Silverthorns

“At Silverthorns itself!” repeated several voices. “No, indeed, papa, you never told us. How very funny it seems! Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

“It is more or less painful to me to recall that time,” Mr Waldron replied quietly. “They are all dead, all those I loved and cared for then. And it is so long ago now! But to go on with my story. I happened to be at Silverthorns one winter when the old squire was taken ill. I was there because my guardian who took charge of me was a very dear and old friend of his, and I was a quiet sort of child that did not give much trouble. I was left to run about the place as I liked, while the two old people were together. I slept in a little room in the oldest part of the house, which was the part the squire liked best, and he and his guests – unless there happened to be a great many in the house – inhabited it much more than the modern part. Do you remember, Charlotte and Jerry, noticing a sort of square tower at the end?”

“With a pointed window high up, and a pointed roof, almost like a kind of great pigeon-house? Oh, yes, I remember it,” said Charlotte.

“Well, that room, the room with that window, is the one that is said to be haunted. It is quite a small room. I believe the story is that the ghost frequents it because it was from that window that the unnatural father watched poor Bridget making her way down the avenue, when his cruelty had made her at last determine to leave him. I had heard something of the story, as I told you, but in the vaguest way. I knew nothing of the particulars; I could scarcely have understood them. I only knew that a long-ago Osbert, who was said to have been a cruel, bad man, was supposed to haunt the tower. But I had never heard that he came more at one time than another; I never knew that his spirit was supposed to be especially restless when any of the family were going to die; above all, when the place was going to change hands, I suppose. And I was not the least afraid of the tower – I often ran in and out of it in the daytime, though there was nothing particularly interesting in the little bare, deserted room. But one night, late evening rather, – I remember it so well, it had been a bitterly cold day, and the ground was covered with snow, – I was hanging about, rather at a loss what to do with myself, for my gr – guardian had been all day shut up with the squire, who was really very ill, when a sudden fancy seized me that I would like to go up to the tower room, as it is called, and look out on the moonlight glittering on the frost-covered trees of the avenue, – I have often, by the bye, had a fancy that the great thorns at the end of the drive seen in a frost must have given their name to the place, – for, like most children brought up alone, I was fanciful and dreamy. My own room, where a nice fire was blazing, was only one flight of steps lower than the tower room, but it looked out to the other side. I ran up-stairs and opened the tower room door – it was perfectly flooded with clear cold moonlight, except in one corner, away from the window, which struck me, as is always the case in moonlight shadows, as extraordinarily black and dark. But I did not mind, I had no thought of fear. I ran to the window and gazed out. It was as I expected – the trees were glistening like silver and diamonds, it seems to me that I have never seen anything so beautiful since. I remember saying to myself, ‘How I wish I could make some poetry about them to myself,’ when suddenly I was startled by the sound, or feeling– feeling as much as sound perhaps – of something moving in the dark corner, and before I had time to look round I heard distinctly three deep sighs or groans. Even had it been the daytime, and had there been nothing eerie about the place, the sound would have made me shiver – it seemed to tell of such profound, hopeless misery. Then in half a moment there rushed over me the remembrance of the story I had heard, and that I was here actually in the haunted room itself. I dashed through the doorway and down-stairs, and never stopped till I got to the servants’ regions; and then I was so near fainting and looked so wretched that my guardian had to be sent for, and all manner of soothing and comforting employed to bring me round. The whole thing might have been forgotten but for what followed. The poor old squire died that very night, and I think my guardian was glad he did not live till the next morning; for it brought the news of the reappearance of the Osbert cousins whom he had thought it his duty to try to trace, and so his sister’s grandson was cut out of his inheritance!”

“And the ghost had reason to be miserable then,” said Jerry. “Poor ghost.”

“Yes,” said Mr Waldron; “his hopes of his long penance ending must have been dashed to the ground.”

“Papa,” said Charlotte, in a rather awe-struck tone, “you speak as if you really believed it. Do you? Do you in the bottom of your heart believe it was the ghost?”

“No,” said Mr Waldron, smiling. “In the bottom of my heart I believe it was – ” He stopped, and dropped his voice mysteriously.

“What?” exclaimed everybody.

“Owls!” said Mr Waldron in a thrilling whisper. Charlotte and Jerry, and one or two others, who afterwards denied it by the way, screamed.

“Oh, papa,” said Charlotte, “you did so frighten us.”

“Well, my dears, it shows how easily nerves can be worked up to be frightened at nothing. It was your own imaginations that frightened you.”

“Then do you mean,” said Noble, in rather a disappointed tone, “that there was nothing in it at all?”

Mr Waldron hesitated.

“I can’t say,” he replied. “I don’t know. I think it was a very curious coincidence that for the first time for long any colour should have been given to the old story, just when the squire died; and even more, just when the estates’ reverting to the female line was stopped. Of course this tells two ways – these circumstances following after made the incident impressive.”

“Yes,” said Noble; “I see.”

“But, papa,” said Charlotte, “didn’t you say that the poor grand – yes, grand-nephew, who so nearly had all, came off very badly? That needn’t have been – the squire might have left him something.”

“He meant to do so, but – it is a long story, and the legal details would only confuse you. The squire had left things, as was usual in the family, all to the male heir, and failing him, to the female line; indeed, there was not very much he could alienate from the property, and the new squire had debts when he came into it, though it is in a much better way now. But the old squire had never really anticipated that the Australian Osberts would turn up. There was room for a lawsuit about what he had meant for his sister and her grandson; and they could not fight it. So all went from them.”

“Did you know them – the sister and the boy?” asked Charlotte.

“Yes,” said Mr Waldron, and he sighed.

“If you had been grown-up then, couldn’t you have helped them now that you’re such a clever lawyer?” asked Jerry.

“Perhaps I might have been able to do something.”

“Only ‘perhaps’!” said Jerry reproachfully. “Papa, I think the law is horribly unjust. I hate it. I don’t want to be a lawyer. Fancy those poor things! And the poor, poor ghost.”

“Jerry’s got the ghost on the brain,” said Ted, teasingly.

“Mamma,” said Jerry plaintively, “do you hear Ted? Should he mock like that when papa’s been telling us the story seriously?”

“He’s only in fun; he didn’t mean to vex you, Jerry,” said Arthur, and Mrs Waldron looked at the boy somewhat anxiously. She did not like his half querulous tone. It reminded her of the time when he was suffering and feeble, and unable to bear ordinary nursery life. “Jerry can’t be well,” she said to herself; and she said it aloud to her husband when they were left alone.

“Do you think I should not have told that old story in his hearing?” he asked. “He is not usually nervous or excitable. I could not get out of telling it without seeming to make some mystery.”

“And you think it better not to tell them the whole?” asked his wife.

“I see no good purpose that it could serve,” he replied. “Not at present, at least, while they are young and impressionable. When they are older I have always intended that they should know, though it is most unlikely that it will ever affect us in any way.”

Chapter Nine

The Tower Room

If we knew more than is possible for us of what is passing at a distance, we should find so-called “coincidences” much more frequent then we have at present any idea of. That very evening when the family party in the Waldrons’ drawing-room was discussing the old legends of the Osberts, the conversation at Silverthorns between Lady Mildred and her niece had taken the same direction.

Claudia Meredon was not looking quite as bright and well as usual, and her aunt was becoming aware of it.

“You are so silent, child,” she said, half reproachfully, “and I like you to talk. It was one of your attractions to me at the first that you were not one of those stupid, half-bred, or not-at-all-bred girls who think good manners consist in staring at their elders, and never answering anything but ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘if you please.’”

Claudia laughed.

“Then you don’t approve of —

”‘Hold up your head, turn out your toes,Speak when you’re spoken to, mend your clo’es,’

“Aunt Mildred?” she said.

“Yes, I do,” said the old lady, testily. “There’s a medium in all things. I detest impertinent little chatterboxes of children. But you’re not a child now, Claudia, and you have plenty of sense and knowledge in your head; you are quite able to talk very intelligently and agreeably if you choose. I only hope you are not going to turn into a book-worm. Are you working too hard?”

“No, aunt, I don’t think so,” said Claudia. “And you know how I enjoy my lessons. And the teaching at Miss Lloyd’s is really very interesting.”

But she gave a very little sigh as she spoke.

“Then what’s the matter with you? Are you ill? I hope you’re not home-sick. Or do any of those girls at Miss Lloyd’s annoy you in any way? You can’t deny that you’re not in your usual spirits.”

“No,” Claudia allowed, “I don’t feel quite as merry as usual; but I’m sure I’m not ill. And I’m not home-sick: if I were it would be too silly, when I know that what you are doing for me now is to make it possible for me to be a real help to them all at home. Perhaps, however, I am just a very little what people call home-sick. It isn’t the girls at school – I have very little to do with them.”

“All the better,” said Lady Mildred. “They cannot be much worth knowing.”

“Perhaps most of them are rather commonplace,” Claudia allowed. “There is only one – the one I told you of, Charlotte Waldron – who interests me at all particularly. But I don’t think I interest her, so though we do all the same lessons we scarcely ever speak to each other,” and again Claudia sighed a little.

“You are a goose,” said her aunt. “I believe you would like to make friends with the girl, and have her adoring you and gushing over you.”

Claudia could not help laughing a little. The idea of cold, proud Charlotte “gushing” over any one, over herself especially, struck her as curiously incongruous.

“She’s not at all that sort of girl, Aunt Mildred,” she said.

“So much the better,” repeated Lady Mildred again. “And whatever she is or is not,” she went on, “remember, Claudia, I gave you fair warning that I could have no school-girl friendships.”

“Of course, aunt, I know that quite well. Don’t think I am dreaming of such things. I really and truly don’t quite know why I don’t feel as bright as usual.”

It was as she said. She did not understand herself. Hitherto, though her life had been in some respects a hard and even anxious one, – for she had shared her parents’ cares and struggles, and the mode of living at the rectory had been of almost Spartan simplicity, – there had been no complications. Duties had been clear and straightforward, to Claudia’s genial and loving nature they had gone hand in hand with her greatest delight – that of serving and helping those about her. But now it was different: she felt herself misunderstood and disliked; she felt she was almost giving reason for this, and yet what could she do? The little kindnesses and overtures of good will which her mother had assured her she could find opportunity for without violating her aunt’s wishes had been rejected almost with scorn. She was beginning even faintly to suspect that her earnest and conscientious school-work, or rather the success with which it was crowned, was rousing against her feelings which she could not endure to suspect the existence of in the hearts of others. Yet here again what could she do? It must be right to do her best, to profit to the utmost by the opportunities her aunt’s goodness was giving her, even if it made her companions – though, to tell the truth, the word was in Claudia’s mind represented by Charlotte Waldron alone – dislike and almost hate her. Yet it was so painful, so new; and to have to face these problems for the first time, when for the first time she was alone and with no one to reprove or advise her, did seem hard. For it would have been impossible to express all her difficulties clearly in a letter, even had she not felt that it would be disloyal to her aunt, and cruel to the anxious hearts at home, to attempt to do so.

“No,” she repeated, as Lady Mildred did not at once speak, “I don’t quite know why I don’t feel as usual. Perhaps I am working a very little too hard. If it were summer I am sure I should be as merry as ever – it must be too lovely here in summer, Aunt Mildred.”

“But you get plenty of fresh air – it is a good drive into Wortherham and back every day?”

“Oh, yes, and I do so enjoy it. You don’t know how nice it is. I am so glad papa managed to teach me to drive quite as a child, though I never had anything like Kelpie to drive before. She is such a darling, Aunt Mildred.”

Claudia’s face lightened up with the thought of her pony’s perfections. Lady Mildred looked at her: she saw that when the momentary glow faded the girl seemed again pale and tired-looking.

“My dear, do you sleep well?” she said suddenly.

“Not very well, perhaps,” Claudia admitted.

“You’re not nervous – you don’t mind being alone?”

“Oh, no,” said Claudia; “I have always had a room alone since I was quite a little girl.”

“Yes; but at home, in a smaller house, where you all seem nearer together, it is different. You are quite sure you are not nervous here? Don’t be afraid of saying so if you are. No one has been telling you nonsense about this house being haunted, or anything of that kind?”

A light broke over Claudia’s face, which had been growing rather bewildered-looking.

“It is very kind of you to have thought of it, Aunt Mildred,” she said. “But indeed I am not the least nervous in that way. I have not slept well partly perhaps because I have been thinking so much about my lessons. I do so want to show them at home that I am doing well, and the examinations and all that will be coming on soon.”

“Don’t overdo it,” said Lady Mildred. “Your father and mother – and I, for that matter, if you care about me in that way – will be perfectly satisfied that you have done your best, without any prizes or things of that kind.”

“There is only one prize given at Christmas,” said Claudia, “and that is a German one that the master gives himself. I do dreadfully want to get it. Mamma is so anxious about my German.”

“Well, don’t overwork yourself, my dear. It would be very unlucky if you were to fall ill here – you that have always been so strong. It would reflect badly on me, or on Silverthorns, if you lost your rosy cheeks here. And to some of those girls, doubtless, prizes must seem matters of life or death – many of them probably are training for governesses.”

“Some perhaps may be,” said Claudia; “but I think many of them, particularly some of the least refined, are very rich. And I don’t think any of them can wish for this prize more than I do. Think what it would be to send it home! But, Aunt Mildred,” she went on in a different tone, “as you see I’m not nervous, I wish you would tell me more about the ghost.”

“I know very little about, the story, my dear,” Lady Mildred replied. “Mr Osbert, my husband, disliked its being spoken about, and I did not care to hear. There was some nonsense about the ghost being heard or seen at the time of the old squire’s death, which annoyed him. I fancy it was set about by some cousins who had no right to the place, but tried to claim something, and they wanted to make out that the ghost was on their side.”

“How very absurd, and how wrong!” said Claudia. “Yes; I know very little about it however. The ghost is supposed to be the spirit of a very ruffianly old Osbert, who cannot rest in peace.”

“He haunts the tower, doesn’t he?” said Claudia. “Old Peebles, the gardener, told me that, one day when I was asking him if there were owls’ nests up there. He said he ‘durstn’t take upon himself to disturb them, nor anything else about the tower, and he couldn’t say.’”

“Ah, yes, you see that explains it all. No doubt there have been owls there for generations, and if no one ever disturbs them they have it all their own way. We have never used those rooms much – the rooms in the lower part of the tower, I mean.”

“But they are dear old rooms. The one the servants call the chintz room might be made delightful. I should not be the least afraid to sleep there,” said Claudia.

“Well, if ever the house is more full of guests than it is likely to be in my time,” said Lady Mildred, who was particularly amiable to Claudia that evening, “you shall move there and try how you like it. We have often used it as a sort of bachelor’s room or odd spare room – it is easily put in order. And, by the bye, you would have no reason to fear the ghost, Claudia. He only appears to, or is heard by – I don’t know which – members of the Osbert family. They must have Osbert blood in them.”

“How disappointing!” Claudia replied. “I shouldn’t care so much for sleeping in the tower if that’s the case.”

“Well, go and sleep in your own bed now, and let me see you looking better to-morrow. It is getting late,” said her aunt.

Claudia kissed her and said good night, and went off. She felt brightened by the talk with Lady Mildred. It was not often that the old lady was so genial and sympathising.

“It was really very kind of her to think of my being perhaps frightened at night,” she said to herself. “Very few grown-up people think of such things. If it had been poor Alix now – I don’t believe Alix will ever be able to sleep in a room alone.”

She was up-stairs by this time on the large first floor landing, which at one side was separated from the oldest part of the house by a door and short passage. Claudia looked at the door.

“I wonder now if I should be frightened if I slept in the tower,” she thought. “I hardly think so. Yet it must be queer and lonely up in that empty room. I wonder if it’s at all moonlight to-night. I’ve a great mind to run up just for a moment. I’ll leave this door open, so that if I am frightened I can rush down at once.”

And half laughing at her own temerity, Claudia opened the door, propping it ajar, for it was a spring one, by the aid of a chair on the wide landing, and running along the passage, began the ascent of the stairs. A few steps led to the chintz room, the door of which, imperfectly latched, was rattling somewhat uncannily, as if some one were trying to get out. But Claudia did not stop to close it – she hastened on, up the two flights, to the tower room itself. The staircase was dark save for some light from below, whence, too, came the sounds of the servants moving about and speaking in the distance, for on the ground floor of this wing were some of the offices in regular use. Claudia was not sorry to hear the murmurs – it seemed less “ghosty.” But as she opened the tower room door and entered, it banged to behind her – and then it seemed indeed as if she were far away from everybody, up there with the moonlight and the owls.

For moonlight there was, though of but a faint and fitful kind. There was frost about, though as yet no snow had fallen this winter, and the outside world looked grim and unadorned, as Claudia went to the window and gazed out. Except where here and there a ray of light fell on the evergreen trees in the avenue, all seemed black and lifeless.

“How dreary,” she thought with a little shudder. “I can’t help pitying the ghost if his rambles are restricted to this melancholy room. I wonder what he did that was so wicked,” and her eyes rested unconsciously on the drive, seen here and there in patches of light and dark through the trees, down which poor Bridget Osbert so many, many years ago had crept away, sobbing and broken-hearted. Claudia had never heard the story, Lady Mildred herself did not know it, but as the girl stood and gazed a strange sensation – not of fear, but of pity and sadness – came over her; and suddenly her thoughts reverted to the mention made by her aunt of the cousins who had been disappointed in their expectations, some of whom apparently had held the last communication on record with the Osbert ghost.

“Poor things,” she thought; “I feel sorry for them. Perhaps they had some rights, after all. It must be hard to part with an old place like this, or to give up hopes of having it if one has expected it. There is something strange in the thought of inhabiting the very spot where one’s ancestors have lived for hundreds of years. It must seem so full of them – permeated with their feelings and actions. If they had been bad people, I think it would seem rather dreadful. I wonder why I feel this so much to-night. Standing here, I could almost fancy I was an Osbert – and I feel certain some of them have been very unhappy. I do feel so sorry for I don’t know whom! If the ghost appeared I really think I should have courage to ask if I could do anything for him – poor ghost.”

But nothing appeared, no sound broke the perfect stillness, save a low rustling wail from the wind as it came round the corner. And the moonlight faded again, and Claudia turning from the window saw that the room was almost perfectly dark, and for the first time a slight feeling of fear came over her. She hurried to the door, and was glad to see as she opened it that the light from the large landing shone faintly up the stairs. And in another moment she had run down, and was smiling at her own trepidations in the cheerful security of her own room.

“I am not so very brave after all,” she said to herself.

And as might have been expected, her dreams that night were rather troubled. They seemed full of Charlotte Waldron and Herr Märklestatter, but the German teacher had the face of Charlotte’s father, whom Claudia had seen but once and for a moment only, the evening he came out to Silverthorns on business, and he seemed to be begging Claudia to do or not to do something. And just as she was consenting, and Mr Waldron was saying, “It is all for the poor ghost’s sake, you know,” she heard what she fancied in her dream to be a sudden cry of distress, and starting up in bed, found that the wind had got up, and was howling round the house, and that her door had blown open with a loud noise.

Still, though the next morning was dreary and stormy in the extreme, Claudia looked and felt better than for some time past.

“You don’t look as if ghosts or anything else had been troubling you,” said Lady Mildred; “but it is far too stormy for Kelpie this morning. You must have the brougham.”

And Claudia, while she thanked her, smiled to herself as she wondered what her aunt would have said to her visit to the tower room the night before.

Chapter Ten

Jerry’s Appeal

It was now very near Christmas, which promised this year to be what people are fond of calling “an old-fashioned” one. Snow had already fallen, though not to any great extent, though the weather-wise were prophesying that there was already more to come.

Charlotte Waldron was working harder at her lessons than she had ever yet done, and with a sort of feverish eagerness and absorption that was new to her. She tried to some extent to conceal her intense anxiety from her mother, perhaps because she felt instinctively that Mrs Waldron would have told her that she was allowing the spirit of ambition and emulation to carry her too far, especially if the whole of her motives had been confessed. She would not allow herself to acknowledge them; she would have been indignant with any one who had put them into words and faced her with their unloveliness. And as “none are so blind as those who won’t see,” she remained self-deceived, and in a sense self-satisfied.