Chapter Twelve.
The Owls Recognise one of the Family.
It seemed late to Claudia when she went up to bed that night, though in reality it was not much past ten o’clock. But so much had happened since dark, and it had grown dark so early with the snow-storm, that it would have been easy to fancy it was already long past midnight.
Claudia went to the window and drew back one of the curtains. The snow overhead had quite disappeared, but down below, it lay like a carpet of white, glistening faintly in the moonlight.
“How cold it looks,” thought the girl with a little shiver, and Mrs Ball’s words returned to her. Yes, it was dreadful to think that but for what seemed a mere accident, Gervais Waldron would by this time have been lying dead under the snow. And had it been so, it seemed to Claudia that she would always have felt or fancied cause for self-blame.
“How thankful I am he is not the worse for it,” she said to herself. “Poor little fellow—I would have insisted on sending him home if he had not said he was to be met. He was so anxious to get away once he had achieved his purpose. He is very anxious still to get away. I wonder if he can go home to-morrow. I am afraid he is rather unhappy at having to stay here—all night. By the bye,” and Claudia started as a thought struck her, “I hope he has not heard anything about the haunted room, and all that story. It was curious that he knew the name of the chintz room. I dare say the story is gossiped about by some of the old people in the neighbourhood, and he may have heard it.”
She did not like to disturb him again, and she hoped that by this time he was fast asleep. But she went out of her room as far as the spring door, between the old and new parts of the house, near which, on opposite sides, were both her room and Jerry’s. She propped the door open with a chair, so that if the boy were by any chance afraid and came to look for her, he should at once see where he was. For a small lamp burned all night on a side-table on the large landing, and even a little light goes a long way when all around is darkness. And as she made her way back again, she glanced up the old staircase to where in the gloom was the door of the tower room.
“I wonder if the ghost is awake to-night,” she thought, half-laughingly. “I always seem to think of the story on moonlight nights—perhaps because it is then that one is tempted to look out of the window, and that reminds me of the view from the tower room, right down the drive.”
But she looked out of the window no more to-night. She was tired, and fell asleep almost immediately she got into bed.
Her dreams were, as might have been expected, somewhat disturbed and confused. She had kaleidoscope visions of herself and Charlotte and Jerry, and a snow-man shaking white flakes over them all, which, on close examination, proved to be leaves of an exercise-book, covered with the German prize essay. Then looking up to complain, she saw that the snow-man had turned into Herr Märklestatter, who was running after Lady Mildred with a very angry face, while Lady Mildred called for help, screaming out, “It is the ghost, it is the ghost.” Claudia half woke up, roused, as it seemed to her in her dream, by her aunt’s cries. But all was silent, and she turned round, half-smiling to herself sleepily at her foolish fancies, and was all but dreaming again, when again a sound something between a sob and a low wail, penetrated to her brain, this time effectually, for she started up, quite awake, and listened in the darkness.