The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  Katherine said nothing and stared at Miss Valentine, but the headmistress felt that the gaze did not stop at her eyes or meet them but went on and on into space.

  “There must be some reason for your being unhappy,” she persisted. Katherine’s jaw set more firmly and her eyes became more distant. “Sheila Hughes-Gibbs is a good friend of yours, isn’t she?” Miss Valentine asked.

  “No.” Katherine bit the word off and clasped her fingers tightly around the polished arms of the chair the way she did at the dentist’s when she was afraid he was going to hurt.

  “Who is your friend, then? Isn’t there someone you like especially?”

  “No.” Her mouth began to tremble, no matter how tightly she pressed her lips together. This wasn’t fair. It had never occurred to her that her father might write to Miss Valentine. Manya should never have let him.

  Miss Valentine watched Katherine’s eyes fill and wanted to take her in her arms—she looked so small for her fourteen years in spite of the old little face—but she remembered what Miss Halsey had told her, and was afraid. “Who is unkind to you, Katherine?” she asked.

  Katherine shook her head. But the headmistress persisted with questions until her brain felt heavy and dizzy.

  “But surely there must be some who tease you more than the others. Your letter made your father and your aunt very unhappy. They want you to stay here and have fun with other girls your own age, fun you’ve missed for several years now. And how can I help you if you don’t help me a little? Who is the one who teases you most?”

  Katherine looked down at the floor and felt worn out. “Nobody.”

  “How about Virginia?” Katherine said nothing. “Does she tease you?”

  “Nobody teases me.”

  “But your father said in his letter that the girls teased you.”

  “Nobody teases me,” Katherine said. “Please let’s stop talking about this. If I have to stay, I will.”

  “Does Penelope tease you?”

  “No.”

  “Penelope and Virginia are the ringleaders in your form. If you don’t tell me it was someone else, I shall have to blame it on them.”

  “But I tell you it wasn’t anyone! No one teases me!” Katherine said loudly.

  Miss Valentine then asked very gently, switching her entire manner, “Do you really want to leave, Katherine? It would make your father very unhappy.”

  Katherine shook her head. She wished she’d never written the letter, that she’d done what she wanted to do on Saturday afternoon, and stayed in the common room instead of going with Sheila.

  Miss Valentine watched her, and again wanted to gather the thin little figure up, and again remembered Miss Halsey. “You’ll try to stay and be happy, won’t you, dear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Run along, then, or you’ll be late to your class.”

  Katherine turned and left the office, then ran to the mail table. She read the letter from her father quickly and turned and ran into the bathroom, choking with sobs. She hated her father, she hated Sheila, most of all she hated herself. She tried to cry quietly, but every once in a while a great sob would come out. She was desperately afraid that someone would come in. The first class had already begun, and she stayed in the bathroom the full half hour, washing her face with cold water. The thought of going into class late with her face all streaked with tears was not to be borne. She went up as the bell rang and slipped into her seat.

  After supper she went into the common room and tried to read, but she had turned only a few pages before Sheila came up to her and tugged one of her long braids. “Come on up to the room. I want to tell you something.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you want to hear?” Sheila stared at Katherine with astonishment in her little pop eyes.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, all right. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t particularly want to tell you. I just thought you’d like to know.”

  “I want to read,” Katherine said.

  Sheila put her hand over the page. “Well, wait a minute. Can’t you talk like a decent human being for a while? I say, what do you suppose Ginny and Pen were doing in Valentine’s room all afternoon?”

  Katherine’s stomach turned over.—Oh, dear God, why did I write that letter?—she thought. “I don’t know. Were they there?”

  “All afternoon,” Sheila said. “I expect they’re going to be expelled.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Um-hum. They were crying awfully hard, and they aren’t here now. Oh, I say, did I tell you I decided not to leave, after all?”

  “No.”

  “So I wrote Mummy and told her never to mind about coming for me. My aunt! Here they come now! I bet Val gave it to them. They still look blobby.”

  Katherine stared at Ginny and Pen with terrified eyes, as they stood in the doorway, looking about the room, then turned and came straight toward her. She dropped her eyes to her book, jerked away from Sheila, and tried to read. Her heart was pounding violently.

  “Well, Katherine Forrester?” Ginny said. Katherine looked into their hostile faces. Sheila’s mouth was open, and her little eyes were filled with curiosity. Katherine sat silent as a stone. She looked from Ginny to Pen and felt cold all over.

  “So you’re a tattletale, too,” Ginny said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Pen’s prim little mouth was hard. “You got us into one beastly mess with your sniveling to old Valentine.”

  “Are you—are you going to be expelled?” Katherine whispered.

  “Oh, so you thought you could expel me, did you?” Ginny laughed. “Well, you were mistaken there, Miss Sneak. I’m still here, and I can make things pretty unpleasant for you from now on, if I choose, I can tell you.”

  “We don’t want tattletales around,” Pen said.

  Sheila couldn’t restrain herself any longer. “What’d she do?”

  “Just wrote her father and said I wasn’t being nice to her, and then told Miss Valentine what a beast I was,” Ginny said angrily.

  “Well, I call that dirty.” Sheila looked Katherine up and down coolly.

  “Dirty’s no word for it,” Ginny said. “Come along, Pen. I can’t stand talking with such filth any longer tonight.” They turned and walked over to the gramophone. Katherine could hear them talking loudly.

  “Gosh, they’re going to make life fun for you,” Sheila said. “I bet you’ll be glad when you get out.”

  Katherine closed her book with a bang. Her voice rose shrilly. “Leave me alone for a minute, can’t you!” She walked over to the window and looked down the mountainside. It was a clear night, and she could see the lake and the deep shadows of the mountains across the way. She wished that they would disappear, that in their place would be space, a great empty hole, all black. And she would run out of doors and leap into the space that had been mountains and lake, and be all alone forever.

  Then she was conscious of someone at her side. It was Pen, pulling at the sleeve of her blouse rather timidly. “I say, Katherine—” she began.

  But Katherine pulled away fiercely. “Leave me alone!” she shouted. Out of the common room she ran, out of the school building, down the path lined by plane trees waving angry branches at her, panting, running, until she bumped headlong into someone.

  “Watch out, little one,” said a pleasant voice, and she looked up through the darkness into Charlot’s face. The accent, too, had been Charlot’s.—Now I’m going out of my mind—she thought.—Charlot, here!—

  Charlot, if it was Charlot, put an arm about her waist and led her down the path to the Music and Art building. In the light shining out from the building she saw that it was not Charlot, but someone a good deal older. Still, someone who had the same tense mouth with the tight lines drawn on either side, the same long dark eyelashes, the same grace of movement.

  �
��I’m awfully sorry,” she said. “And I thought you were someone else.”

  “Did you?” He looked down at her. “And I thought you were a lot younger than you are. What’s the matter?”

  “I was running.”

  “Out of delight?”

  “No.”

  “To get away from the school for a few moments?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not crying?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Not sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I’ll leave you here, then.” He smiled at her, and went into the Music and Art building.

  As Katherine started down the path, she saw a light go on at the far side of the building, and she turned and went toward it. Music poured out toward her as she walked slowly, quietly, up to the window. Crouching against the wall, she listened. He was playing (for she knew without looking that it was the stranger she had run into), playing a Bach Toccata and Fugue that had been one of Julie’s favorites. Her cheek pressed against the rough gray stone of the building, she listened until she heard the bell that meant she would have to run back to school if she was not to be late—and to be late on top of everything that had happened would be sheer stupidity. She ran. And in her mind ran the grievance that had been there since her first day in the place. Manya had chosen this school because Miss Valentine drew her piano teachers from the Montreux Conservatory, but not one music lesson had Katherine had, because the teacher to whom she was assigned was off on a tour and would be late getting back to town. And half an hour a day was all she was allowed to practice. She made up her mind she would speak to Miss Valentine about it the next day. She must have a music teacher, any music teacher, if she was to stay sane in this place. Because her misery was making her neglect her music. During her practice period she sat looking blankly at the keys, aching all over with loneliness for her mother, longing for Julie to lash her into work, to scold her, to swear at her. She would think—I must practice, I must. Mother’d be so furious with me.—But she couldn’t work.

  But the next morning Miss Halsey called Katherine up to her desk, told her that her music master was back in Montreux, that his name was Monsieur Justin Michel Vigneras, that her first lesson was to be at five that afternoon—adding crossly that Monsieur Vigneras was the most expensive of the music masters and that she hoped Katherine would apply herself to her piano lessons better than she had to her school-work.

  At five Katherine knocked on his door in the Music and Art building, her heart beating violently, because she was almost sure that it was the door to the studio from which the music had poured so wonderfully the night before. The same pleasant French voice said, “Come in,” and she pushed the door open and stood in the doorway.

  Monsieur Justin Michel Vigneras did not turn around. He stood leaning against the piano, looking bored and sulky, and this expression seemed even more like Charlot than the composed adult one of the night before. Sheila was at the piano, struggling with a Mozart Sonatina. She looked up in relief as Katherine arrived, jumped up quickly, and ran her fingers through the permanent wave that had become frizzy from the indignant washings of Miss Anderson, the school nurse.

  Monsieur Vigneras’ mouth set. “Finish,” he said.

  Sheila pouted, sat down, and began the Sonatina again.

  “Not the whole thing.” Justin Michel Vigneras raised his eyebrows. “Just from where you left off, please!”

  “I don’t remember where I left off.” Sheila stuck her hands out in front of her. The girls were not allowed to have long or lacquered fingernails, but Sheila had managed to keep the little finger of her left hand free from inspection, and the nail curved out from it, long and pointed, in contrast to the short clipped nails on her other fingers.

  Justin Michel Vigneras pointed to the music. “Here. Begin here.”

  Sheila began to play and labored through to the end. “May I go now?”

  “You certainly may. And if this term you would kindly practice at least half an hour between lessons, it would be less painful to us both.”

  “I practice half an hour every day except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—that’s the week end,” Sheila said righteously.

  “And play at least one scale a week.”

  “All right,” Sheila said, her pout gone and her best smile on, the heavy bands on her teeth in childish contrast to her permanent wave. “Good-bye, monsieur.”

  “Good-bye. And cut that absurd fingernail.” He took a white silk handkerchief with a blue border out of his pocket and blew his nose. Then he turned to Katherine, looking at her for the first time as Sheila went by her and shut the door.

  He smiled at her, and she thought—It must have been an omen, his playing last night, and my hearing him. I’m glad I felt so awful and had to run and run. Otherwise, none of it would have happened.—

  “Aren’t you my little friend of last night?” he asked.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Your name, please?”

  “Katherine Forrester.”

  “What age have you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “You have studied the piano before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Play something for me. Something not too long. I will probably stop you before you get very far, anyhow.”

  Katherine sat down at the piano; her hands felt cold and clammy; she was trembling. She reached up and felt for her mother’s locket with unsteady fingers.—I’m behaving like an idiot, a damned idiot—she said to herself.—If I let myself get all panicky like this I’ll play badly. Mother’d be disgusted with me.—She clenched her hands tightly together for a moment to steady them, then began a Scarlatti Sonata. Once she had begun to play, the fear left her. Her sureness of the music gave her courage, and she played well. When she had finished, Monsieur Vigneras was no longer leaning against the piano.

  But the first thing he said was, “Do you speak French?”

  “Yes, a little,” Katherine answered, surprised and rather disappointed, because his English was very good and she knew she had played well. “I understand it all right.”

  He spoke in French. When he spoke his own language, his voice deepened and a new warmth came. “Play something else.”

  Katherine turned back to the piano and played the Bach Prelude and Fugue in F major.

  “Now some Beethoven.” When she had finished he asked, “With whom have you studied?”

  “With my mother.”

  “Who is your mother?”

  “Julie Forrester.”

  “Is she a musician?”

  “Yes, she—she—” Katherine’s face grew crimson because he didn’t know her mother was dead. “She was a very well known pianist in America.”

  “I will look her up. Where is she?” So he hadn’t noticed the past tense.

  “She—she’s dead.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. When?”

  “Last April. The seventeenth.”

  “She was training you to be a pianist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why in God’s name are you here?”

  “Father wanted me to have some conventional education. I haven’t been to school since I was ten. And I don’t imagine he and Aunt Manya much wanted me around.”

  “Who is Aunt Manya?”

  “My father’s wife … They love me a lot, both of them, and I love them, I adore them both, but after all, what would they do with me? I’d just be in the way, and Aunt Manya’s opening in London, so …”

  “Opening what?”

  “Opening in a play.”

  “Oh. Well, we’ll see what I can do for you. Have you done much Chopin?”

  “The Etudes and the F major Ballade. Just because I wanted to, though. I wasn’t really ready for it.”

  “Well, we’ll see what I can do for you. You shouldn’t be here. Half an hour’s practice every day.”

 
; “I’ll do more. I’ll sneak it in somehow.”

  She was suddenly terribly happy, with that sudden winging up of something inside her breast that seemed like the flight of a bird. She sang as she left the Music and Art building and went back to school, sang as she walked down the corridor, until Miss Halsey stopped her sharply.—I don’t care—she thought angrily, trying to keep the wonderful feeling from going.—I can learn here, the way Mother would have wanted me to. I’ll study and make her proud of me. Nothing else matters.—

  She slipped out of the preparation hall and upstairs to one of the empty practice rooms. It wasn’t used because the piano was so bad, but it was better than nothing. She went in and shut the door, standing by the window in the dark. The mountain sloped in terraces down to the lights of Montreux and the lake; and across the lake the mountains of France stood, shadowy in spite of the clear outline the snow gave them against the sky. Two lake steamers were moving slowly on the water in opposite directions, two small bands of gold lights approaching each other and crossing. In a straight line down the mountain ran the funicular, and, winding around, ran the small train. They were the only lights on the mountainside, and they seemed like something magic. Leaning there with her nose pressed against the windowpane, Katherine suddenly felt a sense of peace and strength. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,” she whispered, then withdrew from the window, turned on the unprotected ceiling light that glared down at her, sat down at the dreadful piano with the squeaking pedals and practiced until time for dinner. She went into dinner with a consciousness of her strength, of great indifference to the things that had been making her so miserable—a consciousness that was too conscious to be real. But she sat through dinner thinking of her music lesson, thinking of Justin Michel Vigneras, thinking of Julie.

  Throughout the dining room the liquid clinking of spoons against glass dishes made a clear sound like myriads of little bells. She listened to them ringing softly, trying to shut out all distinct words, so that the sound of conversation was like a chorus of voices echoing a pagan prayer in a faraway temple. Sucking her cherries slowly, she arranged the eight pips in a pattern around her saucer. It would be beautiful in a temple with bells and everybody praying. She remembered going to church with her Nanny, remembered the sound of the huge organ, the light filtering in golden dusty shafts across the nave, the jangling of bells, intonings of prayers, clear, high voices of choir boys that seemed to shine like the light from the candles burning everywhere, the intense clicking of rosaries—and excitement slid up her spine like a crack up a pane of glass.