The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  “Where you goin’?” grumbled Prue, who had at first been too absorbed in her sweetmeat to pay much attention to their route, but was now approaching the core of the apple, and becoming dissatisfied.

  Juliana glanced down. She had almost forgotten Prue, whose hand she still clasped. Now, jerked into awareness, she observed for the first time a strong similarity between the child’s eyes and those of Captain Davenport; there was an equal likeness in the structure of brow, nose, and temples.

  “Captain Davenport is your father, is he not?” she demanded.

  Prue nodded.

  “And Tillie—Tillie is your mother? Did she really break her leg?”

  “Ay. The doctor set it with a splint. An’ Ma cried wi’ the pain, an’ Davvy was mad-angry, acos she said she was blest if she’d be plagued wi’ me when she were laid abed, an’ he must bring me with him.”

  “Do you really have a grandfather in Petworth?”

  “Ay, Grandpa Strudwick, over to Hoghurst. ’E beant in Petworth… Where we goin’?”

  “Out of town… I suppose your father told you not to tell me anything?”

  “Ay. ’E said ’e’d larrup me if I so much as opened my gob.”

  No wonder the child had resented her father making love to Juliana!

  Faced with evidence of a deception which must have been carefully laid, going back weeks, if not months—those Charles the First mustachios!—Juliana felt as if the ground were crumbling beneath her feet, as if she were walking in a quaking bog.

  He must have planned this all along, she thought. From before our very first meeting. How can I have been such a gull—such a simpleton? How he must have laughed at me up his sleeve!

  Her cheeks burned at the thought; she clenched her hands. If Captain Davenport had come in sight at that moment she would have flown at him like a fury.

  The most horrible feature of the whole business was that Juliana’s mother was also involved. She had supplied the funds for her own daughter’s abduction! But why? To what possible end? To extract money for her dowry from Sir Horace? They would soon catch cold at that, reflected Juliana. She was willing to wager that her grandfather would never part with a single penny. His runaway granddaughter had made her bed, he would say, and she must lie on it.

  Oh! Juliana thought, clenching her hands again at the thought of his anger—his disgust at the scrape she had got herself into. He would say, “Like father, like daughter,” and he would be right! How could she have been such a goose as to let herself be taken in by Captain Davenport?

  Now he seemed a hollow sham, through and through.

  I must make a plan, she thought feverishly; I must consider what to do.

  Instinctively seeking peace and quiet, she had followed the lane that seemed to lead toward the fields. It was wide enough for a cart track and ran between high stone walls. Now Juliana realized with a sinking heart that it was not a way out of the town, but merely led to a house—a fairly new house that must have been built perhaps some ten or fifteen years ago, a little secluded, some five minutes’ walk out of the town center. In fact, as they passed a pair of carriage houses and reached a gateway, Juliana discovered that the house was not yet finished: the main, central portion was complete, but scaffolding still enclosed a side wing, and workmen were wheeling barrows of bricks to and fro.

  The house faced out over a grassy shelf, beyond which lay a deep green valley. It would be a pleasant place to live, Juliana thought dismally; so close to the town, yet private, with a wide prospect of countryside in front, and a spacious plot of land surrounding it. A formal flower garden had been laid out in part of this area, which was enclosed to the rear by another high stone wall, and lay open to the valley in front. Looking down into the valley, Juliana noticed a path, which led to a bridge over a brook at the bottom. If we could get to that path, she thought, we could leave the town quite unobserved; but how to reach it? A ha-ha wall protected the garden on the valley side; only a couple of feet high inside, it gave onto a ten- or twelve-foot drop beyond.

  “Want to see the dancing men again!” whined Prue.

  “Hush. I am thinking.”

  “Want another sweetie! Want to find Davvy!”

  “Do not forget,” Juliana reminded her, “that Davvy forbade you to tell me anything. When he finds that I know he is your father, he is liable to be very angry.”

  Prue’s face fell. She said, in a quelled manner. “When Davvy larrups, ’e fair lays on. What’d we best do, then?”

  “I think I had best take you to your grandfather’s house. I shall ask one of those workmen how to find it.”

  Having reached her decision, Juliana approached the workmen, who now, since it was nearly the end of the day, were beginning to stack their tools and tidy up for the night. She had made up her mind only just in time; another five minutes and they would all have been gone.

  “Pray can you direct me to Hoghurst Farm?” she asked the man who looked like a foreman—a stocky, grizzle-haired individual wearing a carpenter’s apron over his smock and carrying a bag of tools.

  “Hoghurst? Nay, you graveled me there, lass; I’m a Midhurst man myself.” He spoke in a friendly tone, but without any particular deference, and Juliana recollected that she was still disguised in the maid’s apron and cap. He turned to his mates. “Anybody here know o’ Hoghurst Farm?”

  “What be farmer’s name?” someone asked.

  “Strudwick—old Mr. Strudwick.”

  “Arr! Owd Strudwick’s place. A tidy step that be from yurr, maidy!”

  “Never mind. If you will tell me how to find it, I shall be very much obliged.”

  The man who knew the way led her to the garden wall overlooking the valley.

  “Fust you goos down an’ across Rectory Brook at bottom. Then you goos up the Gog—yonder hill wi’ the liddle coppice atop; then you goos down t’other side an’ up Lovers’ Lane into the Dilly woods yonder.” He waved toward a thick mass of woodland which was discernible on the high land beyond the valley. “Then you goos on, a two, three hours’ doust, up along through the ’oods, an’ ye’ll come to a droveway. Goo along it for a spell, while ye can say Our Father three times, slow-like. Then ye must clim up through an oak hanger to your right hand, till ye come atop the hill, an’ maunder along, eater-wise, for half a mile, till ye come to a bramble crundle an’ two cuckoo gates, set middling close. Goo through the second cuckoo gate, an’ along the headland, an’ ye’ll come to Owd Strudwick’s place. ’Tis a liddle daggly owd cottage wi’ a mort o’ stinging nettled round about.”

  “I—I see,” said Juliana, not a little daunted by these instructions.

  “Have ye got it arl queered out, maidy? Now, mind you dooant goo astray in the Dilly woods by the partways o’ the forrep-land; ’tis easy done; an’, atop o’ the packway, goo ye straight into the hurst, whurr thurr’s two-three fodroughs; facing ye; take the one as is dead ahead. Otherwise ye’ll be as lost as Owd Lawrence! Will ye mind that?”

  “Oh, indeed I will,” said Juliana, hoping there would be somebody else to advise her when she had reached this part of the journey.

  She glanced across the valley. Already blue dusk had begun to enshroud the woodlands beyond the little hilltop which her adviser had referred to as “the Gog”; by the time she and Prue were in the woods, true dark would have come. A two- or three-hour walk through the woods, in the dark, with little Prue no doubt whining and complaining every step of the way? Was it feasible? She hardly thought so.

  Very unexpectedly, at this point, a new voice accosted her, which inquired in not unfriendly, but authoritative tones, “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

  Juliana and her informant were standing on a broad grassy path, bordered by a yew hedge, which ran alongside the low wall overlooking the valley. At each end of this path lay a small pavilion-like building, and from one of these buildings
a lady had emerged; it was she who had called out the question as she approached them.

  She was a tall, well-built personage, not in her first youth; she wore a white muslin garden dress over a blue silk under-bodice; a broad-brimmed straw hat was tied under her chin with a blue silk scarf. Under the hat she also had a green silk eyeshade, and she wore long blue gloves and carried a basket of narcissus. She had remarkably thick and handsome auburn hair, braided up into a massive chignon; her eyes were brown, and her strong-featured face, which at present wore an inquiring expression, showed traces of what must, twenty years ago, have been great beauty.

  The man who had been advising Juliana turned and explained.

  “’Tis the young maid yurr, Mis’ Reynard. ’Er wants for to get to Hoghurst Farm. You goo out by yonder gate, maidy, that’ll take ye down the dene”—and he pointed to a gate by the pavilion from which the lady had come. “That is, if Mis’ Reynard don’t mind ye a-crossing her garden.”

  “I—I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Juliana, abashed to discover that she had strayed into occupied and private property. “I had thought—as the men were still building—that nobody lived here. Otherwise I would not have trespassed—”

  “Chut, chut! N’importe pas,” said the lady. “I will show you the way down. Good night, Boxall. A demain!”

  “Good night, missus,” said the man, pulling his forelock, and he hurried after his mates, as the lady turned to escort Juliana to her back gate.

  The lady seemed, for some reason, slightly disappointed, and her next words explained why.

  “You did not, then, come about the position? I was so hoping you had!”

  “Position, ma’am?”

  Juliana had been rather desperately wondering whether to confide her story to some total stranger. “I am running away from my mother, who is at the Bull Inn, and has hired two men to abduct me.” How implausible did that sound! The most likely reaction would be to hand her over to her mother forthwith. But at the lady’s question her hopes suddenly rose.

  “Why, my advertisement for a lady’s maid. I was in hopes, when I saw you, that you were an applicant.”

  Mrs. Reynard, as the man had called her, spoke with a slight but unmistakable Parisian accent. Juliana wondered how a lady from Paris should have taken up her abode in such a tiny place; but no doubt she, like so many others, was a refugee from the terror in France.

  Juliana looked up at the lady’s face, and, encouraged by something she saw there—a mixture of humor, experience, and tolerance manifest in the broad brow, wide mouth, strong cheekbones, and twinkling brown eyes—she suddenly came to a decision.

  “Madam,” she began, speaking rapidly in French, “may I please tell you a little of my story? Will you have the goodness to listen to me for two minutes?”

  “Mais, mon dieu!” exclaimed Madame Reynard, overjoyed. “Here is somebody who speaks French in the midst of all these peasants. And with a most beautiful accent too! Speak what you wish, my child. I shall be enchanted to listen.”

  Thus encouraged, Juliana swiftly poured out an abridged version of her tale. She did not mention the names of any persons, but simply explained that she had run away from her grandfather’s custody, and discovered by chance that her supposed lover was no lover at all, but had been paid by her mother to abscond with her.

  “Nom d’un nom! But it is a melodrama! Never did I think to hear such a tale in Petworth.” Madame Reynard pronounced it “Petvurrt.”

  “Now, madame, I was wondering—I have no experience as a lady’s maid, it is true, but I know how to do hair, and I am quite skilled with my needle—I would be happy to do anything you asked me, if I might stay with you for a few nights—until you find someone more suitable—and until—”

  “Until the maman méchante and the false lover take themselves away from this town, hein?” said the lady, laughing. “Just now, sans doute, they are scouring the streets for you, and may very likely have the constables out searching; better you should come into my house directly, I think, eh?”

  “Oh, madame! You will take me? Oh, I do not know how to thank you—”

  “Et la petite ici? You wish me to take her in too? Or shall we turn her out into the town to starve?” Madame Reynard inquired cheerfully, pinching the cheek of Prue, who had stood scowling like a thundercloud while this incomprehensible conversation had gone on.

  “It is a shocking imposition, ma’am, but if you could have her for tonight, I could take her to her grandfather’s tomorrow. It seems to be above a five-mile walk from here—I think it would be too far for her tonight.”

  “So! We decide about that in the morning. For now, come inside, tous les deux.”

  Without further ado, Madame led them round to a side door and into the main part of the house.

  “We goin’ to stay wi’ this lady?” whispered Prue.

  “Yes. It is too far to go to your grandfather’s tonight,” replied Juliana.

  Madame Reynard led them into a spacious, handsome room with a semicircular window looking out onto the garden and valley. The furniture was scanty, but French, and very elegant. Looking at it, Juliana was reminded of Herr Welcker, as she continued to think of him. The memory gave her a sudden queer pang. For who but he could have advised Juliana’s mother to find a decoy so closely resembling Charles the First? He must have been in the plot too. Oh, what a blind, naive, gullible simpleton I have been!

  The weakness she felt at this disagreeable thought made her realize, all of a sudden, how extremely tired and hungry she was; sheer terror and the need to escape had hitherto borne her up, but now that she was, temporarily at least, in shelter, she found herself almost on the point of fainting. It seemed an eternity since the first hopeful, happy sortie through the forest; an eternity without any breakfast or dinner in it.

  “Vous avez faim?” inquired Madame Reynard, reappearing with wine and biscuits. “Here—a little of this will do you good. I am happy to say that French wine still finds its way to Petworth—up the Rectory Brook.” She gave a chuckle. “Now, Berthe will take the little one down to the kitchen and take care of her. She is not of you?”

  “Madame? No, indeed!” said Juliana, taken aback at this sharp question.

  “No, enfin, you look too young to be her mother. Va, Berthe, take la petite, and stuff her with tartines and sugar cakes and put her to bed.”

  Prue was at first highly reluctant to be parted from Juliana, in whom, by now, she had acquired a certain degree of trust; but Berthe was such a fat, friendly, smiling dumpling of a French cook, who pulled a handful of sugar candy out of her pocket and said, “Viens avec moi, p’tite!” that without the need for any linguistic exchange, her fears were allayed.

  “I have been thinking!” said Madame Reynard, seating herself comfortably on a handsome ottoman and swinging her feet up with a flash of Valenciennes. She helped herself to a glass of wine and continued. “It would not be at all sensible for you to take Prue to her grandfather’s tomorrow.”

  “Why, madame?”

  “Why, what kind of a plotter are you? That is the first place where they will look! But see how fortunately it falls out! They will be asking for a young lady round the town. They may approach some of my workmen. Yes, we will say, a strange young lady with a child was seen; she asked her way to Hoghurst Farm (brr, what a name!). So you must on no account go there.”

  “I suppose that is true,” acknowledged Juliana. “But what is to be done? You cannot wish to keep Prue here, madame. She is the most disagreeable child!”

  Madame Reynard laughed. “Oh, well, in that case I will take her over to her grandfather’s tomorrow, in my carriage. I can make up some tale—that I found her wandering, that you went up to London on the stagecoach. The main thing is that you should stay close in my house until we are sure your pursuers have left the district.”

  “Your servants—?”

 
; “Both French. They do not mingle with the townspeople. After a week or two we will let you out—quite changed in appearance—take off your cap, child!”

  Juliana did so, and Madame remarked thoughtfully, “It may be best to change the color of your hair. Perhaps we turn you into a chestnut-head, like me. Then I tell everybody that the Free Traders have brought over my niece, from Rouen, who has come to live with me.”

  “Oh, madame, you are too kind. I—I wish that I was your niece!”

  “Il n’y a pas de quoi! I have not been so well amused for years; since Milord Egg began growing old and thinking of nothing but his oxen and his brown bread and vaccinations, my life has become bien ennuyante, I assure you. I am enchanted to have you, my child, and mean to enjoy your company to the full. Tell me, how comes it that you speak French so well? Most young English misses do not.”

  “I was brought up in Geneva, madame, and then in Florence.”

  “So? You speak Italian too?” she asked in that language.

  “Certainly, signora,” Juliana replied in the same tongue.

  “But this is famous! Milord Egg will want you for a gouvernante for his children, but I shall not part with you. You shall be my dame de compagnie. We shall read Dante and Molière, and in course of time you shall tell me your whole history—with the names left out, of course, if you prefer it,” she said, suddenly changing her lively tone for one of the most kindly solicitude. “You have had a long, fatiguing, and distressing day—all men are deceivers, we know it, we know it, but tout de même, each time one of them is caught out in his deceit, we must suffer the same shock and chagrin! Come along, I show you your room, and presently old Berthe will bring you a bowl of tisane. Then you weep away your troubles and sleep, and tomorrow you will be better.”

  Setting down her wineglass, Madame rose and escorted Juliana upstairs to the next story, where she was accommodated in a neat little room which just had space for a bed, a chair, a closet, and a fireplace.

  “Milord Egg built me this house,” Madame explained somewhat enigmatically. “When he was young, he was the most extravagant man in the whole world—I had a gilt coach, diamonds, six racehorses of my own! But as we grow old we grow prudent. By the time he came to build my little nest, his spendthrift days were over. That is why I am now adding a new wing… Now, sleep well, my child, cry for your faithless lover and then forget him. Here is a night robe of mine—it is too large, but you will not regard that!”