The House of a Thousand Lanterns

I

When I first heard of The House of a Thousand Lanterns I felt an immediate curiosity to know more of a place with such a name. There was a magical, mystical quality about it. Why was it so called? Could there be a thousand lanterns in one house? Who put them there? And what significance had they? The name seemed to belong to a fantasy from something like the Arabian Nights. Little did I realize then that I, Jane Lindsay, would one day be caught up in the mystery, danger, and intrigue which was centered in that house with the haunting name.

My involvement really began years before I saw the house, and I had had my share of heartbreak and adventure even then.

I was fifteen years old at the time my mother became housekeeper to that strange man Sylvester Milner who was to have such an influence on my life and but for whom I should never have heard of The House of a Thousand Lanterns. I have often thought that if my father had lived we should have gone on in a more or less conventional manner. I should have led the life of a well-bred though rather impecunious young lady and would most likely have married and lived happily, if less excitingly, ever after.

But the marriage of my parents was in its way unconventional, though the circumstances were not unusual. Father was the son of a landowner in the North; the family was wealthy and had occupied the ancestral home, Lindsay Manor, for about three centuries. The tradition was that the eldest son became squire, the second went into the Army, and the third into the Church. Father was destined for the Army and when he rebelled against the career chosen for him he fell into disfavor and after his marriage he was completely estranged.

He was an enthusiastic mountaineer and it was when he was climbing in the Peak district that he met my mother. She was the innkeeper’s daughter, pretty and vivacious; he fell in love with and married her almost immediately in spite of the disapproval of his family, who had other plans for him concerning the daughter of a neighboring landowner. So incensed were they that they cast him off and all he had was an annuity of two hundred pounds a year.

My father was a delightful man, charming, and interested in any form of art; he knew something about almost everything in this field. The one thing he was not particularly good at was earning a living, and as he had been reared in the utmost comfort he was never really able to adjust himself to circumstances other than those in which he had been accustomed. He painted in a manner which could be called “quite well” but, as everyone knows, to paint quite well very often means not quite well enough. He sold the occasional picture and during the climbing season worked as guide. My earliest memories are of seeing him set off with a party, armed with crampons and ropes, his eyes alight with excitement, because this was what he wanted to do more than anything.

He was a dreamer and an idealist. My mother used to say to me: “It’s a mercy you and I, Jane, have our feet firmly planted on the ground, and if our heads are often in these Derbyshire mists they’re never in the clouds.”

“But we loved him dearly and he loved us and he used to say we were the perfect trio. As I was their only child they contrived to give me the best possible education. To my father it seemed natural that I should go to the school which the female members of his family had always attended; as for my mother she believed that my father’s daughter must have only the best, and so from the age of ten I was sent away to Cluntons’, that very genteel school for the daughters of the landed gentry. I was a Lindsay of Lindsay Manor and although I had never seen the place, and was in fact banished from that holy ground, I still belonged to it.

Financially uncertain but secure in our love for each other and having Father’s annuity and his sporadic earnings to help us, we struggled gaily on until that tragic January day. I was home for the Christmas holidays.

The weather was bleak that year. Never had I seen the Derbyshire mountains so menacing. The sky was a leaden grey, the wind icy and some five hours after my Father and his party set off, the blizzard began. I never see snow without recalling that terrible time. I still hate that strange white light which permeates the atmosphere, I hate the silent snowflakes falling thick and fast. We were shut in a weird white world and somewhere up the mountain was my father.

“He’s an experienced climber,” said my mother. “He’ll be all right.”

“She busied herself in the kitchen baking bread in the enormous oven beside the fire. I always connect the smell of freshly baked bread with the tragedy of those dreadful hours of waiting, listening to the grandfather clock ticking away the minutes, waiting… waiting for news.

When the blizzard subsided the snow lay in drifts in the lanes and on the mountains. The searchers went out; but it was a whole week before they found them.

We knew though before that. I remember sitting there in the kitchen, the warmest place in the house, with my mother while she talked of their meeting and how he had bravely defied his family and given up everything for her. “He was the sort who would never give in,” she kept saying. “In a minute he’ll be back. He’ll be laughing at us for being afraid.”

“But if he could defy his family he was no match for the elements. The day they brought his body home was the saddest of our lives. We buried him with four members of his party. There were but two survivors to tell the tale of endurance and suffering. It was a common enough tale. It had happened many times before.

“Why do men have to climb mountains?” I demanded angrily. “Why do they have to face dangers for no reason?”

“They climb because they must,” said my mother sadly.

I went back to school. I wondered how long I should be there, for without Father’s annuity we were very poor indeed. With her accustomed optimism my mother believed that the Lindsays would take over their responsibilities. How wrong she was! My father had offended the family code and when my grandfather had said he would be cut off he had meant it. They did not own us.

My mother’s great concern was to keep me at Cluntons’. How, she was not sure, but she was not one to wait for something to fall into her lap. When I came home after that term she told me of her plans.

“I have to earn some money, Jane,” she said.

“I too. So I must leave school.”

“Unthinkable!” she declared. “Your father would never hear of it.” She spoke of him as though he were still with us. “If I could find the right sort of post we’d manage,” she added.

“What as?”

“I have my talents,” she answered. “When my father was alive I helped him run the inn. My cooking is good; my household management excellent. In fact I could enter some household as a housekeeper.”

“Are there such posts?”

“My dear Jane, they abound. Good housekeepers don’t grow on trees. There will be one stipulation.”

“Shall you be in a position to make stipulations?”

“I shall enter the household on my terms, which are that my daughter shall have a home with me.”

“You set a high price on your services.”

“If I don’t no one else will.”

“She was self-reliant. She had had to be. I thought then that had she been the one to die suddenly my father would have been completely lost without her. She at least could stand on her own feet and carry me along with her. And yet I thought she was asking too much.

I had another term at school before we should have to face the embarrassment of considering whether we should be in a position to pay the bills and it was during this term that I first heard the name of Sylvester Milner. My mother wrote to me at school.

My dearest Jane,

“Tomorrow I am traveling down to the New Forest. I have an interview at a place called Roland’s Croft. A gentleman by the name of Mr. Sylvester Milner is in need of a housekeeper. It is a large establishment I gather and although my condition of accepting the post has not exactly been agreed to, I have stated it and am still asked to attend for the interview. I shall write to you to tell you the result. If I am accepted my remuneration should be enough to keep you at Cluntons’, for I shall need little, as I shall have bed and board provided, as you will during the holidays. It will be an admirable solution. All I have to do is convince them that they must employ me.

I imagined her setting off resolutely for the interview, ready to fight for her place in the sun—not so much for herself as for me. She was a very small woman. I was going to be tall for I took after my father and was already several inches higher than my mother. She had rosy cheeks and thick hair, almost black with a touch of blue, the sort of color one sees in a bird’s wing. I had the same kind of hair but my skin was pale like my father’s, and instead of her small twinkling brown eyes I had my father’s large deep-set grey ones. We were not in the least alike—my mother and I—except in our determination to sweep aside all barriers which prevented our reaching the goal we had set ourselves. In this case, particularly when so much depended on the outcome, I felt she would have good hopes of success.

I was right, for a few days later I heard that she was settling into her new post at Roland’s Croft, and when the term ended I went to join her there.

I traveled down to London with a party of girls from Cluntons’ and there I was taken to the train which would carry me to Hampshire. When I reached Lyndhurst I was to board a local train. My mother had written the instructions very carefully. At the halt of Rolandsmere I would be “met” and if her duties prevented her from coming in the trap, she would see me as soon as I arrived at the house.

I could scarcely wait to get there. It seemed so strange to be going to a new place. My mother had said nothing about Mr. Sylvester Milner. I wondered why. She was not usually reticent. She had said very little about the house except that it was big and set in grounds of some twenty acres. “You will find it very different from our little house,” she wrote unnecessarily really, because I certainly should. Oddly enough she left it at that and my imagination was busy.

Roland’s Croft! Who was Roland and why a croft? Names usually meant something. And why did she say nothing of Mr. Sylvester Milner, her employer?

I began to build fantasies around him. He was young and handsome. No, he wasn’t, he was middle-aged and had a large family. He was a bachelor who shunned society. He was tired of the world and cynical; he shut himself away at Roland’s Croft to keep from it. No, he was a monster whom no one ever saw. They talked about him in whispers. There were strange sounds in the house at night. “You take no notice of them,” I would be told. “That is just Mr. Sylvester Milner walking.”

My father used to say I should curb my imagination, for at times it was too vivid. My mother said it ran away with me. And as it was accompanied by an insatiable curiosity about the world I lived in and the people who inhabited it, these made a dangerous combination.

I was therefore in a state of high expectancy when I reached the little haunt of Rolandsmere. It was December and there was a faint mist in the air which obscured the wintry sun and gave an aura of mystery to the little station with its name worked in plants on the platform. There were very few of us to alight and I was seen immediately by a big man in top hat and a coat frogged with gold braid.

He strode along the platform with such an air of authority that as he came to me I said: “Are you Mr. Sylvester Milner?”

He paused as though with wonder at the thought and let out a roar of laughter. “Nay, miss,” he cried. “I be the coachman.” Then he muttered to himself, “Mr. Sylvester Milner. That be a good one. Well,” he continued, “these be your bags. Just from school, are you? Let’s get to the trap then.” He surveyed me from head to foot. “Ain’t like your mother,” was his comment. “Wouldn’t have known you for hers.”

Then with a sharp nod he turned and shouted to a man who was lounging against the wall of the little booking office. “Here, Harry then.” And Harry picked up my bags and we made a procession, myself behind the coachman who walked with a swaggering gait as though to indicate that he was a very important gentleman indeed.

We went to a trap and my bags were put in. I scrambled up and the coachman took the reins with an air of disdain.

“Tain’t like me to drive these little things but to oblige your ma…”

“Thank you,” I said. “Mr. er…”

“Jeffers,” he said. “Jeffers is the name.” And we were off.

We drove through leafy lanes that edged the forest where the trees looked darkly mysterious. It was very different country from our mountainous one. This, I reminded myself, was the forest in which William the Conqueror had hunted and his son William Rufus had met his mysterious death.

I said: “It’s odd to call it the New Forest.”

“Eh?” replied Jeffers. “What’s that?”

“The New Forest when it’s been there for eight hundred years.”

“Reckon it were new once like most things,” answered Jeffers.

“They say it was built on the blood of men.”

“You got funny ideas, miss.”

“It’s not my idea. Men were turned out of their homes to make that forest and if anyone trapped a deer or a wild boar his hands were cut off or his eyes put out or he might have been hanged on a tree.”

“There’s no wild boar in there now, miss. And I never heard such talk about the forest.”

“Well, I did. In fact we’re doing Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman invasion at school.”

He nodded gravely. “And you’re spending the holiday with us. Surprised I was when that was allowed. But your mother stuck her foot down and it had to be. Mr. Milner gave way on that, which surprised me.”

“Why did it surprise you?”

“He’s not one to want children in the house.”

“What sort of one is he?”

“Now that is a question, that is. I reckon there’s no one knows what sort of man Mr. Sylvester Milner is.”

“Is he young?”

He looked at me. “Compared with me… he’s not so very old but compared with you he’d be a very old gentleman indeed.”

“Without comparing him with anyone how old would he be?”

“Bless you, miss. You’re one for questions. How would I be knowing how old Mr. Sylvester Milner be.”

“You could guess.”

“’Twouldn’t do to start guessing where he were concerned. You’d sure as eggs come up with the wrong answer.”

I could see that I should get little information about Mr. Sylvester Milner through him, so I studied the countryside.

Dusk of a December afternoon and a forest which my imagination told me must surely be haunted by those whom the Norman kings had dispossessed and tortured! By the time we had reached Roland’s Croft I was in a state of great anticipation.

We turned into a drive on either side of which grew conifers. The drive must have been half a mile in length and it seemed a long time before we reached the lawn beyond which was the house. It was imposing and elegant and must have been built round about the time of the early Georges. It struck me at once as being aloof and austere. Perhaps this was because I had been imagining a castle-like dwelling with battlements, turrets, and oriel windows. These windows were symmetrical, short on the ground floor, tall on the first floor, a little less tall on the next and square on the top. The effect was characteristic of eighteenth-century elegance removed as far as possible from the baroque and gothic of earlier generations. There was a beautiful fanlight over the Adam doorway and two columns supported a portico. Later I was to admire the Greek honeysuckle pattern on these but at the time my attention was caught by the two Chinese stone dogs at the foot of the columns. They looked fierce and alien in comparison with so much which was English.

The door was opened by a maid in a black alpaca dress and a white cap and apron with very stiffly starched frills. She must have heard the trap pull up.

“You be the young lady from school,” she said. “Come in and I’ll tell Madam you’re here.”

Madam! So my mother had assumed that title. I laughed inwardly and that pleasant feeling of security began to wrap itself around me.

I stood in the hall and looked about me. From the ceiling with its discreet plaster decorations hung a chandelier. The staircase was circular and beautifully proportioned. A grandfather clock standing against the wall ticked noisily. I listened to the house. Apart from the clock it was quiet. Strangely, eerily quiet, I told myself.

And then my mother flashed into sight on the staircase. She ran to me and we hugged each other.

“My dear child, so you’ve come. I’ve been counting the days. Where are your bags? I’ll have them taken up to your room. First of all, come to mine. There’s so much to say.”

She looked different; she was in black bombazine which rustled as she moved; she wore a cap on her head and had assumed great dignity. The housekeeper of this rather stately mansion was different from the mother in our little house.

She was a little restrained, I thought, as arm in arm we mounted the staircase. I was not surprised that I had not heard her approach, so thick were the carpets. We followed the staircase up and up. It was constructed so that from every floor it was possible to look down into the hall.

“What a magnificent house,” I whispered.

“It’s pleasant,” she answered.

Her room was on the second floor—a cosy room, heavily curtained; the furniture was elegant and although I knew nothing of these matters at that time I later learned that the cabinet was Hepplewhite as were the beautifully carved chairs and table.

“I’d like to have had my own bits and pieces,” said my mother, following my gaze. She grimaced ruefully. “Mr. Sylvester Milner would have been horrified with my old stuff, but it was cosy.”

It was beautiful and elegant and right for the room, I realized, but it lacked the homeliness of our own rooms. Still, there was a fire in the grate and on it a kettle was singing.

Then she shut the door and burst out laughing. She hugged me once more. She had slipped out of the dignified housekeeper’s role and had become my mother.

“Tell me all about it,” I said.

“The kettle will be boiling in a jiffy,” she answered. “We’ll chat over our tea. I thought you’d never get here.”

The cups were already on the tray and she ladled out three spoonfuls of tea and infused it. “We’ll let it stand for a minute or two. Well!” she went on. “Who would have thought it? It’s turned out very well, very well indeed.”

“What about him?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

“He’s away.”

My face fell and she laughed at me. “That’s a good thing, Janey. Why, we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

“I wanted to see him.”

“And I’d thought you wanted to see me.”

I got up and kissed her.

“You’re settled then, and really happy?” I said.

“It couldn’t have been better. I believe your father arranged it for us.”

She had believed since his death that he was watching over us and for this reason no harm could befall us. She mingled strong occult feelings with strict common sense and although she was firmly convinced that my father would guide us as to the best way we should go, at the same time she put every effort in arranging it.

It was clear that she was happy with her post at Roland’s Croft.

“If I’d planned a place for myself I couldn’t have done better,” she said. “I’ve got a good position here. The maids respect me.”

“They call you Madam, I notice.”

“That was a little courtesy I insisted on. Always remember, Janey, that people take you at your own valuation. So I set mine high.”

“Are there many servants?”

“There are three gardeners, two of them married, and they live in cottages on the estate. There’s Jeffers the coachman and his wife. They live over the stables. The two gardeners’ wives work in the house. Then there’s Jess and Amy, the parlormaid and housemaid; and Mr. Catterwick the butler and Mrs. Couch the cook.”

“And you are in charge of it all.”

“Mr. Catterwick and Mrs. Couch wouldn’t like to hear you say that I was in charge of them I can tell you. Mr. Catterwick’s a very fine gentleman indeed. He tells me at least once a day that he’s worked in more grand households than this one. As for Mrs. Couch, she’s mistress of the kitchen and it would be woe betide anyone who tried to interfere there.”

My mother’s conversation had always been gay and racy. I think that was one of the characteristics which had attracted my father to her. He himself had been quiet and withdrawn, all that she was not. He had been sensitive; she was as he had once said like a little cock sparrow ready to fight the biggest eagle for her rights. I could imagine her ruling the household here… with the exception of the cook and the butler.

“It’s a beautiful house,” I said, “but a little eerie.”

“You and your fancies! It’s because the lamps aren’t lit. I’ll light mine now.”

She took the globe off a lamp on the table and applied a lighted match to the wick.

We drank the tea and ate the biscuits which my mother produced from a tin.

“Did you see Mr. Sylvester Milner when you applied for the post?” I asked.

“Why yes, I did.”

“Tell me about him.”

She was silent for a few seconds, and a faint haze came over her eyes. She was rarely at a loss for words and I thought at once: There is something odd about him.

“He’s… a gentleman,” she said.

“Where is he now?”

“He’s away on business. He’s often away on business.”

“Then why does he keep this big houseful of servants?”

“People do.”

“He must be very rich.”

“He’s a merchant.”

“A merchant! What sort of a merchant?”

“He travels round the world to many places… like China.”

I remembered the Chinese dogs at the porch.

“Tell me what he looks like.”

“He’s not easy to describe.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s different from other people.”

“When shall I see him?”

“Sometime, I daresay.”

“This holiday?”

“I should hardly think so. Though we never know. He appears suddenly…”

“Like a ghost,” I said.

She laughed at me. “I mean he doesn’t say when he’ll be coming. He just turns up.”

“Is he handsome?”

“Some might call him so.”

“What sort of things does he sell?”

“Very valuable things.”

This was unlike my mother who was usually the most loquacious of women and my first impression that there was something strange about Mr. Sylvester Milner was confirmed.

“There’s one thing,” said my mother. “You might see a strangelooking man about sometimes.”

“What sort of a man?”

“He’s Chinese. He’s called Ling Fu. He won’t look quite like the other servants. He travels with Mr. Milner and looks after his private treasure room. No one else goes in there.”

My eyes sparkled. It was growing more mysterious every minute.

“Is he hiding something in this treasure room?” I asked.

My mother laughed. “Now don’t you get working up one of your fancies. There’s a simple explanation. Mr. Milner collects rare and costly things—jade, rose quartz, coral, ivory. He buys them and sells them, but he keeps some of them here until he finds a buyer. He’s an authority on them and Ling Fu dusts them and looks after them. Mr. Milner explained to me that he thought it better for Ling Fu to do this and none of the other servants to be involved.”

“Have you ever been in the room. Mother?”

“There’s no reason why I should. I take care of the household. That’s my business.”

I looked into the fire and saw pictures there. There was a face which looked genial at one moment and as the coal burned it changed subtly and was malevolent. Mr. Sylvester Milner! I thought.

My mother showed me my room. It was small, next to her own and it had a window which reached from the ceiling to the floor. It was discreetly but tastefully furnished.

“You can look out on the gardens,” she said. “You can’t see very much now but they are very well kept. The lawns are a picture and the flowers in the spring and summer have to be seen to be believed. You can just see how the house is built—with a wing either side, like a letter E with the middle strut not there. Look, over at that wing. You see those two windows. That’s Mr. Milner’s Treasure Room.”

I looked and was excited.

“You’ll see it clearly in daylight,” said my mother.

She was very pleased with herself. She had managed her affairs admirably.

We went back to her room and talked—how we talked! She caught me up in her mood of exultation. Everything had turned out as she would have wished.

It was in a state of euphoria that I spent that evening, but my first night at Roland’s Croft was an uneasy one. The wind soughing through the trees sounded like voices and they seemed to be repeating a name: “Sylvester Milner.”

It was an interesting holiday. I soon was on good terms with the servants. It was fortunate, said my mother, that Mrs. Couch took to me and Mr. Catterwick had no objection to my presence.

I was to the fore when the gardeners cut down the fir tree and we dragged it into the house. I was there for the cutting of the holly and mistletoe.

There was a wonderful smell in the kitchen and Mrs. Couch, whose rotund figure, rosy cheeks, and cosy look fitted her name, was making innumerable pies and fussing over the Christmas puddings. Because I was already a favorite of hers I was allowed a little of what she called the “taster.” It was the happiest day I had known since my father’s death when I sat near the kitchen range, listening to the bubbling of the puddings and then seeing Mrs. Couch haul them out by a long fork hitched through the pudding cloths and set them in a row. Last of all came the small basin which contained the “taster.” Then I sat at the table and ate my small portion while I watched Mrs. Couch’s face—apprehensive, hesitating, and then expressing gratification.

“Not as good as last year’s, but better than the year before that.”

And all those who had been privileged to share the “taster” protested that the puddings had never been better and that Mrs. Couch couldn’t make a bad pudding if she tried.

For such compliments we were all rewarded with a glass of her special parsnip wine and there was a glass of sloe gin for Mr. Catterwick and my mother, which I suppose denoted their superior rank.

Mrs. Couch told me that in the old days there had been the Family and nobody was going to make her believe—not that anyone had tried to—that it was right and proper that houses should pass out of families and go to them that had no what you might call roots there.

This was an oblique reference to Mr. Sylvester Milner.

“And will he be home for Christmas?” asked the wife of one of the gardeners.

“I should hope not,” said Jess the parlormaid, who was promptly reproved by Mr. Catterwick while I felt that shudder of something between fascination and fear which the name of Mr. Sylvester Milner always aroused in me.

My mother, like Mr. Catterwick, kept somewhat aloof from the servants. One had to keep up one’s position, she told me, and the servants respected her for it. They knew that she had “come down in the world” and that I was at Cluntons’ where Mrs. Couch informed them one of the ladies of the Family had gone.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Couch, “when the Family was here, the housekeeper’s daughter wouldn’t have gone to the same school as one of its members. That would have been unthinkable. But everything’s different now. He came…” She shrugged her shoulders and lifted her eyes to the ceiling with an air of resignation.

I would not have believed I could have enjoyed a Christmas holiday so much without my father. There was not only the strangeness of it all but the overwhelming mystery of Mr. Sylvester Milner.

I tried to find out everything I could about him. He never said much I gathered, but he had made it clear that he wanted everything done his way. He had changed the house since he took over from the Family. He had even had those heathen-looking dogs put on the porch. The Family it seemed had fallen on hard times and been obliged to sell the house. And he had appeared and taken it. He crept about the place, said Mrs. Couch. You’d find him suddenly there. He talked in a sort of gibberish to that Ling Fu. They were often shut in the Treasure Room together. And Mrs. Couch thought it was a heathen thing to do, to keep a room locked against Mr. Catterwick and let a foreigner have the key.

I suppose it was helpful that our first Christmas without my father should be so entirely different. There was less nostalgia for the past. I said it seemed like a miracle but my mother explained that my father was arranging it; he had guided us here because he was looking after us. It seemed so, for everything was going well.

We were very merry decorating the servants’ hall with holly, ivy, and mistletoe, and even Mr. Catterwick smiled wryly at our antics and only gently reproved the maids for their exuberance. The carol singers came on Christmas Eve and sang by the portico, and my mother put a shilling in their tin on behalf of the house.

“Of course when the Family was here,” said Mrs. Couch, “they was brought into the hall and the Master and the Mistress and the rest of the Family served them with hot punch and mince pies. That was how it had been done for generations. It’s a pity times have to change.”

She had a rocking chair in the kitchen and she liked to rock herself to and fro after a heavy baking. It soothed her. Since I had come she liked to talk to me and as I was so interested I was glad to listen. I spent quite a lot of time in the kitchen with Mrs. Couch. My mother was pleased to see that we had become friends for there was no doubt that the cook was a power in the house.

She talked a great deal about the Family, and how it had been in the old days. “A proper household,” she said, implying that there was something rather improper about it in its present state, “they had been, the Master, the Mistress, and the two daughters. They came out,” she went on, “as young ladies should and they might well have made good matches in due course. But the Master he was a gambler, always had been… and his father before him. Together they gambled away their fortune.”

“And then they sold the house,” I prompted.

She leaned close to me. “For a song,” she hissed. “Mr. Sylvester Milner is a true businessman. He bought when the Family had no other way but to sell.”

“What happened to the Family?”

“Master died. Shock, they said. Mistress went to live with her family. One of the young ladies went with her and the other I heard took a post as governess. Terrible that were. She who’d had a governess of her own when she was young and been brought up to expect to employ one for her own children.”

I wondered fleetingly what I should do when I grew up. Should I become a governess? It was a sobering thought.

“He asked me if I’d stay on and I said I would. The house had always served me well. Little did I know…”

I leaned towards her. “Know what, Mrs. Couch?”

“That there’d be such change.”

“Life’s always changing,” I reminded her.

“Everything had gone on here in the same way for years, as you’d expect it to go. We had our differences. Mr. Catterwick and I didn’t always get along, same as now. But it was different then.”

“What happens when he’s here?” I asked.

“Mr. Milner? Well, he’ll have friends to dinner. And they’ll go up to the Treasure Room like as not. Talking away. Talking business, I suppose, being in business. Well, it’s not what I expect, nor did Mr. Catterwick for that matter. I’m used to gentry and so is Mr. Catterwick.”

“You could always leave and go to a place where there’s a family which hasn’t gambled away its fortune,” I suggested.

“I like to settle, and I’ve settled here. I’ll put up with a bit… for he’s not here all the time.”

“Does he ever talk to you?”

She put her head on one side and then she said: “He was never one to come down to the kitchen and give me the menu as you’d expect with a family.”

“When his friends come to dinner…”

“Then I’d go to his sitting room and knock on his door bold as brass. ‘Now, what’s for dinner, Mr. Milner,’ I’ll say. And he’ll answer: ‘I’ll leave it to you, Mrs. Couch.’ And how am I to know whether these friends of his have any special likes or don’t-likes. He’s not like the Family I can tell you. He’s rich though, must be. He bought the place didn’t he. And he keeps us all here.”

“And is hardly ever here himself.”

“Oh he’ll be here between spells of travel.”

“When is he coming back, Mrs. Couch?”

“He’s not one to give you warning.”

“Perhaps he wants to come back suddenly and see what you’re all doing.”

“And I wouldn’t put that past him.”

And so we talked and I always contrived to lead Mrs. Couch from the Family to the present owner of Roland’s Croft.

On Christmas Day there was duckling followed by the Christmas pudding solemnly carried to the table by Mr. Catterwick himself and encircled by mystic brandy flames which were watched lovingly by Mrs. Couch. My mother sat at the head of one end of the big table and Mr. Catterwick at the other, and all the servants and their families were gathered there.

I had the sixpence from the pudding and the three wishes to which that entitled one. I wished that I should see Mr. Milner before I went back to school and then the Treasure Room and the third wish was that my mother and I should go on living at Roland’s Croft.

I thought that if only my father were there it would have been the best Christmas I had ever had, but of course had he been alive we shouldn’t have been there.

After dinner everyone had to do “a turn” except my mother and Mr. Catterwick whose dignity saved them and Mrs. Couch whose bulk excused her. There were songs, recitations, and even a dance; and one of the gardeners and his son played their violins. I recited The Wreck of the Hesperus which, Mrs. Couch whispered, I did so beautifully that it brought tears to her eyes.

During the evening my mother sent me upstairs for her shawl and as I came out of the servants’ hall and shut the door on the lights and gaiety I was suddenly aware of the quiet house closing round me. I went up the stairs and it was as though an eerie coldness touched me. It was almost like a premonition. That warm servants’ hall seemed a whole world away. In a sudden unaccountable panic I dashed up the stairs to my mother’s room, found the shawl and prepared to come down again. I stood at her window and peered out. The candle I had brought up with me showed me nothing but my own face reflected there. I could hear the wind in the trees and I knew that not far off was the forest which long long ago men had said was haunted by the ghosts of those who had suffered for it.

Desperately I wanted to go back to the comfort of the servants’ hall, and yet I had an irresistible urge to linger.

I thought then of the Treasure Room which was always locked. There is something about a locked room that is intriguing. I remembered a conversation I had had with Mrs. Couch. “They must be very precious things in there, to keep it locked,” I had said. “They must be.” “In a way it’s like Bluebeard. He had a wife who was too inquisitive. Has Mr. Sylvester got a wife?” “Oh, he’s a strange gentleman. He’s giving nothing away. There’s no wife here now.” “Unless she’s in the secret room. Perhaps she’s his treasure.” That had made Mrs. Couch laugh. “Wives have to eat,” she said, “and wouldn’t I be the first to know if there was someone being fed.” And that overwhelming curiosity which my father had always said should be curbed took possession of me and I longed to peep inside the Treasure Room.

I knew where it was. My mother had told me.

“Mr. Milner’s apartments are on the third floor, the whole of the third floor.”

I had made an excuse to go up there one afternoon when the house was quiet. I had tried all the doors, and peeped into the rooms—a bedroom, sitting room, a library; and there was one door which was locked.

And now clutching my mother’s shawl, deeply aware of the darkness and silence of this part of the stairs, I forced myself to mount to the third floor.

I held the candle high. My flickering shadow on the wall looked odd and menacing. Go back, said a voice within me. You’ve no right here. But something stronger urged me to go on and I walked straight up to that door which had been locked and turned the handle. My heart was thumping wildly. I was expecting the door to open and myself be caught and drawn into… I did not know what. To my immense relief the door was still locked. Grasping my candle firmly, I fled downstairs.

What a comfort to open the door of the servants’ hall, to hear Mr. Jeffers singing a ballad called Thara slightly out of key, to see my mother put her fingers to her lips warning me to wait till the song was finished. I stood there glad of the opportunity for my heart to stop its mad racing, laughing at my fancies, asking myself what I’d expected to find.

“You’ve been a long time, Jane,” said my mother. “Couldn’t you find the shawl?”

On the second day of the new year there took place a little incident which left a mark on my memory. Amy the housemaid was getting something from the top shelf of a cupboard and in doing so pulled down some holly.

I was in the kitchen at the time—just the two of us, and she said to me: “It’s been in the way ever since it was put up and so’s that on the dresser. It’s time it came down. You help me, Jane.”

So I held the chair while she climbed up, and when she had taken it down, I said: “It looks unfinished now. If that comes down all of it should.”

So we began to take it down and as we were doing so Mrs. Couch came in. She stared at us in horror.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“The dratted stuff was in the way,” said Amy. “And Christmas has come and gone so it’s time it was down.”

“Time it was down. Don’t you know nothing, Amy Clint. Why, it’s not to come down till Twelfth Night. Don’t you know it brings terrible bad luck to take it down afore.”

Amy had turned white. I looked from one to the other. Mrs. Couch had lost her fat comfortable look; she was like a prophet of evil. Her eyes, never very big, had almost disappeared into her pudding of a face.

“Put it back quick,” she said. “It may not have been noticed.”

“Who might have noticed it?” I asked.

But she was too shaken to tell me.

Later when she was rocking in her chair I asked her why decorations must not come down before Twelfth Night. She said it was knowledge that was passed down from generation to generation except among the ignorant like that Amy Clint. Witches looked on it as an insult.

“Why? What have they got to do with Christmas?”

“There’s things that can’t be explained,” said Mrs. Couch mysteriously. “My brother’s sister-in-law was a scoffer. She took down her decorations on New Year’s Day and look what happened to her.”

“What?”

“She was a corpse within the year. So if that don’t show, what does?”

I was not entirely convinced that Mrs. Couch’s brother’s sister-in-law’s untimely death was connected with the taking down of Christmas decorations but it seemed unwise to express doubts.

That memorable holiday came to an end with a climax which seemed dramatic at the time.

On the 20th January I was to return to school and my mother was busily sewing name tapes on my things and preparing my trunk. She and Mr. Jeffers would drive me to the station. Mr. Jeffers said it was like old times having a young lady to be driven to school—and Cluntons’ too. It was clear that he doubted the propriety of this particular young lady’s going to that exclusive establishment since she was only the housekeeper’s daughter, but like Mrs. Couch he was prepared to accept the fact that times had changed.

I was sorry my stay at Roland’s Croft was coming to an end. Already I seemed like a part of the household. There were two things I regretted and I had hoped that there would be a miracle to bring these about: That I might look inside the Treasure Room to assure myself that it was only precious ornaments which were there, and that I should have an opportunity of seeing Mr. Sylvester Milner.

One of my mother’s theories was that if you wanted something very badly and you believed you would get it, you would, providing you did everything in your power to achieve that end. “Faith and determination,” she used to say. “And one is as important as the other.”

It would be summer holidays before I saw Roland’s Croft again, for it was too far to come home for the few days at Easter. And I had not seen Mr. Sylvester Milner nor the inside of his Treasure Room.

About five days before I was due to leave for school, there was an intimation that Mr. Sylvester Milner would soon return. Ling Fu would precede him. It seemed the most incredible bad luck that Mr. Milner should be coming back two days after I had left for school. However I should at least see his mysterious servant.

I watched from a window and was rather disappointed to see a small man alight from the trap. He looked up at the house as though he knew he was being watched and I jumped back. He could not have seen me of course but I had that guilty feeling eavesdroppers get. I just caught a glimpse of his Oriental features. I was disappointed that he should be in European dress and did not have a pigtail.

He changed his costume in the house though; there he wore shiny alpaca trousers and a loose kind of tunic; his slippers had silver markings on them and turned up slightly at the toes. He looked more Oriental thus.

“Creep creep creep about the house,” complained Mrs. Couch. “You never know where he is. What’s wrong with a good English valet? Tell me that?”

He interested me although he rarely looked my way; and two days before I left for school I saw from my window that the curtains of the Treasure Room had been drawn right back so I knew he was in there.

The urge was irresistible. I could go up to the third floor. I would have to make up some excuse for being there if I were discovered. I wanted to see the view from the upper windows? Would that do? I was too impatient to waste time thinking of a better excuse.

Stealthily I mounted the staircase. The house had that quietness which was so noticeable beyond the first floor. Up I went to Mr. Sylvester Milner’s apartments. My mother had had them all specially cleaned so that they would be ready for his return and there was a smell of the polish she herself made and which she insisted was the best and should always be used—a mixture of beeswax and turpentine. And there was the Treasure Room—and the door was open.

My heart began to beat very fast. I paused on the threshold and peeped in. There was no one there. I took a step into the room. It was true there were beautiful figures everywhere. Some were large, some small. There were vases beautifully colored and several Buddhas in what I supposed to be jade. I gazed in fascination at their strange faces, some benign some sinister. I took a few paces into the room. I was actually inside Mr. Sylvester Milner’s Treasure Room!

There was a small room leading from this one in which was a sink and some cleaning materials. Just as I was peeping into it I heard footsteps. Someone was coming along the corridor! If I tried to get out I should inevitably be seen, so I stepped into the little room and waited.

To my horror I heard the door of the room shut and a gentle grating sound as though a key was being turned in a lock.

I came out into the Treasure Room and went immediately to the door. I was locked in.

I stared at the door in dismay as the implication of what this meant swept over me. I was sure it would result in dire consequences. This was the room full of precious objects. No one was allowed to go into it except Ling Fu. I, who was here under sufferance one might say, had dared break the rule, and for my sins was locked in.

I went to the window. There were bars across it. To protect the treasure I supposed. Perhaps I could attract someone’s attention, I desperately hoped it would be my mother’s. There was no one in the grounds. I went to the door and was about to rap on it when I hesitated. The only person I wanted to open that door was my mother. I felt it would be very embarrassing indeed to face Ling Fu and tell him that I had pried into the room when he was not there. I imagined that he had slipped away for a few seconds into one of the rooms on this floor and by a quirk of fate I had come along precisely at that time.

I looked round the room. It was true then that Mr. Sylvester Milner was a merchant and this was his merchandise. There was no great mystery such as I had imagined. I knew nothing of these things but ignorant as I was I could not help but be impressed by their beauty. They were very valuable I was sure, but I was a little disappointed because I had hoped this room contained some dark secret which would give me a clue to the character of Mr. Sylvester Milner. But it was just as they had said—it was his storeroom of treasures and because they were so valuable he did not want the room left open to the servants, and so entrusted them to the care of Ling Fu who perhaps because he was Chinese understood something of their value.

It was an anticlimax and my curiosity had merely placed me in a difficult position. How could I get out of this room without betraying my indiscretion? If my mother discovered me she would be horrified but she understood how I had always found it impossible to curb my curiosity. I should be hustled out and warned never to do such a thing again. But how could I attract her attention? I went to the window. Those bars made me feel like a prisoner; I tried the door again. Then I looked round the room for inspiration, and I almost forgot my dilemma in the contemplation of those beautiful things. There was the figure of a woman carved in ivory; she was so tall and graceful, so beautiful that I felt overawed. I went to examine her more intently. Her features were finely etched and the expression so lifelike that I felt she was watching me. I did not greatly care for the obese Buddhas with their baleful eyes. There was one huge one in what might have been bronze. He was not fat, he was seated on a lotus flower; his eyes were malevolent and wherever I looked I felt they followed me.

I would have to get out of here. They might be only valuable pieces of stone, bronze, and ivory but there was a certain alien quality about them which fitted in with everything I had ever felt about the house.

I should not like to be in this room when darkness fell. I had a silly notion that then all these seemingly inanimate objects would come to life; it was these—and their master Mr. Sylvester Milner—who had brought that strangeness into the house.

How to get out? I was again at the window. Someone might come into the garden. Oh let it be my mother, I prayed. But even if it were one of the maids I could attract her attention. It was hardly likely to be Mrs. Couch who rarely stirred from the house. Whoever it was I would be grateful and humbly confess my curiosity.

I went to the door, passing the bronze Buddha with the evil eyes. They seemed to sneer as they followed me. I turned the handle. I shook the door. I beat on it and called out in sudden panic: “I’m locked in.”

There was no answer.

Memories of my childhood came back to me. How many times had I been told “Curiosity killed the cat.” And I could hear my mother’s recounting the fate of Meddlesome Matty who lifted the teapot lid to see what was within.

I had been wrong to come in here. I knew it was forbidden. It was, as my mother would tell me, abusing hospitality I had been graciously allowed to stay here and I had behaved with ill grace. I was as bad as Meddlesome Matty and the Curious Cat. Both had suffered for their curiosity and so should I.

I tried to be calm. I looked once more at the beautiful objects. My attention was momentarily caught by a collection of sticks in a jade container. I supposed them to be made of ivory. I counted them. There were forty-nine of them. I wondered what they were.

I went into the small adjoining room and examined it. I opened a cupboard door and saw brushes, dusters, and a long coat which presumably Ling Fu wore for cleaning. There was a chair and I sat down on this and stared despondently at my feet.

From below I heard the sound of horse’s hoofs and I ran to the window. That was the carriage coming round from the coach house and Jeffers was taking it down the drive.

I went back to the chair and asked myself how I could get out of this place.

I didn’t care that I should be caught. I only wanted to get out. I called at the top of my voice. No one answered. The walls were thick and people rarely came to the third floor.

I was beginning to get frightened particularly as twilight, which came early on these winter afternoons, would soon descend. It must have been just after three when I tiptoed into this room. It would now be past four.

My mother would not miss me yet but later she would…

I started to imagine what would happen to me. How often did Ling Fu come to the room? Not every day. Then I should be locked away like the bride in the Mistletoe Bough. They would find nothing but my skeleton. But before that I would have to face a night alone with that leering bronze Buddha. Some of the other pieces made me feel uncomfortable too. Even now when the shadows were beginning to fall they seemed to be changing subtly. And when it was dark… The idea of being in the darkness with such objects sent me to hammer on the door.

I tried to think what was the best thing to do. From the window I could see the wintry sun low in the sky. In half an hour it would have disappeared.

I hammered on the door again. There was no response. They would miss me soon, I consoled myself. My mother would be anxious. Mrs. Couch would sit in her rocking chair and talk of the terrible things that could happen to lost girls.

The room was filling with shadows; I was very much aware of the silence. The shapes of the ornaments seemed to change and I tried in vain to divert my eyes from the bronze Buddha. For a moment those eyes seemed to flicker. It was almost as though the lids came down over them. Before it had seemed merely mocking; now it was malevolent.

My imagination grew wilder. Mr. Sylvester Milner was a wizard. He was a Pygmalion who breathed life into these objects. They were not what they seemed—pieces of stone and bronze. There was a living spirit within each one of them—an evil spirit.

The light was getting more and more dim. Some impulse made me pick up the ivory sticks. I stared at them in concentration trying to think how I could get out of this room before it was completely dark.

Then I heard a sound. For the first time in my life I felt the hair lift from my scalp. I stood very still, the ivory sticks in my hand.

The door was slowly opening. I saw a flickering light. On the threshold of the room stood a figure. For the moment I thought the bronze Buddha had materialized, then I saw that it was only a man standing there.

In his hand he carried a candlestick in which was a lighted candle. He held it high so that the light flickered on his face—a strange face, blank of expression. On his head was a round velvet cap the same mulberry shade as his jacket.

He was staring straight at me.

“Who are you?” he asked imperiously.

“I’m Jane Lindsay,” I answered and my voice sounded high pitched. “I was locked in.”

He shut the door behind him, advanced into the room and came close to me.

“Why are you holding the yarrow sticks?” he asked.

I looked down at the ivory pieces in my hand. “I… I don’t know.” A terrible horror had come to me because I knew that my second wish had been granted; I was face to face with Mr. Sylvester Milner.

He took the sticks from me and to my amazement set them out on a small table which was inlaid with what I learned was ivory. He seemed absorbed by this—more interested in the sticks than in me. Then he looked at me intently.

“H’m,” he murmured.

I stammered: “I’m sorry. The door was open and I looked in… and then before I knew what had happened someone came and locked it.”

“This room is kept locked,” he said. “Why did you think that was?”

“Because these things are valuable, I suppose.”

“And you appreciate fine objects of art?”

I hesitated. I felt I could not tell him an untruth for he would know immediately.

“I’m sure I should if I knew about them.”

He nodded. “But you are inquisitive.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“You must not come in here without permission. That is forbidden. Go now.”

As I walked past I glanced sideways at the ivory sticks laid on the table. I had a terrible fear that he would seize me by the hair as I passed and turn me into one of the figures. I would disappear strangely and no one would know what had become of me.

But nothing of the sort happened. I was out in the corridor. I ran to my room and shut the door. I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were scarlet, my hair more untidy than usual and my eyes brilliant. I felt as though I had had an uncanny adventure.

My mother came into my room.

“Wherever have you been, Jane? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Your trunk is almost ready.”

I hesitated. Then I thought I had better confess the truth.

“I think, Mother,” I said, “that I have met Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

“He came back a short while ago. Did you see him from your window?”

“I saw him in the Treasure Room.”

“What!” she cried.

As I told her what had happened she grew pale. “Oh Jane,” she said, “how could you! When everything was going so well. This will be the end. I shall be asked to leave.”

I was very contrite. She had worked so hard and my curiosity had destroyed our chances even as the cat’s had killed it.

“I didn’t mean anything wrong.”

How often in the past had I said those words. “I just thought… a quick look and out again. You see, the way they talked about the Treasure Room I didn’t think it could just be things, ordinary things. I thought there must be something mysterious…”

My mother wasn’t listening. She was, I knew, thinking of packing and leaving in a month’s time and the weary business of finding a post would begin again. And where could she ever find anything as suitable as that which she had held at Roland’s Croft?

It was a melancholy drive to the station two days later with Jeffers and my mother. She was hourly expecting a summons from Mr. Sylvester Milner. I looked back at the portico and the Chinese dogs and thought: I shall never see those again. My summer holidays would be spent somewhere else.

I shared my mother’s melancholy and mine was even greater than hers for it was heavy with guilt.

She embraced me warmly. “Never mind, Janey,” she said. “It’s over and done with. I daresay your father will find something else for us… perhaps even better.”

I nodded gloomily. There could not be for me a more fascinating place than Roland’s Croft, with its cosy kitchen and servants’ hall and its eerie Treasure Room and most of all perhaps its strange owner.

With every post I waited to hear that we had received our congé.

Nothing happened.

Then my mother wrote and said: “Mr. Sylvester Milner never mentioned finding you in the Treasure Room. It seems to have slipped his memory. That’s something to be grateful for and if I hear nothing of it from him by the summer when you’ll be coming for your holidays it must be all right.”

We did hear nothing, and I prepared to go to Roland’s Croft for the summer holidays.

The three wishes I had made with the silver sixpence had all come true.

II

Those summer holidays were spent at Roland’s Croft and the next too so that I had come to regard it as my home. They were my family—Mrs. Couch in her rocking chair, Mr. Catterwick king of the pantry and stiff with dignity, Amy and Jess who began to confide in me about their love affairs. The excitement when holidays approached never diminished and I loved it all—the forest which I insisted was haunted, the garden with its beautiful laid-out lawns, well-kept paths and flower beds and copse of firs on the forest’s edge; the meals round the big table, the chatter, the gossip and the recounting of the grandeur of other houses and the old days in Roland’s Croft when the Family was there.

For me there was in addition the third floor of the house where the treasures were and where Mr. Sylvester Milner and his servant Ling Fu had their quarters.

There was a change in the house when Mr. Sylvester Milner was there and it was far more exciting. Then there were dinner parties and bustle in the kitchen. People stayed in the guests’ rooms-merchants who consumed large quantities of food and drank a good deal of wine. Mrs. Couch and Mr. Catterwick enjoyed these occasions. It was what a house should be. Mrs. Couch liked to work herself up into a state of excitement over the dinner and Mr. Catterwick enjoyed letting us know how great was his knowledge of wines.

After a dinner party we would all sit round the big table and hear from Jess and Mr. Catterwick what the guests were like. Mr. Catterwick often reported that there was a lot of high-flown talk and he couldn’t understand half of it and Jess said that in some houses you’d get some exciting scandal. It was more interesting than talk about a lot of vases and figures and what was happening in outlandish places.

I wished that I could hide myself under the table and listen. For there was no doubt in my mind that the most interesting person in the house was Mr. Sylvester Milner.

Sometimes when I was in the gardens I would look up to the barred window and I often fancied I saw a shadow there. Once I saw him quite clearly. He stood still looking down and I stood looking up. I began to get the impression that he was watching me.

This thought began to obsess me. He had never mentioned to my mother that he had discovered me in his Treasure Room. She had said that she thought it very understanding of him, though she did wish he had put her mind at rest at that time. She began to feel confident that we were safe here. But in a year or so I should be leaving school and the problem would then arise as to what I should do.

The girls at Cluntons’ were destined to have London seasons, when they would attend balls and no doubt in due course find husbands. My circumstances were very different. My mother said that perhaps my father’s family would after all realize their duty and come forward to launch me, but she said it halfheartedly, and although her outlook was optimistic she always believed in making provisions.

“You will be an extremely well-educated girl,” she said. “There are few schools to compare with Cluntons’ and if we can keep you there until your eighteenth birthday you will have had as good an education as any young lady could have.” I was nearly seventeen years old; we had a year to consider.

“We owe a lot to the grace of Mr. Sylvester Milner,” I said.

My mother agreed that it had been a good day for us when she had answered that advertisement. It was true that nothing could have happened to change our lives so completely and since we must live without my father, this was the best possible way to do it. It was as though we lived within a large family and there was always something of interest going on.

It was when I came home for the summer holidays during which I would be seventeen that my mother appeared to be excited about something. She met me at the station in the jingle, she herself driving Pan the pony.

I was always thrilled when the train drew into the little station with the name Rolandsmere colorfully displayed in geraniums, pansies, lobelias, and yellow alyssum. There was lavender and mignonette bordering the bed in which the name had been planted and their delicious perfume filled the air.

I noticed that my mother was suppressing some excitement and that what had happened was good. She embraced me with the usual warmth and we settled into the jingle. As she took the reins I asked how everyone was at Roland’s Croft and she told me that Mrs. Couch had baked a welcome home cake for me and had talked of little else but my return for days and that even Mr. Catterwick had said that he hoped the weather would be fine for me. Amy and Jess were well but Jess was far too friendly with Jeffers and Mrs. Jeffers did not like that at all. Amy was being courted by the unmarried gardener and it looked as if they might make a match of it which would be good, for they wouldn’t lose Amy then.

“And Mr. Sylvester Milner?”

“He’s home.”

She was silent. So her excitement had something to do with him.

“He is well?” I asked.

She did not answer and I cried in sudden fear: “Mother, everything’s all right, isn’t it? He’s not sending us away.”

It was a long time since he had discovered me in his Treasure Room, but perhaps he liked to keep people in suspense for a long time. I had thought he must be a kind man, but I had always felt him to be inscrutable. Perhaps he had only pretended to be kind.

“No,” she said. “Far from it. He has been talking to me.”

“What about?”

“About you.”

“Because I went into the Treasure Room…”

“He is interested in you. He is a very kind gentleman, Jane. He asked me how long you would stay at school. I said that the young ladies of your father’s family had left Cluntons’ when they were eighteen and that I hoped you would do the same. He said: ‘And then?’”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said we should have to wait and see. He asked me if your father’s family had provided for you in any way. I told him they ignored this duty and he said that he thought that you must be considering taking a post of some sort when you left school. He said: ‘Your daughter will have the education to teach others. Perhaps this is what you have in mind for her.’”

I shuddered. “I don’t want to think of that,” I said. “I want to go on like this forever… going to school and coming home to Roland’s Croft.”

“You’ve taken to this place, Janey.”

“I was excited by it the moment I saw it. There’s the forest and the Treasure Room and Mrs. Couch and all of them, and of course Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

“He wants to talk to you, Jane.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“How… strange! What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. But I believe your father knows how anxious I am about the future. I believe he is doing something about it.”

“Do you think he forgave me for trespassing?”

“You were young. I think he forgave that.”

“But he is so… strange.”

“Yes,” said my mother slowly, “he is a strange man. You never know what he’s thinking. It could be quite different from what he’s saying. But I think he’s a kind man.”

“When am I to see him?”

“He wants you to take tea with him tomorrow.”

“Do you think he’s going to tell me he doesn’t want inquisitive people in his house?”

“It couldn’t be that after all this time.”

“I’m not so sure. He might like to keep people on tenterhooks. It’s a kind of torture.”

“We haven’t been on tenterhooks. I never gave the matter a thought after those Christmas holidays.”

“I’m not sure. I often thought he was watching me.”

“Janey. You’re imagining again.”

“No. I saw him twice at his window when I was in the garden.”

“Now don’t start working up one of your fantasies. Be patient and wait till you see him tomorrow.”

“It’s hard because tomorrow seems a long way off.”

Young Ted Jeffers came out and took the jingle round to the stables. I went into the kitchen. Mrs. Couch wiped her floury arms on a towel and embraced me. “Amy,” she called. “Jess. She’s here.” And there they were, so pleased to see me and telling me I’d grown and would have to get more color in my cheeks and was quite the young lady.

“Now she’s here we’ll have the tea so don’t stand gaping,” said Mrs. Couch.

It was certainly coming home. There was Mrs. Couch’s pride with WELCOME HOME, JANE pink icing letters on white icing, and her special potato cakes and Chelsea buns, all my favorites well remembered.

“They say it’s going to be a hot summer,” said Mrs. Couch. “All the signs. Not too much sun, I hope. It’s bad for the fruit Then I shan’t be able to get my plums the right flavor. Last year’s sloe gin has come up better than ever and the elderberry’s ready for tasting.”

There was a slight change in everyone—Amy was flushed with a kind of radiance because the gardener was planning as she told me later “to make her his own”; Jess had a glitter in her eyes and she and Jeffers flashed secret messages to each other. Mr. Catterwick unbent for a moment to say it was like the old days to have someone home to the house from Cluntons’, and I felt happy to be there.

After tea I went to the stables to look at Grundel the pony which Mr. Sylvester Milner had allowed me to ride the last time I was here.

“She’s been waiting for you, Miss Jane,” said the young boy whom Mr. Jeffers was training as a groom. And as she nuzzled up against me, I believed she had.

Then I took my usual walk through the copse to the enchanted forest and I thought how wonderful it all was and that I had come to love this place. And all the time at the back of my mind was the thought: Tomorrow I shall see him. Perhaps he will tell me what he really thinks of me, why he did not forbid me the house after I had behaved so badly as to trespass in his secret room; why he watches me—as I was sure he did—from the windows of his apartments.

The next day I was ready about an hour before I was due to go to his sitting room. I had combed my hair and tied it back with a red ribbon. I put on the best gown I possessed. My father had chosen it for me a few months before he died. It had been my birthday present and I recalled the September day when we had gone to buy it. It was light navy in color with small scarlet silk-covered buttons down the front. It was my favorite dress, and my father had said it became me well.

My mother came into my room, a slight frown between her eyes.

“Oh, you’re ready, Jane. Yes, that’s right. You look neat.”

“What should he want to say to me. Mother?”

“You will know soon enough, Jane. Be careful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t forget that we owe all this to him.”

“You work hard here. I daresay he is glad to have you.”

“He could find another housekeeper easily. Don’t forget he has allowed you to come here, to live here, almost as a member of the family. Not many would have done that and I can’t imagine what we should have done but for that.”

“I’ll remember,” I said.

“Are you ready?” I nodded and together we mounted the stairs to his apartment.

My mother rapped on the door. His rather high-pitched voice bade us enter.

He was seated in a chair wearing his mulberry velvet coat and smoking cap. He rose as we entered. “Come in, Mrs. Lindsay,” he said.

“Here is my daughter,” she said unnecessarily, for his eyes were already on me.

He nodded.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lindsay.” Then to me, “Pray sit down, Miss Lindsay.”

My mother stood hesitantly for a moment and then left us. I took the chair that he indicated and he sat down in the one he was occupying as we entered.

“I have been aware of you since you came to my house,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“So you knew.”

“I thought I saw you looking at me from your windows.”

He smiled. My frankness seemed to amuse him.

“How old are you, Miss Lindsay?”

“I shall be seventeen in September.”

“It’s not a very great age is it?”

“In a year I shall be eighteen.”

“Ah, that is what we are coming to. Now we will have some tea.” He clapped his hands and as if by magic Ling Fu appeared.

Mr. Sylvester Milner said something to him in what I later learned was Cantonese. Ling Fu bowed and was gone.

“You think it strange that I should have a Chinese servant. Miss Lindsay, because you have never known anyone to have a Chinese servant before. Is that so?” He did not wait for an answer. “The fact is it is not strange at all. It is very natural. I spend a great deal of my life in China—in Hong Kong chiefly and there it is normal to be Chinese. I have a house there. You will have heard that I am away from this house for months at a time. Well then I am in my other house. What do you know of Hong Kong, Miss Lindsay?”

I racked my brains. I did not want to appear to be an ignoramus. I desperately wanted to seem intelligent in his eyes. I felt this was very necessary to my future. “I believe it is an island off the coast of China. It is a British protectorate I think.”

He nodded. “The British flag,” he said, “was first hoisted at Possession Point in January 1841. The island was merely a barren point then. There was hardly a house on it. That has changed in forty-five years. It is very different now. The end of the Opium War put us in possession as it were. What do you know of the Opium War, Miss Lindsay?”

I said I knew nothing.

“You will have to learn. I think you will find it interesting. We are a great trading nation. How do you think we have become great? We became great through trade. Never despise it. It brings the good life to so many. I doubt not you have noble ideas of the flag, eh. It floats over Canada, India, Hong Kong… and that makes you proud. But who put the flag there? The traders. Miss Lindsay. That is something you must never lose sight of. China went to war with us in 1840, forty six years ago, because we supplied opium which we brought from India to China. We were wrong you would say. We introduced many to the drug. Yes, it was wrong. It was bad trade but even that brought work and wealth to some. One of the things you will have to learn is that there is never only one side to any question. There are always many. Life would be very simple if there were but one. We should all know exactly what to do because there would be the right and the wrong. But nothing is wholly right nothing wholly wrong. That is why we make our blunders. Here is the tea.”

The teapot was blue with a gold dragon engraved on it, the cups were of the same design. Silently Ling Fu disappeared. Mr. Sylvester Milner poured out the tea.

“China tea, Miss Lindsay. So much in this house has a Chinese flavor as I am sure with your desire for knowledge you have already discovered.”

He handed me a cup of tea and from a barrel with the same blue and gold dragon design a finger of a biscuit which tasted of honey and nuts. I did not believe it was Mrs. Couch’s making.

“I trust the tea is to your liking.”

I said it was, although it was very different from the thick brew which was served in Mrs. Couch’s kitchen.

“I have been going back and forth to China since I was fifteen years old, Miss Lindsay, a little younger than you are now. That is thirty years ago. A lifetime… when one is seventeen, eh.”

“It seems a very long time.”

“One can learn a great deal in thirty years. I am a merchant. My father was a merchant before me. I in due course inherited his business. I have never married so I have no son to follow me. Every man hopes for a son. Every king wants an heir. The King is dead. Long live the King, eh Miss Lindsay.”

“That is certainly so.”

“I know that you will have deduced by now that I am forty-five years of age.” There was a slight twinkle in his eyes. “A young lady as eager for knowledge as yourself would immediately have seen that. Pray do not feel uncomfortable. I have no patience with the incurious. What can they learn about life and what can anyone know without learning? I am going to confide in you because you are interested in everything around you. You could not resist looking into the forbidden room. Well, Miss Lindsay, you are Eve. You have eaten of the tree of knowledge and now must take the consequences.”

For a moment I thought he was going to tell me we were dismissed, and this was after all a kind of slow torture. I had read somewhere that the Chinese practiced this and as he had talked so much about China, this could be his way of telling me.

His next words dispersed that fear. “You and I, I believe, could be very useful to each other.”

“How, Mr. Milner?” I asked.

“I am coming to that. I am a merchant whose business is to buy and sell. During my visits to China and my travels throughout the world and in this country I discover rare and valuable objects. I sell them all over the world. I have many collectors who are waiting to see what I have discovered. You have peeped into my little museum. Some of these pieces are worth a great deal of money. Some I sell at a large profit, others for a small profit, and some I cannot bear to part with. My collection necessarily changes. Sometimes it is more valuable than at others, but it is always worth a great deal of money. But at all times it represents business. What pleasure there is in handling these beautiful objects it may well be that you will one day understand. Allow me to refill your cup.”

He did so and I ate more of the honey and nut fingers. He smiled at me with what I felt to be approval.

“I see that you are… adaptable,” he said. “That is good. Now I come to the purpose of this meeting. I need a secretary. Now when I say a secretary I do not mean someone who will merely write at my dictation. It is more than that I need. I need someone who is prepared to learn something about the goods I handle. You see, the person I am looking for would have to have very special qualities. Do you begin to understand me?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“And what do you think of this proposition?”

I could not hide my excitement. “I could learn, you mean, about these precious things, I could really be of use to you?”

He nodded. “I have been talking to your mother about your future. When I found you in my showroom you were holding the yarrow sticks. Do you know what yarrow sticks are?”

“No. But I remember the sticks.”

“They fascinated you, I expect. They tell the future to those who can understand their message. They told me that your life was in some way linked with mine.”

“These sticks told you that. But how…?”

“When you have learned more of the ways of the East you will not be skeptical. The power of yarrow sticks has been known for thousands of years. I laid out the sticks after you had gone and I was looking to see how significant your presence was going to be in this house. Was it to be of importance? The answer was Yes.”

“A sort of fortune telling,” I said.

He smiled at me. “I think you will be an apt pupil.”

“When shall I start?”

“When you have finished with your education. That will be in a year or so. In the meantime I wish you to study the books I will give you. They will teach you how to recognize great works of art.”

“I shall come home for my holidays as I’ve been doing, shall I? And learn here?”

“In this house,” he said. “You shall have a key to my showroom. You will study the objects there and learn how to recognize value. You will learn too something of how my business is conducted. Your mother has told me that there is no provision for you from your father’s family and it will be necessary for you to earn a living. As what? A governess? A companion? What else is there for a young lady of our times? This will be different. I offer you a chance to learn, a look into the fascinating world of Art. What do you say?”

“I say I want to do this, I want to do it very much indeed. Couldn’t I leave school and start now?”

He laughed. “Now that would not be possible. First you must finish your education. Then you have an apprenticeship to serve. Fortunately that apprenticeship can be served while you are still at school. In your holidays you can study the books I give you to read and you can see some of the most wonderful treasures to come out of China.”

“I knew it was a lucky day when we came here. It is going to be wonderful.”

“You cannot look too far into the future,” he said. “I must tell you that I am the head of a very successful and profitable business. You know the nature of it. I buy and sell. Because of my knowledge of Art and of the country from which it comes I know how to buy at the right prices. And those who are interested in building up valuable collections know they can trust me. My father was a great trader; he ranged the world but was more often in China. He left the business to his sons of whom I was the eldest. We should have worked amicably together but there were differences and we split up. We became to a certain extent rivals, which was inevitable. I was the more successful. It was a somewhat uneasy situation. I don’t think my brother Redmond ever got over his disappointment that I was the one to whom my father bequeathed The House of a Thousand Lanterns.”

“The House of a Thousand Lanterns!” I echoed.

He smiled. “Ah, I see the name arouses your interest. It is intriguing, is it not? It is the name of my house in Hong Kong.”

“Does it really contain a thousand lanterns?”

“There are lanterns in each room. There must have been a thousand there at some time for it to have been so named.”

“That is a great many lanterns. It must be a big house.”

“It is. It was presented to my grandfather for some great service he did to a highly placed mandarin.”

“It sounds like something out of the Arabian Nights,” I said.

“Except,” he answered, “that this is Chinese.”

I knew that my eyes were shining with excitement. I felt that he had opened a door to me and that I was looking into a strange exotic world.

I said: “I long to begin learning.”

That pleased him. “I like your impatience, and your curiosity. They are what I need. But you have to learn of course. It may well be that when you have seen how much there is to learn you will not wish to continue. You have a year before you need decide.”

“I have decided,” I answered firmly.

He was pleased. “If you have finished tea I will take you to my showroom. As I have said, you shall have a key and go there when you will. Study what you see there. Compare these things with replicas and pictures you will see in the books I give you. Note their grace, learn how to discover the period in which a piece was created. Some of the objects are not merely hundreds of years old but thousands. Come with me now and we will go to the showroom.”

I followed him and he unlocked the door and once more I was in that room.

My eyes immediately went to the bronze Buddha which had struck me as being malevolent and which had frightened me so much when I was locked in this room.

His gaze followed mine. “You noticed that?” he said. “It’s a fine piece. I could never bring myself to part with it. It dates back to the third or the fourth century A.D. At that time Buddhist missionaries from India came to China. You will read about this in your history. They came traveling in caravans and sometimes on foot. They traveled for years and as they passed across Asia they rested for a while and carved shrines where they could worship during their brief sojourns. It was during the Tang Dynasty that Buddhism reached its highest influence in China and it was at this time that this image was made.”

“How very old it must be.”

He smiled at me. “Old by English standards. By Chinese…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“There is something evil about it,” I said. “The eyes follow you.”

“Oh that is the skill of the artist.”

“It seems to have some living quality.”

“All great Art has. Look at this. This is a figure of Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy and compassion. Do you not think that is a beautiful piece?”

It was the figure of a woman sitting on a rock; she was carved in wood and painted with exquisite colors and gold leaf.

“It is said that she hears all cries for help,” he said. “Now she would be of the Yuan Dynasty which was the thirteenth and fourteenth century.”

“How valuable these things must be!”

He laid a hand momentarily on my arm. “That is so. That is why I will not sell some of them. You will have to learn about the various dynasties and what art was produced during them. A good deal of study will be necessary and then when you leave school at the appropriate time you will be ready to take over your duties.”

He showed me some scrolls with delicate landscapes painted on them.

“That is an art to be absorbed over many years,” he said. “You must not take too big a bite at first. I will send a book for you to read and we will have tea again together very soon. Then I shall tell you more.”

I said very earnestly: “I want so much to learn.”

I went straight to my mother who was waiting in my bedroom for me to come.

She looked at me anxiously and I flung myself into her arms.

“The most wonderful thing has happened,” I told her. “I am going to learn about Chinese Art and his collection. I am going to work with him. He is going to train me.”

My mother withdrew herself and held me at arm’s length. “What’s all this?”

“That’s why he wanted to see me. He liked my curiosity. I’m going to learn, I’m going to be his secretary… no, his assistant! I shall learn until I leave school and then I shall know a great deal and I shall work with him.”

“Tell me properly Jane, please. No imagination now.”

“It’s true. I’m going to learn. The future is assured. No governessing. I shall not be a companion to some horrid old woman. I am going to learn about China and I’m going to work with Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

When my mother realized that this was indeed so, she said: “Your father has arranged this. I knew he was looking after us.”

I brought all my enthusiasm to the new project. During those summer holidays I read voraciously. I spent a great deal of time in what I ceased to call the Treasure Room. It was now the showroom. I was very proud to be the only one in the house apart from Ling Fu and Mr. Milner who had a key. I occasionally took tea with Mr. Milner; we were becoming good friends.

The household regarded me with a kind of awe. Although I had been accepted with affection in the servants’ hall they now conceded that I was not quite one of them. It was true I had all the time been attending Cluntons’ but now Mr. Sylvester Milner himself had selected me for special attention.

My mother blossomed in her gratification. She would watch me, her head a little on one side, her lips pursed and sometimes they moved as though she were talking to my father. I knew she did when she was alone, I heard her say once when I came upon her unexpectedly, “Well, we didn’t do so badly without the high and mighty Lindsays.” She was sure that she shared her pleasure and pride with my father. Mr. Sylvester Milner was the fairy godfather who had swept away our anxiety with a wave of his magic wand.

What golden days they were! I spent hours lying in the fir copse, a book propped up before me while I was conveyed right back into the past. “Begin as early as you can,” Mr. Sylvester Milner advised me.

I read of the Shang and Chou Dynasties and the coming of Confucius who with his disciples compiled books which related the traditions and customs of his times. I skimmed through the Tsin and Han Dynasties to the Yuen and the Ming and learned of a civilization far more ancient than our own.

Knowing a little I was able to assess the vases and ornaments more easily and to understand what they expressed, and the more I learned the more fascinated I became. By the end of that summer I was dedicated and it was with great regret that I went back to school for the winter term.

If I was interested in a subject I could always excel at it and now what I wanted most of all was to leave school and to start my new work. I applied myself to lessons but I was remote from the world of schoolgirls. Their little comedies and dramas seemed childish to me; I was not exactly unpopular but I was aloof and my yearning to leave became intense.

I decided that when I went home—as I began to think of Roland’s Croft—I would ask if I might not leave at once and not wait until my eighteenth year.

That Christmas, to my great disappointment, Mr. Milner was away. It was spent much as it had been the previous year, but I was no longer so excited by the decorating of the tree and the hall, and tasting of the pudding.

I spent a good deal of the time in the showroom and I fancied that the expression on the face of the bronze Buddha had changed and that there was a veiled approval in the long sly eyes.

I was reading more than ever and had Mr. Milner’s permission to borrow any of the books in what he called his Chinese Library. This was a very small room leading from his study. I made good use of this.

Something unpleasant did happen that Christmas. So immersed was I in my own affairs, that I did not attach much significance to it at the time. My mother and I were walking in the forest and she was speaking of her very favorite topic, how glad she was that Mr. Sylvester Milner had taken such a fancy to me. Suddenly she said, “One moment, Janey. You go too fast for me.” She sat down on a tree trunk and as I looked at her I noticed how flushed her cheeks seemed. She had always been highly colored but never quite so as then and I fancied she had grown thinner.

It occurred to me then that she looked different. I sat down beside her and said: “Are you all right?”

“Just a bit of a cold,” she said. “It’ll pass.”

I gave the matter no further thought but on Christmas morning when I went in to give her her Christmas present she was not yet up. That was unusual for she was usually astir early.

“Happy Christmas,” I said. She woke up suddenly and smiled at me and then she put her hand on her pillow. It was as though she were trying to hide something.

I was puzzled but soon she was smiling and I was so excited because it was Christmas morning that I forgot the incident.

Later when we talked about my future she thought it was an excellent idea for me to speed up my schooling.

“The sooner you begin with Mr. Sylvester Milner the better,” she said.

But Mr. Sylvester Milner thought I should complete my education and it was not until I came home for the summer term in July that I left school forever. I was still only seventeen and would be eighteen in the following September. My duties with Mr. Sylvester Milner had begun.

I was completely absorbed. Each morning I would spend an hour with him when he would dictate letters which I would write out for him. I had developed a good copperplate style for this purpose. I took a great pride in being able to spell the names of the various dynasties without asking him, and as my knowledge increased the more interesting everything became.

Once he showed me a beautiful vase he had acquired and asked me to place it. I was about three hundred years out but he was pleased with me. “You have much to learn, Miss Jane,” he said, “but you are overcoming that obstacle of ignorance.”

I began to learn something not only of the Art of the Chinese and their history but of Mr. Sylvester Milner too. He had been the eldest of three brothers; they had all been involved in their fathers business, although the youngest of them, Magnus, had had little inclination for it.

“It’s not a profession one can follow with success unless there is complete dedication,” explained Mr. Milner. “I and my brother Redmond had that dedication, but we found it difficult to work together. There was so much that we could not agree on and after my father died, we separated. Redmond died of a heart attack quite recently, but he has a son, Adam, who continues with his business. In a way we are business rivals.” Mr. Milner looked regretful. “Adam is a good worker and quite an authority on many aspects of the business—a serious young man, very different in temperament from his father. I have two nephews, Miss Lindsay—Adam and Joliffe.”

“Are they brothers?”

“No. Joliffe is the son of my youngest brother, Magnus. Magnus married a young actress. He tried to join in her profession but without much success. Nothing Magnus did was ever very successful. He and his wife were killed together when the horses drawing a carriage which he was driving ran amuck. Joliffe was only eight years old at the time. Now he is another of my business rivals.” He sighed, “Ah, Joliffe!” he went on. I waited to hear more but he seemed to have decided that he had told me enough.

Mrs. Couch mentioned Joliffe one day. She sat in her rocking chair and said: “Oh, that Joliffe. There’s a one for you.”

Her eyes sparkled and she became almost coy. “‘My goodness Master Joliffe,’ I said to him, ‘you don’t think you’re going to get round me like you do the young ladies, do you?’ And he came back at me, ‘Well, you are a young lady at heart, Mrs. Couch.’ Saucy! Never without his answer!”

“He comes here then?”

“Yes, now and then. Unannounced. Mr. Sylvester Milner don’t like it. He’s what you’d call a precise gentleman. Of course, being his brother’s son, like, he looks on this as his home… one of them anyway.”

Jess dimpled when she spoke of Mr. Joliffe. “You’d go a long way for him,” she confided. And when his name was mentioned Mr. Jeffers looked a little scornful and muttered something about women who didn’t know a rake when they saw one.

Amy said that Mr. Joliffe was not quite what you’d call handsome but when he was there you hardly ever looked at anyone else—not even them that had spoken for you. It was something in him, but you had to be careful.

Even my mother’s face softened when she spoke of him. Yes, he had visited the house. He was a very charming young man and she had enjoyed looking after him on the occasions when he had come. He never stayed long though. He was restless. He rode a lot and was always on the go. She thought that since Mr. Milner had no children of his own he might be thinking of making his nephew his heir.

Mr. Sylvester Milner did mention Joliffe once or twice to me after that first time and I sensed that he did not share the opinion of the ladies.

Joliffe it seemed had a natural instinct for detecting works of Art. All the same Mr. Milner shook his head so that I knew Joliffe did not have his entire approval.

“It was my father’s desire that I and my brothers should work together. Then we should have controlled a very large part of the market. And now there are three of us, rival firms, instead of working in unison. It must be that I am not an easy person to work with.”

“I have not found that so.”

He smiled at me well pleased. “Ah, but you, my dear Miss Jane, are in a different capacity. Both Adam and Joliffe wanted to hold the reins. That was something I couldn’t allow.”

There was a great deal I should have liked to know about Mr. Milner’s family, but once he had told me of the existence of these relatives he became rather secretive and I realized that he had told me what he had because it was in a sense connected with the business. He talked far more about Chinese Art and what had been produced in the various dynasties.

Often he would hear of some precious object which someone wished to sell and he would travel to wherever it was. He went all over the country to see such things.

Once he came back in a state of great excitement because he believed he had made a great discovery.

He sent for tea and I presided over the dragon teapot while he told me why he was so excited.

“I have found another Kuan Yin. You remember the goddess of mercy and compassion. It is a beautiful piece, not large. It may well be that for which my father was searching. Though I believe that particular one was never allowed to go out of China. Yet… I cannot be sure.”

“You have one already, in the showroom.”

He nodded. “A beautiful piece but alas not the Kuan Yin. This is an image of the goddess which was made by a great artist during the Sung Dynasty. This began about nine hundred years ago. It was created at the time of great strife when civil war and bloodshed were the curse of China. Emperor Sung-kaou-tsoo was a man of many gifts; but he used these to subdue the vassal Tartars and in the battles which followed millions died. Because this was a time of great suffering the people appealed to the goddess Kuan Yin who was said to hear every cry of sorrow and distress. There is a legend that the goddess inspired the creator of this image and that she herself lives in it. Not only is it the most beautiful piece ever seen but it has a mystical quality. It is every collector’s dream to find the Sung Kuan Yin.”

“You think you have found it?”

He smiled at my enthusiasm. “My dear Miss Jane, four times I have hoped I found her. I have discovered the most beautiful Kuan Yins and when I have handled them I have said to myself: ‘This is she. There could not be another so beautiful.’ But each time I have been proved wrong. That piece you have seen is indeed a fine specimen. That is why I have kept it. But it is, alas, not the Kuan Yin for which we all search.”

“How shall you know her when you find her?”

“When I find her! I should be the most fortunate man in my profession if I ever did so.”

“And this new one…?”

“I dare not hope too much, for my disappointment would be so great. So I try to calm myself.”

“How will anyone recognize this image if you who are so knowledgeable cannot be sure?”

“The creator engraved somewhere on the wood of the image the word Sung, but that could be copied and was. First we must ascertain that the piece is truly of the Sung Dynasty. Then we are halfway there. But there were several copies even at that time. The artist when he had engraved the letters painted them with a paint which he alone could mix. There is a subtle difference in this paint—a faint luminosity which never fades. Many tests are necessary to ascertain whether this is the true piece. And those of course which date back to the Sung period are very valuable in themselves. But it is this particular one which every collector seeks.”

“When the others are as beautiful why should one be so much more valuable?”

“You could say it is due to the legend which attaches to it. The man who finds this piece and treasures it has given refuge to the goddess—so the story goes. She will listen to his cries of distress; she will never fail to pay heed to his pleas and as she has unlimited power she will look after him for as long as she is his. You see that man will have good fortune and he will know contentment all the days of his life.”

“It seems to me that it is the legend that made it valuable.”

“It’s true, but it is a work of great artistry as well.”

“Do you really think that you have this piece?”

He smiled at me and shook his head. “Deep down in my heart no, for I have an idea that it would never be allowed to leave China. I found this in a sale in a country mansion here. No one there seemed to realize what it was. It was listed as ‘Chinese Figure.’ There was other chinoiserie there—mostly of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s an acquisition though and I shall test it.”

Soon after Mr. Sylvester Milner had brought home the Kuan Yin which now stood in the showroom, he heard of two important sales somewhere in the Midlands and he decided to visit them both. He would be away for about a week he told me, and smilingly he added, “This is one of the occasions when I am pleased to have an assistant to take care of my affairs while I am away.”

Ling Fu traveled with him as he often did and I had heard from some of the merchants who came to the house that Mr. Sylvester Milner’s Chinese servant was becoming well known in Art circles.

I was delighted to be in charge and several times a day looked into the little sandalwood box, which I kept at the back of one of my drawers, for in this box was the key of the showroom, so fearful was I of losing it.

My greatest recreation was riding and walking, and the forest never failed to delight me. I had always loved trees—the rustle of their leaves in summer, the shifting shapes their shadows threw on the ground when the sun was shining, their arms stretching up to the sky in winter making a lacy pattern against the cold blue. But I think what fascinated me most was the history of this forest which had been made by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century and I liked to sit under a tree or on a fallen log and let myself imagine that I saw the hunters of centuries ago with their bows and arrows hunting the deer and wild boar. There was one favorite spot of mine. It was an old ruin and it must have stood thus for hundreds of years; ivy now grew over the ancient stones. The whole of one wall was still standing and part of a parapet jutted out from it. I had often used it as a shelter when I was caught in sudden rain.

This was what happened to me on this day. I had gone for my afternoon walk in the forest. The trees were thick with leaves, and it was pleasant to walk in their shade for it was a hot and sultry day. I was struck by the stillness; all the usual murmurs of the forest were silent on this day—there was a hushed heavy atmosphere. I wondered if on such a day as this William Rufus had ridden out to the hunt and had he had any premonition that he would never ride back? One account said that his body had been found inside the crumbling walls of a building from which no doubt his father had turned out the owners that it might be part of his forest, though others believed that the body of the King was found under an oak tree and that this was a ritual killing. There he had lain with the arrow in his chest—and that was the mysterious end of the man known as the Red King.

What fancies I had in the forest! I used to wonder how much of life was predestined. I remembered that even Mr. Sylvester Milner had studied the yarrow sticks. Had what he saw there made him decide to offer me the position which I had accepted? If I had not picked up those sticks at precisely the right moment would my mother and I now be asking ourselves what sort of way of earning a living I should find? Could a man such as Mr. Sylvester Milner really believe in such things?

I was thinking today about the Sung Kuan Yin and how wonderful it would be if I could be the one to discover this much sought after piece.

The stillness of the forest was unearthly. The sky was rapidly darkening. Then the forest was suddenly illuminated and away in the distance I heard the clap of thunder.

A heavy storm was about to break. Mrs. Couch was always terrified of thunder. She used to hide herself in the cupboard under the stairs which led from the servants’ hall to the ground floor. She used to say: “My old granny told me it was God’s anger. It was His way of showing us we’d done wrong.” I tried to give her the scientific explanation but she scorned it. “That’s come out of books,” she said. “All very well but I prefer to believe my granny. ‘Never shelter under trees/ she told me once. Trees is terrible things for getting struck.’”

My mother joined her voice to that. “Get wet,” she would say, “but never stand under trees when there’s thunder and lightning about.”

The darkness made it eerie. I was aware that the storm was coming closer and I knew that it would break overhead in a few minutes and I should not have time to get out of the forest. I was, however, close to my ruin and the jutting parapet would provide some shelter until the storm was over.

I ran to it and was just in time, for the deluge had begun. While I was congratulating myself on having got to shelter in time, a man came running towards me.

A voice said: “What a storm! May I share your shelter?” His jacket was soaked and when he took off his hat a stream of water fell from it.

I noticed at once how pleasant he was to look at. As he looked up at the sky and laughed, I saw strong-looking white teeth but his most startling feature was his eyes because they were a dark blue—and his brows and short thick lashes were as black as his hair. But it was not the contrast of blue and black which was arresting, it was something in his expression. I could not analyze it in a few moments but I was definitely aware of it. For the rest he was tall and rather lean.

“It seems as though I came just in time.” His eyes were on me and I flinched a little under his gaze, which had the effect of making me wonder whether my hair was tousled and reminding me that the morning dress of sprigged cotton which I was wearing was not my most becoming.

“May I come under the parapet?”

“You will get very wet if you don’t.”

He came and stood beside me. I withdrew as far as I could, for he disturbed me.

“Were you taking a walk too?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I often do. I love the forest. It’s so beautiful.”

“It’s also very wet at the moment. Do you often walk here… alone?”

“I like to be alone.”

“But a young lady on her own! Might she not meet with… dangers?”

“I had never thought of that.”

His blue eyes seemed to be alight with laughter. “Then you should without delay.”

“Should I?”

“How can you know what you will meet here?”

“I am not far from the house.”

“Your home, you mean?”

“Yes, my home. In fact when the storm started I debated whether to make a dash for it or come to this place.”

“I’m still surprised that you are allowed to roam here alone.”

“Oh, I am well able to take care of myself.”

I moved a step or two away from him.

“I didn’t doubt it for a moment. So your home is near here?”

“Yes… it’s Roland’s Croft.”

He nodded.

“You know it?”

“Owned by an eccentric old gentleman. Is that right?”

“Mr. Sylvester Milner is not eccentric, nor is he old. He is a very interesting man.”

“But of course. You are a relative of his?”

“I work for him. My mother is the housekeeper there.”

“I see.”

“Do you think the storm is abating?”

“Perhaps, but it would be a mistake to leave this shelter yet. Storms have a habit of returning. One should make absolutely sure that they really are over before venturing out into them.”

“And you live in this neighborhood?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I am taking a short holiday here. I was just out walking when the storm arose. I saw you through the trees making off with such resolution that I was certain you were going to a shelter. So I followed.” His eyes crinkled with a kind of secret amusement. “I wonder what this place was,” he went on. “Look at these walls. They must be hundreds of years old.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“What was here, do you think? Some sort of dwelling?”

“I think so. I believe it could have been here for nine hundred years.”

“You could well be right.”

“Perhaps it was some house which was partially razed to the ground to make way for forest that kings might hunt to their pleasure. Can’t you imagine it? The King gives the order: lands to be made forest land and the devil take anyone whose home is on it. No wonder those kings were hated. You can feel the hatred sometimes in this forest.”

I stopped. Why was I talking to him in this way? I could see that he was amused. The manner in which he looked at me showed it.

“I can see that as well as being a young lady bold enough to roam the forest alone you are a highly imaginative one. Now I think that that is a very interesting combination—boldness and imagination. That should take you far.”

“What do you mean, take me far?”

He leaned towards me slightly. “As far as you want to go. I can see too that you are very determined.”

“Are you a fortune teller?”

Again he laughed. “At moments,” he said, “I have clairvoyant powers. Shall I tell you something? I’m a descendant of Merlin, the magician. Can you sense his presence in the forest?”

“I can’t and he could not have been here—had he existed at all. The forest was made by the Norman kings long after Merlin died.”

“Oh, Merlin fluttered from century to century. He had no sense of time.”

“I can see you are amused. I’m sorry if I seemed foolish.”

“Far from it. Foolish is the last word I would apply to you and if I am amused it is in the nicest possible way. One of the greatest pleasures of life is to be amused.”

“I love this forest,” I said. “I’ve read a great deal about it. I suppose that’s what makes me imagine things.” And I thought what an extraordinary conversation to be holding with a stranger. I said quickly: “The sky is a little lighter. The storm is beginning to fade away.”

“I hope not. It is so much more interesting sheltering from the storm than walking through the forest alone.”

“I am sure it is abating.” I stepped out from the parapet. He took my arm and drew me back.

I was very much aware of him.

“It’s unsafe to venture yet,” he said.

“I’ve such a little distance to go.”

“Stay and make sure. Besides, we don’t want to cut short this absorbing conversation. You’re interested in the past, are you?”

“I am.”

“That’s wise. The past is such an excellent warning to the present and future. And you feel that there is something significant about this ruin?”

“Any ruin interests me. It must at some time have been someone’s home. People must have lived within its walls. I can’t help wondering about them, how they lived, loved, suffered, rejoiced…”

He watched me closely. “You’re right,” he said. “There is something here. I sense it too. This is a historic spot. One day we shall look back and say, ‘Ah, that was the place where we sheltered from the storm,’”

He put out a hand as though to grasp mine and drawing back I said: “Look. It is lighter. I’m going to chance it now. Goodbye.”

I left him standing there and ran out into the forest.

The rain was teeming down, the wet foliage wrapped itself round me as my feet squelched through the sodden ground. I had to get away though. I was uncertain of what he would do. There was something about him—some vitality which I felt would submerge me if I stayed. He had been laughing at me, I was well aware of that, and I was not sure of him. I was very excited though. I had half wanted to stay and had been half eager to get away.

What an extraordinary encounter and yet it had merely been two people sheltering from the rain.

When I arrived at the house my mother was in the hall.

“Good gracious, Jane,” she said, “wherever have you been?” She came to me and felt my dress. “You’re soaked to the skin.”

“I was caught in the storm.”

“How breathless you are! Come along upstairs. You must get those things off and Amy shall bring hot water. You must have a hot bath at once and put on dry things.”

She poured the hot water into the hip bath in her bedroom and I was immersed in it. She put a little mustard in—her own special remedy—and then made me dry myself and put on the clothes she had got out for me.

When I was dressed I was aware of the bustle in the servants’ quarters and I could not resist going down.

Mrs. Couch was puffing a kind of contentment. Jess and Amy were pink in the cheeks.

“My goodness me,” said Mrs. Couch, “if this is not a day and a half. First my buns catch in the oven and then Mr. Joliffe comes.”

Sprawling on a chair his legs slightly apart, his heels touching the floor, was the man I had met in the forest.

He smiled at me in a way with which I was to become familiar—half teasing, half tender.

“We’re old friends,” he commented.

There was silence in the kitchen. Then I said as coolly as I could, addressing myself to Mrs. Couch who was gaping at me: “We sheltered from the rain… in the forest.”

“Did you now,” said Mrs. Couch looking from one of us to the other.

“For about ten minutes,” I added.

“It was long enough for us to become friends,” he replied, still giving me that smile which touched me in a way I could not then understand.

“Mr. Joliffe is quick to make friends,” said Mrs. Couch.

“It saves so much time in life,” he retorted.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were Mr. Milner’s nephew?”

“I thought I would give you a big surprise. But you might have guessed, you know.”

“You said you were a visitor.”

“So I am.”

“Taking a walk in the forest.”

“So I was, on my way to my uncle’s house. Jess, ask Jeffers to send to the station for my bag.”

“Why yes, Mr. Joliffe,” said Jess blushing.

I felt disconcerted. They were all behaving as though he were some sort of prince. It made me a little impatient.

Mrs. Couch was saying fondly: “Just like you, Mr. Joliffe, to come without a word! We drank the last of the sloe gin last week. Now if I’d have known I’d have kept some back. I know how partial you are to my sloe gin.”

“Nowhere in the world is there sloe gin to compare with that of my dear Mrs. Couch.”

She wriggled in her rocking chair and said: “Go on with you. But I’ll see there’s black-currant tart for your dinner.”

I said I had work to do and went out. I felt his eyes following me as I went.

The house changed because he was in it. I was caught up in the excitement.

Everything was different now. All the solemnity which the presence of Mr. Sylvester Milner brought with it had disappeared. Instead of being a house of certain secrets, somewhat mysterious and now and then a trifle sinister, it was a gay house. He had a habit of whistling rather tunefully. He could imitate the songs of birds and he could produce some of the gayer Sullivan tunes from the Savoy operas with great verve. There was something joyous about him. He appeared to love life and everyone about him was caught up in his enthusiasm for it. He never lost an opportunity of charming everyone and I soon came to the conclusion that he was making a special effort as far as I was concerned.

When I rode out he was beside me; if I went for a walk in the forest I would not have gone far without hearing his whistle behind me. We talked a great deal about ourselves; I told him of my father and his untimely death in the mountains and he told me of his parents’ accident and how he had been brought up between his uncles Sylvester and Redmond.

“In an atmosphere rather like that of Roland’s Croft,” he explained. “Everything seems to be submerged beneath Chinese Art. Do you feel that here?”

“It is Mr. Milner’s business, of course.”

“But everywhere you go there is the influence of China. The vases on the stairs; bits and pieces here and there, and that fellow of my uncle’s shuffling round. Do you feel it?”

“Yes. It fascinates me.”

“That’s because you haven’t been brought up with it. Mind you, I’m in it too… up to my neck.”

“You mean in the business?”

“Yes. Well, why not? I learned how to recognize a Ming vase at my uncle’s knees, you might say. I’m an independent fellow, though. Miss Lindsay. When my uncle Sylvester sent me out to China I got the feeling that I wanted to use my skill, my powers of detection, for myself. Do you understand?”

“Yes. You are yet another branch of the same business.”

“You put it succinctly. We are all in the same lake as it were but we are all pulling our own craft.”

He talked a great deal about Hong Kong—a place which evidently fascinated him. Mr. Sylvester Milner had talked to me too, but differently. With Mr. Sylvester I heard of the various dynasties, how they flourished and passed away. Joliffe made me see a different scene. The green hills running down to sandy beaches on Hong Kong Island; the ladder streets up which people climbed the steep inclines; the letter writers who translated for those who could not read, and wrote to their dictation; the Chinese fortune tellers in the streets, shaking the containers which held the sticks which would be selected and laid out that they might foretell the future; the sampans which made up the floating villages. He talked in a manner which fascinated me and although I had been very interested in what Mr. Sylvester had taught me, this was colorful and alive and it imbued me with a desire to see it for myself.

On the second day of his visit he had asked me where I took my meals.

“Sometimes with my mother in her sitting room, sometimes in the servants’ hall.”

“While I dine in solitary state. It won’t do. You shall dine with me… tête-à-tête, how’s that?”

His word was law. He lightly assumed the place of head of the house while Mr. Sylvester was away. Mrs. Couch without hesitation laid a place for me in the dining room where Mr. Sylvester entertained his guests. I sat at one end of the long table, Joliffe at the other. This amused him, but I felt uneasy wondering what Mr. Sylvester would say if he returned and found me here.

I soon forgot my apprehension though in the intoxicating company of Joliffe Milner.

I remember on the third day after his arrival my mother came to my room.

She said: “Joliffe is very interested in you, Jane.”

“Oh yes,” I said, “it’s the work. He’s in the same business as his uncle.”

My mother looked at me strangely. If feeling exultation in a certain person’s presence, and when he was not there being completely deflated, was being in love, then I was in love with Joliffe Milner. It was clear, I supposed. Even I looking in the minor could see the change in myself.

“Do you think he is a serious young man?” she asked.

“Serious? I hadn’t thought of that. He laughs about most things so one could hardly call him serious.”

I was halted then by the look on my mother’s face and the fleeting thought struck me that she had changed in the last year. Her color was as vivid as ever but her face had fined down a little; her eyes seemed brighter than usual. There was about her a rather secretive look. This was scarcely perceptible but I who knew her so well might be one of the few who noticed. There was a change. Why? I asked myself. What is it? Then I forgot it because my thoughts at this time were dominated by Joliffe Milner.

“He is a very charming man,” said my mother. “Your father was a charming man, but…”

She shrugged her shoulders and my thoughts were too far away to ask her to continue what she was about to say.

I put on my riding kit—my mother’s gift to me—and went out riding. I was joined, as I had hoped I would be, by Joliffe.

And there passed another of those enchanted mornings.

I had my duties and in spite of this new excitement in life I must not ignore them. There was some post to be dealt with. I had always enjoyed working in the little study adjoining Mr. Sylvester’s Chinese Library; I had felt a certain sense of responsibility which was gratifying.

But since Joliffe was at the house, I longed to be out with him.

I had made a habit of going two or three times a week into what I still called the showroom. I had always been thrilled to unlock the door and cross the threshold and to be entirely alone with those precious objects which by now were becoming familiar to me.

But because of Joliffe’s presence in the house I had neglected to go there and when I realized this decided to do so at once.

I went in, shut the door and stood looking round. My eyes always went immediately to the bronze Buddha which had struck me the first time I had entered this room, and from the Buddha to the Kuan Yin. Then I thought it would be a good exercise to compare her with the new one which had so excited Mr. Sylvester when he had brought it home.

I went to the glass showcase in which he had placed it. I stared. The figure was not there.

It could not be so, for she had been there when I was last in this room.

But that was before Mr. Sylvester had gone away.

There was only one explanation. He had taken the figure with him. He had not told me, which was strange. He might have been sure that I would miss it. How odd that he should take it and say nothing.

I was so disturbed by this that I could not concentrate on anything else. I carefully locked the door and went back to my room. I was a little shaken. I could not understand why, having talked so earnestly about the importance and value of the statue, he should have taken it and said nothing.

I went to my window and looked out at the barred windows of the showroom.

No one could have got in. I was the only one in the house who had a key. The answer was simple, Mr. Sylvester must have taken the image with him. Perhaps he was going to have some test made on it.

I went out riding with Joliffe and that was enough to make me forget everything else. It was wonderful to pick our way through the forest and canter across the glades. We stopped at an old inn for cider and farmhouse sandwiches, and sitting in that inn parlor with its stone floor and hams and sides of bacon hanging on the rafters, the brass gleaming in the open fireplace, I was happier than I had ever been in my life and I knew that the reason was Joliffe.

As we sipped our cider which was a little potent and ate the homemade bread and freshly baked ham, I asked him how often he came to Roland’s Croft.

“Not often.”

“They behave as though you are there every day. You enjoy your visits there I believe.”

“Never one as much as this one.”

He turned his blue eyes on me and they undoubtedly implied that this was the best of visits because I was there.

We were quiet as we rode back. I thought he was on the verge of saying something that would be very important to us both so I was in a state of great expectancy. It was strange for him to be silent. It was like discovering a side to his nature which I had not suspected existed.

We returned in the middle of the afternoon and I did not see him for the rest of the day. He left word that he had an appointment and would not be in to dinner. My mother and I dined alone in her sitting room. She was in a strange mood. She talked a great deal about the days when my father had courted her.

“Do you know, Janey,” she said, “I used to have qualms. You see if he hadn’t married me they wouldn’t have cast him off, would they? He would have had a comfortable income, instead of that meager annuity, wouldn’t he?”

“He would rather have had us,” I assured her.

“He must have told me so a thousand times. I’d like to see you settled, Janey. Of course you have this post here with Mr. Sylvester and he’s a very kind gentleman but…”

She looked at me as though asking me to tell her something. I knew that she was hoping that Joliffe would ask me to marry him. She wanted me to know the happiness she had enjoyed with my father.

“Mind you,” she went on as I remained silent. “You’re young yet. Only eighteen, but I was eighteen when I married your father. We met and we knew at once. It was as quick as that.”

She was hoping for confidences. But I had none to give her.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay awake thinking of the inn parlor and the manner in which Joliffe had looked at me. I went over our conversation and in the middle of it all I remembered that the Kuan Yin was not in the showroom and the strangeness of this struck me afresh.

I dozed and dreamed I was in the room and the eyes of the bronze Buddha suddenly moved and they were accusing me.

After an hour of this I got up and went to the window. I looked across at the barred window as I used to when I first came to the house. How different the place looked in moonlight—mysterious, eerie—the sort of place in which anything could happen.

I was getting cold but I knew I would not sleep so I sat there and quite suddenly I saw the flickering light. I could not believe it. That light was behind those barred windows. There was no mistaking it. Someone—something—was in the showroom.

I had begun to tremble and the match shook as I lighted my candle. I went back to the window. It was dark and then… there it was… that flickering will-o’-the-wisp.

Thieves! I thought. And Mr. Sylvester away and I am responsible!

I put on my dressing gown and thrust my feet into slippers. I had to go and see.

Swiftly I mounted the stairs. I was standing outside the door. I took the handle and slowly turned it. The door was locked. It was then that the goose pimples rose on my skin and a feeling of sheer terror came over me. Burglars did not seem half as terrifying as that something which had clearly been—and perhaps still was—in the room.

I sped back to my room. I took the key from the sandalwood box and came back, I tried the door again. It was still locked. I turned the key and went in.

How eerie the room looked. I lifted my candle and because my hand was shaking my shadow danced on the wall. The candlelight fell on the now familiar objects. There was the Buddha. He was terrifying in candlelight. His eyes half closed, his expression malevolent, his effortless lotus pose making him aloof and disdainful.

My heart was racing, my throat was parched, I was prepared for anything to happen. Yet I advanced into the room. I must not dismiss the idea that that light had been brought in by a human being who had entered the room by some means and may have stolen something.

There was the valuable Ming vase. The jade cabinet was intact.

Then I stared. For in the glass case smiling benignly at me was the Kuan Yin which this morning had not been there.

I was imagining it. I opened the case. I touched her. In truth she was there. Yet this morning she had been missing.

Something very strange was happening here. I looked about the room. It was uncanny. These objects had been in the world for centuries; they would have passed through so many hands. Was it true that seemingly inanimate objects became imbued with the tragedies and comedies of the lives of those to whom they had belonged?

Then to my horror I heard a noise. Surely it was a stealthy footstep. I had the feeling that I was about to be trapped.

I moved forward so that I was sheltering behind the bronze Buddha. I saw the flickering light at the door. A dark figure was there.

I caught my breath audibly. A voice said: “Who’s there?”

Floods of relief swept over me for it was Joliffe’s voice.

“It’s you, Joliffe,” I said.

“Jane!”

I came out into the room and we stood facing each other, our candles in our hands.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“What are you?”

“I thought I saw a light in here. I came to see what was happening.”

“I heard someone moving about. I came to investigate.”

“Who could it have been?”

“You were the one I heard.”

“But I saw a light here.”

“Do you think there’s a burglar in the house?”

“The door was locked. How could he have got in?”

“He wouldn’t have come in and carefully locked the door after him. It was a trick of light you saw.”

“It couldn’t have been.”

“It was. How lovely you are, Jane, with your hair loose like that.”

His presence always intoxicated me. I could only think that we were alone together and although in incongruous circumstances it didn’t matter.

He came closer to me. “What good fortune to meet like this.”

“How ridiculous. We can meet during the day.”

“This is exciting.” He put his candle down and took mine from me. Then he put his arms about me and held me tightly.

“I love you, Jane,” he said.

I just wanted to lie against him, for I loved him too and I was happy as I never had been before.

He took my face in his hands and said: “Jane, there has never been anyone like you.”

“There was never anyone like you, I’m sure.”

“This was inevitable. Did you sense from the first day we sheltered beneath the parapet?”

“I think I did.”

“Oh Jane! Life will be good, won’t it? You’ll let it be, won’t you?”

“I only want to be with you,” I answered.

We kissed and I had never dreamed that there were such kisses. I was in a state of euphoria and the transition from terror to bliss was too sudden. Everything seemed unreal. I was in love with a man I had so briefly known and we were here together half clad in this room which for me had always seemed like part of a fantasy.

I expected to wake at any moment to find that I had dreamed of that flickering light and I would find myself seated at my window where I had dozed off.

But no, I was here, and Joliffe’s arms were about me and he was telling me that he loved me and he was urging me to love him completely and utterly.

I was very young and inexperienced; love to me was a romantic and beautiful thing as my mother had always presented it to be. She and my father had met and loved romantically; they had married within three weeks of their meeting and he had sacrificed a life of comfort for her. That was love.

The bronze Buddha seemed to be looking at me with cold disdainful eyes.

“What a strange place for a lovers’ meeting,” said Joliffe. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I must go back to my room,” I said.

“Not yet,” he whispered.

He took me in his arms again but I couldn’t shut out the thought of the Buddha’s watching eyes. It was foolish. What was it but a piece of bronze and yet…

“I must get out of this room,” I said.

Resolutely I picked up my candle. He took his and we went out of the room together. I locked the door.

We faced each other in the corridor.

He was holding my hand firmly. “I can’t let you go,” he said.

“We may wake someone.”

“Come to my room… or I’ll come to yours…”

I drew back. “No, we couldn’t do that.”

He said: “Forgive me, Jane. I’m carried away by… all this.”

“We will talk about everything tomorrow,” I answered.

He held me in his arms again and I withdrew myself hastily and turning fled back to my room.

I set down the candle on the dressing table and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I could hardly recognize myself. My hair hung round my shoulders, my eyes looked brilliant and there was a faint color in my usually pale cheeks. I was looking at a new person. I was looking at Jane in love.

What a strange night! I had made two startling discoveries, but one had almost driven the other from my mind. Joliffe loved me. That Roland’s croft was all important. The fact that the Kuan Yin was back in its place when it had been missing and no one but myself had a key seemed of minor importance beside the overwhelming discovery that I loved and was loved. I could easily convince myself that I had been mistaken about the Kuan Yin. It was back in its place. That was all that mattered. One phrase kept echoing in my mind: Joliffe loves me.

I sat by the window looking across the courtyard. I looked long at the darkened window with the bars across it, and I went over every detail of the scene in that room, starting from the moment when I had seen the light of his candle.

I could feel his arms about me.

In the morning we would make plans for our wedding for I knew that Joliffe would be a very impatient man.

It was four o’clock in the morning before I went to bed and then I did not sleep. I drifted into doze after doze in all of which Joliffe was there.

I slept late and I awoke to find my mother standing by my bedside.

She was saying: “Wake up, Jane. Whatever’s come over you? You are a sleepyhead this morning.”

I sat up and memories of last night came back to me.

“Oh Mother,” I said, “I’m so happy.”

She sat down by the bed. “It’s Joliffe, isn’t it?”

“How did you guess?”

She laughed at me.

“We’re in love. Mother.”

“I daresay it’ll be an early wedding.”

“Yes, it will, of course.”

“When did he ask you?”

“Last night.” I did not tell her where and in what circumstances. I knew she would not like to think of our wandering round the house at night in our dressing gowns.

“So I expect you were awake until the early hours and then slept on.”

“That’s about it.”

I could see that she was delighted. “There’s nothing I could have wished for more,” she declared. “I longed to see you settled. A post with Mr. Sylvester is very nice but I want to see you with a husband to care for you.”

That indefinable change in her seemed to have disappeared. She was her old self; excited, rosy cheeked, bursting with energy.

She held me against her. “It’s what I wanted. I saw how you felt the moment you set eyes on him. He’s charming. He’s full of life. The exact opposite of your father who was always so serious, but I don’t hold that against him! I can’t tell you what this means to me. I feel your father is watching over us just as he has done from the moment he passed on. It’s what I’ve prayed for. Get dressed, Janey love. I’ll see you in a while.”

I did not know then that she went to Joliffe. I did not know what she said to him.

I think at that time she and I were both rather innocent.

When I was dressed and went downstairs my mother and Joliffe were talking together.

He rose and took my hands when I came in; he kissed me tenderly.

“Joliffe and I think there’s no sense in waiting,” said my mother.

“So you have made arrangements between you,” I said.

She laughed and Joliffe’s eyes were ardent.

This is the complete happiness, I thought.

Joliffe went away and said that he would be back very soon. There were one or two matters to be settled.

Mr. Sylvester Milner returned.

I debated whether to tell him about the disappearance and return of the Kuan Yin but I had almost convinced myself that I must have imagined its disappearance. I did not want him to think I was frivolous.

He showed me a few purchases that he had made. “They are not very spectacular,” he said, “but useful additions. I doubt though that I shall have much difficulty in placing them.”

I then blurted out that I was engaged to be married.

I was unprepared for the effect on him. I had known that he would not be pleased since he had taken such trouble to train me, but, I consoled myself, it was a contingency that he must certainly have been prepared for.

“Married!” he said. “But you are far too young.”

“I shall be nineteen in September.”

“You are just beginning to know something of Chinese Art.”

“I’m sorry. It seems ungrateful, but Joliffe and I…”

“Joliffe. My nephew!” His face had darkened. “That is impossible,” he added.

“He came here while you were away.”

His eyes narrowed. His benevolent smile had disappeared. He looked rather like the bronze Buddha.

“You scarcely know him.”

“It seemed enough time…”

“Joliffe!” he repeated. “Joliffe! No good will come of this.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Milner…”

“Not as sorry as you will be if you go on with this. I’ll send for Joliffe. I’ll talk to him.”

There was silence. I said: “Do you want me to do the letters now?”

“No, no,” he said. “This is far too upsetting. Leave me now.”

Disconcerted, bewildered, and unhappy I went to my mother’s sitting room. She was making herself a cup of tea.

“Why, whatever’s the matter, Jane?”

“I’ve told Mr. Milner about Joliffe and me. He doesn’t like it.”

“Well,” said my mother emphatically, “he’ll have to lump it.”

“I see his point. He’s trained me.”

“Stuff and nonsense! What’s training when a girl’s future’s at stake! I expect he wanted someone with money or something for his precious nephew.”

“He never struck me as being like that.”

“But he strikes me now.”

“I’m so sorry he’s upset. I like him. He’s been so good to us.”

“Well, he’s had a good housekeeper though I say it myself, and you were a good secretary to him. But times have got to change and there’s always the possibility of a girl’s getting married.”

“What if he dismisses you when I marry Joliffe?”

“Then he dismisses me.”

“But you thought it was so good here, and so it has been. Think how kind he’s been letting me stay here.”

“Well, so he has, but he doesn’t own us for all that. No, he’s been good to us but you’ve got your future to think of. I want to see you settled, Jane, with a good home and a good husband and in time babies. There’s nothing like it. I always wanted to see you settled before I went.”

“Went… went where?”

“To join your father.”

“What a silly thing to say! You’re here with me and you’ll stay here for years and years…”

“Of course, but I want to see you settled. I’m sorry Mr. High-and-Mighty Milner doesn’t think you’re good enough for his nephew, but I happen to think otherwise and so, bless him, does Joliffe.”

Mr. Sylvester Milner sent for my mother. I sat in her room waiting for her to return. When she came her color was high and she was in true fighting spirit. She had looked like that when she had talked of the Lindsays, my father’s family.

“What did he say?”

“Oh, he was very polite and gentle but he’s against it.”

“So he really doesn’t think I’m good enough to marry his nephew.”

“That’s what it amounts to, but he puts it the other way round. He says Joliffe’s not good enough for you.”

“Whatever does he mean?”

“He says he’s a ne’er-do-well. He’s never settled down and won’t be a good husband.”

“What nonsense! Is he going to turn you out when I marry?”

“He didn’t say that. He was very dignified. He said at the end: ‘I can’t stop your daughter marrying my nephew, Mrs. Lindsay, but I hope with all my heart that she will not. I have a high regard for your daughter, and if she is to marry I would rather she made a more suitable match.’ I stood my ground very firmly and I said: ‘My daughter will marry where her heart is, Mr. Milner, as her father did before her. We’re determined once we make up our minds. And perhaps we know best what’s good for us.’ We left it at that.”

“Is he very angry?”

“More sad I’d say. At least that’s what he wants us to think. He shakes his head and looks like some old prophet when he does it. But we’re taking no notice of him.”

It was all very well to say that, but my joy was dampened a little.

The excitement in the servants’ hall was great. Mrs. Couch rocked on her chair and her eyes were soft. “So you’re the one he’s chosen! I always knew you’d been born lucky. A housekeeper’s daughter going to Cluntons’ like a lady… and now along comes Mr. Joliffe. What a man! Mind you, you’ll have to watch him. Charmers like that don’t grow on every tree and there’ll always be them looking to pluck what don’t belong to them. Men like that Mr. Joliffe can need a lot of looking after.”

“I’ll look after him, Mrs. Couch.”

“I don’t doubt you will. As soon as I clapped eyes on you I said to Jess: ‘There’s a little Madam for you. She knows what she wants and she’ll get it.’ So I was right. You got Mr. Joliffe, and I reckon there’s been a lot of competition for that one.”

Amy said that she reckoned I’d got a handful there but what a handful! Her Jim whom she was marrying at Christmas was a good steady sort and right for her but Mr. Joliffe was a man any girl would fall for given half a beckon; Jess said he was a man and a half and I was lucky.

I went about during those days in a kind of haze of delight. Things looked different; the grass was more luscious, the flowers in the garden more colorful; the world had taken on a new beauty because Joliffe was part of it.

Mr. Sylvester was of course the only one who cast a gloom. He watched me covertly when I thought he did not notice. I supposed he was regretting all the time he had wasted on me.

One day he said to me: “I know it is no use trying to dissuade you. “I can only hope that you will be less unhappy than I fear. My nephew has always been irresponsible. He is wild and adventurous. Some people might find these characteristics attractive. I have never found them so. “I can only hope that you will never regret your decision. When we first met we tried the yarrow sticks. We will try them again before you go.”

On his table was the container with the sticks in it. He held it out to me and asked me to take some. I did so. As I handed them back to him he said, “The first question we will ask is, ‘Will this marriage be a happy one?’”

He proceeded to lay out the sticks. He looked at them, his eyes glowing beneath his skull cap. “Look at this broken line here. This means an emphatic No.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t believe in this fortune telling.”

“It’s a pity,” he answered sadly, and began to study the sticks he had laid out.

In November, Joliffe and I were married in a registrar’s office. It was a quiet wedding. Joliffe had got a special license for he said we didn’t want a fuss.

My mother was in a state of exultation. She looked like a bride herself.

After the ceremony she kissed me fondly.

“This is the happiest day of my life since my husband died,” she told Joliffe and me. She turned to him earnestly: “You will take care of her.”

He swore he would and we went away for our honeymoon.

My mother returned to Roland’s Croft.