Victoria Holt: The House of a Thousand Lanterns

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.

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.”