SHORT STORY. A FATAL LOVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2206, 11 June 1896, Page 42

SHORT STORY. A FATAL LOVE.

One of those dazzling days in early summer so frequently seen in Paris ; a warm, bright noon. -The trees swajed languidly, the doves cooed drowsily from beneath the eaves of the Madeleine, even the flowers in the tray of Felisa seemed to be lost in a delicious reverie. But Felisa herself was gay ; she was always so from morn to night. Now she was carolling merrily over her bright and fragrant wares. " Your flowers are very fresh, mademoiselle, considering tbe heat of the hour." The girl started. She had seen no one approach, and was startled. Her song ceased abruptly, but not unmusically (that was impossible with Felisa), and she stood up hastily to face the stranger over the azaleas and violets, " Oh, yes, monsieur ! I spray them." The tall and handsome gentleman was looking so intently into her face that she Blushed— the rich colour surging up and dyeing the warm olive skin with, exquisite tints She was no child of Paris ; such faces he had seen in tbe streets of Cadiz and Seville. " Some violets, mademoiselle," said he, not so much as glancing at her selection of the blossoms as, with a few swift, light touches of her graceful, brown handn, she deftly arranged them into a pretty nosegay, so rapt was he in the study of this young creature, whose beauty thrilled him like a strain of wild, delicious music. Glad was Comte Marzac that destiny had led him into the Madeleine quarter this bright summer day. She was worth gazing at — warm, richly-tinted skin, great tawny velvety eyes with their dangerous fires half hid beneath thick lathes, not as full of passion as those of Oalderon's Spanish women, lustrous dark hair curlingcoquettishly under a little red tinselled cap, lips like pomegranates turned to the sun, and a form which would make the fame of an artist in the Royal Academy. " May I ask your name, mademoiselle ? " " Felisa," said she, with a pretty accent. " Felisa 1 Then yon are not French. I guessed as much. You have a Spanish name." " Yes, monsieur. My father was Spanish, but I have always lived in Paris." "I heard you sieging, mademoiselle. I listened quite a few moments, for I hated to interrupt so sweet a socg," said he, slipping the coin into her brown palm, and as he did so, holding her hand for a moment in his. To Oomte Marzac she seemed like a flashing gem, a flushing flower, a brilliant varicoloured bird, this lovely child of Spain. " I love to sing, monsisur. I can't help singing ail the time. I feel it here "; and she laid one hand upon her heart. " Has no one ever told you that there was a fortune in your voice 1 " He did not say in her face also, but his eyes said it. " Sometimes I sing for the people who buy my flowers. They seem to like it. Sometimes a crowd has come, monsieur, when I have sung, and stood and listened to me. Sometimes they give me coin for it," said she with a simplicity that in one so magnificently endowed by Nature was strangely sweet and pathetic. 11 Have you ever been to the opera ? " " Once, monsienr ; a kind lady who bad heard me siDg gave me a ticket. Oh, the musio, monsieur 1 I wanted to dance. Sometimes I cried; sometimes I laughed. At night I see fine ladies driving to the opera with jewels in their hair. Sometimes under the arcade I have listened to the grand music 1 " Her face glowed ; her bosom heaved. She was a veritable creature of fire, this little flower girl. He told her that she need not sell flowers very much longer if she would let him be her friend. He was rich; he would have her voice trained. She could wear jewels that she had seen in the glittering shops of the Palais Royal. Felisa was radiant with joy. " Oh, monsieur, how good, how kind, how noble ! How can I thank you 1 " " Never mind the thanks, little one." He took her hand again and held it tenderly, looking long into those eyes of hers, and then turned away. Half dazed with her good fortune, Felisa watched him as he strode down the busy street. Had Bhe fallon Mleep and dreamed, ex was thii ai^

true, this wonderful thing which bad happened to her? How handsome and noble he was 1 How different from Pierre and all the rest I Next day at noon she waited but he did not come; and Felisa was aware that the sun did not seem as bright, nor even the ripples of the Seine. And she thought, " Perhaps to morrow." It was evening now. The boulevards were thronged, the cafes were sparkling with myriad lights, the music of violins played by strolling bands filled the soft air, through which the great pulsing cit* gleamed like a star. Fdisa was in her flower-filled stall, and he was beside her. Her hand he held in his, and he gazed down upon her in a way which no one had ever before looked at her. It thrilled her heart. It made her pulses leap. "I thought you were not ooming, monsieur 1 " Her velvet eyes were strangely soft in the semi-darkness. " Were you sorry, Fdliaa 1 " " Oh, monsieur, yes I I am glad you are here." They told so much — thoße eyes. He smiled at her pretty naivete, and he thought of the sangfroid of the salons of the Faubourg Saint Germain. He did not etay long, but when he went he left her with a long, passionate kiss thrilling her simple young' soul. It was so sweet,- so sweet 1 She trembled when she thought of it. Atter that he came every evening just when the lights were beginning to twinkle through the dusk, and a whole week" went by, a week full of bliss to Felisa. One night, after she had put away her few unsold flowers, he led her from her little stall to a secluded seat under the trees in the park, where a fountain splashed its singing water into a marble basin and statues gleamed white among the winding paths. "Felisa, my beautiful little Felisa, you love me I " said he. Aud he took her in his arms, looked long into those great, stary eyes, and saw there— ah, Felif a 1 He pressed her closer to him, pressed the warm red lips, and she lay there with her hot passionate heart thrilling with* this strange, new happiness that bore her to the very gates of paradise. " To-morrow, Felisa, at this hour," he eaid to her at the last that night. " Yeß, monsieur." " He kissed the moist, wine-red lips again and again, passionately, triumphantly, while the lovely, brilliant face lay upon his breast, and the deep, dark eyes looked her very heart and soul into his. In all Paris there was no soul that summer night happier than Felisa, the little flower girl. She went home to her humble garret to dream dreams that must have found their birth in heaven? Cjmte Marzac sauntered along the bright streets, which even at this late hour were filled with laughing throngs, and ten minutes later was jesting over the . wine cups with his gay companions. Next dry the trees swayed drowsily, the doves cooed, the bells chimed away tbe long bright hours. The little brown beggar with a tambourines lay stretched in undisputed possession of the shady stone bench, for Felisa was not there. Many habitues of the quarter missed her beautiful face and the music of her bird-like voice. At the club C^mte Miizac did not appear, nor was he to be seen at any of his usual haunts. At his hotel it was given out, "M. le Oomte left Paris last evening." An autumn night in Paris, the wind blowing the dry dead leaveß about the parks with a sob, for in autumn even Paris winds sob ; the gardens deserted, but the cafes and streets brilliantly lighted and filled with festive Parisians ; the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the asphalt, the thousand cries of the city rising and falling on the 000 l night air. > A girl hurried along the crowded streets, heeding neither the crowd nor the rude jests and bold looks of admiring eyes. Her eyes had a wild, hunted look in their dark depths as with one hand clasping beneath her throat the mantilla on her head she rushed along.. Oh, whither? Was not tbe Seine calling to her? But first — jast once more beneath the old Arcade, to listen to the music, and perhaps to Bee. The eyes shaded by the mantilla flashed/ savagely as she fled along. Again beneath the old Aroade in the shadows of the night. Yes, the orchestra was playing; she caught the wail of the violins, and Bhe listened thdre, crouched down so that no ray from the lanterns swung above should betray a presence there in the ddkkness. G-.iily-dressed people filed in under the lights, then the crowd thinned, aud the girl in the shadows knew that the singers were before the footlights. Glorious tones floated out and around her in a divine flood of melody. It filled her tired, hungry soul, poor, passionate child. . She did not want to dance now, nor laugh — just to listen with bent head and hands clasped over hearb as if to still its beating. For her there was nothing in this world now which could " make out of the proper sounds of life a song— of life itself a melody 1 " Another sound of hoofs upon the asphalt, and a carriage dashed up; a gentleman descended from it and stood to assist a lady to alight. Tbe great, tawny eyes of the girl there in the darkness saw and blazed like those of a tigress. Her breast heaved ; her breath came in quick, sharp gasps as she oaught the sound of a voice she knew, oh, too well ! She caught the tender tone, the silvery laugh of bis companion, the flash of jewels in the yellow hair, the gleam of a white neck and shoulders, the rustle of silk, tbe odour of violets, bringing back with strange, overwhelming distinctness, for one brief instant, the memory of those innocent, happy yesterdays beneath the shadow of the cross of the Madeleine ; the soft cooing of the doves at noon, the spire of the old church pointing up, up to a blue, blue heaven, Shekaew that the Seine was flowing quietly along beneath the bridge. It called louder to her now over the gay streets of Paris, and she heard and , understood. Fleeing away from the blaza and glare of the gas-lit night, the roar of the great city, soon she was beside the Seine, not sparkling and rippling as at noon, but dark and lurid and mysterious, with the lights from the lamps on the opposite bank reflected in its smooth surface. One moment she paused to pat her hands to her hot, aoh-

x ng brow, to take from her bosom a crucifix —to hold it to her heart, uttering over it a wild, incoherent prayer, to cast, last of all, one lingering look at Paris, with its glittering lights— one cry of angui»b, and then the old, old Seine with its burden of sad secrets flowed on a« quietly as before under the dark bridge. The wind sobbed, and the lights that flickered on a dark, beautiful face ere the water- beneath the black arches closed over it knew ib not — the face over the violets and azaleas — the face of Felisa, the little flower girl.