The Smile of the Stranger

by Joan Aiken

  “Are you, then, a merchant of china, sir?” Juliana asked curiously, attempting to accommodate her body to the awkward contours of the packages.

  “I, ma’am? Indeed no!” He seemed quite affronted at her supposition. “I am a collector. I act as agent for my Patron.”

  “Your Patron is in England?” inquired Mr. Elphinstone weakly, reclining as best he could against a yielding bundle which appeared to contain brocade.

  “Just so, sir.”

  “Not a very safe profession, yours, just at present?”

  “Ah well, one must contrive as best one can. And it is gratifying to do what one may to rescue some of the treasures which these canailles, in their spite and ignorance, would probably smash, burn, or cut up to clothe their filthy brats. I have found priceless tapestries, sir, in hay barns, being used as sacks to hold potatoes. It is infamous! And of course in these times one may pick up a bargain here and there—which is quite an inducement with my Patron, I can tell you, hard put to it as he is, these days, for ready cash! They say his marriage to Princess Caroline will mend all, but for my part I take leave to doubt that.”

  “Your Patron is…?”

  “Why, sir, His Highness! The Prince of Wales! I am surprised you did not know that!”

  Since Herr Welcker seemed so surprised, Juliana made haste to pacify him. “My father and I have lived out of England for so long—I, all my life indeed! We are but now returning for the sake of his health… Oh, how beautiful that is!” she exclaimed in rapture as a division in the mist suddenly revealed to them the whole of the St.-Malo bay, with the shipping scattered about the estuary, the town of St.-Malo itself sitting snug on its island, surrounded by masts, and Dinard gleaming far away on the opposite shore. That they themselves were also seen from below was made manifest by various white puffs of smoke which blossomed out from the walls of the town and the quaysides and ships in the bay; they could hear the reports of the gunshots a moment or two after the puffs, but no shots seemed to come anywhere near them.

  “We are already too high,” said Herr Welcker with great satisfaction. He pulled on a string, and they went higher still.

  Looking up, Juliana marveled at the great silken globe, wrinkling and straining over their heads in its network of cords. It seemed such a frail and delicate structure to carry them so far. It was colored gaily in red and yellow, and bore a crisscross design of harlequin checks.

  “Is it filled with air? Why should it rise?” she wanted to know.

  “No, it is filled with hydrogen, miss. Air comes cheaper, to be sure—but then you need a large bonfire to heat it in the first place, and a circular launching platform with a hole in the middle—that would never have served our turn, as we wished to leave quietly and escape notice.”

  Juliana would have liked to ask more questions about the nature and structure of the balloon, but she observed that her father, what with the high, frigid altitude and the swaying motion of the basket, was commencing to look exceedingly ill. Alarmed, she endeavored to make him as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the basket, and Herr Welcker administered another dram of the cordial which had proved so efficacious in the coach from Rennes. It was bright green, and very strong.

  “Infallible stuff,” remarked Herr Welcker with some complacence. “Monks make it—always carry a supply with me on my travels. Cure you of anything—except a bullet through the head!”

  It certainly appeared to be a soporific; after a generous dose of it had been tipped between his lips, Juliana was relieved to see that her father appeared inclined to sleep, though he still shivered with cold. Juliana asked Herr Welcker if she might untie one of the parcels of tapestry to supply a coverlet for her ailing parent. Herr Welcker was at first extremely unwilling, but when she represented to him that there was very little purpose in saving a man from the French revolutionaries if he were then to perish from exposure to the elements, she finally received grudging permission, Herr Welcker himself selecting his most inferior tapestry for the purpose, and, soon after that, Juliana was happy to hear that her father’s breathing had steadied into the rhythm of sleep.

  For herself she saw no prospect of following his example. Obliged to remain upright on her feet, as was Herr Welcker likewise, she passed several weary hours as best she could, shifting miserably from one numb foot to the other, standing on one leg, leaning her hip against the edge of the basket, propping her elbows on the Buhl cabinet (when Herr Welcker was not looking), trying any position that might, briefly, give some relief to her cramped and frozen limbs. Never could she have imagined that aerial travel could be so uncomfortable! Regrettably, also, Herr Welcker and his assistant had neglected to provision the craft with any food, in the hurried departure. Hunger, therefore, soon added its pangs to the other vexations of the passengers, for none of them had taken supper before they embarked, and Juliana and her father had eaten no dinner either. She dared not inquire how long the passage was likely to take; for one thing, she had as soon not be told how many hours of this misery she might have to endure, and for another, she had a shrewd suspicion that Herr Welcker himself did not know the answer.

  At least the night was clear; Juliana shuddered to imagine what their journey might have been like had a storm blown up. The keen steady wind blew continually from the southeast, carrying them, Juliana was gratified to think, much faster than if they had made their passage by sea; and innumerable large stars burned above them in the firmament, only obscured by the great circular globe of darkness directly above them that was the envelope of the balloon.

  “If only some means could be achieved of guiding the vessel’s direction,” observed Herr Welcker, “this might indeed be a most practical and commodious method of travel. But I understand that neither oars, sails, nor traction by birds has yet proved efficacious in this respect.”

  “Traction by birds! I should think not, indeed!”

  “And yet if only some large birds—say, swans—might be harnessed, one would almost think it practicable,” sighed Herr Welcker. “However, such speculations are not to our purpose. And we appear to be making excellent headway—always supposing we do not drift too far to the west. Indeed I flatter myself that I might yet return in time to have the Sèvres delivered to the Pavilion for a dinner party that His Highness gives there in honor of Lady Jersey next Thursday.”

  “A Sèvres dinner service?” inquired Juliana.

  “No, miss. Pots de chambre,” Herr Welcker replied, employing the French term, presumably, out of a delicate wish not to embarrass the young lady.

  Juliana, however, reared in Italy, where the most outrageous topics were liable to be discussed at the top of somebody’s lungs in the street, at any hour of the day or night, was not embarrassed, but only curious.

  “Pots de chambre for a dinner party? How singular! I do not precisely understand.”

  “Why, miss, where have you been all your life? In any English gentleman’s establishment, it is the custom to keep a set of pots de chambre in the sideboard.”

  “Although born in England I have lived in Switzerland and Italy all my life, and I still do not understand. Why in the sideboard?”

  “Why, for when the ladies leave the table.”

  Since Juliana continued to look baffled, he explained further.

  “At the conclusion of any English dinner party, when the dessert is finished, the ladies quit the table and repair to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen to their wine, their stories (unfit for the ears of ladies), and their pots de chambre.”

  “And what do the ladies do?”

  “How should I know?” replied Herr Welcker. “I presume they, likewise, recount each other stories unsuitable for the ears of gentlemen.”

  “What a very uncouth custom! And how long do the gentlemen remain round the table drinking their wine and telling their stories?”

  “As long as the wine holds out,” replied He
rr Welcker.

  “So you are carrying a set of these toilet articles for the Prince of Wales?”

  “Yes. He has several sets, of course; silver ones for travel and so forth; it was most vexatious: he had ordered this set from the Sèvres manufactory some while since, with his monogram and royal coat of arms. But then, of course, revolution broke out in France, and it was not possible to have them delivered. However, on my travels about France, I discovered that the set had, in fact, been completed, and I was able to come by them, on payment of various largesses. Only imagine my chagrin if, after all that, I had not been able to get them out of the country!”

  “It would have been too bad, indeed.”

  “I may flatter myself that I have a most satisfactory consignment,” pursued Herr Welcker, looking with complacence about his well-packed vessel. “I have, besides the Sèvres and the Gobelins, a table by Riesener (that was in the château of the unfortunate Vicomte de Boyenne), a marble bust by Coysevox, a Keller bronze, a candelabrum by Thomire, not to mention looking glasses, girandoles, two clocks, and some paintings by Greuze and Claude.”

  “How—how very gratifying,” said Juliana faintly, shifting her feet and wondering if they were resting on the Claude—who was esteemed by her father to be one of the most superior French painters of landscape. “You may certainly congratulate yourself.”

  “I should say so! A pretty penny they have cost me too, from first to last! Come, give us a kiss, miss,” said Herr Welcker, without altering his manner in the least particular.

  Juliana stared at him in astonishment. His voice and expression were so perfectly matter-of-fact and unchanged from what they had been before that she could not at first believe she had heard him aright.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said in a tone calculated, she hoped, to freeze out any encroaching pretensions.

  “Come, don’t be standoffish, miss! Give us a kiss? After all,” said Herr Welcker, “who’s to know? The old gentleman’s fast asleep—if there are any angels flying around, they are the only witnesses. And they won’t peach! And you can trust me not to cry rope on you at any later time. Bless my soul!” he added encouragingly, “I haven’t run Prinney’s errands all these years without learning to keep a still tongue in my head, I can tell you!”

  “There will be nothing to keep a still tongue about, Herr Welcker!”

  “Oh come, my dear! Don’t be missish! After all, it isn’t as if there were room for anything else,” Herr Welcker pointed out with exactitude. “What’s a mere kiss, after all? Situated as we are, there could be no thought of impropriety in a simple kiss, with that curst candelabrum sticking in between us like the sword of what’s-his-name. So why not be friendly now, eh?”

  “I am perfectly friendly, Herr Welcker. Indeed, my father and I must be forever obliged to you! But I have not the least intention or inclination to kiss you. I should explain,” said Juliana firmly, “that up to this day I have never kissed any male person, excepting my father—”

  “God bless my soul!” he ejaculated involuntarily. “And you as pretty as a picture! What in the devil’s name were all those Italians about?”

  “It was not that they did not sometimes try,” Juliana acknowledged. “That is why I always carry this extremely long pin in my fichu”—she drew it forth and exhibited it—“which I have been used to stick into any person who attempted to insult me.”

  “No, have you indeed?” he said, daunted, as she calmly returned the pin to its resting place. “Well, I’m blest if I understand you, miss, and that’s a certainty! So pretty and lively as you are, with a cool head on your shoulders, worth a dozen fellows I can think of, a kind heart, anybody can see—and you boggle at a kiss. Now why, pray?”

  “Why?” asked Juliana, wrinkling up her forehead thoughtfully. “It is because, Herr Welcker, I do not intend to kiss any male person—excepting relatives, I suppose,” she added, thinking of her grandfather, “until I encounter a man who fulfills my ideal of what the perfect gentleman should be.”

  “Oh, indeed?” said Herr Welcker, with the liveliest curiosity. “And what might those ideals be, if I might inquire, miss?”

  “He must be exactly like King Charles the First!”

  “Good gad!” he said, really startled. “What a nature to wish on the poor fellow! If that’s your ideal, I can’t say I’m surprised that you haven’t come across him yet—especially in Italy! Even in England you don’t see replicas of Charles the First scattered all abroad.”

  “I daresay in England I shall be more likely to come across such a person, however,” Juliana said with some confidence. “An English gentleman is said to be the flower of European civilization, is he not?”

  “Is he? Being only a Dutchman myself, ma’am, I can’t say.”

  “Certainly he is.” Her confidence wavered a moment as she thought of the English dinner-party ritual just recounted to her by Herr Welcker; then she added firmly, “Think of Lord Chesterfield.”

  “Oh—why, yes, certainly, miss, if you wish,” replied Herr Welcker, possibly asking himself whether she referred to Lord Chesterfield’s precepts, or his practice. “I’ll tell you one difficulty I see in your plans, though, my dear!”

  “And what is that, Herr Welcker?”

  “Why—you go to England—you look around you—by and by you meet this fellow who is the what-d’you-call-’em of European civilization and looks just like Charles the First—and what’ll you do if he’s married already, eh? Or if he don’t seem inclined to look at you?”

  “I shall never tell my love; but sit like Patience on a monument, gently pining away,” said Juliana promptly. “But, if he is like Charles the First, he will look at me! He may not be free, of course,” she acknowledged, “for life, as I already know, is full of such sad ironies, but he will understand me. One soul will reach to another. And I would rather love him in vain, from afar, than settle down in some stupid union with a more commonplace person.”

  And she regarded with indulgence Herr Welcker’s round plump face and untidy brown hair, contrasting it with those angelically sad eyes, the silky beard and mustaches, the straight nose, curling locks, and look of mild, tragic gravity that characterized her hero. Herr Welcker, perfectly understanding the nature of her scrutiny, took such an estimate of his inadequacy in good part; there was absolutely no purpose, he acknowledged to himself, in trying to compete with somebody’s ideal.

  “Well, well!” he said good-naturedly. “I can see you have it all worked out, miss, and I’m sure I wish you well!” And I wish you joy of your ideal when you find him, he added to himself, for after ten years of serving the Prince of Wales, he was not apt to entertain visions of any Prince Charming.

  “And I wish you well too, Herr Welcker,” responded Juliana politely. “I hope that we reach England in time for you to provide the chamber pots for the Prince’s dinner party.” She gave a shiver, and a yawn. “Dio mio, but I am tired! I think if I were only a little warmer I might even be able to sleep for a short period.”

  She gazed hopefully at Herr Welcker, who, at this strong hint, could hardly avoid undoing yet another of his precious tapestries and passing it to her so that she might swathe it around her shoulders, which were indeed very inadequately protected by a worn old pelisse.

  “Thank you, dear Herr Welcker. You are truly kind. Ahh…” She yawned again, and her eyes closed. Herr Welcker regarded her with amiability mixed with exasperation; she seemed to have gone off into deep slumber on her feet, like a little pony, without the least difficulty; whereas he found himself totally unable to sleep, and was obliged to remain awake, shifting from icy foot to foot, while the remorseless hours slowly crept by, the stars moved across the sky, Juliana’s father snored placidly in the bottom of the basket between the legs of the Riesener, and the balloon, it was to be hoped, wandered on its way toward the coast of England.

  * * *

  When Jul
iana opened her eyes, several hours later, she was astonished to see broad daylight. The sun was not shining, however; indeed, thick gray cloud covered the sky, and a light rain was falling. And the reason she had woken was because Herr Welcker was shaking her by the shoulder.

  “Miss! Miss! The Gobelins must not get wet. I must require you to pass it back to me, so that I can wrap it up in the sacking.”

  “What about me?” said Juliana rather resentfully, folding up the tapestry, however, as requested.

  “You, miss, are young and strong, and have powers of self-regeneration not possessed by inanimate material,” said Herr Welcker, whose amiability had been somewhat cooled by hours of cramped freezing wakefulness while his passengers slept. “I should be obliged if you would remove the covering from your father too, if you please.”

  “Certainly not!” said Juliana with decision. “My father, Herr Welcker, is a very sick man. He is also a writer of international repute, and deserves the greatest care and attention.”

  Surprisingly, this reasoning appeared to weigh with Herr Welcker.

  “Oh, a writer, is he? Prinney always had a regard for writers and such people. What is his name? What does he write?”

  “He is a historian, and he writes under the name of Charles Elphinstone.”

  “Oh, ay, his name comes to mind. Life of the Duke of Buckingham, was that it? Ay, I mind Prinney thought highly of it.”

  “And he is in very poor health,” Juliana said firmly. “He must not be uncovered. If you are anxious about your tapestry, Herr Welcker, the best thing you can do is to unwrap something else, that will not be hurt by a few drops of rain—such as the Sèvres—and lay the wrappings from that on top of the tapestry. Thus Papa will have an extra covering, which will be just as well, for I hardly think the Gobelin is sufficient to keep the damp off him.”

  “Oh, very well,” grunted Herr Welcker, impressed in spite of himself by her practicality, and this was done. At first Juliana kept her gaze politely averted from the uncovered Sèvres ware, but as the long dull day wore on it proved impossible to maintain this attitude. Indeed, by dusk they were all three on terms of such intimacy that Juliana felt as if she had lived with Herr Welcker for years, and entertained toward him the kind of cordial boredom that is usually reserved for blood relations. They tried playing word games—at least Juliana did, and Herr Welcker did his best to comply; poor Mr. Elphinstone was too unwell to do anything but remain prone in the bottom of the basket, accepting gratefully, from time to time, a sip of Herr Welcker’s cordial. At first Juliana asked Herr Welcker a great many questions about England, which he answered in a somewhat caustically objective manner, describing the Macaroni Club, the ways of ton society, Vauxhall gardens, King George III’s erratic and irascible habits, Mr. Fox’s amazing gambling losses, and other things that he thought might be of interest to her. Juliana said she thought England sounded a very singular place.