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The King In Yellow

R >> Robert W. Chambers >> The King In Yellow




Geneviève was dressed in silvery grey from head to foot. The light
glinted along the soft curves of her fair hair as she turned her cheek to
Boris; then she saw me and returned my greeting. She had never before
failed to blow me a kiss from the tips of her white fingers, and I
promptly complained of the omission. She smiled and held out her hand,
which dropped almost before it had touched mine; then she said, looking
at Boris--

"You must ask Alec to stay for luncheon." This also was something new.
She had always asked me herself until to-day.

"I did," said Boris shortly.

"And you said yes, I hope?" She turned to me with a charming conventional
smile. I might have been an acquaintance of the day before yesterday. I
made her a low bow. "J'avais bien l'honneur, madame," but refusing to
take up our usual bantering tone, she murmured a hospitable commonplace
and disappeared. Boris and I looked at one another.

"I had better go home, don't you think?" I asked.

"Hanged if I know," he replied frankly.

While we were discussing the advisability of my departure Geneviève
reappeared in the doorway without her bonnet. She was wonderfully
beautiful, but her colour was too deep and her lovely eyes were too
bright. She came straight up to me and took my arm.

"Luncheon is ready. Was I cross, Alec? I thought I had a headache, but I
haven't. Come here, Boris;" and she slipped her other arm through his.
"Alec knows that after you there is no one in the world whom I like as
well as I like him, so if he sometimes feels snubbed it won't hurt him."

"À la bonheur!" I cried, "who says there are no thunderstorms in April?"

"Are you ready?" chanted Boris. "Aye ready;" and arm-in-arm we raced into
the dining-room, scandalizing the servants. After all we were not so much
to blame; Geneviève was eighteen, Boris was twenty-three, and I not quite
twenty-one.




II

Some work that I was doing about this time on the decorations for
Geneviève's boudoir kept me constantly at the quaint little hotel in the
Rue Sainte-Cécile. Boris and I in those days laboured hard but as we
pleased, which was fitfully, and we all three, with Jack Scott, idled a
great deal together.

One quiet afternoon I had been wandering alone over the house examining
curios, prying into odd corners, bringing out sweetmeats and cigars from
strange hiding-places, and at last I stopped in the bathing-room. Boris,
all over clay, stood there washing his hands.

The room was built of rose-coloured marble excepting the floor, which was
tessellated in rose and grey. In the centre was a square pool sunken
below the surface of the floor; steps led down into it, sculptured
pillars supported a frescoed ceiling. A delicious marble Cupid appeared
to have just alighted on his pedestal at the upper end of the room. The
whole interior was Boris' work and mine. Boris, in his working-clothes of
white canvas, scraped the traces of clay and red modelling wax from his
handsome hands, and coquetted over his shoulder with the Cupid.

"I see you," he insisted, "don't try to look the other way and pretend
not to see me. You know who made you, little humbug!"

It was always my rôle to interpret Cupid's sentiments in these
conversations, and when my turn came I responded in such a manner, that
Boris seized my arm and dragged me toward the pool, declaring he would
duck me. Next instant he dropped my arm and turned pale. "Good God!" he
said, "I forgot the pool is full of the solution!"

I shivered a little, and dryly advised him to remember better where he
had stored the precious liquid.

"In Heaven's name, why do you keep a small lake of that gruesome stuff
here of all places?" I asked.

"I want to experiment on something large," he replied.

"On me, for instance?"

"Ah! that came too close for jesting; but I do want to watch the action
of that solution on a more highly organized living body; there is that
big white rabbit," he said, following me into the studio.

Jack Scott, wearing a paint-stained jacket, came wandering in,
appropriated all the Oriental sweetmeats he could lay his hands on,
looted the cigarette case, and finally he and Boris disappeared together
to visit the Luxembourg Gallery, where a new silver bronze by Rodin and a
landscape of Monet's were claiming the exclusive attention of artistic
France. I went back to the studio, and resumed my work. It was a
Renaissance screen, which Boris wanted me to paint for Geneviève's
boudoir. But the small boy who was unwillingly dawdling through a series
of poses for it, to-day refused all bribes to be good. He never rested an
instant in the same position, and inside of five minutes I had as many
different outlines of the little beggar.

"Are you posing, or are you executing a song and dance, my friend?" I
inquired.

"Whichever monsieur pleases," he replied, with an angelic smile.

Of course I dismissed him for the day, and of course I paid him for the
full time, that being the way we spoil our models.

After the young imp had gone, I made a few perfunctory daubs at my work,
but was so thoroughly out of humour, that it took me the rest of the
afternoon to undo the damage I had done, so at last I scraped my palette,
stuck my brushes in a bowl of black soap, and strolled into the
smoking-room. I really believe that, excepting Geneviève's apartments, no
room in the house was so free from the perfume of tobacco as this one. It
was a queer chaos of odds and ends, hung with threadbare tapestry. A
sweet-toned old spinet in good repair stood by the window. There were
stands of weapons, some old and dull, others bright and modern, festoons
of Indian and Turkish armour over the mantel, two or three good pictures,
and a pipe-rack. It was here that we used to come for new sensations in
smoking. I doubt if any type of pipe ever existed which was not
represented in that rack. When we had selected one, we immediately
carried it somewhere else and smoked it; for the place was, on the whole,
more gloomy and less inviting than any in the house. But this afternoon,
the twilight was very soothing, the rugs and skins on the floor looked
brown and soft and drowsy; the big couch was piled with cushions--I found
my pipe and curled up there for an unaccustomed smoke in the
smoking-room. I had chosen one with a long flexible stem, and lighting it
fell to dreaming. After a while it went out, but I did not stir. I
dreamed on and presently fell asleep.

I awoke to the saddest music I had ever heard. The room was quite dark, I
had no idea what time it was. A ray of moonlight silvered one edge of the
old spinet, and the polished wood seemed to exhale the sounds as perfume
floats above a box of sandalwood. Some one rose in the darkness, and came
away weeping quietly, and I was fool enough to cry out "Geneviève!"

She dropped at my voice, and, I had time to curse myself while I made a
light and tried to raise her from the floor. She shrank away with a
murmur of pain. She was very quiet, and asked for Boris. I carried her to
the divan, and went to look for him, but he was not in the house, and the
servants were gone to bed. Perplexed and anxious, I hurried back to
Geneviève. She lay where I had left her, looking very white.

"I can't find Boris nor any of the servants," I said.

"I know," she answered faintly, "Boris has gone to Ept with Mr. Scott. I
did not remember when I sent you for him just now."

"But he can't get back in that case before to-morrow afternoon, and--are
you hurt? Did I frighten you into falling? What an awful fool I am, but I
was only half awake."

"Boris thought you had gone home before dinner. Do please excuse us for
letting you stay here all this time."

"I have had a long nap," I laughed, "so sound that I did not know whether
I was still asleep or not when I found myself staring at a figure that
was moving toward me, and called out your name. Have you been trying the
old spinet? You must have played very softly."

I would tell a thousand more lies worse than that one to see the look of
relief that came into her face. She smiled adorably, and said in her
natural voice: "Alec, I tripped on that wolf's head, and I think my ankle
is sprained. Please call Marie, and then go home."

I did as she bade me, and left her there when the maid came in.




III

At noon next day when I called, I found Boris walking restlessly about
his studio.

"Geneviève is asleep just now," he told me, "the sprain is nothing, but
why should she have such a high fever? The doctor can't account for it;
or else he will not," he muttered.

"Geneviève has a fever?" I asked.

"I should say so, and has actually been a little light-headed at
intervals all night. The idea! gay little Geneviève, without a care in
the world,--and she keeps saying her heart's broken, and she wants to
die!"

My own heart stood still.

Boris leaned against the door of his studio, looking down, his hands in
his pockets, his kind, keen eyes clouded, a new line of trouble drawn
"over the mouth's good mark, that made the smile." The maid had orders to
summon him the instant Geneviève opened her eyes. We waited and waited,
and Boris, growing restless, wandered about, fussing with modelling wax
and red clay. Suddenly he started for the next room. "Come and see my
rose-coloured bath full of death!" he cried.

"Is it death?" I asked, to humour his mood.

"You are not prepared to call it life, I suppose," he answered. As he
spoke he plucked a solitary goldfish squirming and twisting out of its
globe. "We'll send this one after the other--wherever that is," he said.
There was feverish excitement in his voice. A dull weight of fever lay on
my limbs and on my brain as I followed him to the fair crystal pool with
its pink-tinted sides; and he dropped the creature in. Falling, its
scales flashed with a hot orange gleam in its angry twistings and
contortions; the moment it struck the liquid it became rigid and sank
heavily to the bottom. Then came the milky foam, the splendid hues
radiating on the surface and then the shaft of pure serene light broke
through from seemingly infinite depths. Boris plunged in his hand and
drew out an exquisite marble thing, blue-veined, rose-tinted, and
glistening with opalescent drops.

"Child's play," he muttered, and looked wearily, longingly at me,--as if
I could answer such questions! But Jack Scott came in and entered into
the "game," as he called it, with ardour. Nothing would do but to try the
experiment on the white rabbit then and there. I was willing that Boris
should find distraction from his cares, but I hated to see the life go
out of a warm, living creature and I declined to be present. Picking up a
book at random, I sat down in the studio to read. Alas! I had found
_The King in Yellow_. After a few moments, which seemed ages, I was
putting it away with a nervous shudder, when Boris and Jack came in
bringing their marble rabbit. At the same time the bell rang above, and a
cry came from the sick-room. Boris was gone like a flash, and the next
moment he called, "Jack, run for the doctor; bring him back with you.
Alec, come here."

I went and stood at her door. A frightened maid came out in haste and ran
away to fetch some remedy. Geneviève, sitting bolt upright, with crimson
cheeks and glittering eyes, babbled incessantly and resisted Boris'
gentle restraint. He called me to help. At my first touch she sighed and
sank back, closing her eyes, and then--then--as we still bent above her,
she opened them again, looked straight into Boris' face--poor
fever-crazed girl!--and told her secret. At the same instant our three
lives turned into new channels; the bond that held us so long together
snapped for ever and a new bond was forged in its place, for she had
spoken my name, and as the fever tortured her, her heart poured out its
load of hidden sorrow. Amazed and dumb I bowed my head, while my face
burned like a live coal, and the blood surged in my ears, stupefying me
with its clamour. Incapable of movement, incapable of speech, I listened
to her feverish words in an agony of shame and sorrow. I could not
silence her, I could not look at Boris. Then I felt an arm upon my
shoulder, and Boris turned a bloodless face to mine.

"It is not your fault, Alec; don't grieve so if she loves you--" but he
could not finish; and as the doctor stepped swiftly into the room,
saying--"Ah, the fever!" I seized Jack Scott and hurried him to the
street, saying, "Boris would rather be alone." We crossed the street to
our own apartments, and that night, seeing I was going to be ill too, he
went for the doctor again. The last thing I recollect with any
distinctness was hearing Jack say, "For Heaven's sake, doctor, what ails
him, to wear a face like that?" and I thought of _The King in
Yellow_ and the Pallid Mask.

I was very ill, for the strain of two years which I had endured since
that fatal May morning when Geneviève murmured, "I love you, but I think
I love Boris best," told on me at last. I had never imagined that it
could become more than I could endure. Outwardly tranquil, I had deceived
myself. Although the inward battle raged night after night, and I, lying
alone in my room, cursed myself for rebellious thoughts unloyal to Boris
and unworthy of Geneviève, the morning always brought relief, and I
returned to Geneviève and to my dear Boris with a heart washed clean by
the tempests of the night.

Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my sorrow
even to myself.

The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of
me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was
no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back
again of its own accord. These thoughts passed through my troubled mind
as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of white
creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris' basin,--of the wolf's
head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who lay smiling
beside it. I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped in the fantastic
colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter cry of Cassilda, "Not
upon us, oh King, not upon us!" Feverishly I struggled to put it from me,
but I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to
stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the
Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and
flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.
Among all these, one sane thought persisted. It never wavered, no matter
what else was going on in my disordered mind, that my chief reason for
existing was to meet some requirement of Boris and Geneviève. What this
obligation was, its nature, was never clear; sometimes it seemed to be
protection, sometimes support, through a great crisis. Whatever it seemed
to be for the time, its weight rested only on me, and I was never so ill
or so weak that I did not respond with my whole soul. There were always
crowds of faces about me, mostly strange, but a few I recognized, Boris
among them. Afterward they told me that this could not have been, but I
know that once at least he bent over me. It was only a touch, a faint
echo of his voice, then the clouds settled back on my senses, and I lost
him, but he _did_ stand there and bend over me _once_ at least.

At last, one morning I awoke to find the sunlight falling across my bed,
and Jack Scott reading beside me. I had not strength enough to speak
aloud, neither could I think, much less remember, but I could smile
feebly, as Jack's eye met mine, and when he jumped up and asked eagerly
if I wanted anything, I could whisper, "Yes--Boris." Jack moved to the
head of my bed, and leaned down to arrange my pillow: I did not see his
face, but he answered heartily, "You must wait, Alec; you are too weak to
see even Boris."

I waited and I grew strong; in a few days I was able to see whom I would,
but meanwhile I had thought and remembered. From the moment when all the
past grew clear again in my mind, I never doubted what I should do when
the time came, and I felt sure that Boris would have resolved upon the
same course so far as he was concerned; as for what pertained to me
alone, I knew he would see that also as I did. I no longer asked for any
one. I never inquired why no message came from them; why during the week
I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I never heard their name
spoken. Preoccupied with my own searchings for the right way, and with my
feeble but determined fight against despair, I simply acquiesced in
Jack's reticence, taking for granted that he was afraid to speak of them,
lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing them. Meanwhile I said
over and over to myself, how would it be when life began again for us
all? We would take up our relations exactly as they were before Geneviève
fell ill. Boris and I would look into each other's eyes, and there would
be neither rancour nor cowardice nor mistrust in that glance. I would be
with them again for a little while in the dear intimacy of their home,
and then, without pretext or explanation, I would disappear from their
lives for ever. Boris would know; Geneviève--the only comfort was that
she would never know. It seemed, as I thought it over, that I had found
the meaning of that sense of obligation which had persisted all through
my delirium, and the only possible answer to it. So, when I was quite
ready, I beckoned Jack to me one day, and said--

"Jack, I want Boris at once; and take my dearest greeting to
Geneviève...."

When at last he made me understand that they were both dead, I fell into
a wild rage that tore all my little convalescent strength to atoms. I
raved and cursed myself into a relapse, from which I crawled forth some
weeks afterward a boy of twenty-one who believed that his youth was gone
for ever. I seemed to be past the capability of further suffering, and
one day when Jack handed me a letter and the keys to Boris' house, I took
them without a tremor and asked him to tell me all. It was cruel of me to
ask him, but there was no help for it, and he leaned wearily on his thin
hands, to reopen the wound which could never entirely heal. He began very
quietly--

"Alec, unless you have a clue that I know nothing about, you will not be
able to explain any more than I what has happened. I suspect that you
would rather not hear these details, but you must learn them, else I
would spare you the relation. God knows I wish I could be spared the
telling. I shall use few words.

"That day when I left you in the doctor's care and came back to Boris, I
found him working on the 'Fates.' Geneviève, he said, was sleeping under
the influence of drugs. She had been quite out of her mind, he said. He
kept on working, not talking any more, and I watched him. Before long, I
saw that the third figure of the group--the one looking straight ahead,
out over the world--bore his face; not as you ever saw it, but as it
looked then and to the end. This is one thing for which I should like to
find an explanation, but I never shall.

"Well, he worked and I watched him in silence, and we went on that way
until nearly midnight. Then we heard the door open and shut sharply, and
a swift rush in the next room. Boris sprang through the doorway and I
followed; but we were too late. She lay at the bottom of the pool, her
hands across her breast. Then Boris shot himself through the heart." Jack
stopped speaking, drops of sweat stood under his eyes, and his thin
cheeks twitched. "I carried Boris to his room. Then I went back and let
that hellish fluid out of the pool, and turning on all the water, washed
the marble clean of every drop. When at length I dared descend the steps,
I found her lying there as white as snow. At last, when I had decided
what was best to do, I went into the laboratory, and first emptied the
solution in the basin into the waste-pipe; then I poured the contents of
every jar and bottle after it. There was wood in the fire-place, so I
built a fire, and breaking the locks of Boris' cabinet I burnt every
paper, notebook and letter that I found there. With a mallet from the
studio I smashed to pieces all the empty bottles, then loading them into
a coal-scuttle, I carried them to the cellar and threw them over the
red-hot bed of the furnace. Six times I made the journey, and at last,
not a vestige remained of anything which might again aid in seeking for
the formula which Boris had found. Then at last I dared call the doctor.
He is a good man, and together we struggled to keep it from the public.
Without him I never could have succeeded. At last we got the servants
paid and sent away into the country, where old Rosier keeps them quiet
with stones of Boris' and Geneviève's travels in distant lands, from
whence they will not return for years. We buried Boris in the little
cemetery of Sèvres. The doctor is a good creature, and knows when to pity
a man who can bear no more. He gave his certificate of heart disease and
asked no questions of me."

Then, lifting his head from his hands, he said, "Open the letter, Alec;
it is for us both."

I tore it open. It was Boris' will dated a year before. He left
everything to Geneviève, and in case of her dying childless, I was to
take control of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile, and Jack Scott the
management at Ept. On our deaths the property reverted to his mother's
family in Russia, with the exception of the sculptured marbles executed
by himself. These he left to me.

The page blurred under our eyes, and Jack got up and walked to the
window. Presently he returned and sat down again. I dreaded to hear what
he was going to say, but he spoke with the same simplicity and
gentleness.

"Geneviève lies before the Madonna in the marble room. The Madonna bends
tenderly above her, and Geneviève smiles back into that calm face that
never would have been except for her."

His voice broke, but he grasped my hand, saying, "Courage, Alec." Next
morning he left for Ept to fulfil his trust.




IV

The same evening I took the keys and went into the house I had known so
well. Everything was in order, but the silence was terrible. Though I
went twice to the door of the marble room, I could not force myself to
enter. It was beyond my strength. I went into the smoking-room and sat
down before the spinet. A small lace handkerchief lay on the keys, and I
turned away, choking. It was plain I could not stay, so I locked every
door, every window, and the three front and back gates, and went away.
Next morning Alcide packed my valise, and leaving him in charge of my
apartments I took the Orient express for Constantinople. During the two
years that I wandered through the East, at first, in our letters, we
never mentioned Geneviève and Boris, but gradually their names crept in.
I recollect particularly a passage in one of Jack's letters replying to
one of mine--

"What you tell me of seeing Boris bending over you while you lay ill, and
feeling his touch on your face, and hearing his voice, of course troubles
me. This that you describe must have happened a fortnight after he died.
I say to myself that you were dreaming, that it was part of your
delirium, but the explanation does not satisfy me, nor would it you."

Toward the end of the second year a letter came from Jack to me in India
so unlike anything that I had ever known of him that I decided to return
at once to Paris. He wrote: "I am well, and sell all my pictures as
artists do who have no need of money. I have not a care of my own, but I
am more restless than if I had. I am unable to shake off a strange
anxiety about you. It is not apprehension, it is rather a breathless
expectancy--of what, God knows! I can only say it is wearing me out.
Nights I dream always of you and Boris. I can never recall anything
afterward, but I wake in the morning with my heart beating, and all day
the excitement increases until I fall asleep at night to recall the same
experience. I am quite exhausted by it, and have determined to break up
this morbid condition. I must see you. Shall I go to Bombay, or will you
come to Paris?"

I telegraphed him to expect me by the next steamer.

When we met I thought he had changed very little; I, he insisted, looked
in splendid health. It was good to hear his voice again, and as we sat
and chatted about what life still held for us, we felt that it was
pleasant to be alive in the bright spring weather.

We stayed in Paris together a week, and then I went for a week to Ept
with him, but first of all we went to the cemetery at Sèvres, where Boris
lay.

"Shall we place the 'Fates' in the little grove above him?" Jack asked,
and I answered--

"I think only the 'Madonna' should watch over Boris' grave." But Jack was
none the better for my home-coming. The dreams of which he could not
retain even the least definite outline continued, and he said that at
times the sense of breathless expectancy was suffocating.

"You see I do you harm and not good," I said. "Try a change without me."
So he started alone for a ramble among the Channel Islands, and I went
back to Paris. I had not yet entered Boris' house, now mine, since my
return, but I knew it must be done. It had been kept in order by Jack;
there were servants there, so I gave up my own apartment and went there
to live. Instead of the agitation I had feared, I found myself able to
paint there tranquilly. I visited all the rooms--all but one. I could not
bring myself to enter the marble room where Geneviève lay, and yet I felt
the longing growing daily to look upon her face, to kneel beside her.

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