Read Ebook: Virginia of Virginia: A Story by Rives Am Lie Frost A B Arthur Burdett Illustrator

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Ebook has 637 lines and 37448 words, and 13 pages

"Oh, it's you!" she said, addressing Roden. "I was just trying th' piano to see 'f any 'v the keys'd stuck since the last Englishman left; but th' haven't. D'you like music?" she went on, in her vibrant voice, which seemed in some strange manner to harmonize with the firelight and the now steady hum of the rain without. "I'll tell you, before you say anything, I can play very well."

Roden found her open conceit a very novel and amusing sensation, but when she had struck a few chords firmly, her long fingers sinking in among the keys as might the fingers of a miser among the gold coin that he loved, he thought no more of anything save the melody that filled the room.

"Gad!" said he, when she had ceased, "I should say you could play, rather! Where on earth--who taught you?"

"No one," she said, absently, striking noiseless chords with her left hand, and not looking at him. "I've heard people, and I do't by ear. And the men that've had th' Hall've been awful kind 'bout lettin' me play--an' that's all," comprehensively--adding, with sudden irrelevance, "Were your clothes quite dry?"

"Quite," he assured her; "but they are beastly dirty to come to supper in."

"I dried them myself," she continued, taking no notice of his last assertion. "Such work as I had, too! I really think if Milly hadn't helped me, you'd 'a' been in--in--in your green silk quilt now."

She leaned forward for some moments, laughing, with her head against the music-rack, so that the piano reverberated shrilly with the clear sound. Roden laughed with her.

"Who told you--the little nigger?" he asked. "And who is Milly?"

She got suddenly to her feet, as suddenly becoming grave, and closed the piano.

"Milly's one o' th' darkies," she said. "Come and get your supper."

He followed her across the wide hall into the dining-room, and found that supper at Caryston Hall was a very pretty meal. It was served on finest but much-darned damask, by the light of six tall candles in silver candlesticks, each ornamented by a little petticoat of scarlet silk, which gave them the appearance of diminutive coryph?es pirouetting on one slender wax leg. A bowl of violets and primroses occupied the centre of the table, flanked on either side by crystal dishes, filled, the one with the pale amber of honey, the other with the deep crimson of cranberries.

The overseer's daughter poured out tea behind a great silver urn, while on her right hand a monstrous cut-glass flagon foamed with richest milk. "Positively artistic," thought Roden, feeling a certain respect in his British breast for this little maiden of Virginia who could evolve out of her own country-bred brain effects so charming. "It's a beastly pity!" he told himself, though in what the pity consisted he could not quite have told any one else, unless perhaps that a being so gifted with a talent for instrumental music, and the setting forth of appetizing supper-tables, should be hemmed in from further progress by the scarlet soil of her native State, and should murder his sovereign's language with ruthless regularity by beheading some words and cutting the remainder in two.

He also pondered somewhat as to the way in which Virginian overseers and their children expected to be treated by resident foreigners. He noticed that the girl ate nothing herself, sitting with her hand in her lap after she had poured out his cup of tea, and pulling idly at the frayed edge of the table-cloth, with eyes downcast. He wished very much that he knew how to address her, and was casting about in his mind as to how he might find out her surname without being rude, when she answered him directly.

"My name is Virginia"--she said "Faginia"--but it came softly to the ear--"Virginia Herrick."

"They ought to have called you 'Julia,' Miss Herrick," said the young Englishman, gravely regarding her grave face.

"Why?" she said, with her swift change from listless to alert--"why ought they? It's a hijeous name, I think."

"It isn't very pretty--not near so pretty as 'Faginia,'" said Roden, gallantly; "but there was a fellow once called Herrick who was always writing songs to 'Julia.'"

"Oh," said the girl, with a sudden dawning in her sombre eyes, "that's the man wrote 'To Daffodils' and 'Primroses' and things, ain't it?"

"That's the man," he said.

"Well," she replied, slowly, "I don't see why I ought to be called Julia. Her last name wa'n't Herrick, 'cause he wouldn't 'a' written those kynder things to his sister, and a man wouldn't 'a' taken th' trouble to write songs to's wife."

"Why?" said Roden, fixing on her his eyes, at whose blueness she began to wonder in a vague way. Thus looking out from the young man's sunburnt, weather-marked face they reminded her of some vivid, sky-colored flower springing into sudden azure among brown summer grasses.

"Why?" he repeated. "Are all Virginian husbands so ungallant to their wives?"

"So what?" she said, contracting her level brows.

"So rude, so careless of their wives."

"Oh, I reckon so," she made answer. "I don't know much 'bout men 'n' their wives. My father's died when I was born, an' somehow I don't take much to women, nor they tuh me. But I know 'nuff," she supplemented, "to know a man ain't goin' to make a fuss over 's wife."

"If you ever marry," said Roden, "do you think you will put up with that sort of thing?"

"Well, you certainly won't in the next," said Roden, smiling broadly; "that is, if you're orthodox."

"What o'dox?" she said, pausing to question him, with one hand on the table.

"Orthodox--if you believe all that the Bible tells you."

"Well, I don't," she said, quickly; "not by a long sight. I don't believe all those things got into one place like that ark without killin' each other clean out. An' I don't believe those b'ars eat them children for laughin' at that ole feller's bal' head . No, I cert'n'y ain't or-or-orth'dox," said Miss Virginia Herrick, beginning to clear away the supper-dishes.

"You're not commonplace, at all events," Roden told himself, as, after having obtained her permission to smoke, he lighted a cigarette. It was now past eight o'clock, and still no signs of the recreant overseer. Roden occupied himself with putting many questions of a more business-like character to Miss Herrick, as she moved about the room restoring things to their proper places. He found that the little petticoats which ornamented the candles were some more of the things left by "the last Englishman;" and that the primroses and violets grew in what was called the "greenhouse," a narrow glass-fronted corridor reaching along the front of the east wing of the house, and opening out of the dining-room.

He said he would like to go in to look at it, and she at once conducted him there, carrying no candle, since a full-moon looked in at them through the lattice of the winter trees. A thick soft air, spongy with dampness, closed about them. The flowers rose dark and redolent on all sides. Roden could make out the large, bunchily growing leaves of a magnolia-tree outside, seen in rich relief against the dim sky.

Roden, who had an artistic soul, found much pleasure in watching her. He was beginning to think that in her own unique way she was beautiful, and she was certainly shaped like a young caryatid.

After she had answered various queries about house and out-house, niggers and stables, they returned to the dining-room, and lifting one of the tall candlesticks from a side-table, she opened one of the many doors.

"I'm going to father's room," she announced; "'f you like you can come too. Most of 'em" --"most of 'em liked to smoke there. I've got my spinnin' an' some things to do. Ef you want to stay here, there's books." She made a comprehensive sweep with her candleless hand in the direction of a low bookcase which ran around three sides of the room.

"I think I'll come with you, if you really don't mind," said Roden.

"Lor', no!" she hastened to assure him. "But 'f you don't like dogs an' 'coons an' things, you'd better not."

"Oh, I don't mind 'coons and--and things," said Roden, somewhat vaguely. "I'll come, thank you."

They went down a long hall, descended a little stair-way whereon the moonlight fell bluely through a square window high above, down more steps, along another passage with sharp turns, and in at an already open door. An old negress, vividly turbaned, was heaping wood upon an already immense fire.

"Lor', mammy!" called Miss Herrick, "for mercy's sakes stop! 'F you put any more wood on that fire you'll have to get up on th' roof an' shove 't down th' chimney." The "'coons and things" were already crowding about them.

Roden recognized several of his canine friends of the morning, and there were, moreover, two splendid old hounds, which at sight of their evidently beloved "Faginia" set up a most booming yowl of welcome. There were also the 'coon; a curious flat-stomached little beast, that flew about after a startling fashion from chair to chair, and which Miss Herrick introduced as a "chipmunk;" a corn-crake; a young screech-owl; and three large Persian cats.

All these pets, he discovered later, had been presented from time to time by the "last Englishman," or "the Englishman before the last," or "the Englishman before the one with the glass eye," or the fat wife, or the ugly sister, or what not.

"If I can only add a gorilla or a condor to this unique collection," reflected Roden, "my position is assured. I will probably be forever the 'last Englishman,' and I will always be mentioned as 'the Englishman who gave me the gorilla.'"

He then sat down in a corner as far removed as was consistent with politeness from the other inhabitants of the apartment, and occupied himself with watching "Faginia," her "mammy," and the "things."

"Aunt Tishy," said Miss Herrick, indicating him with a movement of her bright head, as he sat withdrawn into his coign of vantage, like a hermit-crab within its shell, "that's the new Englishman, Mr. Roden."

"How yo' do, sur? Hope yo' coporosity segastuate fus rate, sur," quoth the dusky dame, with an elephantine dab, supposed in the innocence of her Virginian heart to correspond to the courtesy of civilization.

"My what?" said Roden.

"She means she hopes you are well," explained Virginia, about whose neck the raccoon was coiling himself with serpentine affection.

"Oh yes, thanks, very well. Are you?" said Roden.

"Oh yes," said that young woman "'cep' when you get th' misery, or th' year-ache in th' middle o' th' coldest nights, an' have me huntin' all over creation for somethin' to put in your year. Oh yes!"

"G'way, chile!" exclaimed the thus maligned personage, with an air of indignant sufferance. "If I didn' know yer wuz jess projeckin', I sutny would feel bade."

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