Читать книгу Green Willows - V. J. Banis - Страница 7

CHAPTER THREE

An elderly lady in black with a white apron and a widow’s cap ushered me in at the front door. With her silvery colored hair and her spectacles slipped down on her nose she reminded me a bit of Mrs. White, which was reassuring. She was, I supposed, Mrs. Tremayne, but I could not help noting that she was considerably older than the gentleman I had met outside.

“Yes, yes, come this way, please,” she said when I told her who I was. She led me into a comfortable sitting room, which seemed all ablaze with candles and a fire roaring in the fireplace.

“You must be frozen. What a night for travel. And hungry, too, I’ve no doubt. Here, take off your shawl and stand by the fire. My, you are young. He didn’t say, but then, of course, he wouldn’t.”

She brought her fluid chatter to an abrupt stop and I had the impression she thought she had said more than she should. I was still unnerved by meeting with Mr. Tremayne, and the awkward silence jangled on me.

“I...I met the master,” I said, only to say something.

“Master Tremayne? He’s back then?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, we....” I could hardly say we had strolled through the woods together, though, and now it was my turn to stop in midsentence.

“He’s a lonelyish man,” she said, as if that covered everything. “I’ll tell the mistress you’re here.”

“Oh, then you’re not the mistress?” I blurted out.

“Me? Heavens, no, where did you get that idea? But I suppose I should have introduced myself. We see so few people, and I was that glad to see you. I’m Mrs. Duffy, the housekeeper.”

She gave me a smile that was so warm that truly all my uneasiness vanished and I was glad to be here in this brightly lit room and by the warm fire.

“The mistress,” she said, “is his sister, Miss Eleanor. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d best tell her you’re here.”

She went out, her skirts whispering as she walked. The house was still but for the crackling of the fire. I turned to stare into the flames and thought of the man I had met on the path. How could I ever face him again? But perhaps I would not have to. No doubt I would deal most often with the mistress.

His sister, Mrs. Duffy had said. Was there no wife then? Surely there must have been, as there was a child. Perhaps his wife had died. That would explain why he was, as the housekeeper had put it, lonelyish.

I heard a movement and turned back toward the doorway to the hall, my eyes instinctively going upward, as one’s eyes do, to meet the face of a person of normal height. Mrs. Duffy had not warned me, nor had Mr. Tremayne. There was no reason why they should have, I suppose, and yet in that embarrassing second or two when I had to lower my eyes down to the level of a wheelchair, I could only wish that someone had made some reference to it.

Instinctive too was the shrinking feeling I experienced—pity, repulsion, even curiosity, and mixed with them was an urge to show no emotion at all.

I was aware, however, that I had shown them by the flicker of resentment—too strong a word, perhaps disdain?—that showed in her eyes. It was gone in an instant, and I saw now a crippled woman in a chair but a very strong-minded one who, having paused for whatever effect just within the room, now moved forward by her own efforts. I doubted very much that she would ever want someone to push the chair for her, for she gave that impression.

Mrs. Duffy had paused behind her in the doorway. She gave me a glance, encouraging, I thought, and said, “This is Miss Kirkpatrick, ma’am. I’ll bring the tea.” She disappeared down the hall.

“Sit down, Miss Kirkpatrick, please. I’m Eleanor Tremayne. We’ll have some tea in a moment.”

“How do you do?” I sat in the chair she had indicated. She wheeled herself about so that she was facing me across a tea table. I watched her hands as she turned the chair. They were strong and her wrists were thick and powerful. She did not smile easily but kept her mouth in a thin, straight line. Her hair, a dull brown color, was worn pulled sharply back from her face, giving her a masculine appearance.

For all of that, though, her eyes, while shrewd and appraising, were not unfriendly, and I thought she welcomed a new employee with more grace than might have been necessary.

We exchanged a few desultory remarks about my journey and the weather, plainly making conversation until the tea was brought in. In a moment Mrs. Duffy returned, bearing a silver tray which she placed in front of Miss Tremayne.

I had been wondering if I would meet Mr. Tremayne again. I rather hoped not, as I thought I would be embarrassed to face him so soon after my faux pas. Apparently I was to be spared that awkwardness, as there were only the two cups on the tray.

She poured, all the while asking me polite questions. I was an orphan, was I not? Had I no relatives at all, then? How long had I been at Mrs. White’s? Had I been to this part of the country before?

I answered her questions as openly and as pleasantly as possible. She had, after all, every right to know everything about me, and in fact my correspondence with her brother, which had led to my being hired sight-unseen, had not included a great many questions regarding my background, so that much of what she asked me was, from their point of view, new territory.

As I sipped my tea, I found it increasingly difficult to follow the conversation. I had traveled all day, most of it in a cold rain. The warmth of the fire combined with the warmth of the tea had made me drowsy and I found myself making an effort to keep my eyes open.

I must have actually begun to nod my head, because she said abruptly, breaking off some sentence the direction of which I had lost, “Why, how thoughtless of me. You’re tired, of course.”

I brought my head up with a jerk and said as quickly as I could, ‘Oh, no, it’s all right, really.”

“Nonsense,” she said, dismissing my protests with a quick gesture. “Would you ring for Mrs. Duffy, that cord over there, just by the door, thank you.”

I pulled the cord and heard a faint tinkling sound in the distance. In a moment, Mrs. Duffy bustled in and, at Miss Tremayne’s instructions, I was escorted off to my room.

As we were going out, though, Miss Tremayne asked me something that struck me as odd. “Miss Kirkpatrick,” she said, “are you a fanciful girl?”

I paused to look back at her. It was such an unexpected question that I had to think for a moment before answering.

“Why, I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know?”

“At Mrs. White’s, there was hardly any opportunity for being fanciful.”

“I see.” Those shrewd eyes of hers studied me so intently that I had to resist an urge to fidget. “Well, we shall have to hope that you are not.” She paused and in a lower voice added, “If you should have the opportunity.”

I hesitated a few seconds longer, but she had lowered her gaze and was studying her hands. Apparently I was dismissed. When I glanced at Mrs. Duffy she gave me a faint smile and led the way from the room, and I was obliged to follow her.

As she led me up the stairs, Mrs. Duffy kept up a steady stream of chatter, a nervous sort of chatter that sprang, I guessed, from her pleasure at having an audience. Fortunately none of it required much in the way of answers from me, for I found myself looking around with curiosity, examining my new surroundings.

It was a striking house, far more luxurious than anything I had been in before. At the same time, though, there was an artificiality about the place that jarred. It had a contrived look of oldness, but it was obvious at second glance that the house was really rather new. Mrs. White’s, for instance, had originally been a manor house and went back several hundred years, while I would not have guessed Green Willows to be more than, say, twenty or thirty years old.

Yet for all its newness, the house had an odd air of neglect, of disuse. I do not mean it was dirty or shabby. The light from Mrs. Duffy’s lamp gleamed smartly on silver and brass and freshly washed mirrors. The walls were paneled partway up in a very handsome dark wood and a rich brocade cloth covered above that. There was an emptiness, though, a hollow quality. When one spoke, one’s voice seemed to ring falsely on the air. It was like a house that, although kept up, has not been lived in for many years.

Perhaps I was only being fanciful indeed, and at any rate, I was glad to see that I would be living in such a fine house.

The stairs were wide and thickly carpeted. They went up straight to a landing and then off at right angles in either direction. As we reached the landing, the light showed a handsome portrait hanging there. In daylight it would dominate the stairs.

“Oh,” I said, pausing involuntarily, “how lovely.”

“Who? Oh, that, yes,” Mrs. Duffy said, pausing too. “That was the missus, his wife, the little girl’s mother. She is lovely, isn’t she? Her name was Angela and they say that’s exactly what she was, an angel.”

She lifted the lamp so that its light fell directly on the portrait, to reveal a slim, pale woman in a white gown, her creamy yellow hair tumbling about her face and shoulders. The artist had created for her a dreamlike setting of clouds and golden rays of light, and he had blended cloud and gown, light and hair, to make of his model a creature not only human, but a thing of gossamer and light and dreams—truly an angel, with that heavenly smile and those gentle, loving eyes.

I could hardly imagine her the wife of the man I had met on the path, who seemed so rough, so inelegant.

The portrait, however, had put me at ease on one point. I need not worry about the nature of the girl I was going to be teaching. With such a mother, could the child be anything but an angel herself?

I said as much to Mrs. Duffy as we continued on our way, and she smiled and said, “Little Elizabeth, aye, she’s an angel all right, never you worry about her, Miss.”

“Is her mother deceased, then?”

“Yes, some years ago, they say. But folks around here can’t talk nice enough about her.”

“Did you know her?” We had reached the upper corridor and I was led quickly toward the rear of the house.

“Me? Oh, no, Miss, I’ve only been here a few months. And it’s lonesome, I don’t mind saying. I’ll be glad for your company.”

“And I for yours, I’m sure,” I said. We had reached a closed door, which she swung open for me. “This is my first employment, you know.”

“Is it now? And you’ve come all the way here to Green Willows. There, I think you’ll like this room, Miss. I’ve lighted the fires and there’s a warming pan for you.”

It was a small but cozy room, with a four poster bed, a dressing table, a small wooden chair by the fire, and bright curtains at the windows.

“It’s lovely,” I said, not daring to tell her how it compared to the shabby cubbyhole I’d had at Mrs. White’s. “You certainly do seem to do everything, though.”

“I do what has to be done, Miss,” she said with an odd note of pique in her voice.

“Are there no other servants, then?” I put my shawl on the back of the chair. My bag, I saw, had been brought up.

“Not just now.” She took the pillows from the bed and began to fluff them.

The change in her manner struck an uneasy chord within me, and I began to think again of the strange warnings I’d gotten from the coach driver and woman at the inn. I was tired and susceptible, and suddenly I began to worry again.

Trying to still the worrisome voice within me, I said, “I suppose it’s a long walk from the village.”

“Oh, that. I walk it myself twice a week. No, we’ve got no shortage of help during the days.” She paused, pounding the pillow with such ferocity that I half expected it to burst and scatter a flurry of feathers about the room.

She added quickly, “They won’t stay nights. There, I think that’ll be comfortable for you.”

“Mrs. Duffy,” I said on a rising note, “is there anything wrong with Green Willows, or with the Tremaynes?”

“Wrong?” She looked flustered and I could see that she was embarrassed by my question, even though she had perhaps prompted it. She was a well-trained servant and as such knew the importance of loyalty to her employers. “Why, what on earth could have given you that idea, Miss? They’re very fine people, I’m sure, and as for Green Willows, why, it’s a lovely home, if it is a bit lonely.”

“Is it so isolated, then?” I asked, my anxiety hardly laid to rest. “Are there no visitors?”

“Visitors, Miss? To Green Willows?” Her expression made this seem so incongruous that my fears were again fanned into flame. But she would not let me voice them.

“Now, Miss,” she said in a soothing tone, “you’re tired, I expect, and you’re letting your imagination run away with you. What you want is a good night’s sleep.”

“But, I—”

“If you need anything, all you’ve got to do is pull that cord there,” she said, effectively silencing any further questions I might have. “Good night, Miss. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

With that she left, but not before pausing in the doorway to say again, “I’m that glad you’re here, Miss.”

I was left alone in my room. The fire crackled on the grate and the wind rattled the shutters in reply. I went to the window and looked out, but I could see little. Apparently we were right on the headland, as the earth seemed simply to drop away a hundred yards of so from the house. Although the grounds in front were beautifully landscaped, here it appeared that the darkness lay upon a barren hillside except for one old, gnarled tree that stood at the cliff’s very edge, its branches twisted into a grotesque parody of beseeching.

For all my worries, Mrs. Duffy was right. I was tired, and having thrown the bolt on my door, a perhaps unnecessary gesture that nonetheless gave me a greater peace of mind, I was soon in my bed and, grateful for the warming pan, asleep in no more than a few minutes.

* * * * * * *

I do not know how long I slept before I was awakened. The fire had burned down to a few glowing coals and the room was cold. Outside, the wind still rattled the shutters and thrust one icy draft across the floor of my room.

For a moment, I lay still muffled in sleep, trying to recall first where I was and then why I had awakened. Then I heard it again—a distant sound of sobbing.

I thought at once of my new pupil, Elizabeth. Was she crying in her bed, perhaps even because I was here? Some girls did so resent education, I knew. Perhaps to her I represented a loss of freedom, or a loss of the time she might otherwise spend with her father or her aunt, although I could not imagine Eleanor Tremayne truly comfortable in the presence of a child.

Hardly thinking, I slipped from my room and went to the door. I could hear the crying more clearly here. Yes, it was a girl’s voice, and not far away, I thought. I slid back the bolt and opened the door, stepping into the hallway. A distant candle or a lamp burned around a corner, giving the faintest of glows to the hall, which was empty.

I went back for my dressing gown, slipping quickly into it, and came into the hall again. I turned in the direction of the crying, and gave a little startled cry as someone moved just a few feet from me.

“Mr. Tremayne,” I breathed, so relieved to find it was only him that I forgot to be embarrassed at being found in the dark hall, in my dressing gown. “You startled me.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.” He came closer, those hard eyes staring down at me. “Is something wrong, Miss Kirkpatrick?”

“It was that sobbing,” I said. “It woke me and I came to see what was wrong.”

For a long moment he continued to stare at me. I cannot say that his face was expressionless. Indeed, it seemed full of expression, but of what I could not read.

“What sobbing?” he asked finally.

“Why, the sound of crying....” I stopped. Except for our whispering voices, the house lay still about us. “But, it...I heard it. You must have heard it too.” I felt as if that icy draft of air were moving up my spine.

“I heard nothing but your door open. I came to see what was wrong.”