The House of a Thousand Lanterns

I

Lottie had saved me. She had broken down and confessed everything to Joliffe. She had obeyed instructions and brought about the death of Sylvester. Chan Cho Lan had believed that The House of a Thousand Lanterns would belong to Adam when Sylvester died and that he would have left it in time to Chin-ky. Lottie had obeyed instructions not because she would gain anything by doing so but because she believed it was the will of her ancestors that Sylvester should die.

When it was revealed that The House was mine, Chan Cho Lan had thought that I should many Adam who would be willing to return the house to its rightful owner who was after all his own son Chin-ky. When I married Joliffe I was doomed and Lottie was ordered to remove me in the same way as she had Sylvester. Jason would have followed. But Lottie was in a quandary. She had grown to love us both but Adam was her half brother and so was Chin-ky and as the daughter of Chan Cho Lan she owed her duty to her family. She had been, Chan Cho Lan complained, dilatory in carrying out her task, and I had gone on living. Perhaps I was younger and stronger than Sylvester and better able to resist this slow poison. She had been commanded by Chan Cho Lan to produce the hallucination for me as she had done for Sylvester. Chan Cho Lan had known of the secret cupboard behind the panel and had put the robe there that it might be safe from prying eyes.

And Lottie had obeyed. Poor Lottie, torn by her emotions, had put the money sword in my bedroom to warn me that I must prepare for death. Half English, half Chinese, brought up to think as a Chinese and then to have been thrust into an English environment, she had been bewildered. She wanted to kill me and yet save me. Bemused, she had been afraid to carry out Chan Cho Lan’s instructions and yet afraid to disobey them. Because I had not fallen so easily under the spell of the slow poison as Sylvester had, she had sought to hasten matters. That was why she had thought of throwing me from the window. She had heard of Bella’s death and had thought it would please Chan Cho Lan if I died in a similar way. In desperation she had drugged me effectively and led me to the upper room. Perhaps that would have been the end if Joliffe had not come up in time. I liked to think that it was his love for me that awakened him at precisely the right moment. I believe it was so.

As for Lottie, I could feel no rancor towards her. I understood how her mind worked for I had learned something of Chinese customs and logic.

I was greatly relieved that Jason did not come out of his drugged sleep until we were safely back in The House of a Thousand Lanterns. He was astonished to wake up to find himself lying on his bed.

“Where’s Chin-ky?” he said. “She was going to take me to him. First she gave me tea… and then I fell asleep.”

I said: “It’s all right. You’re back here now. I came to look for you and found you asleep, so I brought you back.”

He accepted this and asked when he was going to play with Chin-ky again.

Joliffe and I discussed at length these strange events which had been going on around us and all my fears and suspicions had been revealed. He was incredulous that I could have believed such things of him.

So was I now that I knew the truth.

“I’m wild,” he said, “I’m reckless. I haven’t always told you all I should. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you Bella committed suicide… but believe me, Jane, it was because she knew she was doomed. I knew you’d be distressed. I knew you might think that I had driven her to it and I took the easiest way out. I told you she had died of her illness convincing myself that in a round about sort of way that was so. I really did believe Chan Cho Lan when she told me that Lottie was my father’s daughter. Listen, Jane, don’t look for perfection in me. You won’t find it. I’m devious, I hate trouble, I go to all sorts of lengths to avoid it. I’m wild if you like. I accept all this. You’ll never be sure of what I’m going to do. There’s only one thing in life you can be sure of, and that is that I love you.”

“That’s enough,” I said, “while I’m sure of that I’ll be ready to face anything that may come.”

Chan Cho Lan took her own life by drinking the poison which had been intended for me. This was due to loss of face. She had failed to eliminate us and restore The House as she believed to its rightful owners. She had produced a daughter who was half foreigner—it was different to have had a son—and that in itself was enough to create the wrath of the gods. Her daughter had betrayed her to the foreign devils just as she was about to expiate her sin in loving a foreigner. She had failed and in a way which meant she would never be able to bring about the desired result. In Chan Cho Lan’s mind there was only one thing she could do. It was the classic solution when so much face that could never be regained had been lost. She could sanctify herself by joining her ancestors.

Adam decided that he would leave Hong Kong for a while. He had always hid his feelings and he did so now. It was difficult for me to adjust my view of him, so completely had I been deluded. And so, I assured myself, had Sylvester. Who would have thought this rather solemn man of apparently stern morals, was all the time the lover of the woman who had been his father’s mistress, and that she had borne him a son.

He convinced us that he had had no part in Chan Cho Lan’s schemes for murder. He had believed at first that he would marry me and so get control of the business and it had been a great blow to him when I had married Joliffe. Chan Cho Lan had kept her secrets even from him, for although he was her lover he was a “foreign devil” and she knew that he would never be reconciled to her reasoning.

He was without doubt deeply upset by what had happened and his great concern was to look after Chin-ky now that the boy’s mother was dead. Before he left he put him into the care of an uncle, a respected mandarin of Canton. There was Lottie. How sorry I was for her. She wept often silently and the manner in which she sat so still while the tears ran unheeded down her cheeks was more than I could bear.

I tried to make her see that I held her guiltless of Sylvester’s death and her attempts to kill me. Others had planned it and misled her into thinking that it was her duty. She declared that she was a miserable creature who had failed in her duty to her ancestors. She had betrayed her mother because she could not allow me and dear little Jason to die.

Joliffe and I set out to convince her.

We reiterated that she was not to blame. If Sylvester had died because of the poison she had given him, I and Jason were alive because of her. Did she not see that in saving two lives she had expiated her sin of taking one? It was an odd sort of reasoning but it worked. She was thoughtful. She confessed that she had meant to throw herself from the window from which she had planned to throw me, and we were afraid for some time that she would carry out her intention.

Adam, before he went away, joined his entreaties to ours, and I think his were the more effective. She was his half sister, and he commanded her to take notice of what he said. So strong was her feeling for her family that she would listen to him more readily than to me whom she loved.

Finally she was persuaded and she went away to prepare for the marriage which had been arranged for her in fact by Adam. Chan Cho Lan had pretended to consult Joliffe about the marriage and had led him to believe that his father was Lottie’s also because she wished to call him to the house frequently in order to make me uneasy. She apparently thought it would be a good idea to make trouble between Joliffe and me in case my death could be made to appear suicide. It was for this reason that she had invited me and shown me her son Chin-ky. She thought it as well that I should have a reason for suicide in case there should be enquiries after my death, and as Joliffe’s first wife had killed herself it could seem a good idea that his second did too.

Lottie’s husband was half English and half Chinese and had been educated in England. He was a good and intelligent young man and I believed she would be happy.

There was The House of a Thousand Lanterns. In the vaults below this, the mandarin had created a beautiful temple to his wife. There was no way to this temple through The House of a Thousand Lanterns; the only way was through Chan Cho Lan’s house where the mandarin had lived after he had given The House of a Thousand Lanterns to Joliffe’s great-grandfather.

His greatest treasure was the tomb of his wife and to her he had given the most prized statue of Kuan Yin.

The words he had had inscribed on the tomb when translated were:

Through the changing scene I loved you.

In life we were as one and death shall not part us

For our love is everlasting.

We went down to look at it. There was a hushed feeling in the vaults. It seemed a different place from that in which I had been imprisoned.

The benevolence of the goddess seemed to be fixed upon me and I said suddenly as though prompted to do so: “This must always remain. This was what he intended. The Kuan Yin must remain here where the mandarin put it.”

Adam said: “That statue is worth a fortune.”

I said quickly: “It doesn’t belong to us. We are aliens here. It is not for us to interfere.”

I spoke with authority. The House of a Thousand Lanterns belonged to me and this was part of the house.

And there in that underground haven I knew exactly what I would do.

I was going to relinquish The House of a Thousand Lanterns. It could never in truth be mine. That was what it had told me from the moment I had entered it.

It must be restored to those who would have lived there but for the mandarin’s quixotic gesture.

Adam would look after his son, and when Chin-ky was of age he should live with his wife and children in The House of a Thousand Lanterns.

There seemed to be a lightness in the air. The House had changed.

II

A few months later Joliffe, Jason and I left for England. I was pregnant and I wanted my child to be born at home. There was also Jason’s school to be thought of.

It was a wonderful day when we arrived at Roland’s Croft.

Mrs. Couch was at the door, fatter than I remembered, her red cheeks aglow, a slight glaze of tears in her eyes.

“Home at last then, young Jane,” she said. “But I suppose I’ve got to call you Madam.” Her eyes went from Joliffe to Jason and back to me… significantly studying me, knowing that I was what she would call “expecting.”

“It’s about time, too,” she said. “Now the house will be a home again.”