She was up-stairs by this time on the large first floor landing, which at one side was separated from the oldest part of the house by a door and short passage. Claudia looked at the door.
“I wonder now if I should be frightened if I slept in the tower,” she thought. “I hardly think so. Yet it must be queer and lonely up in that empty room. I wonder if it’s at all moonlight to-night. I’ve a great mind to run up just for a moment. I’ll leave this door open, so that if I am frightened I can rush down at once.”
And half laughing at her own temerity, Claudia opened the door, propping it ajar, for it was a spring one, by the aid of a chair on the wide landing, and running along the passage, began the ascent of the stairs. A few steps led to the chintz room, the door of which, imperfectly latched, was rattling somewhat uncannily, as if some one were trying to get out. But Claudia did not stop to close it—she hastened on, up the two flights, to the tower room itself. The staircase was dark save for some light from below, whence, too, came the sounds of the servants moving about and speaking in the distance, for on the ground floor of this wing were some of the offices in regular use. Claudia was not sorry to hear the murmurs—it seemed less “ghosty.” But as she opened the tower room door and entered, it banged to behind her—and then it seemed indeed as if she were far away from everybody, up there with the moonlight and the owls.
For moonlight there was, though of but a faint and fitful kind. There was frost about, though as yet no snow had fallen this winter, and the outside world looked grim and unadorned, as Claudia went to the window and gazed out. Except where here and there a ray of light fell on the evergreen trees in the avenue, all seemed black and lifeless.
“How dreary,” she thought with a little shudder. “I can’t help pitying the ghost if his rambles are restricted to this melancholy room. I wonder what he did that was so wicked,” and her eyes rested unconsciously on the drive, seen here and there in patches of light and dark through the trees, down which poor Bridget Osbert so many, many years ago had crept away, sobbing and broken-hearted. Claudia had never heard the story, Lady Mildred herself did not know it, but as the girl stood and gazed a strange sensation—not of fear, but of pity and sadness—came over her; and suddenly her thoughts reverted to the mention made by her aunt of the cousins who had been disappointed in their expectations, some of whom apparently had held the last communication on record with the Osbert ghost.
“Poor things,” she thought; “I feel sorry for them. Perhaps they had some rights, after all. It must be hard to part with an old place like this, or to give up hopes of having it if one has expected it. There is something strange in the thought of inhabiting the very spot where one’s ancestors have lived for hundreds of years. It must seem so full of them—permeated with their feelings and actions. If they had been bad people, I think it would seem rather dreadful. I wonder why I feel this so much to-night. Standing here, I could almost fancy I was an Osbert—and I feel certain some of them have been very unhappy. I do feel so sorry for I don’t know whom! If the ghost appeared I really think I should have courage to ask if I could do anything for him—poor ghost.”
But nothing appeared, no sound broke the perfect stillness, save a low rustling wail from the wind as it came round the corner. And the moonlight faded again, and Claudia turning from the window saw that the room was almost perfectly dark, and for the first time a slight feeling of fear came over her. She hurried to the door, and was glad to see as she opened it that the light from the large landing shone faintly up the stairs. And in another moment she had run down, and was smiling at her own trepidations in the cheerful security of her own room.
“I am not so very brave after all,” she said to herself.
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.