Virginia of Virginia: A Story

“It’s a girl,” said Roden, laying a wager with himself. “No; it’s a boy. Hanged if it isn’t a girl!” He took his short brier-wood pipe from his mouth, knocked out its contents against the side of the wagon, and pocketed it.

The time of the year was January, the scene a country road in Virginia, and it was drizzling, a thick Scotch drizzle, abetted by a lusty east wind. Even the branches of the straggling locust-trees that lined the red road seemed clogged with it. It hung in folds upon the sides of the mountains, and was blown in masses between the clefts of the rolling meadows.

Roden was not only a new arrival in Virginia, but in America, and the impression made upon him had not, to speak very moderately, been favorable. Coming from Washington, some one in the train had asked him if it did not remind him of England. He had answered with some curtness that it did not, demanding at the same time why he should be particularly reminded of England by the state of the weather in Virginia. His interlocutor had replied with the never-failing urbanity of the Virginian farmer, that “anybody could tell he was an Englisher by th’ way he talked, and them loose pants.”

At the moment he first saw the figure alluded to, the owner of the British accent and the “loose pants” was shivering in spite of the top-coat turned up about his ears and the soft hat pulled down to meet it.

It was indeed a girl; she wore a soft hat, the counterpart of his own, fashioned of the same stuff as her dark-gray jacket and the kirtle which reached just below her knees. On her legs were shooting-gaiters of russet leather, decidedly influenced as to color by the tyrannic soil, and on her feet stout cowhide boots. She carried a gun on her shoulder, and a game-bag hung at her side. She further appeared to be bounded on the east, west, north, and south by dogs. An old mastiff lounged sulkily at her heels. Far in front, a collie gave chase to a stately buzzard, which sailed away undisturbed by its pursuer’s shrill barking, while an asthmatic pug sought a Juggernautal fate between the ponderous wagon-wheels, and a little black-and-tan terrier, sniffing hither and thither among the mist-drenched weeds, reminded Roden of the accounts of certain mammoth ants as related by the credulous Herodotus.

The girl, who had been walking with head bent, looked up as the creaking of the wagon-wheels arrested her attention.

“I beg your pardon,” said Roden, “but can you tell me if I am on the right road to Caryston Hall? I think that’s the name.”

She looked at him seriously for a moment, and then said, “Yes, you are. I s’pose you’re th’ new Englishman. Are you?”

“I suppose so,” said Roden. “My name is Roden. I have bought a farm somewhere in this neighborhood, and it is called Caryston Hall.”

“That’s it,” she said; “you’re right. My father’s th’ overseer there. Why don’t you get down and walk? You look so cold. I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” said Roden; “I think I will;” and he jumped down beside her.

Judging by her attire, he had at first thought her a sporting country-woman of his own, like himself an exile in a far country; but after she had spoken he found that the soft, slow intonation was strange to his ear. “The overseer business explains it,” he thought. “She is a native, and this language is Virginian.” In the mean time the girl was also making mental observations. He was the third English gentleman she had seen, though of immigrant Britishers she had known full threescore and ten. She was thinking that he had spoken to her with an unusual civility, and wondering how long it would continue. Civility this young Virginian had not found to be a characteristic of the British settler in her native State.

“I’m very lucky to have met you,” said Roden, as they walked on, having dismissed the services of the ancient wagoner, whom the girl addressed as “Unc’ Dick.” “I would like to ask you some questions about the place, and it’s awfully kind of you to go back with me.”

She said, indifferently, and without lifting her eyes this time, “Oh, I was goin’ back anyway! ’Tisn’t any bother.”

Her long strides matched Roden’s exactly, and the rapid motion through the stiffly yielding medium under foot began to warm his veins. They saw the serpentine flourish of Unc’ Dick’s voluminous whip-lash outlined against the pale sky as the wagon descended a hill just in front of them. Two more buzzards appeared, slanting in still absorption towards the west. Instantly the collie was after them.

“Why didn’t you telegraph?” said the girl, suddenly.

“I did,” said Roden, with some grimness. “I telegraphed twice. I also had the pleasure of rereading both telegrams when I arrived at the station about an hour ago.”

“Seems to me,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at the mastiff, pug, and terrier, that were having a tow-row over an old shoe (which same seem to be sown in lieu of corn in the thorns by the Virginian way-side)--“Seems to me that letters reach us twice as quick as telegrams, anyhow. You must have thought it funny we didn’t send for you?”

“I don’t know that I found it very amusing,” said Roden, truthfully, adding, in a tone of helpless aggravation, “All my luggage was left behind in Washington.”

At this direct appeal the overseer’s daughter at first looked as sorrowful as even Roden could have desired, bursting the next moment into peals and roulades of laughter. Roden, after the first sharp inclination to feel angry, joined in her mirth.

“Pore feller!” she said at last, taking off her rain-soaked hat, on which she appeared to dry her brimming eyes--“Pore feller! it all seems awful to you out here, don’t it?”

“It does,” said Roden in his heart, but out loud he replied with mendacious civility that it did not. He was, moreover, occupied in a close scrutiny of her uncovered locks. They were of a pale golden color, lying close to her forehead in thick, round rings, after the manner of a child’s, and clustering heavily, with the dampness. As he stood beside her he saw also that she was very tall, taller than most tall women, and that her fair throat, rising boy-like from a dark-red kerchief, had unusual suggestions of muscle beneath its smooth surface.

Presently they walked on. The top of a tolerably high hill was soon reached, surmounted, as Roden at first thought, by an almost impenetrable thicket. As they approached nearer, however, he perceived an aperture in the mass of foliage, and a long wooden gate, hanging by one hinge in an aimless, desultory manner, and ornamented also as to its dingy gray with copious splashes of red mud. On either post were rusty iron vases, wherefrom there sprouted two stunted specimens of the aloe tribe. One of these vases, having been broken some years before, hung over to one side with a suggestion of inanimate sentimentality highly ludicrous. Some kind Samaritan had thrust a stick in between its disabled joints, thus preventing it from utter downfall.

The view beyond the gate was unique, and to Roden rather pleasant after his morning’s experience. The lawn proper was shaped like a lady’s slipper, and outlined by a gravel carriage-drive. It seemed as though some Titaness might have set a careless foot among the surrounding shrubbery, crushing out of existence all save a bordering fringe of evergreen and acacias. The long, low house of red brick--with wings out-spread after a protective, hen-like fashion in the direction of the many out-houses--was to be seen through the bare branches of two splendid tulip-trees. A little Alderney heifer was grazing near the portico, and some dorkings stood resignedly on long yellow legs under the shelter of the large box-bushes.

As they worked along the sinuous carriage-way Roden looked with a feeling of ownership at the glimpses of distant hill and forest, as visible through the crowding tree-stems. Here he was to make his home for at least the next two years, and he was glad not to find it so bad as he had expected.

As she opened the hall door the girl said to him, “Father won’t be here until six o’clock. I’ll have you some dinner ef you want it. But you’d better go to your room first, hadn’t you, you’re so wet?--I’ll send you some things the larst Englishman left behind him. There’s a barth ready, and plenty of towels. I’m used to fixin’ for you English, you see. Well, good-by till you’re dressed; then I’ll show you over the house.”

She sent a little “nigger,” who conducted him with wordless dignity to the apartment allotted him, and who some five minutes later returned again with the “last Englishman’s things.” That personage must have been of very slight proportions and medium height, whereas Roden stood six foot one in his stockings, and was of excellent figure. He struggled for some time with the meagre garments, and then decided that he could not put in an appearance until his own garments should be dry. At this moment some one knocked at the door with the announcement--“Dinner rade-y.”

“I can’t come to dinner,” said Roden at the key-hole. “The clothes won’t fit me. Say I am very sorry.”

The departing footsteps echoed down the narrow corridor that led to the room which had been given him, and Roden, who had taken the silk coverlet from the bed and rolled himself in it, stretched out before the fire of pine cones in the big fireplace. The room was large and square, and had hangings of faded green silk embroidered with tarnished gold. A ponderous mahogany wardrobe, looking like nothing so much as a grim wooden mausoleum, occupied nearly all of one wall. Facing this on the opposite side of the room was a low chest of drawers, also of mahogany, with brass lion-head handles. A square mirror in a wrought-brass frame hung over it. The bedstead was low and wide, with foot-board and head-board of a like height. Voluminous curtains of faded green fell from a mahogany frame fastened to the ceiling, and were tucked back behind brass knobs on either side of the bed. There was a huge pale-green paper screen crowded into one corner of the room, and behind this Roden discovered a bath-tub and a washhand-stand. One picture hung over the mantle-shelf, a reproduction of the Madonna of the Chair, done evidently with a very hard and very pointed lead-pencil, and faintly tinted with pink chalk as to lips and cheeks.

Roden lay in the soft embrace of his one Indian-like garment and stared up at this work of art. He became fascinated in wondering how many days it must have taken its indefatigable perpetrator to make the million of little scratches that composed it. He wondered if it were the production of generations past or present. Could Virginia herself have been guilty of it? He thought not. At all events he hoped not. Her voice seemed to put her beyond the pale of such possibilities. He recalled it to his memory’s ear now, with a distinct sensation of pleasure. There had been in it a certain rich sonorousness. It was grave, serious, soft as the rush of the rain through the short grass without. A beautiful voice attracts men always, even as the timbre of a fine instrument invariably attracts a musician. It is, so to speak, the overture to the whole character. No; the pink-cheeked Virgin, with the slate-colored infant tilted against her wooden and unresponsive bosom, could never have been the work of the maiden in the Rosalind costume. Never, never! Why, now that he thought of it, should the cheeks of the pictured Madonna so blush? unless, perhaps, at the culpable drawing of her sacred proportions. Why should she have been drawn at all? There was absolutely no reason that he could discover. The pine cones crackled and blazed up with a savory smell. The fragrant warmth stole pleasantly over the young fellow’s relaxed limbs. The pink-and-gray Madonna faded slowly and surely away in a golden haze. There was a pleasant humming as of a summer field within his ears. Why did he seem to be pulling up a scarlet window-blind, which obstinately refused to remain in position, in order to let three large black sheep gambol at their pleasure about that imposing mahogany catafalque? And why did the loss of a brass key at least three feet long, and which seemed to belong to his hat-box, occasion him such acute mortification when called upon by a very old woman in blue kid low-shoes to explain its whereabouts? And why did--and why didn’t--and what on earth made them all? Roden had not slept so soundly since leaving British soil.