Miss Ayr of Virginia, & other stories

by Julia Magruder

The story, if it could be called a story, was absolutely without literary form, and so unfinished in style that no magazine could have ventured to print it. And yet there breathed through it such an exquisite soul of sweetness, such a spirit of refinement, purity, innocence, aspiration and charm, that Mr. Black was tempted to ask her to re-cast the manuscript, leave out the poor attempt at plot, and let the subtle self-analysis appear in the form of entries in a journal, or letters, or something of that sort. There were two reasons against this, though—one was, that he felt that the girl would have been incapable of doing what he wanted, and would simply have made a mess of it; and the other was, that he positively shrank from exposing to public view the secrets of the heart of this young girl. For the keynote of this poor story of hers was the aspiration of a young, innocent, and ardent woman after love. What it described was the hardships of a lot keenly interpenetrated with pain, full of privation of body and soul, obscured by perplexities and difficulties on every side, and yet sweetened, illuminated, glorified, by the possibility of the attainment of the supreme good, which, to this being, at least, was to be found only in love. Here was a creature, if ever words painted truth, whose waiting heart was kept both strong and pure by the sanctification of that hope. The manuscript proved beyond a doubt, that, though she could not write, she could love!

Mr. Black had laid it down, with tenderness and regret, and had rather sadly gone about the task of writing her a note to be sent with the returned manuscript. He had had to harden his heart to this sort of thing so often, that he did not flinch from the plain duty before him, and he would not lead this girl to believe that she could ever write. What he felt like telling her was, that he found himself positively grateful to her for the self-revelation of so pure a heart and so strong a spirit. This, of course, he was not at liberty to express; but he said what he could to soften the blow to her, and he put aside to be returned to the author the manuscript, which was beautifully written (on both sides of the paper, however), and tied with a bit of blue ribbon.

Then he took up the next manuscript, and, to his relief, found it to be in a man’s handwriting. It would help him, he hoped, to efface the impression which its predecessor had made on him. This strong and vigorous writing was unknown to him also, and Mr. Black began to read, with that stirring of possibilities which rises in the jaded mind of the editor at the sight of the work of a perfectly new contributor, and which ninety-nine times out of a hundred ends in disappointment.

This case proved not to be the exceptional one, for this manuscript possessed the same faults of inexperience and lack of literary form as the last one. The letter that accompanied it furnished a further coincidence, in the fact that it acknowledged the use of a nom de guerre, and that the present was the first effort of the writer, who, for certain reasons, had been impelled to write this one story, and would probably never write another. The motive, however, in this case, must have been a different one; for this man, who called himself Hugh Robertson, said that he didn’t think his story worth paying for; (This made Mr. Black smile. Could it then be worth publishing?) but he would like to have it come out in this magazine, because its circulation was so large that, in that way, it would reach a great number of readers.

And what, then, was the message for which this Hugh Robertson desired such a wide audience? Mr. Black read the manuscript attentively, and then, after a brief study of the man, as his character was indicated in his note and his handwriting, he constructed his theory of the case. Here was a man, strong, able, successful, surrounded by conditions of prosperity and ease which flatly contradicted the case of Ethel Ross—and yet the keynote to this soul, too, was the all-powerful one of love. Between the two there was a difference, however, for the woman’s heart was attuned to aspiration and the man’s to renunciation. The message from the woman’s heart was that every trial and earthly evil could be borne without complaint, so long as there remained the possibility of the fulfilment of ideal love. The message from the man’s heart was that the fulfilment of ideal love was so well-nigh impossible a thing (though every other fulfilment which the world could give was scant joy in comparison with it), that it behooved one to learn earnestly the lesson of resignation without cynicism. The man’s voice was the stronger of the two, and his message was the nobler, but then there was every indication of its being the outcome of a maturer mind.

It had been as Mr. Black laid down the second manuscript that he had uttered the exclamation already recorded, and the thing that struck him as so very extraordinary was the subtle sort of answering to each other’s needs which these two manuscripts conveyed to his mind. The man’s was as obviously a self-revelation as the woman’s; and the perspicacious editor shrewdly suspected him of being a very shy man, who would not have been able to express himself fully and freely in his own person, and who had therefore sought this means of saying what he had to say to as large an audience as he could reach. Mr. Black could not quite explain why he felt it so, but, in reality, he was convinced that this was a man of influence and importance, who lived a life of active labor, in which he was able to express himself objectively, but who was now, for the first time, giving his soul a subjective expression in this manuscript. The address given by Hugh Robertson was in a great and populous city. It was also in a locality not very far away from the little town from which Ethel Ross had dated her letter. Mr. Black reflected on this fact rather wistfully. He wished that this man and this woman could meet. He could hardly have been the judge of fiction that he was, without a certain amount of romance in him; but, on the other hand, he had an equal amount of common sense, and he saw that the obvious and practical duty of the present moment was to guard the confidence of his contributors in the discharge of his functions as editor.

So he drew a sheet of paper toward him, and wrote his letter to Hugh Robertson. It was much shorter and more restrained than the former one, for no one could fail to recognize in this man a person quite able to stand on his own feet, and yet Mr. Black felt conscious of a regret in this instance, too. A man so strongly capable of renouncing seemed to him the very man who deserved to possess.

Before he had quite finished, he was interrupted by a pressing business demand, so he thrust both the finished and unfinished letters into the drawer of his desk, together with the letters to which they were the answers. Before he left the room, he called one of his assistants and delivered to him the two manuscripts, to be put up for return, and giving the addresses, told the clerk to send on the manuscripts, and he would forward, later in the day, his letters to the two authors.

He hurried away from the room then, and the clerk took the two manuscripts into the outer office, put them up with great precision and care, and in all unconsciousness sent Hugh Robertson’s manuscript to Ethel Ross, and Ethel Ross’s manuscript to Hugh Robertson. He had understood Mr. Black’s very explicit directions, but, in putting up and sealing the two parcels, he had mixed them.

So it came to pass that when Miss Ethel Ross—whose real name, in full, was Ethel Ross Duncan—went on her daily mission to the little postoffice of the small country town, she received one day, not the envelope containing a check, for which she so mightily longed, but a bulky package, which made her very young and ardent heart sink low within her. She really had not expected to have her story returned. It had seemed to her, as she had written it with breathless agitation, in stolen moments, alone in her chamber at night, so palpitatingly interesting, that, as she had ended it, she had felt a positive certainty of seeing those thrilling words turned into print, and of having, in exchange for it, a check which should be large enough for her to carry out a passionate desire of her heart.