The Smile of the Stranger (5 page)

“Ships from St.-Malo? You are hoping for a ship? I fear, sir, your hopes are due to be dashed. No ships are sailing at present. Those wretched devils of Frogs have closed the port.”

“Then—” gasped Juliana’s father. “My god! We are trapped! Fixed in France
!
Heaven help us, what can we do?” He tottered to a chair and sank on it, looking haggardly at the other two occupants of the small room. But Herr Welcker, strangely enough, did not seem too dispirited.

“Well, I’ll tell you!” he said. “Damme if I haven’t got a soft spot for you two, after the young lady stood up for me with such spunk. Pluck to the backbone you are, my dear. I’ll take you both with me—though,” he added puzzlingly, “it will mean throwing out some of the Gobelins, half a dozen of the Limoges, and most of the wallpaper too, I shouldn’t wonder. Devilish bulky stuff!”

“Sir? I don’t understand you.”

“Walls have ears,” said Herr Welcker. “Let us all take a stroll out of the town. And if you have any luggage that can be carried in a handbag, fetch it along. The rest will have to remain here.”

“What?” gasped Mr. Elphinstone. “Leave my books? My Horace—my Livy—my Montefiume’s Apologia—Dieudonne’s History of the Persian Empire in fourteen volumes? Leave them behind?”

Herr Welcker shrugged.

“Stay with them if you please,” he said. “Otherwise it’s bring what you can carry. I daresay the innkeeper will look after your things faithfully enough if you leave a few francs in a paper on top—you can come back for the books when the wars over! Who wants a lot of plaguey books? The Frogs don’t, for sure. Unlettered, to a man
... Well, are you coming, or not?”

Anguished, Mr. Elphinstone hesitated, then sighed and said, “Well, Juliana, my dear, if you will carry my own Vindication, I daresay I could make shift to bring along a few of my most treasured volumes. We shall just have to leave our clothes behind. I collect, sir, that you have at your disposal an air balloon?”

“You collect rightly,” said Herr Welcker.

I
II

By good fortune, the evening was a foggy one. Juliana, though apprehensive as to the effect of the moist, chill air on her father
’
s delicate frame, could not but be grateful for the cloudy dimness as the three foreigners made their way, silently, and taking pains to avoid notice, toward the edge of the village. Herr Welcker walked a hundred yards ahead, not too fast, and Juliana and her father followed in a strolling, loitering manner, gazing about them at the cottages and the cabbage gardens and the wide bay of St.-Malo, as if their only intention were to view the scene and to enjoy the evening air. Luckily there were few people abroad in the street; most of the village population, it seemed, had repaired to the Liberty Tree to dance around it, drink cheap red wine, and sing revolutionary songs. The fugitives
’
exit from the village was achieved without mishap—due, partly, to the prudence of Herr Welcker, who led them away from the main road and onto a small muddy, brambly path which ran off between the vegetable plots and then up a wooded slope, the steepness of which made Mr. Elphinstone pause, after a while, and gasp for breath, his hand to his side.

“Papa? Are you in pain?” exclaimed Juliana in an anguished whisper. “Here—let me carry your bundle. Pray try not to cough!”

“It is nothing, child—it will pass.” And in a moment he continued on his way. Coming up with Herr Welcker at last, they found themselves in what seemed a large, saddle
-
shaped meadow at the top of the hill. They discovered him in low-voiced conversation with another man, a black-cloaked individual with a hood pulled low over his face. Juliana noticed also a cart, a tethered horse, and a complicated arrangement of guy ropes, dimly visible in the haze, wavering upward into obscurity.

“Deuce take it, there
’
s very little wind,” Herr Welcker was muttering discontentedly. “You do not think, Gavroche, that the plaguey machine will deposit us in mid-Channel? Or merely carry us up the coast to Normandy?”

“Have no fear, monsieur. There is a good southeast wind behind this fog—your craft will bear you to England swiftly enough. Only, make haste to embark! Your cargo is all packed in, and there is no time to be lost—at any minute a shift in the mist might render us visible to some native of the locality or fisherman in the bay.”

“I have brought two more passengers,” said Herr Welcker. “We shall have to remove some of the goods.”

“Monsieur! Have you taken leave of your senses? After all the trouble you took to collect—”

“Hush! It cannot be helped. Without the aid of these two, I should not be here at all. Quick, let us see what can be most easily displaced. The Petitot snuffboxes, for a start—he doesn
’
t care for those above half—the smaller Buhl cabinet—some of the Gobelins
—not
the Sevres—”

Arguing, the two men disappeared up a rope ladder into the gloom, leaving Juliana and her father below with the horse, which dropped its head and cropped in a dispirited manner at the poor pasturage, while the mooring ropes creaked and strained.

“Very good—I think that will do—”

Welcker was out of sight above, but he was evidently passing canvas-wrapped bundles to the other man, who, dangling on the ladder, received them from him; Juliana, running forward, called softly, “Pass them down to me, monsieur! I will catch them
!
”

“Mind yourself, mademoiselle
!
They are heavy. Above all, do not let them fall—though, what does it matter? Oh, the
Limoges!” he exclaimed in anguish. “When I think of the pains that Monsieur went to in order to acquire those—”

“Quiet, Gavroche!” A shift in the mist revealed Herr Welcker s round pink face looking authoritatively over the side of what looked like a very large laundry basket or vegetable farmer
’
s hamper, floating above them in the haze. “Good, that will do! Tell the young lady and the gentleman that they may come up, and to make haste—I think I hear voices in the distance.”

Juliana obliged her father to go first up the ladder, although he was most unwilling. The exertion of climbing up was almost too much for his strength, and the process took many precious minutes, while he clung to the ropes with shaking hands, gasping and coughing. Fortunately Herr Welcker, although so plump, appeared to possess a powerful frame; leaning over the side, at some risk to himself, he more or less hoisted the unfortunate Mr. Elphinstone bodily into the basket, assisted by the man Gavroche, who pushed from below. Then the bundles of books were passed up.

“Now you, mademoiselle—make haste! The voices are coming closer!”

Impelled by fright, Juliana tucked up her skirts and managed the undignified ascent as speedily as she could. Behind her she heard the vague shouts become closer and more menacing.

“Yonder! Ah, look yonder! It is the strangers—it is the spies!
A
has les sc
é
l
é
rats! A la lanterne!
Quick, quick—they are attempting to escape!”

Careless of decorum, Juliana tumbled over the side into the basket. Louder than the voices of the mob, as she did so, came three sharp twangs from below.

“Good, Gavroche has cut the mooring ropes,” remarked Herr Welcker, looking over the side.

“But what will happen to
him?
Is he not coming with us?” gasped Juliana.

“No. He will outdistance them easily enough—he has the horse, which was once the best of poor Chateaumacenay
’
s stud—none of these ragamuffins has any beast that can possibly overtake him
...
Capital, he is away,” he added calmly, and Juliana heard the rattle of hoofs across the turf. “Pity about the Limoges—never mind! But for you, miss, I should be dead as mutton by now, and I value my neck above a parcel of Limoges. Ah, there they come!”

Juliana by now had scrambled herself upright in the narrow, packed space available, and, looking over, she saw many dim figures with lanterns, and waving weapons, directly below where they themselves hung suspended. White faces gaped upward.

“
’
Send they have no muskets,” Herr Welcker muttered uneasily. “One bullet through the envelope, and we should be laughing on the other side of our faces
...
Aha, though, Gavroche was right: here comes the breeze.”

The basket that contained them tipped, swayed, and bore off in a northerly direction. Yells of baffled fury burst from the fog-shrouded group down below. Pikes and reaping hooks were shaken; a few stones whistled past and one or two fell in the basket.

Juliana
’
s father let out a sharp cry as he was struck by a stone on the temple.

“Oh, dear Papa, are you injured? Here, let me see? Shut your eyes—I will bathe it—I have my vinaigrette in my pocket.” Crouching by him, she ministered to him as best she could, wiping the wound with her handkerchief. It proved to be only a graze. There was remarkably little space for them all in the basket, which, perhaps four feet in diameter, contained, as well as themselves, a great number of canvas
-
wrapped packages of every shape and size.

“Pray observe particular care
not
to step on the ones marked with red chalk,” Herr Welcker admonished his passengers. “They contain the breakables—the Lim—ah no, we have left that behind!—the Sevres, the crystal lusters for His Highness
’
s chandeliers, the Due de Cevennes
’
s Ming—”

“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, bu
rn
, or cut up to clothe their filthy brats. I have found priceless tapestries, sir, in hay ba
rn
s, 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.