by Joan Aiken
At last, hunger making them bad-tempered, they fell into a weary silence, and stared ahead with a longing that turned to hope and then to almost incredulous joy as the flat sandy coast of England finally crept into view on the gray and rainy horizon. More and more details gradually became apparent.
“Where are we, Herr Welcker, can you tell?” inquired Juliana, when waterways, chalk cliffs, and church steeples began to be recognizable as such.
“Ay, my dear, I am glad to say that the wind must have shifted round in the night, and has blown us due northward. I was afeared we might find ourselves down in Somerset, but that is the Isle of Wight we are now leaving to our right—I recognize the Needles lighthouse. So if I can procure some kind of conveyance to take me to Southampton, I may yet be in Brighton by tomorrow.”
“Brighton? Is that where His Highness resides?”
“Yes, miss, mostly. He has built himself this great Pavilion in the town, you know, and so long as one of his lady friends is there, he is content enough. Time was when it was Mrs. Fitz, but these days it is generally Lady Jersey; they say he has built her a special set of stairs.”
“Stairs? What a singular present,” said Juliana rather inattentively; her eyes were fixed on the scenery below. “Dio mio, but England is a gray, flat, dismal-looking country, Herr Welcker! Is all of it like this?”
“No, no, miss, some of it is well enough,” said Herr Welcker tolerantly. “And Brighton, where His Highness resides, is as fine a town as you could wish to see.”
“But, if Lady Jersey—Did you not say that His Highness was about to marry, Herr Welcker?”
“Marriage and love, miss, are two very different things.”
“That will not be the case in my life,” said Juliana very firmly.
As Herr Welcker had no reply for this, he inquired, after a pause, “Where is your destination in England, my dear?”
Since by this time Juliana had formed the opinion that Herr Welcker, though obliging, was a somewhat disreputable type of person, she decided that it might be best if he did not know their true name and direction. She therefore informed him merely that they were bound for a small place in the county of Hampshire, at no great distance, she understood, from Southampton.
“Oh, in that case you won’t have the least difficulty, miss. By the look of our course, you will not have above forty miles to travel once we have made our landfall. And a good thing too, if you ask me,” added Herr Welcker, with some concern, glancing at the sick man tossing restlessly at their feet. “I do not scruple to say, miss, that the sooner your papa is in his own home, and under the care of a good doctor, the better it will be.” Since he was a kindly, though realistic man, he did not utter the thought that had come unbidden into his mind, which was that, considering Mr. Elphinstone’s state of health and prospects of survival in Britain, he might as well have been left behind and the parcel of Limoges taken in his stead. But there was no use crying over spilt milk jugs.
“Yes; I am afraid you are very right,” said Juliana, making him start slightly—but she was agreeing with his spoken comment, not his unspoken one. “Where shall we land, Herr Welcker?”
“On the first nice flat piece of land that we spy, my dear.”
He pulled a string that let out some of the hydrogen gas, and the balloon sank slightly, wrinkling and swaying as the air hissed from the valve. Juliana, who had been mending a small rent in one of the tapestries—for she carried a housewife full of needles and thread in her reticule and hated to be idle—bit off her thread, folded the material carefully once more, and rewrapped it in its sacking cover.
“Are we nearly home?” said Mr. Elphinstone faintly. His mind had wandered at times during the day; Juliana thought that he believed himself a boy again, returning from school for the Christmas holiday.
“Yes, dearest Papa! Soon we shall be there!” She crouched down to embrace him and smooth his hair. Herr Welcker pulled the string again, and the balloon descended even lower. The blue of dusk was beginning to enshroud the countryside below; when next Juliana looked over the side she could see, among the bosky woods and little, hedged-in fields, that here and there a solitary light was beginning to shine faintly in the twilight. It seemed a very quiet, unpeopled landscape.
“Ah, there’s a clump of lights ahead,” Herr Welcker said with satisfaction, and opened the hydrogen valve once again. “This is not a part of the country I know well, but that looks like a decent-sized place where one would hope to be able to hire a conveyance. Heaven send they are not as suspicious as the French, take us all for a parcel of spies, and cast us into jail!”
“What recourse have we if they do so?” inquired Juliana rather hollowly. She did not relish the thought of spending her first repatriated night in an English jail.
“Nay, never trouble your pretty head, my dear. I carry letters of authorization from Prinney himself—enough to get us all out of the Tower of London should we chance to land in there. Now—here’s a big meadow—slow and steady does it—we don’t want to hit a hedgerow at this juncture and break all those pots we have brought so far at such trouble!”
Considering that he had never navigated an air balloon before, Juliana could not but admire his dexterity, as, little by little, he reduced the quantity of gas in the envelope, so that the great unwieldy craft sank lower and lower, not too fast, not too slowly, while it continued to glide northward on the light wind. The ground moving past below them was very close now; Juliana, looking down, could see with disappointment that English grass looked much like French or Italian grass. English cattle, though, she was interested to note, seemed decidedly fatter than French cattle, as, bellowing with fright, they bolted heavily away from the descending aerial monster.
“Now, miss! When I say ‘Hold,’ will you please endeavor to hold that tall pile of packages in place? For I am afraid that when we touch the ground there may be some considerable bump, and it would be too bad if everything should fall about and get broken at this stage.”
“Besides falling upon Papa, which would also be too bad,” agreed Juliana.
“Hold!” he cried, and she did her best, as requested, to keep the cargo in position by wrapping her arms and body around as many bundles as she could, and clutching the edge of the basket with both hands.
There was a violent thump, and poor Mr. Elphinstone cried out with alarm and surprise.
Herr Welcker let out a most appalling oath, fortunately in Dutch.
“Oh, what is it?” cried Juliana, terrified. “Is something broken?”
“No,” he growled. “You have stuck your verdoemde bodkin into the side of the basket, and it has run very nearly right through my thumb!”
“Oh, I am sorry!” she exclaimed repentantly. “It is a dreadful fault I have, I know! I am always sticking my needle into the arms of chairs. Papa has scolded me for it, times out of mind. Are you very severely hurt, dear Herr Welcker?”
“No, it is nothing,” he said with a fair degree of calm, pulling out the needle, which he threw onto the grass, and wrapping a handkerchief round his bleeding thumb. “And, look, here we are in England without a bone broken—or even a crystal from the candelabrum—”
“And there are some English coming to meet us,” said Juliana, looking eagerly toward the end of the field, where running figures with lanterns and pitchforks could now dimly be discerned.
Four
Early next morning, Juliana and her father set off once more.
Herr Welcker had not lingered a moment; as soon as his letters of authorization had satisfied the English villagers that the balloon party were not French spies, he had bespoken the only carriage available in the place—it turned out to be a small hamlet of half a dozen houses named Burley Heath—loaded up his consignment of goods, and, after a hasty farewell, had departed at speed for Southampton, recommending that Juliana and her father should rack up for the night at the village
inn.
“I am obliged to be in Brighton by tomorrow if I can arrange it, but the old gentleman would do well not to travel further at this hour.”
Juliana could only agree, and as they were assured that the chaise would be back by the following morning, and they might have the use of it next day, she was relieved to see her father comfortably established in a warm bed, with a basin of soup, at the Fox and Grapes. She herself was so tired, cold, and stiff that she was soon happy to follow his example and retire to bed, although it was some time before she was able to sleep. Despite the fact that she lay on a soft feather mattress, under a sloping cottage roof, she still seemed to feel the lurch and sway of the balloon’s basket as it bore them across the sky, and, looking up, she expected to discover the innumerable stars still above her.
On the following day Mr. Elphinstone was feverish and weak; his features seemed to have sharpened in the course of the journey, and his eyes had sunk back in their sockets. He was frighteningly pale, and his hands shook badly; Juliana was divided between a certainty that he should not be allowed to leave his couch, and the knowledge that nothing would satisfy him but to be once more within the confines of his own home.
“Come—make haste—let us be on our way!” he urged as soon as Juliana had eaten a morsel of bread and butter and drunk a little coffee—he himself would touch nothing but cold water. “My bones ache to be at home—I shall not be comfortable until we are at Flintwood. Old Mrs. Hurdle will look after me there; I daresay she will soon put me to rights with one of her possets.”
Juliana devoutly hoped that old Mrs. Hurdle—whom she took to be the housekeeper—was still presiding in her grandfather’s house.
Fortunately for the pair, Herr Welcker, although he had been in such haste to be off on the previous evening, had taken time to consider their welfare.
“Reckon you won’t have any English money about you, miss, hey?” he had inquired as he stood superintending the transfer of his cargo from the balloon into the chaise. “And in a little hamlet like this they won’t thank you for French louis or Italian lire; different if you’d landed at a port where there’d be a changing house. Best let me loan you a few guineas—a—a—now don’t come missish over me again, I beg!” as Juliana began to protest. “Don’t forget, you pulled me out of a scrape, for which I’m vastly obliged, as I value my skin highly. Pish, what’s a handful of coins? Bless you, where I’m going, Prinney would fill one of these to the brim with gold guineas, if I asked him”—and he flourished one of the Sèvres pots.
Realizing that her scruples were indeed absurd, Juliana had accepted the loan, promising to repay it as soon as she was established at her grandfather’s.
“No need, my dear—but still—if you insist—very well, then! Adieu! And thanks for the pleasure of your company—convey my best respects to your papa—” He bowed and sprang into the chaise, with surprising agility, considering the long, hard twenty-four hours he had just undergone.
Thanks to him, therefore, they were provided with funds to pay their shot at the inn and hire the chaise in which, immediately after breakfast, they set off once more. They were a bedraggled-looking pair. Without nightwear or toilet articles, Juliana had been obliged to sleep in her shift and borrow a comb from the landlady to bring some order into her tangled curls. Her old brown worsted dress and pelisse were damp and travel-stained from the journey. She was divided between anxiety for her father, despair at the first impression her grandfather was likely to receive of her, and lively interest at the scenes through which they were passing.
“Oh, Papa, it is all so pretty, is it not? A thousand times prettier than the countryside in France! I wonder that last night I thought it all so flat and gray. The meadows are so green! And the little gardens are so trim—oh, Papa, look, there are still roses, though it is so late in the year. And the little thatched houses are so delightful! Do but look at that pair! Oh, see the wild horses, Papa! And the deer! Do the horses belong to nobody? May they roam where they please? I knew of the wild horses in the Camargue, but I never heard there were wild horses in England also.”
Her father smiled faintly at her enthusiasm as he reclined in his corner of the carriage, but he was too ill to sit up and appreciate any of the objects that attracted her interest; he said that he must be content with her descriptions. Indeed, after giving detailed directions to the driver concerning their route, he lay back, for the most part, with his eyes closed, and, since he had passed a very bad night, Juliana, hoping that he might sleep a little on the way, wrapped round him a traveling rug which the landlady had thoughtfully supplied, and endeavored to suppress her exclamations of wonder.
She reflected that it was as well he had been able to instruct the driver as to their direction, for the way seemed very tortuous. The road, often no more than a sandy track, wound through long stretches of woodland, where the trees grew huge and massive, most of them leafless now, though here and there a great oak still kept its bronze foliage. Now the road climbed over heathery moorland, becoming even narrower and more stony; sometimes they must splash through a ford, or scrape along a narrow, deep-banked lane. The forest hamlets through which they passed grew more and more infrequent; their pace was necessarily slow, and, as the hour of noon came and went, Juliana began to feel quite hollow with hunger, for she had been too tired to eat much on the previous evening, and had taken very little breakfast.
She would have liked to ask the driver if he thought they were nearly at their destination, but she did not wish to risk disturbing her father, who had fallen into a kind of restless sleep, twitching and moaning in his corner.
At last, when they reached a woodland crossroads, she was delighted to observe a signpost which said on one of its arms: “Flintwood 2 miles.” A mile, she recalled, was somewhat less than a league, so they must be fairly close to the end of their journey. Presently the road began to improve. The banks were trim, the surface was well kept, and soon they drove between a handsome pair of gates and, coming out through a grove of large beech trees, found themselves within sight of a house—a château, Juliana thought it might have been called in France; not a castle, nor exactly a mansion, but a largish rambling, comfortable-looking gentleman’s residence built in rosy, ancient brick, with tall twisted chimneys.
“That’ll be Flintwood Manor,” called back the driver, evidently quite as relieved as Juliana to come within sight of his goal. “Reckon ’ee’ll be glad enough to jump down and stretch your legs then, missie! Massy me, I niver did goo to such an out-o’-the-road spot—I reckon myself a New Forester born an’ bred, but I niver set foot here in my life afore. Time an’ agen I made sartain we was lost.”
He cracked his whip to encourage the horses to trot forward in style. The approach to the house lay over a stretch of rough, grassy parkland, sparsely set with clumps of large trees, over which the road ran straight and unfenced, so that they must be observed from the windows of the house, if there were anyone at home. While they traversed this stretch of road, Juliana had ample opportunity for many conflicting anxieties: suppose her grandfather should be ill, dead, away from home, the house empty? General Paget might have died during the year since his son had written to him. Or, on the other hand, he might be at home—indeed, a blue thread of smoke ascending from one of the chimneys certainly suggested that somebody was there—but he might be entertaining fashionable company—dozens of elegant strangers—not at all disposed to welcome the sudden arrival of his ill, weary son and dirty, travel-worn granddaughter. Or perhaps he had sold his ancestral home to strangers, on whom the travelers would not have the slightest claim…
The chaise pulled up beside a wide flight of shallow brick steps which led up to the main entrance—a massive oaken door set in under a round archway. To Juliana’s mingled relief and apprehension, a black-clad manservant appeared in the doorway, descended the steps as the carriage rolled to a stop, and came to open its door.
“Good day.
I am Sir Horace Paget’s granddaughter,” Juliana informed the man, in her pretty, accented English, thinking to herself how strange the words sounded. “I am come with my father—Mr. Charles Paget—we have just arrived from France. I believe my grandfather is expecting us?”
“Yes, miss,” said the man, whose expressionless face gave no intimation as to whether he meant that Juliana and her father were indeed expected, or merely that he had heard and understood what she said.
“My father is—is not quite well,” Juliana went on hurriedly. “The journey has fatigued him dreadfully—he is sleeping at present. I think it—it might be best if you could summon assistance—perhaps he could be carried in a chair—and taken straight to a bed?”
“I will apprise Sir Horace of your arrival, miss, and instruct some of the footmen to assist Mr. Charles and see to the disposal of your baggage,” said the expressionless major-domo. “Would you care to step this way, miss?”
Juliana, however, did not like to leave her father, or rouse him until more practical help was forthcoming, and so she waited beside the carriage, feeling very uncomfortable, and very conspicuous, as if all the diamond-paned windows of the house were holding her under observation. She was wretchedly conscious of her hair, which hung in rat’s-tails, for any order achieved with the aid of the landlady’s comb had long since been deranged by the jolting of the carriage. The inn mirror had told her that she was pale and hollow-eyed. As for our baggage, she thought, no doubt the revolutionary mayor of St.-Servan has long since confiscated it. I only hope that one of my grandfather’s housemaids is somewhere near my size, so that I can borrow a nightgown from her.
