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."