Futurist Stories Part 9

LITTLE children were dead--

THE stream of fugitives increased as the days pa.s.sed--Starvation--death--

TRIUMPHANT over Defeat still rang in Dasha's ears--Some day it would come--

TRIUMPH--

SHE clothed a child here--

COMFORTED a mother there--

AND still they came--over the snow and corpses--through the woods--fugitives everywhere--

DASHA worked--worked with all her heart--fed--clothed--

OUT into the snows, into the storms to look for the wanderers and bring them to a shelter--

Have mercy on my soul--she whispered--Forgive--

THE Andante far away--calling--Dasha--a reward--

DASHA IVANOVNA died on a bed of snow--On her dead face was a triumphant sweet look.

THE fugitives wept and prayed as they buried her in the woods.

WHEN summer came bluebells grew over her grave.

THE MAD ARTIST

FAINTLY--

SPEAK, speak--Angel or demon, or both, speak to me before I throw you into the sea.

THE storm raged in all its fury around the house, and the rain beat down--

SPEAK, or I'll break you into a thousand pieces.

BUT the only answer was the smile of the Angel with the uplifted eyes and the outspread wings as if she was about to ascend to Heaven. The marble Angel that was to have been his masterpiece! His last gift to man was now his hated treasure.

NIGHT came on and with it the fury of the storm increased--and still the mad artist now implored, now threatened. The Angel smiled and looked Heavenward.

WHEN I chose a model for my masterpiece, he murmured, she was beautiful, but had not the face of that Angel. How came I to copy the image in my heart and not the living one that for months was each day here in my studio.

THE storm raged without, and within the artist groped for light, clung to the shreds of memory. His madness was increasing, his head seemed miles away. What had he been thinking of just then, had he seen a woman rise from a tomb--no, it was the Angel.

HE must get to work and finish it. But it was finished. Vaguely he remembered dismissing his model.

SPEAK--with a faint cry of anguish he rushed to the statue. Speak, image of my lost Louise! But no, you are cold marble, you have no life, no warmth--

STILL, it must be the girl I loved. It is her mouth, her eyes.

THE wind moaned around the house, seeming to call the name of Louise.

The mad artist wept, and groped for light, for memory. Vaguely he could see, 'way back in some half-forgotten period, a nurse leaning over his cot. The noise of battle still rang in his ears--but that was all past, in his other life--now there were phantoms and the image in his heart of the lost Louise. Why had he chosen that name. That name made him think of running water. Where was reverie--Oh yes, it was the statue--well it must die. Never should men see his masterpiece that had cost him all the joy of life. For he had likened the features of the Angel after Louise.

SPEAK, demon, he implored. Take on a woman's voice.

THE storm had ceased and the sun shone brightly on the wet gra.s.s and the flowers of a day in June. One ray peeped in at the window of the studio and saw the Angel broken by hammer and chisel on the floor. Its smiling face seemed to forgive all the madness of the night.

FROM what strange nightmare was he awakening? At the sight of his loved and hated Angel broken at his feet, his senses were slowly returning--But with what pain they came--as if his head must break.

HE could not think yet--he would later on. He had been mad--he remembered the doctor saying so--In France--sh.e.l.l shock.

IT had come over him as he stood by the gate of the Chateau. Then a hospital. Afterward all had been darkness, a horrible groping amid a thousand broken memories, phantoms which had shrouded him. But now it was over. He was sane--life, life! Oh what joy to live again, as one risen from the tomb--he would travel out into the world--far from his studio.

THE attendant entered bringing lunch to the mad artist and found him dead, his lips pressed to the marble ones of his Angel, the image of Louise.

SHE was only one of his many phantoms.

OLD SCORES

A NIGHT of untold beauty.

COBWEBS on the heavens.

A GRAY winter sky, brightened by the moon shining through it.

BARE branches of hundreds of trees interlacing their silvery boughs.

AND a cottage with thatched roof and square leaded panes--a setting for romance, for dreams of visionary splendor.

IS the master at home, asked a strange woman of the old man servant.

HE has not yet returned.

THEN I will wait for him.