Silverthorns

Jerry, as usual, was her chief and indeed at this time her only confidant. And even to him she did not say very much, but what she did say startled and impressed the sensitive, sympathising nature of the boy far more than Charlotte had any idea of.

“Jerry,” she repeated more than once, “if I don’t get the German prize I shall go out of my mind. Oh, I don’t know what I shall do! I just can’t bear to think of it. It does not seem fair, does it, that I, who have been working steadily all these years, doing my best, my very best, should suddenly be set aside by a stranger, to whom the work is far easier than to me? – a girl who is far cleverer than I, who, for all I know – she never tells us anything – may have learnt her German in Germany and her French in France. That isn’t fair competition. If it had been Gueda now, or one of the girls who have learnt as I have done, with no greater advantages, I might have felt it in a way, but I should have known it was fair. And now it just isn’t.”

“No,” Jerry agreed, “it isn’t. But oh, Charlotte, it does make me so unhappy when you speak like that.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Charlotte penitently. “I’ll try not; but you see I’ve no one else to speak to. I told you I had left off talking to mamma about it all – and – there is just no one but you I can speak to.”

“No, don’t leave off speaking to me,” said Jerry; “I should know you were thinking of it all the same. Charlotte,” he went on after a little pause, “do you think the girl herself thinks it fair? You have said sometimes that you thought she was really a nice girl.”

“I can’t make her out,” Charlotte replied. “She seems nice, only she is dreadfully reserved. As for whether she thinks it fair or not, I don’t fancy she thinks about it in that way at all. I’m not sure that she really knows how clever she is. She does not seem conceited. But I suppose she wants very much to get the prize. The truth is, she should not be in the class or in any class; she should be by herself.”

“I wonder the teachers don’t see it,” said Jerry.

“Oh, they don’t care like that. They can’t make such particular distinctions. It’s only me it really matters to,” said Charlotte hopelessly. “I suppose everything’s unfair in this world. I don’t see how one is to help getting to have horrid feelings. What can it matter to her, so spoilt and rich and beautiful – what can one little school prize matter to her as it does to me?” and she groaned despairingly.

Jerry was silent for a few minutes; then he spoke again.

“Charlotte,” he said, “are you sure you won’t get it? It would be all the more of a triumph if you did win it over her.”

“But I know I can’t,” she said. “Of course I shall do my best; I should need to do that any way. Some of the girls are really very good German scholars. But she is more than good; she really writes it almost perfectly. Oh, no, I have no chance – the notes for the composition were given out last week. I have begun it, but I almost think I shall spill a bottle of ink over it, or let it catch fire accidentally at the last minute.”

“Oh, no, Charlotte, you won’t do that – promise me you won’t. Do, Charlotte!” Jerry entreated.

“Oh, well, I don’t suppose I shall. I should not like not to show Herr Märklestatter I had done my best. He used to be so kind to me; he is kind to me still. Only,” and again Charlotte sighed profoundly, “I really don’t know how I shall bear the disappointment and the mortification!”

Jerry did not sigh, – he was never very demonstrative, – but his face grew hard and stern, and he pressed his lips tightly together in a way that was usual with him when he was making up his mind to something.

For Jerry was making up his mind to something, and for the next few days he was silently thinking it over wondering how he was to carry it out.

The predicted snow fell but slightly. But the frost continued and increased. By the middle of December there was no talk among the boys on holiday afternoons but of skating. And one Tuesday evening, in the Waldrons’ school-room there was great excitement about an expedition to come off the following day, which was as usual a half-holiday.

“Can’t you come, Charlotte?” asked Arthur. For Charlotte, “one sister of her brothers,” was, as was natural, a great adept at skating, and even at less feminine recreations.

“I wish I could,” she said. “I’d give anything to go; but I can’t. It’s this extra work for the end of the term that I must get on with.”

It was the German composition. A glance at the expression of her face told it to Jerry.

“It’s out Gretham way, isn’t it?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Arthur replied; “about half-a-mile past the first Silverthorns lodge.”

“I wish you’d take me, as Charlotte can’t go,” said Jerry.

The others looked at each other in surprise.

“You, Jerry!” they exclaimed. For the boy was of course debarred by his lameness from skating or any amusement of the kind, and he had often seemed to shrink from being a spectator of what he could not take part in, with a sensitiveness which his parents regretted.

“Yes, I. Why not?” he said. “Of course I would enjoy going more if Charlotte were to be there too, but I meant that I could have her seat in the dog-cart. I don’t take much room.”

“Are you to have the dog-cart?” asked Charlotte. “That is a piece of luck.”

“Yes; papa has to send Sam out that way with some message or papers or something, and he said we might get a lift. Of course we have to find our own way home, Jerry.”

“I know that. I can quite walk one way,” said the boy. “I needn’t stay long if I get too cold.”

“Very well. I’m sure you’re welcome to come, as far as I’m concerned,” said Arthur. “You must be ready at one, sharp.”

“I couldn’t have gone in any case,” said Charlotte. “We are to have an extra French lesson to-morrow – recitations, and it won’t be over till two.”

“What a sell,” observed Ted, “and on a half-holiday.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Charlotte.

“No, I dare say not,” replied Ted. “You’ll go off your head some fine day, Charlotte, or paralyse your brain or something, if you work and fuss at lessons like that.”

“Well, I may be thankful that I shall have one brother sane enough to act as my keeper, if working at one’s lessons is what sends people out of their minds,” said Charlotte cuttingly.

Ted looked at her, opened his mouth as if about to speak, but shut it up again. He was no match for Charlotte in this kind of warfare, and indeed he was not quite sure if she were making fun of him or not. All the others burst out laughing, and Ted’s discomfiture might have led to some family discord had not Mrs Waldron at that moment entered the room. Arthur, with the laudable intention of diverting the storm, turned to her.

“Jerry wants to go out to see the skating to-morrow, mother,” he said. “You don’t mind his coming? We are to get a lift one way.”

Mrs Waldron looked pleased.

“No, of course not. I am very glad for him to go,” she said. And she patted Jerry’s head as she passed him, but the boy shrank away a little from the caress.

“Mamma thinks I want to go to amuse myself,” he thought. “Nobody really cares about poor Charlotte except me.”

It seemed colder than ever the next day, and there was a leaden look in the sky which told of snow not very far from falling. But it would certainly hold off till night, if not for another day or two, said Ted, who prided himself, and with some reason, on his weather wisdom.

“Wrap up well, Jerry,” said his mother, as she saw the boys preparing to start, “and don’t be very late. I should like you all to be home for the school-room tea. Perhaps I’ll have it with you, as your father will not be back till late for dinner. Charlotte will enjoy being all together at tea, as she will have no holiday scarcely.”

“When will she be home, mamma?” asked Jerry.

“About half-past two. All her class are staying later to-day.”

Mounted in the dog-cart among his brothers, Jerry set to work with calculations which they little suspected.

“It will take us three-quarters of an hour to get to the pond,” he thought. “She will be leaving Miss Lloyd’s about a quarter past two; say it takes her an hour to Silverthorns – she’ll go slower than we in this weather, I should think. Well, say only three-quarters – she’ll be near the first lodge by three, and it will take me about ten minutes from the pond. So I can stay there till a quarter to three or so – quite long enough; and I’ll tell them all then that I don’t want to stay longer. And if I don’t meet her I don’t much care – I’ll just go up to the house and say I want to see Miss Meredon. I won’t go home without having done it, or done what I could, that is to say.”

But all this preoccupation of mind did not render him a very lively companion.

“I can’t think what Jerry comes for if he’s so glum,” grumbled Ted. And Arthur’s warning “leave him alone” had to be several times repeated to secure the drive to the skating-ground ending in peace.

Things fell out much as Gervais had anticipated. He stood about the edge of the pond, with some other non-performing spectators, for three-quarters of an hour or so patiently enough. It was a pretty sight; notwithstanding his absorption in other things, he could not but own this to himself, and he felt pride in his tall, strong brothers, who were among the most agile and graceful of the skaters present. And now and then, when one or other of the three achieved some especially difficult or intricate feat, Jerry’s pale face flushed with pleasure and excitement.

“How I wish I were like them!” he said to himself, as some of Charlotte’s revilings against the unfairness of “fate” returned to his mind. And with the recollection returned also that of the real object of his joining in the excursion. He looked at his watch, a pretty little silver one which his father had given him a year ago, when he was only twelve years old, though his elder and stronger brothers had had to wait till they were fifteen for theirs, – were there not some compensations in your fate, Jerry? – and saw that it was fully half-past two. Time enough yet, but he was really getting chilled with standing about, and he was growing fidgety too. He had felt braver about it all in the distance, now he began to say to himself, how very much easier it would be to speak to the girl in the road than to have to march up to the house and ask for her formally, and he felt as if every moment was lessening the chance of his meeting her. Just then Arthur came skimming by. Jerry made a sign to him, and Arthur, always kind and good-natured, especially to his youngest brother, wheeled round and pulled up.

“What is it, Jeremiah?” he said. “You look rather lugubrious – you’re not too cold, are you?”

“Yes,” said Jerry, not noticing in his nervous eagerness to get away, Arthur’s half-bantering tone, which he might otherwise have resented; “I am horribly cold. I don’t want to stay any longer. I just wanted to tell you I was going, so that you’d know.”

“All right,” Arthur replied; “you’re sure it won’t be too far for you, and you don’t mind going alone?”

“Of course not,” said Jerry, already turning to go. But with an “I say, Jerry,” Arthur wheeled back again. “It’s looking awfully heavy over there,” he said, pointing to the slate-blue darkness of the sky towards the north; “they say it’s sure to snow before night. Make the best of your way home. You know the shortest way – the footpath over the stile just beyond the ‘Jolly Thrashers’?”

Jerry nodded. Truth to tell, he had but a vague idea of it, but he could ask – and he must be off.

“Or,” said Arthur, making Jerry nearly stamp with impatience, “perhaps, after all, you’d better keep to the high road. There’s a strong chance of your falling in with Sam – he won’t have got back yet.”

“All right, all right,” Jerry called back, and then he set off at the nearest approach to a run his poor stiffened knee could achieve.

He looked at his watch as he ran – only twenty-five minutes to three! barely five minutes since he had signalled to Arthur! Jerry relaxed his speed – it was scarcely possible that Miss Meredon was near Silverthorns yet.

He walked on quietly, past the second entrance, and along what from a certain corner was called the Wortherham road, till he came to the first Silverthorns lodge. Then he began to breathe more freely; “the girl,” as he always mentally dubbed her, could not enter the grounds now without his seeing her. He looked at his watch for the third time – seventeen minutes to three. Just about the time he had planned. She should be here soon if she had left Miss Lloyd’s a little after two.

But he had been walking up and down the short stretch of road between the so-called first lodge and the next corner fully twenty minutes before at last the sound of wheels reached him clearly through the frosty air, though still at some distance. Hitherto he had not gone beyond the corner – it would have made him feel more nervous somehow to look all along the great bare road; but now he gathered up his courage and walked briskly on. He was still cold, and beginning to feel tired too, but new vigour seemed to come to him when at last he was able to distinguish that the approaching vehicle was a pony-carriage, and the Silverthorns one no doubt; not that he knew it, or the pony, or the driver by sight, but it was not very likely that any other would be coming that way just at that time.

Jerry stood by the side of the road, then he walked on a few steps, then waited again. The sound of the wheels drew nearer and nearer, and he heard too the tinkling of a bell on the pony’s neck. Then he distinguished that, as he expected, the carriage was driven by a lady, and then – it seemed to come up so fast, that in another moment it would have passed him like a flash had he not resolutely stepped forward a little on to the road, taking his cap off obtrusively as he did so.

“Miss – Miss Meredon,” he said in his thin, clear boy’s voice. “I beg your pardon.”

The pony slackened its pace, the girl glanced forward to where Jerry stood, with a slightly bewildered, inquiring look on her face.

“Yes,” she said. “Is there something wrong with the pony, or the harness, or anything?” forgetting that a mere passer-by stopping her out of good-nature to point out some little mishap would not have been likely to address her by name.

“No,” said the boy – quite a child he seemed to her, for thirteen-year-old Gervais was small and slight; “oh no, it’s nothing like that. It’s only that – you are Miss Meredon, aren’t you?” Claudia nodded. “I wanted to speak to you for a minute by yourself. I – I forgot about him,” he added in a lower tone, coming nearer her, so that the groom behind should not overhear him, which small piece of good breeding at once satisfied the girl that the little fellow was a “gentleman.” “I wouldn’t keep you for a moment. You don’t think me rude, I hope?” he went on anxiously, for one glance at the sweet, lovely face had made Jerry feel he would be very sorry indeed to be thought rude by its owner.

“Oh, no,” said the girl smiling; “I am only a little puzzled. You see I don’t even know who you are.”

But she began to throw aside the fur carriage rug as she spoke, as if preparing to get out to speak to him.

“I’m Ger – ” he began. “My name’s Waldron. I’m Charlotte – you know Charlotte? – I’m her youngest brother.”

“Oh,” said Claudia, in a tone of enlightenment. And then she knew what had seemed familiar to her in the very blue eyes looking wistfully at her out of the pale, slightly freckled face, with its crown of short, thick, almost black hair. “You are a little like your sister,” she said, as she got out of the carriage, “and you are even more like your father.”

For in Charlotte’s eyes, as Claudia at least had seen them, there was none of the softness which kindliness gave to Mr Waldron’s, and anxious timidity at this moment to those of his little son.

“Oh, do you know papa?” said Jerry, with a mixture of interest and apprehension in his voice.

“I’ll speak to you in an instant,” said the girl, by this time on the footpath at Jerry’s side. “Hodges,” she went on to the groom, “take the pony home – it’s too cold to keep him about. And tell Ball, if her ladyship asks for me, to say I am walking up the drive and I’ll be in immediately.”

The man touched his hat and drove off.

“Now,” said Claudia, “we can talk in peace. You asked me if I knew your father,” she went on, speaking partly to set the boy at ease, for she saw he looked anxious and nervous. “No, I can’t say I know him. I only saw him once for a moment, but I thought he had the kindest eyes in the world. And when I first saw Char – your sister, I remembered his face again.”

“Yes,” said Jerry, gratified, but too anxious to rest there, “papa is as kind as he looks. I wish you could see mamma though! But it’s about Charlotte I want to speak to you. Miss Meredon, will you promise never to tell anybody you’ve seen me? I’ve planned it all on purpose – coming out here and waiting on the road to meet you. Will you promise me? I shall never tell any one.”

Claudia looked at the anxious little face.

“Won’t you trust me?” she said. “Tell me first what it is you want of me, and then – if I possibly can, and I dare say I can – I will promise you never to tell any one.”

Jerry looked up at her again.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you. It’s about the German prize. Charlotte is breaking her heart about it – I mean about knowing she won’t get it.”

Claudia’s face flushed.

“But how does she know she won’t get it?” she said. “It isn’t decided – the essays aren’t even given in yet. Mine is not more than half done.”

“I know – she’s working at hers now. She’s working awfully hard, though she has no hope. You are much cleverer; you’re cleverer at everything, she says, and especially German. But you can’t ever have worked harder than she’s done. I suppose you learnt German in Germany? Of course that leaves no chance for the others.”

He could not look at her now; he wanted to work himself up to a sort of indignation against her, and in sight of the candid face and gentle eyes he felt instinctively that it would not have been easy.

“No,” said Claudia, and her tone was colder; “I have never been in Germany in my life. I have been well taught, I know, but I too have worked hard.”

“Well, I dare say you have. I don’t mean to vex you, I don’t mean to be rude,” said poor Jerry; “but you are cleverer, you are much further on; and you knew a great deal more than the others before you came. There is a sort of unfairness about it, though I can’t put it rightly.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

Jerry gulped something down like a sob.

“I want you not to try for the prize,” he said. “I can’t think that if you are good and kind, as you seem, it would give you any pleasure to get it when it will break Charlotte’s heart.”

A crowd of feelings rushed through Claudia’s heart and brain. What had Charlotte ever been or done to her that she should care about her in this way? Why should she make this sacrifice for a girl who had not even attempted to hide her cold indifference, even dislike? Could the loss of the prize be sorer to Charlotte, or the gaining of it more delightful, than to her, Claudia? Was it even in the least probable that the other girl’s motives were as pure as she knew her own to be?

But as her glance fell on the anxious little face beside her these reflections gave way to others. It might be more to Charlotte Waldron and her family than she – Claudia – could understand. Charlotte had resented the idea that her education was to be turned to practical use, but yet, even if she were not intended to be a governess, her parents might have other plans for her. They certainly did not seem rich, and Claudia remembered hearing that they were a large family. It was in a softened tone that she again spoke to Jerry.

“I hardly see that my giving up trying for it would do what you want,” she said gently. “Your sister would probably be too proud to care for the prize if she thought she had gained it by my not trying.”

“Oh, of course you would have to manage not to seem to do it on purpose. I could trust you for that,” said Gervais naïvely, looking up at her with his blue eyes. “And,” he went on, “Charlotte is fair, though she’s proud. She doesn’t pretend that you’re not much cleverer and further on.”

“I haven’t contradicted you when you said that,” said Claudia; “but I don’t think that I am cleverer than she is. In German I have perhaps had unusually good teaching – that is all.”

“You will get the prize if you try, you know that,” Jerry persisted. “If you give up trying Charlotte will think it a piece of wonderful good fortune. But I don’t think she or any one could be very surprised. You have everything you want, why should you care to work extra for a prize like that? It isn’t as if you had been years at Miss Lloyd’s, like the others – and – and – cared about it like them. And the teachers think you too grand, to be vexed with you whatever you do.”

“Grand,” repeated Claudia, with a little laugh, but it was not a bitter one. “I only wish you all – ” but she stopped. There was a good deal of truth in what Jerry said; she was only a new-comer, with scarcely a real right to enter the lists. And it was true too that she was free to retire without vexing any one, or involving others in her self-sacrifice. Lady Mildred would not care; her parents would, not improbably, take this boy’s view of the case. Self-sacrifice was the only one involved.

She turned and looked at Charlotte’s brother.

“Very well,” she said, “I promise to do as you wish. I cannot yet quite see how I shall manage it. You will not of course blame me if I find I cannot. I do promise you to do my best to get out of it, so that Charlotte shall have no rivals but her regular ones.”

Jerry looked up at her.

“Thank you,” he said, “thank you awfully. You are very good and – and kind. I wish Charlotte could know; but of course she never must. You’ll never tell anybody, will you?” he added.

“I’ll never tell any one by whom it could possibly come round to Charlotte,” she said. “And for some time to come I’ll not tell any one at all.”

“I’ll trust you,” said Jerry. “Now I must go. Oh but would you like me to walk up to the house with you?” he went on, with a sudden recollection of his “manners.”

“No, thank you,” said Claudia, secretly amused, for Jerry, though only three years younger, was about half her size; “oh no, thank you. You must get home as fast as you can.”

“That isn’t very fast,” said Jerry, “for I’m lame, you see,” and the child coloured painfully as he said it.

“And I believe it’s beginning to snow,” said Claudia, anxiously. “I do wish I could send you home somehow. Come up with me to the stables, and I’ll see what can be done.”

“Oh no, no, thank you,” said Jerry eagerly, for now that his great purpose was achieved, a nervous shyness was beginning to overpower him, and he felt only eager to get away. “I shall be all right. I’m going to meet our dog-cart down by the ‘Jolly Thrashers.’”

“You are sure?”

“Quite,” he repeated. “Good-bye, Miss Meredon, and thank you again, awfully.”

They shook hands, and the boy set off. Claudia stood watching him through the now fast falling snow.

“I hope he will be all right,” she said to herself as she turned towards the lodge gates.

Neither she nor Jerry had realised how long they had been talking. When Claudia went in she found Lady Mildred on the point of sending out to see if she had taken refuge at the lodge from the snow.

“I should have felt very unhappy about that poor boy if he had had any further to go than the ‘Thrashers,’” thought Claudia to herself more than once as the afternoon drew on into evening, and the snow fell so fast that one could not tell when the daylight really faded.

Chapter Eleven

Sent by the Snow

Claudia and her aunt were sitting quietly that same evening in the small drawing-room which Lady Mildred always used in the winter, and Claudia was thinking over her strange meeting with “the little Waldron boy,” as she called him to herself (for she did not even know his Christian name), and hoping he had got safe home, when her aunt looked up suddenly.

“How should you like to spend Christmas in London, Claudia? Would it seem very dreary to you?” she said.