"That"s right," he said, "I forgot that you must be hungry."
Then we all three sat and looked at each other without speaking.
"Lindsay," said Harry at last, "you"d better finish that exercise you were doing when Helena came in," and Lindsay obediently went back to the table.
I wanted Harry to speak to me. After all I had told him I thought he should have been sorry for me, and should have allowed that I had right on my side, instead of letting me sit there in silence. At last I could bear it no longer.
"I don"t think," I said, "that you should treat me as if I were too naughty to speak to. I know quite well that you are not at all fond of Mr. Vandeleur yourself, and that should make you sorry for me."
"I suppose you"re thinking of what Gerard Nestor said," Harry replied.
"It"s true I know very little of Mr. Vandeleur, though I daresay he has meant to be kind to us. But what I can"t make out is how you could treat your grandmother so. Lindsay and I have never had any one like what she"s been to you."
His words startled me.
"If I had thought," I began, "that she would really care--or be frightened about me--perhaps I--" but I had no time to say more, there came a knock at the front door and Lindsay started up.
"It"s Kezia," he said, "she locks the back-door when she goes out in the evening and we let her in. She"s been to church," so off he flew, eager to be the one to give her the news of my unexpected arrival.
But I did not rush out to meet her, as I would have done at first.
Harry"s words had begun to make me a little less sure than I had been as to how even Kezia would look upon my conduct.
CHAPTER XIV
KEZIA"S COUNSEL
The sound of low voices--Lindsay"s and Kezia"s, followed by an exclamation, Kezia"s of course--reached Harry and me as we stood there in silence looking at each other.
Then the door was pushed open and in hurried my old friend.
"Miss Helena!" she said breathlessly. "Miss Helena, I could scarce believe Master Lindsay! Dear, dear, how frightened your grandmother will be!"
I could see that it went against her kindly feelings to receive me by blame at the very first, and yet her words showed plainly enough what she was thinking.
"Grandmamma will not be frightened," I said, rather coldly. "Harry has sent her a telegram, and besides--I don"t think she would have been frightened any way. It"s all quite different now, Kezia, you don"t understand. She"s got other people to care for instead of me."
Kezia took no notice of this.
"Dear, dear!" she said again. "To think of you coming here alone! I"m sure when Master Lindsay met me at the door saying: "Guess who"s here, Kezia," I never could have--" but here I interrupted her.
"If that"s all you"ve got to say to me I really don"t care to hear it,"
I said, "but it"s a queer sort of welcome. I can"t go away to-night, I suppose, but I will the very first thing to-morrow morning. I daresay they"ll take me in at the vicarage, but really--" I broke off again--"considering that this is my own home, and--and--that I had no one else to go to in all the world except you, Kezia, I do think--" but here my voice failed, I burst into tears.
Kezia put her arms round me very kindly.
"Poor dear," she said, "whatever mistakes you"ve made, you must be tired to death. Come with me into the dining-room, Miss Helena, there"s a better fire there, and I"ll get you a cup of tea or something, and then you must go to bed. Your own room"s quite ready, just as you left it.
Master Lindsay has the little chair-bed in Mr. Harry"s room--your grandmamma"s room, I mean."
She led me into the dining-room, talking as she went, in this matter-of-fact way, to help me to recover myself.
Harry and Lindsay remained behind.
"I have had--some--milk, and a piece of--gingerbread," I said, between my sobs, as Kezia established me in front of the fire in the other room.
"I don"t think I could eat anything else, but I"d like some tea very much."
I shivered in spite of the beautiful big fire close to me.
"You shall have it at once," said Kezia, hurrying off, "though it mustn"t be strong, and I"ll make you a bit of toast, too."
Then I overheard a little bustle in the kitchen, and by the sounds, I made out that Harry or Lindsay, or both of them perhaps, were helping Kezia in her preparations.
"What nice boys they are," I thought to myself, and a feeling of shame began to come over me that I should have first got to know them when acting in a way that they, Harry at least, so evidently thought wrong and foolish.
But now that, in spite of her disapproval, I felt myself safe in Kezia"s care, the restraint I had put upon myself gave way more and more. I sat there crying quietly, and when the little tray with tea and a tempting piece of hot toast (which Harry"s red face showed he had had to do with) made its appearance I ate and drank obediently, almost without speaking.
Half an hour later I was in bed in my own little room, Kezia tucking me in as she had done so very, very often in my life.
"Now go to sleep, dearie," she said, "and think of nothing till to-morrow morning, except that when things come to the worst they begin to get better."
And sleep I did, soundly and long. Harry and Lindsay had had their breakfast two hours before at least, when I woke, and other things had happened. A telegram had come in reply to Harry"s, thanking him for it, announcing Mr. Vandeleur"s arrival that very afternoon, and desiring Harry to meet him at Middlemoor Station.
They did not tell me of this; perhaps they were afraid it would have made me run off again somewhere else. But when my old nurse brought up my breakfast we had a long, long talk together. I told her all that I had told Harry the night before, and of course in some ways it was easier for her to understand than it had been for him. I could not have had a better counsellor. She just put aside all I said about grandmamma"s not caring for me any longer as simple nonsense; she didn"t attempt to explain all the causes of my having been left so much to myself. She didn"t pretend to understand it altogether.
"Your grandmamma will put it all right to you, herself, when she sees well to do so," she said. "She has just made one mistake, Miss Helena, it seems to me--she has credited you with more sense than perhaps should be expected of a child."
I didn"t like this, and I felt my cheeks grow red.
"More sense," repeated Kezia, "and she has trusted you too much. It should have pleased you to be looked on like that, and if you"d been a little older it would have done so. The idea that you could think she had left off caring for you would have seemed to her simply impossible.
She has trusted you too much, and you, Miss Helena, have not trusted her at all."
"But you"re forgetting, Kezia, what I heard myself, with my own ears, about sending me away to school, and how little she seemed to care."
Kezia smiled, rather sadly.
"My dearie," she said, "I have not served Mrs. Wingfield all the years I have, not to know her better than that. I daresay you"ll never know, unless you live to be a mother and grandmother yourself, what the thought of parting with you was costing her, at the very time she spoke so quietly."
"But when I fell downstairs," I persisted, "she seemed so vexed with me, and then--oh! for days and days before that, I had hardly seen her."
Kezia looked pained.
"Yes, my dear, it must have been hard for you, but harder for your grandmamma. There are times in life when all does seem to be going the wrong way. And very likely being so very troubled and anxious herself, about you as well as about other things, made your grandmamma appear less kind than usual."
Kezia stopped and hesitated a little.
"I think as things are," she said, "I can"t be doing wrong in telling you a little more than you know. I am sure my dear lady will forgive me if I make a mistake in doing so, seeing she has not told you more herself, no doubt for the best of reasons."