Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1879 — RAY’S ONLY LOVE; [ARTICLE]

RAY’S ONLY LOVE;

Or, What Thanksgiving Brought. BY LILIAN IRVING. Tljo opening exhibition of the Art Society wus crowded that day. The long room, with its wealth of painting and statuary, seemed a temple lit for the gods, and tiie public, in all their various ways, were enjoying it. For the public of' our period are much concerned with things artistic, and take art exhibitions ;ts a natural part of their daily bread, an inalienable right of their inheritance. Kay. Converse was sauntering dreamily about the room, passing a few idle hours, more for the sake of passing them than for any vtry absorbing appreciation he felt just then for the treasures of art surrounding him. Once he had cared for these things so much, tlo thought of it now half-sadly, halfamused, as we sometimes turnback to look at our past selves as at another individiial. That was in the days lie had known Genevieve Kelsey. He had cared for her, too, with that silent, absorbing, passionate devotion of his which was a part of his nature. She <liil not hersOlf realize the depth of his love, though she was more near to responding to it than she knew, till Ralph Eveleth came in her way and had seemed to strangely fascinate her. He was a handsome man—a man of society, who seemed Ma.se with the world, who was accustomed to have his own way, and who had run the whole scale of enjoyment—perhaps of dissipation. Yet he was refined and gentlemenly, and only the All-seeing eye could toll how ho and Genevieve Kelsey seemed strangely attached from the first. When ltay Converse first found that ho could notwin this fair woman he let go all the strands that had made life beautiful to him and went out to the fur West. He had been roughing it there for ten years. During that time life had been one stern reality to him. Yet, with its gleams of finer things, he learned to love tlio symphony of color when the sunset fires burned low in the west with such tints as never an artist’s brush had caught; the purplo hue that stole softly over mountains and plains enfolded him in its lmsh of peace. The stars that shone above him were not purer than his life, nor colder; for no woman’s touch could sot his pulses thrilling. How could it, after lie had known Genevieve Kelsey? It hid boon a fancy of his to pass the Thanksgiving of this year at home among the quiet Kentucky hills, and now, within a few hours’ journey, he was detained in St, Estavenne by missing a train. Ah! ho little dreamed what destiny meant when she sent that train without him. Tiie city life surged about him with its bitter-sweet memories and associations. Hiß thoughts strayed unaccountably backward. Some spring of memory was touched, and long-silent melodies llowed forth. His half-dreaming thoughts were suddenly arrested by a face, beforo which ho paused in sudden eagerness. It was a medallion, a woman’s face wrought in marble. There was no mistaking that face the sight of which thrilled and touched him with all the old nameless magnetism. He turned to tho catalogue, but the number was only entered as “A Sketch,” but he knew it was the face of Genevieve Kelsey. In almost less time 1 ban it could be told he was on his way to the studio of the sculptor who had modeled the sketch. Some sudden prophetic instinct stirred within him and impelled him with a wild eagerness of hope. In all theso years he had not heard of Miss Kelsey. He did not know, he did not want to know, anything of the old life, since she would now make life bright for him. He had taken it for granted, indeed he had vaguely heard, that she had married Eveleth, and further he never inquired. But some intuitional hope, for whose existence he could not account, hurried him out into the chill gray of that November afternoon. The brief glow had already faded into the dull twilight, and the gas was lighted here and there as he hurried through the crowded streets. A chill wind sprung up from the east. A city, like an individual, has her own moods and tenses, and if one lingers long within her gates one comes to individualize her. St. Estavenne had changed to Mr. Converse since he entered it that morning, and he journeyed on with but one thought in his mind. Was he near Genevieve Kelsey ? He felt that consciousness of presence which is to us all an ever-old, ever-new miracle. The picture of that night when he had seen her last came vividly before him. By the right of his own love he had entreated her to tell him if there was no hope, if she were irrevocably pledged to Ralph Eveleth, and she had given him all her confidence. “I know all his faults,” she had said, “but I love him.” “But, my darling, he is so utterly unworthy of you,” he replied, thinking of her happiness before he thought of his own. “Oh! my love, you will have a hard life if it is once linked with his. It' he were worthier you than I, I could give you up. If I could bear it all for you—your pain without mine—God knows I would. But it will come to you alone, love, when you are his wife, and I can havo no right to comfort you. Perhaps there will come a time when you would even rather have my tenderness than none.” Genevieve looked at him almost uncomprehendinglv. “Why, I love him,” was all Bho said, and he saw her again as she sat there in the deep embrasure of the window seat —a petite, dainty woman, “made of spirit, and lire, and* dew,” with gomp

subtle charm of her own that no words could catch. Her beauty depended much upon expression—glaring, fading, luminous, evanescent —as cloud pictures, yet marvelously lovely with vivid lights gleaming in the thoughtful eyes and lips, whose glow of coral rivaled the rose tints of the sweet, spirited countenance, framed and shadowed by clouds of soft-falling dusky hair, among whose soft tresses his fingers had caressing strayed. In those days he always thought of her as the one fair woman who was to make life fair to him, and through all the dreary years that followed his love for her was so strong that it held him always high and pure. Perhaps, after all, he had been hasty in thinking she had married Mr. Eveleth, he thought, with a wild gleam of exultant hope. Why had she ever cared for Ralph Eveleth? The question came again to his mind, and was as unanswerable as it had been when he first asked it ten years ago. In fact, her friends all asked this when Miss Kelsey seemed to be drifting on to that fateful crisis of her life. Even those who did not know her very well felt it would be to her one lifelong tragedy; not, perhaps, in outer trial, but in inner endurance. An ordinary woman might have been very happy as the wife of Ralph Eveleth. Eren a woman of superior endowments, if her nature were strong and self-centered, and if not too fine a fiber, might have found life satisfying to her at his aide. But Genevieve was not a strong woman. She was just a gifted, sensitive, highly- wrought girl, with infinite possibilities in her nature —both ways. A woman of a singular earnestness of purpose, of a clear brain, of a warm, loving heart. Delicately responsive as was her nature, to every surrounding influence, she could not live her highest life with Ralph Eveleth. She was too receptive, too generous, too sympathetic not to be tinged by tho color of the atmosphere in which she lived. Mr. Eveleth was not wholly a- bad man—indeed, he had many elements of superiority. He was a man of rather brilliant intellect, but fatally weak in moral power—-a man to always do the thing that at the time seemed easiest without much care how it affected bis own future or that of others. He lacked steadfastness and energy of purpose. Miss Kelsey was a new revelation of j womanhood to him. He had not the delicacy of insight to fully appreciate her rare gifts, or to comprehend her tender sweetness, but ho admired her brilliancy, and resolved to win her for his own. But theri were depths in her nature he had never sounded—chords whose melodies his touch could never waken; there were forces all undreamed of by him. Some day, Ray Converse had then said, these forces would stir and demand their fruition, and in that day the tragedy of living would come upon her. And so it was that he had trembled for Genevieve’s future when he saw her gravitate to Ralph Eveleth. He did not think that her higher nature consented to it. And in that he was right, for she went on as one borne by an irresistible fate. But the crisis in her fate cable sooner than Mr. Converse could have foreseen. There had been some kind of an early promise between Genevieve Kelsey and Ralph Eveleth, which ho went out into the world and held lightly, and which she held sacredly in her heart. She was so true in her nature that she only measured him by her own pure constancy. In those years her strongest tie to him, perhaps, was her consciousness that lie had need of her, and it was in this perfect unselfishness of her nature that tho trouble came. For the love of one will not make sacred a bond that demands for its perfection the love of two. In these first days of sunuy sweetness she did not question much of | life. She was satisfied in being. Vague dosire touched her at times, as she watched the sunset fires burning low in the west, and the artist's creative fire stirred in her. But its forces were to wait for other years.

At times slie was a curious compound of undeveloped impulses and powers. The unrest of genius was upon her, and touched and swayed her with its halflxeeded upliftings. She had a vague consciousness of waiting for some touch that should crystallize the half-real dreams and half-dreaming realities that made up her life; some event that should interpret her to herself. The event came. Ralph Eveleth’s letters suddenly ceased. A silence that neither thought nor words could break fell between those two who had promised to walk tho paths of life together. For months Genevieve Kelsey wrestled singly and alone with a sorrow that was as the very depths of the Dark Valley to her. It seemed as if her strength could no longer avail, and she yielded for a time to the constant, dumb anguish of patience. Then came other days. Youth and hope are strong, and the forces of her character asserted themselves. It was then that that rare courage and sweetness that characterized her rose to determine and shape her life. It was this subtle fineness and strength of her nature that Ray Converse had felt in her, and which had always so appealed to him. In many ways he knew her better than she knew herself. In his heart ho always carried her sacredly, and he consecrated to her the deepest reference of his nature. Half unconsciously he sometimes felt that the time would come in her life when she would have need of him, and he held himself pure and strong above his pain for this time. Po absorbed was he m all the scenes which memory had c arried him backward that he reached the studio of which he was in search with a feeling of surprise. The crimson curtains were closely drawn, and the sculptor sat alone among his marbles. These men touched common ground at once. St. John had all the keen instincts that are the birthright of every artist, and he understood the silent intensity of Mr. Converse’s feelings when he asked who was the subject of the artist’s sketch. “It was modeled from the face of a young lady friend of mine—Miss Kelsey,” politely replied St. John, and the face of Mr. Converse grew luminous. “ Will you permit me to ask her address, sir? She is an old friend of mine,” he said, and, penciling the number and street St. John gave him, with a hearty clasp of the sculptor’s hand he bade him good-evening. “ Genevieve has never married Eveleth,” was his one thought; “ please God, she may be my Genevieve yet.” Miss Kelsey sat alone that Thanksgiving eve. The east wind had kept its promise, and a cold rain had set in—one of tnose dreary, dripping, despairing rains, that have no beginning and no ending—so Genevieve h*-,d said to herself,as her thoughts kept rhythmic time to the measured beat of that despairing storm. A vague restlessness had taken possession of her that evening. It was a new thing for her to yield to it. Eight years of life, crowded with work, had somewhat modified the old .girlish enthusiasm of her nature. For it was eight years since Ralph Eveleth had drifted out of her life. She had grown to look calmly at the pld sorrow and comprehend that it tyere best; to feel that she had grown stronger ancl purer,

and that it is bnt a moral degradation for a woman to love what is unworthy of her love. She thought of the words: She cannot look down to her lover; her lore, like her soul, aspires. He mnst stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holiest fires. For two years she had trusted Ralph Eveleth; she had hoped against hope; she had believed in him and suffered by him as only a loving woman can suffer. Unasked, her heart made all the excuses for him. She placed him always in the mental perspective of a good light. She was patient and tender, and at last when the bitter knowledge was forced upon her that it was all in vain, that the man she loved had no existence save in her own idealization of him, she had felt that life, in its best sense, was over for her; she was not much given to the consolation of poetry or philosophy, but in all those dark, despairing days a line of Mrs. Browning’s haunted her: And having missed some personal hope. Beware that thus I miss no reasonable duty. In work and in living in other lives Miss Kelsey strove to forget the past—no, not to forget—but to overlay it with earnest, genuine living. She would not be warped or harrowed by suffering— God had made her too noble for that. Of the silent intensity of the love Ray Converse lad for her she had never fully realized. Absorbed in her thoughts of another she failed to comprehend all he had endured, when he felt that for her happiness he must leave her. Afterward she had . ;ause to know how tender and steadfast was his love, and sometimes it rested her to remember it. She thought how happy must the woman be whom his love enfolded, for that he had married she never questioned. Now she knew that the highest love of her life had never been given to Ralph; that he had not the power to call it from her. These eight years of her life in St. Estavenne had been years of earnest work in her art. Two days in each week she received her pupils in painting; others she worked in her studio. This last year the silent intensity of her nature had found expression in a book which had met a success that surpassed her highest expectations. This book was' the inevitable outgrowth of all she had lived through, for to the artistic nature expression is a necessity. Nothing could have more conclusively proved liow she Had outgrown her love for Mr. Eveleth than her power to write this book, with its rare analytical characterization. All that had died in her heart lived on her brain with added force. Miss Kelsey wondered why life looked dreary this evening. She had become quite the center of a charming circle of people, all of exceptional gifts and culture, and both artists and authors sought her continually. The innate joyousness and elasticity of her nature shone through the earnestness of real rank like a light through alabaster. The woman was still as fresh and simple as the child. The years of discipline had perfected her character into rare loveliness, and her manner had a nameless magnetism, felt by all. One could not know Miss Kelsey without giving her the poet’s tribute: All hearts prrew warmer in her presence, As one who, seeking not her own, Gave freely for the love of giving. Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. But to-night life looked dreary to Genevieve, and she faintly wondered m hat she should dp all the long, louely winter so near at hand, thinking with a despairing thrill of pain that life had grown colorless, and she could not endure it any longer. To this there succeeded a state of repressed excitement. The rose-flush deepened in her cheeks, and there was a new sparkle in her eyes. She felt a presence of unknown happiness. There came a ring at the door, and a voice in the hall. Bnt she sat quite still on the low seat in the south window, where the faint odor of the ferns breathed a subtle fragrance. The footsteps came nearer. There was a knock at the door. Miss Kelsey could not herself have told what followed. She only realized half an hour later that Ray Converse was beside her; that his arms enfolded her, and that his eyes were bent low upon the pure, patient beauty that sorrow had chiseled in her face. There was more than the old girlish loveliness of feature and color. The girl’s eagerness had not faded, but the woman’s power was there—the woman’s longing and earnestness—for Ray had told her what his coming meant. He held her in his arms, and kissed again and again the tender, clinging lips—the flushing, paling face; and he told her the story of his years of love in words of passionate intensity. He told her how, when all was dark, the thought of her was still the inspiration to live not unworthily of her, and now that his need of her must be met, and they would go out together into the joy and fullness of a new life that should be a perpetual And Genevieve listened to the words that thrilled every chord of her being; listened as only a woman who has suffered and triumphed and loved can listen to the words that first satisfy her heart. Ray loved her; what more could she ask? “ And now, my darling,” he said—“my own' patient, loving little girl—you will promise to be mine to-morrow. I cannot part with you again, dear. Life is tOo snort to lose one hour of its happiness. Let to-morrow be, indeed, the Thanksgiving of our lives.” There was a quiet, beautiful bridal the next day. No one knew just how it came about, but all the circle of friends who had held Genevieve so dear grouped in the pretty studio where she had wrought out so many lovely fancies, and there were flowers and music and tender kisses after the sacred rites were suid, and the light of an ineffable neace was on the face of the lovely bride, and perhaps there were never purer prayers than those that followed Genevieve Converse by all who loved her and who knew what Thanksgiving brought her.