Complete weird tales of.., p.1181
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1181
There was a silence. The girl looked at Stormont, flushed painfully, looked at Darragh.
Then, without a word, she turned ascended the stairs, and reappeared immediately carrying the leather case.
“Thank you, Mr. Darragh,” she said simply; and laid the case in his hand.
“But,” said Darragh, “I want you to do a little more, Eve. The owner of these gems is my guest at Harrod Place. I want you to give them to her yourself.”
“I — I can’t go to Harrod Place,” stammered the girl.
“Please don’t visit the sins of Henry Harrod on me, Eve.”
“I — don’t. But — but that place — —”
After a silence: “If Eve feels that way,” began Stormont awkwardly, “I couldn’t become associated with you in business, Jim — —”
“I’d rather sell Harrod Place than lose you!” retorted Darragh almost sharply. “I want to go into business with you, Jack — if Eve will permit me — —”
She stood looking at Stormont, the heightened colour playing in her cheeks as she began to comprehend the comradeship between these two men.
Slowly she turned to Darragh, offered her hand:
“I’ll go to Harrod Place,” she said in a low voice.
Darragh’s quick smile brightened the sombre gravity of his face.
“Eve,” he said, “when I came over here this morning from Harrod Place I was afraid you would refuse to listen to me; I was afraid you would not even see me. And so I brought with me — somebody — to whom I felt certain you would listen. … I brought with me a young girl — a poor refugee from Russia, once wealthy, to-day almost penniless. … Her name is Theodorica. … Once she was Grand Duchess of Esthonia. … But this morning a clergyman from Five Lakes changed her name. … To such friends as you and Jack she is Ricca Darragh now … and she’s having a wonderful time on my new snow-shoes — —”
He took Eve by one hand and Stormont by the other, and drew them to the kitchen door and kicked it open.
Through the swirling snow, over the lake-slope at the timber edge, a graceful, boyish figure in scarlet and white wool moved swiftly over the drifts with all the naive delight of a child with a brand new toy.
As Darragh strode out into the open the distant figure flung up one arm in salutation and came racing over the drifts, her brilliant scarf flying.
All aglow and a trifle breathless, she met Darragh just beyond the veranda, rested one mitten hand on his shoulder while he knelt and unbuckled her snow-shoes, stepped lightly from them and came forward to Eve with out-stretched hand and sudden winning gravity in her lovely face.
“We shall be friends, surely,” she said in her quick, winning voice;— “because my husband has told me — and I am so grieved for you — and I need a girl friend — —”
Holding both Eve’s hands, her mittens dangling from her wrist, she looked into her eyes very steadily.
Slowly Eve’s eyes filled; more slowly still Ricca kissed her on both cheeks, framed her face in both hands, kissed her lightly on the lips.
Then, still holding Eve’s hands, she turned and looked at Stormont.
“I remember you now,” she said. “You were with my husband in Riga.”
She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace to kiss it an did it very well for a Yankee.
Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table.
Darragh said: “The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz.”
“Valentine begged me,” said Ricca, smiling. “She is going to be lonely without me. All hours of day and night we were trotting into one another’s rooms — —” She looked gravely at Eve: “You will like Valentine; and she will like you very much. … As for me — I already love you.”
She put one arm around Eve’s shoulders: “How could you even think of remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking of you, dear.”
Eve’s head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: “I’ll go with you. …
I want to. … I’m very — tired.”
“We had better go now,” said Darragh. “Your things can be brought over later. If you’ll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you need. … Are there snow-shoes for him, too?”
Eve turned tragically to her lover: “In Dad’s closet — —” she said, choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca’s hand and drawing her with her.
Stormont followed, entered Clinch’s quarters, and presently came downstairs again, carrying Clinch’s snow-shoes and a basket pack.
He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: “Your wife is beautiful, Jim. … Her character seems to be even more beautiful. … She’s like God’s own messenger to Eve. … And — you’re rather wonderful yourself — —”
“Nonsense,” said Darragh, “I’ve given my wife her first American friend and I’ve done a shrew stroke of business in nabbing the best business associate I ever heard of — —”
“You’re crazy but kind. … I hope I’ll be some good. … One thing;
I’ll never get over what you’ve done for Eve in this crisis — —”
“There’ll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business. That solves everything. … Lord! — what a life Eve has had! But you’ll make it all up to her … all this loneliness and shame and misery of Clinch’s Dump — —”
Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the stairs — the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles.
Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went over to her and took her hand.
“I’m so glad we are to be friends,” he said. “It hurt a lot to know you held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way.”
Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: “Oh,” she exclaimed, reddening, “I forgot the jewel case! It’s under my pillow — —”
She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying the jewel-case.
Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca’s hands.
“My jewels!” cried the girl, astonished. Then, with a little cry of delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light.
And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered them with Darragh’s rifle.
“Now, by Christ!” he shouted, “who stirs a finger shall go to God in one jump! You, my gendarme frien’ — you, my frien’ Smith — turn your damn backs — han’s up high! — tha’s the way! — now, ladies! — back away there — get back or I kill! — sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some white little mice! — —”
With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept the jewels into one hand — filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone and pocketed them.
“You gendarme,” he cried in a menacing voice, “you think you shall follow in my tack. Yes? I blow your damn head off if you stir before the hour. … After that — well, follow and be damn!”
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.
