The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy (top ten books to read txt) 📗

lovely after the storm, and she had found a friend who exhaled the breath of Paris, who knew Armand well, who could talk of all the merry, brilliant friends whom she had left behind. So she lingered on under the pretty porch, while through the gaily-lighted dormer-window of the coffee-room came sounds of laughter, of calls for “Sally” and for beer, of tapping of mugs, and clinking of dice, mingled with Sir Percy Blakeney’s inane and mirthless laugh. Chauvelin stood beside her, his shrewd, pale, yellow eyes fixed on the pretty face, which looked so sweet and childlike in this soft English summer twilight.

“You surprise me, citoyenne,” he said quietly, as he took a pinch of snuff.

“Do I now?” she retorted gaily. “Faith, my little Chauvelin, I should have thought that, with your penetration, you would have guessed that an atmosphere composed of fogs and virtues would never suit Marguerite St. Just.”

“Dear me! is it as bad as that?” he asked, in mock consternation.

“Quite,” she retorted, “and worse.”

“Strange! Now, I thought that a pretty woman would have found English country life peculiarly attractive.”

“Yes! so did I,” she said with a sigh. “Pretty women,” she added meditatively, “ought to have a good time in England, since all the pleasant things are forbidden them—the very things they do every day.”

“Quite so!”

“You’ll hardly believe it, my little Chauvelin,” she said earnestly, “but I often pass a whole day—a whole day—without encountering a single temptation.”

“No wonder,” retorted Chauvelin, gallantly, “that the cleverest woman in Europe is troubled with ennui.”

She laughed one of her melodious, rippling, childlike laughs.

“It must be pretty bad, mustn’t it?” she said archly, “or I should not have been so pleased to see you.”

“And this within a year of a romantic love match! . . .”

“Yes! . . . a year of a romantic love match . . . that’s just the difficulty . . .”

“Ah! . . . that idyllic folly,” said Chauvelin, with quiet sarcasm, “did not then survive the lapse of . . . weeks?”

“Idyllic follies never last, my little Chauvelin. . . . They come upon us like the measles . . . and are as easily cured.”

Chauvelin took another pinch of snuff: he seemed very much addicted to that pernicious habit, so prevalent in those days; perhaps, too, he found the taking of snuff a convenient veil for disguising the quick, shrewd glances with which he strove to read the very souls of those with whom he came in contact.

“No wonder,” he repeated, with the same gallantry, “that the most active brain in Europe is troubled with ennui.”

“I was in hopes that you had a prescription against the malady, my little Chauvelin.”

“How can I hope to succeed in that which Sir Percy Blakeney has failed to accomplish?”

“Shall we leave Sir Percy out of the question for the present, my dear friend?” she said drily.

“Ah! my dear lady, pardon me, but that is just what we cannot very well do,” said Chauvelin, whilst once again his eyes, keen as those of a fox on the alert, darted a quick glance at Marguerite. “I have a most perfect prescription against the worst form of ennui, which I would have been happy to submit to you, but—”

“But what?”

“There is Sir Percy.”

“What has he to do with it?”

“Quite a good deal, I am afraid. The prescription I would offer, fair lady, is called by a very plebeian name: Work!”

“Work?”

Chauvelin looked at Marguerite long and scrutinisingly. It seemed as if those keen, pale eyes of his were reading every one of her thoughts. They were alone together; the evening air was quite still, and their soft whispers were drowned in the noise which came from the coffee-room. Still, Chauvelin took a step or two from under the porch, looked quickly and keenly all round him, then, seeing that indeed no one was within earshot, he once more came back close to Marguerite.

“Will you render France a small service, citoyenne?” he asked, with a sudden change of manner, which lent his thin, fox-like face singular earnestness.

“La, man!” she replied flippantly, “how serious you look all of a sudden. . . . Indeed I do not know if I would render France a small service—at any rate, it depends upon the kind of service she—or you—want.”

“Have you ever heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Citoyenne St. Just?” asked Chauvelin, abruptly.

“Heard of the Scarlet Pimpernel?” she retorted with a long and merry laugh, “Faith, man! we talk of nothing else. . . . We have hats ‘à la Scarlet Pimpernel’; our horses are called ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’; at the Prince of Wales’ supper party the other night we had a ‘oufflé à la Scarlet Pimpernel.’ . . . Lud!” she added gaily, “the other day I ordered at my milliner’s a blue dress trimmed with green, and bless me, if she did not call that ‘à la Scarlet Pimpernel.’”

Chauvelin had not moved while she prattled merrily along; he did not even attempt to stop her when her musical voice and her childlike laugh went echoing through the still evening air. But he remained serious and earnest whilst she laughed, and his voice, clear, incisive, and hard, was not raised above his breath as he said,—

“Then, as you have heard of that enigmatical personage, citoyenne, you must also have guessed, and known, that the man who hides his identity under that strange pseudonym, is the most bitter enemy of our republic, of France . . . of men like Armand St. Just.”

“La! . . .” she said, with a quaint little sigh, “I dare swear he is. . . . France has many bitter enemies these days.”

“But you, citoyenne, are a daughter of France, and should be ready to help her in a moment of deadly peril.”

“My brother Armand devotes his life to France,” she retorted proudly; “as for me, I can do nothing . . . here in England. . . .”

“Yes, you . . .” he urged still more earnestly, whilst his thin fox-like face seemed suddenly to have grown impressive and full of dignity, “here, in England, citoyenne . . . you alone can help us. . . . Listen!—I have been sent over here by the Republican Government as its representative: I present my credentials to Mr. Pitt in London to-morrow. One of my duties here is to find out all about this League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, which has become a standing menace to France, since it is pledged to help our cursed aristocrats—traitors to their country, and enemies of the people—to escape from the just punishment which they deserve. You know as well as I do, citoyenne, that once they are over here, those French émigrés try to rouse public feeling against the Republic. . . . They are ready to join issue with any enemy bold enough to attack France. . . . Now, within the last month, scores of these émigrés, some only suspected of treason, others actually condemned by the Tribunal of Public Safety, have succeeded in crossing the Channel. Their escape in each instance was planned, organised and effected by this society of young English jackanapes, headed by a man whose brain seems as resourceful as his identity is mysterious. All the most strenuous efforts on the part of my spies have failed to discover who he is; whilst the others are the hands, he is the head, who beneath this strange anonymity calmly works at the destruction of France. I mean to strike at that head, and for this I want your help—through him afterwards I can reach the rest of the gang: he is a young buck in English society, of that I feel sure. Find that man for me, citoyenne!” he urged, “find him for France!”

Marguerite had listened to Chauvelin’s impassioned speech without uttering a word, scarce making a movement, hardly daring to breathe. She had told him before that this mysterious hero of romance was the talk of the smart set to which she belonged; already, before this, her heart and her imagination had been stirred by the thought of the brave man, who, unknown to fame, had rescued hundreds of lives from a terrible, often an unmerciful fate. She had but little real sympathy with those haughty French aristocrats, insolent in their pride of caste, of whom the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive was so typical an example; but, republican and liberal-minded though she was from principle, she hated and loathed the methods which the young Republic had chosen for establishing itself. She had not been in Paris for some months; the horrors and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, culminating in the September massacres, had only come across the Channel to her as a faint echo. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, she had not known in their new guise of bloody justiciaries, merciless wielders of the guillotine. Her very soul recoiled in horror from these excesses, to which she feared her brother Armand—moderate republican as he was—might become one day the holocaust.

Then, when first she heard of this band of young English enthusiasts, who, for sheer love of their fellow-men, dragged women and children, old and young men, from a horrible death, her heart had glowed with pride for them, and now, as Chauvelin spoke, her very soul went out to the gallant and mysterious leader of the reckless little band, who risked his life daily, who gave it freely and without ostentation, for the sake of humanity.

Her eyes were moist when Chauvelin had finished speaking, the lace at her bosom rose and fell with her quick, excited breathing; she no longer heard the noise of drinking from the inn, she did not heed her husband’s voice or his inane laugh, her thoughts had gone wandering in search of the mysterious hero! Ah! there was a man she might have loved, had he come her way: everything in him appealed to her romantic imagination; his personality, his strength, his bravery, the loyalty of those who served under him in the same noble cause, and, above all, that anonymity which crowned him, as if with a halo of romantic glory.

“Find him for France, citoyenne!”

Chauvelin’s voice close to her ear roused her from her dreams. The mysterious hero had vanished, and, not twenty yards away from her, a man was drinking and laughing, to whom she had sworn faith and loyalty.

“La! man,” she said with a return of her assumed flippancy, “you are astonishing. Where in the world am I to look for him?”

“You go everywhere, citoyenne,” whispered Chauvelin, insinuatingly, “Lady Blakeney is the pivot of social London, so I am told . . . you see everything, you hear everything.”

“Easy, my friend,” retorted Marguerite, drawing herself up to her full height and looking down, with a slight thought of contempt on the small, thin figure before her. “Easy! you seem to forget that there are six feet of Sir Percy Blakeney, and a long line of ancestors to stand between Lady Blakeney and such a thing as you propose.”

“For the sake of France, citoyenne!” reiterated Chauvelin, earnestly.

“Tush, man, you talk nonsense anyway; for even if you did know who this Scarlet Pimpernel is, you could do nothing to him—an Englishman!”

“I’d take my chance of that,” said Chauvelin, with a dry, rasping little laugh. “At any rate we could send him to the guillotine first to cool his ardour, then, when there is a diplomatic fuss about it, we can apologise—humbly—to the British Government, and, if necessary, pay compensation to the bereaved family.”

“What you propose is horrible, Chauvelin,” she said, drawing away from him as from some noisome insect. “Whoever the man may be, he is brave and noble, and never—do you hear me?—never would I lend a hand to such villainy.”

“You prefer to be insulted by every French aristocrat who comes to this country?”

Chauvelin had taken sure aim when he shot this tiny shaft. Marguerite’s fresh young cheeks became a thought more pale and she bit her under lip, for she would not let him see that the shaft had struck home.

“That is beside the question,” she said at last with indifference. “I can defend myself, but I refuse to do any dirty work for you—or for France. You have other means at your disposal; you must use them, my friend.”

And without another look at Chauvelin, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back on him and walked straight into the inn.

“That is not your last word, citoyenne,” said Chauvelin, as a flood of light from the passage illumined her elegant, richly-clad figure, “we meet in London, I hope!”

“We meet in London,” she said, speaking over her shoulder at him, “but that is my last word.”

She threw open the coffee-room door and disappeared from his view, but he remained under the porch for a moment or two, taking a pinch of snuff. He had received a rebuke and a snub, but his shrewd,