“A sort of fortune telling,” I said.

He smiled at me. “I think you will be an apt pupil.”

“When shall I start?”

“When you have finished with your education. That will be in a year or so. In the meantime I wish you to study the books I will give you. They will teach you how to recognize great works of art.”

“I shall come home for my holidays as I’ve been doing, shall I? And learn here?”

“In this house,” he said. “You shall have a key to my showroom. You will study the objects there and learn how to recognize value. You will learn too something of how my business is conducted. Your mother has told me that there is no provision for you from your father’s family and it will be necessary for you to earn a living. As what? A governess? A companion? What else is there for a young lady of our times? This will be different. I offer you a chance to learn, a look into the fascinating world of Art. What do you say?”

“I say I want to do this, I want to do it very much indeed. Couldn’t I leave school and start now?”

He laughed. “Now that would not be possible. First you must finish your education. Then you have an apprenticeship to serve. Fortunately that apprenticeship can be served while you are still at school. In your holidays you can study the books I give you to read and you can see some of the most wonderful treasures to come out of China.”

“I knew it was a lucky day when we came here. It is going to be wonderful.”

“You cannot look too far into the future,” he said. “I must tell you that I am the head of a very successful and profitable business. You know the nature of it. I buy and sell. Because of my knowledge of Art and of the country from which it comes I know how to buy at the right prices. And those who are interested in building up valuable collections know they can trust me. My father was a great trader; he ranged the world but was more often in China. He left the business to his sons of whom I was the eldest. We should have worked amicably together but there were differences and we split up. We became to a certain extent rivals, which was inevitable. I was the more successful. It was a somewhat uneasy situation. I don’t think my brother Redmond ever got over his disappointment that I was the one to whom my father bequeathed The House of a Thousand Lanterns.”

“The House of a Thousand Lanterns!” I echoed.

He smiled. “Ah, I see the name arouses your interest. It is intriguing, is it not? It is the name of my house in Hong Kong.”

“Does it really contain a thousand lanterns?”

“There are lanterns in each room. There must have been a thousand there at some time for it to have been so named.”

“That is a great many lanterns. It must be a big house.”

“It is. It was presented to my grandfather for some great service he did to a highly placed mandarin.”

“It sounds like something out of the Arabian Nights,” I said.

“Except,” he answered, “that this is Chinese.”

I knew that my eyes were shining with excitement. I felt that he had opened a door to me and that I was looking into a strange exotic world.

I said: “I long to begin learning.”

That pleased him. “I like your impatience, and your curiosity. They are what I need. But you have to learn of course. It may well be that when you have seen how much there is to learn you will not wish to continue. You have a year before you need decide.”

“I have decided,” I answered firmly.

He was pleased. “If you have finished tea I will take you to my showroom. As I have said, you shall have a key and go there when you will. Study what you see there. Compare these things with replicas and pictures you will see in the books I give you. Note their grace, learn how to discover the period in which a piece was created. Some of the objects are not merely hundreds of years old but thousands. Come with me now and we will go to the showroom.”

I followed him and he unlocked the door and once more I was in that room.

My eyes immediately went to the bronze Buddha which had struck me as being malevolent and which had frightened me so much when I was locked in this room.

His gaze followed mine. “You noticed that?” he said. “It’s a fine piece. I could never bring myself to part with it. It dates back to the third or the fourth century A.D. At that time Buddhist missionaries from India came to China. You will read about this in your history. They came traveling in caravans and sometimes on foot. They traveled for years and as they passed across Asia they rested for a while and carved shrines where they could worship during their brief sojourns. It was during the Tang Dynasty that Buddhism reached its highest influence in China and it was at this time that this image was made.”

“How very old it must be.”

He smiled at me. “Old by English standards. By Chinese…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“There is something evil about it,” I said. “The eyes follow you.”

“Oh that is the skill of the artist.”

“It seems to have some living quality.”

“All great Art has. Look at this. This is a figure of Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy and compassion. Do you not think that is a beautiful piece?”

It was the figure of a woman sitting on a rock; she was carved in wood and painted with exquisite colors and gold leaf.

“It is said that she hears all cries for help,” he said. “Now she would be of the Yuan Dynasty which was the thirteenth and fourteenth century.”

“How valuable these things must be!”

He laid a hand momentarily on my arm. “That is so. That is why I will not sell some of them. You will have to learn about the various dynasties and what art was produced during them. A good deal of study will be necessary and then when you leave school at the appropriate time you will be ready to take over your duties.”

He showed me some scrolls with delicate landscapes painted on them.

“That is an art to be absorbed over many years,” he said. “You must not take too big a bite at first. I will send a book for you to read and we will have tea again together very soon. Then I shall tell you more.”

I said very earnestly: “I want so much to learn.”

I went straight to my mother who was waiting in my bedroom for me to come.

She looked at me anxiously and I flung myself into her arms.

“The most wonderful thing has happened,” I told her. “I am going to learn about Chinese Art and his collection. I am going to work with him. He is going to train me.”

My mother withdrew herself and held me at arm’s length. “What’s all this?”

“That’s why he wanted to see me. He liked my curiosity. I’m going to learn, I’m going to be his secretary… no, his assistant! I shall learn until I leave school and then I shall know a great deal and I shall work with him.”

“Tell me properly Jane, please. No imagination now.”

“It’s true. I’m going to learn. The future is assured. No governessing. I shall not be a companion to some horrid old woman. I am going to learn about China and I’m going to work with Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

When my mother realized that this was indeed so, she said: “Your father has arranged this. I knew he was looking after us.”


* * *

I brought all my enthusiasm to the new project. During those summer holidays I read voraciously. I spent a great deal of time in what I ceased to call the Treasure Room. It was now the showroom. I was very proud to be the only one in the house apart from Ling Fu and Mr. Milner who had a key. I occasionally took tea with Mr. Milner; we were becoming good friends.

The household regarded me with a kind of awe. Although I had been accepted with affection in the servants’ hall they now conceded that I was not quite one of them. It was true I had all the time been attending Cluntons’ but now Mr. Sylvester Milner himself had selected me for special attention.

My mother blossomed in her gratification. She would watch me, her head a little on one side, her lips pursed and sometimes they moved as though she were talking to my father. I knew she did when she was alone, I heard her say once when I came upon her unexpectedly, “Well, we didn’t do so badly without the high and mighty Lindsays.” She was sure that she shared her pleasure and pride with my father. Mr. Sylvester Milner was the fairy godfather who had swept away our anxiety with a wave of his magic wand.

What golden days they were! I spent hours lying in the fir copse, a book propped up before me while I was conveyed right back into the past. “Begin as early as you can,” Mr. Sylvester Milner advised me.

I read of the Shang and Chou Dynasties and the coming of Confucius who with his disciples compiled books which related the traditions and customs of his times. I skimmed through the Tsin and Han Dynasties to the Yuen and the Ming and learned of a civilization far more ancient than our own.

Knowing a little I was able to assess the vases and ornaments more easily and to understand what they expressed, and the more I learned the more fascinated I became. By the end of that summer I was dedicated and it was with great regret that I went back to school for the winter term.

If I was interested in a subject I could always excel at it and now what I wanted most of all was to leave school and to start my new work. I applied myself to lessons but I was remote from the world of schoolgirls. Their little comedies and dramas seemed childish to me; I was not exactly unpopular but I was aloof and my yearning to leave became intense.

I decided that when I went home—as I began to think of Roland’s Croft—I would ask if I might not leave at once and not wait until my eighteenth year.

That Christmas, to my great disappointment, Mr. Milner was away. It was spent much as it had been the previous year, but I was no longer so excited by the decorating of the tree and the hall, and tasting of the pudding.

I spent a good deal of the time in the showroom and I fancied that the expression on the face of the bronze Buddha had changed and that there was a veiled approval in the long sly eyes.

I was reading more than ever and had Mr. Milner’s permission to borrow any of the books in what he called his Chinese Library. This was a very small room leading from his study. I made good use of this.

Something unpleasant did happen that Christmas. So immersed was I in my own affairs, that I did not attach much significance to it at the time. My mother and I were walking in the forest and she was speaking of her very favorite topic, how glad she was that Mr. Sylvester Milner had taken such a fancy to me. Suddenly she said, “One moment, Janey. You go too fast for me.” She sat down on a tree trunk and as I looked at her I noticed how flushed her cheeks seemed. She had always been highly colored but never quite so as then and I fancied she had grown thinner.

It occurred to me then that she looked different. I sat down beside her and said: “Are you all right?”

“Just a bit of a cold,” she said. “It’ll pass.”

I gave the matter no further thought but on Christmas morning when I went in to give her her Christmas present she was not yet up. That was unusual for she was usually astir early.

“Happy Christmas,” I said. She woke up suddenly and smiled at me and then she put her hand on her pillow. It was as though she were trying to hide something.

I was puzzled but soon she was smiling and I was so excited because it was Christmas morning that I forgot the incident.

Later when we talked about my future she thought it was an excellent idea for me to speed up my schooling.

“The sooner you begin with Mr. Sylvester Milner the better,” she said.


* * *

But Mr. Sylvester Milner thought I should complete my education and it was not until I came home for the summer term in July that I left school forever. I was still only seventeen and would be eighteen in the following September. My duties with Mr. Sylvester Milner had begun.

I was completely absorbed. Each morning I would spend an hour with him when he would dictate letters which I would write out for him. I had developed a good copperplate style for this purpose. I took a great pride in being able to spell the names of the various dynasties without asking him, and as my knowledge increased the more interesting everything became.

Once he showed me a beautiful vase he had acquired and asked me to place it. I was about three hundred years out but he was pleased with me. “You have much to learn, Miss Jane,” he said, “but you are overcoming that obstacle of ignorance.”