The Governess Part 27

"Huh!" she cried in an exasperated manner, "I know what you mean! You mean I am quite free to go and--take the consequences. That's what you mean."

Miss Blake paused but made no reply.

"But suppose there aren't any consequences?" pursued Nan, biting her lip and scowling darkly from between her knitted brows.

Miss Blake turned her head.

"There are always consequences," she said over her shoulder in a voice that was very low and serious.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SLEIGH-RIDE

The storm lasted for three days and then came a term of perfect weather. Under foot the snow was packed hard and tight into a compact ma.s.s over a bed of ice, and overhead the sun shone out from a cloudless sky, while the air was so keen that it kept the mercury very close to the zero mark even at midday.

"How is this for high?" demanded Ruth exultantly, as she and Nan met toward the end of the week, the first time they had seen each other since that stormy day when the subject of the sleigh-ride had first been broached to Miss Blake.

"The weather, you mean? Oh, perfectly fine!" responded Nan.

Ruth drew a step nearer to her.

"It's all arranged for to-night. Not a soul has refused; every one we've asked is going, and the sleigh is a regular old ark. We've got everything our own way. Mike, from the stables, is as solid as a brick wall. The horses are perfectly safe and we're going to have footstoves to keep our toes warm. Mrs. Cole has telephoned down to Howe's to have our supper ready, and we're going to have a simply stunning time."

Nan tried to smile, but failed, and Ruth was too full of her own affairs to notice.

"We're going to start at eight sharp. First we thought we'd pick up the party as we went along, but Mrs. Cole said it would waste too much time, so we're all going to meet at her house. I've so much on my mind my head's spinning. Be sure you're on hand at eight. We're not going to wait for any one."

"O Ruth!" faltered Nan, flinging out a detaining hand as the girl was about to go. "I'm not going. Didn't I tell you?"

Ruth stopped short and gazed at her in bewilderment.

"Not going! What on earth do you mean?"

"I can't go; that's all," stammered Nan, flushing hotly at the seeming weakness of the confession.

Ruth stared at her blankly.

"Well, I like that!" she enunciated at length.

"Why, I told you, didn't I?" asked Nan.

"Told me what? That you weren't going? Well, I should say not. Miss Blake said you couldn't but you said flat down you would, and, of course, I believed you. Don't you remember the last words you said as I went away that day were that I could count on you? And so, of course, I counted."

Nan stood and regarded the snow at her feet in silence.

"It's right-down mean to back out at the last minute when the party's all made up and the couples all arranged and you've given your word.

We've been awfully careful whom we've asked, because we only wanted a certain kind--not alone a certain number. Of course, we could get lots of girls to take your place and jump at the chance; but we prefer you, and you'd given your promise."

Nan ground the snow under her foot until it squeaked.

"I thought you were sick, or something, when you didn't come around,"

went on Ruth, sternly. "I never imagined for a minute it was because you meant to flunk and leave us in the lurch like this. If I'd thought that I wouldn't have gone to all the trouble I did to save you a place next to John Gardiner when Mary Brewster was fighting tooth and nail to get it."

The pinched snow squeaked again under Nan's grinding heel, this time louder than before.

"It's all nonsense, Miss Blake's not wanting you to go," pursued Ruth.

"Everything is as proper as pie, and if the boys get to carrying on a little too much Mrs. Cole will settle them in no time. She's real determined when she makes up her mind. What under the sun does Miss Blake think we are going to do? But that's no matter now. You gave me your word, and you've no right to go back on it. Besides, it'll set us all topsy-turvey with our accounts, for if you don't go of course you won't turn in your share of the tax, and we couldn't ask any one at the last minute just to come as a make-shift and expect her to pay for the privilege. The end of it will be the rest of us will have to make it up, and if you think that's fair I don't!"

"I'll gladly pay my dues," returned Nan, more meekly than Ruth had ever heard her speak. "You can ask any one you choose as my subst.i.tute, and say anything you please to explain my not going, and I'll stand by you."

This began to sound serious, and Ruth felt it was time to clinch her argument.

"If you go out Louie Hawes will, too. Her mother said she'd let Lu go if Miss Blake would let you, but that if Miss Blake objected she thought it would be best not to have Lu join. She said she made Lu's going entirely conditional on yours. So, you see, if you back out you'll not alone be breaking your promise, but you'll be breaking up the party and making a mess of it all round. I told Mrs. Hawes you were going, and Lu's heart is set on it. If she has to stay back now, at the last minute like this, it will disappoint her dreadfully, and I wouldn't blame her if she never spoke to you again."

Nan felt that she had been driven into a corner, and that there was but one way out of it. In spite of her strong desire to go with the girls, she had determined to stick to her resolve to stay behind. She had hardly known why she had tried to avoid them all these days. But now she knew. It was because she was afraid they would shake her resolution. Once she would have called herself cowardly for trying to spare herself such temptation, but now she knew better; she saw she had been simply wise. It would not have been brave, but merely reckless, to have done otherwise. She had known ever since Miss Blake spoke that she was free to do as she pleased. That she was held by no promise; that she was compelled by no stronger claim than Miss Blake's disapproval, which might be, after all, only a groundless personal prejudice, she thought. She hardly realized why she felt bound to obey. And now along came Ruth to prove that there were other claims outside Miss Blake's. She remembered perfectly having said that Ruth could count on her. Here was a very definite promise, although it had been made in half-ignorance, and she understood clearly that Ruth meant to make her keep it. Then, again, she was directly responsible for Louie's disappointment, and this seemed to her, as Ruth had intended it should seem, a compelling conclusion. If she had been older her reasoning would not have stopped here, but, as it was, she perceived only two sides to the question, and this that Ruth had just presented seemed infinitely more convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess'

seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, but Nan did not know it. She honestly believed she was waiving all considerations but those with which her duty was concerned, and she thought she had done so when she broke out with a sort of impatient groan:

"Oh, dear! I never saw such a tangle!"

"Well," returned Ruth grimly, "I don't know anything about that, but whatever it may be, I've got the strong end of the line and I mean to hold it. You've just got to go and that's all there is to it."

Nan gave a rueful laugh. She more than half-liked to have Ruth leave her no alternative. It somehow made her seem less responsible to herself. If the decision were taken out of her hands she could not be held accountable and--the enjoyment would be there all the same.

"I wish you'd let me off, Ruth," she protested weakly, as a sort of last sop to her conscience.

Ruth saw that she had prevailed and gave her head a triumphant toss.

"Well, I won't, so there! And what's more I can't stand here wasting time like this another minute. I have a hundred things to do before eight o'clock, so good-bye! Be sure you're on time for we won't wait a second, and if you don't arrive none of us will ever speak to you again, so there!"

Nan stood dumbly stubbing her toe into a little mound of snow quite a minute after Ruth had left her. She had not even glanced up when, in response to her friend's last declaration, she had said, "Very well; I'll be on hand," and her voice had sounded so flat and lifeless that Ruth thought it better to hasten off before the words could be recalled. When Nan spoke in that half-hearted tone Ruth had no faith in her strength of purpose. She walked home in a doubtful frame of mind, wondering if, after all, the promise would be kept.

But Nan had no such misgivings. She knew perfectly well that she was "in for it" now, but, strange to say, she felt no exultation in the prospect.

"Oh, dear!" she snapped out peevishly, with a last vicious dig of her heel into the snow, "every bit of enjoyment is taken out of it, I never saw anything so provoking, in the whole of my life. If Miss Blake only hadn't been so mean, I might have been spared all this fret and bother and been just as jolly as any of them. But how can a person have a good time when they know there's some one at home pulling a long face and making one feel as if one were breaking all the laws. It's just too bad, that's what it is."

But Miss Blake neither "pulled a long face" nor by any other means tried to impress Nan with a sense of her disapproval. She took her decision quietly, and made no comment upon it one way or the other.

But when it neared dressing time, and the girl had gone to her room to prepare, she tapped gently for admittance and came in, bearing in her hand a coquettish sealskin hood which she generously offered to Nan, saying:

"It's bitterly cold, and I know you won't want to tie a comforter about your ears. If you will wear this I shall be only too happy to lend it to you. See, the cape is so full and deep your chest and back can't get chilled, and it is not at all clumsy, as so many of them are. Try it on. I think it will be becoming and I know it will keep you warm."

Nan was at a loss for words. Miss Blake had none of the air of heaping coals of fire on her head, but just for a second the girl suspected her of it and hung back reluctantly. Then she looked into the frank, honest eyes and all her suspicion vanished.

"You're--you're awfully kind," she stammered, hastily.

"Try it on," repeated Miss Blake, cordially.

Nan took the soft, warm thing by its rich brown ribbons and, setting it snugly on her head, tied the strings into a big broad bow beneath her chin.