'WAVING VIEW'
I was only eight years old at the time we made the acquaintance of the
family at Moor Court. It may seem strange and unlikely that I should
remember so clearly all that happened when we first got to know them,
but even though I was so young at the time I _do_ recollect all about it
very well.
For it was so new to me that it made a great impression.
Till then I had never had any real companions; as I have said already, I
had scarcely ever had a meal out of our own house. It was like the
opening of a new world to me.
But I have asked grandmamma about a few things which she remembers more
exactly than I do. Especially about the Vandeleur boys, I mean about
what was said of them. But for things that happened afterwards I daresay
I should never have thought of this again, though grandmamma did not
forget about it. She told me over quite lately everything that had
passed at that birthday tea.
The months, and indeed the years that followed that first happy day at
Moor Court seem to me now, on looking back upon them, a good deal mixed
up together--till, that is to say, a change, a melancholy one for me,
came over my happy friendship with the Nestor children.
This change, however, did not come for fully three years, and these
three years were very bright and sunny ones. Sharley and her sisters
continued all that time to be my grandmamma's pupils--winter and summer,
all the year round, except for some weeks of holiday at Christmas, and a
rather longer time in the autumn, when the Nestors generally went to the
sea-side for a change; unless the weather was terribly bad or stormy,
twice a week they either walked over with a maid, or the governess-cart
drawn by the fat pony made its appearance at the end of our path.
Sometimes the little groom went on into the village if there were any
messages, sometimes if it was cold he drove as far as the farm at the
foot of the hill, where it was arranged that he could 'put up' for an
hour or two, sometimes in warm summer days the pony-cart just waited
where it was.
Often, once a fortnight or so at least, in the fine season, I made one
of the party on the little girls' return home. How we all managed to
squeeze into the cart, or how old Bunch managed to take us all home
without coming to grief on the way, I am sure I can't say.
I only know we _did_ manage it, and so did he. For he is still alive and
well, and no doubt 'ready to tell the story,' if he could speak.
We never seemed to be ill in those days. The Nestor children were no
doubt very strong, and I grew much stronger. Then Middlemoor is such a
splendidly healthy place.
I have some misty recollections of Nan and Vallie having the measles,
and a doubt arising as to whether I had not got it too. But if it was
measles it did not seem worse than a cold, and we were soon all out and
about again, as merry as ever.
And grandmamma seemed to grow younger during those years. Her mind was
more at rest for the time, for the steady payment she received for the
girls' French lessons made all the difference in our little income,
between being comfortable, with a small extra in case of need, and
being only _just_ able to make both ends meet with a great deal of
tugging. And grandmamma was happy about taking the money, for it was
well earned; Sharley and the others made such good progress in French
and after a little while in German also, even though Nan was by nature
rather slow and Vallie dreadfully flighty, and not at all good at giving
her attention.
But she _was_ so sweet! I never saw any one so sweet as Vallie, when she
had been found fault with and was sorry; the tears used to come up into
her big brown eyes very slowly and stay there, making them look like
velvety pansies with dewdrops in them.
Somehow Sharley always seemed the _most_ my friend, though she was a
good deal older. Perhaps it was through having known her the first, and
partly, I daresay, because in _some_ ways I was old for my age.
The big brother Gerard came home for his holidays three times a year. He
was a very nice boy, I am sure, but I did not get to know him well, and
I had rather a grudge at him. For when he was at Moor Court I seemed to
see so much less of Sharley. It wasn't her fault. She was not a
changeable girl at all, but Jerry had always been accustomed to having
her a great deal with him in his holidays, as she took pains to explain
to me. So of course if she had given him up for me she _would_ have been
changeable.
She did her best, I will say that for her. She told Gerard all about me,
and he was very nice to me. But it was in rather a big boy way, which I
did not understand. I thought he was treating me like a baby when _he_
only meant to be kind and brotherly. I remember one day being so
offended at his lifting me over a stile, that it was all I could do not
to burst into tears!
So it came to be the way among us, without anything being actually said
about it, that during Jerry's holidays I was mostly with the four
others--Nan and Vallie and the two younger boys.
And I daresay it was a good thing for me. For none of them were at all
old for their age; they were just hearty, healthy, regular _children_,
living in the present and very happy in it. And if I had been altogether
with the older ones I might have grown more and more 'old-fashioned.'
For Gerard was a very serious and thoughtful boy, and Sharley, though in
outside ways she seemed rather wild and hoydenish, was really very
clever and very wise, to be only the age she was. I never quite took in
that side of her character till I saw her with Jerry--she seemed quite
transformed.
One thing came to pass, however, which was a great pleasure to the two
people it chiefly concerned and to Sharley. As for me, I don't think I
gave much attention to it, and I am not sure that if it had at all
interfered with my own life I should not have been rather jealous!
This was a close friendship between Gerard Nestor and grandmamma.
And it is necessary to speak about it because it was the beginning of
things which brought about great changes.
Grandmamma loved boys and she was one of those women that are well
fitted to manage them. She used to say that till she got _me_, she had
never had anything to do with _girls_. For her own children were both
boys--papa was the elder, and the other was a dear boy who died when he
was only sixteen, and whom of course I had never seen, though grandmamma
liked me to speak of him as 'Uncle Guy.' Then, too, she had had some
charge of her nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur.
Her friendship with Jerry came about by his reading French and German
with her in the holidays. He had never been out of England and he was
anxious to improve his 'foreign languages,' as he was backward in them,
besides having a very bad accent indeed.
Granny has often said she never had so attentive a pupil, and it was in
talking with him--for 'conversation' was a very important part of her
teaching--that she got to know so much of Gerard, and he so much of her.
She used to tell him stories of her own boys, Paul--Paul was papa--and
Guy, in French, and he had to answer questions about the stories to show
that he had understood her. And in these stories the name of Cosmo
Vandeleur came to be mentioned.
The first time or so he heard it I don't think Jerry noticed it. But one
day it struck him just as it had struck grandmamma that first day--the
birthday-tea day--at Moor Court.
'Vandeleur,' said Jerry--it was one day when he had come over for his
lesson, and as it was raining and I could not go out, I was sitting in
the window making a cloak or something for my doll. 'Vandeleur,' he
repeated. 'I wonder, Mrs. Wingfield, if your nephew is any relation to
some boys at my school. They are great chums of mine--they were to have
come home with me for the summer holidays'--it was the Christmas
holidays now,--'but their relations had settled something else for them
and wouldn't let them come. I think their relations must be rather
horrid.'
'I remember Sharley--I think it was Sharley--speaking of them,' said
grandmamma. 'They are orphans, are they not?'
'Yes,' said Gerard. 'They've got guardians--one of them is quite an old
woman. Her name is Lady Bridget Woodstone. They don't care very much for
her. I think she must be very crabbed.'
'I do not think they can be related to my nephew,' said grandmamma. 'I
never heard of any orphan boys in his family, and I never heard of Lady
Bridget Woodstone. But Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur is only my nephew, because
his mother was my husband's sister--so of course he _may_ have relations
I know nothing of. He always seemed to me very near when he was a boy,
because he was so often with us.'
She sighed a little as she finished speaking. Thinking of Mr. Vandeleur
made her sad. It did seem so strange that he had never written all these
years.
And Jerry was very quick as well as thoughtful. He saw that for some
reason the mention of the name made her sad, so he said no more about
the Vandeleur boys. Long afterwards he told us that when he went back to
school he did ask Harry and Lindsay Vandeleur if they had any relation
called Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur, but at that time they told him they did not
know. They were quite under the care of old Lady Bridget, and she was
not a bit like granny. She was the sort of old lady who treats children
as if they had no sense at all; she never told the boys anything about
themselves or their family, and when they spent the holidays with her,
she always had a tutor for them--the strictest she could find, so that
they almost liked better to stay on at school.
The three years I have been writing about must have passed quickly to
grandmamma. They were so peaceful, and after we got to know the Nestors,
much less lonely. And grandmamma says that it is quite wonderful how
fast time goes once one begins to grow old. She does not seem to mind
it. She is so very good--I cannot help saying this, for my own story
would not be true if I did not keep saying _how_ good she is.
But I must take care not to let her see the places where I say it.
She loves me as dearly as she can, I know--and others beside me.
But still I try not to be selfish and to remember that when the
dreadful--dreadful-for-_me_--day comes that she must leave me, it will
only for _her_ be the going where she must often, often have longed to
be--the country 'across the river,' where her very dearest have been
watching for her for so long.
To me those three years seem like one bright summer. Of course we had
winters in them too, but there is a feeling of sunshine all over them.
And, actually speaking, those winters were very mild ones--nothing like
the occasional severe ones, of another of which I shall soon have to
tell.
I was so well too--growing so strong--stronger by far than grandmamma
had ever hoped to see me. And as I grew strong I seemed to take in the
delightfulness of it, though as a very little girl I had not often
_complained_ of feeling weak and tired, for I did not understand the
difference.
Now I must tell about the change that came to the Nestors--a sad change
for me, for though at first it seemed worse for them, in the end I
really think it brought more trouble to granny and me than to our dear
friends themselves.
It was one day in the autumn, early in October I think, that the first
beginning of the cloud came. Gerard had not long been back at school and
we were just settling down into our regular ways again.
'The girls are late this morning,' said grandmamma. 'You see nothing of
them from your watch-tower, do you, Helena?'
Granny always called the window-seat in our tiny drawing-room my
'watch-tower.' I had very long sight and I had found out that there was
a bit of the road from Moor Court where I could see the pony-cart
passing, like a little dark speck, before it got hidden again among the
trees. After that open bit I could not see it again at all till it was
quite close to our own road, as we called it--I mean the steep bit of
rough cart-track leading to our little garden-gate.
I was already crouched up in my pet place, when grandmamma called out to
me. She was in the dining-room, but the doors were open.
'No, grandmamma,' I replied. 'I don't see them at all. And I am sure
they haven't passed Waving View in the last quarter-of-an-hour, for I
have been here all that time.'
'Waving View,' I must explain, was the name we had given to the short
stretch of road I have just spoken of, because we used to wave
handkerchiefs to each other--I at my watch-tower and Sharley from the
pony-cart, at that point.
Grandmamma came into the drawing-room a moment or two after that and
stood behind me, looking out at the window.
[Illustration: 'I do wonder why they are so late.'--P. 82.]
'Not that I could see them coming,' she said, 'till they are up the hill
and close to us. But I do wonder why they are so late--half an hour
late,' and she glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. 'I hope
there is nothing the matter.'
I looked at her as she said that, for I felt rather surprised. It was
never granny's way to expect trouble before it comes. I saw that her
face was rather anxious. But just as I was going to speak, to say some
little word about its not being likely that anything was wrong, I gave
one other glance towards Waving View. This time I was not disappointed.
'Oh, granny,' I exclaimed, 'there they are! I am sure it is them--I know
the way they jog along so well--only, grandmamma, they are not waving?'
And I think the anxious look must have come into my own face, for I
remember saying, almost in a whisper, 'I do hope there is nothing the
matter'--granny's very words.