Chapter IV: The Governess

The morning of the expected governess' arrival dawned cold and dreary. Rain fell in torrents, and the streets were drenched and slippery with slush. All day Nan moped in unhappy expectation of her anticipated thralldom. At every sound of rumbling wheels before the door she would fly to the window, torturing herself with the belief that this was the hack which was conveying the tyrant-governess to the victim-pupil, and she felt a curious sort of disappointment when no such vehicle appeared and no such personage arrived, for always the rumbling wheels belonged to some grocer's cart or butcher's wagon, and by evening the invader had still not appeared. Then Nan plucked up courage.

"I shouldn't wonder if she had been switched off the road," she said to Delia, inclining to be quite jolly at the mere thought of such a grateful possibility. And she pictured to herself an accommodating engine whizzing the unwelcome guest off into some remote region from which she would never see the desirability of returning. Nan wished her no ill, but she did not wish herself ill either. She ate her dinner quite contentedly, and was just going to settle down comfortably to some thrilling tale of adventure when Br--r--r! went the bell, and she knew her fate had descended upon her.

She flew to the parlor and hid behind the folding-door. She heard Delia ascend the basement stairs. She heard her come along the hall, and then--it was very strange, but Nan really thought she heard her give a smothered exclamation that was instantly followed by the word of warning, "Hush!"--but she must have been mistaken, for it was only Mr. Turner who was speaking. He was asking for Nan herself. She slipped from behind the door with the hope at her heart that even now, at the last minute, the governess had "backed out." Certainly it looked as if she had, since she saw only the lawyer standing by the hat-stand. She held out her hand to him with a real smile of greeting when--he stepped aside and there stood the governess.

At first Nan thought it must be some little girl, so small and slender looked the figure beside that of the tall man. The eyes beneath the rain-soaked brim of the governess' hat were soft and dark; her hair was brown, and the damp wind had blown it into innumerable little curls and tendrils about her temples, where it took on a ruddy sheen in the gas light. Her nose was delicate and short; her mouth, which was not small, was fascinating from the fact that the parting lips disclosed two rows of perfect teeth. She had two dimples that came and went as she smiled, and in her chin was a small cleft that was quivering a little, Nan noticed. She thought the governess looked as if she were going to cry. Her eyes seemed somewhat "teary round the lashes," and there was no doubt about it--her chin was quivering.

"Pooh!" thought Nan. "I might have saved myself all that worry. She's as afraid as she can be. I guess I'll be able to manage her as easy as pie."

But now Mr. Turner was addressing her.

"Nan," he was saying, "this is Miss Blake. Can't you welcome her to her new home, my dear?"

Nan hung back in awkward silence, but the new governess did not give her the opportunity to make the moment an embarrassing one. She stepped forward, and, taking the girl's hand in her own, said softly:

"Mr. Turner has told me all about you. I hope we shall be very happy together."

She did not attempt to kiss her.

Nan murmured an indistinct "Yes'm," and shrank back against the wall. Delia stood beside the new governess with a very curious expression on her face. For a moment there was silence, and then Mr. Turner broke in upon it with:

"I think it would be well if Miss Blake were to be shown to her room at once. She is drenched with the rain and must be cold and hungry. Will you be good enough, Delia, to get her something to eat while Nan takes her upstairs?"

Nan started forward quickly at the note of rebuke in the lawyer's voice.

"Oh, won't you come to your room?" she asked.

She vaguely wondered what made Delia look so strange and act in such a dazed, uncertain fashion. She thought she must be a sad "'fraid-cat" to be overawed by such a little personage as the new governess.

"Now I will say good-night," said Mr. Turner to Miss Blake, as she started to follow Nan above. "I hope," he added in an undertone, taking her hand, "that you will be happy. Don't become discouraged. Send for me whenever you need me. I am always at your service."

She silently bowed her thanks. Somehow she found it difficult to speak just then. She had been tired and cold before she entered the house, but it seemed to her she had not known weariness or chill until now. She felt herself shiver as she turned away from the lawyer and heard the door close behind him. He seemed to be leaving her alone with an enemy.

Nan certainly looked anything but amicable.

"Here's your room," she announced, as they reached the upper landing. She flung open a door, and the new governess found herself stepping forth into utter darkness, where Nan herself was groping about for matches. The air of the place was cold and damp. It had the feel of a room that was unused. It was barren and cheerless. But in the second preceding Nan's discovery of the matches Miss Blake hoped that when the gas was lit it would seem more inviting. But it did not. It was bare and undecorated, and presented anything but an attractive appearance.

The stranger drew two long pins from her hat without saying a word. Nan turned on her heel and made to leave the room.

"Will you please tell me where I can find some warm water?" inquired Miss Blake.

"Washstand in that little dressing-room. Left-hand faucet," announced Nan, curtly, and marched away.

The governess gently closed the door.

Perhaps if Nan had remained there to see she would have wondered if Miss Blake were quite in her right mind. Her behavior was certainly extraordinary. The tears rained down her cheeks, and she did not try to stop them. She just stood in the middle of the floor and gazed about at the awkwardly-placed furniture, the faded carpet, the bare walls, and the ugly mantel-piece as if she could not take her eyes from them. She turned slowly from one thing to another, and presently, in a sort of timid, hungry way, she stretched out her hand and touched each separate object with her caressing fingers, crying very hard the while and murmuring to herself in so low a voice that no one could have overheard.

Even Nan must have softened to her as she stood there crying softly and smiling through her tears at this bare and unfamiliar room. Even Nan must have been moved to wonder what Miss Blake had suffered that she was so glad to get into such an uninviting shelter as this.

But Nan was down stairs in the basement watching Delia prepare a dainty supper for the governess, and scowling at her as she saw to what trouble she went to make it appetizing and delicate.

"There, Delia Connor!" she burst out resentfully, "you're the worst turn-coat I ever saw in my life! This very afternoon you looked black as thunder when you thought she had come, and now you are just dancing attendance on her, as if she was the best friend you ever had!"

"Perhaps she is," responded Delia, placing sprigs of parsley neatly about the sliced chicken and setting the coffee-pot on the range.

Nan tossed her head scornfully. "Well, I like that! I should think you'd be ashamed! A perfect stranger like her!"

Delia did not answer. She was crushing ice for the olives, and as Nan spoke she bent her face over the table and pounded away in silence. But when she had finished, she lifted her head and said, amiably:

"Oh, you can't tell. By the looks of her I should think she is a good-natured little body. She has the true eyes. When you see eyes like that you can mostly be sure they've an honest soul behind 'em. I shouldn't wonder if she'd be a good friend to any one who'd let her."

"Huh!" sneered Nan, wrathfully, "that means, I s'pose, that you intend to let her. Never talk to me of turn-coats any more, Delia Connor!"

Delia caught up a coal-hod and strode deliberately off toward the cellar stairs. When she came back she was laden down with kindlings and coal.

"What you going to do with those?" demanded Nan, imperatively.

"Build a fire in the library. I guess a spark'll look good to the poor little soul--coming in out of the cold and wet."

This was the last straw. Nan's eyes flashed, and she tore after Delia upstairs, scolding as fast as the words would come.

"The idea! The idea! A fire! 'Poor little soul!' And many's the time I've come in out of the cold and you haven't even as much as lit the gas! Oh, no; never mind me! I can come in out of the cold till every tooth in my head chatters, and you wouldn't care a straw. Why, Delia Connor, we never have that fire lit. You just know we don't! There hasn't been a fire in that grate since daddy went away! You know very well there hasn't, and now the first thing you do is to light it for that horrid governess-woman that's going to boss you 'round like anything, and make me do all sorts of hateful things. I tell you what it is, Delia Connor, you don't care a single thing about me. I know just how 'twill be. You'll help her to do anything she wants to, and you'll never stand up for me a bit. It's mean of you, Delia! It's downright mean of you. And it's just because she's got those dimples and things, and smiles at you as if you were her best friend. But she needn't think she can manage me. I'm not going to be ordered about by her, if she has got a soft voice and shiny eyes!"

Nan and the fire sputtered and blazed as though they were trying to see which could outdo the other, and Delia stood by looking first at this one and then at that with a good deal less fear of the sparks from the grate than of those from Nan's eyes.

She knew better than to try to pacify the girl when her temper was at such a white-heat, and she inwardly wondered what would happen if the governess should come down while it was yet at its worst. As if in answer to her question they heard the sound of an opening door above, and immediately after Miss Blake's light steps upon the stairs. Nan bit a word off square in the middle and set her lips tightly together. Delia removed the "blower" from the grate and the dancing flames leaped high up the chimney and sent a ruddy glow about the room. The only sounds to be heard were the comfortable ticking of the tall clock in the corner and the low purring of the fire behind its bars. Miss Blake came down the hall and paused on the library threshold.

"Oh, how jolly!" she cried, clapping her hands like a delighted child and running forward eagerly to the hearth. "How perfectly jolly! Don't you think an open fire is the most comfortable thing in the world? And I always loved this one particularly--I mean this kind," she corrected herself quickly.

Nan made no response. She sat in her father's study-chair as stiff and stolid as a lay-figure in a shop window, with her lips drawn primly over her teeth.

Miss Blake was, or pretended to be, unconscious of her attitude, however, and went on talking as easily as though she had the most appreciative of listeners.

"When I was a little girl I used to love to cuddle down here on the hearth-rug--I mean I used to love to cuddle down on the hearth-rug and look into the burning coals. I used to see all sorts of wonderful things in the flames. They used to tell me I'd 'singe my curly pow a-biggin' castles in the air,' but I didn't mind, did I--I mean I didn't mind," she caught herself up quickly.

Delia coughed behind her hand and hurriedly left the room in order to get Miss Blake's supper, which she meant to serve upstairs for the occasion.

As soon as she was gone the new governess turned toward Nan in a strange apologetic sort of way and said:

"I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll just cuddle down on the rug as I used to do when--when I was a little girl. It seems so good to get back--to an open fire that it makes me quite homesick. You won't mind, will you?"

Nan gave a grunt that was meant for "No," and the new governess plumped down upon the floor with her chin in her palms and her elbows on her knees, looking so much like a little girl that for a second Nan had a wild impulse to plump down beside her and inquire, by way of opening the acquaintance--

"Say, does your hair curl like that naturally--or does your mother put it up at night?" or something equally introductory and to the point. But of course she did no such thing, and when Delia reappeared she found them regarding the fire in perfect silence.

At the sound of her step Miss Blake lifted her head and gave Nan a bewildering smile.

"How stupid I have been! Do forgive me!" she said. "We have been having what the Germans call 'an English conversation,' haven't we? I was thinking so hard I quite forgot you--and myself. Ah, what a pretty supper! But I put you to so much trouble," and she turned on Delia two very grateful eyes, while she jumped to her feet with the lightest possible ease.

Delia beamed down upon her beatifically and gave an extra touch to the dainty tray. Nan from her chair scowled darkly upon the whole performance. Delia had deserted her cause; had gone over bodily to the enemy--that was plain. But she needn't flaunt her defection in Nan's very face. Why, it was positively disgraceful the way Delia fetched and carried for this person already, and looked, all the while, as if she could hardly keep from dancing for very joy at the privilege. Well, this governess needn't think that Nan was the kind to be won over by a few smiles and some flickering dimples. When Nan said a thing she meant it and she stuck to it, too. She wasn't a turn-coat like some folks she knew.

"'Alas, alas! my dear old home--! To think that anybody who isn't wanted should come and push herself like this into my dear old home! Oh, father, her eyes are like--' Good gracious! all that description part would have to be changed!" Nan pulled herself together with a visible jerk. How could she speak of "needly eyes" when those of the governess were so deep and soft and gray that they made you feel like--no, they didn't either; but they weren't needly all the same. No! That whole description part would have to be changed. Bother! Well, if it came to that she guessed she could do it! "Her hated form haunts me in my sleep, and I dream of her all night as I see her in the daytime--little and dear, with her hair all shimmery and soft and her eyes kind of kissing you softly all the time, and--" Goodness! that would never do! Why it would be crazy to call on one's father to rescue one from a person like that. Well, she'd leave out the description altogether, that's what she'd do. She--

"Did you speak?" asked the governess, in her musical voice, turning toward Nan inquiringly, and then the girl suddenly realized that she had been mumbling her thoughts aloud.

"No, I didn't," she responded, with irritation. "It was too bad," she declared to herself it was, "that after all the trouble she had taken to learn the thing by heart, she should be pestered to death by having to make changes in it this way--at the last minute, too. Why wasn't Miss Blake tall and lanky and needly-eyed and a fright, she'd like to know? It was just like her, though! So contrary! To change about and upset all Nan's plans. Well, as long as there was so much fuss about the thing, she s'posed she'd give it up."

"She's so little, it'll be easy enough to manage her. I guess it isn't worth while. I can just say, to-morrow or next day, 'Miss Blake, I've come to the conclusion you don't suit,' and she'll go right off. She may cry a little, but I won't mind that; and if she begs to stay, I'll say, 'Now there's no use teasing! When I once say a thing I mean it!' and that will settle her once for all."

Delia was pressing the governess to take more supper when Nan again waked to what was going on about her.

"Why, you don't eat any more than you used--I mean than a bird. Do take a little more chicken, do! And a cup of coffee, nice and hot, that's a good--lady!"

It was really too humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word--with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia--swept out of the room and upstairs to bed.

Miss Blake looked after her with strange, wondering eyes, but made no attempt to follow her. She just turned to Delia and stretched out her hands.

"O Delia! Delia!" she faltered, brokenly.

The woman came to her and took both the little hands in hers. "Bless you, dearie!" she cried. "That I ever lived to see the day! There, there, lamb, don't cry so, Allanah! See, I'm not crying, am I now?" sobbed she, kneeling beside the stranger and hugging her knees wildly. "Oh, but it's glad I am to see your dear face again! Now tell me all about it--how you came to know we need you so bad?"