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In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn;
How long be crying, “Mercy on them, God!”
Why, who are thou to teach and He to learn?’
In the Church of St Barnabé vespers were over; the clergy left the altar; the little choir-boys flocked across the chancel and settled in the stalls. A Suisse in rich uniform marched down the south aisle, sounding his staff at every fourth step on the stone pavement; behind him came that eloquent preacher and good man, Monseigneur C—.
My chair was near the chancel rail. I now turned toward the west end of the church. The other people between the altar and the pulpit turned too. There was a little scraping and rustling while the congregation seated itself again; the preacher mounted the pulpit stairs, and the organ voluntary ceased.
I had always found the organ-playing at St Barnabé highly interesting. Learned and scientific it was, too much so for my small knowledge, but expressing a vivid if cold intelligence. Moreover, it possessed the French quality of taste; taste reigned supreme, self-controlled, dignified and reticent.
Today, however, from the first choir I had felt a change for the worse, a sinister change. During vespers it had been chiefly the chancel organ which supported the beautiful choir, but now and again, quite wantonly as it seemed, from the west gallery where the great organ stands, a heavy hand had struck across the church, at the serene peace of those clear voices. It was something more than harsh and dissonant, and it betrayed no lack of skill. As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking of what my architect’s books say about the custom in early times to consecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, being finished sometimes half a century later, often did not get any blessing at all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St Barnabé, and whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church, might have entered undetected, and taken possession of the west gallery. I had read of such things happening too, but not in works on architecture.
Then I remembered that St Barnabé was not much more than a hundred years old, and smiled at the incongruous association of mediaeval superstitions with that cheerful little piece of eighteenth century rococo.
But now vespers were over, and there should have followed a few quiet chords, fit to accompany meditation, while we waited for the sermon. Instead of that, the discord at the lower end of the church broke out with the departure of the clergy, as if now nothing could control it.
I belong to those children of an older and simpler generation, who do not love to seek for psychological subtleties in art; and I have ever refused to find in music anything more than melody and harmony, but I felt that in the labyrinth of sounds now issuing from that instrument there was something being hunted. Up and down the pedals chased him, while the manuals blared approval. Poor devil! whoever he was there seemed small hope of escape!
My nervous annoyance changed to anger. Who was doing this? How dare he play like that in the midst of divine service? I glanced at the people near me: not one appeared to be in the least disturbed. The placid brows of the kneeling nuns, still turned toward the altar, lost none of their devout abstraction, under the pale shadow of their white head-dress. The fashionable lady beside me was looking expectantly at Monseigneur C—. For all her face betrayed, the organ might have been singing an Ave Maria.
But now, at last, the preacher had made the sign of the cross, and commanded silence. I turned to him gladly. Thus far I had not found the rest I had counted on, when I entered St Barnabé that afternoon.
I was worn out by three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble: the last had been the worst, and it was an exhausted body, and a mind benumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favorite church for healing. For I had been reading ‘The King in Yellow’.
‘The sun ariseth; they gather themselves together and lay them down in their dens.’ Monseigneur C – delivered his text in a calm voice, glancing quietly over the congregation. My eyes turned, I knew not why, toward the lower end of the church. The organist was coming from behind his pipes, and passing along the gallery on his way out, I saw him disappear by a small door that leads to some stone stairs which descend directly to the street. He was a slender man, and his face was as white as his coat was black. ‘Good riddance!’ I thought, ‘with your wicked music! I hope your assistant will play the closing voluntary.’
With a feeling of relief, with a deep calm feeling of relief, I turned back to the mild face in the pulpit, and settled myself to listen. Here at last was the ease of mind I longed for.
‘My children,’ said the preacher, ‘one truth the human soul finds hardest of all to learn; that it has nothing to fear. It can never be made to see that nothing can really harm it.’
‘Curious doctrine!’ I thought, ‘for a Catholic priest. Let us see how he will reconcile that with the Fathers.’
‘Nothing can really harm the soul,’ he went on, in his coolest, clearest tones, ‘because—’
But I never heard the rest; my eye left his face, I knew not for what reason, and sought the lower end of the church. The same man was coming out from behind the organ, and was passing along the gallery the same way. But there had not been time for him to return, and if he had returned, I must have seen him. I felt a faint chill, and my heart sank; and yet, his going and coming were no affair of mine. I looked at him: I could not look away from his black figure and his white face. When he was exactly opposite to me, he turned and sent across the church, straight into my eyes, a look of hate, intense and deadly: I have never seen any other like it; would to God I might never see it again! Then he disappeared by the same door through which I had watched him depart less than sixty seconds before.
I sat and tried to collect my thoughts. My first sensation was like that of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath before crying out.
To suddenly find myself the object of such hatred was exquisitely painful: and this man was an utter stranger. Why should he hate me so? Me, whom he had never seen before? For the moment all other sensation was merged in this one pang; even fear was subordinate to grief, and for that moment I never doubted; but in the next I began to reason, and a sense of the incongruous came to my aid.
As I have said, St Barnabé is a modern church. It is small and well lighted; one sees all over it almost at a glance. The organ gallery gets a strong white light from a row of long windows in the clerestory, which have not even colored glass.
The pulpit being in the middle of the church, it followed that, when I was turned toward it, whatever moved at the west end could not fail to attract my eye. When the organist passed it was no wonder that I saw him; I had simply miscalculated the interval between his first and his second passing. He had come in that last time by the other side-door. As for the look which had so upset me, there had been no such thing, and I was a nervous fool.
I looked about. This was a likely place to harbor supernatural horrors! That clear-cut, reasonable face of Monseigneur C—, his collected manner, and easy, graceful gestures, were they not just a little discouraging to the notion of a gruesome mystery? I glanced above his head, and almost laughed. That flyaway lady, supporting one corner of the pulpit canopy, which looked like a fringed damask table-cloth in a high wind, at the first attempt of a basilisk to pose up there in the organ loft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out of existence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, I thought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else, from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimes for my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, I told myself, than was my organist with the anaemic complexion): from that grim old dame, to, yes, alas! to Monseigneur C— himself. For all devoutness had fled. I had never yet done such a thing in my life, but now I felt a desire to mock.
As for the sermon, I could not hear a word of it, for the jingle in my ears of
‘The skirts of St Paul has reached.
Having preached us those six Lent lectures,
More unctuous than ever he preached:’
keeping time to the most fantastic and irreverent thoughts.
It was no use to sit there any longer: I must get out of doors and shake myself free from this hateful mood. I knew the rudeness I was committing but still I rose and left the church.
A spring sun was shining on the rue St Honoré, as I ran down the church steps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violets from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with my destruction.
I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began to dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. It began to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached a long way back – a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these years: it was there though, and presently it would rise and confront me. But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could into the rue de Rivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of gray stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys of the Cours la Reine.
I left the river side, plunged blindly across to the Champs Elysées and turned toward the Arc. The setting sun was sending its rays along the green sward of the Rond-point: in the full glow he sat on a bench, children and young mothers all about him. He was nothing but a Sunday lounger, like the others, like myself. I said the words almost aloud, and all the while I gazed on the malignant hatred of his face. But he was not looking at me. I crept past and dragged my leaden feet up the Avenue. I knew that every time I met him brought him nearer to the accomplishment of his purpose and my fate. And still I tried to save myself.
The last rays of sunset were pouring through the great Arc. I passed under it, and met him face to face. I had left him far down the Champs Elysées, and yet he came in with a stream of people who were returning from the Bois de Boulogne. He came so close that he brushed me. His slender frame felt like iron inside its loose black covering. He showed no signs of haste, nor of fatigue, nor of any human feeling. His whole being expressed but one thing: the will, and the power to work me evil.
In anguish I watched him, where he went down the broad crowded Avenue, that was all flashing with wheels and the trappings of horses, and the helmets of the Garde Republicaine.
He was soon lost to sight; then I turned and fled. Into the Bois, and far out beyond it – I know not where I went, but after a long while as it seemed to me, night had fallen, and I found myself sitting at a table before a small café. I had wandered back into the Bois. It was hours now since I had seen him. Physical fatigue, and mental suffering had left me no more power to think or feel. I was tired, so tired! I longed to hide away in my own den. I resolved to go home. But that was a long way off.
I live in the Court of the Dragon, a narrow passage that leads from the rue de Rennes to the rue du Dragon.
It is an ‘Impasse’, traversable only for foot passengers. Over the entrance on the rue de Rennes is a balcony, supported by an iron dragon. Within the court tall old houses rise on either side, and close the ends that give on the two streets. Huge gates, swung back during the day into the walls of the deep archways, close this court, after midnight, and one must enter then by ringing at certain small doors on the side. The sunken pavement collects unsavory pools. Steep stairways pitch down to doors that open on the court. The ground floors are occupied by shops of second-hand dealers, and by iron workers. All day long the place rings with the clink of hammers, and the clang of metal bars.
Unsavory as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard, honest work above.
Five flights up are the ateliers of architects and painters, and the hiding-places of middle-aged students like myself who want to live alone. When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone.
I had to walk awhile before any conveyance appeared, but at last, when I had almost reached the Arc de Triomphe again, an empty cab came along and I took it.
From the Arc to the rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour, especially when one is conveyed by a tired cab horse that has been at the mercy of Sunday fête makers.
There had been time before I passed under the Dragon’s wings, to meet my enemy over and over again, but I never saw him once, now refuge was close at hand.
Before the wide gateway a small mob of children were playing. Our concierge and his wife walked about among them with their black poodle, keeping order; some couples were waltzing on the side-walk. I returned their greetings and hurried in.
All the inhabitants of the court had trooped out into the street. The place was quite deserted, lighted by a few lanterns hung high up, in which the gas burned dimly.
My apartment was at the top of a house, half way down the court, reached by a staircase that descended almost into the street, with only a bit of passage-way intervening. I set my foot on the threshold of the open door, the friendly, old ruinous stairs rose before me, leading up to rest and shelter. Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw him, ten paces off. He must have entered the court with me.
He was coming straight on, neither slowly, nor swiftly, but straight on to me. And now he was looking at me. For the first time since our eyes encountered across the church they met now again, and I knew that the time had come.
Retreating backward, down the court, I faced him. I meant to escape by the entrance on the rue du Dragon. His eyes told me that I never should escape.
It seemed ages while we were going, I retreating, he advancing, down the court in perfect silence; but at last I felt the shadow of the archway, and the next step brought me within it. I had meant to turn here and spring through into the street. But the shadow was not that of an archway; it was that of a vault. The great doors on the rue du Dragon were closed. I felt this by the blackness which surrounded me, and at the same instant I read it in his face. How his face gleamed in the darkness, drawing swiftly nearer! The deep vaults, the huge closed doors, their cold iron clamps were all on his side. The thing which he had threatened had arrived: it gathered and bore down on me from the fathomless shadows; the point from which it would strike was his infernal eyes. Hopeless, I set my back against the barred doors and defied him.
There was a scraping of chairs on the stone floor, and a rustling as the congregation rose. I could hear the Suisse’s staff in the south aisle, preceding Monseigneur C— to the sacristy.
The kneeling nuns, roused from their devout abstraction, made their reverence and went away. The fashionable lady, my neighbor, rose also, with graceful reserve. As she departed her glance just flitted over my face in disapproval.
Half dead, or so it seemed to me, yet intensely alive to every trifle, I sat among the leisurely moving crowd, then rose too and went toward the door.
I had slept through the sermon. Had I slept through the sermon? I looked up and saw him passing along the gallery to his place. Only his side I saw; the thin bent arm in its black covering looked like one of those devilish, nameless instruments which lie in the disused torture chambers of mediaeval castles.
But I had escaped him, though his eyes had said I should not. Had I escaped? That which gave him the power over me came back out of oblivion, where I had hoped to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him – they had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine. I had recognized him almost from the first; I had never doubted what he was come to do; and now I knew that while my body sat safe in the cheerful little church, he had been hunting my soul in the Court of the Dragon.
I crept to the door; the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens; and the wet winds from the Lake of Hali chilled my face.
And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon.
Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!’
THE MAKER OF MOONS (#ulink_b2220cce-ae21-5a57-ad88-3177600ef302)
‘I have heard what the Talkers were talking – the talk
Of the beginning and the end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.’
I
Concerning Yue-Laou and the Xin I know nothing more than you shall know. I am miserably anxious to clear the matter up. Perhaps what I write may save the United States Government money and lives, perhaps it may arouse the scientific world to action; at any rate it will put an end to the terrible suspense of two people. Certainty is better than suspense.
If the Government dares to disregard this warning and refuses to send a thoroughly equipped expedition at once, the people of the State may take swift vengeance on the whole region and leave a blackened devastated waste where today forest and flowering meadowland border the lake in the Cardinal Woods.
You already know part of the story; the New York papers have been full of alleged details. This much is true: Barris caught the ‘Shiner’ red-handed, or rather yellow-handed, for his pockets and boots and dirty fists were stuffed with lumps of gold. I say gold, advisedly. You may call it what you please. You also know how Barris was – but unless I begin at the beginning of my own experiences you will be none the wiser after all.
On the third of August of this present year I was standing in Tiffany’s, chatting with George Godfrey of the designing department. On the glass counter between us lay a coiled serpent, an exquisite specimen of chiseled gold.
‘No,’ replied Godfrey to my question, ‘it isn’t my work; I wish it was. Why, man, it’s a masterpiece!’
‘Whose?’ I asked.
‘Now I should be very glad to know also,’ said Godfrey. ‘We bought it from an old jay who says he lives in the country somewhere about the Cardinal Woods. That’s near Starlit Lake, I believe—’
‘Lake of the Stars?’ I suggested.
‘Some call it Starlit Lake – it’s all the same. Well, my rustic Reuben says that he represents the sculptor of this snake for all practical and business purposes. He got his price too. We hope he’ll bring us something more. We have sold this already to the Metropolitan Museum.’
I was leaning idly on the glass case, watching the keen eyes of the artist in precious metals as he stooped over the gold serpent.
‘A masterpiece!’ he muttered to himself, fondling the glittering coil, ‘look at the texture! whew!’ But I was not looking at the serpent. Something was moving – crawling out of Godfrey’s coat pocket – the pocket nearest me – something soft and yellow with crablike legs all covered with coarse yellow hair.
‘What in Heaven’s name,’ said I, ‘have you got in your pocket? It’s crawling out – it’s trying to creep up your coat, Godfrey!’
He turned quickly and dragged the creature out with his left hand.
I shrank back as he held the repulsive object dangling before me, and he laughed and placed it on the counter.
‘Did you ever see anything like that?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ said I truthfully, ‘and I hope I never shall again. What is it?’
‘I don’t know. Ask them at the Natural History Museum – they can’t tell you. The Smithsonian is all at sea too. It is, I believe, the connecting link between a sea urchin, a spider, and the devil. It looks venomous but I can’t find either fangs or mouth. Is it blind? These things may be eyes but they looks as if they were painted. A Japanese sculptor might have produced such an impossible beast, but it is hard to believe that God did. It looks unfinished too. I have a mad idea that this creature is only one of the parts of some larger and more grotesque organism – it looks so lonely, so hopelessly dependent, so cursedly unfinished. I’m going to use it as a model. If I don’t out-Japanese the Japs my name isn’t Godfrey.’
The creature was moving slowly across the glass case towards me. I drew back.
‘Godfrey,’ I said, ‘I would execute a man who executed any such work as you propose. What do you want to perpetuate such a reptile for? I can stand the Japanese grotesque but I can’t stand that – spider—’
‘It’s a crab.’
‘Crab or spider or blindworm – ugh! What do you want to do it for? It’s a nightmare – it’s unclean!’
I hated the thing. It was the first living creature that I had ever hated.
For some time I had noticed a damp acrid odor in the air, and Godfrey said it came from the reptile.
‘Then kill it and bury it,’ I said, ‘and by the way, where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ laughed Godfrey. ‘I found it clinging to the box that this gold serpent was brought in. I suppose my old Reuben is responsible.’
‘If the Cardinal Woods are the lurking places for things like this,’ said I, ‘I am sorry that I am going to the Cardinal Woods.’
‘Are you?’ asked Godfrey; ‘for the shooting?’
‘Yes, with Barris and Pierpont. Why don’t you kill that creature?’
‘Go off on your shooting trip, and let me alone,’ laughed Godfrey.
I shuddered at the ‘crab’, and bade Godfrey good-bye until December.
That night, Pierpont, Barris, and I sat chatting in the smoking car of the Quebec Express when the long train pulled out of the Grand Central Depot. Old David had gone forward with the dogs; poor things, they hated to ride in the baggage car, but the Quebec and Northern road provides no sportsman’s cars, and David and the three Gordon setters were in for an uncomfortable night.
Except for Pierpont, Barris, and myself, the car was empty. Barris, trim, stout, ruddy, and bronzed, sat drumming on the window ledge, puffing a short fragrant pipe. His gun case lay beside him on the floor.
‘When I have white hair and years of discretion,’ said Pierpont languidly, ‘I’ll not flirt with pretty serving maids; will you, Roy?’
‘No,’ said I, looking at Barris.
‘You mean the maid with the cap in the Pullman car?’ asked Barris.
‘Yes,’ said Pierpont.
I smiled, for I had seen it also.
Barris twisted his crisp gray moustache, and yawned.
