The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  He swung furiously round and ran down the stairs again. Juliana was terrified at the sound of the quarrel that followed. Discovering two staples, on the door and the jamb, she contrived a bolt with the skewer, so that when, presently, her mother ran upstairs and shook the door, shrieking insults, she was unable to get in. After a time she went down again, and a long, muttered colloquy took place. Juliana crawled weakly back to her pallet, and sometime later she must have fallen asleep again.

  When she woke she realized with dismay that entry had been effected into the room. The skewer had been dislodged from its shaky position and removed. Worse, the drugged material must have been held to her nostrils again while she slept, for she had the same nauseated, dizzy sensation, in even greater degree, that she had experienced before.

  Downstairs, as before, she could hear voices arguing; but now there seemed to be three of them. She could distinguish two men’s voices, besides the shrill, bird-like tones of her mother.

  No wonder, she thought vaguely, that Papa could not endure being married to her. No wonder he fled from her…

  “Damn your impudent selfishness,” Laura Paget was crying. “Why do we have to remain here like beggars while you lounge at your ease in Petworth?”

  “Because, ma’am, I happen to have a house in Petworth, whereas you have run out of money,” came Lieutenant Cox’s voice, loud, cheerful, and self-satisfied. “And because it’s best we ain’t associated in people’s minds, and because someone has to keep guard over the young lady. But don’t fret—I have brought you enough Geneva to warm you nicely—a whole tub—nineteen bottles’ worth—I hope you are duly grateful! It cost me a pound and sixteen shillings, and I do not begrudge it in the slightest.”

  “Have you brought some bread and meat?” asked Davenport’s voice sharply.

  “Ay, ay, plenty; a lovely handful of mutton chops for Madame here to sizzle over the embers. That should tickle up the nostrils of our little captive up yonder; I daresay she will very soon be ready to cry ‘I will!’”

  “Well, I can tell you, she ain’t at the moment,” growled Davenport.

  “No? Give her two or three days of fasting, and she’ll come around. Or do you reckon she would sooner have me for a bridegroom? I’d be ready—you know that!”

  “I also happen to know that you’ve a wife already at Clapham!”

  “What has that to say to anything? You are as good as wed to your Tillie. By the by, what became of the brat?”

  “I neither know nor care!”

  Juliana heard a clink, and then Laura Paget’s voice. “Fuller than that, idiot! I need more than a niggardly couple of teaspoonsful to keep out the cold in this hideous damp hovel!”

  “I am sorry that you don’t like it, ma’am; it was the best accommodation I could think of on the spur of the moment. And you must agree it makes a handy prison—not quite so choice as old Egremont’s, with his nightcaps and his two pounds of bread a day, but even more secure.” Cox laughed heartily, and there were further sounds of clinking. Although she intended to keep listening, Juliana presently fell into a drugged sleep once more. Vaguely, through its mists, she heard the voices downstairs become loud, rise to a pitch of quarrelsomeness, then die down. Later on there came soft steps on the stair, and the door opened. The light of a candle illuminated her wretched little room.

  “Miss Paget? Are you there?” inquired a soft voice from behind the candle flame. “It is quite all right to come out now! Both your mama and Captain Davenport are enjoying the sleep of intoxication. I took the liberty of lacing their Geneva with laudanum! Dear, dear, they have left you in a pickle, have they not?”—as she staggeringly rose to her feet. “I wish I could carry you down the stairs, but I fear they are too steep; but you may take my hand; so—that’s the dandy. Down you go—very good!”

  Arrived in the downstairs room, Juliana peered about—it was dark now, and the place was lit only by the candle and the dying fire. She could see both her mother and Davenport sprawled out on the floor, evidently dead drunk.

  “My—my dress—” she managed to articulate. Lieutenant Cox—for it was he—looked about briefly, then stooped to pick up a shred of material.

  “Alas—I fear your mother must have burnt it—” He tossed the piece into the fire, which blazed up briefly. “Here, you had best take her shawl instead. Do not trouble yourself—it is all thick woodland, there is no one to see you.”

  Shivering, Juliana wrapped herself in the shawl he gave her, then followed weakly as he led the way outside.

  The night was cool and damp, very dark, with no stars. Juliana sniffed hungrily at the smell of wet undergrowth and forest earth, so much preferable to the fetid smell of the hut.

  “I am afraid I am too weak to walk,” she said simply. “Have you a carriage?”

  “A carriage? No, my dear. But old Brown Peg brought me and the tub of Geneva, and I daresay she can make shift to carry us both back. A moment, though, till I make up a fire to warm the bones of that previous pair—no need to leave them to freeze to death—” She heard him laugh, briefly, his step as he turned back into the house with something in his hands; then she saw the reflected light as a flame leapt. A moment later he was back, beside the dark, warm bulk of a horse.

  “Hup you go now, my dear, and hang on to the crupper! That’s it—so—now I mount in front of you, and all you have to do is keep a firm hold of my belt. Capital! Off we go; old Peg knows her way through these woods better than any exciseman.”

  Indeed, the mare, invisible in the darkness, picked her way sure-footedly among the trees, while Juliana dazedly clung on to Lieutenant Cox’s belt. Presently he began to laugh.

  “Butter my wig, what a pair of muttonheads! I am sorry, my dear, to laugh when you are in such a case, but I cannot help it when I think how capitally I have fooled them! Eh, me and old Sir Groby too! He was watching out for them like a hawk, had them followed to Petworth as soon as Dav made the mistake of going up to town for the Runners. (And much use they were—putting the cry on a set of gypsies who were in France at the time you vanished.) Down comes old Sir Groby, sniffing about, and I very soon have him dispatched. And now, if that pair choose to drink themselves into Valhalla, I daresay neither you nor I will weep, my love, hey? I’ll soon have you in safety—in a close, quiet little room, where you can lie as snug as a dormouse all winter long—come up, mare!”—as she stumbled, crossing a brook. “Watch how you go, old Peg, it’s not often that I ride you with five hundred thousand gold shekels clinging on to my belt.”

  “Where are you taking me, sir?” asked Juliana, stirred to vague alarm by his words.

  “Why, to my father’s house at Newgrove, where else? I wouldn’t invite that havey-cavey pair there—but there’s a little private room that will just suit you—with your interest in the Stuarts!” He chuckled. “Ay, you can sit in there and think about Charles the First, and Charles the Second, and Charles the Third, too, if you’ve a mind to. And where you and I can talk and kiss without fear of interruption.”

  “Sir—Lieutenant Cox—pray, pray take me back to Madame Reynard’s house—to the Hermitage—I am sure Mr. Throgmorton will pay you a great reward if you do so,” Juliana said.

  “My dear girl, you must be funning! A reward? Why accept a slice, when you can have the whole cake? You are so delightful and charming, Miss Paget, that I cannot rest until I have made you mine, all mine. Hey up, mare!”

  They had now come out of the wood into fields, and he kicked the mare into a canter.

  “B-b-but you have a wife in Clapham!” Juliana managed to articulate.

  “Never mind her, my dear! A wife in Clapham is easy got rid of—one way or t’other. If she won’t go easy, I’ll prune her off as I did Rosie the baker’s daughter…”

  By now they were galloping at a rapid pace. Juliana looked down at the shadowy ground. If she threw herself off the mare, she would probably brea
k her leg. Then she would not be able to run, and he would easily be able to recapture her. Perhaps they might come to a gate or stile, where he would be obliged to slow down; that would be the time to throw herself off, just as he had passed through the gate.

  She had reached this point in her incoherent planning when a voice cried, “Halt!” The mare snorted, and Juliana was suddenly aware of black figures moving out from the darkness of a hedgerow ahead of them. Peg threw up her head, and Lieutenant Cox cursed at her; next moment Juliana, leaving go of Cox’s belt, pushed herself violently away from the mare and fell sprawling onto hard grassy ground. As she hit the ground she heard a pistol shot and saw a red spark of flame; the mare screamed and wheeled about. Juliana heard a confusion of voices shouting, and then nothing more.

  Fourteen

  She woke to broad daylight, and a sense of complete incredulity. For she found herself back in her own room, in her own bed at the Hermitage—sunlight on the apple trees outside the window, Berthe just coming through the door with a steaming cup on a tray. Could it all have been an appalling dream? But no—as Juliana tried to sit up, she realized that she ached in every limb, and that her head still swam horribly; also her left arm was bandaged and felt very sore when she tried to move it.

  “Ah, you poor little cabbage, you are awake then—wait one small moment while I call Madame,” exclaimed Berthe rhetorically, putting down the cup, which smelled as if it contained hot wine and cinnamon. Madame Reynard was, in fact, close behind her, and came swiftly to the bedside to embrace Juliana.

  “Oh, chérie, what a fright you gave us. We have been in despair!—we feared we had lost you forever—that your terrible maman had abducted you in order to acquire the treasure of that Rajah or Nawab, or whatever he was—oh, how happy we were to see you safe back!”

  “But, Tante ’Lise—how did I get back? Who brought me? I remember nothing!”

  “Who brought you? Why, the gypsies did—two great black-haired fellows like Beelzebub and Asmodeus, an old witch in a shawl, a young girl, and a little imp with a red kerchief, who told me his name was Pharaoh, though I daresay Child of Satan would do equally well. They said that they had found you insensible in a field, up near Brinksoles, with Lieutenant Cox dead as a herring nearby, and his mare lamed by stumbling about with her foreleg through her rein.”

  “Lieutenant Cox dead! What killed him?”

  “A bullet through his head,” replied Madame Reynard calmly. “The gypsies all declare that is how they found him—and as he was known to be involved with les gentilshommes, it is thought he must have been killed in some smuggling affray. His parents have been summoned back to Newgrove from Bath; other than them, I do not think anybody will grieve at his loss.”

  Juliana recalled his saying. “There’s a little private room that will just suit you…” She shivered, and lay silent. She wondered what had become of her mother and Captain Davenport—Jenkins. How long had it been before they had woken and discovered that their accomplice had betrayed them?

  “My child, I must ask you one question,” Madame Reynard said, looking at her carefully. “I do not think you are quite ready to tell your tale yet, but this I must know, in case there is need to send for a physician. Were you violated? I dislike to distress you, but did either of those men force you to go to bed with him?”

  “No, madame—thank God,” Juliana said weakly. “I must confess I feared very much that Captain Davenport would do so—because, on our elopement, before, he had been so—so very urgent—but I think the presence of my mother constrained him—”

  “He was her lover?”

  “I do not know… I think it possible. And their accomplice—Lieutenant Cox—I think his intentions were very bad, but he was shot before—”

  “It is enough.” Madame Reynard’s voice was full of relief. “And you have no pain, no wound, no bleeding? Bien. We will talk fully when you are more rested. Now drink Berthe’s posset and sleep again. You are among friends once more, and we shall see that no harm comes to you.”

  Twice more Juliana slept and woke, drank Berthe’s potions, and slept again. Then she awoke clearheaded and calm, and ready to tell her tale. At that point Madame Reynard insisted on summoning Lord Egremont. “He is a justice of the peace, if wrongdoers need to be brought to judgment, it is best that he hear it all from the start.”

  So Juliana told her tale from the beginning. When she described the little house in the forest, Madame Reynard and Lord Egremont looked at one another significantly, but neither spoke. When Juliana came to the end, Madame Reynard said, “Are you feeling strong, chérie? Strong enough to hear a somewhat shocking piece of news?”

  “I—I think so,” faltered Juliana. “What is it?”

  “Two days ago some charcoal burners over at Brinksoles noticed a great column of smoke going up into the sky from the part of the forest known as Badlands. They went to see what was causing it, and found the old keeper’s cottage burning; it had already burned almost away, and they could not put out the fire. But when it all died down, a body was found in the ashes.”

  “One body?”

  “Yes. It was so burned, they do not know if it were man or woman.”

  I wonder which of them it was, thought Juliana, shivering. Was that Cox’s work—just before we left? Somehow the horror of that death, in the dreadful little house, combined with the doubt as to who had died to make the thought of the other, still alive, particularly terrifying… She repeated aloud, in a trembling voice, “I wonder which of them it was.”

  Lord Egremont said firmly, “My dear Miss Juliana, you have been subjected to a shocking experience, but you must now endeavor to put it quite out of your mind. Your friends are all around you, and we are going to keep a most careful watch over you, never fear! We shall also institute a search for the survivor of that fire. Meanwhile, as it is only three days now till your birthday—”

  “Three days?” cried Juliana. “Why, what is today? I had thought it was Tuesday?”

  “No, my child. It is Thursday. You have lain sick for two days. And now,” continued Lord Egremont, “I have a surprise for you; a pleasant one, I hope.”

  “What can it be, sir?” Juliana felt she was hardly equal to any more surprises.

  “Your Grandfather, Sir Horace, is here, and wishful to see you.”

  “Grandfather? Oh, I would like to see him above all things!”

  At her heartfelt cry of joy, some muttering, which had been going on outside the door, resolved itself into Berthe, standing aside, and Sir Horace, stumping forward with a very red face.

  “Grandfather—” cried Juliana, opening her arms. “Oh, I am so very sorry for what I did! I wish now that I had never left Flintwood!—No, I do not, for then I would not have met dear Madame Reynard, and Lord Egremont. Please, Grandfather, say that you forgive me!”

  Sir Horace made an inarticulate sound—took one of the hands stretched out to him—then as Juliana looked at him pleadingly he fairly took her in his arms and hugged her.

  “Good God, child,” he then said, surveying her, “what have you done to your hair? You look like I do not know what!”

  “Aha! Now he has truly accepted her,” muttered Madame Reynard to Lord Egremont, and they tactfully left the room (which indeed was hardly large enough to contain them all), leaving Sir Horace with his granddaughter.

  They were both trying to say different things to one another.

  “If only you had been at home! You would have seen through Captain Davenport’s pretensions in one moment. How could I have been such a fool?”

  “Why did you not tell me that your father had written books under the name of Charles Elphinstone? The silly fellow—why could he not use his own name?”

  “I have felt so bad about you, Grandfather—I longed to tell you all about everything. Oh, if only you had told me that I was to be an heiress, I would have been on my guard. Can I
get rid of the money? Give it away?”

  “I have all your father’s books in my bedroom; have read them over, I cannot tell you how many times—never realizing they were his! I have always, as you know, been fond of history—”

  “No, I did not know that—”

  “A letter came to you from Mr. Murray, which I opened, not knowing what other course to take—then all became plain—”

  “And then, when I was living with Madame Reynard, I longed to write to you but did not dare—I thought you could not approve of her—”

  “Madame Reynard is an excellent sort of woman,” said Sir Horace. “In her way! Ahem! Knew her many years ago in Paris—took her to the Comédie a few times—she cured me of a phlegm—of course, in my young days, gels of your age would not have been allowed anywhere near women of the world such as Madame, but—but—times have changed, I understand. Nothing, I daresay, compared to what goes on in London. And I find that she has taken very kind care of you—can see that. As for Egremont—singular sort of fellow—a bit queer in his attic, if you ask me. Still, he has some excellent notions about cultivation—”

  “Oh, Grandpapa, I am so happy to see you!”

  “Well, m’dear, we’ll agree to say no more about what’s past, eh? Mind you,” he added unfairly, “if you had agreed to marry Mr. Arpel, none of this need have happened.”

  “But how could I agree to marry him? I had never even met him!”

  “Never met him? Gel’s got moonshine in her brain-box,” grumbled Sir Horace. “Far’s I can make out, you have been practically living in one another’s pockets. Arpel contrived to find you for me—”

  Juliana would have demanded further explanation, but at this point Madame returned with a large basin of pottage, and orders that the General must quit her patient before she became overtired.

  “How does Sir Groby go on?” inquired Juliana, as Madame remained while the pottage was eaten.