Part 1

Miss Ayr of Virginia & Other Stories

Miss Ayr of Virginia & Other Stories

BY Julia Magruder

AUTHOR OF “THE VIOLET” “THE PRINCESS SONIA”

[Illustration]

CHICAGO HERBERT S. STONE & CO. MDCCCXCVI

CONTENTS

Miss Ayr of Virginia 1

A New Thing Under the Sun 63

The Thirst and the Draught 127

A Bartered Birthright 189

His Heart’s Desire 225

The Masked Singer 289

The Story of an Old Soul 349

Once More 385

Miss Ayr of Virginia

Miss Ayr of Virginia

When Miss Ayr of Virginia came down to take her place on the coach for the races, in company with her cousins, the Miss Ayrs of New York, there was a discrepancy between the former and the latter which could scarcely have failed to attract attention. It could not be denied that the advantage was on the side of the last-named ladies, though Miss Ayr of Virginia was exquisite, and they were plain.

Compared with such costumes as they wore, however, such _chic_, such height, such distinguished bearing, what was mere beauty? The little country girl, with her village-made costume, just saved from absolute dowdiness by a few touches from her cousins’ maid (which she had inwardly resented), was certainly a fish out of water in that jaunty party; and in her wretched little soul she felt it.

Moreover, her dress was not only countrified, it was unbecoming. Its style of construction quite disguised her slight and charming figure, and her hat was as complete a handicap for a beautiful face as could well have been invented.

She did not realize this, not having as yet entirely lost her buoyant belief in herself, which was one result of her being an only child and the spoiled darling of her father, besides being the recognized belle of her county. What she did realize, however, was that these fashionable cousins of hers found her a nuisance, and that the invitation which she had received from their father would never have come from themselves.

The Miss Ayrs of New York were partly right in what they said of their cousin, namely, that she had been badly brought up. This fact might possibly have been overlooked on the score of her having lost her mother in childhood, but for the other fact, that the Miss Ayrs of New York were in the same case, and yet felt proudly conscious that they could challenge the world as to their unimpeachable good form. There was one important difference between the two families, however. The Ayrs of New York were rich, while the Ayrs of Virginia were poor. The war, which had caused the impoverishment of the latter branch of the family was not yet so far back in the past but that days of opulence and ease could yet be remembered, even by this sole representative in the present generation, Miss Carter Ayr, who, now for the first time emerged from the safety and seclusion of her beloved South, was come to taste the delights of a season in New York.

The two brothers, who were the respective heads of the families, had both been left widowers, and neither of them had re-married; but John Ayr of New York had been able to give his daughters the very best that money could do for them, in the way of governesses and chaperonage and foreign travel, while Henry Ayr of Virginia had had to content himself with the ministrations of a gentle, old-maid cousin, who had been governess and chaperon in one, and had let Carter grow up much as she chose--a fact which had not in the least interfered with her father’s complete satisfaction with her.

There were three Miss Ayrs of New York, and they were all tall, and imposing, and perfectly dressed. They were particularly showy for an occasion such as the present, which was, perhaps, one reason why Jim Stafford, the young bachelor millionaire to whom all society did reverence, had invited all three of them to go out on his coach to-day. Jim was a very good-natured fellow, however, and often did things with no other prompting than that quality, and so, when Mr. Ayr, hearing the matter discussed over night, and no provision made for Carter, had insisted that one of the girls should yield her place to her cousin, Jim had good-naturedly said there was room for all, and Mr. Ayr had decreed that Carter should go. He generally interfered very little, but his daughters knew that when he spoke he meant to be obeyed.

So, in this way, it happened that little Carter Ayr found herself in the midst of that fluttering, chattering, bantering party, whose jargon was wholly unfamiliar, and whose manner toward herself seemed to surround her with an atmosphere of chill and constraint.

As the female element was so largely supplied by the ladies Ayr, most of the strangers whom Carter saw about her were men. She had never seen such men as these before, except in a tailor’s picture-plate, and she felt rather a contempt for them, as country-bred people are apt to feel toward those who dress as they have neither the means nor the knowledge to dress. Carter, with her provincial prejudice against fastidiousness in dress, particularly on the part of men, now got some sense of inward support by adopting a supercilious criticism of the exquisitely cared for details of the costumes of these men. She had a standard in her little Southern heart by which she liked to believe that she measured these fashionable gentlemen into puniness.

In spite of all her loyalty to a very different type, she could not help feeling lonely and depressed, as she was assisted to mount to her high seat, while the grooms could hardly keep in check the impatience of the four superbly harnessed horses. Carter, who knew the points of a horse, thought the harness rather outdid the horses themselves, but what did her opinion amount to in this company, where she was so evidently a supernumerary and an incubus?

It was an uncommonly pretty foot that she put on the ladder to mount, but it had on a very bad shoe. Even the big and clumsy feet of her cousins contrasted favorably with it, for the reason that their shoes were of shiny patent leather, with sharply-pointed toes, which made her little blunt ones look somehow stunted and shabby. But then, again, she had reason to reflect that no one was noticing her!

Who has not felt a certain sense of pity on festal occasions, for the friend who is brought? That person seems, somehow, surrounded with a sort of blight among the others who have come by a process of natural selection.

But if any heart, under those fashionable habiliments, felt a tender sentiment for Carter, no one showed it. Jim Stafford, himself, was wholly occupied with handling the reins, as they drove through the crowded streets. The Misses Gladys, Ethel, and Rosamond Ayr were making themselves as painstakingly agreeable to the men beside them as if it had been their business to divert attention from all the others present, and the married woman, who was acting as chaperon to the party, was the most cold and unapproachable of the lot--or so Carter had concluded, when one of her cousins had given her a casual introduction to Mrs. Emory, as “Miss Ayr of Virginia.”

Somehow, the intonation with which it had been said had given an indefinable offense to Carter, and when other members of the party took it up and said:

“Help Miss Ayr of Virginia to her place,” or “Miss Ayr of Virginia comes next,” or “Don’t crowd Miss Ayr of Virginia,” though it was all said in an amiable way, Carter’s sense of resentment deepened. There seemed to be a certain disrespect to her beloved State implied, and that was more than she could calmly bear.

It was a new and exciting experience to her to be whirled through the thronged city streets, and gazed at by admiring crowds, upon whom she looked down from such a great height that it almost made her dizzy. If she had been in a congenial atmosphere, it would have been delightful, for she was inherently pleasure-loving, and her blood was young and ardent; but, as things were, everything seemed to add to her sense of loneliness and depression.

The sky had been overcast when they started out, but now, suddenly, the sun appeared, and with it came a little gleam across the shadows on Carter’s face. She had felt bitterly the fact that she was ill-dressed (though, at home, these clothes had seemed to her good enough for any company in the world!) but with the appearance of the sunshine she had remembered the one really incontrovertibly handsome and imposing thing which she possessed--an elegant parasol, which she had bought the day before at a very fashionable place, and for a price which a week ago would have frightened her. Her father had paid over to her a little legacy from an aunt, and she had intended to invest this in jewels or some permanent thing, but she had heard her cousin Gladys admire that parasol, and, needing one, she had boldly purchased it.

So, here, at least, she could be confident, and it was with an air of satisfaction that she now unfurled her gorgeous sun-shade, and let the full glory of its laces and ribbons float to the breeze.

The motion that it made attracted general attention to her, and simultaneously with this she heard Gladys say, in a voice of excited protest:

“For heaven’s sake, tell Carter to put down that parasol!”

The word was then passed to Ethel, who, in the same excited tone, passed it to the man seated next to Carter.

“Miss Ayr of Virginia is requested to lower her parasol,” he said, with more amiability in his manners than her two cousins had used.

Carter, who had heard the behest, when it had originated with her eldest cousin, did not at once succumb, but said, from under the flaunting glory of the proscribed article:

“Why?”

“Of course, coming from Virginia she didn’t know,” she heard her cousin saying in a tone of contemptuous extenuation, which she hotly resented.

No one had answered her question, however, and so turning to the woman who sat nearest to her--it happened to be Mrs. Emory--she said:

“Why shouldn’t I raise my parasol, if the sun is out?”

“It isn’t done,” was the answer, given curtly and coldly, and Mrs. Emory returned at once to her talk with her neighbor.

Carter, of course, furled her offending sun-shade, feeling snubbed and sore. It would have been childish and rude to persist, but she was not only hurt, but puzzled. Being from the rural regions she had not as her cousin suggested, any knowledge of the fact that it was not considered smart to raise a parasol on a coach. This sacred tenet was so strictly adhered to, however, that although it was a warm and dusty autumn day, the ladies endured the heat unmurmuringly, staring with haughty superiority at the coaches on which the people were pleasantly shaded by their parasols.

By the time the entrance to the race-course was reached, Carter was completely miserable. She despised the trivial conventions to which she saw such importance attached, and she had a sense of suppressed rage at being forced into an inferior position by people to whom she felt herself superior.

She was no more conceited than an only child, and an acknowledged belle and beauty might be excused for being, and she did know, in her heart, that she would have been incapable of treating the meanest slave on her father’s estate as unkindly as she felt that these people were treating her.

No one noticed her as they went bowling along in the crowded procession of vehicles, until, near the entrance, they came to a sudden halt, the carriage in front of them having halted also.

The footmen sprang down and went to the leaders’ heads, while necks were craned and eager questions put as to the cause of the blockade.

It was apparent enough. One of a pair of oxen, engaged in some heavy draught in connection with the preparing of the track and grounds, had fallen down, or else thrown itself down in a fit of sullenness and could not be got to move. The animal was strong and fat, and looked more obstinate than ill, but it was impossible not to feel pity for a creature so beaten and belabored and kicked, as it was, by the men about it. The thing had apparently been going on for some time, and the men looked as if their efforts were well-nigh exhausted.

Various suggestions were made and tried in vain. Many vehicles had emptied their passengers, and a crowd had gathered, while the ox, stubborn and defiant, still refused to budge.

The party on the coach, from their high position, could see all that was happening, and cries of distress soon began to rise from them.

“What are we to do?” “The creature hasn’t a notion of moving!” “We shall be kept here all day!” were some of the protesting remarks, through which a very sweetly modulated voice, with an accent so unlike theirs as to sound almost foreign, was heard to say:

“I could make it get up, in half a minute.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Jim Stafford, turning toward the speaker, who was flushed, but perfectly composed. “Virginia to the rescue! Miss Ayr of Virginia undertakes to raise the stalled ox! Ten to one she does it!”

The bet was eagerly taken by another man, and Carter found herself the center of interest.

“Enter the field, Miss Ayr of Virginia,” said Jim Stafford. “Only explain your method of procedure, and I’m your backer. What do you propose to do?” And with the arrant childishness of the average pleasure-seeker all the men present became absorbed in this incident, which offered a new and unexpected diversion.

All the women, meantime, were looking at the young Southern girl with cold disapprobation.

“Now, Miss Ayr of Virginia,” said Jim Stafford, “give your orders. How do you propose to do it?”

“Could we possibly get some mud from anywhere?” asked Carter.

“Mud? not likely, in this dust!” said one man, but Stafford cut him short.

“Mud? Of course. Nothing simpler!” he said. “Here, Trollope, get a bottle of Apollinaris out of the lunch-basket and break it in the road;” and as the groom flew to comply with his order he turned to Carter.

“We’ll have the mud in a jiffy,” he said. “Now, what’s to be done with it?”

“Stop the ox’s nostrils with it,” Carter decreed next.

The young dudes on the coach gave a little “Hooray!” and in a moment they were down in the road, stirring the fizzing water into the yellow dust with their canes, with all the glee of children at a new game.

The mixture was soon turned into a stiff mud, and the immaculate Trollope was ordered to fill his hands with it and follow his master.

Every eye was fixed on Jim Stafford, as he approached the man who had the ox in charge and ask permission to try his experiment. Carter, left on the coach with the women, who she felt, instinctively, were not the friendly element of the party, watched with a confidence not unmixed with anxiety. How could she tell that these Yankee oxen would respond to Virginia treatment? And if they did not, where would she hide her humiliated head? She realized that, like many another act of daring, its only justification would be in its success.

“Stop up both nostrils at once, and hold it in,” she called to Trollope, in her pretty, low voice.

The crowd made way for the groom and his master to approach, and the performance was quickly accomplished.

The next instant, there was a heaving and panting on the part of the ox, and, with a frantic motion of consternation, it had scrambled to its feet, and stood there snorting out the mud and shaking its great head from side to side.

The man in charge of it caught hold of its harness, and without the least difficulty, led it away.

The road was open.

“Three times three for Miss Ayr of Virginia!” cried Jim Stafford, and his companions, imitating him, waved their hats around their heads and echoed his words.

It was not loud enough to be positively rowdy, but it was too loud, it seemed, to suit Mrs. Emory’s sense of decorum, for she was heard to say rather severely:

“Really, Jim, if you ask me to chaperon your parties, I must insist upon decent behavior. This is unbearable!” and she turned upon poor little Carter a glance that was meant to be perfectly annihilating.

“Get out, Mamie! You’re making a point about nothing,” her cousin answered, in an amiable, off-hand fashion. “If you’d been the heroine of that incident, you’d think you deserved cheers and you’d have had them. I’m not going to see Miss Ayr of Virginia deprived of the honor and glory which are her due.”

His cousin said nothing, but her face continued to look both offended and aggrieved, and she turned away to speak with some of the women of the party, who seemed promptly sympathetic.

Carter heard her name pronounced several times among them in a tone which she did not like, and it was Gladys whom she distinctly heard saying:

“This is what comes of giving a girl a man’s name and letting her run wild, as they do in the South.”

Carter felt indignant at the aspersion cast on her beloved South, but the assiduities which she was at that moment receiving from all the men in the party helped her to bear it.

It was not altogether her victoriousness in her recent undertaking that had made them rally round her so. It had at last penetrated their rather slow minds that the women were exercising a sort of tacit ostracism against this young stranger, and every one of them was ready with his protest.

Carter, moreover, had acquired a brilliant color, by reason of her late experience, and, now that their eyes had been drawn to her directly, they saw how uncommonly pretty she was, and regarded her unfashionable garments with a commiseration that had something akin to chivalry in it. She felt this, and, under the influence of sympathy, her beauty blossomed out like a flower. She became suddenly gay and at her ease. The men were so absolutely friendly that the women no longer frightened her.

When Jim Stafford had brought his four bays triumphantly into place and they had taken their position by the race-course, the grooms took the horses away, and the host of the party being liberated from his exacting duties as whip, was free to seek his own will and pleasure.

It was not long before the nature and direction of that became manifest, for he deliberately proposed a shuffling of seats and partners, by which he managed to seat himself next to Carter.

“I want to understand the philosophy of that splendid achievement of yours,” he said. “Why did the mud make the ox jump up so quickly?”

“Because the mud stopped its nostrils and it could not breathe.”

“But can’t oxen breathe through their mouths?”

“They either can’t, or they think they can’t, for they never make any effort to do it. It was having its breathing suddenly checked that so startled and terrified the creature that it instinctively sprang to its feet, and its whole mood was changed.”

“And where--if one may ask--did you become the possessor of such a unique and valuable piece of information?”

(By Jove, she _was_ pretty, he reflected, and particularly so at that moment, when, for some reason, a flood of lovely rose-color suffused her face.)

“A neighbor of ours told me about it,” she said. “I am glad I happened to think of it.”

“I should think so, indeed! But for that timely thought of yours, we should probably have spent the day there, awaiting that brute’s pleasure!”

He knew that this was not so, but he suddenly found himself possessed of a consuming desire to do homage to this girl.

And to tell the truth, she looked not unused to homage. Indeed, she was far more natural and at her ease, now that she was being made much of and paid court to, than she had been, when neglected and left alone. There could be no doubt as to which of these conditions was her accustomed element.

When the racing began, the general interest centered on the track, of course, and as the different horses were led out, Carter showed and expressed such a knowingness on the subject that all the men listened with visible interest to what she had to say. The remarks of the other women sounded the merest _banalités_ in comparison, for this little country maiden knew a horse as she knew a friend.

She was wildly excited over the first race, and had the good fortune to pick out the winner. As a consequence, the men all insisted on her betting on the second one, putting up gloves and candy recklessly. To their surprise, their overtures were promptly snubbed, the little Virginian looking so hurt at such a proposition that her big eyes showed a suspicion of tears. The other ladies of the party, however, took up the bets with avidity, though their opportunities were decidedly more limited.

At last the great race of the day was called. A grey horse named Quicksilver was the hot favorite in it, and was to be ridden by a colored jockey. This last fact caught Carter’s attention, and sent her thoughts flying wistfully Southward, and she was further interested because he wore the Confederate colors--white and red. She could not see his face, but it was easy to distinguish the silver-grey horse, and, to her delight, it came in first, though pushed hard by another horse named Hautboy.

The second heat was even more exciting, for now Quicksilver came tearing along the home stretch, neck and neck with Hautboy.

The two ran together superbly, their jockeys poised like birds upon their backs, but just before the judges’ stand was reached, there was a wild plunging and collision, and Hautboy came in ahead.

And then began a scene of frantic excitement. The little mulatto who had ridden Quicksilver was in a state of fury, bordering upon insanity. He vowed that Hautboy’s jockey had used some trickery, and appealed to the judges, who refused to sustain him. At this he went simply beside himself, and tossing away his whip, declared he would not ride the other heat. Threats, expostulations, bribes, oaths, abusive epithets, coaxing cajoleries were used in vain. He was simply maddened with fury, and stubbornly adhered to his refusal.

Quicksilver, meanwhile, was being walked about, switching his tail viciously and glaring wickedly to right and left. He was an evil-tempered brute, and this young darkey was the only rider who seemed equal to him. Immense sums had been put up on the race and desperate measures were resorted to to bring the obstreperous jockey to his reason.

But it was all in vain. He reiterated his refusal with excited fury. He said a million dollars wouldn’t make him ride the other heat, and that he’d die first.