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 mass 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 substitute, 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.

"It's not so unbecoming!" commented the governess, observing Nan critically with her head on one side.

Nan looked in the mirror. What she saw there was the reflection of a flushed, excited face with keen, young eyes that were just now unusually large and bright. Sundry riotous tendrils of hair had escaped from their restraining combs and were flying loose at the temples, and, framing all, was a circle of dusky, flattering fur which lent a look of softness and roundness to the firm, square chin and rose above the brow in a quaint, coquettish peak which was vastly graceful and becoming.

"O Miss Blake!" cried Nan, her eyes flashing with pleasure, "isn't it the darlingest thing? And as warm as toast! I'll be ever and ever so careful of it. You're awfully good to lend it to me. But I really think I oughtn't to take it. Something might happen; it might get lost."

"Don't give it another thought," Miss Blake said, kindly. "Just wear it and keep warm and comfortable. You must take the gloves, too. They will keep your fingers cozy."

So Nan set out looking like a young Russian in her borrowed furs and feeling what satisfaction she might in the consciousness that she was appearing, if not behaving, at her best.

She found most of the party already assembled at Mrs. Cole's and as the door was opened to her, a loud chorus of shouting laughter met her ears and she was laid hold of by a dozen hands and dragged forward under the gaslight.

"Pooh!" shrieked the chorus again. "This one's easy enough! Nan Cutler! first guess," and she was released as hurriedly as she had been set upon, while the entire company fell upon a later comer and tried to discover the identity of the muffled, veiled individual before she had either spoken or recovered from the unexpected onslaught.

"Well, Nan," cried Harley Morris, jovially, "you're the only girl who isn't muffled out of all recognition. We've had a dandy time trying to identify some of them."

"I never saw you look so well," declared Louie Hawes, generously, with her eyes glued to the fascinating peak.

"Nor I," broke in Mary Brewster. "Really, I didn't know you at first. That hood is as disguising to you as our veils are to us."

Nan flushed, but made no response. Harley Morris gave a low whistle and strolled off to join John Gardiner, who was standing before the fire talking with grave-faced Mr. Cole, and as he went she heard him murmur under his breath:

"Sweet remark! Oh, these dear girl friends!"

It instantly changed her feeling from momentary resentment toward Mary to pity for her.

All at once Mrs. Cole's shrill treble was heard high above the hum and murmur of the other voices, crying:

"Now, girls and boys, time's almost up! It any of the party's missing, he or she will be left behind! Prompt's the word."

Then, stepping over to her husband, she tapped him lightly on the shoulder and said:

"There now, Tom, I'm glad we're going, for you're looking as solemn as an owl. Cheer up and have a lovely time with your book and that jolly fire, and don't forget to go to bed at nine o'clock like a good little boy."

Mary Brewster laughed, and most of the others joined in her merriment. But Mr. Cole looked so troubled and stern that Nan, who was gazing at him from the corners of her eyes, saw no reason to laugh at his wife's sally, but felt a much greater inclination to cry for pity of him and his anxious face.

Suddenly she was roused from her musing by John Gardiner's voice close at her ear.

"Nan!" he said.

"Oh, heyo, John!"

"I want to tell you something," he went on, nervously, in a hesitating whisper. "From the looks of her, Mrs. Cole means to carry things with a high hand to-night. Hope we won't come to grief. Sometimes the motto is 'everything goes,' and then it isn't so easy to hold back and stand for the things you ought to. I depend on you, Nan, to keep a level head, for some of us'll have to act as ballast or we'll all go under."

Nan's face glowed with gratification. "All right, John," she responded staunchly, and then, Mrs. Cole giving the signal, in an instant the roomful seemed to fling itself helter-skelter to the hall-door, fastening boas and mufflers as it went, all eager and breathless to be off. There was a deal of laughing and exclaiming, shrieking and protesting as the girls were bundled, one after another, into the sleigh.

"Is this you, Lu?"

"Yes. O dear! I have lost my veil. No, here it is, dragged under my chin."

"I thought I was to sit next to you, Nan!"

"Oh, that's all right, Mary's there, and it's too late to change now. No matter."

John Gardiner leaped up.

"I say there, Mike, hold your horses for a second. Would you mind moving down a place, Mary? Thanks! Mrs. Cole said I was to sit next to Nan, and as we are all under her orders to-night I'm bound to obey. There! this is what I call festive! 'A thorn between two roses,' eh?" and he settled himself comfortably between the two girls with a great, hearty laugh and a final "Ready!" at which word the horses started into a brisk trot. Their bells broke into a silver chime; the sleigh swept smoothly over the glaze of snow, and the evening's fun began.

Some one had brought a tin horn, and this was blown with such a vim that conversation was impossible. But remarks and retorts were shouted from one side to the other, and the tamest of them brought forth peals of laughter.

The heaven above them was densely black, and out of it flashed innumerable stars like sparks white-hot and quivering with inward fire. But the wind that swept across the sky was so cold that it made it seem to contract and retreat and leave the shivering world an inconceivable depth below.

Swathed and bundled as they were, the girls very soon began to feel the deadly chill in the icy air.

"Nan's shivering like an ash-pan!" John cried out suddenly. "Has anybody got an extra shawl or something they can lend her?"

"Hush!" returned the girl, trying to control her trembling, "it's nothing; I'm all right."

"Pity she can't keep warm with John Gardiner beside her!" Mrs. Cole suggested.

In the shadow Nan's teeth came together with a snap of disgust. She saw now what it was in Mrs. Cole that offended Miss Blake. She had never noticed it before, but it had been there, and she knew it. John made no retort, while the others laughed and applauded.

"Here, Nan!" spoke up some one at the other end of the sleigh, "here's a cigarette. Take it and warm yourself before its genial blaze," and it was passed along from hand to hand, its ruddy point glinting out in the shadow as it went along. When it came to Mary, instead of handing it on at once, she held it a moment, then suddenly raised it to her lips.

"Hey, there! Turn off the draught!" cried its owner merrily at sight of the newly-glowing tip.

"Shut down the damper!" shouted some one else.

"I dare you to smoke it!" laughed Mrs. Cole.

Mary deliberately took a long puff.

Nan leaned back behind John and laid her gloved hand impulsively on Mary's shoulder. "O Mary!" she protested in a whisper. "Don't. Please! It'll make you sick."

But the girl was not to be thwarted. She shook off Nan's hand impatiently.

"Mind your own business!" she replied, and took another puff.

On they swept through the icy air, across the snow-covered country, amid the white night. The horn blew; the voices sang and shouted, and finally the sleigh swung up before the hospitable road-house, where every window was alight and their steaming supper awaited them.

It was harder to get out of the sleigh than it had been to get in it, for joints that at first had been limber and strong were now stiff and cramped from cold and disuse, and the girls made a sorry show, limping and halting from the sleigh to the house. When Nan first gained the ground she could hardly stand, but a little vigorous exercise soon sent the blood tingling through her veins again and unknotted her muscles, and she was about to run gayly up the path when she felt a hand upon her shoulder, and looking round saw Mary Brewster beside her, her face ghastly and drawn in the pallid moonlight and her chin quivering weakly in a manner that Nan saw at once was not the effect of the cold.

"Lean on my shoulder and I'll get you up to the house in a jiff," she said, in a low whisper.

Mary clung to her, wavering and faint, without a word, and in the confusion no one noticed her plight. Nan had fairly to drag her up the steps, and then again up the staircase to the room the woman of the place had showed them when Nan had drawn her aside and told her of their dilemma.

"It's the cold!" gasped Mary, crying abjectly between her spasms of misery.

"No such thing!" returned Nan stoutly. "It's that villainous cigarette. But never mind now. There! Don't think of anything but getting better. I'll stroke your head for you. It must be aching terribly."

So she soothed and comforted the girl as best she could, and the kind mistress of the house came up every now and then with offers of help and reports of how the supper was progressing below, and after a while Mary grew quieter and could do something beside moan and cry and wring her hands over her own wretchedness.

"Nan," she whispered presently in a conscious-smitten voice, "I want you to leave me and go down stairs. You've given up the best part of the fun for me, but you shan't lose it all. Please go down!"

Nan shook her head. "No, you don't, ma'am!" she declared cheerfully, and Mary was too exhausted to argue the question. She felt deliciously drowsy and the freedom from pain made her tearfully happy. Vague, dreamy thoughts were wandering through her brain, and one of them was that Nan had been very kind to her. She had not deserved it. She had been mean to Nan. She admitted it. She ought to beg her forgiveness. It was so good to be out of pain that she was willing to do anything to prove her gratitude. She opened her eyes and saw Nan bending over her with a face full of sympathy. She put up her hands and drew the face down to hers, her lip trembling like a little child's.

"Kiss me, Nan!"

Nan kissed her.

"I want you to forgive me. I've been hateful to you and you've been generous and kind and--I love you for it. I'd like to be your friend--if you'd let me, after the way I've treated you."

Nan kissed her again. "Never mind that now. We'll begin all over, and I guess I can behave a little better myself. Now go to sleep and get a good nap before it's time to go home."