Miss Ayr of Virginia, & other stories

by Julia Magruder

The father, himself, a somewhat feeble and timid man, explained that they were in the shadow of a recent bereavement, his wife, and the girl’s mother, having died only a month or so ago. He alluded to it in a low and sorrowful voice, and ended with the words:

“You can understand, therefore, all the more, why I should have wished for the opportunity of thanking you for resenting the affront that was offered to her, by that brute, when she was exposing herself, for the sake of our child, to the dangers which such a position made inevitable. It was all that our dear daughter might be nurtured in refined and wholesome conditions, for the preservation of her health and her innocence, and the development of her voice, which has fulfilled, at last, all our hopes concerning it, when the dear mother, who so passionately loved her has passed beyond the knowledge of it.”

“Don’t say so, Father,” said the young girl, gently. “I felt her very near to me, last night. It was that thought which kept me up and enabled me to sing my best.”

As she spoke, she drew a little nearer to him, and putting Tommy on the floor, she took her father’s hand in hers and held it, while he talked to their visitor, and told his story, in a simple, frank, unworldly way that very soon put Randall in possession of the whole situation. It was made very clear to him that the mother had been the master spirit of this trio, and that this mild and ineffectual little man was very helpless without her. His lack of worldly prudence showed plainly enough in the fact that he took this stranger so fully into his confidence on the sole ground that he had once defended his dead wife from an insult. The girl, herself, too, seemed to find nothing strange in the situation, as she sat by and listened to her father’s recital of his wife’s labor of love and sacrifices.

She had once possessed a superb voice, herself, it seemed, and had received the most perfect and thorough training in a great European conservatoire, being herself an Italian, but before she had sung in public at all, a severe attack of throat trouble had ruined her voice forever, and she had come to America to give lessons, and in a southern town had met and married her husband. Then had begun a long life of vicissitudes of various kinds, culminating in the street-singing performances, a necessity to which they had been reduced, at last, by positive want. In this way she had eked out the little that she could make by taking pupils at a small price, and by the little jobs of writing and bookkeeping which the man himself could get, until the time should be ripe for her daughter’s début.

All this was told to Randall with the utmost simplicity, and Bianca, herself, sitting by, seemed pleased that he should know it. When at last he rose to go, it was like the parting of friends, and he asked and received permission to come again. He longed almost intolerably to ask her now, to-day, to be his wife, and he chafed under the necessity of delay.

And the delay, in point of fact, was not very long. When hearts are young and trusting, why should it be? And Bianca had had an instinct of blind trust in him from the first. He got Mensenn to say a good word for him; he cultivated the father and took pains to make him acquainted with the details of his life, position and circumstances; and then, at last, he felt that he had only Bianca’s consent to win.

How would she answer him? How did she feel toward him? He asked himself these questions with agitated hope and fear. Her very friendliness and frankness half frightened him at times.

One afternoon when he went to call, as he did almost daily now, he found Bianca in the little sitting-room alone. It was the first time it had happened so, and she explained her father’s absence, and that he might be in at any moment. The situation was a little constrained for her, and Randall saw it, and to reassure her he asked her to sing. She had done this frequently before, but always with her father to play her accompaniments. He volunteered to do this now, himself, and sitting down to the piano he struck the opening chords of the song he had first heard her sing. The song which had been the consummation of her revelation to him. She began to sing it. They were alone together. The song was more than speech. He turned his head and looked upward at her. His look agitated her, and her voice faltered. At this he smiled, and the voice grew more unsteady. Then suddenly he stopped playing, and without the support of the accompaniment, she broke down utterly.

But the hands that were lifted from the keys suddenly took both of hers in an imperious grasp. The gaze that she tried desperately to avoid, compelled her to look at him, and after the confession of that look she knew no more, but that she was in his arms, and was glad and satisfied.