I am afraid that Sharley's letter scarcely had justice done to it the second time I read it through – between every line would come up the thought of what grandmamma had said, and the wondering what she could mean. And besides that, the uncomfortable feeling that I was not as good as she thought me – that I did not deserve all the love and anxiety she lavished on me.
CHAPTER IX
A GREAT CHANGE
Perhaps here it will be best for me to tell straight off what the contents of Mr. Vandeleur's letter were. Not, I mean, to go into all as to when and how grandmamma told me about it, with 'she said's' and 'I said's.' Besides, it would not be quite correct to tell it that way, for as a matter of fact I did not understand everything then as I do now that I am several years older, and it would be difficult not to mix up what I have since come to know with the ideas I then had – ideas which were in some ways mistaken and childish.
First of all, how do you think Cousin Cosmo, as I was told to call him, had come to write again after all those years of silence? What had put it into his head?
The explanation is rather curious. It all came from Gerard Nestor's being at Moor Court that Easter, and feeling so sorry for grandmamma and so sure that she was in trouble.
I have told, as we knew afterwards, that he had written to his people, but that grandmamma's way of answering made them think, and hope, that he had fancied more than was really the matter, and besides it was difficult for the Nestors, who were not relations, to do anything to help grandmamma, unless she had in some way given them her confidence. At that time they were hoping to come home the following spring, and then, probably, Mrs. Nestor would have found out more.
But when Gerard first went back to school his head was full of it. He had not been told anything, it was only his own suspicions, so there was no harm in his speaking of it, as he did, though quite privately, to his great friend, Harry Vandeleur.
And Harry gave him some confidences in return. Lady Bridget Woodstone, the old lady who was guardian to him and his brother, had lately died – the boys had spent their last holidays at school, but a new guardian had now appeared on the scene. This was a cousin of theirs whom, till then, they had never heard of, and this cousin was no other than grandmamma's nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur.
Gerard quite started when he heard the name, which he remembered quite well. Harry said that Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur was grave and quiet, he and Lindsay felt rather afraid of him, but they would know better what sort of person he was when they had spent the holidays with him.
'We are to go to his house, or at least to a house he has got in Devon, near the sea-side, next August,' he told Gerard, and he promised that he would ask his guardian if he had any relation called Mrs. Wingfield, and if he found it was the same, he would tell him what Gerard had said, and how all these years she had been hoping to hear from him. For granny had told Gerard almost as much as she had told me of how strange it was that 'Cosmo' never wrote.
Well now you – by 'you' of course I mean whoever reads this story, if ever any one does – you begin to see how it came about. Harry Vandeleur did tell his guardian about us, or about grandmamma, and found out that she was his aunt. Mr. Vandeleur was very much startled, Harry said, to hear about how very differently she was living now, and he wrote down the address and told Harry he would make further enquiries.
That was all Harry knew, for Mr. Vandeleur was very reserved, and Harry and Lindsay did not feel as if they knew him any better after the holidays than before. Mrs. Vandeleur was very ill, though they thought she would have liked to be kind; they were always being told not to make a noise, and so they stayed out-of-doors as much as they could. It was rather dull (very dull, I should think), and they hoped they would not spend their next holidays there; they would almost rather stay at school.
It was August or September when Mr. Vandeleur heard about grandmamma. He did not at once write to her; he made enquiries of the lawyer who had for many years managed, grandpapa's and papa's affairs, and he found it was only too true, that granny was very badly off. But even then he did not write immediately, for Mrs. Vandeleur got worse and for a little while they were afraid she was going to die.
He told granny this in his letter, but went on to say that Mrs. Vandeleur was better, and the doctors hoped she might be moved home to their house in London after the new year. In the meantime he was in great difficulty what to do, he had to be in London a good deal, and it was a pity to shut up the house, as they had made it all very nice, and they had good servants. And even when Mrs. Vandeleur was much better she must not be troubled about housekeeping or anything for a long time, and besides this, there was a new responsibility upon him, which he would tell granny about afterwards. He meant the care of the two boys, but he did not speak of them then.
Some part of this, grandmamma told me that very evening; she also told me how sorry her nephew was about his long silence, though, as I think I said before, he had written and got no answer, – a letter which she had never received.
Here I find I must change my plan a little after all, and go into conversation again. For as I am writing there comes back to me one part of our talk that evening so clearly, that I think I can remember almost every word.
We had got as far as grandmamma telling me most of what I have now written down, but still I did not see why the letter had so upset her or why she had whispered something to herself about being 'thankful.'
'Well,' I said, 'I am glad he has written if it pleases you, grandmamma. But I don't think I want ever to see him.'
'You must not be prejudiced, Helena dear,' she answered. 'I think it very likely you will see him, and before very long. I have not yet told you what he proposes. He wants us to go to – to pay him a long visit in London. He says I should be a very great help to him and Agnes – Agnes is his wife – as I could take charge of things for her.'
'Of course you would be a great help,' I said. 'But I think it is rather cool of him to expect you to give up your own home and go off there just to be of use to them.'
Grandmamma sighed. She did not want to tell me too much of her increasing anxiety about money, and yet without doing so it was difficult for her to make me understand how really kind Mr. Vandeleur's proposal was, and how it had not come a day too soon.
'There are more reasons than that for my accepting his invitation,' she said. 'It will be of advantage to us in many ways not to spend the coming winter here, but in a warm, large house. If we had weather like last year I should dread it very much. London is on the whole very healthy in winter, in spite of the fogs. And you are growing old enough to take in new ideas, Helena, and to benefit by seeing something more of life.'
I felt very strange, almost giddy, with the thought of such a change.
'Do you really mean, grandmamma,' I said, 'that – that you are thinking of going there soon?'
'Very soon,' she answered, 'almost at once. It may get cold and wintry here any day, and besides that, my nephew is very anxious to settle his own plans as quickly as possible.'
I said nothing for a minute or two. In my heart I was not at all sorry at the prospect of a winter in London, even though I naturally shrank from leaving dear old Windy Gap, the only home I had ever known. But the sort of spoilt way I had got into kept me from expressing the pleasure I felt – that one side of me felt, anyway.
'I don't believe he cares about us,' I said at last rather grumpily. 'I am sure he is a very selfish man.'
Grandmamma looked distressed, but she was wise, too. She saw I was really inclined to be 'naughty' about it.
'Helena, my dearest child,' she said, and though she spoke most kindly I heard by her voice that she would be firm, 'you must not yield to prejudice, and you must trust me. This invitation is the very best thing that could have come to us at present, and I am deeply grateful for it. It is rather startling, I know, but there should be a good deal of pleasure for you in our new prospects. And I am sure you will see this in a day or two. Now go to bed, my darling. To-morrow we shall have a great deal to talk over, and you must keep well and strong so as to be able to help me.'
She kissed me tenderly, and I whispered 'Good-night, dear grandmamma,' gently and affectionately.
But as soon as I got upstairs and was alone in my own little room, I burst into tears. I daresay it was only natural. Still, I see now that my feelings were not altogether what they should have been. There was a great deal of selfishness and spoiltness mixed up with them.
After that evening I have rather a confused remembrance of the next two or three weeks. Things seemed to hurry on in a bewildering way, and of course it was all the more bewildering to me, as I had never known any change or uprooting of the kind in my life.
Grandmamma was exceedingly busy. She had to write very often to Mr. Vandeleur, and he replied in a most business-like way, generally, I think, by return. It was no longer a great event for the postman to be seen turning up our path, and as well as letters he sometimes now brought parcels.
For grandmamma was determined that we should both look nice when we first went to London to live in her nephew's big house, where there were so many servants.
'We must do him credit,' she said to me, with a smile. I understood what she meant, and I had a feeling of pride about it, too, and I was very pleased to have some new dresses and hats and other things. But with me there was no good feeling to my cousin mixed up in all this. I now know that there was reason for grandmamma's wish to gratify him; he behaved most generously and thoughtfully about everything, sending her more than sufficient money for all we needed, and doing it in such a nice way – just as a son who had grown rich might take pleasure in helping a mother to whom he owed more than mere money could ever repay.
But though grandmamma read out to me bits of his letters in which he was always repeating how grateful he was to her for coming to his aid in his difficulties, she did not tell me the whole particulars of her arrangements with him. He would not have liked it, and I was really too young to have been told all these money-matters.
I did notice that there was never any mention of me in what she read to me. And now I know that Mr. Vandeleur did not particularly rejoice at the prospect of my living with them too. He had proposed that I should be sent to some very good school, for he knew nothing of children, especially of little girls. I think he believed they were even more tiresome and mischievous and bothering in every way than boys.
Grandmamma would not listen for an instant to this proposal. Her first and greatest duty in life was her granddaughter, 'Paul's little girl,' and she would do anything rather than be separated from me, especially as I was delicate and required care. In reality I was not nearly as delicate as she thought. But I daresay it did not add to my cousin's wish to have me in his house to hear that I was considered so.
Among the other things that grandmamma had to arrange about was what to do with Windy Gap. In her heart I believe she thought it very unlikely that it would ever be our home again, but she did not say anything of this kind to me. She went off one day to Mr. Timbs to ask him to try to let it as it was, with our furniture in. He promised to do his best, but did not think it likely it would let in the winter.
'And by the spring we shall be coming back again,' I said, when granny told me this. I had not gone with her to Mr. Timbs; she had made some little excuse for not taking me.
To this she did not reply, and I thought no more about it, but I was glad to hear that Kezia was to stay on in the cottage to keep it all aired and in nice order. And I said to her secretly that if granny and I were not happy in Chichester Square – that was the name of the gloomy, rather old-fashioned square, filled with handsome gloomy houses, where Mr. Vandeleur lived – it was nice to feel that we had only to drive to the station and get into the train and be 'home' again in four or five hours.
Kezia smiled, though I think in her heart she was much more inclined to cry, and said she hoped to hear of our being very happy indeed in London, though of course she would look forward to seeing us again.
I shall never forget the day we left our dear little cottage. It had begun to be wintry, a sprinkling of snow was on the ground and the air was quite frosty, though the morning was bright. I did feel so strange – sorrowful yet excited, and as if I really did not know who I was. And though the tears were running down poor Kezia's face when she bade us good-bye at the window of the railway carriage, I could not have cried if I had wished. We had a three miles' drive to the station. It was only the third or fourth time in my life I had ever been there, and I had never travelled for longer than half an hour or so, when granny had taken me, and once or twice Sharley and the others, to one of the neighbouring towns famed for their beautiful cathedrals.
We travelled second class. I thought it very comfortable, and it was very nice to have foot-warmers, which I had never seen before. My spirits rose steadily and even grandmamma's face had a pinky colour, which made her look quite young.
'I should like to travel like this for a week without stopping,' I said.
Granny smiled.
'I don't think you would,' she said. 'You will feel you have had quite enough of it by the time we get to London.'
And after an hour or two, especially when the short winter afternoon grew misty and dull, so that I could scarcely distinguish the landscape as we flew past, I began to agree with her.
'It will be quite dark when we get to Chichester Square,' said grandmamma. 'You must wait for your first real sight of London till to-morrow. I hope the weather will not be foggy.'
'Will there be flys at the station?' I asked, 'or did you write to order one?'
Grandmamma smiled.
'No, dear, that would not be necessary. There are always lots of four-wheelers and hansoms. But Mr. Vandeleur is sending a footman to meet us and he will find us a cab.'
'Hasn't he got a carriage then?' said I.
Grandmamma shook her head.
'Not in London. Their carriages and horses are in the country still for Mrs. Vandeleur. They will not be sent back to London till she comes.'
'I hope that won't be for a good long while,' I said to myself, rather unfeelingly, for I might have remembered that as soon as my cousin's wife was well enough she was to return. So her staying away long would mean her not getting well.
Their being away – for Mr. Vandeleur was not in London himself just then – was the part that pleased me the most of the whole plan. I thought it would be great fun to be alone in London with grandmamma, and I had been making lists of the things I wanted her to do and the places we should go to see. It never struck me that she could have any one or anything to think of but me myself!
CHAPTER X
NO. 29 CHICHESTER SQUARE
It was quite dark when we arrived at Paddington Station, and long before then, as grandmamma had prophesied, I had had much more than enough of the railway journey at first so pleasant.
I was tired and sleepy. It all seemed very, very strange and confusing to me – the huge railway station, the dimly burning gas-lamps, the bustle, the lots of people. For, as I have to keep reminding you, there is scarcely ever nowadays a child who leads so quiet and unchangeful a life as mine had been. I felt in a dream. If I had been less tired in my body I daresay my mind and fancy would have been amused and excited by it all. As it was, I just clung to grandmamma stupidly, wondering how she kept her head, wondering still more, when I heard her suddenly talking to some one – who turned out to be Mr. Vandeleur's footman – how in the world she or he, or both of them, had managed to find each other out in the crowd!
I did not speak. After a while I remember finding myself, and granny of course, safe in a four-wheeler, which seemed narrow and stuffy compared to the Middlemoor flys, and jolted along with a terrible rattle and noise, so that I could scarcely distinguish the words grandmamma said when once or twice she spoke to me. I daresay a good deal of the noise was outside the cab, and some of it perhaps inside my own head, for it did not altogether stop even when we did – that is to say when we drew up at 29 Chichester Square.
The house was very large – the hall looked to me almost as large as the hall at Moor Court. It was not really so, but I could scarcely judge of anything correctly that night. I was so very tired.
A nice-looking oldish man came forward and bowed respectfully to grandmamma. He was the butler. He handed us over, so to say, to a nice-looking oldish woman, who was the head housemaid, and she took us at once upstairs to our rooms, the butler asking grandmamma to leave the luggage and the cab-paying to him – he would see that it was all right. She thanked him nicely, but rather 'grandly' – not at all as if she was not accustomed to lots of servants and attention, which I was pleased at. It was a good thing for me that I had been so much with the Nestors; it prevented my seeming awkward or shy with so many servants about, which otherwise I might have been. Grandmamma of course had been used to being rich, but I never had.
There came a disappointment the very first thing. Hales, the housemaid, threw open the door of a large, rather gloomy-looking bedroom, where a fire was burning and candles already lighted.
'Your room, ma'am,' she said. 'Missie's – ' she hesitated. 'Miss Wingfield's,' said granny. 'Miss Wingfield's,' Hales repeated, 'is on the next floor but one.'
Grandmamma looked uneasy.
'Is it far from this room?' she said.
'Oh no, ma'am, just the staircase – it is over this. Mr. Vandeleur thought it was the best. It was Mrs. Vandeleur's when she was a little girl.' For the house in Chichester Square had been left to Cousin Agnes by her parents a few years ago; that was why it seemed rather old-fashioned. 'All the rooms on this floor besides this one,' Hales went on, 'are Mrs. Vandeleur's; and master's study, and the next floor are spare rooms, except to the back, and we thought it was fresher and pleasanter to the front for the young lady.'
Grandmamma looked pleased at the kind way Hales spoke, but still she hesitated. I gave her a little tug.
'I don't mind,' I said, for I was not at all a frightened child about sleeping alone and things like that. She smiled back at me. 'That's right,' she said, and I felt rewarded.
My room was a nice one when I got there, but it did seem a tremendous way up, and it looked rather bare and felt rather chilly, even though there was a fire burning, which, however, had not been lighted very long. The housemaid went towards it and gave it a poke, murmuring something about 'Belinda being so careless.' Belinda, as I soon found out, was the second housemaid, and it was she who was to wait upon me and take care of my room.
'You must ring for anything you want, miss,' said Hales, 'and if Belinda isn't attentive perhaps you will mention it.'
And so saying she left me. I felt rather lonely, even though grandmamma was in the same house. There was a deserted feeling about the room as if it had not been used for a very long time, and my two boxes looked very small indeed. I felt no interest in unpacking my things, even though I had brought my books and some of my little ornaments.
'They will look nothing in this great bare place,' I thought. 'I won't take them out, and then I shall have the feeling that we are not going to be here for long.'
A queer sort of home-sickness for Windy Gap and for my life there came over me.
'I do wish we had not come here; I'm sure I'm going to hate it. I think grandmamma might have come up with me to see my room,' and I stood there beside the flickering little fire, feeling far from happy or even amiable.
Suddenly, the sound of a gong startled me. I had not even begun to take off my hat and jacket. I did so now in a hurry, and then turned to wash my hands and face, somewhat cheered to find a can of nice hot water standing ready. Then I smoothed my hair with a little pocket-comb I had, as I dared not wait to take out any of my things. But I am afraid I did not look as neat as usual or as I might have done if I hadn't wasted my time.
I hurried downstairs; a door stood open, and looking in, I was sure that it was the dining-room, and grandmamma there waiting for me. A table, which to me seemed very large, though it was really an ordinary-sized round one, was nicely arranged for tea. How glad I was that it was not dinner!
'Come, dear,' said grandmamma, 'you must be very hungry.'
'I couldn't change my dress, grandmamma,' I said, not quite sure if she would not be displeased with me.
'Of course not,' she replied, cheerfully, 'I never expected it this first evening.'
My spirits rose when I had had a nice cup of tea and something to eat – it is funny how our bodies rule our minds sometimes – and I began to talk more in my usual way, especially as, to my great relief, the servants had by this time left the room.
'Shall we have tea like this every evening, grandmamma?' I asked; 'it is so much nicer than dinner.'
Grandmamma hesitated.
'Yes,' she said, 'while we are alone I think it will be the best plan, as you are too young for late dinner. When your cousins come home, of course things will be regularly arranged.'
'That means,' I thought to myself, 'that I shall have all my meals alone, I suppose,' and again an unreasonably cross feeling came over me.
Grandmamma noticed it, I think, but she said nothing, and very soon after we had finished tea she proposed that I should go to bed. She took me upstairs herself to my room, and waited till I was in bed; then she kissed me as lovingly and tenderly as ever, but, all the same, no sooner had she left me alone than I buried my face in the pillow and burst into tears. I had an under feeling that grandmamma was not quite pleased with me. I know now that she was only anxious, and perhaps a little disappointed, at my not seeming brighter. For, after all, everything she had done and was doing was for my sake, and I should have trusted her and known this by instinct, instead of allowing myself from the very first beginning of our coming to London to think I was a sort of martyr.
'I can see how it's going to be,' I thought, 'as soon as ever Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur come back I shall be nowhere at all and nobody at all in this horrid, gloomy London. Cousin Agnes will be grandmamma's first thought, and I shall be expected to spend most of my life up in my room by myself. It is too bad, it isn't my fault that I am an orphan with no other home of my own. I would rather have stayed at Windy Gap, however poor we were, than feel as I know I am going to do.'
But in the middle of all these miserable ideas I fell asleep, and slept very soundly – I don't think I dreamt at all – till the next morning.
When I opened my eyes I thought it was still the night. There seemed no light, but by degrees, as I got accustomed to the darkness, I made out the shapes of the two windows. Then a clock outside struck seven, and gradually everything came back to me – the journey and our arrival and the unhappy thoughts amidst which I had fallen asleep.
Somehow, even though as yet there was nothing to cheer me – for what can be gloomier than to watch the cold dawn of a winter's morning creeping over the gray sky of London? – somehow, things seemed less dismal already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish that some one would come with my hot water and say it was time to get up.
This did not happen till half-past seven, when a knock at the door was followed by the appearance of Belinda – at least I guessed it was Belinda, for I had not seen her before. She was a pleasant enough looking girl, but with rather a pert manner, and she spoke to me as if I were about six.
'You'd better get up at once, miss, as breakfast's to be so early, and I'm to help you to dress if you need me.'
'No, thank you,' I said with great dignity, 'I don't want any help. But where's my bath?'
'I've had no orders about a bath,' she replied, 'but, to be sure, you can't go to the bathroom, as it's next master's dressing-room. You'll have to speak to Hales about it,' and she went away murmuring something indistinctly as to new ways and new rules.
In a few minutes, however, she came back again, lumbering a bath after her and looking rather cross.
'How different she is from Kezia,' I thought to myself. 'I would not have minded anything as much if she had come with us.'
Still, I was sensible enough to know that it was no use making the worst of things, and I think I must have looked rather pleasanter and more cheerful than the evening before, when I tapped at grandmamma's door and went downstairs to breakfast holding her hand.
She had much more to think of and trouble about than I, and if I had not been so selfish I was quite sensible enough to have understood this. A great many things required rearranging and overlooking in the household, for, though the servants were good on the whole, it was long since they had had a mistress's eye over them, and without that, even the best servants are pretty sure to get into careless ways. And grandmamma was so very conscientious that she felt even more anxious about all these things for Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur's sake, than if it had been her own house and her own servants. Besides, though she was so clever and experienced, it was a good many years since she had had a large house to look after, as our little home at Middlemoor had been so very, very simple. Yes, I see now it must have been very hard upon her, for, instead of doing all I could to help her, I was quite taken up with my own part of it, and ready to grumble at and exaggerate every little difficulty or disagreeableness.
I think grandmamma tried for some time not to see the sort of humour I was in, and how selfish and spoilt I had become. She excused me to herself by saying I was tired, and that such a complete change of life was trying for a child, and by kind little reasons of that sort.
'I shall be rather busy this morning,' she said to me that first day at breakfast, 'but if it keeps fine we can go out a little in the afternoon, and let you have your first peep of London. Let me see, what can you do with yourself this morning? You have your things to unpack still, and I daresay you would like to put out your ornaments and books in your own room.'
'I don't mean to put them out,' I said, 'it's not worth while. I will keep my books in one of the boxes and just get one out when I want it, and as for the ornaments, they wouldn't look anything in that big, bare room.'
But as I said this I caught sight of grandmamma's face, and I felt ashamed of being so grumbling when I was really feeling more cheerful and interested in everything than the night before. So I changed my tone a little.
'I will unpack all my things,' I said, 'and see how they look, anyway. Perhaps I'd better hang up my new frocks, I wouldn't like them to get crushed.'
'I should think Belinda would have unpacked your clothes by this time,' said grandmamma, 'but no doubt you'll find something to do. But, by the bye, they may not have lighted a fire in your room, don't stay upstairs long if you feel chilly, but bring your work down to the library.' I went upstairs. In the full daylight, though it was a dull morning, I liked my room even less than the night before. There was nothing in it bright or fresh, though I daresay it had looked much nicer, years before, when Cousin Agnes was a little girl, for the cretonne curtains must once have been very pretty, with bunches of pink roses, which now, however, were faded, as well as the carpet on the floor, and the paper on the walls, to an over-all dinginess such as you never see in a country room even when everything in it is old.
I sat down on a chair and looked about me disconsolately. Belinda had unpacked my clothes and arranged them after her fashion. My other possessions were still untouched, but I did not feel as if I cared to do anything with them.
'I shall never be at home here,' I said to myself, 'but I suppose I must just try to bear it for the time, for grandmamma's sake.'
Silly child that I was, as if grandmamma ever thought of herself, or her own likes and dislikes, before what she considered right and good for me. But the idea of being something of a martyr pleased me. I got out my work, not my fancy-work – I was in a mood for doing disagreeable things – but some plain sewing that I had not touched for some time, and took it downstairs to the library. I heard voices as I opened the door, grandmamma was sitting at the writing-table speaking to the cook, who stood beside her, a rather fat, pleasant-looking woman, who made a little curtsey when she saw me. But grandmamma looked up, for her, rather sharply —
'Why, have you finished upstairs already, Helena?' she said. 'You had better go into the dining-room for a few minutes, I am busy just now.'
I went away immediately, but I was very much offended, it just seemed the beginning of what I was fancying to myself. The dining-room door was ajar, and I caught sight of the footman looking over some spoons and forks.
'I won't go in there,' I said to myself, and upstairs I mounted again.
On the first landing, where grandmamma's room was, there were several other doors. All was perfectly quiet – there seemed no servants about, so I thought I would amuse myself by a little exploring. The first room I peeped into was large – larger than grandmamma's, but all the furniture was covered up. The only thing that interested me was a picture in pastelles hanging up over the mantelpiece. It caught my attention at once, and I stood looking up at it for some moments.