LITTLE MISSY.
Do you know the feeling of living in a house pervaded by an unseen presence—a person who has lived there once, and whose spirit seems to dwell there forever afterward? That was what Mrs. Jack Hereford felt when she and her husband took refuge from New York and Newport and Tuxedo at Malvern, the old Virginia plantation, with its tumbledown house, full of rickety furniture, and staring daubs of family portraits in every room in it. The house and everything in it, and six hundred acres of land grown up with pine saplings, had been bought for a song from the heirs of the estate, who had never seen it, and never wanted to see it.
Colonel Baskerville had been the last owner of the place, and he had been dead ten years; also Mrs. Baskerville. And there had been three children—two sons, one of whom was shot dead at Gettysburg, and the other had died of wounds and exposure. The daughter, Amy Baskerville, too, was no more. All this Mrs. Hereford gathered from the one or two persons she had met, and the old doctor who was her nearest and only neighbor.
It was this Amy Baskerville whose shadowy, girlish presence was all over Malvern. She was only twenty when she died, as the plain headstone in the old family burying-ground said. The brick walls of the graveyard were crumbling, and the iron gate had given way. Cattle and sheep browsed on the green mounds. Many of the tombs of the dead-and-gone Baskervilles were marble slabs supported on pillars, of which the solid brick and mortar had disappeared, leaving them like gigantic tables. The later graves were sunken, especially those of Colonel Baskerville and his wife, over which a simple monument was raised, inscribed to the memory of Colonel Marmaduke Baskerville and Nancy, his wife. Those over the two sons were highly ornate, and bore long epitaphs: "Marmaduke, who was killed while gallantly leading his regiment, after the fall of both his colonel and lieutenant-colonel," followed by a long list of Marmaduke's virtues; and "George, who died of wounds contracted in the service of his country, at the early age of eighteen." The story was plain. The poor old colonel and his wife had put up the showy tombstones with Pity weeping over an urn, and their executors had put up the plain stones over the father and mother and little Amy.
Hanging in the grim library, with its few old-fashioned books upon the crazy shelves, were portraits of the colonel, a veritable Virginia colonel, with a tremendous shirt ruffle rushing out of his generous bosom, and his rosy face wearing a look of majestic solemnity common in portraits, but which Colonel Baskerville never wore for five consecutive minutes in his life. Then there were portraits of George and Marmaduke, both handsome lads, both as alike as two peas, and, besides, a portrait of little Amy. She was about sixteen when it was painted. It was so sweet, so sad! There was not a trace of weakness in the half-womanish, half-childish mouth and chin. In the delicate, well-poised head one could see more will power, more intellect, than in the portly colonel and both of the handsome, frank-faced boys put together. This was not Amy's only picture. There was an old daguerreotype on the drawing-room table which revealed her in a white dress, and half a dozen faded photographs of her in her riding-habit, in fancy dress, in numerous other costumes and attitudes, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, of her brothers; and a whole bookful of sketches, scribbled all over, "The Book of Amy. Life and Adventures of Amy Baskerville. By G. B., Esq.," in which G. B., who had considerable skill, pictured Amy in numberless grotesque and humiliating circumstances, and once or twice as she must truly have been, graceful and picturesque.
Then there were piles of old-fashioned, desperately sentimental songs on the broken-down old piano in the drawing-room, which had once been sung by Amy's fresh young voice. One day Mrs. Hereford came across a frayed little white satin slipper that had been Amy's, and had evidently done good service. It was the saddest little reminder in the world. It was like the ghost of youth and joy. And there was a broken fan, laid away in tissue paper, and inscribed, "To be mended." Mrs. Hereford locked these little girlish relics up carefully in the drawer of the dressing-table in what had been Amy's room. On the dressing-table was an old-fashioned swinging glass, in which Amy had once been wont to look roguishly, admiring her own fresh beauty. The glass remained, but Amy was dust and ashes.
One afternoon Mrs. Hereford, sitting on the porch, around which the vines had grown in neglected luxuriance, saw an old negro woman coming up the pathway toward the house. She was very infirm, and leaned upon the shoulder of a little darky about ten years old, who dutifully supported her. She stopped at the foot of the steps, and, with an old-fashioned courtesy, said, "Good-evenin', my mistis."
"Good-evening, aunty," replied Mrs. Hereford, having learned that much of Southern etiquette. "Won't you walk in and rest yourself?"