The Governess Part 6

Suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed. The sound she heard now was a new one, and one that caused her flesh to tingle. It was the sound of a stealthy hand upon her door. The k.n.o.b turned noiselessly, the hinges gave a faint whine, and there on the threshold stood a white-robed figure, ghastly and spectral in the pallid light that fell upon it from the cloud-freed moon outside. Miss Blake did not utter a sound and the apparition glided forward with slow, measured steps until it stood beside her bed. Its eyes were staring and wide and fixed.

"It's Nan!" thought Miss Blake, not daring to speak aloud.

The apparition did not remove its gaze. Presently it sighed. Then it raised its head and spoke and its voice was weirdly low and mournful.

"Alas, alas!" it wailed. "This is the worst thing that ever happened to me in all my life. My dear old home! To think that anybody who isn't wanted should come and push herself like this into my dear old home! What does she know of the way I feel? I can never tell her how I hate to have her here, for that would be unladylike. But oh, how I hate it! No, I must keep my lips closed and bear her persecution in silence."

Two white hands were raised and wrung in a way that was truly tragic.

"O father, father!" groaned the ghost, making wild grabs at its hair, "come home from Bombay and save me from this awful woman. Turn her out of the house. Make her go back where she came from. Her hated form haunts me in my sleep and I dream all night of her as I see her in the daytime."

Miss Blake caught her breath in a struggling gasp of dread as to what would come next.

"Tall and thin and lanky, with hair all dragged into that ugly little hard k.n.o.b at the back of her head!"

The ghost paused, and its uneasy hands clasped each other convulsively while it showed plainly that it was confused in its mind and struggling to grasp a thought it could not express.

Miss Blake breathed a deep sigh of relief. She had really begun to suspect that it was a vision of herself that was haunting Nan in her nightmare. Of course now she knew better. For surely she was not "tall and lanky," and her hair was certainly not "dragged into an ugly little k.n.o.b at the back of her head." How grateful she was it had not proved to be herself.

"O father! her eyes are like needles."

Miss Blake could have shouted for joy. But who could this awful bugbear be?

"They p.r.i.c.k me when she looks! Save me! Save me! my heart will break if some one doesn't come and rescue me from this terrible person. Take her away! She's coming at me with her needly eyes! Daddy! Daddy!"

The uneasy spirit rocked backward and forward in the intensity of its emotion. It stretched out its arms and wagged a threatening forefinger, while it mumbled some unintelligible warning in a voice that faltered and wavered, and then frayed off to a mere wheeze that sounded suspiciously like a snore.

Miss Blake would have risen if she had dared, but she dreaded the effect even the slightest shock might have upon Nan, in what she never doubted was a somnambulistic trance. But when the white-robed figure turned slowly about and retraced its steps to the threshold, she started up and noiselessly followed after to make sure that the girl arrived safely in her own bed and showed no sign of further wandering that night.

Never was a pa.s.sage from room to room made more deliberately, and when the bed was reached the phantom scrambled into it, dragged the blankets closely about her shoulders and with a sigh of satisfaction settled herself to slumber.

The governess crept back to her own room, thoroughly chilled and shivering with nervousness. It was an hour or more before she felt herself growing drowsy, but at last she dropped asleep and slept heavily until long past the usual rising hour.

Nan waked at her accustomed time, feeling tired and irritable. She found Delia in the kitchen, preparing a tempting breakfast with more than her habitual care.

"Huh!" grunted the girl. "We have hot m.u.f.fins every morning, don't we?

And griddle-cakes! and eggs, and scallops, and fried potatoes, too!

Oh, no! we're not making any fuss for the governess. Oh, no! none at all! If I were you I'd be ashamed of myself, Delia Connor!"

Delia pursed her lips together and made no retort.

It did not improve Nan's temper to have to wait for her breakfast until Miss Blake should appear. But Delia made no attempt to serve her, and she was too proud to ask. Happily the delay was not too serious, and the governess appeared at the dining-room door just in time to prevent the m.u.f.fins from falling and Nan's temper from rising.

"Good morning!" said the cheery voice.

"--morning!" snapped Nan.

"I overslept," continued the governess apologetically; "and I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. I beg your pardon. But I was very tired. I did not sleep over-well the first part of the night."

"You're not late--or--or anything," said Nan. "I never get up till I feel like it."

Miss Blake made no comment.

"And how did you sleep?" she asked after a moment, her eyes laughing mischievously as though in spite of her, while her face remained quite sober.

"All right," responded Nan, uncommunicatively.

"No dreams?"

The girl shook her head non-committally.

"Now, I wonder whether I could tell you your dream," ventured the governess, the light fading a little in her eyes.

Nan did not encourage her to try.

"You were being pursued by some awful creature--oh, quite a gorgon, I should say!"

The girl lifted her head.

"This relentless creature was deaf to all your appeals, though you appealed to her touchingly, something after this style: Alas, Alas!

this is the worst thing that ever happened to me in all my--"

"Stop!" cried Nan, suddenly, with blazing eyes, "I didn't! I didn't!

Delia listened. She told on me. You're making fun of me, and you're both of you just as mean as you can be, so there!"

She started up from her chair, which she thrust behind her so roughly that it fell to the ground with a bang, and rushed toward the door in a fury of anger and mortification.

Miss Blake sprang from her place and tried to detain her, crying:

"Nan, Nan! What do you mean? I was only in sport! Come back, dear, and let me tell you all about it." But the girl fled past her, flinging her hand pa.s.sionately away and spurning her attempt at explanation. A moment later the street door flung to with a loud slam.

The quick tears sprang to the governess' eyes, but she crushed them back.

"Don't mind her, dearie," said Delia, consolingly, but with an effort and a sigh. "She ain't always like this. She's sorter upset just now.

She don't mean any harm, and she'll be sorry enough for what she's done come lunchtime. Now, you see."

"But I don't understand," Miss Blake cried. "She said you listened and that you told me, and that we were both making fun of her. She thinks we are in league against her. What can she mean? Why, I was only repeating some nonsense she said in her sleep last night, and I thought she would be amused to hear an account of it. She came into my room and orated in the most tragic fashion. What does she mean by saying you listened and told me?"

Delia shook her head. What she privately thought on the subject she would not have told Miss Blake for worlds.

"If you take my advice," she ventured, "you won't mind what Nan says.

She's quick as a flash, but she's got a good, big heart of her own, and it's in the right place, too. Just let her be."

"Let her be?" interrupted Miss Blake, hastily, "not if this is the way she is going to be. That is not what I am here for. I am here to educate her, Delia, and I intend to do it."

Delia could see that she meant what she said. There was a determined expression about her mouth that would have surprised Nan if she had seen it. But at noon, when she returned, the governess' face was as placid as ever. She and Delia were discussing the price of b.u.t.ter in the most intimate fashion possible, and Nan snorted audibly as she heard them agree that it was ruinously high.

Delia had played a poor enough part before, "kow-towing" to the enemy the first thing, but now she had deliberately betrayed her--Nan. Had "gone back on her" in the most flagrant fashion. It was the meanest thing she had ever heard of and she'd pay Delia back, you see if she wouldn't! To listen at key-holes and then go and tell-tale!