Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1890-06-20

Esby shook my hand with great warmth.
'Shant we call or send some flowers,
RalphT said 1.
"'Nop he replied; 'I'll write her q
note ~
~ did go up to the atelier, but my
thoughts were not much upon wha,
Bonnat was saying, although the other
fellows seemed more than usually in.
terested. They twitted me bit about
having been kept away by one of the
fair sex. 'We might have expected 1t
of an impressionabie creature like you,
Bright, but what's taken hold of Esby?'
l wasn't in joking nor a confiding
humor, so muttered something about
Esby attending to his own affairs, and 1
went off for walk by tho Seine. Pm
not often irritable, but the fellows Jared
on me. .-.-c2.
"Esby rested on my mind, md 1
thought of Madge Hartley, shut in her
room in this strange city, sad, despairing
thoughts haunting her. Toward even,
ing, l 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 had never seen, yet i'm
mediately recognized as done with the
most exaggerated pcculiarities of his
brush. So strangely like my friend was
it, yet weird thing, uncanny, ghostly.
He never did piece of work moro
beautiful in color and full of wonder
fully strange inspiration. But the sad
ness and despair which shone through
it's ghostliness was so great that it was
with heart stillcd by prcmonition that
l read word painted beneath with
slender brush of carmine. This was the
word Unfinished ,:;:: Z, -;
81 stood some time gazing upon the
portrait in blind kind of way, repeat
ing, mechanically, iUnfinished.' 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.
al rushed up to the Hartleys. Mr..
Hartley received me with a grave face
and gave me letter. ..--.:... ,
at was n letter from Ralph to Madoe.
He told her frankly what he had told
me-thc whole course Of his feeling to-
ward her.
land now, he said, If you were woman
to receive such thing. I should ofror myself
as your husband, but to you am we'll aware
that would BIO useless. Many years ago. the
suspicion OF this strange peculiarity of my
nature aawned upon me-this incapacity for
completion, in any condition or action Of my
lie. L have been ever since wardinE OF an
acknowledgment OF it to myself But how
much Drawer, how infinitely better thing It
would have been to have acknowledged ft.
the pain which have Brought upon you and
upon myself is witness. can not oven ask
you to forgive mo. Yet you will not deem,
that am without realization OF what have
done, when tell you that, like Cain have
gone into Punishment, tho brand upon me,
that brand given at my birth-a man with
out rm,symbol of the incomplete. 1t is not
tho ending OF u miserable life I am contem-
plating, It is but completeretirement from
lie as 1t Is its daily contact with my fellow
men. In the wilderness of some primitive
land, perhaps the good Lord will some dny
'1t is ten years ago, sir, since read
That, and that's tho last I've seen of
Ralph Esby. I've heard that his father
was killed in duel, shot in the arm, and
that his mother died when he was born,
soon after. One can put two and two to-
gether in regard to poor Ralph's pccu-
liarities. All these years we have been
wondering where Ralph might be, but
the uncertainty came to an END year
since, when n fellow from Australia came
into my studio and handed me n card,
upon which was written, In feeble hand
Harry, my boy, I've iinishedp
est was avid colt finished him, said
the man.
''SIiss Hartleyf Oh, she had severe
illness. But her father and 1 nurscd her
through. For six years 1 did not say
anything to her in regard to the state of
my feelings. Then asked her to be nv
wife, and we've been married four years
now.
81 wish we could have told Ralph"
-Ayyonaut