Chapter VI: Amy Lee

In my career there have been some days and incidents to which I shall ever look back with pleasure and delight, and among these I number my brief sojourn at Applewood.

Amy Lee received me with a blush of pleasure on her pale and somewhat saddened young face, for the atmosphere of the sick-room and the dull life she led had impressed her features with premature thought; and when seated with her at supper in the long dining-room of Applewood, with the wigged and breastplated portraits of past generations staring down upon us from the walls, with plate and crystal glittering on the table, amid the wax-lights of the chandelier and girandoles, and with two servants in showy livery attending us, I felt all the sudden novelty of the situation with an emotion of delight at the beauty of the young girl.

The loss of her parents, travel, the scenes she had seen in India, and the life she had since led with her aunt, made Amy older than her years, and thoughtful in her youth. Motherless and fatherless almost from infancy, Amy had been, like myself, early accustomed to rely upon her own reflections and resources. Her father was an officer who had served long and faithfully in Indian wars; thus we had much that was in common between us, and in five minutes were as intimate as old friends.

The musical inflections of her voice had in them a chord which proved singularly seductive. The smile in her dark-blue eyes was full of drollery and sadness by turns--of witchery always--and the extreme blackness of their lashes, when contrasted with the whiteness of their nervous lids, lent a darker tint to them at all times,--a deeper colour than they really possessed.

Boylike, I felt a fond and sudden interest in this attractive girl; but to tell the secret I possessed--to reveal what hung over her, the wrong her nearest relative meditated,--would be to betray and impeach the supposed-to-be irreproachable Macfarisee; thus I was troubled, restless, and wretched, amid the charms of her presence and of her society; and while she poured out wine for me, with little hands that trembled when they grasped the heavy crystal decanters, and selected the best fruit in the salvers for my plate, acting the hostess with a grace peculiarly her own, when she chatted and smiled to me, I relapsed frequently into silence and thought.

"And the task for which you have been left here is to prepare some inventories for my aunt?" she observed, after one of those awkward pauses which at times ensue in the conversation of strangers.

"It would seem so."

"Alas! she will never be able to examine them."

"Oh," said I bitterly, "Mr. Nathaniel Macfarisee is sufficiently interested in the documents to relieve the poor lady of all trouble in that matter."

"He is so very good and kind. Dear Mr. Macfarisee!"

"I am glad you think so."

"You will have a frightful deal of trouble, Mr. Ellis. Why did not Mr. Macfarisee remain himself, or leave some one else to assist you?"

"I know not," was my reply, though I knew very well; for my discretion and silence were more readily to be relied on than those of others in the employment of the worthy triumvirate.

"And you will be here----"

"A week, Mr. Quirky said; perhaps a fortnight."

"A whole week! I am so glad of that; you will be quite a companion for me," she exclaimed, clapping her hands with girlish pleasure, while I reflected that to spend a week in this house, with such a girl, was assuredly the most delightful piece of office-work that had occurred to me since I became the legal pupil of Messrs. Harpy, Quirky, and Macfarisee.

"Your aunt, Mrs. Rose, has long been ill, I believe."

"Oh, for years, and has endured such pain in all parts of her body, that I am astonished her soul has not been put to flight--poor woman!--long since."

"But I have read somewhere that the soul is not in the body, but in the brain--I think Locke says so," said I, becoming learned as the wine inflamed me, and the decanters on the table seemed alternately to multiply and decrease in number.

"I never read Locke," replied Miss Lee, laughing; "but I feel assured that it is in the heart."

"I have no doubt every young beauty supposes so; but if we think long--and thought is the action of the soul--it becomes weary, for the _head_ aches."

"But if we suffer long anxiety, or are in love, does not the heart ache?"

"I do not know--I never was in love. Were _you_?"

"No; how can you ask me such a question?"

We both blushed furiously now, as a boy and girl might do, and cast down our eyes; then as our hands came in contact, how I knew not, unless it was that Amy searched for the nut-crackers and I hastened to assist her, we both trembled, and were seriously overcome by confusion.

At that moment a clock struck in the hall.

"Heavens," exclaimed Miss Lee, "it is twelve o'clock; we have been conversing, and never reflecting that we cannot stop time."

"But you have made me forget its flight," said I, in a low voice.

This was a gallant speech for a lad of seventeen, and as such, I have thought fit to record it here.

Another little pause ensued, and fortunately her aunt's bell rang sharply, so she begged to be excused and hurriedly left me. For some time I waited her return; but she came no more that night, or morning rather, and I retired to bed, my heart filled with new impulses, and my head with new visions and fancies. When closing my eyes on the pillow, I seemed still to see before me the long lashes, the delicate hands, and thick dark curls of Amy Lee, while her sweet merry tones lingered in my ear. I was restless, and the dawn almost came ere I slept, with the full intention of setting about Macfarisee's obnoxious business in the morning.

With the new day I was more bewildered than ever; for nearly the whole of it was spent in sketching certain picturesque sycamores of the avenue in the young lady's album, and writing love verses on the embossed "Bristols" and pink and peagreen leaves thereof; or in rambling about the lawn, feeding the peacocks, visiting the preserves of gold and silver pheasants (long undisturbed by the echo of a gun-shot), and studying the language of flowers in the conservatory; so if inventories of plate and pictures were requisite to complete the earthly happiness of Mr. Nathaniel Macfarisee, he was exceedingly unlikely to get them from me.

Amy's consolation and companions in the lonely life she led had long been her birds, her flowers, her music, and her own thoughts, when not occupied by attendance upon her ailing, besotted, and ascetic relative, whose sentiment of revenge, cherished against her mother, combined with the warp which the evil influence of Macfarisee's subtle mind and oily tongue had given an intellect already unhinged by time, disease, and the homilies of the Reverend Mr. Pawkie, had led her ultimately to pen the absurd and wicked testament already referred to, and to do the poor girl a deadly wrong, by robbing her of all that was hers by right of inheritance, by law, and justice, for the enrichment of a stranger.