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.