The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers [best short novels .TXT] 📗

with people⁠—shivering, chattering 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! Tomorrow⁠—tonight⁠—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 the Pont Neuf.”

There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: “Mamma, Mamma, then tomorrow 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 Franc-tireur 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 for them,” 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 cannon. The boom of the gun rolled along the quay and the old bridge vibrated.

Again over by the Point 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 anyone 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,” asked Trent 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. Tomorrow 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—goodnight!” and he hurried away muttering, “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 believe in the Army of the Loire:” and the attaché of the American Legation slipped his arm 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 la 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 horizon 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 housetops, 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 into 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