## Veriton Villa

The following story of Southern life and manners won a prize offered by a Boston newspaper, and was written by a young lady in Boston, a teacher in one of the advanced schools of that city. She has never visited the South, but the faithful local color and character drawing shows an intimate acquaintance with the works of Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Albion W. Tourgee and other well known chroniclers of Southern life. Everyone living in the South will recognize the accurate portraits of Southern types of character and realistic description of life among the Southern planters.

“Will you go, Penelope?” asked Cyrus.

“It is my duty,” I said. “It is a grand mission to go to Texas and carry what light I can to its benighted inhabitants. The school I am offered will pay me well, and if I can teach the savage people of that region something of our culture and refinement, I shall be happy.”

“Well, then, goodbye,” said Cyrus, offering me his hand.

I had never seen him so passionately aroused.

I took his hand for a second and then got upon the train that was to bear me to my new field of duty.

Cyrus and I had been engaged to be married for fifteen years. He was professor of chemistry in the Massachusetts State University. I had received an offer of $40 a month to teach a private school in a little town in Texas, and had accepted it. Cyrus received $20 per month from his chair in the university. He had waited for fifteen years for me to save up enough money for us to get married. I seized this chance in Texas, resolved to live economically, and in fifteen more years, if I kept the school that long, we could marry.

My board was to cost me nothing, as the DeVeres, one of the oldest and most aristocratic families anywhere in the South, offered me a place in their home. There were several children in the family, and they were anxious to secure a competent teacher for the little school which they attended.

The station where I got off was called Houston, and I found there a team waiting to convey me to Vereton, the little town six miles away, which was my destination.

The driver was a colored man, who approached me and asked respectfully if I was Miss Cook. My trunk was placed in the vehicle, which was an old rickety ambulance drawn by a pair of wretched mules, and I mounted beside the driver, whose name, he said, was Pete.

While we were driving along a shady road, Pete suddenly burst into tears and sobbed as if his heart were breaking.

“My friend,” said I, “will you not tell me what is the matter?”

“Ah, missie,” he said between sobs, “I happen to look at dat busted link hangin’ down from dat trace chain en it remind me of Massa Linkum what am in heb’n, what gib us po’ slaves freedom.”

“Pete,” said I, “do not weep. In the mansions of the blessed above, your godlike liberator awaits you. Singing among the hosts of heaven, Abraham Lincoln wears the brightest crown of glory.”

I laid my arm gently across Pete’s shoulder.

The poor, softhearted, grateful man, whose dark skin covered a heart as pure as snow, still sobbed at the remembrance of the martyred Lincoln, and I made him lay his head upon my breast, where he sobbed unrestrainedly as I drove the mules myself the rest of the way to Vereton.

Vereton was a typical Southern home. I had been informed that the DeVere family were still very wealthy, in spite of having lost a great deal during the rebellion, and that they still lived in the true aristocratic planter style.

The house was two-storied and square, with big white pillars in front. Large verandahs ran entirely around the house, about which climbed dense masses of ivy and honeysuckle.

As I alighted from the ambulance, I heard a chattering and saw a large mule run out the front door, driven by a lady with a broom. The mule lay down on the verandah and the lady advanced to meet me.

“Ah you Miss Cook?” she asked, in the soft slurring accent.

I bowed.

“Ah am Mrs. DeVere,” she said. “Come in, and look out for that dam mule. I can’t keep him out of the house.”

I went in the parlor and looked about me in amazement. The room was magnificently furnished, but I could see the Southern sloth and carelessness visible everywhere. A wheelbarrow full of dried mortar stood in one corner that had been left there when the masons built the house. Five or six chickens were roosting on the piano and a pair of pants were hanging on the chandelier.

Mrs. DeVere had a pale, aristocratic face, with Grecian features, and snowy hair arranged carefully in becoming ringlets. She was dressed in black satin and wore flashing diamonds on her hands and at her throat. Her eyes were black and piercing and her eyebrows dark. As I took my seat, she drew a long piece of plug tobacco from a silver card receiver, and bit off a chew.

“Do you indulge?” she asked smilingly.

I shook my head.

“The h⁠⸺⁠l you don’t!” she replied.

Just then a horse dashed up to the verandah⁠—or gallery, as they call it in Texas⁠—and someone dismounted and entered the room.

I shall never forget my first sight of Aubrey DeVere.

He was fully seven feet in height, and his face was perfect. It was the absolute image of Andrea del Sarto’s painting of the young Saint John. His eyes were immense, dark, and filled with a haunting sadness, and his pale, patrician features and air of haut monde stamped him at once as the descendant of a long line of aristocrats.

He wore a dress suit of the latest cut, but I noticed that he was barefooted, and down from each side of his mouth trickled a dark brown stream of tobacco juice.

On his head was an enormous Mexican sombrero. He wore no shirt, but his dress coat, thrown back from his broad chest, revealed an enormous scintillating diamond tied with a piece of twine strung into the meshes of his gauze undershirt.

“My son, Aubrey; Miss Cook,” said Mrs. DeVere languidly.

Mr. DeVere took a chew of tobacco from his mouth and tossed it behind the piano.

“The lady who has kindly consented to assume our scholastic duties, I presume,” he said, in a deep musical baritone.

I inclined my head.

“I know your countrymen,” he said with a dark frown upon his handsome face. “They still grope among their benighted traditions of ignorance and prejudice. What do you think of Jefferson Davis?”

I looked into his flashing eye without flinching.

“He was a traitor,” I said.

Mr. DeVere laughed musically, and stooping down drew a pine splinter from one of his toes. Then he approached his mother and saluted her with that chivalrous reverence and courtesy that still lingers among sons of the South.

“What shall we have for supper, mammy?” he said.

“Whatever you d⁠⸺ please,” said Mrs. DeVere.

Aubrey DeVere reached out his hand and seized one of the chickens that roosted upon the piano. He wrung its neck and threw its quivering and fluttering body upon the delicate Brussels carpet. He took a long stride and stood before me, towering like an avenging god, with one arm upraised, the other pointing to the fowl, struggling in its death agonies.

“That is the South,” he cried, in a voice of thunder; “the bleeding and dying South after Gettysburg. Tonight you will feast upon its carcass, as your countrymen have been doing for the last thirty years.”

He hurled the head of the chicken into my face with a terrible oath, and then dropped on one knee and bowed his kingly head.

“Pardon me, Miss Cook,” he said, “I do not mean to offend you. Twenty-eight years ago today, my father was killed at the battle of Shiloh.”

When the supper bell rang I was invited into a long, lofty room, wainscoted with dark oak and lighted by paraffine candles.

Aubrey DeVere sat at the foot of the table and carved. He had taken off his coat, and his clinging undershirt revealed every muscle of a torso as grand as that of the Dying Gladiator in the Vatican at Rome. The supper was truly a Southern one. At one end was an enormous grinning opossum and sweet potatoes, while the table was covered with dishes of cabbage, fried chicken, fruit cake, persimmons, hot raw biscuits, blackhaws, Maypops, fried catfish, maple syrup, hominy, ice cream, sausages, bananas, crackling bread, pineapples, squashes, wild grapes and apple pies.

Pete, the colored man, waited upon us, and once in handing Mr. DeVere the gravy he spilled a little of it upon the tablecloth. With a yell like a tiger, Aubrey DeVere sprang to his feet and hurled his carving knife to the handle in Pete’s breast. The poor colored man fell to the floor, and I ran and lifted his head.

“Goodbye, missie,” he whispered. “I hear de angels singing, and I sees de bressed Mars Abraham Linkum smilin’ at me from near de great white th’one. Goodbye missie, Ol’ Pete am goin’ home.”

I rose and faced Mr. DeVere.

“Inhuman monster!” I cried. “You have killed him!”

He touched a silver bell and another servant appeared.

“Take this body out and bring me a clean knife,” he commanded. “Resume your seat, Miss Cook. Like all your countrymen, you evince a penchant for dark meat. Mammy, dear, can I send you a choice bit of the ’possum?”

The next day I met the four DeVere children, and found them very bright and lovable. Two were boys and two girls, ranging from 10 to 16 years of age. The little school house was half a mile away down a beautiful country lane, full of grass and flowers. I had fifteen scholars in my school, and except for a few things my life at Vereton would have been like Paradise. The first month I saved up $42. My salary was $40, and I made the other two by loaning small sums to my scholars for a few days at a time, for which they paid me from 10 to 25 cents interest.

I took a curious interest in studying the character of Aubrey DeVere. His was one of the noblest and grandest natures I had ever known, but it was so far influenced by the traditions and customs of the people with whom he had lived, that scarcely a vestige of its natural good remained.

He had been splendidly educated at the University of Virginia, and was an accomplished orator, musician and painter, but from his early childhood he had been allowed to give way to every impulse and desire, and his manhood showed sadly his lack of self-control.

One evening I was in the music room in the second story of the DeVere mansion, playing over that loveliest of Schubert’s Leider, “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” when Aubrey DeVere entered. Of late, on account of some strange whim, he had become more careful in his dress.

This evening he wore a shirt, thrown open in front, exhibiting his massive collar bone, and a black velvet smoking jacket, trimmed with gold braid in a fanciful design. On his hands were white kid gloves, and I noticed that his feet, on which he absolutely refused to wear shoes, had been recently washed at the pump. He was in one of his most bitter and sneering moods, and launched forth into a most acrimonious tirade against Grant, Lincoln, George Francis Train and other heroes of the Union. He sat down upon the center table and began scratching one of his ankles with the toe of the other foot in a manner that he knew always irritated me.

Resolved not to become angry, I continued playing. Suddenly he said:

“Pardon me, Miss Cook, but you struck a wrong note in effecting the run in that diminished seventh.”

“I think not,” I answered.

“You are a liar!” he replied. “You struck a natural, when it should have been a sharp. This is the note you should have played.”

I heard something swish through the air. From where he sat on the center table, he shot between his teeth a solid stream of tobacco juice with deadly aim full upon the black key of A-sharp on the piano. I rose from the stool, somewhat nettled, but smiling.

“You are offended,” he said, sarcastically. “You do not like our Southern ways. You think me a mauvais sujet. You think we lack aplomb and savoir-vivre. With your Boston culture, you think you can detect a false note in our courtesy, a certain lack of fineness and refinement in our manners. Do not deny it.”

“Mr. DeVere,” I said coldly, “your taunts are nothing to me. I am here to do my duty. In your own house you are at liberty to act as you choose. Will you move one of your feet and allow me to pass?”

Mr. DeVere suddenly sprang from the table and clasped me fiercely in his arms.

“Penelope,” he cried, in a terrible voice. “I love you! You miserable little dried-up, washed-out, white-eyed, sallow-cheeked, prim, angular Yankee schoolma’am. I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. Will you marry me?”

I struggled to get free.

“Put me down,” I cried. “Oh, if Cyrus were only here!”

“Cyrus!” shouted Mr. DeVere. “Who is Cyrus? Cyrus shall never have you, I swear.”

He raised me above his head with one hand and hurled me through the plate glass window into the yard below. Then he threw the furniture down upon me, piece by piece, the piano last of all. I then heard him rush down the stairs, and in a moment felt a stream of liquid trickling down among the broken furniture. I recognized the acrid smell of petroleum, heard the scratch of a match, and the fierce roaring of flames; felt a sudden scorching heat, and remembered no more.

When I regained consciousness I was lying in my own bed, and Mrs. DeVere was sitting beside me, fanning me.

I tried to rise, but was too weak.

“You must keep still,” said Mrs. DeVere gently. “You have been ill with fever for two weeks. You must excuse my son; I am afraid he startled you. He loves you very much, but he is so impulsive.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He has gone to bring Cyrus, and it is time he had returned.”

“How did I escape from that dreadful fire?”

“Aubrey rescued you. After his fit of passion had passed he dashed aside the burning furniture and carried you back upstairs.”

A few minutes later I heard the sound of footsteps, and looking up saw Aubrey DeVere and Cyrus Potts standing by my bedside.

“Cyrus,” I cried.

“How de do, Penelope,” said Cyrus.

Before I could reply there was a loud and fiendish yell outside. The front door was broken down and a dozen masked men dashed into the room.

“We hear there is a d⁠⸺ Yankee in here,” they cried. “Lynch him!”

Aubrey DeVere seized a table by the leg and killed every man of the lynching party.

“Cyrus Potts,” he thundered, “kiss that schoolma’am, or I’ll brain you as I did those other fellows.”

Cyrus dabbed an icy kiss in my direction.

A week later Cyrus and I left for Boston. His salary has been raised to $25 per month and I had saved $210.

Aubrey DeVere accompanied us to the train. Under his arm he carried a keg of blasting powder. As our train rolled out he sat down upon this keg and touched a lighted match to it.

One of his great toes fell through the car window and fell in my lap.

Cyrus is not of a jealous disposition, and I now have that great toe in a bottle of alcohol on my writing desk. We are married now, and I will never taken another trip to the South.

The Southern people are too impulsive.