Silverthorns

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.

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.