Frederica (39 page)

“Well, I can’t rightly say, sir,” replied the landlord, smiling indulgently at him. “It was an hour ago when it came by the town—maybe an hour-and-a-half.”

Jessamy’s shining eyes lifted to Alverstoke’s; a smile wavered on his lips; he said simply: “The
relief
of it! How far is that place—King’s Langley?”

“Just a matter of five miles, sir. But I don’t believe all I hear, and there’s no saying that the balloon did come down there. All
I
say is that none of those cod’s heads that went chasing after it has come back yet, so if they ain’t still gawking at it where it lays they’re maybe following it into the next county!”

“I see,” said Alverstoke. “You can draw me a tankard of your home-brewed. Order what you like, Jessamy: I’m going to have a word with Curry.”

He strode out of the inn as he spoke, to find Curry and the head ostler leading the grays towards the stables. He ran Ms experienced eye over his horses. They were sweating, but. not distressed. Curry said, with pride: “Prime ‘uns, my lord! Didn’t I say to your lordship they’d go well upon wind?”

Alverstoke nodded, but Curry saw that he was slightly frowning, and looked an enquiry. “They’ve taken no hurt, my lord. I’ll give ‘em some warm gruel, and—”

“Yes, see that done, and give the ostler exact instructions. I’m taking you on with me.”

“Very good, my lord. Nothing wrong, I do hope?”

“I’m not sure. No need to say anything to Mr Jessamy, but there’s no question that when we last saw the balloon it was being borne, off its course. Well, if the wind took it, the country is fairly open, and it may have made a safe landing.”

“No reason why it shouldn’t have, my lord.”

“None, but it appears that none of the people who ran off to see it have yet returned. If there was nothing more to look at than the boat, and the empty bag, what should be keeping them so long?”

“Well, your lordship knows what boys are!” suggested Curry.

“I do indeed! But they were not all boys. I may have become infected by Mr Jessamy’s alarms, but I’ve a feeling I may need you. Fifteen minutes!”

He went back into the inn, to find Jessamy refreshing himself from a large tankard. He lowered it, with a sigh of satisfaction, and handed a similar one to the Marquis, saying: “Lord, I was thirsty! Here’s yours, sir: the ale-draper says it’s a regular knock-me-down!”

“In that case, you will shortly be top-heavy, and I shall abandon you, so that you may sleep it off at your leisure.”

“Well, I thought I might be a trifle overtaken, so I ordered a half-and-half for myself.”

“Thank God for that!”

Jessamy laughed, but said, a little shyly: “I expect I’ve plagued you enough already, with my—my distempered freaks, sir.”

“Now, what can I have said to make you think so?” demanded Alverstoke, in astonished accents.

“You may choose to poke bogey at me, but you know very well, sir!
Such
a set-down—! I—I am afraid I took snuff, and I shouldn’t have done so!”

“Handsomely said!” approved Alverstoke. “But if you took
that
for one of my set-downs—!”

“Well, if it wasn’t I hope you’ll never give me one,” said Jessamy frankly. “Sir, when do we set forward again? I have been thinking, and I shouldn’t wonder at it if we met them on their way back to London. Except that—what becomes of the balloon?”

“I haven’t the least idea. It’s a nice point, I admit.”

“It occurred to me a minute ago. They can’t carry it, and they can’t fill the bag again, because where would they get the hydrogen? And all those casks couldn’t be brought on the wagon—at least, they could, but it would take them all day to get here, even if they knew where the thing meant to make its descent, which they never do.”

“Very true. One can only assume that they must have it conveyed by farm-cart, or some such thing, to a place of safety—leaving it there to be recovered later.”

“Well, if that’s how they manage, doesn’t it
prove
what a crackbrained thing it is?” said Jessamy scornfully. “A fine way to go on a journey! Getting set down in a field, very likely miles from where you wish to be, and then being obliged to pack the boat, and the bag, and the anchors, and all the rest of the gear, on to a cart, before you trudge off to find some sort of a carriage!”

“A sobering thought,” agreed Alverstoke. “I fancy, however, that balloons are not intended for mere travel. Are you ready to set forward again?”

Jessamy jumped up at once, and went out into the yard. He was critically inspecting the new team when Alverstoke joined him, exchanging with Curry various disparaging remarks about job-horses. He was surprised when Curry sprang up behind, but beyond saying that he had thought Alverstoke had meant to leave him in charge of the grays, he made no comment. His mind was preoccupied; and he only nodded when, a mile out of Watford, Alverstoke acidly animadverted on leaders which had acquired the habit of hanging off.

No other vehicles than the Mail, and a private chaise, both southward bound and travelling fast, were encountered; and the only pedestrian was a venerable gentleman in a smock, who disclaimed all knowledge of balloons, adding that he didn’t hold with them, or with any other nasty, newfangled inventions; but at the end of the second mile Alverstoke saw a cluster of people ahead, and drew up alongside them. They were mostly of immature age, and they had emerged on to the post-road through a farm-gate opening on to undulating pastures. They were talking animatedly amongst themselves; and (said the Marquis sardonically) bore all the appearance of persons capable of running two miles to marvel at a deflated balloon.

So, indeed, it proved; and they had been richly rewarded. Not that any of them had been in time to
see
anything; but there were them as had, and (as several voices assured his lordship) a rare bumble-broth it must have been, such as hadn’t happened in these parts, not since anyone could remember. Dicked in the nob they were, surely, for what must they do, with a good three acres of clear ground under them, but bear down on a clump of trees, and get all tangled up in the branches. Oh, it was a terrible accident! for although one of the gentlemen climbed down safe enough, the other, which was trying to help the nipperkin they had with them, made a right mull of it, by all accounts, and broke his arm; while, as for the nipperkin, he came crashing through the branches, with blood all over him, and was taken up for dead. “Which,” a senior member of the gathering told the Marquis, “wasn’t so laughable, nor anything like.”

“Where?” Jessamy demanded hoarsely. “
Where
?”

“Oh, you won’t see nothing
now,
sir! They was all gone off to Monk’s Farm above an hour ago, with the nipperkin stretched out on a hurdle. Well, all of us which came from Watford was too late to get a sight of aught but the balloon, with its ropes caught up in the elm-tree, and there’s no saying when they’ll start in to get it down, which don’t hardly seem worth waiting for. So we come away.”

“I seen the doctor drive up in his gig!” piped up an urchin.

“Ay, so you did, and got a clout from Miss Judbrook for your pains, poke-nose!”

“Where is the farm?” asked Alverstoke, interrupting the goodnatured mirth caused by this last remark.

He was told that it was at Clipperfield: a statement immediately qualified by the ominous words,
as you might say;
but when he asked for more precise information all that he was able to gather from the conflicting, and generally incomprehensible, directions offered by half-a-dozen persons was that the lane leading to the village joined the post-road at King’s Langley.

Cutting short the efforts of a helpful youth to describe the exact situation of Monk’s Farm, he drove on, saying: “We shall more easily discover the whereabouts of the farm when we reach Clipperfield.” He glanced briefly at Jessamy, and added: “Pluck up! There’s a doctor with him, remember!”

Jessamy, ashen-pale, trying desperately to overcome the long shudders that shook his thin frame, managed to speak. “They said—they said—”

“I heard them!” interrupted Alverstoke. “He was taken up for dead, and he was covered with blood. Good God, boy, have you lived all your life in the country without discovering that illiterates always invest the most trifling accident with the ingredients of melodrama?
Taken up for dead
may be translated into
was stunned by his fall;
and as for
covered in blood
—! What the devil should make him bleed but scratching his face, when he missed his hold, and tumbled down through the branches?”

Achieving a gallant smile, Jessamy said: “Yes—of course! Or—or a nose-bleed!”

“Very likely!”

“Yes. But—” He stopped, unable for a moment to command his voice, and then said jerkily: “Not—a
trifling
—accident!”

“No, I am afraid he may have broken a bone or two,” replied Alverstoke coolly. “Let us hope that it will be a lesson to him! Now, my young friend, I am going to do what you have been wishing me to do from the start of this expedition: spring ‘em!”

As he spoke, the team broke into a canter, quickly lengthening their strides to a gallop. At any other time, Jessamy’s attention would have been riveted by the consummate skill displayed by a top-sawyer driving strange horses at a splitting pace along a winding road, too narrow for safety, and by no means unfrequented; but, in the event, a dreadful anxiety absorbed him, and his only impulse, when Alverstoke faultlessly took a hill in time, or checked slightly at a sudden bend, was to urge him to a faster speed. It was not he, but Curry, grimly hanging on, who shut his eyes when Alverstoke feather-edged a blind corner, leaving an inch to spare between the phaeton and an oncoming coach; and it was Curry, who, when the first straggling cottages of King’s Langley came into sight, gasped: “For God’s sake, my lord—!”

But even as these words were jerked out of him, he regretted them, for the Marquis was already checking his horses. As the team entered the little town at a brisk trot, he said, over his shoulder: “Yes, Curry? What is it?”

“Nothing, my lord! Except that I thought you was downright obfuscated, for which I’m sure I beg your lordship’s pardon!” responded his henchman, availing himself of the licence accorded to an old and trusted retainer.

“You should! I’m not even bright in the eye.”

“Look! There’s a signpost!” Jessamy said suddenly, leaning forward in his seat.

“Clipperfield and Sarratt!” read Curry.

His lordship turned the corner in style, but was forced immediately to rein the team in to a sober pace. The lane was winding and narrow, bordered by unkempt hedges, and so deeply rutted, so full of holes, that Curry remarked, with dour humour, that they might think themselves lucky the month was June, and not February, when the lane would have been a regular hasty-pudding. At the end of two difficult miles, which stretched Jessamy’s nerves to snapping-point, he said: “Cross-road ahead, my lord, and I can see a couple of chimneys off to the left. This’ll be it!”

Whatever excitement had been aroused in Clipper-field by the recent accident had apparently died away. There was only one person to be seen: a stout woman, engaged in cutting a cabbage in the patch of garden in front of her cottage. Having, as she informed him, far too much to do without troubling herself with balloons, she was unable to give Jessamy any news of Felix; but she told Alverstoke that Monk’s Farm lay about a mile down the road, towards Buckshill. She pointed with her knife to the south, and said that he couldn’t miss it: a statement which he mistrusted, but which turned out to be true.

It was set a hundred yards back from the lane, a large, rambling house of considerable antiquity, with its barns, its pigstyes, and its cattle-byre clustered round it. Before its open door stood the doctor’s gig, in charge of his man. Alverstoke turned in through the big white gate, and drove up to the farm.

Before the phaeton had stopped, Jessamy sprang down from it, and almost ran into the house. A shrill voice was heard demanding to know who he might be, and what his business was. “Ah!” said the Marquis. “The lady who clouted young—er—poke-nose, I fancy!”

XXI

The door of the farmhouse opened on to an unevenly flagged passage, at the end of which a flight of worn oak stairs rose to the upper floor. Jessamy, hesitating after his impetuous entrance, found himself confronted by an angular woman, whose sharp-featured countenance wore all the signs of chronic ill-temper. In answer to her angry enquiry, he stammered: “I beg pardon! It’s my brother! The—the boy who was carried in here!”

This reply, far from mollifying her, had much the same effect as a match applied to a train of gunpowder. Her eyes snapped, her colour rose, and she said: “Oh, he is, is he? Then I’m mightily glad to see you, young sir, and I trust you’ve come to take him away! This house isn’t a hospital, nor a public inn neither, and I’ve got too much to do already without looking after sick boys, let me tell you! What’s more, I’m not a nurse, and I won’t take the responsibility, say what you like!”

At this point, in what threatened to be a lengthy diatribe, she stopped, and her jaw dropped. Alverstoke was standing on the threshold. At all times an imposing figure, he was, on this occasion, a startling one, for although he wore a long driving-coat of white drab, with a number of shoulder-capes, it was unbuttoned, and revealed the exquisite attire he habitually wore in London, which included an extremely elegant waistcoat, the palest of pantaloons, and highly polished Hessian boots. In Bond Street he would have been complete to a shade; in a country village he looked quite out of place; but Miss Judbrook was almost as much impressed as she was astonished.