Chapter XV: A Tug of War

"Is Nan in?" asked Ruth, coming to the house one day in the very teeth of a blinding snowstorm, and putting the question to Delia with a very decided note of excitement in her voice.

"Yes, she's in; but she's pretty busy," replied Delia, showing the guest into the dining-room, where the bright logs were blazing cheerfully in the fireplace, and where Miss Blake, enveloped in a huge apron, was kneeling before the hearth and polishing its tiles till they shone like gems. She stopped to welcome the guest in her own hearty, informal fashion.

"O Ruth! come in and sit down. I wondered who could be brave enough to face a storm like this. Why, it is almost a blizzard. Take off your things, dear, and get warmed. You won't mind my going on with my work?"

"Oh, no! not at all. Please don't stop. Thank you. This is as comfortable as can be. But then, one always is comfortable here. I came to see Nan about something important. She's busy?"

"Yes, in her room. But if you don't mind waiting a little I think she will soon be able to come down," responded the governess genially.

"Then I'll sit here, if you don't mind," and the girl settled herself in an engulfing armchair with a sigh of satisfaction, her eyes following Miss Blake from place to place as she tripped briskly about, energetically wielding her dust cloth and whisk broom and humming contentedly as she worked.

"Perhaps you won't approve of the plan that I've got in my mind, and won't let Nan go into it," ventured Ruth, presently.

"I can't fancy you suggesting anything that I would so seriously disapprove of as that," returned Miss Blake, smiling kindly, but asking for no further enlightenment on the subject than her guest was inclined to give of her own accord.

"Well, then, it's this: If the cold weather lasts we'll have elegant sleighing, with all this snow, and I want to hire a sleigh, just any common old thing will do, and fill it with straw, and all of us girls and boys go off on a screamingly fine sleigh-ride. If it clears we'll have a full moon, and I think it would just be the jolliest thing in the world. Now please say Nan can go. She'll love to I know, and she always makes things snap so," pleaded the girl, fixing her eyes on Miss Blake's face with a peculiar intensity of expression.

The governess hesitated.

"Oh, please say she can," reiterated Ruth.

"My dear Ruth, I can't say anything until I know more of the matter. You say you girls and boys are to go. What girls and boys do you mean?"

"Why, Lu and Grace and Mary and the Buckstone girls, of course; and John Gardiner and Harley Morris and Everett Webster, and oh! all those fellows--the ones in our set; you've met them all."

"And is there to be no grown woman in the party--no chaperone?" suggested Miss Blake.

Ruth looked down and began picking a thread from the thumb of her glove.

"Oh, of course; mamma wouldn't let me go unless there was a chaperone," she replied after a moment, but tamely, with the ring all faded out of her voice.

"No, I am sure she would not," the governess remarked dryly.

"I thought of you at once," Ruth began again with an upward glance that however did not meet Miss Blake's eye. "But then we all thought that it would be too much to ask of you--to ride all those miles with a noisy crowd in the cold and night, and--so on, and so--so--just before I came here I ran into Mrs. Cole and asked her to chaperone us, and she said she would."

The governess laid her duster on a chair, and unbuttoned her apron very deliberately.

"Mrs. Cole," she repeated half-aloud, as if speaking to herself, and her tone had something in it that seemed to call for some sort of justification from Ruth.

"You know she's just been married, and she's as full of fun as she can be. And she likes a good time immensely, and loves to be with us girls, and it won't bore her a bit to go, and it's ever so much better to have her than--than--some one who wouldn't enjoy it, you know."

"Is Mr. Cole to be of the party?" Miss Blake inquired, still with that odd inflection.

"Why, no," responded Ruth, twisting her handkerchief into a hard knot. "There won't be room for him. But Mrs. Cole said it didn't matter in the least. She says she often goes off and leaves him, and he has just as nice a time sitting home with his cigar and a book or something."

"They have been married, I think, three months," Miss Blake commented half to herself.

"Yes, about," replied Ruth. "And Mrs. Cole is just as gay and jolly as she ever was. You may think that it isn't very dignified for a married woman to--"

"Oh! my dear Ruth," interrupted the governess hastily, "I am not disparaging Mrs. Cole, and I have no right to express an opinion concerning her conduct, but I think--yes, I am quite sure that I prefer Nan not to join your party."

Ruth jumped from her chair with a cry of protest: "O Miss Blake! Don't say that! Think of it, we're going to drive down as far as Howe's and have a supper and it will be such fun. We want Nan awfully. She's just the best company in the world, and if she doesn't go it will be--well, it will be too bad. Do please say she may."

Miss Blake shook her head somewhat sadly. "I can't say so, Ruth. There are special reasons why Nan ought not to go--reasons that I can only explain to her, but which I am sure she will understand. You other girls have your mothers, but Nan has none, and that means that she has no protector, now that her father is absent, unless I can stand in such a relation to her. Believe me, I do not voluntarily deny Nan any pleasure, but there are some instances in which I must."

"But it's going to be perfectly proper," Ruth insisted, almost in tears. "You don't think my mother would let me go if it wasn't going to be perfectly proper, do you, Miss Blake?"

The governess stood before the fire and rested her arm on the high mantel-shelf, tapping the fender lightly with the toe of her slipper. At Ruth's question she turned her head quickly from the flames toward the girl with a compassionate smile.

"No," she hastened to declare, "I am sure your mother would not let you go to anything that she knew to be in any respect not altogether as it should be."

There was just the shade of an emphasis on the word knew--just the merest breath of a pause before it. Miss Blake gazed frankly and fearlessly into the girl's eyes as she spoke, and Ruth's lids dropped suddenly as if she had been trying to look at the sun and it had blinded her.

There was a pause and in it they could distinctly hear Nan's feet going to and fro on the floor above their heads, and her sharp young voice shouting the chorus of some tuneless popular air, in her own perfectly cheerful, earless fashion.

"Oh, Miss Blake, please!" quavered Ruth.

If she had known the governess as well as Nan did she would have known that it was worse than useless to "tease." As it was, she was aware of some force here that did not appear in her own easy-going mother, and unconsciously she bowed to it--but even as she did so she gave a last wail of entreaty from pure force of habit.

"Please, Miss Blake!"

"No, Ruth. I can't consent to Nan's joining you. If she goes, it will be in direct defiance of my authority and against my wish and approval. But when she hears what I have to say I do not think she will go."

"Don't think who will go?" demanded an eager voice, as Nan came pelting in at the door, having flung down stairs in such a whirl that they had scarcely realized she had started before she was here.

"Heyo, Ruth! When did you come? You're a dear girl to venture out a day like this! Who'll go where, 'you don't think,' Miss Blake?"

Ruth rose and began dragging on her gloves. "Hello," she said, blankly, in return for the other's greeting.

"Who'll go? Who'll go?" insisted Nan, tapping the floor with her foot to emphasize her impatience.

Ruth looked at Miss Blake a little sullenly, and said nothing. Miss Blake looked at Nan.

"You," she returned simply. "I was just saying to Ruth that I am sure you would not go anywhere against my plainly expressed wish."

The girl threw back her head with an unrestrained laugh.

"Oh, now, you're bragging!" she cried breezily. "Don't count too much on me. I'm a queer creature. I don't know what I'd do if I were hard put!"

Ruth glanced at Miss Blake again as she buttoned her coat. The governess' face was quite placid, but there was an expression in her eyes that was quite new to the girl and that she did not care to face.

"The fact of the matter is, Nan," Miss Blake explained, "Ruth has come here to invite you to join a sleighing party to be given--what night did you say, Ruth?"

"The first clear one," responded the girl still sullenly.

"The first clear night," resumed Miss Blake. "All your friends are going, and it would give me as much pleasure to have you join them as it would you to do so, but--under the circumstances it is impossible to do anything save--" she paused an instant, and Nan broke in impatiently:

"Under what circumstances? There aren't any circumstances! A sleighing party! Why, it'll be just magnificent and gorgeous! Of course I'll go. Hurrah! Ruth, you're a dear to ask me! Go? Well, I should think so!"

Ruth fastened her fur boa about her neck, and murmured something almost inaudible about having to hurry home.

"Well, you can count on me," cried Nan, flinging her arm about her friend's waist and escorting her to the door. "Good-bye! Thanks heaps for asking me! Las' tag!"

The front door slammed, and the girl came back to the library with her cheeks aglow and her eyes flashing. "What fun!" she exclaimed. "I know what we'll do! We'll go down to Howe's and have a supper and a jolly good time generally. Mary Brewster and Grace and Ruth had it all planned out for the next good snow, and I'd forgotten. O goody!"

Miss Blake was standing as they had left her, by the fire, with her foot upon the fender and her hand upon the high mantel-shelf. Now she took them both down and turned to Nan, saying in a low, controlled voice:

"Nan, I want to talk to you about this party. And you must hear me out, even if some of the things I am about to say do not please you." She kept her eyes on the girl's face as she spoke, and saw its expression change quickly from one of eager anticipation to one of growing apprehension and then again to one of dogged opposition. So vivid were these changes that she almost lost the necessary courage to go on, for she read in them that her task promised to be no easy one.

"Well?" said Nan, tapping her foot impatiently, as Miss Blake did not at once continue.

"Please sit down here, and I will try to say what I have to say as quickly as possible," resumed the governess, drawing a long breath.

Nan obeyed, but with a decidedly impatient fling of herself upon the low ottoman Miss Blake had indicated.

"As I said to Ruth," the low voice commenced, "under almost any other circumstances it would give me the greatest pleasure to know that you were to enjoy this sleighing party with the others. If Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes were going it would settle the question at once."

"Or if you were," suggested Nan, with a curl other lip.

Miss Blake's face paled, and for an instant she regarded Nan in a sort of surprised, hurt silence. Then she replied, steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and--I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must--she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, impressionable girls like yourself."

"Oh, pshaw!" interrupted Nan, impatiently. "There's nothing against her at all. She's lots of fun, and a body'd be a great goose that tried to suit all the old frumps in town. She said so herself, and she's married and she knows."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Miss Blake's face. Nan's emphasis reflected so directly on her own condition of unauthoritative spinsterhood.

"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone, one who will be no more of a restraint than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid the party will prove a rather uproarious one. And I cannot help thinking that this is precisely the reason Mrs. Cole has been asked to attend you; that you might not be under any restraint. I don't for a moment think any of you girls would deliberately take advantage of your liberty, but you are full of animal spirits, and when you get in full swing it is a little hard, perhaps harder than you know, to rein yourselves in. I am afraid Ruth has not been quite candid with her mother. At all events, I am sure that if Mrs. Andrews realized the circumstances she would think twice before letting Ruth go. It is not only that I think Mrs. Cole will not prove a restraint; I am afraid she will intentionally lead you on. And if she does, I am afraid your sleigh-ride will be decidedly unconventional."

"I hope we'll have a splendid time," announced Nan, setting her jaws with a snap of her teeth.

But the governess went on as if she had neither seen nor heard.

"It is very important, Nan, that you especially should not be identified with anything of the sort. It might injure you in such a way that the harm could never be repaired." She paused and Nan straightened herself with a jerk.

"I'd like to know why it's more important for me than for the other girls? If their mothers think it's good enough for them I guess it's good enough for me, and if they can be trusted I guess I can."

Miss Blake hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went on steadily and firmly, but without the least suggestion of sternness in her voice or manner.

"The reason is simply this: You have not had the advantages the other girls have had. You have had no mother; no careful, loving training from the first, and--excuse me, dear--your behavior has shown it. How could it be expected not to do so? People have criticized you, and their criticisms have been severe, unjust even. Lately you have set yourself right with most of your neighbors, but it has been hard work, and it has been only begun. It will still be hard work to keep their good opinion. If you want to hold a place in their esteem you must earn it and keep on earning it. The other girls might do with perfect safety what you could not dream of doing, because in them it would be looked on merely as a single slip; with you it would be backsliding. Do you understand me, Nan?"

There was no reply, but the girl's bent head was answer enough. Miss Blake passed her hand tenderly over the roughened hair, and for a long time there was silence between them. Nan was thinking, and Miss Blake was content to let her think.

The tall clock in the corner tapped out the minutes with slow, even ticks. The fire burned steadily on the hearth, and the logs settled as they burned. Outside the high wind raced madly around bleak street corners, carrying the snow before it in white, blinding clouds. The air was so full of the swirling, eddying flakes that it dimmed the light and made evening seem to have settled down long before its usual time. Every now and then there came to them from the conservatory a faint, faint breath from a blossoming daphne, as though the delicate thing were breathing out sweet gratitude for its shelter from the storm.

Nan could not help responding to the quieting influence of it all. It was very, very different from the place as it used to be, and she felt the difference and the suggestiveness of it more now than she had ever done before.

Suppose the change in herself was as marked as this? Every one seemed to like her nowadays. They said she was altered and improved, and if they said so, she supposed it must be true. What, then, if she were to turn about and be her old self again?

What if Miss Blake were to give the house its old aspect again? Ugh! It was disheartening even to think of such a thing. But granting that she were to let things go back, she couldn't undo some of the improvements she had made? So it seemed reasonable to Nan that even if she let herself be as she had been for awhile, just to rest from the constant trying to be good, for a day or so, the really important changes must still remain; like the dumbwaiter and the wall paper and the frescoes and the woodwork. And, pshaw! Just going to this sleigh-ride wasn't going to prove that she was backsliding, anyway! Miss Blake was too particular--making an awful fuss over nothing. Mrs. Cole was all right enough. Lots of nice people knew her, and the girls always liked to have her around, she was so gay and jolly. And now that she was married, it was fun to have her chaperone them, for she never interfered, nor was wet-blankety, like mothers and people, no matter what was going on. In fact, she often urged them on and suggested things the girls themselves would never have thought of, so that wherever she was the fun promised to run high. It was too bad of Miss Blake to have put the case as she had. It simply meant that if Nan went she deliberately disobeyed her wish and defied her authority.

For the first time the girl seemed to get a glimpse of the tactful, tender way in which she had been guided. She saw that this was the first instance in which she had been put under definite restraint. Always before Miss Blake had left her seemingly to decide for herself, and she had never been aware of the influence that led her in the right direction.

But this was different. This was discipline, and she rose against it instantly.

If she did not go on the sleigh-ride she would only be obeying Miss Blake's injunction. There was no credit or virtue in that. There might be some satisfaction in denying one's self a pleasure if one felt one were independent, and that what one did was self-abnegating and laudable. But if one acted under compulsion--! Pooh! Nan guessed Miss Blake thought she was a mere child to be ordered about like that.

And yet, with all this, there was a strange unfamiliar tugging at her heart to confess herself willing to obey. She actually had to make an effort to keep from doing so. She scarcely knew how it happened, but all at once she became conscious that she had shaken herself together and that she was saying, in no very gracious voice to be sure, but still that she was saying, "Well, if you will have it your own way, you will I suppose. There! I promise you I won't go on the sleigh-ride. Now, does that satisfy you?"

Miss Blake took her hand from Nan's hair so hastily that the girl lifted her head in astonishment. But the governess had neither the air of being angry nor of being wounded as she feared. She simply rose and said in quite a matter-of-fact tone as she turned toward the door:

"I demanded no promise of you, Nan, and I give you back your word. Moreover, I entirely recall my injunction. Do as you please. If you decide to go you will neither be disobeying my order nor breaking your own promise. You are quite free and untrammeled, my dear."

Nan sprang to her feet.

"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.