The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  Instead of going straight to the platform, Manya went over to the group of folding chairs where the members of the orchestra were now sitting, still holding their instruments, and borrowed the guitar that the second violinist occasionally used when they played gypsy airs. Then she beckoned to Tom and whispered to him; he smiled and sat down at the piano.

  “I was going to do a long and tragic speech from Phèdre,” Manya said, smiling at her audience, “but I’ve had my eye on this guitar all evening, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to sing you a few Russian and French songs instead.”

  With an easy little jump she was up on the piano with the guitar, and Tom began to play softly. As Manya broke into her song, something happened inside Katherine. It was as though something that had been stretched to its utmost limit inside her now snapped, and something warm spread all through her; it wasn’t until Manya had sung several songs that she realized that this warm feeling was love.

  She remembered that Julie had talked sometimes about how wonderfully Manya sang with the guitar; she remembered that Julie had never stopped being Manya’s friend; she knew as she listened to Manya sing that she loved and adored her—not in the way she had adored Julie, but warmly, securely, like a child again. Perhaps this singing of Manya’s meant more to Katherine than her acting ever would or could, since it was always music that moved her most deeply. All she knew was that she was happy again, and it was good.

  Manya had one of those haunting voices that can sometimes be light and childlike, sometimes deep and full of tears, and with her singing the formal part of the concert came to an end. The audience crowded around the small stage, demanding more songs; the orchestra joined in with Manya’s guitar and Tom’s piano; the lady in bronze sequins fumed because she was not going to have a chance to sing Caro Nome. When Manya sang the sweetly sentimental Ma Mie that Charlot had whistled up and down the scale, up and down the scale, as he climbed the mountain, Katherine felt the tears rush into her eyes. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and looking up, saw the doctor.

  “There is a very great artist,” he said.

  Katherine nodded.

  “Only a great artist can take those simple, beautiful songs and sing them into the hearts of everyone present. What a liquid voice! And when she is on the stage! I bow down to her, I kiss her feet. Ah, Miss Katherine, I am very happy. Today I received a cable that my wife is out of danger, and now Madame Sergeievna sings so beautifully, and the concert turns out not to be a bore after all!”

  He put his arm around her, and it was the arm of a father. She leaned against him and watched Manya and Tom, and her love for them overflowed within her like a fountain. Perhaps if she hadn’t tried so desperately and successfully all summer to avoid seeing them together except at meals, this would have happened sooner. Now the relief of being able to love them again was greater than she could bear, and she had to leave the salon, to run down to her cabin and cry. She cried very hard and then stopped, feeling happy and sleepy. She took a hot bath, a wonderful bath of hot salt water that stung her face and eyes as she rubbed off her tears with a washcloth filled with the special salt-water soap that even so didn’t lather. When Manya came down she was in bed, half asleep. Manya stood in the doorway, framed in the yellow light from the other cabin, and looked over at Katherine’s bed, but did not attempt to come in, so Katherine called, “Aunt Manya.”

  Manya sat down on the edge of the bed, looking very beautiful in her dark full skirt and peasant blouse, her face flushed and her eyes shining from the triumphant ovation her songs had received; but her eyes softened as she watched Katherine, the pale face looking very childish with the dark braids lying coiled beside it on the pillow, one hand clutching the heavy gold locket.

  “Aunt Manya—” Katherine whispered.

  “What is it, darling? Are you all right? Why did you run out on my singing?”

  Katherine squirmed around until she was kneeling in the bed, and flung herself at Manya. “Please kiss me good night,” she said.

  As she felt Manya’s tender arms go quickly around her, felt Manya’s lips brush softly against her cheek, she was a child again, completely protected and happy.

  SEVEN

  But they sent her to boarding school, her father and Aunt Manya, to an English boarding school in Switzerland. She went with a kind of fighting resentment that slowly turned into a bewildered misery. The years were rolled off her, and she was turned into a little girl again, but it was no help. She stood in the middle-school common room with her nose pressed against the windowpane and wept. When she unscrewed her eyes enough to look out for a moment, all she saw was gray fog and the branches of the plane trees, thick and furry, through it. The lake and the mountains across the lake were as invisible as though they weren’t there at all. Her stomach jerked as she thought how strange it would be if the fog lifted suddenly and there were nothing but a great gaping hole with space showing through, all empty and black. The idea was so startling that she stopped crying and tried to imagine what it would be like without the lake and the mountains. The older girls listening to Good Night, Sweetheart on the tinny gramophone would scream with terror, but Katherine would just stand there quietly by the window and watch. Maybe no one would notice her, and they would all run out of the room and she would be there, all by herself. She would be really alone, and she could break the silly record and just sit there quietly, with no one to bother her. They would all run out and fall into space, and she would stand by the window and watch them disappear and smile.

  “Katherine.”

  Katharine pressed her nose harder against the window-pane.

  “What?”

  “Come away for a minute. I’ve got something to tell you. Oh, you ass, you’ve been crying again.”

  “No, I haven’t, Sheila.”

  “Hunh,” the other girl said. “Come along.”

  “What do you want?” Katherine stared out of the window.

  “I said I wanted to tell you something. Something awfully interesting. If you don’t come along I won’t tell you. I thought you’d like to know.”

  “All right,” Katherine said. Sheila took her arm and led her out of the common room and up the back stairs. “Where are you going?” Katherine asked.

  “To the room. It’s the only place we can be alone.”

  “But we aren’t allowed—” Katherine began.

  “To hell with the rules.” Sheila shook her head violently, and her dull-brown hair with the frizzy permanent flew about her face. She pushed it away and took Katherine firmly by the hand so that she couldn’t escape. “Aren’t you shocked because I swore?” she asked.

  Katherine smiled faintly. “No. What do you want to tell me?”

  “Wait till we get to the room.” Sheila led her along the corridor and into one of the dormitories.

  “Well?” Katherine sat on one of the beds and held the tip of a dark braid firmly in each hand.

  “Good Lord, you’d think you were doing me a favor in listening,” Sheila said. “Not many people would tell you things, Katherine Forrester. Nobody likes you.”

  Katherine flushed and kicked her feet against the edge of the bed. “Do many people tell you things?”

  “I wouldn’t listen.” Sheila tossed her head again. “I’m getting out. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  “What do you mean?” Katherine looked up quickly, and Sheila walked self-consciously over to one of the white bureaus between the beds and sat down by it.

  “Just what I said.” She opened the bottom drawer and began rummaging around in it. “I’m leaving next Saturday. Just one week.”

  “But how can you?” Katherine watched, amused, while Sheila pulled a compact out of the drawer and powdered her nose, then smeared a little lipstick on her lips.

  “I’ll get into a frightful row if they find me with this. But I’m hanged if I care.” Sheila rouged her cheeks gingerly. “I’ve only another week of this dungeon. Ever used make-up?”

  “Yes.”r />
  Sheila looked skeptical. “Well, maybe it’s because you’re an American. They say Americans go in for this stuff frightfully young.” Sheila’s mother was American, and she considered herself a great connoisseur of American language and manners, although the largest body of water she had ever crossed was the English Channel. She added, “You’ve got to promise not to tell about my leaving.”

  “All right.”

  “I just wrote Mummy and she said she’d come and get me.” Sheila rolled her make-up in a uniform blouse and put it back in the drawer. Then she pulled out a pink lace brassière and held it up. “Do you have any of these?”

  “No.”

  “I say! Well, don’t you think you ought to?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, don’t you just think you ought to?”

  “Why should I? I’m perfectly flat.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s really decent not to.”

  “That’s silly.”

  Sheila changed the subject. “I’ll tell you why I told you about my getting out.”

  “Why?” Katherine asked, wishing she would hurry.

  “I think you ought to leave, too.”

  “But this is just the beginning of the term.”

  “You’re awfully silly,” Sheila said. “You don’t like it here, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t lie. You know you hate it. You’re always crying. Don’t think Pen and I don’t hear you at night, even if you do put your pillow over your head. It’s not going to get any better. Why don’t you write your mother?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Your father, then,” said Sheila, looking away, a little embarrassed.

  “I don’t want to bother him.”

  “Gosh, you are queer,” Sheila said. “I should think your being unhappy would bother him.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m unhappy.”

  “But haven’t you told him?”

  “No.” Katherine wandered over to the window. It had never occurred to her that it might be possible to leave the school.

  “Wouldn’t you like to leave school?” Sheila persisted.

  “Of course.”

  “Then I think you’re an ass if you don’t write your father. Where is he?”

  “London.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a composer.”

  “Gosh, I should think you’d like to be with him.”

  “I do.” Katherine turned away from the window and walked between the beds to Sheila. “Is your mother really going to take you away?”

  “Of course. I don’t tell lies even if you do.”

  Katherine didn’t get angry. It wasn’t worth while to get angry with Sheila. “You mean all you did was write her and she said she’d come and get you?”

  “That’s all. Are you going to write your father?”

  “I don’t know. You’d better wash that stuff off your face, Sheila. If anyone sees you, you’ll get into an awful row.”

  “I’ll take it off with cold cream,” Sheila said, unrolling a jar from her gym bloomers. “It’s awfully bad for your face to use soap and water.” She began to smear the cream on her face, unconscious of the door opening and the stern stare of their form mistress. Katherine saw her first and backed toward the window.

  “Well, Sheila!” the form mistress said, ignoring Katherine.

  Sheila clutched the cold-cream jar to her and glared at the mistress. Katherine stood with her back to the window and looked apprehensively at the gold pince-nez perched on the mistress’s nose, then dropped her eyes along the blue serge dress to the floor.

  “Go wash that stuff off your face immediately, Sheila,” the mistress said, then turned to Katherine. When she spoke her voice was softer. “What are you doing here, Katherine?”

  “I was—I was just with Sheila, Miss Halsey,” Katherine said, tears rising quickly to her eyes at the note of kindness in the mistress’s voice.

  “Well, run along to the infirmary sitting room and wait for me there. I want to have a talk with you.”

  Katherine left obediently and walked slowly down the corridor, stepping carefully in the centers of the diamond patterns on the carpet. She turned the handle of the door to the infirmary nervously, but Miss Anderson, the nurse, was not at the desk, and she slipped into the tiny sitting room unseen. The fire was lighted, but she went over to one of the windows and peered out into the fog. It was beginning to lift a little, and she could see the plane trees more clearly. Their bare branches looked ugly to her, and she stared beyond them, trying to see down the mountainside. But the lake and the mountains beyond it were still invisible. She wondered again if they were really still there. Was it possible for them just to disappear? People died and were never seen again … She did not hear the door open, and she jumped when she heard Miss Halsey’s voice.

  “What are you thinking of, Katherine?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, but you must have been thinking of something.”

  “Just that it looks cold and you can’t see the lake.”

  “Come over and sit down,” Miss Halsey said.

  Katherine walked over to the couch and sat stiffly on the edge.

  “Is Sheila a very good friend of yours?” Miss Halsey asked.

  “No.”

  “You seem to see rather a lot of her.”

  Katherine shrugged her shoulders. She couldn’t tell Miss Halsey she didn’t talk to Sheila from choice. “She’s all right.”

  “I don’t think she’s very good for you,” Miss Halsey said. “Why don’t you go around more with the other girls in your form?”

  —They’re incredibly childish and they don’t like me—Katherine thought, but she merely said, “I don’t know,” and looked down at her feet. Miss Halsey put an arm around her tenderly.

  “Why are you so stiff and unrelaxed, Katherine?” Miss Halsey asked. “People would like you, if you’d only let them.”

  Katherine pressed her lips together. Miss Halsey’s arm felt heavy about her, and she wanted to jerk away. The mistress held her arm around the stiff little body for a moment, then stood up wearily. “All right, Katherine. Run along back to the common room.”

  Katherine left without speaking and went downstairs. In the common room there was still a group around the gramophone, and some of them were singing the words … “Good night, Sweetheart” … Sheila wasn’t there, and Katherine was glad. She went over to her locker, ignoring and ignored by the groups of girls she passed, and pulled out her writing paper. She sat cross-legged on a table near one of the windows and began writing a letter to her father.

  She didn’t have a chance to speak to Sheila again until after dinner. Then she drew her aside and whispered, “I wrote my father this afternoon.”

  “Gosh, that’s ripping,” Sheila said. “Do you want me to tell you a joke?”

  “No.” Katherine turned away in disgust.

  In the common room a group of girls were playing cards on the floor. Penelope Deerenforth, her other roommate, who was captain of the form, was dealing out the cards swiftly, her tongue sticking out of one corner of her mouth.

  “That fool of a Halsey is going to put the bureau in front of the window again tonight.”

  “Been going on one of your sleepwalking toots, Lady Macbeth?” Ginny Merritt asked.

  “So it seems,” Pen said, and looked up and saw Katherine.

  “Hello, Katherine. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” Katherine moved away, but Ginny stopped her.

  “There’s something we think Pen ought to say to you.”

  “Oh?” Katherine said. “What?”

  Pen reddened. “Well—I don’t mean to sound pompous or anything because of being captain of the form or anything, but we sort of think it would be nicer if you undressed under your bathrobe the way the rest of us do.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, it really isn’t done, not to, you know.”

  “I
sn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I can’t see what difference it makes as long as you’re not deformed or rolling in fat, but if it upsets you to see me undress out in the open, I’ll take cover.” She looked at them with all the scorn she could muster and walked away, but as she left, Ginny leaned out and tripped her up, and she fell. Loud laughter. She scrambled up and ran from the room. It would be four days before she could hear from her father or Aunt Manya.

  On Wednesday there was no letter for her. But there would be one the next day. Surely there would be one the next day. On Thursday morning she stood by the mail table fifteen minutes before the earliest possible moment when she could expect the students’ mail to be brought out. When she saw Miss Halsey she wanted to leave, but she saw that the form mistress was coming straight to her, so she slid down from the table and waited.

  “Miss Valentine wants to see you in her office, Katherine.” Miss Halsey looked at her strangely.

  The headmistress was sitting at her desk with a letter in her hand. Katherine’s heart jumped as she recognized her father’s handwriting.

  “Good morning, Katherine,” Miss Valentine said. “Sit down.”

  Katherine sat rigidly in a straight chair by the desk, her eyes glued to the letter.

  “I have a letter from your father here. He says you are unhappy. What’s the matter?” Miss Valentine looked at Katherine’s thin face and watched her jaw set stubbornly. “He says that you don’t like the girls. Are they unkind to you?”