Frederica

Whatever excitement had been aroused in Clipperfield 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 stopp

ed, 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!’

Twenty-one

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.

He said, pleasantly, but with a faint touch of hauteur: ‘Why should you, indeed? I fancy you must be Miss Judbrook: I am Lord Alverstoke. I should like to see the doctor, if you please.’

Miss Judbrook was so much overcome that she dropped a slight curtsy, and said: ‘Yes, my lord!’ However, she was a redoubtable woman, and she made a swift recovery. ‘I hope I’m not an unfeeling woman, my lord, nor one as doesn’t know her duty, but it’s none of my business to be nursing boys which fall out of balloons, and I can’t and I won’t undertake it, as Judbrook should have known, instead of having him brought here without a word to me, let alone calling Betty out of the dairy to sit with him! I’m not going to do her work, so he needn’t think it! I’m sure I’m very sorry for the young gentleman, but as for having him laid up here, as bad as he is, and having to be sat with, and waited on hand and foot, I haven’t the time nor the patience to do it, which I told Dr Elcot to his head. And if Mrs Hucknall sets foot inside this house I leave it, and that’s flat!’

‘Yes, well, all these matters can no doubt be arranged – when I have had word with the doctor!’ said Alverstoke.

Miss Judbrook sniffed resentfully, but his evident boredom disconcerted her. She said, rather more mildly: ‘I’m sure I hope so, my lord! The doctor’s in my parlour – mussing it up with his splints and his bandages, and bowls of water, and I don’t know what more beside! This way!’

She opened a door on the left of the passage, saying: ‘This is my Lord Alverstoke, wanting to see you, doctor, and the little boy’s brother. And I’ll be obliged to you not to slop any more water on to my new carpet!’

‘Oh, go away, woman, go away!’ said the doctor testily.

Contrary to Jessamy’s eager expectation, the doctor and the second of the two aeronauts were the only people in the room. The aeronaut, his brow adorned with sticking-plaster, was sitting in a chair by the table, while the doctor was bandaging his splinted forearm.

‘Felix?’ Jessamy blurted out. ‘My brother?’

The doctor paused in his task to direct a penetrating glance at him from under his bushy brows. ‘His brother, are you? Well, there’s no need for you to be in a stew: he hasn’t managed to kill himself!’ He transferred his gaze to Alverstoke, and favoured him with a nod. ‘Good-day to you, my lord. Are you related to the boy?’

‘Cousin, and – er – guardian!’ said Alverstoke.

The doctor, continuing his work, said: ‘Then you’ll give me leave to tell you, my lord, that you’re a mighty careless guardian!’

‘So, indeed, it would appear,’ agreed Alverstoke. ‘How badly is the boy hurt?’

‘Early days to tell you that. He suffered a severe concussion, cut his face open, and sprained a wrist, but there are no bones broken, barring a couple of ribs. Badly bruised, of course. He came round half-an-hour ago. Complained of headache. Which might mean –’

‘That would be the altitude!’ said his present patient. ‘Many people suffer from acute headache when –’

‘I’m not an ignoramus!’ growled the doctor. ‘Keep still!’

‘Is he – has he – injured his brain?’ asked Jessamy, as though he dreaded to hear the answer.

The doctor shot another of his piercing looks at him. ‘No reason to think so. He wasn’t himself – couldn’t expect him to be – but he knew what had happened to him, I think. Sang out that he couldn’t, and some gabble about falling.’

Again the aeronaut intervened, addressing himself to Alverstoke. ‘I thought he was safe, my lord! Everything was going well till we started the descent! That was when we veered. You see, when you drop down close to the earth –’

‘Yes, I understand that you frequently meet winds that were not encountered at higher altitudes,’ interrupted Alverstoke. ‘Also that you were blown amongst trees. Never mind why! just tell me, if you please, what happened when you became entangled with – an elm tree, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes – that is, it may have been an elm, my lord! I don’t know anything about trees. When Mr Oulton saw that we weren’t going to clear it, which we should have done, if the valve hadn’t stuck, when he tried to close it, he shouted to me to grab hold of a branch, and climb out of the boat on to it. ‘You first, Beenish, and lend the boy a hand!’ he told me. Which I did, and it was easy enough, and there wasn’t much danger either, as long as the weight was taken out of the boat, so that it wouldn’t break through the branches, and crash down on to the ground. The valve being open, and the gas escaping pretty fast, there was no fear the balloon would rise again, you understand. And the little chap wasn’t a scrap afraid! That I’ll swear to! Cool as a cucumber, he was, and thinking of nothing but ways of controlling balloons! ‘Don’t be in a worry about me!’ he said. ‘I shall do!’ Which I never doubted, my lord! There was Mr Oulton, helping him to climb out of the boat, and I was just thinking he wouldn’t want me to lend him a hand when he suddenly seemed to lose his head. At least – I don’t know, but I can’t think what else it could have been, for it looked to me as if he had hold of the branch all right and tight, though it all happened so quickly, of course, that I can’t be sure of that. All I do know is that he cried out: “I can’t!” and – and fell! My lord, I swear I did my best! I tried to grab hold of him, but I lost my balance, and the next thing was that I fell out of the tree!’

Jessamy, who had been listening to him in gathering incredulity, exclaimed: ‘Felix? Why, he climbs like a cat!’

‘Young man,’ said the doctor, ‘if you don’t know why your brother couldn’t grasp the branch I can tell you! His hands were numb with cold, that’s why!’