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?"