied in rubbing grass and
dirt into his back while his legs waved into the air.

The policeman pointed at the dog. He was speechless with indignation.

"Well, Captain," smiled the young fellow.

"Well, Monsieur Student," growled the policeman.

"What do you come and complain to me for?"

"If you don't chain him I'll take him," shouted the policeman.

"What's that to me, mon capitaine?"

"Wha--t! Isn't that bull-dog yours?"

"If it was, don't you suppose I'd chain him?"

The officer glared for a moment in silence, then deciding that as he was a
student he was wicked, grabbed at the dog, who promptly dodged. Around and
around the flower-beds they raced, and when the officer came too near for
comfort, the bull-dog cut across a flower-bed, which perhaps was not
playing fair.

The young man was amused, and the dog also seemed to enjoy the exercise.

The policeman noticed this and decided to strike at the fountain-head of
the evil. He stormed up to the student and said, "As the owner of this
public nuisance I arrest you!"

"But," objected the other, "I disclaim the dog."

That was a poser. It was useless to attempt to catch the dog until three
gardeners lent a hand, but then the dog simply ran away and disappeared in
the rue de Medici.

The policeman shambled off to find consolation among the white-capped
nurses, and the student, looking at his watch, stood up yawning. Then
catching sight of Hastings, he smiled and bowed. Hastings walked over to
the marble, laughing.

"Why, Clifford," he said, "I didn't recognize you."

"It's my moustache," sighed the other. "I sacrificed it to humour a whim
of--of--a friend. What do you think of my dog?"

"Then he is yours?" cried Hastings.

"Of course. It's a pleasant change for him, this playing tag with
policemen, but he is known now and I'll have to stop it. He's gone home.
He always does when the gardeners take a hand. It's a pity; he's fond of
rolling on lawns." Then they chatted for a moment of Hastings' prospects,
and Clifford politely offered to stand his sponsor at the studio.

"You see, old tabby, I mean Dr. Byram, told me about you before I met
you," explained Clifford, "and Elliott and I will be glad to do anything
we can." Then looking at his watch again, he muttered, "I have just ten
minutes to catch the Versailles train; au revoir," and started to go, but
catching sight of a girl advancing by the fountain, took off his hat with
a confused smile.

"Why are you not at Versailles?" she said, with an almost imperceptible
acknowledgment of Hastings' presence.

"I--I'm going," murmured Clifford.

For a moment they faced each other, and then Clifford, very red,
stammered, "With your permission I have the honour of presenting to you my
friend, Monsieur Hastings."

Hastings bowed low. She smiled very sweetly, but there was something of
malice in the quiet inclination of her small Parisienne head.

"I could have wished," she said, "that Monsieur Clifford might spare me
more time when he brings with him so charming an American."

"Must--must I go, Valentine?" began Clifford.

"Certainly," she replied.

Clifford took his leave with very bad grace, wincing, when she added, "And
give my dearest love to Cécile!" As he disappeared in the rue d'Assas, the
girl turned as if to go, but then suddenly remembering Hastings, looked at
him and shook her head.

"Monsieur Clifford is so perfectly harebrained," she smiled, "it is
embarrassing sometimes. You have heard, of course, all about his success
at the Salon?"

He looked puzzled and she noticed it.

"You have been to the Salon, of course?"

"Why, no," he answered, "I only arrived in Paris three days ago."

She seemed to pay little heed to his explanation, but continued: "Nobody
imagined he had the energy to do anything good, but on varnishing day the
Salon was astonished by the entrance of Monsieur Clifford, who strolled
about as bland as you please with an orchid in his buttonhole, and a
beautiful picture on the line."

She smiled to herself at the reminiscence, and looked at the fountain.

"Monsieur Bouguereau told me that Monsieur Julian was so astonished that
he only shook hands with Monsieur Clifford in a dazed manner, and actually
forgot to pat him on the back! Fancy," she continued with much merriment,
"fancy papa Julian forgetting to pat one on the back."

Hastings, wondering at her acquaintance with the great Bouguereau, looked
at her with respect. "May I ask," he said diffidently, "whether you are a
pupil of Bouguereau?"

"I?" she said in some surprise. Then she looked at him curiously. Was he
permitting himself the liberty of joking on such short acquaintance?

His pleasant serious face questioned hers.

"Tiens," she thought, "what a droll man!"

"You surely study art?" he said.

She leaned back on the crooked stick of her parasol, and looked at him.
"Why do you think so?"

"Because you speak as if you did."

"You are making fun of me," she said, "and it is not good taste."

She stopped, confused, as he coloured to the roots of his hair.

"How long have you been in Paris?" she said at length.

"Three days," he replied gravely.

"But--but--surely you are not a nouveau! You speak French too well!"

Then after a pause, "Really are you a nouveau?"

"I am," he said.

She sat down on the marble bench lately occupied by Clifford, and tilting
her parasol over her small head looked at him.

"I don't believe it."

He felt the compliment, and for a moment hesitated to declare himself one
of the despised. Then mustering up his courage, he told her how new and
green he was, and all with a frankness which made her blue eyes open very
wide and her lips part in the sweetest of smiles.

"You have never seen a studio?"

"Never."

"Nor a model?"

"No."

"How funny," she said solemnly. Then they both laughed.

"And you," he said, "have seen studios?"

"Hundreds."

"And models?"

"Millions."

"And you know Bouguereau?"

"Yes, and Henner, and Constant and Laurens, and Puvis de Chavannes and
Dagnan and Courtois, and--and all the rest of them!"

"And yet you say you are not an artist."

"Pardon," she said gravely, "did I say I was not?"

"Won't you tell me?" he hesitated.

At first she looked at him, shaking her head and smiling, then of a sudden
her eyes fell and she began tracing figures with her parasol in the gravel
at her feet. Hastings had taken a place on the seat, and now, with his
elbows on his knees, sat watching the spray drifting above the fountain
jet. A small boy, dressed as a sailor, stood poking his yacht and crying,
"I won't go home! I won't go home!" His nurse raised her hands to Heaven.

"Just like a little American boy," thought Hastings, and a pang of
homesickness shot through him.

Presently the nurse captured the boat, and the small boy stood at bay.

"Monsieur René, when you decide to come here you may have your boat."

The boy backed away scowling.

"Give me my boat, I say," he cried, "and don't call me René, for my
name's Randall and you know it!"

"Hello!" said Hastings,--"Randall?--that's English."

"I am American," announced the boy in perfectly good English, turning to
look at Hastings, "and she's such a fool she calls me René because mamma
calls me Ranny--"

Here he dodged the exasperated nurse and took up his station behind
Hastings, who laughed, and catching him around the waist lifted him into
his lap.

"One of my countrymen," he said to the girl beside him. He smiled while he
spoke, but there was a queer feeling in his throat.

"Don't you see the stars and stripes on my yacht?" demanded Randall. Sure
enough, the American colours hung limply under the nurse's arm.

"Oh," cried the girl, "he is charming," and impulsively stooped to kiss
him, but the infant Randall wriggled out of Hastings' arms, and his nurse
pounced upon him with an angry glance at the girl.

She reddened and then bit her lips as the nurse, with eyes still fixed on
her, dragged the child away and ostentatiously wiped his lips with her
handkerchief.

Then she stole a look at Hastings and bit her lip again.

"What an ill-tempered woman!" he said. "In America, most nurses are
flattered when people kiss their children."

For an instant she tipped the parasol to hide her face, then closed it
with a snap and looked at him defiantly.

"Do you think it strange that she objected?"

"Why not?" he said in surprise.

Again she looked at him with quick searching eyes.

His eyes were clear and bright, and he smiled back, repeating, "Why not?"

"You _are_ droll," she murmured, bending her head.

"Why?"

But she made no answer, and sat silent, tracing curves and circles in the
dust with her parasol. After a while he said--"I am glad to see that young
people have so much liberty here. I understood that the French were not at
all like us. You know in America--or at least where I live in Milbrook,
girls have every liberty,--go out alone and receive their friends alone,
and I was afraid I should miss it here. But I see how it is now, and I am
glad I was mistaken."

She raised her eyes to his and kept them there.

He continued pleasantly--"Since I have sat here I have seen a lot of
pretty girls walking alone on the terrace there,--and then _you_ are alone
too. Tell me, for I do not know French customs,--do you have the liberty
of going to the theatre without a chaperone?"

For a long time she studied his face, and then with a trembling smile
said, "Why do you ask me?"

"Because you must know, of course," he said gaily.

"Yes," she replied indifferently, "I know."

He waited for an answer, but getting none, decided that perhaps she had
misunderstood him.

"I hope you don't think I mean to presume on our short acquaintance," he
began,--"in fact it is very odd but I don't know your name. When Mr.
Clifford presented me he only mentioned mine. Is that the custom in
France?"

"It is the custom in the Latin Quarter," she said with a queer light in
her eyes. Then suddenly she began talking almost feverishly.

"You must know, Monsieur Hastings, that we are all _un peu sans gêne_ here
in the Latin Quarter. We are very Bohemian, and etiquette and ceremony are
out of place. It was for that Monsieur Clifford presented you to me with
small ceremony, and left us together with less,--only for that, and I am
his friend, and I have many friends in the Latin Quarter, and we all know
each other very well--and I am not studying art, but--but--"

"But what?" he said, bewildered.

"I shall not tell you,--it is a secret," she said with an uncertain smile.
On both cheeks a pink spot was burning, and her eyes were very bright.

Then in a moment her face fell. "Do you know Monsieur Clifford very
intimately?"

"Not very."

After a while she turned to him, grave and a little pale.

"My name is Valentine--Valentine Tissot. Might--might I ask a service of
you on such very short acquaintance?"

"Oh," he cried, "I should be honoured."

"It is only this," she said gently, "it is not much. Promise me not to
speak to Monsieur Clifford about me. Promise me that you will speak to no
one about me."

"I promise," he said, greatly puzzled.

She laughed nervously. "I wish to remain a mystery. It is a caprice."

"But," he began, "I had wished, I had hoped that you might give Monsieur
Clifford permission to bring me, to present me at your house."

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