My New Home

'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.'