The Small Rain

by Madeleine L'engle

  “But that’s crazy. I’ve only been really happy at school since I’ve known Sarah.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Katherine. I won’t forbid you to have anything to do with Sarah, but I want you to promise me not to be alone with her so much.”

  “That’s crazy. I don’t get all this.”

  “Someday you’ll understand and be grateful to me,” Miss Valentine said. “Will you ask Sarah to come in to me now?”

  Katherine stalked out. Sarah was waiting in the passage. “Grateful, hell,” Katherine muttered, “Grateful, hell, hell, hell. She wants you now,” she said to Sarah.

  “Did she do anything to you?” Sarah whispered.

  “She’s just cracked,” Katherine said. “She’s completely cracked. Don’t listen to her.”

  Sarah went back into the room. Katherine waited outside. The first bell for dinner rang, and the girls trooped downstairs. Katherine went into the bathroom and waited until they had all gone by; then she went back and stood in the passage again, in one of the doorways, so that she could not be seen, but could see Miss Valentine when she came out of Sarah’s room. It was a long time before Miss Valentine came out. Katherine kept looking at her mother’s watch; it was a full half hour before the door opened and Miss Valentine went downstairs. Katherine went back into the room. Sarah was standing miserably by the window, wiping her eyes.

  “What did she say?” Katherine asked.

  “She—she said I wasn’t to tell you,” Sarah said, blowing her nose.

  “Please—can’t you?”

  “I don’t think I’d better.”

  Katherine went over to Sarah and put her arm around her. “She’s made you unhappy.”

  “Please don’t, Katherine,” Sarah said, pulling away. “I’m going down to supper now.”

  “Are you going to the cinema tonight?” Katherine asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I’d sort of like to talk to you.”

  “No—” Sarah said.

  Katherine held her hand out to Sarah timidly. “Sarah—”

  “What?”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “No.”

  “Did I do something I shouldn’t?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not mad at me?”

  “No … I’m going down to supper now.”

  “Sarah—”

  “What?”

  “What was that thing you wanted me to put music to?”

  “What thing?”

  “That thing you read me this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say it?”

  Sarah recited unhappily:

  “This ae night, this ae night,

  Every night and alle,

  Fire and sleet and candle-lighte,

  And Christe receive thy soule.”

  “I’ll do it tonight,” Katherine said.

  “All right … Oh, Miss Valentine wants to see you in her study at eight.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m going down to supper now … Are you coming?”

  “In a minute. You go on.”

  “All right—” Sarah said, turning to go.

  “Sarah—What did she say to make you like this? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing’s happened,” Sarah said.

  “You’re different. Everything’s different. What has she done?”

  “Nothing. I’m going now,” Sarah said, and left.

  Katherine stared after her. Then she sat down on the edge of Sarah’s bed. She reached up and pressed her locket close to her. “Jesus,” she whispered, “Jesus, dear Jesus, Jesus—”

  When Katherine went to her music lesson on Monday, Justin was sitting at the piano, playing. She stood quietly, leaning against the door until he had finished. When he saw her, he turned around, held out both hands, and smiled at her so sweetly that the tears rushed to her eyes. She went up to him and put her hands into his, looking down at him, trying to keep back the tears.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  For a moment she could not answer. She just stood still, shaking her head. Then she said, “I don’t know.”

  “Has someone hurt you?”

  Wildly she thought—He mustn’t be kind to me like this! I don’t want him to see me cry—But his eyes looked into hers with interest and concern, and she felt trapped; she wanted to run, to run far, far away; to run where? To run into his arms.

  “Has someone hurt you?” he asked again.

  At last she nodded.

  He held her hands very tightly. “You should get away from here, little one. This is no place for you.”

  She pulled away from him and turned around because she couldn’t stop crying.

  He came up to her and put both his hands on her shoulders. “What is it, dear? Do you want to talk to me about it?”

  She wanted to talk to him about it. She wanted to talk to him about it more than anything in the world. But she couldn’t. She stamped her foot and said fiercely, “It’s just that I’m such an utter fool.”

  “You’re not a fool, little one,” he said. “You’ll be all right. Just get out of this place as soon as you can.”

  Suddenly she asked, “You’re not going away, are you? You’re not going away after Easter? You’re coming back?”

  “Yes. I’m coming back. But I’m going to get away, too, as soon as I can. You’re not going to be in Paris for the holidays? You won’t be able to hear my concert?”

  “No. I’d give anything in the world if I could.”

  He saw that she had stopped crying. “We must get to work,” he said.

  She went down the path to the château, down the path filled with the wavering yet sharp shadows of plane trees with their ice-black branches; past Justin’s studio; up the old oak tree and over the stone wall; paused for a moment by the little boy with the chipped stone pigeon eternally lighting on his shoulder; then pushed through the grasses that pricked through the snow, always choosing a slightly different trail so that no telltale path would be formed; lifted the broken shutter with the old, green, blistered paint; into the salon; into the other world, Julie’s world.

  Sarah and Pen were there. This she had not counted on. This was not fair. If Sarah had given the château to Pen, Katherine could never go there again.

  At the sight of Katherine framed in the window, Sarah’s face became suffused with red; her eyes seemed larger and more ice-blue than ever.

  “Hello, Kat,” she said. “I thought you had a piano lesson this afternoon.”

  “No. That was just extra last week.” Katherine still stood leaning against the dusty woodwork of the long French window. If this was to be the last time she could come to the château (because if it became other people’s it became part of their world and was no longer part of Julie’s and Justin’s and the world she and Sarah had made up), if she could never come here again, they ought to have the decency to go away and leave her alone.

  “Well,” Pen said, smiling to cover her embarrassment. “This is certainly a gorgeous place, Kat. You and Sarah were beasts to keep it to yourselves.”

  “If too many people start running over here, Val will find out.” Katherine turned from Pen and looked at Sarah. “I won’t come again.”

  “Good gracious, Kat, why not?” Sarah widened the blue eyes.

  “I’ve too much work to do to waste time over here with a wheezy organ.”

  “Oh!” Pen said with relief, as the organ was mentioned. “Do play for us, Kat.”

  Quietly Katherine stripped the organ of its dusty coverings. Instead of playing Bach, as she usually did here, she played the Brahms-Paganini Variations, the most noisy, wild, and confused music she knew.

  “Phew!” Pen said as she finished. “That wore me out, just listening to it. You’re certainly a wizard, Kat. It won’t be long before we’ll all be saying, ‘I knew her when—’ Well, we’d better get on back t
o school, Sarah. It must be nearly time for prep. You coming, Kat?”

  “It’s one of my practice periods,” Katherine said. “If you won’t report me, I’ll stay here till I have to sign in with Elkes.”

  “Of course I won’t report you.” Pen looked indignant and uncomfortable at the same time, and as usual when she didn’t know what to do, took off her glasses and wiped them.

  “Well, I mean your being head of form and everything—”

  “Oh, this is sort of different,” Pen said awkwardly, putting her glasses back on. “Coming, Sarah?”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered, and they opened the window and pushed aside the broken shutter. Katherine was left standing alone by the organ, the light lying in stripes across her uniform as it filtered through broken slats in the shutters. Suddenly she heard the shutter being pushed away again, and Sarah came back into the room.

  “I say, Kat—” Sarah said, standing just inside the window.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about?” Katherine almost whispered the words.

  “Oh, all this mess and sort of everything. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, Val and everything—”

  “If you want to start paying attention to what Val says, that’s up to you.”

  “I don’t like you to be unhappy.”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “Sure?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well—see you later, then—”

  “All right.”

  “In the common room.”

  “Good-bye.” Katherine turned back toward the organ.

  “Good-bye.” Another push of the shutter, and Sarah was gone again.

  EIGHT

  But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.

  By the time Katherine was sixteen, peace had come back. The peace of work at the piano, and an ever-increasing adoration of Justin. The peace of reading every book in the school library, and every book she could beg Manya to send her. She was given the job of playing the organ in chapel, to the eternal resentment of Miss Elkes, who had been proud of her own ability to pound out hymns and psalms. She learned to develop an aloofness that kept her free from the barbs of her formmates, and the change from savagery to at least a kind of civilization is most marked between fourteen and sixteen, so that they began to give her a kind of respect. They were proud of her when she played in a recital at the Montreux Conservatory, winning honors and getting her name in the papers.

  Active happiness is not a common state. Active unhappiness is better than dull days. Katherine was seldom in an intermediate stage. If Justin was pleased with her, she sang as she left his studio. If he was moody and preoccupied, she was sure it was because he was angry with her, and she was depressed until her next lesson. She learned to accept seeing Sarah constantly just as a member of her form, but sometimes a casual word would make her remember the peaceful and happy hours in the fourth-floor music room, or the daydreams together in the château on Sunday afternoons, or the hour between tea and prep, and she would feel a panic of loneliness that made her rush in terror to a piano to keep misery from filling her heart. Yet if there were more stars than usual, or if the trees in front of the street lamp made special patterns on the path, a feeling of the great glory of life would come over her. If she woke up in the night, got out of bed and stood by the window, looking down the mountainside, she would think as her heart began to pound with sudden unreasonable excitement, my God, my God, the night keeps being shattered by so many things; that thin steeple jutting into the purple sky pushes it away with cool, sharp blackness; in the raucous clang of somber bells I can feel it shatter and break; from the chalet up the mountain the colored notes of a concertina make it warm with their warmth; the high thin cry of a distant siren splinters it into frightened fragments; the night keeps being shattered by so many things …

  Then in the spring of her sixteenth year there was the music lesson at the end of which Justin said, “I’m going away.”

  When something like that is said, there is a hollowness inside you, but no real feeling. “Away? When?”

  “This summer. After school closes and I finish up in Montreux. I have a position at the Conservatory in Paris for next year … You must be glad with me about that.”

  “I’m glad for you. I’m awfully glad for you,” Katherine said, still empty and unfeeling inside.

  “You have one more year of this place after this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “May I come to Paris and go on studying with you?”

  “You should come to Paris, yes. But whether or not you should study with me is another matter. We’re worked together for almost three years now. Maybe you should have a change.”

  “There’ll be all next year,” she said, and felt tears tremble in her eyes. She looked down so that he wouldn’t see.

  But of course he saw. Justin always saw everything. And said nothing.

  At last Katherine said, “I could learn from Mother. Whenever she told me anything, it was like turning on a light. It’s the same way with you. It would be stupid to change.”

  “Well,” he struck a chord lightly on the piano. “We’ll see when the time comes. Meanwhile, I have news for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Yes … That Miss Valentine doesn’t like you much, does she?”

  “No. She can’t bear me.”

  “She doesn’t understand you. That’s why. She’s afraid of people she doesn’t understand. And she resents your talent. Although she hopes that someday she’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, yes, Katherine Forrester was one of my girls. We gave her her first encouragement here at the school. Such a nice little girl. One of my favorite pupils.’ Whited sepulchre. I have no patience with disappointed old maids who try to pretend they are Moses the Lawgiver to make up for being thwarted. I had the devil of a time wangling special permission for you.”

  “Special permission for what?”

  “To spend the night in Territet next week.”

  “The night in Territet!”

  “Yes. Julien Quimper will be in town Monday night. He knew your mother and he wants you to play for him.”

  “Oh—” Katherine gasped.

  “I had to be most charming and gallant to your Miss Valentine before she would give you permission. She ended up by being so coy with me that I nearly spoiled it all by being rude. Anyhow, you’re to come down to Montreux with me after your lesson on Monday, and you will spend the night with me and my sister in Territet. In the evening we’ll go to Quimper’s concert, and then you’ll play for him. I told your Miss Valentine that you couldn’t possibly make the last train back to the school, and that it would be of the utmost importance to your career. It isn’t, so don’t be nervous about it. I know Quimper will like you. You’re his type. And he may be able to help you. And I also thought you might like to meet him because he knew your mother. He admired her very much, and said that if it hadn’t been for her accident, she would have been one of the greatest pianists of our time, if not the greatest … You’re happier now, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes!” Katherine said. “Oh, yes! Thank you ever and ever so much, Monsieur Vigneras.”

  “Let’s get to work,” he said. “Let’s hear the Italian Concerto again. I think that will be a good thing for you to do for Quimper.”

  The Sunday before Quimper’s concert Sarah knocked on the door of the fourth-floor practice room where Katherine was working. “Hello,” she said. “Am I bothering you?”

  “No.”
Katherine stopped playing and looked at Sarah, who seated herself on the window seat.

  “This is sort of like old times, isn’t it?” Sarah asked. Katherine said nothing. “I heard you, so I thought I’d come in for a sec if you didn’t mind.”

  “No. I don’t mind!”

  “Isn’t the chemistry assignment foul? I’ve got to get on downstairs and get Pen to help me with mine. Have you done it yet?”

  “No.”

  “It’s frightful—a lot of old algebraic formulas we’ve all forgotten years ago stuck in the middle of electrons and negatrons … I hear you’re going to Montreux with Justin tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ginny told me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I s’pose you’re awfully excited about that.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Well, good-bye and good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sarah left, and Katherine started practicing again. But for several minutes her fingers trembled, and she could not concentrate. She wished that Sarah had not come.

  On Monday at her lesson she played the program Justin had arranged for her to play to Julien Quimper. Then he looked at her and said, “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I put my hair up.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  Her hair had not gone up since the night when Manya had fixed it on shipboard. Now she no longer felt as though she were playing at being grown up. It seemed incredibly stupid that at the school they were not allowed to wear their hair up until they were in the sixth form. She had had to go into the bathroom of the music and art studio to follow her impulse of putting her dark braids up before this lesson.

  “Don’t you like it?” she asked.

  He looked at her again. “Yes. I like it very much. But all of a sudden you aren’t a little girl any more. You’re a woman. And quite beautiful. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. Pretty nearly seventeen. I’m not a child.”

  “In many ways I know you’re far beyond your years, little one, but you surprise me nevertheless.”

  “Do you want me to be a child? Would you like me to be a child?”

  Justin laughed. “You’re funny.”

  “No, I’m not!”