Mamma smiled. Her impulse was always on the side of “you may” – perhaps almost too much so.
“Are you going far, Edward?” she asked her husband.
“Out beyond Gretham – as far as – Silverthorns,” he replied, with the slightest possible, not so much hesitation as slackening of speech before the last word. “I have no objection – none whatever,” he went on, speaking quickly, “to the children coming with me, if you think it can’t hurt them.”
“I should so like to go. I haven’t been so far as Silverthorns for – ages,” said Charlotte eagerly still.
Her father glanced at her with a half-question in his eyes.
“It is not a particularly pretty road,” he said; “besides it is dark already; one road is as pleasant as another in the dark.”
“The house at Silverthorns must look lovely in the moonlight,” Charlotte replied.
“And there will be a moon to-night,” added Jerry.
“If it isn’t overclouded,” said Mr Waldron. “Ah, well, if mamma says you may, it will be all right, I suppose.”
“You will not be kept there long?” asked Mrs Waldron.
“A quarter of an hour at most,” her husband replied. “It is nothing of any importance – merely some little difficulty with one of the leases, which Lady Mildred Osbert wants to speak to me about. Had it been anything of consequence she would have telegraphed for the London men – I have never anything to do with the important business there, you know,” he added, with an almost imperceptible shade of bitterness.
“Then I think it very inconsiderate to expect you to go all that way late on a Saturday evening,” said Mrs Waldron. The colour rose in her cheeks as she spoke, and Jerry thought to himself how pretty mamma looked when she was a very little angry.
“That was my own doing. Lady Mildred gave me my choice of to-day or Monday morning. She is going away on Monday afternoon for a few days. I preferred this evening. Monday will be a very busy day.”
He rose from the table as he spoke.
“Get ready, children,” he said. “I give you ten minutes, not more. And wrap up well.”
Chapter Two
In the Moonlight
It was almost quite dark when Mr Waldron’s dog-cart with its three occupants started on the four miles’ drive.
“I don’t know about your moon, Jerry,” said his father. “I’m afraid we shall not see much of her to-night. It is still so cloudy.”
“But they seem to be little flying clouds, not heavy rain bags,” said Charlotte. “And there is the moon, papa.”
“It’s almost full,” added Jerry. “I believe it’s going to be a beautiful night. Look, Charlotte, isn’t it interesting to watch her fighting her way through the clouds?”
She had fought to some purpose by the time they reached Gretham, the village on the other side of which lay Lady Mildred Osbert’s house. For when they entered the Silverthorns avenue the cold radiance, broken though not dimmed by the feathery shadows of the restless, rushing cloudlets, lighted up the trees on each side and the wide gravel drive before them, giving to all the strange unreal look which the most commonplace objects seem to assume in bright moonlight. Mr Waldron drove slowly, and at a turn which brought them somewhat suddenly into full view of the house itself he all but pulled up.
“There, children,” he said, “you have your wish. There is Silverthorns in full moonlight.”
His voice softened a little as he spoke, and something in it made an unexpected suggestion to Gervais.
“Papa,” he said, “you speak as if you were thinking of long ago. Did you ever see Silverthorns like that before – in the moonlight, just as it is now?”
“Yes,” his father replied. “I had almost forgotten it, I think. I remember standing here one night, when I was quite a little fellow, with my grandmother, and seeing it just like this.”
“How curious!” said Charlotte. “But I don’t wonder it has come back to your mind now. It is so beautiful.”
She gave a deep breath of satisfaction. She was right. The old house looked wonderfully fine. It was of the quaintly irregular architecture of some so-called “Elizabethan” mansions, though in point of fact some part of it was nearly two hundred years older than the rest, and the later additions were, to say the least, incongruous. But the last owner’s predecessor had been a man of taste and intelligence, and by some apparently small alterations – a window here, a porchway there – had done much to weld the different parts into a very pleasing if not strictly correct whole. Ivy, too, grew thickly over one end of the building, veiling with its kindly green shadow what had once been an unsightly disproportion of wall; the windows were all latticed, and a broad terrace walk ran round three sides of the house, while here and there on the smooth, close-cut lawn just below stood out, dark and stiff, grotesquely-cut shrubs which had each had its own special designation handed down from one generation to another.
“See,” said Mr Waldron, pointing to these with his whip, as he walked old Dolly slowly on towards the front entrance, “there are the peacocks, one on each side, and the man-of-war at the corner, and – I forget what they are all supposed to represent. They look rather eerie, don’t they? – so black and fierce; the moonlight exaggerates their queer shapes. But it is lovely up there on the windows – each little pane is like a separate jewel.”
“Yes,” repeated the children, “it is lovely.”
“We always say,” Charlotte added, “that Silverthorns is like an old fairy castle. It must be one of the most beautiful houses in the world! – don’t you think so yourself, papa? What would it be to live in a house like that! Just fancy it, Jerry!”
But by this time Mr Waldron had got down, and throwing the reins to Jerry, was ringing. He was not kept long waiting; the door flew open, and a flood of light – lamplight and firelight mingled, for there was a vision of blazing logs on an open hearth in the hall! – poured out, looking cheery enough certainly, though coarse and matter-of-fact in comparison with the delicate radiance outside.
“Her ladyship? Yes, sir – Mr Waldron, I believe? Yes, her ladyship is expecting you,” said a very irreproachable sort of person in black, who came forward as soon as the footman had opened. He was busy washing his hands with invisible soap while he spoke, and as he caught sight of the dog-cart and its occupants, he made some further observation which Charlotte and Jerry did not distinctly catch. But their father’s clear decided tones rang back sharply in answer:
“No, no – no need to put up. My son will wait for me. It is all right.”
Apparently, however, the butler, or major-domo, or whoever he was, had some twinges on the score of hospitality, for the door, already closed, was re-opened, and the footman looked out.
“Mr Bright says, sir,” he said, addressing Jerry in the first place, then stammering somewhat as he caught sight of Charlotte; “I beg your pardon, Miss, he says as I’m to leave the door a little open, and if you find it too cold, I’ll be here in the ’all, and ’appy to call some one, sir, to ’old the ’orse.”
“Thank you, it’s all right,” said Jerry, well knowing that neither he nor Charlotte would have ventured to enter without their father’s permission and protection, even if the proverbial cats and dogs had suddenly begun to fall from the sky.
“Who’s Mr Bright, do you think, Jerry?” Charlotte whispered.
“That fellow in black – the butler, I suppose,” Jerry replied.
“Don’t you wonder papa ventured to speak