Love’s a Stage Page 13

  Monsieur Annonay, when they reached him, was pounding furiously with a sledgehammer upon the splintering head of a hooked anchoring peg. A small, dark man with a beaked nose and crooked lips, he hurled the hammer to the ground and spread wide his arms to exclaim:

  “Ah, the beauteous mademoiselle! I kiss you hands.” He snatched Frances’ hands from her sides, and did so with great energy. Then, apparently satisfied, he stood back, hands on his hips, to admire her while Lord Landry effected the introductions. Annonay thrust his forefinger into the air in a mighty spearing gesture and exclaimed, “Ah, the emotion that fills me—what courage for one of the weaker sex to assist in the rearing of a balloon! To brave the dangers of the so-explosive hydrogen . . .”

  “The explosive hydrogen!” ejaculated Frances, turning involuntarily to look at the tanks Rivington and Captain Zephyr were unloading from the wagon.

  “Not since the death of my dear wife Madeleine have I been one of a ballooning party that included a female. Poor Madeleine—the greatest female pilot of our time!’Twas ten years ago this April that a sad accident put a period on the sentence of her life. She was making a solo ascension at the Champ de Mars in Paris, delighting the crowd below with a display of fireworks . . .” He fell back a few steps, gesturing toward the heavens as if to conjure up a vision of the fearless Madame Annonay. “Gold and silver rain poured from her basket—a cascade of sparks. Below, the crowd cheered with excitement, thinking it a part of the act. But no, the basket was on fire! The balloon began to plummet earthward. As it reached the level of the rooftops, a current caught the car and flung it against the chimney of a house in Rue de Provence. Madeleine fell to the street and spoke to me her last words: ‘Ah ha, I have broken Monsieur Bibot’s record for rapid descent.’” On Monsieur Annonay’s head was a high-crowned beaver hat with a curious pair of canvas earflaps dangling from the brim to his shoulders. He yanked the hat from his head and held it soulfully to his breast; poking out from his head came a mass of short fat braids trussed with spirals of wildly jiggling copper wire. Frances gave the kernel of a shriek, and stared agape at the bizarre coiffure.

  “Monsieur, your hair!” she said.

  “You noticed, mademoiselle!” said Annonay with what Frances felt was a rather maniacal grin. “This is the ceromancy—I have the metal woven into my hair, the better, Miss Atherton . . .” Annonay lowered his voice and gestured her closer with a crooked finger, “to conduct my bodily electricity.”

  Because Frances’ contact with lunatic inventors had been of the most restricted nature, she most unwisely made the comment that she didn’t think the body had electricity, and if it did, that it would conduct itself very well on its own accord. Thus Frances exposed herself to a full half hour of a stern and enthusiastically delivered essay pertaining, but not limited, to bodily electricity, acupuncture, and Hindu levitation, and was preparing for an alarming plunge into the diagnostic values of examination of the tongue, when he was called away by Captain Zephyr to participate in transferring the gas into the balloon bag.

  Frances turned to Lord Landry, who had been, so it seemed to her, deriving enormous enjoyment from listening to Annonay’s discourse. Had she been told that Landry’s approbation stemmed instead from watching her response to Annonay, she would have been amazed, even though Landry had demonstrated a certain interest in debauching her. She had been reared to habits of self-confidence, but also modesty; no one had ever told her how delicate and beguiling was the perplexed curve of her lip, how bright her well-opened hazel eyes, or how entrancing was that expression that designed her features when something happened to flabbergast or fascinate her.

  She delighted Landry further by saying to him:

  “Do you think it’s true what Monsieur Annonay said about holy men in India being able to float in the air? I’m sure my father is as holy as any men in India and he never did so.”

  “Great as my respect is for the British imagination, I don’t think we’re a nation that would tolerate much floating on the part of our clergy,” offered Landry. “Don’t brood over Annonay. He’s quite non compos mentis. Last summer he designed a parachute shaped like an inverted umbrella, and has tried times out of number to talk someone into piloting a balloon from which he can jump.”

  “An inverted umbrella? I’ve a very small understanding of physics, but I shouldn’t think that would work,” said Frances.

  Landry grinned. “It would best Madeleine’s record for rapid descent. Come by the wagon; I’ll put down a blanket and you can sit to watch the balloon inflate.”

  Frances was situated in time to see Captain Zephyr attach a hydrogen cask to the balloon bag with a snaky leather hosepipe, which began a mechanical monotone hissing. The puddle of blue, red, and gold that lay on the ground began to take form and rise, first in waving bulges, then taut and full, transformed into a live, beautiful semicircle that sat on the clover like an uncanny dome. Suddenly, it lifted from the ground to bob slowly, persuasively, at the tethered gondola beneath. The sun shimmered and broke like a wave on the rounded sides of the fully inflated balloon, casting a long, fanciful shadow on the soft sea of clover.

  The peace was broken by M. Annonay and Captain Zephyr, who had been engaged in a terse disagreement about the proper adjustment of the bag’s valve. Zephyr shouted that M. Annonay was a jackass and was overfilling the balloon. M. Annonay retorted with a string of French expletives so graphic that Lord Landry asked Frances if she spoke French. When she said no, Rivington raised his eyebrows at Landry and laughed and said, “Good thing, too!” Before the combatants could go to again, Lord Landry draped an arm around his uncle’s shoulders and showed a blithe disregard for the truth by telling him that Miss Atherton had been bemoaning her lack of opportunity to closely inspect the finished balloon.

  Frances was pulled to her feet by Captain Zephyr and brought to admire the neat arrangement he and Rivington had made of the basket suspension cables. Not to be outdone, Annonay interrupted to draw attention to the difficulties of his share of the experiment, which had been to prepare in his workshop the hydrogen gas. To a ton of iron shavings and water, M. Annonay and his assistants had added a half ton of diluted sulphuric acid to generate the gas. The stench of the sulphuric acid escaping from the barrel! The corrosive fog! A scene of Stygian drama!

  The melodrama of Annonay’s tone caused Rivington to point out dryly that if they would agree to experiment with ordinary illuminating gas, it would render ballooning at once easier and less expensive. With the natural revulsion any innovator must feel to an idea not thought of by himself, M. Annonay frowned at Rivington, and even Captain Zephyr looked reproachfully at his much-beloved only son and heir. The older generation was allied to bemoan the fecklessness of the young! Sir Giles tactfully turned the sentiment to good account by asking Annonay if it was true that Testu-Brissy had ascended while mounted on a horse suspended from a rectangular platform below the balloon.

  The conversation flowed to Garnerin’s pioneering parachute jump in 1797, and had washed into the scientific balloon ascensions of Bibot and Gay-Lussac when Frances noticed that the grazing sheep had migrated to within ten feet of a spreading bracken bush. Probably they were too smart to chew upon its poisonous branches, but country-bred Frances knew better than to place any dependence on the intelligence of a sheep. Quietly she left Captain Zephyr’s side and went to the sheep, where she built a rapport by scratching the sides of their necks through the thick woolly fleece. Then she led them away from the bracken; they trotted happily after her.

  Before many minutes passed she was joined by Richard Rivington, who said, “You missed your calling, Miss Atherton. You ought to have been a shepherdess.”

  She had been weaving the daffodils with rye straw into a spring crown. He dropped to the turf beside her, saying, “I hope you won’t ever hereafter feel obliged to stare at the ground when you are around Giles.”

  Frances looked up quickly from the green sprigs she was manipulating. Her tone was suffocated as she
replied, “You can’t know! The most mortifying circumstances are connected with our acquaintance.”

  “But I do know. David gave me an outline of your adventure! Don’t worry—I don’t think it soils you forever. And you can rest assured that Giles isn’t so fallow as to think you belonged at Chez la Princesse. If he seems to take an interest in you, it’s because he finds you intriguing.”

  Frances set down her daffodil crown and stared at Rivington with startled hazel eyes. “Why would he?”

  A smile hovered around Rivington’s mouth. “How could he not? You are the most unconventional conventional girl I, for one, have ever met. While being quite—forgive me!—straightlaced, you make nothing of acting at Drury Lane or of entering a notorious brothel. . . .”

  “I don’t make nothing of that!” Frances interrupted him to protest.

  Rivington’s blue eyes were bright with laughter as he begged pardon. “No, well, but also, perhaps Giles finds you intriguing because it’s obvious David has a tendre in your direction.”

  “Tendre! You’re quite out there. Nothing like that exists in his attitude toward me, I promise you.” She rather spoiled the effect of this brave announcement by adding wistfully, “He doesn’t take me that seriously.” She stared at the blossoms of a flowering peach tree nearby, then gave a great sigh and prepared to rise.

  Rivington stood up, helping Frances to her feet. His face was thoughtful, but he said only, “There are times when I have the thread of a feeling that David is not so case-hardened as he insists.” He picked up the daffodil crown and handed it to Frances. “I don’t know. No doubt I’m wrong. He’s left more lovers than Don Juan. It’s just that I have a great deal of affection for him. Don’t let him break your heart, will you?”

  “No danger of that,” said Frances so stoutly as to compensate for a certain want of conviction in her tone. They walked together toward the sheep, and Frances amended in a light way, “I daresay I was only the moment’s diversion for him. Already he’s probably beginning to lose interest.”

  Since it was not in Rivington’s power to deny that his favorite cousin’s attachments were remarkable for their lack of tenacity, he said nothing.

  The clover sent sweet fragrance into the air as it was crushed beneath their feet—a fragrance that was carried away as they walked by a fresh spring breeze that now blew in gusts, setting smaller branches waving, shaking off last autumn’s holdout leaves. Frances held the crown of daffodils on her fingertips, swinging it back and forth at her side as she walked, saying diffidently:

  “I can’t imagine what he would have said to you about—I believe you called it my adventure? You don’t wish to tell me, perhaps. I don’t care, really, but naturally one wishes to know what is said behind one’s back.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Rivington, rising nobly to the occasion. “It wasn’t anything much, I can assure you—only that you had followed Kennan there thinking he was on some nefarious errand.”

  Frances’ pink lips curved upward. “So he was! And though it’s not the least use for me to know it, I do think that his visit to Chez la Princesse points Kennan up as a very bad character.”

  Since two of his cousins and any number of his friends had been present as well as Kennan, Rivington was only able to give qualified agreement with her statement. He did say kindly that he didn’t think she ought to worry about being recognized by anyone who had been there, since he didn’t doubt that the most of them had been foxed.

  “Foxed?” Frances gave him a wide-eyed, inquiring look. “Inebriated, do you mean? But Sir Giles recognized me! I could see it instantly in his face.”

  “He only took note of you because of your connection with David. You can trust Giles to stay mum.”

  “Then there’s Mr. St. Pips,” Frances pointed out gloomily.

  “Don’t worry about St. Pips. Did David not tell you?” questioned Rivington. “He went back to Chez la Princesse that night and engaged St. Pips at faro. I can’t remember how much it was that St. Pips lost, but at any rate, he was obliged the next morning to leave London for his Lincolnshire estate, where I suppose he’ll have to rusticate for a long, long time. If ever he does return to town, I’m sure that will be the memory he retains of that night, and not anything associated with you.”

  Not unnaturally, Frances was bereft of speech. Staring dazedly at Rivington, she stretched one hand automatically to stroke the small ewe that had come to nuzzle her skirts. Finally, she said:

  “Lord Landry did that for me?”

  “It seemed like the right thing to do,” responded Rivington, with a half smile. “To David, to me, it’s not important that you were there. They say we’re a lawless family. There are others, however . . .”

  “Who will think otherwise!” finished Frances. “I know! I’ve had to do it all, though. I’ve had to!”

  Rivington’s bright smile answered her rueful one. “You’re quite a heroine, I think.”

  Frances’ expression said clearly that she did not embrace this classification of her character. “No, no! In fact, so far I’ve made an ignominious botch of things!”

  Frances tried to strike Landry’s potent image from her thoughts. Now, if ever, was a moment perfectly tailored to ask Rivington’s assistance to enter Fowleby Place. She must find exactly the right words, though, or risk a reanimation of the disapproval he had expressed about her acting at Drury Lane. He was much too tolerant to nag. He might even express admiration for her courage, but he had let her see more than once that he bore a latent anxiety about her safety.

  The ewe distracted her then as it bumped against her knees, then pressed its cold nose against her wrist. Frances placed her crown of daffodils over its ears and watched with Rivington as the sheep shook its head. The crown slipped to a tipsy angle over one eye and the ewe gazed from underneath it with a particularly wise look, causing Frances to laugh. The sheep, as if attracted by the musical sound and interested by her heightened color and merry eyes, stretched its neck to her and pursed its lips.

  Frances gave its cheek a last gentle rub and then turned her face toward Rivington, determined to introduce the topic of entering the Duke’s ball. Before the first of her words had time to issue from her lips, however, she was disconcerted to find she had lost her chance. Lord Landry was coming toward them across the clover, his golden hair loose in the sunny breeze. To Rivington he called out:

  “Your father has sent me to issue a very civil invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Mutton to view the interior of the gondola.”

  “They won’t like it,” said Frances, shaking her head with knowledgeable pessimism.

  “You say that because you think you wouldn’t like it,” retorted Lord Landry with a grin as he joined them. “The sheep will love it.”

  Landry was right, rather to Frances’ surprise. The sheep allowed themselves to be led into the gondola as though into a stable, and stood side by side chewing on a bale of fodder as nonchalantly as if they had a barn over their heads instead of the swollen orb of the balloon. The gondola bobbed a few inches off the ground from its tether. Landry leaned over it from inside, talking to Frances and the four men. A gusty breeze pulled the gondola two feet away from under her hand. She pulled back, surprised, with the exclamation that the balloon was tugging at its anchor like a boat tied to a dock during high tide.

  “Ah, ha, ha,” said Annonay, “it is riding on an ocean of air. And the wind is increasing, so it’s fortunate that today we only test. It would be too dangerous to make a flight. The balloon might, I estimate, go as much as thirty-five or forty miles an hour.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Captain Zephyr, looking as though he rather relished the idea. “But I’ll tell you what, little Frances. Why don’t you climb into the basket beside David? Then you can feel a bit of what it’s like to fly.”

  “No—no, thank you!” Frances backed away from the basket, palms out, as if fending off the suggestion, shaking her head vigorously. “I think not! I’ve never felt the slightest desire to fly.�
� She saw Rivington, wearing a grin, advance on her purposefully. Quickly she turned to flee, but he caught her around the waist. She laughed and struggled, and demanded that he unhand her as he bore her inexorably toward the balloon.

  “Hush! You’ll startle the sheep. And if you keep wriggling like that and your skirts fly up, don’t blame me,” managed Rivington, half choking with mirth. Swinging her in his arms, he set her lightly in the gondola beside Lord Landry, who steadied her with an arm around her shoulders as the balloon dipped and then steadied itself under her slight weight. However, it was not for nothing that she had been raised in a fishing village, and she soon had her sea legs and was standing with a semblance of confidence. Landry, seeing she was capable of supporting herself, stepped back in the gondola and looked at her. There was a lull in the breeze, and the gondola ceased its eddying.

  “Now you can say you’ve been in one at least. How do you like it?” he said.

  Her dark-lashed eyes reflected her enjoyment of the strange, weightless sensation. “It is exhilarating! As long as this is the farthest I get from the ground.” As she spoke, the forgotten Mr. Bilge arrived to perch on the gondola’s rim in a rush of gray wings. He had the end of a piece of rope in his black beak, but dropped it to give a loud scream.

  “Mr. Bilge, you’ve escaped your leash!” said Frances. “And you’ve been chewing on a rope.” Her expression was one of comical dismay as she turned to Rivington and Captain Zephyr. “I’m so sorry. I hope he hasn’t damaged something important.” Frances was expecting only a polite reassurance, so she was much surprised when she saw Zephyr’s jaw drop. Before she heard him speak, he seemed to shrink and move away from her. It was an extraordinary feeling; she didn’t quite realize that it was she going and not Zephyr, Rivington, Annonay, and Sir Giles, until she heard Landry’s pointedly calm voice in her ear, saying:

  “I don’t want to alarm you, my dear, but it seems the parrot’s chewed through our anchoring line. To carry on your nautical analogy, we’ve been set adrift.”