Silverthorns

“But, papa,” said Charlotte, whose quick wits had taken in all he said, “if the place always goes to Osberts, it must be all nonsense about Lady Mildred’s intending to leave it to this Miss Meredon, as everybody will say.”

“I don’t know,” said her father. “There have been rumours that Lady Mildred is perfectly free to do as she likes with it, others that she is bound by some arrangement to leave it to the Osberts, and that in reality she only has it for her life. Either may be true. Mr Osbert and his brother were not very friendly, and General Osbert needed money. Perhaps he was satisfied with some help from his brother during his life. And the squire was much attached to his wife, and owed much to her. She may be able to leave it to her own people. But even if not, it doesn’t matter – General Osbert has sons,” he added, as if thinking aloud.

“Papa!” exclaimed Charlotte almost indignantly, “how can you say it doesn’t matter? I think it would be the most unfair, unnatural thing to leave an old, old place like that to people who have nothing to do with it.”

“What does it matter to us?” said Ted, with a yawn. “How can you excite yourself so about other people’s affairs, Charlotte?”

But Mr Waldron stroked Charlotte’s head as she sat near him.

“I think it is very unlikely,” he said. “Mr Osbert had plenty of family feeling.”

“What would the poor ghost do if it were so?” said Jerry, so seriously that they all laughed. “Just fancy his feelings! He’d lose all chance of ever resting in peace, poor thing – for if it once went away to another family, it could never go to the descendants of a woman Osbert. Lady Mildred isn’t an Osbert. No, you needn’t laugh – I’m very sorry for the ghost,” he persisted with real concern. “It makes me feel quite fidgety. I’d like to know about how it really is.”

“Perhaps Lady Mildred would ‘count’ as a woman Osbert,” said Noble. “It would seem fair, for the ghost would surely be punished enough by its going quite away from his family.”

“Nonsense, Noble,” said Jerry irritably. “Those relations of hers —that girl,” with an accent of bitter scorn, “is not even her descendant, supposing Lady Mildred did count.”

Charlotte glanced at him uneasily. It was so unlike Jerry to speak with such a tone of any one. And she knew whence came the prejudice he showed.

“We shall have to tell you not to excite yourself next, Jerry, my boy,” said his father. “I shall wish I had not told you anything about it.”

“But you haven’t, papa,” said Charlotte. “That’s to say, we have not heard a word about the ghost yet, I mean of what you ‘could personally vouch for.’ Do tell us.”

Mr Waldron glanced at his wife. “How am I to get out of it?” his eyes seemed to ask.

“Yes,” said Mrs Waldron calmly, chiming in with Charlotte; “do tell us.”

“I had heard this old story as a child,” he began. “You know I lived in this neighbourhood as a little boy, but I don’t think I ever told you that in the old days I have stayed at 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.