Grandmamma shook her head.

'No,' she said, as if thinking aloud, 'I never heard those names in the branch of the Vandeleurs I am connected with.'

CHAPTER VI

'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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.sed 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.