The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  “No, Your Highness, excuse me,” interposed Lord Egremont, “it was not from General Brandywine Paget that Miss Paget received her legacy; he is still alive, I am glad to say, and is the young lady’s grandfather; it was from his brother, Seringapatam Paget, her great-uncle, that she inherited.”

  The Prince nodded irritably, as if he hated being corrected.

  He went on, “And your father, I understand, was that excellent historian whose books on Villiers and Wentworth I have read with so much enjoyment. And I hear with delight that one on my great-great-grandfather, Charles the First, is in course of publication. I shall look forward to that with the keenest pleasure. Alas, he was a sad loss, your father; we could have done with many more works from his pen.”

  Good heavens, thought Juliana, while she was making civil replies to these remarks, could King Charles the First really have been the great-great-grandfather of this man? How very extraordinary!

  “I hear from my friend Augustus that Charles the First is quite your ideal of a man and a prince,” His Highness continued, in a somewhat languishing manner. “But I hope that having his image in your mind will not render you too hard-hearted toward other princes, ma’am?” He took her hand in his rather limp and moist one, and gave it a gentle squeeze. Good God! thought Juliana, very much disconcerted; he is flirting with me; what must I do now? Anxiously looking past the Prince of Wales, she caught Herr Welcker’s eye fixed on her with a look of such amused sympathy that she instantly felt more at ease.

  “Meeting Your Highness must necessarily demote your great-great-grandfather to second place in my esteem, sir,” she said, smiling up at the large florid good-natured face above hers. He beamed back, delighted, and Juliana, anxious to quit a vein which she knew she could not continue, said, “Sir, pray enlighten my ignorance on a point that puzzles me?”

  “Anything, my dear Miss Paget!”

  “You have alluded to your friend Augustus. You refer to Count van Welcker?”

  “Yes, my dear.”

  “But I thought his name was Frederick?”

  “His full name is Frederick Augustus Arpel, Count van Welcker, my child”—Juliana gave a gasp—“and I am infinitely obliged to you for saving his life, since, besides bringing me all kinds of treasures from Europe”—Juliana thought of the Sèvres and could not forbear a smile—“the political and military intelligence that he has brought along with the pots and pans has been of inestimable value to our government.”

  “Good God! You mean, sir, that Count van Welcker is a sp—”

  “Hush, my dear. Walls have ears,” said the Prince, glancing at the remarkable Grinling Gibbons carvings, which did seem particularly generously endowed in this respect.

  Lord Egremont now came up with a member of the local gentry who was to be presented to the Prince, and Juliana, much relieved, was able to make another deep curtsy and retire to the side of the room, where Herr Welcker immediately joined her.

  She burst out at once. “You are Augustus Arpel—but why did my grandfather not know that you are Count van Welcker?”

  “Ah, well, when I was engaged as his aide in the American war, I had not inherited the title, which came from an uncle. And since then we had quite lost touch; I have been out of England a great deal, as you know. Indeed, I was not aware that you were the granddaughter of my old chief; I thought your grandfather was the other General Paget. However, of course, when I received your grandfather’s letter—”

  Juliana blushed, wondering what Sir Horace had said.

  “When I received a letter informing me that you had vanished, and asking for my help in tracing you—”

  She interrupted him. “Grandfather asked for your help? I do not understand.”

  “Why,” he said, “in my various missions I am frequently in communication with all kinds of odd folk. Sir Horace thought I might have means of acquiring information—”

  “The gypsies!”

  He laughed, and said, “The gypsy tribe know no frontiers. What is a war between England and France to them? But it certainly was awkward when, returning from a mission to France to commence the search for you, we were all clapped under hatches for your murder, my dear! I cannot express my relief, Miss Juliana, both at your most obliging intervention and at the discovery that you were not murdered but alive and more delightful than ever.”

  He took her hand gently in his own—his clasp, unlike that of the Prince, was warm and firm—and continued, “I am indeed sorry, my poor child, that your suitor turned out so badly. If I had known in London what I learned later, I would never have carried your message to him.”

  His kindly face was grave now, and rather somber.

  “Oh, Herr Welcker, I was so mistaken in him! I will never, never believe anybody ever again. He was so different when we eloped! And when he kissed me, it was quite horrid! All he wanted was my money, and how I wish I had not got it. It has done nothing but harm. I would like to give it all away.”

  Count van Welcker looked much more cheerful at once. “Well,” he said, “you can give it away, you know! Nothing obliges you to keep it. If only—”

  At that moment a movement in the crowd began. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Prinney is going in to dinner. Do you dine here, Miss Juliana?”

  “No, sir, I cried off. I do not feel strong enough for a great dinner. I am going back to the Hermitage.”

  “My dear Miss Juliana—might I be permitted to come round and call on you after dinner?”

  “Will not His Highness have need of you, sir?”

  “His Highness can manage without me very well.”

  There was such an anxious, intent look suddenly in his eyes that she found her heart beating faster as she slipped away. It was odd, she thought, to be able to run through the town without fear of being seen or pursued; she could still hardly believe in her freedom. She felt all of a sudden very lighthearted. The streets were empty; the inhabitants of the town were still in the park, making merry.

  Berthe and Rosine, however, had remained at the Hermitage; like General Paget, they were not interested in fetes; and they preferred their own cooking to Lord Egremont’s feast.

  “Mademoiselle looks tired,” said Berthe. “She will be the better for a bowl of good soup. Eh, poor Madame! Doubtless she wishes she were at home too. Did you see the Prince, mademoiselle?”

  “Yes, I saw him,” said Juliana. “He was very fat.” Not a bit like Charles the First, she thought. But still, I liked him.

  “Mademoiselle laughs,” said Rosine sympathetically. “She has been well amused.”

  “Yes, I have!” said Juliana, thinking how difficult it would be to explain that she was laughing because she had suddenly realized what a very dull man Charles the First must have been. Good; but dull.

  Some two hours later, Madame Reynard returned, accompanied by Count van Welcker.

  “The Count kindly escorted me home,” she said, “lest I should be kidnapped by highwaymen or brigands! And now I am going to my couch, for I am fatigued with a thousand and one civilities. Amuse each other, my children; but do not let this rake of a Count keep you up too long, chérie. Rest well, my very dear child; I shall see you in the morning. Bonsoir!” She kissed Juliana good night, but turned at the foot of the stairs to say, “I have given you another birthday present, and I have instructed the Count to tell you about it.”

  “Is she not a delight? I sat next to her at dinner,” he said, taking Juliana’s arm and strolling with her into the garden. “May we walk up and down this grassy alley? Shall you take a chill?”

  “Certainly not,” said Juliana. “My feet will get wet, that is all.”

  The rain clouds had disappeared at sunset, and a wonderful pink afterglow filled the sky. Juliana picked a sprig of honeysuckle blossom and sniffed at it. She said, “Count van Welcker, I am sure I have you to thank for bringing me my father’s books? I was so
touched, so deeply grateful—”

  “Ah, it was nothing,” he quickly replied. “I had to go to France on government affairs—I found a messenger to negotiate—it was a simple matter! Now let me tell you about Madame Reynard’s birthday present. ‘What can one give a girl who has just inherited a fortune?’ she said, and then she began to laugh and exclaimed, ‘I have it! I will give her the memory of how she had to play cache-cache and run through the underground way! I will give her my house when I return to France!’”

  “Her house? This house? But oh, how can she ever bear to leave it?”

  They turned to look at it, standing among its young apple trees, against the pink sky. The valley down below lay hushed, except for the distant bleating of sheep and lambs. But over in Petworth Park the revels were still at their height; voices could be heard singing and shouting; and the occasional crackle of a firework.

  “Prinney was just about to give one of his violin recitals,” Count van Welcker said. “I daresay he will be very annoyed when he finds that I slipped away. How glad I am to miss it!”

  Then he turned toward Juliana, and said, “Miss Paget—I addressed you on this subject once before at your aunt’s house. Believe me, I was not then aware of the gold collar round your neck. However, at that time—as in our dear balloon—your thoughts were all directed toward Charles the First. That has not prevented mine toward you from growing stronger and more tender with every passing week. Dare I inquire whether Charles the First has now suffered an eclipse—whether there can be any possibility of your sentiments having undergone a change? I am quite wealthy (as you may not know), I can support you in modest comfort, and, if you wish, we can consign all your fortune to the devil… Do you find yourself able to give me an answer, dear Miss Juliana?”

  He took both her hands, looking steadily into her face, and moved toward her as she looked up at him, smiling.

  “Oh, but please don’t go down upon one knee again,” cried Juliana. “The grass is so wet!”

  “I was not going to go down upon one knee,” replied Count van Welcker. “It is odds but you’ve left a needle sticking somewhere in that grass! I was going to take you in my arms.”

  “How very odd,” remarked Juliana, some time later. “When Captain Davenport kissed me I did not like it at all.”

  “But this is different, hmm?”

  “No, that is what is strange. It is not so different—and yet, now, after all, I find that I do quite like it!”

  Order Joan Aiken’s next book

  in the Paget Family Saga

  The Weeping Ash

  On sale October 2016

  Historical Note

  I have anticipated in one respect. The Prince Regent did not, in fact, come to Petworth until 1814, when Lord Egremont received him, Alexander, Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, the Prince of Wurtemberg, and the Grand Duchess of Oldenberg, with their respective suites. “The Russian attendants in the train of the Czar are yet spoken of by townsmen, who recollect their grotesque appearance and the circumstance of their evincing a partiality for oil by drinking it from any lamps…as well as devouring the soap placed in their bedrooms.” (From Petworth: A Sketch of Its History and Antiquities, by Rev. F. H. Arnold, 1864.)

  J. A.

  Read on for more of Joan Aiken’s classic Paget Family Saga.

  When sixteen-year-old Fanny Herriard became, through the instrumentality of her father the Rev. Theophilus and with his full consent and approval, betrothed to forty-eight-year-old Thomas Paget, the regulating officer of Gosport, she was under no illusion as to the romance of the match. She did not make any attempt to convince herself that Mr. Paget was a heroic or dashing character—despite the fact that he preferred to be called Captain Paget: in point of fact, as she knew, a regulating officer was hardly to be distinguished from a civilian—and besides, Papa said that Mr. Paget only carried the rank of lieutenant. Moreover the prospective bridegroom was a widower, with two daughters already older than Fanny herself, and one younger, and until this year he had possessed little more than his pay of one pound a day and additional ten shillings subsistence money. (His previous wife, it was to be inferred, had been able to bring him some money of her own).

  Recently, however, Captain Paget had benefited by a stroke of good fortune which, quite unexpectedly, enabled him to contemplate a second marriage, one this time for pleasure rather than for convenience. A distant cousin of his, whom he had never even met, having herself succeeded to an immense—and quite unanticipated—legacy, just as she had contracted an alliance with a wealthy man of rank, had the happy and liberal notion of seeking out the more impoverished members of her family and sharing her good fortune with them. The astonished Thomas, therefore, found himself not only endowed, out of the blue, with a handsome competence, enough to enable him to buy a thriving business, but also possessed for an indefinite period of a larger and much more comfortable house than his own, at a very reasonable rental.

  The reason for this additional piece of luck was the devoted attachment of his generous cousin Juliana to her new-wedded husband, a Dutch nobleman who, up to the time of his marriage, had served as an equerry and intelligence agent in the entourage of the Prince of Wales. However, during the previous year, 1796, Count van Welcker had been delighted to find himself repossessed of some family estates in Demerara, upon the recapture of that region for the British by Laforey and Whyte. In consequence of this, the count was obliged to take leave of absence from the prince’s service and make a journey which might be of some years’ duration. His bride, unable to contemplate the prospect of such a long separation, had elected to accompany him, and she therefore obligingly offered Thomas Paget her own house in Petworth until the (doubtless far distant) date of her return.

  With all these advantages, it could not be said that Captain Paget was particularly handsome or interesting in his person: he was a plain, square, dry-looking man, with sandy hair, rather thin lips, pale blue eyes, two fingers missing on one hand, discolored teeth, and a curt, short manner of speaking; but still it was to be hoped that having been the recipient of such generosity would release in him hitherto suppressed qualities of kindness and liberality; and in any case several of Fanny’s unmarried sisters (she was the youngest of eight) thought, and said, that Fanny had done very well for herself, very well indeed, considering that Papa could afford to give his daughters only £200 apiece as dowry. The Rev. Theophilus Herriard was a hard-working Church of England rector, long since widowed, and his daughters might think themselves lucky to catch husbands at all.

  Only Fanny, a shy, sensitive girl with a considerable reserve of delicate pride, knew the full measure of her own luck: that she was enabled, by this marriage, to get away from home before her sharp-eyed siblings could discover the intensity of the anguish that she was going through on account of her rejection by Barnaby Ferrars, the squire’s happy-go-lucky son.

  “Marriage?” he had said, laughing heartily. “You thought we might be married? Why, goosey, my father would never allow it! No, no, my dear little sweetheart, we must be like two butterflies, that flutter and dance and kiss in mid-air—so!—and then flit on to other meetings; you will find some good, kind, wormy fellow who will cosset and spoil you all the days of your life; and I—I shall never forget you, dear little wild rose, and the happy haymaking we passed together, when I am married to some dull lady of fortune who will help repair the inroads that my father’s gambling has made on his estates. Gold—gold I must be sold for gold, my angel—” and he had tickled her chin with a buttercup. For their flirtation—innocent enough, heaven knew—had taken place during a warm and beautiful June, when the whole village—schoolchildren, grandparents, squire’s sons, and rector’s girls—had all helped in the meadows to get in the splendid crop of hay. But then Barnaby’s father, Squire Ferrars, had fulfilled his promise to buy his son a commission in the Hussars. Fortunately by the day, some weeks later, when Barnaby came whistl
ing along to inform the Herriard family, assembled for evening tea drinking, of his imminent departure to join his regiment, Fanny, too, had been able to gather the shreds of her pride and dignity around her—it was that little air of self-possession and reserve which, did she but know it, had attracted his notice to her in the first place—and could tell him, with cool decorum masking a breaking heart, that her own betrothal had been arranged; that she would be marrying Captain Paget, a school acquaintance of her father’s, in September.

  “Why, that’s famous! Dear little wild rose, I’m delighted to hear it. Good luck to you both,” said. Barnaby, not very interested; and after he had informed the Herriards that his regiment was ordered out to India to keep a sharp eye on Tippoo Sahib, he bade them all a care-free good-bye and swung happily off into the dusk.

  “Barnaby’s very pleased with himself,” said Harriet.

  “You’d think the squire would wish him to marry and get an heir before he goes off abroad,” said Maria.

  “Maria, such thoughts are unbecoming to you and, in any case, no concern of ours,” reproved her father.

  “At one time I quite thought that Barnaby had an eye to our Fanny,” said Kitty with a spiteful sidelong glance at her youngest sister. But Fanny said nothing, merely bent her head lower over her stitching—they were all hemming sheets for her bride linen—and was immensely relieved when the rector said, “Enough chatter, children; it is time for evening prayers.”

  By September the hot, haymaking weeks were a thing of the past, long forgotten, and it was in weeping gray autumn weather that Captain Paget assisted his youthful bride into the carriage which, after the simple wedding ceremony had been performed by her father, was to take them from Sway, in the New Forest, where Fanny had spent the whole of her life up till now, off to the new home in Sussex.

  It was a cold and dismal journey. Rain penetrated the cracks of the ancient hired conveyance, turned the roads to quagmire, and reduced the stubble fields on either side of the turnpike to an uninviting dun color, but nevertheless Fanny, who had never traveled in her life, was prepared to find interest in all that she saw. Although she did not feel it likely that she would ever come to love her taciturn bridegroom, she was exceedingly grateful to him for taking her away from her sharp-eyed sisters and a home which had come to be associated with excruciating unhappiness; she fully intended to be friendly, affectionate, and biddable, to do as much as lay in her power to make her marriage a success.