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
