Victoria Holt - The House of a Thousand Lanterns

“I am sure,” I told him, “that your advice is good, and I will do my best.”

“Then we have made a bargain.”

I tried to keep the bargain. Joliffe did not write again. Often I walked in the forest and my footsteps invariably took me to that ruin where we had sheltered and first met. I used to hope that I would find him there, that I would hear his voice calling me. If he had come to me I am sure I should have forgotten everything but my love for him. I looked for letters every day; when I was near the station if a train came in I would watch the people coming out hoping that one of them would be Joliffe.

But he did not come or write. I wondered what was happening in Kensington and if Bella was with him. At one moment I upbraided him to myself. He had not come because his uncle had threatened to disinherit him if he did. At another I feared that he would return and that I would throw all convention aside and go to him.

I worked hard. I studied books and the objects of art which were brought to the showroom. I learned as quickly as I could. I looked for and won Mr. Sylvester’s approval. I thought: He is right. This is the crutch on which I can lean until I grow stronger.

He entertained more often than before and our guests were not all those concerned in his profession. He had become more neighborly and he visited and was visited by people who lived round about. Our immediate neighbor was Squire Merrit who owned a large estate. He was a great favorite of Mrs. Couch’s for he was a good trencherman and never failed to show his appreciation of her dishes. During the season he would send a brace or two of pheasants over to her by one of his servants and he used to say that no one could cook a pheasant as she could and he hoped he’d be invited to share these.

Mrs. Couch would purr and murmur as she rocked back and forth in her chair and said that it was like the old days when gentlemen were gentlemen. She much preferred him to some of the men and women who came to talk about Art. I didn’t agree, although Squire Merrit was a jolly enough man. I found much more gratification when I was asked to attend a dinner party—as I often was—and could join intelligently in the conversation. Sometimes out walking I would catch a glimpse of the beautiful birds in Squire Merrit’s woods and I was sorry to think that they were being carefully nurtured only to be shot.

When the season started, we often heard the sound of guns. I would be glad when it was over. Mrs. Couch, however, rocked back and forth and expounded on the ways of cooking pheasant.

She had done a great deal to help me since I had been back. Her affection was warm and genuine. She would shake her head often over “that Mr. Joliffe.” But I could see that she was fond of him and she did not adopt that censorious attitude towards him which Mr. Sylvester did, and I liked her for it.

She had always been interested in what was in the future and often at tea she would make us all turn our cups upside down and then she would read the future in the leaves. Sometimes she used the cards as well and would lay them out on the kitchen table and clucking over the spades and hearts.

Dear Mrs. Couch, she had been fond of my mother and had taken on herself the duty to look after me as best she could.

I began to feel that in spite of my dire misfortune I was lucky in having such a household to return to where I might lick my wounds and prepare myself for whatever was to come.

It was a weekend. Squire Merrit was entertaining a shooting party to which Mr. Sylvester had been invited but he had declined the invitation. He confided to me that he preferred to see the picture of a beautiful bird on a vase or a scroll rather than lying dead on the grass for a dog to retrieve.

I was in the kitchen with Mrs. Couch and we were discussing the next day’s dinner as friends of Mr. Sylvester were expected.

“If it’s that Mr. Lavers,” Mrs. Couch was saying, “he’s fond of a good roast. Nothing fancy mind. He likes his food plain. A good bit of roast ribs of beef would suit him I reckon and I’ll make some of my own horse radish. I’ll have to give that Amy a talking to. She’s getting that absent-minded. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear she was expecting…”

Amy had married the gardener and Mr. Jeffers now had his eyes on one of the village girls. “He’s got the wandering eye, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Couch, “and wandering eyes never rest long in one place.” She glanced out of the window. “My patience me! What’s this?”

Her red face was a shade paler and her chins shook a little as her mouth dropped open.

I sprang up and looked through the window.

Two of the gardeners were carrying what looked like an improvised stretcher and on it was Mr. Sylvester Milner.

* * *

It was a silent house. It seemed as though fate was determined to deal one blow after another. Life was becoming like a nightmare. It seemed as though everywhere the life I had known was slipping away from me.

They had carried Mr. Sylvester in and the doctor had come immediately. He had said that an operation would have to be performed without delay and they had taken him away.

There was nothing we could do but sit around and talk. All we did know was that a bullet had lodged in his spine and would have to be removed.

Mrs. Couch made pot after pot of tea in the big brown kitchen earthenware teapot and we all assembled at the big table and talked of what had happened. Amy, protuberant enough under her apron to confirm Mrs. Couch’s conjectures, was the center of attraction for once because Jacob, her husband, had been one of those who had helped carry the stretcher into the house.

“There was all this shooting going on,” she said, “so nobody noticed. How long he’d been lying there is anybody’s guess. The shooting started after their lunch and it was four when he was found. Could have been half an hour or more. One of the guns, they say it was, don’t they, Jake?”

Jacob nodded. “One of the guns,” he repeated.

“You could have knocked Jake down with a feather couldn’t you, Jake?”

Jacob said: “Yes, you could have.”

“There he was coming back with some of the weed killer he was getting for the weeds.”

“The weeds is something shocking,” said Jacob, and looked embarrassed to have contributed to the conversation.

“When he suddenly stumbles and there’s Mr. Milner lying there… bleeding, wasn’t he, Jake?”

“Something shocking,” Jacob confirmed.

“So he gave the alarm and then they made this stretcher and brought him in.”

Mrs. Couch stirred resolutely. “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s like fate. Death don’t walk single. Death begets death, like they say in the Bible. When I was pulling the blinds down for poor dear Mrs. Lindsay I said to myself: ‘And who’ll be the next?’”

“Mr. Milner isn’t dead,” I reminded her.

“As near to it as makes no odds,” said Mrs. Couch. “There’s change coming in this house. I’ve felt it in my bones these last weeks, I wonder who the next owner will be, and who they’ll want to keep. Might be more like a house should be. There’s that about it. But Mr. Milner, he was a kind man in his way.”

I cried out: “Please don’t talk of him as though he’s dead. He’s not.”

“Yet,” added Mrs. Couch prophetically.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned and ran out of the room. As I did so I heard Mrs. Couch say: “Poor Jane. It’s her mother going off like that. Enough to upset any of us.”

* * *

Mr. Sylvester did not die. The operation was a success in that his life was saved, but he would not recover the full use of his limbs and was semi-paralyzed. The doctors called it a miracle as they had performed the tricky operation of removing a bullet from his spine. This was proved to have been fired from a gun which had come from Squire Merrit’s gun room though it was uncertain which member of the party had fired the actual shot. The obvious explanation was that Mr. Sylvester had ventured too near the shooting party and a shot intended for one of the birds had accidentally caught him.

Three weeks after the accident he was recovered enough to receive visitors and I went to see him.

He looked smaller and younger, I thought, without his smoking cap; his light brown hair was plentiful and only faintly touched with grey.

He was very pleased to see me.

“Well, Jane,” he said, “this will put an end to my wanderings for a while.”

“It may not be so.”

“They have explained to me rather fully what has happened. I have to be prepared for the existence of a semi-invalid.”

“Even if that were so you have many interests.”

“There you are right. I can still buy and sell, but sellers will have to come to me. It is a good thing I have trained you well.”

I said: “If I can be of the least service to you I shall be glad.”

“You will be. You are looking sorry for me. That shows you have a kind heart and that is a good thing to have. Sympathy for the troubles of others and courage in our own. That is one of the greatest gifts any human being can have. The fates are being good to you, Jane. They are giving you a chance to learn this lesson.”

“I’d rather fate had been a little less good.”

“Never rail against fate, Jane. What is to be will be. That is how the Chinese see it. Accept your fate meekly, submit to it, look upon it as experience. Never rail against it. Then you will come through.”