beyond that first, cold exchange. We had seated ourselves, Mr. Tremayne and I, in two chairs near the window, and the girl had taken a stiff-looking wooden chair facing us. She sat with her feet properly together, her hands folded neatly in her lap, but I could still see the air of barely contained excitement, and her eyes, which were the only part of her moving just now, went continually from her father to me.
The silence grew oppressive. I could hear the steady tick-tock of a grandfather’s clock in the hall, and a fly buzzed impudently about my head. The scent of old spices perfumed the room, along with a tang of sea air, and something that at first I could not identify but finally recognized as gardenia. I decided that the girl was wearing a scent, and wondered if her father approved at her young age. Scents would have been forbidden to the young ladies at Mrs. White’s.
The door opened suddenly, breaking the stillness so abruptly that I started. Neither father nor daughter noticed me, however, for their eyes had gone at once to the archway that led to the hall. I looked too, just as a tall, weather-beaten man appeared in it, stooping his head slightly because he was tall and the archway was not. He had pewter colored hair and eyes not much darker, which now swept the room coldly, settling on me.
Mr. Tremayne had risen as the commander entered, and in way of introduction, he said, “This is the new governess.”
“Damn fool nonsense,” was the disdainful reply.
I had started to rise, but at this, I thought better of it and settled stiffly back into my chair, my face coloring slightly.
“We’d better talk in here,” Mr. Tremayne said, leading the way out of the room. With another icy scowl about the parlor, as if he suspected I had been purloining his ships’ fittings, the commander followed him.
Elizabeth and I were left alone, and again the silence descended, although I could hear the men’s voices faintly in the distance, the commander’s occasionally rising sharply on some obscenity.
“I’m Mary Kirkpatrick,” I said, addressing the girl for the first time. “I’m to be your new governess.”
“I know.” She smiled, bringing her face to such life that at last she looked like the girl she was and not the little old woman she had been imitating. “If Grandfather allows it,” she added.
“I can’t see why he would not,” I said, more sharply than I intended.
She bit her lip and I could see she was torn between making some reply to this or keeping silent. I was about to say that, of course, she knew the situation better than I did, when she spoke again.
“He wants me sent away to school,” she said. “Somewhere far away. He speaks often of France.”
I thought it peculiar that nothing of this had been said to me and that I had been hired and brought into the middle of this conflict before it was properly settled, as if Mr. Tremayne had been trying to produce a fait accompli.
Aloud, I said diplomatically, “Perhaps he has reasons for thinking that best.”
She suddenly jumped up from her chair and crossed the room to me, dropping to one knee so that she could look me straight in the face. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Oh, he has his reasons, all right. He wants to keep me away from Green Willows. He would do anything to keep me from there.”
The remark, so unlike anything I had been prepared for, struck a responsive chord in my own disquiet, which I quickly tried to quell.
“Don’t you like Green Willows?” I asked.
“Like it?” She looked aghast at the suggestion, as if I had wounded her to the quick. “Oh, Miss Kirkpatrick, if you only knew. I love Green Willows. I want to go back. You’ve got to help me, help me persuade them to let me come home to Green Willows.”
“Why, I...,” I stammered, nonplussed. “Surely if your father and your grandfather both want you here, why...but there must be a reason.”
“They’re trying to keep me from my mother.”
At that moment we heard their steps in the hall. In a twinkling she had leaped up and regained her chair, and when the two men came into the room, they found us as before, I with my face somewhat reddened, her expression one of innocent—although hesitant—expectancy.
I could not but wonder what exactly she was expecting of me.
* * * * * * *
I do not know what conversation had passed between Mr. Tremayne and Commander Whittsett while they were out of the room, but the result of it was that it was agreed I would begin lessons with Elizabeth the following morning, which seemed to please Elizabeth greatly, although she was careful to remain restrained.
I was properly introduced to her and to the commander, who acknowledged me grudgingly. “I think it only fair to tell you,” he said, “that I was and am opposed to bringing a governess in here for my granddaughter. I believe she should be sent away to a proper school. But I have agreed to go along with this arrangement for the time being. Later, we shall see.”
“I shall do my best to produce the results you desire,” I said, “but that shall be easier if I know exactly what they are.”
He looked a bit taken aback by my boldness, as he no doubt had a right to be. I thought I saw a fleeting smile on Mr. Tremayne’s face, although I could not imagine what he found amusing. His daughter looked quite surprised. I suppose no one ever spoke up to the commander. Indeed, I was not a little frightened of him myself, but I believe in facing up to things. If I were to please him, and I thought that I would have to do that to retain my position, I must know what he had in mind.
“Why, what I desire,” he said, “is to see my granddaughter properly educated and to see her kept from any unhealthy influences.”
This reply was so plainly rude that I forgot altogether my promise to myself to keep my Irish temper on the shelf. “Well, sir,” I said, “as to her education, I have come from a school that has a fine reputation and teaches the latest methods, and I shall endeavor to give your granddaughter as good an education as she would get there, which is to say as good an education as she could get anywhere. And as for the other, I truly hope that neither she nor you will find me an unhealthy influence.”
I do not know what I expected in the way of a response to this, but now that I had spoken, my temper had cooled somewhat, so that I would not have considered it surprising or inappropriate if he had struck me with a bolt of lightning.
He did not answer for a long moment, and this time the room’s silence was quite ominous. I supposed that I would be dismissed on the spot and was already thinking ahead to my ignominious return to Mrs. White’s.
“I did not mean to imply that you were an unhealthy influence,” he said, speaking coolly. “And as to your credentials, I have no doubt they are impeccable, else my son-in-law would not have hired you for the job. I believe I can trust him in that.”
I think he might have said something more, probably about my manners, but Mr. Tremayne intervened, stepping quickly to my side and taking my arm.
“Then if everything’s settled, we’ll go now,” he said. “Miss Kirkpatrick will take up her duties in the morning, as we’ve agreed.”
He
