“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 He himself had been quiet and withdrawn, all that she was not.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.