‘An empty promise! He will assure you – and me too! – that he has no intention of teasing me, and –’
‘He will just ask you!’ interpolated Eliza.
‘Yes – or offer it to me as a high treat, and look like an orphan without means of support if I decline it,’ said his lordship bitterly.
‘Playing off his tricks!’ said Jessamy. ‘Of course he will do so, when he knows he can bamboozle you, sir! Why don’t you give him a set-down?’
‘Instead of encouraging him to think he can depend on you for every indulgence!’ agreed Frederica. ‘Jessamy, do you think you should perhaps bring him away? I daresay they must be wishing him at Jericho!’
Jessamy shook his head, saying with a reluctant smile: ‘No, they ain’t. One of them told Cousin Buxted that he was making himself useful! As a matter of fact, he’s getting as much encouragement as he gets from Cousin Alverstoke – and, lord, won’t he be intolerable for weeks to come!’
‘It would be a waste of breath, I imagine, to say that I have never offered him encouragement, nor, I might add, perceived the smallest need to do so!’ said Alverstoke. He saw that his nephew was approaching, and greeted him with a demand to know how much longer they were to be kept waiting.
‘Oh, not for long now, I fancy!’ responded Buxted. ‘I have been talking to the chief aeronaut, a very agreeable man! There are two of them, you know. This one – Oulton, I believe his name is – has been telling me a number of interesting facts concerning the difficulties and dangers of ballooning: the unexpected currents of air at high al
titudes, the delicacy of the valve, the hazards of descending in a strong wind when the grapnels have frequently been known to tear away whole bushes, so that the balloon swiftly reascends – to name only a few! One needs to be intrepid indeed to venture into the sky: I don’t scruple to say I would not do so for the world!’
‘No, indeed!’ said Charis, shuddering.
‘The speed to which they attain, too!’ he continued. ‘Conceive of travelling at fifty miles an hour! But that, it seems, cannot be seen today, for there is too little wind. I fear that nothing more than a short flight will be attempted, unless, of course, a stronger current is encountered as the balloon rises. I wonder, Charis, if you know to what enormous – one might say incredible – heights they have been known to rise?’
‘Felix told me, half-a-mile. Oh, I hope they will not do so today! It terrifies me only to think of it!’
The Marquis, interpreting with fiendish accuracy the expression on his nephew’s countenance, said: ‘Come, come, Carlton! Surely you can’t be such a clunch as to have hoped to astonish Felix’s sister? If she has been attending, for the past week, to his instructive discourse, she must be very well able to recite all the statistics to you!’ He glanced at Charis, with a smile that drew a soft laugh from her. ‘But I do beg you won’t, Charis!’
‘Oh, no, how could I? I am too stupid to understand such things!’
‘Or perhaps your little brother didn’t perfectly understand all that he tried to tell you!’ said Buxted. ‘It is not the height which constitutes the danger, but the delicacy of the valve, which controls the height. Owing to the atmospheric pressure the cord attached to it has to be operated with great caution. If the valve cannot be sufficiently opened the place of descent may be missed. If, on the other hand, it is opened, and cannot be closed again, the gas escapes with such violence that the balloon collapses so rapidly that it falls to the earth with fatal velocity!’
Fortunately, since Charis had turned pale at the thought that she might be going to witness so terrible a disaster, Jessamy created a diversion by exclaiming: ‘Look! they have begun to fill it!’
And, indeed, the silken bag, which had previously been spread on the ground, could now be seen, rising above the heads of the crowd. As it swelled and mounted it drew gasps of admiration from the spectators, for although those who had had the curiosity to observe it at close quarters knew that its classically-shaped boat was painted in blue and red, with a scroll-work of gold, it was not until the bag began to fill that the huddle of colours on the ground resolved themselves into vertical stripes of red and white, with a blue band, like a sash, running across them.
‘Your ordeal is nearly over, cousin!’ said Frederica.
Before he could reply they were both startled by a hoarse shriek from Charis. Frederica turned quickly, just in time to see her pointing hand drop, and to catch her as she sank into a swoon. She looked round in alarm, and saw that the balloon, released from its moorings, was swiftly soaring upwards, with a small figure clinging, monkey-like, halfway up one of the dangling ropes which had tethered it to the ground. She sat rigid, so paralysed with dread that she could neither speak nor move. Her eyes, drenched with horror, remained fixed on Felix’s diminishing form; and she was unaware either of the noise made by the crowd of startled onlookers, or of the shocked silence which had fallen upon her companions.
That silence was broken by Jessamy. As white as Charis, he croaked suddenly: ‘They are pulling him up! Don’t try to climb, you little fool! Don’t – ! O God! he’ll never keep his hold!’
He buried his face in his hands, but raised it again, as Alverstoke said coolly: ‘Yes, he will. Steady, my child! They are hauling him up fast.’
His gaze, like Frederica’s, never wavered from Felix, already a tiny, indistinguishable figure against the sky. The suspense lasted for seconds that seemed hours. Buxted said: ‘I can’t see! I can’t make out … !’
‘Yes, yes!’ cried Jessamy, his lips trembling. ‘They’re pulling him into the boat! Oh, well done, you little brute, you little devil! Just wait till I get my hands on you! Just wait!’ He then sat down abruptly on the grass, and ducked his head between his knees.
Alverstoke, mounting the step of the landaulet, grasped Frederica’s wrist. ‘Come!’ he said authoritatively. ‘You are not going to faint! He’s quite safe now.’
Buxted, also suffering, like Jessamy, from reaction, ejaculated: ‘Safe? Upon my word, sir, if you think it safe to be –’
‘Be quiet, cloth-head!’ interrupted Alverstoke, with so much menace in the glance he cast upon his nephew that that well-meaning young man almost quailed.
Frederica pulled herself together. She said, out of a dry throat but with a calmness to match Alverstoke’s: ‘No, I never faint.’ Becoming aware of Charis, limp against her shoulder, she said: ‘Charis! My – my wits must have gone begging! I forgot – !’
‘Take this!’ said Eliza, producing a vinaigrette from her reticule. ‘No, never mind! lay her back against the squabs! I’ll attend to her! For heaven’s sake, Vernon, what’s to be done?’
‘Revive Charis!’ he recommended.
‘That’s not what I meant!’ she snapped, untying the ribbons of Charis’s bonnet, and casting this modish confection aside. ‘Frederica, change places with me, or let Vernon hand you out of the carriage!’