Miss Ayr of Virginia, & other stories

by Julia Magruder

But the voice was beginning again, and again he turned and listened. This time it was Schubert’s serenade that she sang, and her technique seemed to him absolutely perfect. Her voice, however, was colder, poorer, more expressionless than before, and he rose as it ended, with an impatient desire to get away. He could have stood any fault of method, had the voice itself been beautiful and sympathetic, but the voice distinctly antagonized him. Before he had moved from his place, however, he saw the woman getting out of the cart with a little basket in her hand, and he remembered that he was supposed to pay for the feast of which he had just partaken. He sat down again, and waited for her to come to him.

As she drew nearer, and he heard the small coins clinking lightly in the basket, a feeling of what was almost disgust took possession of him. He saw looks of bold curiosity turned upon her from every side. He even heard certain comments, which, when he thought of the face upturned to the sky that Sunday morning, made him hot with indignation. When he recalled the voice, however, he was able to control himself.

As the singer approached him, he saw that her eyes, of which he sought eagerly to catch a glimpse, were uniformly cast down, so that even when the light fell so as to enable him to penetrate the shadows of the mask, he saw only a pair of lowered lids.

An idea struck him, and as she came toward him he took a silver dollar from his pocket and dropped it into the basket. He hoped that the unusual size of the coin might cause her to look up, but it did not. She made a little gesture of acknowledgment, as she had done for the pennies and dimes already received, and walked swiftly on. Even the hand that held the basket was covered by a thick glove, which revealed nothing of its shape or character.

As she remounted to her place, handing the basket over to the man, who poured the contents into his pocket, Randall walked away. His pace quickened suddenly, as he heard behind him the voice that had so repelled him, singing with that beautiful method, which compelled admiration in spite of himself, the words and music of “After the Ball.”

The effect of this experience upon Randall was to make him resolve to put his opposite neighbor completely out of his head, a thing he might have accomplished, but for a circumstance which occurred the very next morning.

The day was very mild and beautiful, and his front windows had been left wide open by the maid who had done up his room. Randall went to one of them, and stood with the lace curtains shoved aside by his elbows, his hands resting lightly in his pockets. The people over the way seemed to be making the most of the spring sunshine also, for the windows were open all along, and in some cases, even the doors. The streets, still damp from yesterday’s rainfall, were sending up a faint steam under the warm sunshine, and there seemed to be a perfect epidemic of pavement cleaning in progress. Servant maids with hose or brooms were working away vigorously, and the fresh young green on the budding branches rose above all this, as if the toilets of the trees had been completed before those of the pavements were begun.

Randall had determined to forget his neighbor with the beautiful face and unbeautiful voice, and in order that he might emphasize this resolution, he looked hard at the door of her house, which happened to be one of those that stood open.

He could not penetrate far into the dark chasm of a hall which the opening revealed, but as he looked, out of the darkness there sprang a jet black object, which, as it bounded into the street, he saw to be a rather large black kitten. He knew from its precipitous rush that someone must be after it, and the someone proved to be the beautiful young girl.

If she had been beautiful before, with her long dark cloak and the severe little hat that hid both her head and her hair, what was she now, in a fresh pink cotton gown that revealed every curve of her slight and exquisite young figure, and her lovely face, surmounted by a rippling mass of bright gold-brown hair.