The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  But Juliana shook her head without speaking. The news had overwhelmed her. All she could think was, that if only her great-uncle Henry had written to her father before—if they had traveled to England last summer—if her father had known that such a sum awaited him—if he had not wished to finish his book before setting out for England—

  “Oh, I cannot bear it!” she exclaimed, pressing her hands to her cheeks, down which tears were beginning to roll.

  “Tush! That, miss, is hardly a normal way in which to receive news of a very handsome competence,” said Mr. Throgmorton, disapproving to the last. He added more tolerantly, however, “Well, well, I daresay you would like some time to think over the information you have received. Perhaps we may appoint a date for another meeting to discuss arrangements for your formal identification. I would suggest tomorrow morning. (Tonight I dine at Petworth House.) And then I shall come down again on June the twenty-fourth (if all is in order) with papers for you to sign, Miss Paget. For the moment I daresay I had best bid you good afternoon.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Juliana. Her eyes were too blurred by tears to perceive his extended hand; she stood up and moved uncertainly toward the door. All she longed for was fresh air and silence, in which to come to terms with this devastating news.

  “One single moment, madam—” said Mr. Throgmorton, as Madame Reynard was on the point of following her young protégée. “With regard to your inquiry two weeks since, respecting the Glebe Path—as you are here, we may as well settle the matter—”

  Juliana walked blindly along the passage and out into the street, disregarding Madame’s cry of “Attendez-moi, chérie!”

  The cock-throwing was still in progress; by now, with dusk falling and work hours over, a much larger crowd of people had assembled in the square. Anxious to get away from the press, Juliana edged her way along the wall and round the corner into the street that led up toward the Hermitage.

  “Look out, missie, you’ve dropped summat!” cried a rough voice, and turning, Juliana saw something white on the cobbles. She stopped to pick it up—had a momentary glimpse of a gypsy urchin clad in ragged breeches and a red kerchief, who seemed to be staring at her in horror—then a powerful hand thrust her head dawn, while, at the same time, some object held under her nose and mouth gave out a choking fume of noxious vapor which she could not help inhaling. Her head swam, her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank down upon the pavement.

  “Watch out for the lady, she’ve fainted!” the same rough voice shouted.

  Dimly, Juliana apprehended that she was being lifted up; she felt herself laid on an upholstered seat, and heard the slam of a carriage door; then she felt a swaying, jolting motion which assisted her plunge into deep unconsciousness.

  Thirteen

  Juliana next opened her eyes on darkness. At first she felt dreadfully sick and confused, the effects of the drug still remaining to perplex her senses; she even wondered if she might possibly be dead, a horrible, close, dank, earthy odor all about her powerfully contributing to this impression. But after a long while she heard a cock crow, very faintly, in the distance, and then light began gradually stealing into the room where she lay.

  It was a dismal little box of a place—the bedroom of some cottage, she surmised from the sloped ceiling, damp walls made of wattle and daub, the bare worm-eaten boards of the floor, and the lack of furniture. A small window hole was boarded over. It took Juliana some time to observe all these details, for she still felt exceedingly weak and unwell; when she attempted to raise herself up on one elbow, her head throbbed so badly that she was immediately obliged to lie down again. At last, however, she managed to push herself up, and found that she was laid upon a pallet on the floorboards. The door of the room was closed. She crawled over and feebly shook it, but it was secured on the other side.

  “Help!” Juliana called, as loudly as she could, and she shook the flimsy door again. “Help, help!”

  At first there was no reply, but as she continued to call, and to rattle the door, she heard sounds from below, as if her room lay at the top of a flight of stairs.

  She heard a kind of grumbling groan, then a cough or scraping sound. After a while a man’s voice said, “Our guest has woken up,” and a woman’s voice replied with a sound of irritable acquiescence, as if she resented being woken from sleep simply to be apprised of this fact.

  “Do you wish to speak to her, or shall I?”

  There was another irritable rejoinder, a negative, apparently. Then quick firm steps mounted a stair, and a voice, surprisingly close, spoke on the other side of the thin door.

  “Miss Paget? Are you attending?”

  Juliana recognized the voice immediately. She mustered what strength she had to reply in a calm, firm manner. “Yes, I am attending, Captain Davenport. And I wish you will let me out of this place!”

  “Not so fast, my dear! First we need an undertaking from you.”

  “If you expect me to agree to marry you,” Juliana said coldly, “you are a great way wide of the mark! I am not to be caught in that manner twice, I assure you!”

  “In that case, ma’am,” he replied, “I fear that you are liable to starve to death in there.”

  Juliana instantly began shouting “Help!” again, and rattling the door as hard as she could. Captain Davenport waited until she had tired herself out (which did not take long, as she was still very weak) and sunk down on the floor; then his voice, still just outside the door, said, in a pitying tone, “I am afraid there is not the least use in keeping up such a clamor, Miss Paget. We are in the middle of the forest; in the area known as Badlands, because it belongs to nobody, and is rarely visited. The keeper’s cottage in which you find yourself incarcerated is ruinous and not entered from one year’s end to another. Your skeleton may dry to dust here before it is discovered.”

  “If my body is not discovered,” said Juliana quickly, “then I shall not be presumed dead and it will be many years before those who hope to inherit my fortune may do so!”

  “Very true, my dear. So it is much more likely that your body will be discovered; doubtless your murder will be laid at the door of the brutal smugglers who attacked Sir Groby.”

  He let a pause elapse while Juliana wondered if the attack on Sir Groby had been public knowledge, or whether his awareness of the occurrence indicated that he had committed the assault himself; probably the latter, she thought.

  Then he said, in a milder tone, “Come, my dear, do not be obstinate! We hold all the cards. You may as well be accommodating. After all, there is plenty of money to share among us. Your mother has a special license. We may be married by noon, and you back with your friends. Why do you not come downstairs and talk the matter over calmly?”

  “I am perfectly calm, Captain Davenport,” Juliana replied. “And quite prepared to come down.”

  She heard a key turned, and presently saw him. He looked different; shrunk down, somehow in stature, from the surly man with whom she had shared the elopement; and very, very different from the polished Captain Davenport of the Pantheon Rooms and St. James’s Park. This man was pale, untidy, and haggard; his beard was untrimmed, his eyes were bloodshot. However, he seemed collected enough; he pulled Juliana to her feet (she found she was still too weak to stand unaided) and assisted her down a flight of stairs which were so narrow and so steep that they more nearly resembled a ladder.

  The squalid little room down below was a degree warmer than Juliana’s prison had been, because a small fire of sticks burned in the tiny hearth; and there was a narrow window, also, which assured Juliana that Captain Davenport had spoken nothing but the truth when he said they were in the middle of the forest, for it showed a close view of dense undergrowth. Juliana, however, had little attention to spare for anything but the woman who sat huddled on a stool by the handful of fire, fixing her eyes hungrily upon the disheveled figure of her captive.

 
“Well, miss,” she said harshly. “How does it feel to be the underdog? Do you find that you like it?”

  Juliana looked thoughtfully at the speaker, in whom she recognized the lady of the Ponte Vecchio, and of Lord Lambourn’s house.

  “How do you do, ma’am? I collect that you are my mother. How should I address you? As Mother? Or as Mrs. Paget?”

  “Ay—ay—you are full of fine airs and impertinence now—but after a few days without any food you’ll sing another tune,” the woman said loudly and angrily, her hands working one inside the other, as if she wished to take hold of Juliana and shake her. Indeed, she half rose up, but Captain Davenport, behind Juliana, said sharply, “Be easy now, Laura! Do not rush at things all in a pelted… I am afraid you will have to sit on the floor, my dear,” he added, to Juliana, “since there is but one seat.” He himself sat on the bottom step—for the stairs led straight into the little room—and Juliana, after glancing round her, sank weakly onto the ground, which was simply hard-packed earth, covered over with a layer of dirty-looking rubbish. The room was almost as bare as the one upstairs, save for a couple of sacks spread out in one corner, and a small basket, containing a loaf and a bottle of Geneva. A black pot stood near the fire. Captain Davenport, interpreting Juliana’s glance, nodded ironically. “See the privations we undergo for your sake,” he said. “But we, at least, are supplied with food, which I fear will not be your lot.”

  Laura Paget, still with ravenous eyes fixed on Juliana, began to mutter, rather to herself than aloud. “Oh, how I have longed for this moment! The petted, cosseted little darling—her father loved her so much! He took such care of her! Never let her out of his sight! Times out of mind I have lurked, and watched, and planned, and hoped—but he—weak, whining fool as he was—nevertheless always seemed to divine just as I was ready to pounce, and off he would go; and then there was the long pursuit to begin all over, discovering where they had flitted to. In Geneva—in Milan—in Florence—each time I thought I had her. I had found out so much—talked to neighbors, learned the degree of his illness—all her follies and weaknesses—il re Carlo! Bah! And then—just when I had my decoy duck ready, my sweet Charles figure fitted to match her sickly tastes—off she went again. But now I have her, and can do as I choose with her.”

  “Easy, ma’am,” said Captain Davenport warningly. “Take care now! Do not be overexciting yourself and mar all!”

  “Why should I have lived a life of wretched anxiety and disgrace, all these years, while she is feted and pampered—vouchers to Almack’s, introduced to Prinney’s brothers—what has she done to deserve such respect?”

  Juliana could not withhold a shudder as she studied her mother. It seemed only too plain that Laura Paget had become slightly unhinged by the uncertainties of her life, or by its hatreds, or by the exertions of her recent scheming. Juliana was not certain that reason would reach her at all, but trying it seemed the only course open to her.

  “What do you want, Mother?” she said, in as calm a voice as she could manage. “If it is money, I shall have plenty for us both. I am very happy to sign a paper making over half my fortune to you. Will that not satisfy you?”

  “No—no—that would not do—” muttered Laura Paget, turning from her survey of her child to stir the fire restlessly with a hazel twig. “No, she must give it all—all—”

  “Signing such a paper would be impracticable, I fear, Miss Paget,” interposed Captain Davenport. “There would be all too much reason to suppose that you had signed under duress.”

  “I would say that I had not!”

  “No, I fear you must resign yourself to marry me. The marriage need be of short duration only, I assure you!”

  “Ay—he wishes to return to his slut in Southampton,” muttered Mrs. Paget spitefully. Suddenly she rounded on Davenport, her eyes blazing. “If you had not spent half the money I gave you on that trollop, we should not be in this case now—forced to subsist on the charity of your friend—your havey-cavey Cox! Suppose he does not come back?”

  “He will come back, ma’am, don’t trouble your head,” Davenport said easily. “He wants his cut! Young Cox has all his buttons, I promise you.”

  “But how can you hope to marry me?” said Juliana. “What clergyman would do it?”

  “Why, my dear, there is not the least difficulty in the world. We have your mother—who approves of the match—we have her consent. And we have a clergyman—Mr. Wakeford, the rector of Barlavington, who stands under an obligation to my friend Cox—a little matter of a false entry in the baptismal register, which he would not wish brought into the public eye!”

  “Cox and Jenkins,” mumbled Mrs. Paget to herself. “Don’t care for ’em. Never wanted ’em in. But couldn’t carry off the gal on my own. Don’t want ’em now, though. Who’s to say—once Jenkins marries her—that I shall have my rights?”

  “Jenkins?” said Juliana, turning to look at Captain Davenport, who appeared somewhat embarrassed. “Is that who you really are? Mr. Throgmorton’s dismissed clerk? The ex-actor? No wonder you contrived such a sympathetic presentation of King Charles the First! I collect that, having milked Sir Groby, you then approached my mother with your valuable information and she was persuaded to hire you? Let me congratulate you. Captain Davenport is vastly more romantic than Jenkins! I see you had gauged my tastes to a nicety.”

  “Pray feel free to continue calling me Captain Davenport if you prefer,” said he as jauntily as he could.

  “I do not wish to call you anything at all,” said Juliana. “You fill me with disgust. I find you wholly contemptible. I would sooner starve to death than marry you.”

  “Strong words!” He shrugged. “But it may not be a case of starving to death, my love. That sounds easy and peaceful, I daresay you think! But what would you say to being upended in a barrel of rainwater (there is one just outside, if it be not full of mud) and held there till you drown? Or having your throat cut with that”—and he nodded toward a rusty but sharp-looking butcher knife that lay by the basket.

  Juliana shuddered in spite of herself.

  “But if my murdered body is found,” she said quickly, to banish the idea of that rusty blade sawing at her throat, “you will not stand to gain a penny, Cap—Mr. Francis Jenkins. All the money will then go to my mother—if she does not go to the gallows.”

  “Sharp, aren’t you?” he said, half angry, half admiring. “But I can easily supply myself with a wedding certificate, you know. Mr. Wakeford would oblige with one, I feel certain.”

  “In that case,” said Juliana, rising shakily to her feet, “I do not see that you have any need for my cooperation at all. You may as well ask Mr. Wakeford to forge the certificate directly—if you can get my mother to agree! And now, if you will excuse me, I shall lie down again, for I feel very ill.”

  “Suit yourself,” replied Davenport laconically, but Mrs. Paget cried, “No, no Francis, how do you know she will not escape out of the window? You must cut her stays—cut her stays! Leave her only her shift, so that she cannot run out into the wood!”

  “How can she possibly escape, Laura, while we are here?” he replied irritably, but as she continued to insist, in a high, piercing voice, that Juliana’s stays must be cut—

  “Oh, very well,” he grumbled at last, and, taking up the knife, he walked round behind Juliana, ripped the brown silk dress apart with one dexterous tug, and slit her stay laces at the back so that they and her petticoat fell off and she stood shivering in her shift.

  “Oh!” she gasped furiously. “How dare you? How dare you?”

  “Just a precaution, my love,” he replied calmly, wagging the knife at her before returning it to the basket. “Here—you may have one of these if you wish to cover yourself,” he added, averting his eyes as if in distaste from her bare limbs, and he tossed her one of the sacks. Furious, cold, shaking, shamed, and terrified, Juliana glanced toward the door, wondering
whether to make a dash for it, but Davenport, catching her eye, slightly shook his head in what was almost a pitying manner, and she knew that it would be hopeless; still too sick and weak from the effects of the drug, she would be unable to run more than a few yards. Climbing the stairs, she huddled back on her pallet, pulling the sack round her as best she could.

  Soon, to her unspeakable horror, she heard her mother’s voice, angrily urging Davenport.

  “Don’t be a whining milksop, man, you were not used to be so nice! Why, I can remember times when you were as hot and hard to hold back as any stallion. What ails you, fool? Hurry on up and take her—then she is ours for sure, she will be glad enough to put out her little finger for your ring.”

  A low mutter followed, evidently Davenport objecting to her command, then her voice rose to an angry shriek.

  “Coward! Gaby! Do you call yourself a man? You are no better than a eunuch. If you do not go up there, I declare I shall take the knife and so spoil her looks that no other man will even wish to touch her.”

  “No, ma’am—Laura, do not—pray, pray be calm, I beg of you! Think what you are about—think what you are doing—your own daughter! Oh, very well, I will go up—”

  Juliana heard him step on the stair. Looking about her desperately, she noticed the glitter of rusty metal in a corner, and snatched up an old meat skewer which must have been lying there for years past. Preparing to sell her honor dear, she faced Captain Davenport as he came through the door.

  “I warn you, sir, I shall defend myself as long as my strength holds out,” she said breathlessly, retreating to the corner of the room, and she held the skewer in front of her.

  “Oh, it is of no use, I can’t do it,” said he, with a kind of savage irritation. Laura Paget was shouting obscenities from below.

  “Coward! Coward! Do it, or I shall call you the most arrant coward I have ever come across.”