Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1882-12-02
CARsEsAD7NE'S LOVE.

CARHsADGNE'S LOVE.
Carradine sat alone at his easel painting,
and as he painted he thought. Eight years
before, when lie was a poor and struggling
boy, just entering on that race which must
be run by every aspirant to art and its
honors, there happened to him something
which neither time nor toll had ever becn
able to efiacc from his memory. As he
was passing along the streets 4 wreath of
fragrant roses suddenly fell on his head,
and, looking up IN wonder, he behcld,
reaching out from the embroidered dra-
peries of an overhanging window, child
with fsiry-iike proportions, with great
dark eyes, and long curling black locks,
who stood smiling and throwing him kisses
from her curved lips, colored like 4 pomc-
granate. While she still gazed nurse
had come forward and drawn the child
away; the curtains were closed, and he
saw the little creature no more.
Such was the vision that the artist had
carried so long in his memory; in his
memory only for he had no second glimpse
of the child. That very day an accident
occurred which kept him prisoner in his
room for some weeks, and when next he
went out the house was empty, and pla-
card with great tlaring letters announcing
it for sale stared him ih the face from the
same window in which the little white
robeA elf had stood waving her hand and
smiling to him. In course of time other
faces appeared there, but they were strange
faces, and among them was never the one
for which he looked.
Now, as Carradine sat painting alone,
he thoaght of al this; OF the struggle that
had ended at length in success; of his
hard unfriended boyhood, and Of the
beautiful child with her fragrant rose
crown, which had seemed almost like a
prophecy. That rose-wreath, dry and
withcred now, was all that was left to him
of the fair vision, but when that morning,
in turning over an old portfolio, he
had come upon it by chance, it spoke to
him of that by-goRe day just as eloquently
as when its blossoms were fresh and full.
Eight years ago" he said thoughtfully,
letting the shriveled circlet slip through
his fingers slowly. She must be near l6
now-if she lives. If? No, | do not
doubt her living presence--somewhere. |
wonder where she is now, and what she
is like 1t 1872"
With that, he placed the wreath beside
his ease, and began to paint. Thc face,
as it grew on his canvas, presented 4
young girl in the Gewy morning blush of
first youth, with shadows in the great
dark eyes and half smile about the bright
curved lips, like an embodied summer sun
shower. 1t was thus that the artist pie
tured his ideal of the child-woman, whose
infantile look and smile for eight long
years had been his own dream of love.
Carradine had not had an easy life. An
orphan from his earliest years, poor anI
unfriendcd, he had striven hard for the
means to crafty that inherent idolatry
for art which was always clamoring to
find expression in form and coloring. He
had fought and he had won; but now, at
26, lie stood in the place which he had
gained for himself almost as much alone
at the very heart as he had been eight
years before, when the child's gift came
TO him as a prophecy.
1t was not that he was friendless. There
were men who liked and sought him, wo-
men who would gladly have taught him
to forget his Loneliness in their affection.
But though his nature responded readily
TO his kindness, there was one chord,
deeper than all, that remained untouched,
and from the sweetest glances his heart
went back to the unknown child that haG
smiled down on him so long ago.
The ideal head became his great source
of enjoyment, and dreamy sOftness shad-
ed his dark-gray eyes, as line by line and
tint by tint took him back into that past,
which, all lifeless as it was, seemed to
him, in those moments. more real than the
busy present. Yes now, in reviewing
that one bright vision of his memory, it
was not so much the lovely child that he
saw, in fancy, as the beautiful girl whose
face, with fuller depth and sweetness,
looked out at him from his own canvas.
Instinctively, he hardly knew why, he
disliked to work on this picture in any
other presence, and he devoted to it only
his hours of solitude. Sol happened that
it was nearly finished when, by some
chance, friend discovered him bending
over it, too absorbed to notice any ap-
proach. AS the door opened Carradine
rose hastily, turning his easel 10 the wall,
SO as to conceal the face upon it. This
little stratagem, however, was destined to
be of no avail. Having been marked by
the intruder-one of those cordial, we'll
meaning people. good-natured to degree,
but with little delicacy Of perception, the
action at once aroused his curiosity.
"Aha, master painter" he said, wit.i a
laugh, "lct Tie see " hat IL ia that you work