The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  This conversation was making Juliana uncomfortable; and besides, she felt that Lord Egremont and Madame Reynard must have many private matters to discuss. So she politely excused herself and returned to the house. Looking down from her bedroom window later, she saw the two of them pacing slowly along the grass walk, arm in arm, their heads bent together in conversation. How very strange! she thought. They seem like a married pair—indeed, far more attached to one another than my aunt and Lord Lambourn. And yet he is not married to her—not married at all! People, she concluded, are not in the least the way that I was led to expect. Now, Papa, and my aunt, and Grandfather were all persuaded that for a man and woman to love when they are not married is disgraceful and scandalous; even wicked; but I am sure that Madame Reynard is not wicked. I think, on the contrary, that she is probably very good. As for Milord Egg, I am not so sure about him. But no, I do not believe that he is wicked.

  As for Mr. Cox, she tried not to think about him at all. Like Lord Egremont, she hoped that he would soon leave the town again.

  She began trying to frame a letter to her grandfather.

  Dear Grandfather:

  The Excellent young man mentioned in my last letter to you turned out, on closer acquaintance, to be a Snake in the Grass, and a complete Charlatan and Deceiver. Having discovered this sad fact only after our Elopement was under way, I have now escaped from him and taken refuge with a most Estimable lady, the erstwhile Mistress of the Earl of Egremont; he, too, is a very Pleasant and Polished Person, and I understand, an excellent landlord…

  Discouraged, she abandoned the attempt. She was obliged to admit to herself that she would probably never be received by her grandfather again. It had been just possible that, if Captain Davenport had turned out as respectable as he seemed, Sir Horace might in the end have been brought to countenance the match, but in the present circumstances he could only consider Juliana utterly disgraced; compromised by her elopement, by its equivocal ending, and by her present company. There would be little use in attempting to state her case. Sighing, she abandoned the effort of composition (in any case, there was no paper in her room) and, as she now observed from her window that Lord Egremont had quitted his hostess after bestowing on her an affectionate kiss and a polite bow, she went downstairs to ask in what way she might make herself useful.

  She found Madame Reynard equipping herself with a large basket containing many small bottles and packets, and what looked like a large pot of raspberry jam. Then she wrapped herself in a cape. “I go to visit the poor,” she explained.

  “Are there so many poor?” Juliana was surprised. Petworth had seemed a particularly trim, prosperous little town.

  “In effect, no; but there are always some unfortunate through illness or accident. And the English notions of doctoring are barbaric! An infection of the eye they rub with a black cat’s tail—still attached to the cat! And to cure a case of ague, the wretched sufferer is filled up with Geneva and then thrust into a horse pond, imagine it! When you have been here long enough to be accepted as my niece, you may accompany me on my rounds.”

  “I shall be very happy to help you, ma’am, and to learn your methods of medicine,” Juliana said, smiling as she remembered her agitating experiences with Herr Welcker and the inhabitants of St.-Servan. The smile changed to a sigh. “But in the meantime, Tante ’Lise, what can I do to assist you?” she asked.

  “Do you write a clear hand, child?”

  “Why, yes, ma’am. I have always—” Juliana checked herself. “I have always been used to copy out my father’s manuscripts,” she had been going to say. She changed it to “I have always been accounted to write a legible script,” and Madame Reynard said, “Excellent. In that case, I shall be infinitely obliged if you will undertake the task of making a fair copy of my memoirs.”

  And she handed Juliana the large leather-bound volume in which, earlier, she had been writing.

  Settled at an elegant escritoire, Juliana could not avoid some amusement. Here she was, in such different surroundings, required to carry out the very same task that she had so often performed for her father. The substance of what she had to copy was, however, she very soon discovered, of a very different nature. Madame Reynard, the illegitimate daughter of a duke, had moved in aristocratic circles in Paris of the 1770s, and wrote of the people she had known with tolerance, intelligence, a discerning eye, and a devastating wit. Petworth must indeed seem quiet to her after Paris, Juliana thought, scratching away with her quill. She found herself becoming more and more fascinated by the scene revealed, and presently could not resist turning ahead, to see whether the reminiscences continued on to cover Madame’s London life with Lord Egremont. They did; and Juliana was much tempted to read on in hopes of discovering some mention of her own parents; but Madame’s writing was very spiky and hard to decipher; Juliana decided that she had better proceed in a regular manner, and not allow herself the indulgence of reading the later pages until she came to them, or the work would proceed too slowly.

  She had transcribed some twenty pages by the time Madame Reynard returned. That lady put off her cloak and hat, and sank with a sigh of exhaustion onto her chaise longue, calling to Berthe to bring wine and biscuits.

  “Pouf! Those obstinate English peasants! If they were dying in the desert, and you offered them a glass of the best wine in France, they would scowl in your face and say, ‘Dunno as I want it, missis, ’taint noways what I bin used to.’” Her imitation of the rich Sussex accent had the skill of long familiarity and exasperation. “It is no wonder that you will never have a revolution in this country! If one came suggesting they should rise and take away his wealth from Milord Egg, they would say, ‘Nay, dunna mek such a fanteague, old Lordy baint so bad. Things be best left the way they be!’ and that would be the end of the matter. Thank you, Berthe! Pour a glass also for Mademoiselle Jeanne… Have you managed to interpret much of my scribble, child?”

  “I’m getting on famously, Tante ’Lise, and I find it beyond anything interesting!”

  Madame Reynard chuckled and said, “I fear you will discover some matters that are not usually disclosed to an English jeune fille, but in my opinion the sooner some facts are known, the better; I do not approve of keeping young girls in total ignorance of the world. There was a sad case not long ago of a German princess who became pregnant by her footman simply because she was too ignorant to realize that what he was doing to her would lead to such a condition. Imagine it!”

  “I am sure that you are right, ma’am,” replied Juliana, thinking of her experiences in London.

  When Berthe had withdrawn and the door was closed, Madame Reynard remarked, “Well, my child, I have discovered, as I expected to, that your mother is still in the town, staying at the Bull. Nothing like taking round medicines to people’s houses for learning all the talk of the place! Setting a chambermaid’s sprained thumb, I learned that the lady was very miserly with her vails; doctoring an ostler’s mother’s rheumatism, I heard that the bearded young gentleman who has escorted the lost young lady here is gone off, it is thought up to London to fetch the Bow Street Runners, for he has bespoken a room at the Bull again for two nights from now. And their friend Lieutenant Cox still remains at his family home in the town; he comes from a respected Petworth family, but he is not a shining example of it.”

  “Oh, good God,” said Juliana, trembling. “My mother still in the town! Do you suppose she can have got word of my whereabouts, ma’am?”

  “No, I do not. The general opinion seems to be that you must have been lost in the woods, which are very extensive; and that you are now dead of cold and hunger! And I am very much afraid that your mother hopes that is the case. ‘Not a bit of proper feeling about the poor young lady did she show,’ my chambermaid told me with the utmost indignation. ‘Just wished to know if a-many folk died in those woods, and how long might it take to discover the young lady’s body, happen she had died in there.’
I greatly fear, my dear, that your mother believes it would be in her best interests if you were dead.”

  “But why? Why?” Juliana murmured, utterly puzzled and distressed.

  “My dear, in a case like this, with characters such as that, there is only ever one motive. Money. It must be that you are entitled to moneys of whose existence you are not aware and that your mother stands to inherit. This must be the explanation.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Juliana said thoughtfully. She remembered Lieutenant Cox saying, “But where’s the heiress—Miss Moneybags—?” She had thought at the time he was speaking ironically. But perhaps he was in earnest?

  “I wonder how I could find out,” she said slowly. “If I am entitled to money, I would very gladly give some of it to my mother.” She remembered the angry, hungry look of the woman on the Ponte Vecchio; her acquisitive, resentful stare round Lord Lambourn’s dining saloon. Juliana could not like what she had seen or heard of her mother, but she found that she felt deeply sorry for her. “If only my grandfather would tell me! But if he knew—he seems to have taken pains to keep me in ignorance.”

  “It is a pity cher Monsieur Trockmorton has gone back to town,” Madame Reynard said. “We could have asked him to discover whether you are the heiress to a fortune that nobody has thought to inform you of! Shall I write to him and inquire?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am—thank you for thinking of it, but no,” Juliana said hastily. “For how could you divulge your interest without betraying your knowledge of my whereabouts?”

  “True,” said Madame Reynard. “And—I must now tell you, my dear, that, without setting out to do so, I have learned your identity. You see, I saw your mother coming out of the Bull Inn, and I remembered her. I have encountered her in London, many years ago.”

  Juliana was a little dismayed, but, rallying, said, “I am sure you will not betray me, ma’am, however!”

  “Most certainly I will not, child. You need have no anxiety on that head.”

  “My—my mother did not recognize you, ma’am?”

  “She showed not the slightest sign of having done so. All she will have seen is an old country woman with a basket.”

  “Hardly that, dear ma’am,” said Juliana, looking with affectionate admiration at the handsome countenance of her hostess. She was beginning more and more easily to comprehend how Lord Egremont’s regard had endured for twenty years.

  “Did—did you know my mother, ma’am—in the days when she was married to Papa?”

  Next moment it occurred to Juliana that her question had been tactlessly phrased; it seemed possible that Madame Reynard had had more chance of meeting Laura Paget later on, in the brief period when she had been mistress of the Prince of Wales, as Elise Duthé had been of Lord Egremont. But Madame answered, quite unperturbed, “I did meet her a few times in those days. But she was never one to make friends with her own sex; she was of a haughty, cold disposition, always striving to be queen of whatever company she found herself in. To tell truth, I did not like her. You are very different from her, child.”

  Juliana would have liked to ask more questions, but Berthe came in to announce that supper was waiting for them, and the subject was dropped. Never mind, Juliana thought comfortably, Tante ’Lise does not seem to object if I ask her questions, and I have all the time in the world to do so!

  And, in fact, next day Juliana found an opportunity to ask Madame Reynard why there seemed to have been such terrible enmity between her parents—why her father had been so distraught to learn that his wife was seeking him in Florence.

  “Revenge,” Madame Reynard said slowly. “She had a very revengeful nature. She could not bear to be slighted. She must be the one to do the spurning! And when your father divorced her, it made her dreadfully angry—she longed for the means to hurt him. I am afraid, my child, that your mama is not an agreeable character.”

  “Did you know my father, madame?” Juliana said wistfully.

  “No, my dear, I never had that pleasure. His books, yes. I know them!”

  During the next few weeks, life at the Hermitage—which, Juliana discovered, was the name of Madame Reynard’s dwelling—settled into a surprisingly placid routine. Little Prue was taken over to Petworth House on the day following her arrival, and, although she set up a great uproar at the prospect of being parted from Juliana and Mistigris, Madame reported that, when she discovered that she was to live in an establishment where there were untold cats, dogs, parrots, pet rabbits, other children, ponies to ride, a park full of deer, and even an orangery where the children were sometimes permitted to pick the fruit, her spirits underwent a mercurial change, and she was so enchanted by her surroundings that she hardly troubled to say good-bye to her conductress.

  “Are there so many children about the house, then?” inquired Juliana. “Whose are they all?”

  “Oh, well, two of them—Guillaume et Marie—are by another lady, a previous mistress of Georges, who left him some twelve or thirteen years ago to marry somebody; then there are some little nephews and nieces—Georges has three brothers, you know, Percy, Charles, and William—then, also, Georges is a great patron of the arts, and you will always find writers about the house, or painters, working away at their easels, and they are quite likely to bring their children with them if they come for a long stay.”

  “Good gracious! And does Lord Egremont not object to all these children about the place?”

  “Mais non, pas du tout! He is the most amiable man in the world. A friend of his said that the quality in which he excels above all others is ‘put-up-ability.’”

  “Well, he will need it with little Prue,” Juliana said.

  In the mornings Juliana wrote letters to Madame’s dictation, or sewed, or read aloud; the afternoons were devoted to the transcription of her memoirs; and in the evenings, when the workmen had departed, Juliana was encouraged to go out into the garden for air and exercise. Madame insisted that this was a time for recreation, since Juliana was kept so hard at work all day, and she was ordered to swing in the swing that hung from the walnut tree, or play at long-bowling or Dutch rubbers or quoits with Lord Egremont; but Madame Reynard herself was a notable gardener, and Juliana often chose to help her in the long light evenings. Truly, she often thought, it was a happier existence than any she had known for years, since her father’s illness had begun robbing him of strength and spirits, and filling his daughter with anxiety and apprehension.

  Several times, also, Juliana paid informal visits to Petworth House, escorted by Madame Reynard through the underground passage, and she found, as she had been told, that it was the most unceremonious establishment in the world, certainly like no other house that she had ever been in. The original foundations were very ancient, but the house had been rebuilt, about a hundred years previously, by the Duke of Somerset, and was of a large size, over three hundred feet long, Juliana was informed, with fifteen or sixteen rooms on the ground floor alone, full of handsome furniture and interesting works of art; one room lined throughout with the most remarkable wooden carving, done with exquisite skill; these rooms, as Madame Reynard had described, were occupied by a heterogeneous throng of visitors, poets, established at desks in the throes of composition, artists at their easels, nurses, children, girls playing pianos, boys playing tennis on the enclosed court or comparing the merits of their fowling-pieces, ladies drinking endless cups of Hyson and gossiping over their embroidery. Lord Lambourn had objected to the lack of order and comfort, and the bucolic ways of the servants, but Juliana found the free-and-easy atmosphere delightful, the master of the house wandering about, his hands in his pockets and his hat on his head, inquiring after everybody’s well-being. Juliana had not yet met the enceinte Madame Iliffe (or Ayliffe), who had taken to her bed, being afflicted with cramps and backache, but she became fast friends with young George and Henry, aged respectively eight and five, who had received little Prue very good-nature
dly, and by their brotherly example were greatly improving her peevish ways. Juliana also liked the older children, William and Maria and enjoyed the company of the equable Mademoiselle Lord, their French governess, who might have been expected to become quite distracted at the succession of pupils who slipped in and out of her jurisdiction, but who took their comings and goings with remarkable calm. Juliana was encouraged to perform on any of the pianos or harps whenever she wished, go riding with the girls in the extensive park (which Milord Egg had done much to reclaim from wild woodland), make use of the library, or stroll about admiring the many fine pictures by Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Holbein, besides many more modern painters. It was very agreeable to be made free of such a treasure-house of people and things—and it was very agreeable, also, to return from it to the calm, orderly ménage of Madame Reynard.

  “I hope Georges is not throwing out too many lures at you?” that lady one day inquired. “I am afraid he can hardly help it, when there is a charming young girl at hand—he is the most confirmed gallant!”

  “He does throw out a lure or two,” Juliana was obliged to acknowledge. “But so far I have been able to repel them without hurting his feelings, I think.”

  “The feelings of Georges are never hurt,” Madame Reynard said. “He merely bides his time and waits for a more favorable occasion. But if you tell him a really firm no, then he will accept it. There is not the least particle of harm in him; he is the dearest man! And so thoughtful—did I tell you how he once had all the people of Petworth vaccinated?”

  “No, ma’am—vaccinated against the smallpox, do you mean?”

  “Yes. It was five years ago.” Madame Reynard began to laugh. “He had been trying to persuade them all to eat brown bread, because he read that was better for their health than white flour. But try to change the habits of the English laboring classes! They would not—they preferred their white flour. So then Georges decided that at least he could prevent their dying of the smallpox, and he sent for a supply of serum from Monsieur Jenner at the London Smallpox Hospital. But, unfortunately, by some mischance, the wrong kind of serum was supplied, and a number of people fell ill. So Georges had fourteen of them brought into Petworth House to be nursed, and one of them died—eh bien, it took him a long, long time to live that down here. ‘Owd Lordy an’ ’is pathery ways,’ they all said. ‘If ’e dunna roil us in one way, ’tis in another. But, scamble-’eaded as ’e be, ’e be middling good-natured.’”