Silverthorns

“Her? – who?” said Jerry, in bewilderment. “Lady Mildred, do you mean?”

“Lady Mildred,” Charlotte repeated. “Of course not. You can’t have forgotten – the girl I mean, the girl who has come to live with Lady Mildred, and who’s coming to Miss Lloyd’s.”

“Oh,” said Jerry, “I had forgotten all about her.”

“How could you?” Charlotte exclaimed. “I have been thinking about her all the time. It was so queer that just after hearing about her, and speaking about her, it should happen for us to come out here, where we hadn’t been for so long. I began thinking of it at dinner, immediately papa said he was going to Silverthorns.”

“I wonder you didn’t tell mamma about her,” said Jerry.

“I shall afterwards, but I was thinking over what you said. I want to get my mind straight about her, and then I’ll tell mamma. But do you know, Jerry, I think I feel worse about her since coming here. It does not seem fair that one person should have everything. Just think what it must be to live here, and have all those grand servants waiting on her, and – ”

“I shouldn’t much care about that part of it,” interrupted Jerry, “and I don’t think you would either, Charlotte. You’d be frightened of them. You said just now you wondered papa dared speak so sharply to that undertaker-looking fellow.”

“Ah, yes, but then he’s not his servant. One would never be frightened of one’s own servants, however grand they were,” said Charlotte innocently. “Besides, even if one was a little, just at the beginning, one would soon get accustomed to them. Jerry, I wonder which is her room. There must be a lovely room at that corner, in that sort of tower, where the roof goes up to a point – do you see? I dare say her room is there. The French governess said that Miss Lloyd said that evidently Lady Mildred makes a tremendous pet of her, and doesn’t think anything too good for her.”

Jerry was getting rather tired of the nameless heroine. His eyes went roaming round the long irregular pile of building.

“I wonder,” he said, “if there’s a haunted room at Silverthorns. Doesn’t it look as if there should be?”

The wind was getting up a little by now; just as he spoke there came a gusty wail from the trees on one side, dying away into a flutter and quiver among the leaves. It sounded like an answer to his words. Charlotte gave a little start and then pressed closer to her brother, half laughing as she did so.

“Oh, Jerry,” she said, “you make me feel quite creepy. I shouldn’t like to hear the wind like that at night. I certainly don’t envy the girl if there is a haunted room and she has to sleep anywhere near it.”

“There now – you have found out one thing you don’t envy her for,” said Jerry, triumphantly. “But the door’s opening, Charlotte. There’s papa.”

Papa it was, accompanied to the steps by the amiable Mr Bright, who seemed really distressed at not having been allowed to make himself of any use. For Mr Waldron cut him short in the middle of some elaborate sentences by a civil but rather abrupt “Thank you – exactly so. Good evening,” and in another moment he was up in his place, and had taken the reins from Jerry’s hands.

“You’re not cold, I hope,” he said. “Dolly all right, eh? Well, Gipsy” – his pet name for Charlotte – “you’ve had enough of Silverthorns by moonlight, I suppose?”

Charlotte gave a little sigh.

“It was very nice,” she said. “I wish it were ours, papa.”

“My dear child,” he exclaimed in surprise.

“I do, papa. I think it would be delightful to be as rich as – as that. I just don’t believe people who pretend that being rich and having lovely houses and things like that is all no good.”

Mr Waldron hesitated. He understood her, though she expressed herself so incoherently.

“My dear child,” he said again, “if it were not natural to wish for such things, there would be no credit in being contented without them. Only remember that they are not the best things. And if it is any comfort to you, take my word for it that the actual having them gives less than you would believe, when you picture it in all the glow of your imagination.”

“Still,” said Charlotte, “I think one might be awfully good, as well as happy, if one were as rich and all that as Lady Mildred. Think what lots of kind things one might do for other people – I wonder if she does – do you think she does, papa?”

“I believe she does some kind things,” said Mr Waldron; “but I scarcely know her. As a rule rich people do not think very much about doing things for others, Charlotte. I don’t say that they mean to be selfish or unkind, but very often it does not occur to them. They don’t realise how much others have to go without. I think it would be terrible to be thus shut off from real sympathy with the mass of one’s fellows, even though I don’t altogether blame the rich for it. But this is one among several reasons why I am not sorry not to be rich.”

“But, papa – ” Charlotte began.

“Well, my dear?”

“If – if rich people aren’t good – if they are selfish without its being altogether their fault as you say, doesn’t it seem unfair on them? Wouldn’t it be better if there were no rich people – fairer for all?”

Mr Waldron gave a little laugh.

“You are treading on difficult ground, Gipsy. Many things would be better if many other things did not exist at all. But then this world would no longer be this world! As long as it exists, as long as we come into it human beings and not angels, there will be rich and poor. Why, if we were all started equally to-morrow, the differences would be there again in a month! I give Arthur and Ted exactly the same allowance, but at this moment Arthur has some pounds in the Savings’ Bank, and Ted not only is penniless, but probably owes all round.”

“He borrowed threepence from me this afternoon,” said Jerry laughing.

“Just so. No – it has been tried many times, and will be tried as many more perhaps, but with the same result. I don’t say that the tremendous disproportions that one sees might not be equalised a little without injustice. But I don’t want to give you a lecture on political economy. Only don’t mistake me. All I mean is, that in some ways the narrow road is harder for rich people than for others. But when they do walk in it, they are not seldom the best men and women this world knows. Still you can perhaps understand my meaning when I say that the possession of great riches would make me afraid.”

“Thank you, papa,” said Charlotte. “I think I do understand a little. I never thought of it like that before.” She was silent for a few minutes; then with the pertinacity of her age she returned to the subject with which her thoughts were really the most occupied.

“I don’t fancy somehow that Lady Mildred Osbert is one of the best rich people. Is she, papa? You don’t speak as if you liked her very much?”

“I don’t think one is justified in either liking or disliking ‘very much’ any person whom one scarcely knows,” Mr Waldron replied. “I have told you that I believe she does kind things. I believe she has done one lately. But if you ask me if I think – she is an old woman now – she is the sort of woman your mother would have been in the same circumstances, well no – certainly I don’t.”

And Mr Waldron laughed, a happy genial little laugh this time.

“That’s hardly fair upon Lady Mildred, papa,” said Jerry. “We all know that there never could be any woman as good as mamma.”

“My dear boy, what would mamma say if she heard you?”

“Oh, she’d quote some proverb about people thinking their own geese swans, or something like that, of course,” said Jerry unmoved. “That’s because she’s so truly modest. And if she wasn’t truly modest she wouldn’t be so good, and then – and then – she wouldn’t be herself. But I agree with you, papa,” he went on in his funny, old-fashioned way, “it is a good thing mamma isn’t rich. She’d worry – my goodness, wouldn’t she just! – she’d worry herself and all of us to death for fear she wasn’t doing enough for other people.”

“That would certainly not be charity beginning at home, eh, Jerry?” said his father, laughing outright this time.

“Papa,” said Charlotte, “what is the kind thing Lady Mildred has done lately? Is it about – the girl?”

“What girl? – what do you know about it?” said Mr Waldron, rather sharply.

But Charlotte was not easily disconcerted, especially when very much in earnest.

“A girl she has adopted. They say she is going to leave this girl all her money, so she – the girl – will be a great heiress. And she is awfully pretty, and – and – just everything. I heard all about it this morning at school,” and Charlotte went on to give her father the details she had learnt through the French governess’s gossip. “She is to drive herself in every morning in her pony-carriage, except if it rains, and then she is to be sent and fetched in the brougham. Fancy her having a pony-carriage all of her own!”

Mr Waldron listened without interrupting her. He understood better than before his little daughter’s sudden curiosity about Silverthorns and Lady Mildred, and her incipient discontent. But all he said was:

“Ah, well, poor child! It is to be hoped she will be happy there.”

“Papa, can you doubt it?” exclaimed Charlotte.

“Papa isn’t at all sure if Lady Mildred will be very good to her, whether she makes her her heiress or not,” said Jerry bluntly.

“I don’t say that, Jerry,” said his father. “I don’t know Lady Mildred well enough to judge. I said, on the contrary, I had known of her doing kind things, which is true.”

“Papa only said Lady Mildred wasn’t a woman like mamma,” said Charlotte. “She might well not be that, and yet be very good and kind. Of course we are more lucky than any children in having mamma, but still if one has everything else – ”

“One could do without a good mother? Nay, my Gipsy, I can’t – ”

“Papa, papa, I don’t mean that – you know I don’t,” exclaimed Charlotte, almost in tears.

“No, I know you don’t really. But even putting mamma out of the question, I doubt if Lady Mildred – however, it is not our place to pass judgment.”

Suddenly Charlotte gave a little scream.

“Jerry, don’t. How can you, Jerry?”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mr Waldron.

“He pinched me, papa, quite sharply, under my cloak,” said Charlotte, a little ashamed of her excitement. “Jerry, how can you be so babyish?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Jerry penitently. “It was only – when papa said that – I thought – there’s another thing.”

“Has the moonlight affected your brain, Jerry?” asked his father.

“No, papa; Charlotte understands. I thought perhaps she’d rather I didn’t say it right out. It makes three things, you see – being stupid – and perhaps the haunted room and Lady Mildred being horrid to her. You see, Charlotte?”

But Mr Waldron’s face – what they could see of it, that is to say, for the clouds seemed to be reassembling in obedience to some invisible summons, and a thick dark one, just at that moment, was beginning to veil the moon’s fair disc – expressed unmitigated bewilderment.

“He means what we were talking about this afternoon, papa. Jerry, you are too silly to tell it in that muddled way,” said Charlotte, laughing in spite of her irritation. “I said it seemed as if that girl had everything, and Jerry thinks nobody has. He said perhaps she’s not very clever, and it’s true one kind of pretty people are generally rather dull; and perhaps there’s a haunted room at Silverthorns, and she may be frightened at night; and now he means that perhaps Lady Mildred isn’t really very kind. But they’re all perhapses.”

“One isn’t,” said Mr Waldron. “There is a haunted room at Silverthorns – that, I have always known. If the poor girl is nervous, let us hope she doesn’t sleep near it! As to her being ‘dull’ – no, I doubt it. She hasn’t the kind of large, heavy, striking beauty which goes with dullness.”

“Papa, you have seen her,” exclaimed Charlotte in great excitement. “And you didn’t tell us.”

“You didn’t give me time, truly and really, Charlotte.”

“And what is she like? Oh, papa, do tell me.”

“I only saw her for an instant. Her aunt sent her out of the room. She did seem to me very pretty, slight, and not very tall, with a face whose actual beauty was thrown into the shade by its extremely winning and bright and varying expression. All that, I saw, but that was all.”

“Is she fair or dark?” asked Charlotte. “You must have seen that.”

“Fair, of course. You know my beauties are always fair. That is why I am so disappointed in you, poor Gipsy,” said Mr Waldron teasingly.

But Charlotte did not laugh as she would usually have done.

“Charlotte,” said Jerry reprovingly, “of course papa’s in fun. Mamma is darker than you.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that papa’s in fun,” said Charlotte snappishly. “Besides, mamma isn’t dark, except her hair and eyes – her skin is lovelily white. There’s nothing fair about me, except my stupid light-blue eyes.”

“My blue-eyed gipsy,” said her father, using a pet name that had been hers as a baby.

“Dear papa,” said Charlotte; and the sharpness had all gone out of her voice.

They were almost at home by now. There had not been much temptation to look about them in returning, for the clouds were getting the best of it, and the moon had taken offence and was hiding her face.

“My little girl,” whispered her father, as he lifted her down, “beware of the first peep through the green-coloured spectacles.”

“Papa!” said Charlotte, half reproachfully.

But I think she understood.

“Jerry,” she said, as her brother and she stood waiting at the door, their father having driven round to the stables, “just compare this door, this house, with Silverthorns.”

“What’s the good?” said Jerry.

Chapter Three

A Family Party

A hearty but somewhat unnecessarily noisy welcome awaited them. Arthur, Ted, and Noble were all in the drawing-room with their mother. She had insisted on the muddy boots being discarded, but beyond this, as the boys were tired, and it was late when they came in, she had not held out; and Charlotte glanced at the rough coats and lounging-about attitudes with a feeling of annoyance, which it was well “the boys” did not see. “Mamma” herself was always a pleasant object to look upon, even in her old black grenadine; she, thought Charlotte, with a throb of pride, could not seem out of place in the most beautiful of the Silverthorns’ drawing-rooms. But the boys – how can they be so rough and messy? thought the fastidious little sister.

“It is all with being poor – all,” she said to herself.

But she felt ashamed when Arthur drew forward the most comfortable chair for her to the fire, and Ted offered to carry her hat and jacket up-stairs for her.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll run up-stairs, and be down again in a minute. It’s messy to take one’s things off in the drawing-room,” and so saying, she jumped up and ran away.

“What a fuss Charlotte always makes about being messy, as she calls it,” said Ted. “She’s a regular old maid.”

“Come, Ted, that’s not fair. It’s not only for herself Charlotte’s tidy!” Arthur exclaimed.

“No, indeed,” said Noble, chiming in.

“You needn’t all set upon me like that,” said Ted. “I’m sure I always thank her when she tidies my things. I can’t be tidy, and that’s just all about it. When a fellow’s grinding at lessons from Monday morning till Saturday night.”

This piteous statement was received with a shout of laughter, Ted’s “lessons” being a proverb in the house, as it was well known that they received but the tag end of the attention naturally required for football, and cricket, and swimming, and stamp-collecting, and carpentering, and all his other multifarious occupations.

Mrs Waldron, scenting squabbles ahead, came to the rescue.

“Tell us your adventures, Jerry. Is it a fine evening? Where is your father?”

“He’ll be in in a moment,” Jerry replied. “He went round to the stables; I think he had something to say to Sam. Yes, mamma, we had a very nice drive. It was beautiful moonlight out at Silverthorns, but coming back it clouded over.”

“Silverthorns!” Noble repeated. “Have you been out there too? Why, we’ve all been there – how funny! I thought mamma said you had gone to Gretham. I say, isn’t Silverthorns awfully pretty?”

As he said the words the door opened, and Charlotte and her father came in together. They had met in the hall. Mr Waldron answered Noble’s question, which had indeed been addressed to no one in particular.

“It is a beautiful old place,” he said. “But ‘east or west, home is best.’ I like to come in and see you all together with your mother, boys. And what a capital fire you’ve made up!” He went towards it as he spoke, Charlotte half mechanically following him. “It is chilly out of doors. Gipsy, your hands are quite cold.” He drew her close to the fire and laid one arm on her shoulder. She understood the little caress, but some undefined feeling of contradiction prevented her responding to it.

“I’m not particularly cold, papa, thank you,” she said drily.

Mrs Waldron looked up quietly at the sound of Charlotte’s voice. She knew instinctively that all was not in tune, but she also knew it would not do to draw attention to this, and she was on the point of hazarding some other remark when Jerry broke in. Jerry somehow always seemed to know what other people were feeling.

“Papa,” he said, “were you in earnest when you said there was a haunted room at Silverthorns?”

Every one pricked up his or her ears at this question.

“I was in earnest so far that I know there is a room there that is said to be haunted,” he replied.

“And how?” asked Charlotte. “If any one slept there would they be found dead in the morning, or something dreadful like that?”

“No, no, not so bad as that, though no one ever does sleep there. It’s an old story in the family. I heard it when I was a boy.”

“Don’t you think it’s very wrong to tell stories like that to frighten children?” said Charlotte severely.

“And pray who’s begging for it at the present moment?” said Mr Waldron, amused at her tone.

“Papa! we’re not children. It isn’t like as if it were Amy and Marion,” she said, laughing a little. “Do tell us.”

“Really, my dear, there’s nothing to tell. It is believed that some long ago Osbert, a selfish and cruel man by all accounts, haunts the room in hopes of getting some one to listen to his repentance, and to promise to make amends for his ill-deeds. He treated the poor people about very harshly; and not them only, he was very unkind to his daughter, because he was angry with her for not being a son, and left her absolutely penniless, so that the poor thing, being delicate and no longer young, died in great privation. And he left the property, which was not entailed, to a very distant cousin, hardly to be counted as a cousin except that he had the same name. The legend is that his ghost will never be at peace till Silverthorns comes to be the property of the descendant of some female Osbert.”

“Do you know I never heard that story before? It is curious,” said Mrs Waldron thoughtfully.

“But it’s come all right now. Lady Mildred’s a woman,” said Ted, in his usual hasty way.

“On the contrary, it’s very far wrong,” said his father. “Lady Mildred is not an Osbert at all. Silverthorns was left her by Mr Osbert to do what she likes with, some people say. If she leaves it away, quite out of the Osbert line, it will be a hard punishment for the poor ghost, supposing he knows anything about it, as his regard for the family name went so far as to make him treat his own child unjustly.”

“Is it certain that Lady Mildred has the power of doing what she likes with it?” asked Mrs Waldron.

“I’m sure I can’t say. I suppose any one who cares to know can see Mr Osbert’s will by paying a shilling,” said Mr Waldron lightly. “Though, by the bye, I have a vague remembrance of hearing that the will was worded rather peculiarly, so that it did not tell as much as wills generally do. It referred to some other directions, or something of that kind. General Osbert and his family doubtless know all they can. It is not an enormous fortune after all. Lady Mildred has a small income of her own, and she spends a great deal on the place. It will be much better worth having after her reign than before it.”

“Any way she won’t leave it to me, so I don’t much care what she does with it,” said Ted, rising from his seat, and stretching his long lanky arms over his head.

“No, that she won’t,” said Mr Waldron, with rather unnecessary emphasis.

“My dear Ted,” said his mother, “if you are so sleepy as all that you had better go to bed. I’m not very rigorous, as you know, but I don’t like people yawning and stretching themselves in the drawing-room.”

“All right, mother. I will go to bed,” Ted replied. “Arthur and Noble, you’d better come too.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Noble, who as usual was buried in a book. “I’m going to finish this chapter first. I’m not like some people I know, who have candles and matches at the side of their beds, in spite of all mother says.”

Mrs Waldron turned to Ted uneasily.

“Is that true, Ted,” she said, “after all your promises?”

Ted looked rather foolish.

“Mother,” he said, “it’s only when I’m behind with my lessons, and I think that I’ll wake early and give them a look over in the morning. It isn’t like reading for my own pleasure.”

Another laugh greeted this remark, Ted “reading for his own pleasure” would have been something new.

“But indeed, mother, you needn’t worry about it,” said Arthur consolingly. “I advise you to let Ted’s candle and matches remain peaceably at the side of his bed if it pleases him. There they will stay, none the worse, you may be sure. It satisfies his conscience and does no harm, for there is not the least fear of his ever waking early.”

Ted looked annoyed. It is not easy to take chaff pleasantly in public, especially in the public of one’s own assembled family.

“I don’t see why you need all set on me like that,” he muttered. “I think Noble might have held his tongue.”

“So do I,” said Charlotte, half under her breath. Then she too got up. “I’m going to bed. Good night, mamma,” and she stooped to kiss her mother; and in a few minutes, Noble having shut up his book resolutely at the end of the chapter, all the brothers had left the room, and the husband and wife were alone.

Mrs Waldron leant her pretty head on the arm of the sofa for a minute or two without speaking. She was tired, as she well might be, and somehow on Saturday night she felt as if she might allow herself to own to it. Mr Waldron looked at her with a rather melancholy expression on his own face.

“Yes,” he said aloud, though in reality speaking to himself, “we pay pretty dear for our power of sympathising.”

“What did you say?” asked his wife, looking up.

“Nothing, dear. I was only thinking of some talk I had with Charlotte – I was trying to show her the advantages of poverty,” he said, smiling.

“Poverty!” repeated his wife; “but nothing like poverty comes near her, or any of them, – at least it is not as bad as that.”

“No, no. I should not have used the word. I should rather have said, as I did to her, of not being rich.”

“Charlotte does not seem herself,” said Mrs Waldron. “I wonder if anything is troubling her.”

“She is waking up, perhaps,” said the father, “and that is a painful process sometimes. Though she is so clever, she is wonderfully young for her age too. Life has been smooth for her, even though we are so poor – not rich,” he corrected with a smile.

“But is there anything special on her mind? What made you talk in that way?”

“She will be telling you herself of some report – oh, I dare say it is true enough – that Lady Mildred Osbert is arranging to send this niece of hers, this girl whom, as I told you, she is said to have adopted, to Miss Lloyd’s. And of course they are all gossiping about it, chattering about the girl’s beauty and magnificence, and all the rest of it. After all, Amy, I sometimes wish we had not sent Charlotte to school at all; there seems always to be silly chatter.”

“But what could we do? We could not possibly have afforded a governess – for one girl alone; and I, even if I had the time, I am not highly educated enough myself to carry on so very clever a girl as Charlotte.”