Futurist Stories Part 2

I WANDERED out again into the street.

I WALKED up the quai which winds along the river and where the quaint well-known bookshelves are built displaying to the pa.s.serby rare old books and piles of rubbish alike.

DESPITE the rain several students were eagerly looking through these stores of hidden wealth.

AS the Parisian would say ils bouquinaient.

SO I too began to pick up at random several old volumes.

AN English one caught my glance--

IT was a copy of Browning--old and tattered--and pencil-marked. Turning to the fly-leaf I saw a name, written in a woman's hand--

VICTORIA O'FALLON--Paris 18--

I LOOKED up--and saw far back into now almost forgotten years of my life and there flashed into unaccountable and extraordinary vividness in my mind the remembrance of a western mining camp and of a girl, Vicky O'Fallon. She was a little red-headed beauty, who dreamed and talked of nothing but the stage, who longed to study and to travel, to release her life from the coa.r.s.e and rude environment in which she lived.

AND I questioned almost pa.s.sionately, could that little, discontented Irish girl be the same one whose name on an old yellowing page was intriguing my thought? How came her book here among these old volumes?

Had some strange fate transplanted her to Paris in the year 18--? Had her dreams come true and was she on the stage in this great city of the world? I asked of the bookseller how this copy of Browning had come into his hands. He did not know.

I COULD not dismiss this girl, I could not forget the book.

SOMEWHERE, somehow she had read Browning. She obsessed my mind.

SHE possessed my waking hours. I wandered from theatre to theatre, watching at the stage doors, and saw play after play, always in the hope of discovering this girl I had scarcely known. I studied hotel registers, old play-bills, and always old books. I had not thought of her for years and now I desired more than anything else in life to see once more her dancing blue eyes and hear again her laughter.

BUT it was all in vain that I scanned faces in the streets, in railway stations, in pa.s.sing cabs. I could find no trace of Victoria O'Fallon.

YEARS pa.s.sed.

I WAS travelling one dull English day from London to Glasgow. In the railway carriage toward night I fell into desultory talk with a sad uneasy looking man who shared the compartment with me. At some turn in the conversation he told me his name was O'Fallon.

THE worn copy of Browning seemed almost to take form in my hand--and Victoria--her dream, her hair, her enchanting laugh.

FOR moments I was too dazed to speak. Then I managed to ask if by any chance he was related to a girl Victoria O'Fallon. He stared at me in silence, while a look of hatred and despair distorted his face.

FINALLY in a choked voice he breathed rather than spoke--

I AM just out of prison because of Victoria O'Fallon--she was my niece.

I sent her to Paris. She was on the stage, just one night--I struck her--she fell on a chair--her back. She's dead now.

HE gazed vaguely out into the gathering darkness.

THEN he seemed to remember me.

THERE was a French Count he began, but his voice sank into silence.

I SAT as if I had been turned to stone.

A NEAPOLITAN STREET SONG

ALONE--

A CITY full of lights, of pleasure. The sea singing to itself as it rolled quietly into the harbor. A glow of light on distant Vesuvius. Gay throngs of people pa.s.sing to and fro in the summer evening. Alone. For the first time in her life.

A HEAVY heart--there was no joy.

THEY had come to Naples on their wedding journey. Her brief happiness had been taken--torn from her.

ASHES.

He--cold--rigid--lay in the adjoining room.

TWO candles burned. A nun prayed. Monica leaned out of the window.

THROUGH her tears she saw a star shining in the night.

A STAR of sorrow.

THE sea--they had gone together on its blue waves to Capri--to Sorrento--

WAS it some terrible nightmare--would she awaken and find him near.

FROM a distant street came the sound of music--gay--lively--a Neapolitan street song.

HOW could there be joy. The sound was agony. An organ might have soothed.

HAD there ever been a time when gay music delighted.

O SOLE MIO sang the clear voices of the street singers. They drew nearer--and stopped under the window.

MONICA'S wounded inward self cried out for silence

THE world was drear. There should be no joyful singing.

SHE looked down absently. A young girl stood a little apart from the singers. Monica noticed her--and their tearful eyes met.

THEN singers also could know sorrow.

SUDDENLY--her own seemed lightened.

MONICA'S soul surged forward. She wanted to comfort, to help this brown-eyed girl. Perhaps her grief was harder to bear.

ONE of the men stepped toward the girl and pushed her rudely.