The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  “The pussy went down the ’ole,” repeated Prue fearfully, clinging to Juliana’s hand.

  “Well, I will go down after him,” resolved Juliana. “But you had best not.”

  “Oo, no! I’d be frit to death.” Prue let go her hold, and, rather nervously, Juliana climbed over the edge of the trap, and let herself down the ladder.

  “Be you all right, miss?” Prue called. “Can you see Misty?”

  “I am still climbing down the ladder,” Juliana called back.

  She had to descend some fifteen rungs, widely spaced apart, and then stood still a moment, while her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, which came only from the opening above her. When she began to see, she discovered, as she had expected, that she was in a brick vault, surrounded by a number of casks, and a powerful smell of liquor.

  The errant Mistigris was sitting on one of the barrels, but as soon as Juliana made for him, he swung himself down and scampered away into a dark corner. Going after him, she was discouraged to find an opening, apparently the end of a passageway, into which the monkey had disappeared.

  I cannot follow him in there, she thought at first, panic-stricken, for the passage looked dark as a chimney; but then she thought of what she owed Madame Reynard and resolved to try. Luckily she now observed a flint and steel, and a bundle of rushlights, lying on a ledge in the brick wall.

  “Miss! Miss! Where be you?” Prue called anxiously.

  “The monkey has run into a hole. I am going after him!” Juliana called back. “Do you stay there, and let us hope that I can catch Misty before Madame knows that he is lost.”

  “I’m afeared,” whined Prue dolefully. “Suppose there’s summat bad down there!”

  Stifling feelings of a similar nature, Juliana told her not to be a goose, and lit one of the rushlights. This disclosed a narrow rock tunnel, which was evidently much-used, for there were many trampled footprints in its clay floor. Of Mistigris there was no sign, but she started resolutely along the passage. After walking some distance, she began to feel more and more nervous; there was still no trace of her quarry, and she wondered where the passage could possibly be taking her; she must by now have traversed several hundred yards, and still there was no end to it! Several times she was on the point of turning back, but she could not bear to admit defeat and the loss of the monkey; so she kept on. At last she was rewarded by a glimmer of light ahead, and came to the foot of a flight of stone steps.

  It was from a half-open door at the top of the stairs that the light emanated; to Juliana’s joy she now perceived the monkey crouching in the doorway and looking back at her as if teasing her to follow. She ran up the steps and thought she had him, but he slipped through the door just before her hands had closed on him, and darted across the room beyond, which was a vaulted brick chamber like that below Madame’s summerhouse, except that there were no wine barrels in this room. More steps led up out of it to another door, also slightly open; and the exasperating Mistigris bounded up the steps and through the crack of the upper door with Juliana in eager pursuit, so sure she could catch him that she never stopped to wonder where the chase was leading her, until she was fairly through the second door, when she was suddenly brought short by a man’s voice exclaiming, “God bless my soul! Who the deuce have we here?”

  Juliana came to an abrupt halt, looking around her in astonishment and confusion. She now found herself in a most extraordinary room, which seemed at least a hundred feet long. Its width was about a third of its length and the walls were painted black. White lines were described in a regular pattern on both walls and floor. A gallery with a sloping roof ran around three sides of the room; it was netted over, as if to keep in prisoners, and a strip of netting about three feet high ran across the middle of the room from side to side. Two men clad in trousers, white shirts, and waistcoats stood regarding Juliana with expressions of considerable surprise; one of them was middle-aged, the other younger. They held long-handled racquets in their hands, and, now that she had collected herself enough to think rationally, Juliana realized that by some extraordinary means she had blundered into a tennis court—though how a smugglers’ passage should lead into such a place, she found it hard to imagine!

  The wayward Mistigris, who seemed perfectly at home here, had snatched up a ball from the stone floor, and, holding it in his paw, was swinging across the dividing net in the center.

  “Mistigris I know,” said the older man, who was standing nearer to Juliana, “and, seeing him, I understand why you are here—try if you can catch him, Socket!—but who you can be, my dear, has me in a fair puzzle! Do enlighten me, I beg!”

  “Truly, sir, I beg your pardon,” Juliana said, rather breathlessly—his amused glance made her feel like an untidy, blundering child. “I—I am Madame Reynard’s niece! And, as you see, I was trying to recapture Mistigris—I had no notion that the passage led into your tennis court, or I would not have trespassed. I must apologize again.”

  “Madame’s niece? Well, by all that’s famous! Here have I been acquainted with her these twenty years, and never even knew that she had a niece. What reserve! I see very little resemblance,” he added, studying Juliana with twinkling eyes, “though it’s true that you are of the same coloring; but your features, my dear, are cast in a more delicate mold. Well, well! Only to think of ’Lise having a niece. And how did you arrive, my child?”

  “Well, sir—” began Juliana, blushing and confused.

  The gentleman, on observing her hesitation, misunderstood the cause and said kindly, “No, no never mind! I can guess without your telling. You came along with Ebenezer Lee—not to mention my burgundy and claret and my half-anchor of rum and the Hyson tea that Madam can’t be without—that’s it, eh?”

  Juliana curtsied without replying. By now she had guessed that her interlocutor could be none other than “Milord Egg” and she studied him with as much curiosity and interest as he was giving her. She saw a medium-sized man, in his mid-forties, with a trim, well-knit figure. He had a long, hawk-like nose, a long upper lip, a fresh-colored complexion, and a look of quiet humor, derived from the set of his eyes, which tilted down at the outer corners, and a slight quirk at the corner of his mouth. His hair was cut short and his dress very plain, though of superior quality. His neckcloth, though snowy white, was somewhat carelessly tied.

  “Do you think that Mam’selle has a look of Madame ’Lise, Socket?” he asked the younger man, who, having at last caught the monkey, now approached them.

  “Well—perhaps—just a little,” said the latter, rather doubtfully. “The shape of the head is similar. Here is your aunt’s pet, miss. Would you like me to carry him home for you?”

  “Ay, see her back along the passage, Ned; we are used to it, but the young lady is not,” said Milord Egg. “In the circumstances, it was very brave of you, my child, to chase after that naughty beast. One of these days it will get stuck up a tree that nobody can climb, and I for one shan’t weep millstones. Give my respects to your aunt, my dear, and tell her that I shall give myself the pleasure of calling in this afternoon to improve our acquaintance. Good-bye for the present!”

  “Good-bye, sir—and my apologies again,” Juliana said, curtsying.

  “Think nothing of it—we use that corridor all the time, don’t we, Socket?”

  But Socket, a fair-haired, stolid-looking young man had already descended the steps, holding the indignant Mistigris, who chattered and screamed with annoyance all the way back.

  “I am glad my pupils do not make such a row,” Socket observed as they emerged into Madame Reynard’s vault.

  “Are you a teacher, sir?” Juliana inquired.

  “Why, yes; I tutor Lord Egremont’s sons,” the young man replied. “Shall you be all right now, miss? Then I will return to his lordship, for he does not like to stop in the middle of a game. Good-bye!” He carefully handed her the monkey and turned back into the dark pass
age, which he negotiated with as much ease and familiarity as if it had been lamplit all the way along.

  Juliana climbed the ladder in a very thoughtful frame of mind, only just in time to reassure the frantic Prue, who was beginning to believe that some underground Troll-king had swallowed her and that she would never be seen again.

  “Wherever was you, miss, for so long?”

  “I had to run a very long way after the monkey, Prue; and now I think we had best go back to the house, for very likely, after all that chasing, he will be wanting his dinner.”

  “I wants mine, I knows that,” said Prue, and she ran on, calling to Berthe, who had come into the garden to pick a bunch of parsley, “The pussy went down the ’ole, and Miss had to fetch ’im.”

  “Oh, what horror!” said Berthe cheerfully. “Come, little one, there is a great bowl of soup for you!”

  Juliana followed more slowly. Lord Egremont, she was thinking, why, of course! Why had his name not occurred to me? For she had heard various tales, while in London, of this eccentric peer, who had won the Derby several times with his racehorses, who had been a notable member of the Macaroni Club, yet never drank or gambled, who had had the most ravishing mistresses, yet was reputedly very shy and disinclined for society, who had been engaged to Lady Maria Waldegrave, but broke it off and never married anybody else. Miss Ardingly said he had been Lady Melbourne’s lover and was the father of one of her children. He was a friend of Charles James Fox, he was averred to be highly cultured, lively-witted, well grounded in the classics, keenly interested in the arts, yet chose to retire to his estates in Sussex and was hardly seen in London above once every two or three years; when he did come he brought his own drinking water because he said London water tasted disgusting. Lord Lambourn—who had once been to stay at Petworth on some business connected with the Sussex Regiment—said the house was the most uncomfortable he had ever visited—damp sheets, no bell, and nothing but rustic impertinence from the servants. When he had asked for a glass of water and wine after supper, a footman told him the butler had gone to bed…

  Juliana’s thoughts were interrupted by the voice of Madame Reynard, who was sitting out-of-doors on a cushioned chaise longue, writing slowly in a large leather-bound volume—for the day had turned out a hot one.

  “Malepeste!” exclaimed that lady, in a kind of cheerful indignation, as she surveyed Juliana’s absent, dreamy demeanor. “I can see all too well what has happened to you! Mistigris went into the wine tunnel, is it not so? He always will, if we forget to shut the trap. And you went after him, and of course you encountered Milord Egg, playing tennis, and now you have fallen head over ears in love with him, am I not correct? He had only to cast his eye on a jeune fille and down they all go like bowling pins. Oh, it is too bad! Now we shall never have any peace!”

  Juliana burst out laughing. “No, no, Tante ’Lise,” she said, “it is not so bad as that, I promise! Milord Egg does have a great charm, I can see that, but, after all, he must be at least twenty-five years older than I.”

  “What is that to the purpose?”

  “No, madame, truly, you mistake. I have been looking all my life for somebody like Charles the First, and Milord Egg, though, I am sure, very delightful, does not resemble Charles the First in the slightest degree.”

  Eleven

  Lord Egremont came to call, as he promised he would, later on that day; but Juliana did not take this as any particular compliment to herself, since Rosine had said that he visited Madame Reynard every afternoon. However, when he did come he was dressed very handsomely in a black coat of superfine cloth, skintight pantaloons, and exquisitely polished boots; his neckcloth was most correctly tied, and he brought a charming bunch of hothouse flowers “for the young lady from over the water.” The effect of all this formality, however, was somewhat marred by the fact that he came along the underground passage, and ascended the ladder just as Juliana, who was playing hide-and-seek with Prue, had concealed herself under the table in the summerhouse.

  “This young lady has the most unusual habits,” Lord Egremont remarked to Madame Reynard, who was also in the summerhouse, reclining on her chaise longue. “First of all she arrives in my tennis court as if the Militia were after her; now I find her sitting under a table. It is most singular!”

  “Do not be absurd, Georges!” replied Madame Reynard, giving him her hand to kiss without getting up. “She is playing cache-cache, that is all. It is entirely your own fault, for arriving unannounced in this way, that you find her under the table. You should have come round correctly, by the road.”

  “That way is so much farther,” he complained, sitting down and fanning himself with his hat. “Besides, then I must be civil to ever so many people all the way through the town.”

  Juliana, who had wondered whether the passage had been constructed more as a convenience for smugglers, or for Lord Egremont’s private visits to his chère amie, now correctly concluded that it was almost equally employed in both capacities. Having stood up to curtsy and receive the flowers, she retired under the table again, just in time for little Prue to discover her with a loud cry of “Got you, then, miss!”

  “Who is this?” inquired Lord Egremont, inspecting the child through his quizzing glass. “Another niece of yours, my dear ’Lise? Or a great-niece?”

  “No, Georges, how can you be so foolish? She is a foundling, at present deserted by her parents,” explained Madame Reynard in a low voice, having instructed Prue to “run to Berthe and ask her to bring a glass of lemonade for the gentleman.”

  “And do you propose to keep her?”

  “Why, no,” said Madame Reynard calmly. “I was about to ask if you could find a niche for her in your establishment, my friend. It would be so much more amusing for her there.”

  “Oh, by all means,” he replied with the utmost amiability. “Send her round whenever you like—Lizzie will stuff her with sugarplums, Mademoiselle Lord will weep over her orphaned state, Conrad Leidenberg will bake her a cake on her birthday, and Mrs. Garland will hem her pinafores for her. There can be no difficulty. I daresay she will get on excellently with little Henry—he is always saying that he needs an ally because Georgie bullies him.”

  “Bien, then that is settled. I will bring her round tomorrow—not through the subterranean way. I shall be glad to see my dear Liz. How is she?”

  “She feels the heat—she finds herself troubled by nausea and backache; you know she is always so at such times… But tell me about this delightful young lady,” he said affably. “It is news to me, dear ’Lise, that you possess a niece. You have been very silent about her all these years!”

  “Why, she is not precisely a niece, but a kind of cousin,” explained Madame Reynard placidly. “You remember my cousin Raoul Duthé?”

  “Ah, I see. His daughter? Yes,” observed Milord Egg, bringing the quizzing glass into action once more. “Yes, now I examine her closely, I see she has quite a look of Raoul… And how is your father, my dear?” he inquired suavely of Juliana, who cast an anguished glance at Madame Reynard. That lady shrugged her shoulders in a particularly Gallic manner, and made a significant chopping gesture with the side of her hand.

  “Alas, sir,” faltered Juliana, “he, like so many others—”

  “No, guillotined, was he, poor fellow? Too bad, too bad. And that reminds me, God bless my soul, ’Lise, what do you think is all the crack now among the ton, up in London? Throgmorton was telling me, and I was never so shocked in my life. All the ladies go to balls with a band of red velvet ribbon round their necks, to represent the victims of Madame Guillotine. I call that abominably vulgar—quite the outside of enough! By the by, did Throgmorton carry out your business for you all right and tight, my dear?”

  “Yes, I thank you, Georges. It was just to note down the additions to my house on the title deeds, and to make an inquiry about the Glebe Path.”

  “The new wing looks w
ell,” he remarked, turning to inspect the almost completed addition. “I told you Jem Bowyer would do a good job… Ay, Throgmorton’s an excellent attorney; I find it is better to have him down from London once in a while than to entrust my business to local fellows. They mean well, but they know about as much law as my horse Fingal. Now, old Throgmorton is a close-mouthed, quiet old stick-in-the-mud, but he’s fully up to snuff; knows all the tricks of the trade; I shouldn’t wonder but what he has the family history of every member of both Houses of Parliament at his fingertips. I daresay there’s many a man who will breathe easier when old Throgmorton’s gone to his fathers and taken his secrets with him… Talking of secrets, I see that young Cox is back in town on furlough, which does not much delight me.”

  “What, the son of your tenants over at Newgrove? But his father and mother have gone to Bath.”

  “All the more reason why I hope that he leaves Petworth again soon. Alone, he is more prone to get up to mischief.”

  “And what kind of mischief do you have in mind, mon ami? Every young man will flirt.”

  “Of course; but the last girl that your Cox flirted with—that pretty Rosie Tanner, the baker’s daughter—was found dead up in Bedham Woods last January, if you remember.”

  “Georges! You do not think—?”

  “I don’t like young Cox. At best he is a puppy. At worst—I don’t know what. I shall be glad when he returns to his ship. He has gone with the Free Traders, too, on several occasions, it’s said. To purchase a dallop of tea from them is one thing—to accompany them on their runs is something quite else, and unbecoming to a gentleman.”