The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1890-04-09

"sShan't we call or send some flowers,
Ralph?' said I. I
"'Nor he replied; I'LL write her q
note.'
81 did 60 up to the atelier, but my
thoughts were not much upon what
Bonnat was saying, although the other
fellows seemed more than usually In.
terested. They twitted me a bit about
having been kept away by one of the
fair sex. 'We might have expected it
of an impressionable creature like you,
Bright, but what's taken hold of Esby2'
I wasn't in a joking nor confding
humor, so muttered something about
Esby attending to his own affairs, and I
went off for a walk by the Seine. I'm
not often irritable, but the fellows Jared
On me.
"Esby rested on my mind, and I
thought of Madge Hartley, shut in her
roomi in this strange city, sad, despairing
thoughts haunting her. Toward even
ing, / wandered up to Ralph's room.
Pinned upon the door was paper, and
on it written: go in, Bright I quickly
turned the handle and entered.
"The room was entirely vacant, but
opposite me stood portrait of Esby-a.
portrait which I had never seen, yet ina-
mediately recognized as done with the
most exaggerated peculiarities of his
brush. So strangely like my friend was
it, yet weird thing, uncanny, ghostly.
He never did a piece of work more
beautiful in color and full of wonder
fully strange inspiration. But the sad
ness and despair which shone through
its ghostliness was so great that it was
with heart .stilled by premonition that
I read a word painted beneath with
slender brush of carmine. This was the
word 'Unfnished'
81 stood some time gazing upon the
portrait in blind kind of way, repeat
ing, mechanically, Unfinished And
gradually the terrible fear grew that
Ralph had done something desperate.
Poor Ralph No one in his sane mind
ever painted portrait like that.
II rushed up to the Hartleys. Mr..
Hartley received me with a grave face
and gave me letter.
"It was letter from Ralph to Madge.
He told her frankly what he had told
me-the whole course of his feeling to-
ward her:
"'And now, be said if you were woman,
to receive such thing, should offer myself
as your husband, but to you am we'll aware
that would be useless. Many years ago, the
suspicion Of this strange peculiarity of my
nature dawned upon me-this incapacity for
completion, in any condition or action of my
life. I have been ever since warding of an
acknowledgment of it to myself. But how
much braver, how infinitely better a thingit
would have been to have acknowledged it.
the pain which I have brought upon you and
you to forgive me. Yet you will not deem
that am without realization of what I have
done, when I tell you that, like Cain, have
gone into banishment, the brand upon me,
that brand given at my birth-a man with
out an arm, symbol of the incomplete. 1t is not
the ending of a miserable life I am contem-
plating. It is but a complete retirement from
life as it is its daily contact with my fellow
men. In the wilderness Of some primitive
land, perhaps the good Lord will some day
say Finished
"It is ten years ago, sir, since I read
that, and that's the last I've seen of
Ralph Esby. I've heard that his father
was killed in a duel, shot in the arm, and
that his mother died when he was norn,
soon after. One can put two and two to-
gether in regard to poor Ralph's pecu-
iarities, All these years we haye been
wondering Where Ralph might be, but !
the uncertainty came to an end year
since, when fellow from Australia came
into my studio and handed me a card,
upon which was written, in feeble hand:
Harry, my boy, I've fnishedp
"'It was wild colt finished him, said
the man.
"Miss Hartley7 Oh, she had severe
illness. But her father and nursed her
through. For six years I did not say
to her in regard to the state of
my feelings. Then I asked her to be my !
wife. and we've been married four years /,
now.
II wish we could have told Ralph"
i