The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  “I am amazed at how well you speak the Sussex dialect, Tante ’Lise!”

  “I should be able to, after taking salves and simples to them for nineteen years. Apropos of which, my ostler’s mother tells me that the young man with the beard was returned to Petworth accompanied by two unmistakable Bow Street Runners, who are scouring the forest for dead bodies. So it will be necessary for you to keep indoors for the next day or two, my dear… It is a pity I am not the owner of Newgrove, where the bad young Cox’s parents reside.”

  “Why is that, ma’am?” asked Juliana, who had gone rather pale at the mention of the Runners.

  “Why, because in Newgrove House they have a secret room, where people were used to hide Royalist sympathizers.”

  “A secret room! Perhaps Charles the Second hid in it when he was escaping from the Roundheads. Did he not travel through Sussex?” Juliana asked hopefully.

  “Don’t ask me, child. I always confuse those Charleses and Jameses. Was Charles the Second the one who believed that, because he was King, everything he said must be true?”

  “No; that was his father, Charles the First.”

  “A most boring, bigoted man! He quite deserved to have his head cut off.”

  Juliana opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again, as Rosine came in to say there was a message from George Barrett, the steward at Petworth House, that a party of gypsies were encamped on Hampers Green, the common to the north of the town, and that Madame had best watch out for her poultry; all landowners with houses on the edge of the town were being advised to take extra precautions.

  “The gypsies will be clever if they can get into my garden,” said Madame, “with walls on three sides, and a steep drop on the fourth. But I thank Barrett for his thoughtfulness.”

  As if to remind them of the warning, an old gypsy woman came to the Hermitage on the following afternoon, selling clothes-pegs and birch whisks for beating eggs, and remedies made from wild plants. Madame Reynard was out at the time taking a bottle of foxglove tea to a dropsical publican, but Juliana, on her behalf, bought a flask of Pimpernel water, for she knew that the household supply was running low; and she hesitated over some cobweb pills, which the old crone claimed were a sovereign cure for asthma and consumption; but as they looked decidedly unsavory, and cost a penny apiece, Juliana did not in the end buy any; cobwebs, after all, were common enough, and Madame Reynard could compound her own pills, were she minded to try them as a remedy.

  “You have a lucky face, my dearie,” said the old woman, fixing Juliana with a sharp eye, as she accepted a shilling for six pegs and the Pimpernel water. “But you should beware the wiles of fine gentlemen, and I see danger for you high in the air.”

  “Thank you, old mother,” Juliana said, laughing. “I have already discovered the truth of your first warning, and the second one even more so—being high in the air has brought me nothing but trouble!”

  When Madame Reynard returned from her charitable mission, which had included a call on her friend Liz Iliffe at Petworth House, she had much of interest to relate.

  “I hear that your mother and the bearded young man are in difficulties at the Bull,” she reported. “Monsieur Rapley, the landlord, began to suspect that they had not enough to pay their account, and demanded some money from them, and they made him a great scene, my chambermaid told me. Perhaps they have used all their funds to pay the Bow Street Runners, who have so far found nothing. I think it unlikely that your maman will remain here much longer.”

  “I hope not, indeed,” Juliana said fervently.

  “Also Milord Egg plans to hold a Cuckoo Fete, a fair in Petworth Park, on John the Baptist’s Day.”

  “June the twenty-fourth? Why, that is my birthday,” said Juliana. “But why is it called a Cuckoo Fair?”

  “That is supposed to be the day when the cuckoo ceases calling. Georges has invited the Prince of Wales to come from Brighton; he intends to hold a great dinner, and there will be a feast in the park for the townspeople. Georges has commanded one thousand yards of tablecloth and two hundred dozen mugs from London. And there will be sports and games and archery contests, and naturally all the country people wish for bullbaiting and cockfighting, though Georges does not approve of those sports. He is always trying to persuade the farmers to use oxen to pull their plows, for oxen cost only half the price of a horse, but of course they will not listen to him.”

  “Poor Lord Egg,” said Juliana, laughing. “I hope very much that my mother will have abandoned the search and left Petworth by the day of the fete, for I should like to see it.”

  Two days later there was a very disconcerting occurrence. Berthe came home after buying fish in the market to report that the whole band of gypsies had been arrested and were being held in the Town Hall (where the stocks and other instruments of correction were kept) under suspicion of having made away with the lost young lady in the woods. The Bow Street Runners had laid an accusation against them.

  “But this is dreadful!” said Juliana, horrified at the news. “Of course they are innocent! Is Lord Egremont the magistrate here? I must ask him to let them go at once. May I go over to Petworth House, ma’am, and inform him of the true state of affairs?”

  “I suppose you must,” agreed Madame Reynard. “It will, I fear, entail telling him a portion of your history, but, to be honest, I fancy he guessed from the outset that you were not my niece. Very well, then, run along, my child.”

  Juliana accordingly hastened by the underground passage to Petworth House, and demanded of George Barrett where Lord Egremont was to be found.

  “’E be in the picture gallery, reckon,” a footman said, after some inquiry. “I fancy ’e be a-talking to one o’ they poetical gentlemen.”

  Following this advice, Juliana discovered Lord Egremont and the poetical gentleman seated on two half-unpacked wooden crates; by the casual eye they might have been taken for workmen, as they were both in shirt sleeves and surrounded by wood shavings and several stone busts. The poetical gentleman—a strongly built muscular man with a wild visionary light in his eye—was reading some lines from a notebook which he held in his hand:

  “The lark, sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn

  Appears, listens silent; then springing from the waving cornfield loud

  He leads the Choir of Day; trill, trill, trill, trill

  Mounting upon the wings of light into the great expanse.

  Re-echoing against the shining blue and lovely heavenly shell—”

  He broke off to say, “There is something about those lines, Lord Egremont, that does not quite sit as it should, but I am foxed if I can discover what it is.”

  “Why, my dear Mr. Blake, it is those trills, to be sure! Trill, trill, trill, trill! You cannot put that into a serious poem. Four trills, indeed! It is the outside of enough!”

  “But, sir, the lark invariably trills four times. One must be exact.”

  “No, no, my dear fellow, the line would be a great deal better if it read, ‘He leads the Choir of Morning: trill, trill, trill!’”

  “My dear Lord Egremont, you oblige me to believe that you have the ear of a penny ballad-monger. ‘Choir of Morning: trill, trill, trill,’ indeed! That sounds downright ridiculous! Besides, I used the word ‘morn’ two lines above. No, no, that will not do—I must think again…”

  He sat frowning and nibbling at his quill.

  Lord Egremont looked up and saw Juliana, who had hesitated, not liking to break into their discussion.

  “Why,” he said, with lifted brows and his endearing crooked smile, “it is the charming Mademoiselle Jeanne! How can I serve you, my dear child, on this delightful summer morning which has just been so accurately described by our friend?”

  “If I might have a private word with you, sir?”

  “By all means.” Lord Egremont glanced around, then led the way round a corner int
o an annex of the gallery where one immense stone statue was transfixing another with a spear. “Now, what is troubling you, my dear? Why this agitated air?”

  “Sir—those gypsies who have been apprehended on suspicion of making away with a young lady—”

  “Yes, my child?”

  “Well—you see—” Juliana nervously adjusted her fichu and then looked up to see that Lord Egremont was observing her with a twinkling eye.

  “I collect that you wish to inform me you are the young lady in question, so it is not possible that they can have murdered you? And that therefore they should be released without delay?”

  “Yes, sir, that is it exactly,” she said with an unbounded sense of relief. “But will it be necessary that I should appear in court, or give evidence? For I am, just at present, extremely anxious—”

  “To lie low, is it not so? Well, I see no difficulty here. I shall send a note to say that, in my opinion, there is not enough evidence to bring a case against them, and give orders to let them go immediately.”

  He summoned a footman and did so.

  “Oh, sir, I am exceedingly obliged to you,” said Juliana, with such heartfelt gratitude that Lord Egremont, laughing, pinched her cheek and said it was a good thing she did not sit on the bench with him all the time, or there would be no prisoners to put in his comfortable new jail, where the prisoners were all supplied with sets of clothes including two pairs of stockings and a wooden nightcap, and exercised individually in a commodious airing yard.

  “It sounds delightful, sir,” Juliana said politely.

  “I have it, I have it!” cried Mr. Blake from his packing case. “The words ‘shining’ and ‘lovely’ should be transposed: ‘The lovely blue and shining heavenly shell!’ That does away with the awkwardness of the two v sounds coming close together.”

  “William, William,” said the earl affectionately, “why will you not leave working for a while and go to sit with my Liz and read to her? She complains that she has hardly seen you this visit.”

  “I intend painting a picture for her, very soon,” said William, obediently rising to his feet. “It shall be a Last Judgment; and it shall have an inscription to her; let me think now, something along the lines of ‘Egremont’s Countess may assuage, The flames of Hell that fiercely rage…’”

  Pocketing his notebook, he wandered out of the gallery, and Juliana, having thanked Lord Egremont once again for his kindness, was about to follow his example, when, to her extreme horror, who should enter the place but Sir Groby Feverel! With great presence of mind, Juliana slipped behind a large statue as Lord Egremont turned to greet Sir Groby, and kept out of view, though her heart was beating so loud with fright and surprise that she wondered it did not betray her presence.

  To her dismay the two men, though they left the gallery, now walked in the direction of the tennis court. Juliana did not, therefore, dare return by the underground way, as she had been intending, but no more did she dare linger in Petworth House, for fear of encountering Sir Groby again. She ran upstairs to seek the help of William and Maria, who were sitting in the schoolroom, arguing about whether carrots floated or sank, instead of getting on with their Latin, and in spite of the remonstrance of Mademoiselle Lord. Fortunately at that moment a messenger arrived from Mr. Leidenberg in the kitchen, asking if Mam’selle would be so obliging as to come down and advise on the wording of the menu for the Prince of Wales’s dinner.

  As soon as she was gone: “William, could you possibly be so obliging as to lend me a suit of your clothes?” said Juliana. “Just for a couple of hours? We are much of a size—I promise I would not hurt them!”

  “Of course, Miss Jeannie—anything you wish,” said William, who had inherited his father’s tranquil disposition. “But what’s the row? Why do you look so pale and frightened?”

  “It is just that there is somebody in the house by whom I very much wish not to be recognized.”

  “We’ll dress you up so that your own mother wouldn’t know you,” said William cheerfully. “It’ll be a prime lark, won’t it, Polly?”

  “I’ll help Miss Jeannie dress,” said his sister firmly. “It wouldn’t be proper for you to do that.”

  So, ten minutes later, disguised in jacket, breeches, and hat, Juliana stole cautiously down a side staircase. She still did not dare pass through the tennis court, for that would be to attract notice; so, thrusting her hands into her pockets and endeavoring to stride freely and casually, like a boy, she passed through the main entrance and so through the gates into the town.

  In order to reach the street leading to the Hermitage, she was obliged to cross the main square, in which stood the Town Hall. This she did apprehensively enough, pulling her hat well down over her ears and hardly daring to glance about her, for fear of encountering her mother or Captain Davenport. A loud clamor of voices as she reached the middle of the square did, however, induce her to take a quick look sideways, and to her unbounded relief she saw that Lord Egremont’s order had already been put into effect, for the gypsies were just emerging from the Town Hall, a most motley and gaudily garbed crew, chattering among themselves, with expressions that varied from indignation at their wrongful detention to joy at its sudden ending.

  Juliana was hurrying on her way, amused at the thought that none of them realized she was the cause of their apprehension and also of their release, when she almost ran up against a sunburned man who was following in the rear of the tatterdemalion procession. She heard him give a sudden gasp—their eyes met—and then she was running up the street, almost blind with shock, her heart beating even faster than after her sight of Sir Groby. It could not have been! she told herself incredulously. It is impossible that it should have been. And yet it was! She was certain that it had been. Brown-skinned, his hair bleached by the sun, much thinner than when she had seen him last, disguised in a long smock, a round hat, spotted neckerchief, and leather leggings, she had surely recognized Herr Welcker!

  I must have imagined it! she decided, when, panting and flustered, she found herself safely back in the Hermitage garden. No doubt having just seen Sir Groby—of which, alas, there can be no doubt whatsoever—deranged and flustered my mind, predisposed me to imagine things that are not so. For what in the world could Herr Welcker be doing with a band of gypsies?

  There seemed absolutely no adequate answer to that question.

  She asked Berthe, whom she discovered hanging out washing in the garden, where the gypsies came from, and who they were. Berthe shrugged.

  “They are not English—they are not French. They come and go as they please. They have ships, and cross the sea; sometimes, comme les gentilshommes, they bring goods or escaped persons from France; sometimes they steal and poach. They are wild. They are their own masters.”

  Which did not advance Juliana’s inquiry.

  Madame Reynard was, not unnaturally, somewhat startled to see her protégée come home with an agitated aspect and clad in a suit of boy’s clothes. She demanded to be told what was the matter, and Juliana was obliged to explain that a gentleman staying at Petworth House, Sir Groby Feverel, was a particular enemy of hers, and that she very much dreaded being recognized by him.

  “Heavens, my dear,” said Madame Reynard, “you seem to have enemies under every bush! No sooner does one go than another one arrives. It is a pity—I was about to inform you that your mother and Captain Davenport have quitted the town, leaving their bill unpaid at the Bull. And now, here is another peril! I am not at all surprised to hear that you detest Sir Groby, for he is a most evil man, and I have heard many scandalous tales concerning him. Indeed, Georges was very annoyed that he has invited himself, for they are not friends, pas du tout, and the reason Sir Groby gave, that he was writing a treatise on wood carving and wished to study the work of Mr. Grinling Gibbons, seemed exceedingly hard to credit. I fear, my child, that he has somehow got wind of your presence in Petworth, and invented
this pretext to come here. Perhaps he followed Captain Davenport and the Bow Street Runners.”

  “Oh, what can it all mean?” lamented Juliana. “I believe that I had best leave your house, ma’am, and get clear away from here. I am nothing but a trouble to you.”

  “Nonsense, my child; you are giving me more amusement and diversion than I have had for years,” Madame Reynard replied briskly. “Now—let us think what is best to be done. I must ask Georges to get rid of Sir Groby; that will not be easy, for Georges is so good-natured, he dislikes to turn away a guest. But perhaps we can say there is smallpox in the town, or some such thing.” She laughed as she surveyed the anxious Juliana. “You look quite famous as a boy! Perhaps you had better remain one for the present—my nephew Jean! Fortunately the gentlemen must have come again last night—we could say you came with them—they have left an immense package in my kiosque; if it is tea, I fear it must have become wet on the crossing, for it weighs heavy as lead.”

  However the heavy parcel proved, when undone, to contain books.

  “Books!” exclaimed Madame Reynard in disgusted astonishment. “Reading is an admirable occupation, I do not say to the contrary, but to make this perilous journey all the way from France, up the Arun River and then our brook, for nothing but a great bundle of dusty volumes, quite passes my comprehension, indeed it does!”

  But Juliana was kneeling on the stone summerhouse floor, with tears running down her cheeks, opening first one volume and then another.