Chapter XVII: Consequences

As soon as she saw that Mary had fallen soundly asleep Nan rose and slipped noiselessly down stairs. She had no trouble in finding the supper-room, for she had only to follow the echoing sounds to be led directly to the door. She stood a moment on the threshold before she laid her hand upon the knob. It seemed to her she had never heard such a hub-bub, but as she listened she seemed to hear, over and above it all, Miss Blake's soft voice saying quietly:

"If you and the other girls have no more careful a chaperone than Mrs. Cole, I am afraid your party will prove a rather uproarious one."

"Rather uproarious!" Nan smiled, as she repeated the words to herself. Then she turned the knob and pushed open the door.

The clamor surged louder than ever, and for a second seemed almost to stun her. Dishes were clattering, and every one seemed doing his or her best to add to the tumult and confusion. No one noticed Nan standing dumbly in the doorway, and it was only when some one's eye fell upon her as she took a step or two forward that there was a cry of "Hullo! Here's Nan!" and she was pulled to the table, forced into a chair, and plied with all sorts of dishes and questions, until she put her hands to her ears and begged for mercy.

"Here's some salad! Take this!"

"The jelly's most gone and what's left of it is melted. But you're welcome to it such as it is and what there is of it."

"Where have you been all this time?"

"We've been calling you every sort of a name for being so rude as to stay away from the supper."

"Oh, Nan had her good reason," shouted Mrs. Cole, pushing back her chair and springing to her feet.

"Come, girls and boys!" she cried shrilly, "it's getting late. If we want to dance we'd better be about it."

Of course that led to a general uprising, and in a moment the whole tableful was swarming toward the parlor.

"How do you like it, Nan?" asked John Gardiner, quizzically, coming and leaning toward her to whisper the question in her ear, as they stood at one side waiting for the music to begin.

"Like it!" repeated Nan, "I think Mrs. Cole's simply--well, I'm sorry she was ever asked to come. It would all have been so different if we had had Mrs. Andrews or Mrs. Hawes or--just imagine Miss Blake acting as she has to-night!"

"I can't imagine it!" returned John, emphatically, "and worse yet, Mike is in no condition to drive us home. He's been drinking. I went out to see if the horses were all right and being fed, you know, and there I heard about it. Mike simply mustn't drive."

Nan pressed her hands together and gave a stifled groan.

"That's what I wanted to tell you," continued John, hurriedly. "It isn't safe to let him try and I'm going to take his place myself. I don't know how long I can stand it, for it's colder than ever and I haven't any driving gloves, but I'll do the best I can and perhaps some of the other fellows will lend a hand."

Nan thought a minute. "I tell you what," she declared at last, "I'm going to do part of the driving myself. I'll sit up front and when you give out I'll lend a hand and we'll get through somehow. I've Miss Blake's gloves and they are as warm as toast."

The anxious look faded a little from John's face, and in spite of himself he showed he was relieved. "I may not have to give up at all," he said at length; "but if I do there's not a fellow in the whole lot I'd rather trust the reins to than you. Come! They're making a move. Get your things on as quick as you can and be where I can see you so we can take our places without making too much talk."

In a twinkling Nan had flown upstairs, roused Mary and helped her to get ready and was hooded and cloaked and standing in the hall-way. The others came up one by one and presently the big door was opened and they trooped through it out into the waiting sleigh. John gave Nan a hand and she sprang quickly to the place beside him on the driver's seat. They started.

It proved a very different matter sitting on that unsheltered box facing the wind to cuddling, as they had done before, among the warm straw with their faces shielded from the current by the high protecting sides of the sleigh, and after a very little while Nan had to set her teeth to keep from crying out for the pain in her stinging cheeks.

Back of them the rest of the party shouted and tootled and yodeled as cheerfully as ever. Every one wanted to know what had become of Mike, and as nobody could tell but John and Nan, and they wouldn't, the questions went unanswered, and by and by the subject was dropped and only occasional spiteful jokes made by Mrs. Cole at the expense of John's driving and Nan's sitting beside him while he did it.

Happily the horses knew the way home and were eager to get there, so they did not have to be urged or guided. But it was necessary to hold a tight rein, and John's hands soon began to feel tortured and twisted with the strain upon them biting through their numbness like screws of pain. He shook his head determinedly when Nan offered to relieve him, and at last she had to wrench the reins from him in order to take her share of duty and give him a chance to recover a little.

So, taking turns faithfully like good comrades, and exchanging never a word, they got the sleigh and its load safely into town at last, and not one of the gay, irresponsible party knew how difficult an achievement it had been.

Miss Blake herself opened the door to Nan and let her in. One glance at her, as she stood huddled and quivering with cold in the vestibule, was enough. Not a question was asked. She was led gently into the warm dining-room, her hood and cloak taken from her and her frozen hands briskly chafed, while on Miss Blake's tea-stand stood her little brass kettle, bubbling and purring merrily above its alcohol flame, and hinting broadly at soothing cups of something "grateful and comforting."

Nan let herself be waited upon in a sort of half dream. The agony in her hands had been so great that it had taken all her strength to bear it, and now it was going she felt weak and babyish.

"O dear!" she broke down at last, with a gulp of relief. "It's been an awful evening! Mrs. Cole was detestable. Do you know what she did?" and then came out the whole story pell-mell: all told in Nan's blunt, uncompromising way, and giving Miss Blake a better idea than anything else could have done of just how right she had been in opposing the girl's going under such chaperon age.

She was too wise to say "I told you so," and she was too sincere to try to gloss over the probable result of the episode. She looked grave and thoughtful when Nan had finished her account, and her voice was very serious as she said:

"What the consequences to the others may be I don't know; I dread to think. But I feel that at least you and John and Mary have seen things as they are, and will profit by your experience. You remember the talk we had at Mrs. Newton's before the holidays? She said 'Experience is an expensive school, and only fools can afford to go to it,' or something like that; you are no fool, Nan. I think you will see more and more plainly, as time goes on, that there are some things that we cannot afford to do. We cannot afford to buy a momentary pleasure at the price of a lifetime of regret, and we cannot afford to spend even one day of our life in unscrupulous company. It costs too much. We think we have a very keen business sense, we men and women, but we allow ourselves to be cheated every day we live in a way that would disgust us if we were dealing in dollars and cents. Self-respect is more valuable than momentary enjoyment, yet those boys and girls sold one for the other to-night.

"As for you, I think you made a good exchange, Nan, when you gave up your supper for Mary's sake. Love is a reliable bank, dear, and you can't make too many deposits in it. It always pays compound interest, and the best of it is, it never fails."

Nan's lips opened as if she were about to speak, but she closed them again, and sat looking into the fire very seriously and silently for some time. Then the lips parted again, and this time the words came, though even now with an effort:

"I guess you'll think it's no credit to me that I'm sorry I went. But I am sorry, and I would be if it had been the best time in the world. I didn't want to go, really, after you said you'd--rather I wouldn't. I didn't, honestly. It won't do either of us any good for me to say now that I wish I had done as you wanted me to. But I do wish it. I've hated myself all along for acting as I did. Now don't let's say anything more about it--but--but--I wanted you to know how I feel."

There was an ominous catch in her voice that warned Miss Blake not to pursue the subject. Nan could humble herself to apologize, but to follow the abasement up by shedding tears on it was too much for her dignity, and she fought against it stolidly.

But the governess knew her well enough by this time to feel assured that what she said was true, and she accepted the clumsy, halting "amende" as gratefully as if it had been the most graceful of acknowledgments.

"Dear me," she broke in, in quite a matter-of-fact way. "Do you know that the small hours are getting to be large hours, and we are sitting here as unconcernedly as if it were just after dinner. Come, let us both get upstairs and to bed as fast as our feet can carry us," and she promptly set the example by extinguishing the lamp and helping Nan to shoulder her armful of wraps.

"Oh, by the way," she said, as they readied the upper hall, and the girl was about to make return of the hood, "you may keep it if you will. Accept it and the gloves, with my love, as a sort of recompense for what other things you have missed this evening."

Nan was too overcome by the richness of the gift to make any response at all for a moment. Then she blurted out awkwardly, though in a very grateful voice:

"You're so good to me it makes me--ashamed. You're always giving me things. It isn't right. You give away everything you have."

Miss Blake lifted her chin and laughed gayly over the cleft in it.

"No, I don't," she returned, tip-toeing to drop the gloves, like a blessing, on the girl's head. "I have one or two things which I keep all for myself. But if I like to give presents, do you know what it's a sign of? It's a sign I'm poor. Poor people are always possessed by a passion for giving presents. It's true! I've always noticed it! Good-night!"

And that was the last Nan heard about the affair from Miss Blake. Unfortunately--or fortunately--it was not the last she heard of it from others, by any means. It was a long, long time before it was allowed to drop.

In the first place, Michael was discharged from the stables, and this led to a vast amount of discussion, for the poor fellow, who was temperate by nature, was thrown out of employment in midwinter, and his predicament seemed a pitiable one to those who really understood the facts in the case.

Miss Blake, when she heard of the affair, had bidden John Gardiner bring the man to her. She heard his story, and then sent him off with a few kindly, encouraging words, and the poor fellow felt comforted in spite of the facts that she had given him neither money nor any definite promise of help. When he had gone she sat for some time thinking busily, her chin in her palms and her elbows propped on the desk in front of her. She was still for so long that John and Nan stole off after a while and tried experiments with the kodak on some back-yard views, and when they came back to Miss Blake's room to ask her opinion on some point of focus they found the place deserted and the governess gone.

The next day Mike was discovered sitting smilingly enthroned in his accustomed place on the lofty box of the livery "broom-carriage," and he vouchsafed the information to congratulating friends that: "Ut's another chanct Oi hav, though how Oi come boy ut ye'll niver know anny moar than Oi do mesilf, for Misther Allen was that set agin me he wuddn't hear a wurrud Oi'd sa'. But Oi have another chanct and ut's mesilf 'll see till ut, ut lasts me me loife-toime."

"O dear!" complained Ruth to Nan, "I never want to hear the name of sleigh-ride again so long as I live. Everywhere I go, they say so significantly: 'We hear you had a very gay time the other night! Well, well! such things wouldn't have been tolerated when I was young!' and then they make some cutting remark about Mrs. Cole, and I'm afraid it's not going to be very pleasant for her after this, for none of our fathers and mothers want to have anything more to do with her. They say her example has been so bad. And one can't have a bit of fun nowadays, for we're all being kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."

But as the weeks passed the gossip died away and then every one breathed freer again.

Latterly Nan was filling her part of the household contract with considerably less ill-will than she had shown at the beginning, but even now there were occasional lamentations when the day was especially enticing, and her spirits rose and soared above the pettiness of bed-making and the degradation of dusting. It took her about twice as long to get through with her share of the work as it took Miss Blake, and she could never console herself with the thought that it was because the governess shirked. Occasionally she let her own tasks go "with a lick and a promise," as Delia described it, bat when she saw the thoroughness with which Miss Blake did even the least important thing she had the grace to be ashamed and to determine on a better course in the future. But before she really settled down to a stricter habit of conscientiousness something happened that gave her more of an impulse than a course of lectures would have done.

The winter had been a long and unusually severe one, but by March it seemed reasonable to suppose that its backbone was broken. Nan had preferred the care of the conservatory to the duller and less interesting work of dish-washing, and Miss Blake, in letting her take her choice, had only exacted the promise that her charge was not to be neglected. Nan had, as we know, given her hand upon it, and so the matter stood. The governess never "nagged" her about her duties; she took it for granted that the girl would honorably keep her word.

And indeed for some time she was tolerably thorough, watering the plants and loosening the soil about their roots; sponging the leaves of the rubber trees and palms and picking off all the shriveled leaves and faded petals from the flowering shrubs and keeping the temperature at as nearly the right degree as was possible with such varying weather and their simple device for heating the place.

But she found it was much more of a tax than she had first supposed. At the start plants had seemed so much more inviting than dishes that she had appropriated the care of them at once, and now that she discovered what her selection really involved she felt almost aggrieved, and was inclined to be cross when she saw Miss Blake's tasks finished for the day while her own was scarcely more than begun.

"Provoking things!" she would declare as she dashed a double spray of water on the rubber trees that did not need it, and gave but a mere sprinkle to the blossoming azalias that did: "if I'd known what a nuisance you were I can tell you I never would have taken you! Here! will you come off, or won't you?" and she would give some wilted blossom a vicious jerk that would set the entire plant shaking in its pot as though it were trembling with distress at the rough treatment it was receiving. If Miss Blake heard her she gave no sign. Sometimes when they passed a florist's window she would stop and look wistfully in at the bewildering display, and Nan would know that she was longing to go in and buy some especially fascinating orchid or unusually rare crysanthemum. But she would not yield to her impulse, for on one occasion the girl had said with a shrug of impatience:

"For goodness' sake don't get any more. It's all I can do to attend to the bothersome things now. I wish they were all in Hong Kong--every one of them."

So since then there had been no further additions to the conservatory, and Miss Blake had to check her horticultural ardor or confine it to her window-sill upstairs.

But the plants throve in spite of their ungracious nursing, and when she was not irritated by them Nan was very proud of the fine showing they made.

"I think that double, white azalia is one of most beautiful things I ever saw: so pure and delicate!" said Mary Brewster to Miss Blake, hanging over it in honest admiration one leaden-skied day when she come to carry Nan off to her house to dinner and was waiting while the girl went upstairs to get ready.

"Yes," replied the governess, "I love it! But then, I love all the dear things--even those poor woolly-leaved little primroses that have almost less charm for me than any flowers I know. I'm so glad they are all doing so well. I can't bear to bring a plant into the house and then have it die. It seems almost like murder. But now I must run away. I have an appointment with my dentist at three. It is very good of you to ask Nan to dinner to-night, and I'm doubly glad it happens as it does, for she would have to dine alone if she stayed at home, for I have to go out of town on business and cannot get back tonight. Delia will call for Nan at nine o'clock. Good-bye, and have a pleasant evening!" and she caught up her satchel and was off in a twinkling.

But after she had let herself out of the front door she came back and called Nan to the head of the stairs.

"It's bitterly cold," she said. "I had no idea it was so severe! Be sure you wrap up warmly, Nan, and don't forget your gloves and leggings when you come home. Oh, and the plants! You'll not fail to look after them when you get in--the last thing before you go to bed? I think it will freeze to-night, and they will need extra heat. Now, good-bye again, and God bless you!"

Nan waved her a vigorous adieu with the towel she held in her hand, and this time the governess was off in earnest.

The two girls followed her out not long after, and went laughing and chatting down the street.

"I've asked Grace and Lu and Ruth to come in after dinner, and we're going to have a candy-pull. I didn't ask John, but I told him what was up, and he said he and Harley and Everett had been wanting to call for some time, and as I'd be sure to be in, he thought they might as well do it to-night. I told him he'd have to 'call' loud, for we'd be in the kitchen, and probably wouldn't hear him, and he said he'd see to it that we did; so I suppose we'll have them too."

Among them all it proved a gay evening, and seemed unusually so, for of late jollifications had been rare. As Ruth said, "they were all kept on short rations to pay up for the other night."

It appeared to Nan when Delia arrived that she had made a mistake in the hour, and had appeared at eight instead of nine; but as it happened Delia purposely delayed in order that her girl might have an extra sixty minutes, and when she pointed to the clock, whose short hand pointed to ten, Nan could only shake her head, and say: "Well, I suppose so--but it doesn't seem as if it could be."

It was so cold that Delia had brought an additional wrap for her, and the girl was glad to avail herself of it when she felt the nip of the freezing air.

"Why, it's much worse than it was this afternoon," she said. "If this is spring, I'd just as lief have winter. I tell you what it is, Delia, it won't take me long to tumble into bed. I'm frozen stiff already. I hope you locked up before you came out, so all we'll have to do will be to go upstairs. I hate to putter about in the cold."

It seemed strange to go to bed without Miss Blake's cheery "Good-night!" ringing in her ears. It was the first time the governess had spent a night away from home since she first came to the house, almost six months ago, and Nan devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a repetition of the performance in another half-year. Her empty room gave one "les homeseeks."

In order to forget it and to escape the cold, Nan cut short her preparations for the night and got into bed with as little delay as possible. She cuddled comfortably between her smooth sheets and soft blankets and in a moment was soundly asleep.

When she waked the next morning it was with a vague feeling of responsibility, as though she had gone to sleep with a weight of some calamity on her heart. As she dressed she tried to recall it but there was nothing in yesterday's experience to depress her and she ran down to breakfast determined to shake off the haunting impression. But all through the meal it clung to her and she could not get rid of it. To be especially virtuous in Miss Blake's absence and show her that she was "dependable," she took the dish-washing upon herself and got through with it speedily. Then up to her room to set that in order, and then down to the conservatory to attend to the plants.

It was just as this juncture that Delia heard a wild cry of distress ring through the house. She ran upstairs in a fright and found Nan standing at the threshold of the conservatory door gazing in and wringing her hands. The sight that met her eyes was a pitiful one. There was not one plant among them all that had outlived the night. The leaves of all were frozen black.