The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1907-09-05
THE....,.
LIVING.
PORTRAIT
G.
BY Ola Victoria Gould.

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1t hung over his desk in a deer
frame of gold, and seated beneath
that lovely likeness of his dear dead
wife he wrote the ten great novels
that gained for him the foremost
place in contemporary literature.
The severest critics honored him as
man OF genius, but until he won the
beautiful Constance Juillard he had
displayed no richer talent than a del
icate lyric fancy, and it was only
after her death and his recovery from
the first unconsolable pangs of grief
that he showed himself to be pos
sessed OF consummate creative power.
AS he worked, his eyes were lifted
from his manuscript to the portrait
above his desk, as the poets eyes
are lifted rom earth to heaven, and
more and more he seemed to draw
his inspiration from that perfect like
ness of his dead wife.
How lovely twas; how flushed
with the warm human of the once
living, breathing original. All, there
were days when he could almost see
the portrait grow-when the slender,
g1rlish face in the painting seemed to
be taking on the maturity of life
itself.
But no. he must not surrender his
heart to such fancies. Every day he
would grow q day older, but the face
in the painting would always remain
the same girlish likeness of a dead
love. Death had taken her away
from him, and he would only grieve
himself by dreaming that the glory
of life and nature still shone upon
that departed face
AS the weeks and months passed,
however, instead of lessening, this
Fancy grew stronger, till there came
a time when he could no longer shut
his mind to the TACT that somehow
the face in the painting was every
day growing day older, like that OF
living woman
He worked and watched, and as his
first great novel grew to an end, a
splendid womaciy maturity stole as
the face of the portrait above his
desk.
/ am mad he said "She diel
three years ago, and whatever
0 change shall come over her counte-
nance shall be the mutation of a
spirit world, not that of flesh and
blood have worked too long at one
task; must go away and rest"
But when after some months OF
travel he returned and unveiled the
portrait, he knew that the woman in
the painting was indeed keeping
measured step with time, like liv-
ing woman.
What miracle was this, for it was
not madness? He touched the can
vas with awed hands, half expecting
to meet with substantial spirit, but
it was material stuff, cold and hard
Could the ghost of his dead love
be looking out upon him from her
portrait, like a face from window
He believed in immortality, and to
his sensitive, imaginative nature
death was a gate loosely latched, that
spirit hands could open and spirit
shapes return through, yet he wished
to exhaust the natural before turn
ing to the supernatural for an expla.
nation of the seeming miracle.
His search for the artist who had
painted the marvellous portrait ended
with the discovery that the man was
dead, He, too, had loved the beau.
tiful Constance Juillard, but she mad
chosen for her plighted lover better
If not more gifted man, and it was
said that the young artist had dice
less certainly from the effects of &
wasted life than from unreciprocatei
love.
Il must be satisfied with the mir
acle as it is, the novelist at last con
cluded. 1t is enough that we shall
grow old together. She will seen
to be with me STILL"
AS the eees. and months and year,
passed he took deepening consolation
in the treasure of the living portrait
and as the gray crept into his hair The
silver strands showed among the gols
in the dear matronly face lookin;
down upon him. and he labored a
his writings with the blessed feelins
that his wife was near him always
a sweet, womanly presence to Low,
and cheer.
So they grew old together-th>
man and this woman-even so ma
turally that at last great fear cam,
upon him, an old mans piteous dreat
that his Constance might die befor,
him. The hair of the portrait hal