Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
On page 16, "bran-new" may be a typo for "brand-new".
[Illustration: Constance Cary Harrison]
A Virginia Cousin
& Bar Harbor
Tales
_By_
Mrs Burton Harrison
M D CCC XCV
Lamson Wolffe and Co.
Boston and New York
Copyright, 1895,
By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co
All rights reserved
Note by the Author
The little story "A Virginia Cousin," here put into print for the
first time, is in some sort a tribute offered by a long-exiled child
of the South to her native soil. It is also a transcript of certain
phases of that life in the metropolis which has been pooh-poohed by
some critics as trivially undeserving of a chronicler, but fortunate
hitherto in finding a few readers willing to concede as much humanity
to the "heroine in satin" as to the "confidante in linen."
Of the other contents of this volume, "Out of Season" made its first
appearance some time ago in _Two Tales_, and "On Frenchman's Bay" was
published in _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_.
C. C. H.
NEW YORK,
_November, 1895_
A Virginia Cousin
Chapter I
Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend awoke to the light of a spring morning in
New York, feeling at odds with the world. The cause for this state of
variance with existing circumstances was not at sight apparent. He was
young, good-looking, well-born, well-mannered, and, to support these
claims to favorable consideration, had come into the fortunes of a
father and two maiden aunts,--a piece of luck that had, however, not
secured for him the unqualified approbation of his fellow-citizens.
Joined to the fact that, upon first leaving college, some years
before, he had led a few _cotillons_ at New York balls, his wealth and
leisure had brought upon Townsend the reproach of the metropolitan
press to the extent that nothing short of his committing suicide would
have induced it to look upon anything he did as in earnest.
With an inherited love of letters, he had dabbled in literature so far
as to write and publish a book of verse, of fair merit, which,
however, had been received with tumultuous rhapsodies of satire by the
professional critics. The style and title of "Laureate of the 400,"
applied in this connection, had indeed clung to him and made life
hateful in his sight. To escape it and the other rubs of unoccupied
solvency, he had made many journeys into foreign countries, had gone
around the globe, and, in due course, had always come to the surface
in New York again, with a sort of doglike attachment to the place of
his birth that would not wear away.
Of the society he was familiar with, Vance was profoundly weary. Of
domestic ties, he had only a sister, married to a rich banker, and in
possession of a fine new house, whose tapestries and electric lighting
occupied all her thoughts and conversation that could be spared for
things indoors. Away from home, Mrs. Clifton was continually on the
wing, attending to the demands of philanthropy or charity, and to
cultivation of the brain in classes of women of incomes equal to her
own. Whenever her brother dined with her, she entertained him with a
voluble flow of conversation about these women and their affairs,
never failing, however, to exhibit her true sisterly feeling by
telling Vance that she could not see why in the world he did not marry
Kitty Ainger and settle down.
By dint of much iteration, this suggestion of Kitty Ainger as a wife
had come to take languid possession of the young man's brain. Besides,
he liked Miss Ainger as well as admired her, and was perhaps more
content in her company than in that of anybody else he knew.
On the spring morning in question, he had awaked in a flood of
sunshine and fresh air that poured through the open windows of his
room. His cold bath, his simple breakfast, his ride in the Park,
brought his sensations of physical well-being to a point that almost
excited his spirits to strike a balance of youthful cheerfulness. He
forgot his oppressive belongings, the obloquy they had conferred upon
him in the minds of men who make public opinion about others as
citizens, his unreasonable stagnation of ambition.
As he cantered along the equestrian byways of the Park, and felt,
without noting, the stir of new life in nature, he grew light of heart
and buoyant. And as this condition increased, his thoughts
crystallized around the image of Katherine Ainger. She, too, loved her
morning ride; no doubt he should meet her presently. He had not seen
her since Thursday of last week, when he had taken her in to dinner at
Mrs. Cartwright's; and he had a vague idea she had resented him a
little on that occasion. Her talk had been a trifle baffling, her eyes
evasive. But she had worn a stunning gown, and was by all odds the
best-looking woman of the lot. How well she sat at table, by the way!
What an admirable figure for a man who would be forced to entertain,
to place at the head of his board in perpetuity!
Their families, too, had always known each other. And she was so
uncommonly level-headed and sensible! Agreeable, too; no whims, no
fancies. He had never heard of her being ill for a day. As to temper
and disposition, they matched all the rest. She had never flirted;
and, marrying at twenty-six a husband of twenty-nine, she would give
him no possible anxiety on that score.
Yes, his sister was right; everybody was right. Miss Ainger was the
mate designed for him by heaven; and he had been a fool to dawdle so
long in making up his mind to accept the fact.
As the sunshine warmed him, and his horse forged along with a
beautiful even stride beneath him, Vance worked up to a degree of
enthusiasm he had not felt since he played on a winning football
eleven in a college game. That very day he would seek her and ask her
to be his wife. They would be married as soon as she was willing, and
would go away in the yacht somewhere and learn to love each other. He
would have an aim, a home, a stake in the community. At thirty years
of age, he should be found no longer in dalliance with time to make it
pass away.
Vance, enamored of these visions, finished the circuit of the Park
without seeing the central object of them, with whom he had resolved
to make an appointment to receive him at home that afternoon. He rode
back to the stable where he kept his horse, left it there, and,
getting into an elevated car, went down-town to visit his lawyer,
going with that gentleman afterwards into the stately halls of the
Lawyers' Club for luncheon.
At a table near him, Vance saw, sitting alone, a man named Crawford,
whom he had met casually and knew for a hardworking and ambitious
junior member of the New York bar. They exchanged nods, and Vance
fancied that Crawford looked at him with a scrutiny more close than
the occasion warranted.
"You know Crawford, then?" said Mr. Gleason, an old friend of Vance's
father. "He began work with our firm, but had an offer for a
partnership in a year or two, and left us. He's a tremendous fellow to
grind, but is beginning to reap the benefit of it in making a name for
himself. If that fellow had a little capital, there is nothing he
could not do, in this community. He has never been abroad, has had no
pleasures of society, leads a scrupulously regular life, drinks no
liquors or wines of any kind, and is in bed by twelve o'clock every
night of his life. His only indulgence is to buy books, with which his
lodgings overflow. We have always supposed him to be a woman-hater,
until latterly, when straws seem to show that the wind blows for him
from a point of sentiment. He was in the Adirondacks last summer, in
camp with a friend, and I've an idea he met his fate then. After all,
Vance, my dear boy, marriage is the goal man runs for, be he what he
may. It will develop John Crawford, just as it would develop you, in
the right direction; and I heartily wish you would tell me when you
intend to succumb to the universal fate, and fall in love."
"I heartily wish I could," said Vance, with a tinge of the mockery he
had that morning put aside.
At that moment, Crawford, who had finished his luncheon, passed their
table, hat in hand, bowing and smiling as he did so. A waiter,
jostling by, made him loosen his hold of the hat, a rather shabby
light-brown Derby, that rolled under Vance Townsend's feet. It was
lifted by Vance and restored to its owner before the waiter could
reach the spot; and again Vance thought he detected a look of
significance, incomprehensible to him, in the frank eyes Crawford
turned upon him as he expressed his thanks.
"It would have been a benefit to Crawford's friends to have
accidentally put your foot through that hat," said Mr. Gleason,
laughing. "He is accused by them of having worn it ever since he was
admitted to the bar. But then, who thinks of clothes, with a real man
inside of them? And no doubt the girl they say he is going to marry
will right these trifling matters in short order."
"I like Crawford; I must see more of him," replied Vance. "He strikes
me as the fellow to pass a pleasant evening with. I wonder if he would
come to dine with me."
"If you bait your invitation with an offer to show your first
editions, no doubt of it," said Mr. Gleason. "But to go back to our
conversation, Vance. When are we to--"
"I decline to answer," interrupted the young man, smiling,
nevertheless, in such a way that Mr. Gleason built up a whole
structure of probabilities upon that single smile.
Yes, Vance decided, everything conspired to urge him toward his
intended venture that afternoon. When, about four o'clock, he turned
his steps in the direction of Miss Ainger's home, he had reached a
pitch of very respectably loverlike anxiety. He even fancied the day
had been unusually long. He caught himself speculating as to where she
would be sitting in the drawing-room, how she would look when he laid
his future in her hands.
At that moment, he allowed himself to remember a series of occasions
during the years of their friendship, upon any one of which he
believed he might have spoken as he now meant to speak, and that she
would have answered as he now expected her to answer. Ah! what had he
not lost? In her gentle, equable companionship, he would have been a
better, a higher, a less discontented fellow. All the virtues,
charms, desirable qualities, of this fine and high-bred young woman,
who had been more patient, more forgiving, than he deserved, were
concentrated into one small space of thought, like the Lord's Prayer
engraved upon a tiny coin. But even as his foot touched the lowest
step of her father's portal, he experienced a shock of doubt of
himself and of his own stability. He tarried; he turned away, and
strolled, whither he knew not.
In the adjoining street lived Mrs. Myrtle, an aunt of his, to whom, it
must be said, Vance rarely paid the deference considered by that
excellent lady her just due. She inhabited the brown-stone dwelling in
which, as a bride, she had gone to housekeeping when New York society
was still within limits of visitors on foot. Not that that made any
difference to Mrs. Myrtle, who had always kept her carriage, and had,
about twenty years back, been cited as a leader of the metropolitan
_beau monde_.
In those days, whether on wheels or a-foot, everybody went to Mrs.
Myrtle's Thursdays. Her spacious drawing-rooms, papered in crimson
flock paper, with their massive doors and mouldings and mirror-frames
and curtain-tops of ebonized wood with gold scroll decorations, their
furniture in the same wood, with red satin damask coverings, had, in
their time, contained the elect of good society. The pictures upon
Mrs. Myrtle's walls, and the statuary scattered on pedestals about the
rooms, were then quoted by the newspapers, and by those so favored as
to see them, as a rare display of the highest art, accumulated by an
American householder. One of the earliest affronts of many
unintentionally put upon his aunt by Vance had been his contemptuous
shrug of the shoulders when called upon by her, shortly after his
return from his first winter spent in Italy, to view her "statuary."
Since then, Mrs. Myrtle had, little by little, come to a perception of
the fact that her "art collection" was not, any more than its
mistress, an object of the first importance to New York. But Vance had
been always associated in her mind with the incipient stages of
enlightenment, and she loved him accordingly. Her love for Vance's
sister, Mrs. Clifton, who refused to pay her tribute, and belonged to
the new "smart set," was even less.
Upon Mrs. Myrtle, Vance now resolved to pay a long-deferred duty-call.
Admitted by an old negro butler, he was left alone in the large
darkling drawing-room, in the shade of the crimson curtains, amid the
ghostly ranks of the statues, to ruminate until Mrs. Myrtle should
make her appearance. Little thought did he bestow upon the duration of
this ordeal. He was well occupied, and, for once in his life, heartily
ashamed,----first, of his indecision upon the Ainger door-steps, and,
secondly, of the fact that he had put in here to gain courage to
return there.
Mrs. Myrtle's heavy tread upon her own parquet floor aroused him from
meditation. His aunt was a massive lady, who wore black velvet, with a
neck-ruff of old point-lace; who, never pretty, and no longer pleasant
to look upon, yet carried herself with a certain ease born of
assurance in her own place in life, and cultivated by many years of
receiving visitors. Her small white hand, twinkling with diamonds,
was extended to him with something of the grand air he remembered his
mother, who was the beauty of her family, to have possessed; and then
Mrs. Myrtle, seating herself, fixed an unsmiling gaze upon her nephew.
"I--ah--thought I would look in and see how you are getting on," he
said, with an attempt at jocularity.
"But it is not Thursday," she answered, cold as before. "I make it a
point to see no one except on Thursday, or after five. And it is not
yet after five."
Townsend, who could not dispute this fact, was at a loss how to go on.
But Mrs. Myrtle, having put things upon the right footing, launched at
once into an exposition of her grievances against him, his sister, and
the ruling society of latter-day New York.
"I am sure if any one had told your mother and me, when we first came
out, what people were to push _us_ against the wall, and to have all
New York racing and tearing after their invitations, we should never
have believed it. It's enough to make your poor mother come back from
the dead, to revise Anita Clifton's visiting-list. And I suppose the
next thing to hear of will be your marriage into one of these bran-new
families. I must say, Theodore, although it is seldom my opinion is
listened to, I _was_ pleased when I heard, the other day, that you
were reported engaged to Katherine Ainger. The Aingers are of our own
sort; and her fortune, although it is not so important to you, will be
handsome. She is one of the few girls who go much into the world who
still remember to come to see me; and she has been lunching here
to-day."
"Really?" said Vance, turning over his hat in what he felt to be a
most perfunctory way.
"Yes; if you or Anita Clifton had been here in the last two months,
you might have found out that I have had a young lady--a Southern
cousin--stopping in the house."
"A cousin of mine?" queried the young man, indifferently.
"My first cousin's daughter, Evelyn Carlyle. You know there was a
break between the families about the beginning of the war, and, for
one reason or another, we have hardly met since. When I went to the
Hot Springs for my rheumatism last year,--you and Anita Clifton
doubtless are not aware that I have been a great sufferer from
rheumatism,--I stopped a night or two at Colonel Carlyle's house in
Virginia, and took rather a fancy to this girl. I found out that she
has a voice, and desired to cultivate it in New York, and so invited
her to come on after Christmas and stay in my house."
Vance was conscious of a slight feeling of somnolence. Really, he
could not be expected to care for the Virginian cousin's voice. And
Aunt Myrtle had such a soporific way of drawling out her sentences! He
wished she would return to the subject of her luncheon-guest, and
then, perhaps, he might manage to keep awake.
"So you invited Miss Ainger to-day, to keep the young lady company?"
he ventured to observe.
"If you will give me time to explain, I will tell you that Katherine
Ainger and she have struck up the greatest friendship this winter,
and have been together part of every day. I wish, Vance, that you
could bring yourself to extend some attention to your mother's first
cousin's child. From Anita Clifton I expect nothing--absolutely
nothing. Not belonging to the 'smart set,' whatever that may be, I
make no demands upon Anita Clifton. But you, Vance, have not yet shown
that you are absolutely heartless. When Eve goes home, as she soon
will, it would be gratifying to have her able to say you had
recognized her existence."
"I will leave a card for the young lady in the hall," he said,
awkwardly; "and perhaps she would allow me to order some flowers for
her. Just now, Aunt Myrtle, I have an engagement, and I must really be
going on."
He had risen to his feet, and Mrs. Myrtle was about shaping a last
arrow to aim at him, when the door opened, and a girl came into the
room.
"Oh! Cousin Augusta," she said, in the most outspoken manner, a
slight Southern accent marking some of the syllables enunciated in a
remarkably sweet voice, "I have been taking your Dandie Dinmont for a
walk, and he has been such a good, obedient dear, you must give him
two lumps of sugar when he comes to tea at five o'clock."
As Mrs. Myrtle performed the ceremony of introduction between them,
Vance became conscious that he was in the presence of one of the most
radiantly pretty young persons who had ever crossed the line of his
languid vision. Equipped in a tailor-made frock of gray serge, a black
hat with many rampant plumes upon her red-brown hair, a boa of black
ostrich feathers curling around her pearly throat and caressing the
rosiest of cheeks, his Cousin Eve surveyed him with as much
indifference as if he had been the veriest casual met in a crowd in
Fifth Avenue. Two fingers of a tiny gloved hand were bestowed on him
in recognition of their relationship, after which she resumed her
interrupted talk about the dog.
"You understand that Mr. Townsend is a relative, my dear?" asked Mrs.
Myrtle, in her rocking-horse manner. "You have heard me speak of him?"
"Yes; oh, yes, certainly," Eve said, with preoccupation. "But to us
Virginians a cousin means either very much--or very, very little."
"The presumption, then, is against me?" he asked, determined not to be
subdued.
"Is it? I had not thought," she answered, hardly looking in his
direction. Vance took the hint and his departure. When again out of
doors, he straightened himself, and walked with a firmer, more
determined tread, conscious of a little tingling in his veins on the
whole not disagreeable. In this mood, he reached the corner of the
street in which dwelt Miss Ainger, and was very near indeed to passing
it, but, recovering himself with a start, turned westward from the
Avenue, and again sought the house from which he had gone irresolute a
little while before.
The door was opened for him by a servant, who did not know "for sure,"
but "rather thought" Miss Ainger was in the drawing-room. While
following the man across a wide hall, Vance espied, lying upon a
chair, a man's hat--not the conventional high black hat of the
afternoon caller, but a rusty brown "pot" hat, of an unobtrusive
pattern.
"Humph! the piano-tuner, no doubt," he said to himself, and
simultaneously recalled the fact that he had seen the object in
question, or its twin brother, that same day. Before the footman could
put his hand upon the knob of the drawing-room door, it opened, and
the owner of the hat came out. It was indeed Crawford, dressed in
morning tweeds, as Vance had seen him at luncheon in the Lawyers'
Club, his plain, strong face illuminated with an expression Vance knew
nothing akin to, and therefore did not interpret.
But Vance did know Miss Ainger for an independent in her set, a girl
who struck out for herself to find clever and companionable people
with whom to fraternize; and he was accordingly not surprised to meet
Crawford here as a visitor. As once before that day, the two men
exchanged silent nods, and parted. Vance found Miss Ainger caressing
with dainty fingertips a large bunch of fresh violets that lay in her
lap and filled the room with fragrance.
Kitty Ainger, a daughter of New York, calm, reserved, temperamentally
serious, fond of argument upon high themes, cultivated in minor points
to a fastidious degree, handsome in a sculptural way, had always
seemed to him lacking in the one grace of womanly tenderness he
vaguely felt to be of vast moment in a young man's choice for a wife.
To-day, as she greeted him, her manner was gentle and gracious to
perfection. Perhaps it so appeared in contrast to that of the fair
Phyllida who had flouted him in his Aunt Myrtle's drawing-room;
perhaps Kitty was really glad of this first occasion in many days when
they were alone together, undisturbed.
The thought caused a wave of excitement to rise in the suitor's veins.
He wondered how he could have held back, an hour before, when upon the
threshold of such an opportunity. But then, had he made appearance, no
doubt there would have been other visitors,--Crawford, for instance,
whom Miss Ainger was plainly taking by the hand, to lead into society,
as clever girls will do when they find an unknown clever man;
Crawford, who did not know enough of conventionality to put on a black
coat when he called on a girl in the afternoon; Crawford, poor and
plain, a man's man, whom the Ainger family no doubt regarded as one of
Kitty's freaks. Yes, Crawford would have been a decided interruption
to this _tête-à-tête_.
Now, there was an open sea before Vance, and he had only to launch the
boat, so long delayed, a craft he at last candidly believed to be
freighted with the best hopes of his life. They talked for awhile upon
impersonal subjects--Kitty exerting herself, he could see, to be
agreeable and sympathetic with her visitor. In the progress of this
conversation, he took note with satisfaction of the artistic elegance
of her dress (of the exact color of the Peach Blow Vase, he said to
himself, searching for a simile in tint), with sleeves of sheenful
velvet, and a silken train that lay upon the rug. Her long, white
fingers, playing with the violets, wore no rings. Her slim figure,
her braids of pale brown hair, her calm, gray eyes, attracted him as
never before, with their girlish and yet womanly composure.
"Why have you never told me," he said abruptly, "of your friendship
with that little witch of a Virginia cousin of mine who has been
staying with Mrs. Myrtle this winter?"
"If you wish me to tell you the truth, it was because she asked me
never to do so," replied Kitty, coloring a little. "You have met her?"
she added eagerly.
"Yes, to-day; a little while ago, when I called upon my aunt. But how
could she know of me? What reason was there for her to avoid me?"
"Evelyn is an impulsive creature," was the answer; and now the blood
rushed into Kitty's cheek, and she was silent.
"Impulsive, yes; but how could she resent a man she had never seen;
who had not had the smallest opportunity to prove whether or not he
was obnoxious to her? That is quite too ridiculous, I think. You, who
have so much sense, character, judgment, why could not you exercise
your influence over this very provincial little person, and teach her
that a prejudice is, of all things, petty?"
"She is not a provincial little person," said Kitty, with spirit. "And
she does not merit that patronizing tone of yours."
"If _you_ take her under your wing, she is perfection," he answered
lightly, as if the subject were no longer of value for discussion.
"But before we begin to differ about her, only tell me if it is my
Aunt Myrtle's objection to me as a type that my truculent Cousin Eve
has inherited?"
"I hardly think so. Please ask me no questions," the girl said,
uncomfortable with blushing.
"As you like. It is veiled in mystery," he said, rather piqued. "At
least, you won't mind informing me if she got any of her ideas of me
from you. No, that is hardly fair. I will alter it. Did you and she
ever speak of me together?"
"What if I tell you yes, and that, every time we met?" exclaimed Miss
Ainger, plucking up courage when thus driven into a corner.
To her surprise and dismay, Vance took this admission quite otherwise
than she had meant it. In Eve's attitude toward him, he thought he
read a girlish jealousy of the object preoccupying the affections of
her friend.
"I see. I understand," he said, with a gleam in his eyes she had not
seen there in all of their acquaintance. Until now, the hearth-rug had
been between them. With an animation quite foreign to him, he crossed
it, and leaned down to take her hands. At once, Kitty, withdrawing
from his grasp, rose to her feet and faced him.
"I think there is some great mistake," she said, very quietly. As
Vance gazed at her, he became aware that he had until now never seen
the true Kitty Ainger, and that her face was beautiful.
"You repulse me? You have never cared for me?" he said, fiercely.
A wave of color came upon her cheeks, and her eyes dropped before his
to the violets in her hand.
"I must tell you," she said, after a pause, during which both thought
of many things stretching back through many years, "that I have just
promised to marry Mr. Crawford."