The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📗

full cry. Do we not call our organisation ‘the Fatalists’? Our aim is to take every opportunity by quick, short speeches, by mixing with the crowd and putting in a word here and there, to make propaganda against the fiend Robespierre. The populace are like sheep; they’ll follow a lead. One day, one of us⁠—it may be the humblest, the weakest, the youngest; it may be Joséphine or Jacques; I pray God it may be me⁠—but one of us will find the word and speak it at the right time, and the people will follow us and turn against that execrable monster and hurl him from his throne, down into Gehenna.”

He spoke below his breath, in a hoarse whisper which even she had to strain her ears to hear.

“I know, I know, Bertrand,” she rejoined, and her tiny hand stole out in a pathetic endeavour to capture his. “Your aims are splendid. You are wonderful, all of you. Who am I, that I should even with a word or a prayer, try to dissuade you to do what you think is right? But Joséphine is so young, so hotheaded! What help can she give you? She is only seventeen. And Jacques! He is just an irresponsible boy! Think, Bertrand, think! If anything were to happen to these children, it would kill maman!”

He gave a shrug of the shoulders and smothered a weary sigh. She had succeeded in capturing his hand, clung to it with the strength of a passionate appeal.

“You and I will never understand one another, Régine,” he began; then added quickly, “over these matters,” because, following on his cruel words, he had heard the tiny cry of pain, so like that of a wounded bird, which much against her will had escaped her lips. “You do not understand,” he went on, more quietly, “that in a great cause the sufferings of individuals are nought beside the glorious achievement that is in view.”

“The sufferings of individuals,” she murmured, with a pathetic little sigh. “In truth ’tis but little heed you pay, Bertrand, to my sufferings these days.” She paused awhile, then added under her breath: “Since first you met Theresia Cabarrus, three months ago, you have eyes and ears only for her.”

He smothered an angry exclamation.

“It is useless, Régine⁠—” he began.

“I know,” she broke in quietly. “Theresia Cabarrus is beautiful; she has charm, wit, power⁠—all things which I do not possess.”

“She has fearlessness and a heart of gold,” Bertrand rejoined and, probably despite himself, a sudden warmth crept into his voice. “Do you not know of the marvellous influence which she exercised over that fiend Tallien, down in Bordeaux? He went there filled with a veritable tiger’s fury, ready for a wholesale butchery of all the royalists, the aristocrats, the bourgeois, over there⁠—all those, in fact, whom he chose to believe were conspiring against this hideous Revolution. Well! under Theresia’s influence he actually modified his views and became so lenient that he was recalled. You know, or should know, Régine,” the young man added in a tone of bitter reproach, “that Theresia is as good as she is beautiful.”

“I do know that, Bertrand,” the girl rejoined with an effort. “Only⁠—”

“Only what?” he queried roughly.

“I do not trust her⁠ ⁠… that is all.” Then, as he made no attempt at concealing his scorn and his impatience, she went on in a tone which was much harsher, more uncompromising than the one she had adopted hitherto: “Your infatuation blinds you, Bertrand, or you⁠—an enthusiastic royalist, an ardent loyalist⁠—would not place your trust in an avowed Republican. Theresia Cabarrus may be kindhearted⁠—I don’t deny it. She may have done and she may be all that you say; but she stands for the negation of every one of your ideals, for the destruction of what you exalt, the glorification of the principles of this execrable Revolution.”

“Jealousy blinds you, Régine,” he retorted moodily.

She shook her head.

“No, it is not jealousy, Bertrand⁠—not common, vulgar jealousy⁠—that prompts me to warn you, before it is too late. Remember,” she added solemnly, “that you have not only yourself to think of, but that you are accountable to God and to me for the innocent lives of Joséphine and of Jacques. By confiding in that Spanish woman⁠—”

“Now you are insulting her,” he broke in mercilessly. “Making her out to be a spy.”

“What else is she?” the girl riposted vehemently. “You know that she is affianced to Tallien, whose influence and whose cruelty are second only to those of Robespierre. You know it, Bertrand!” she insisted, seeing that at last she had silenced him and that he sat beside her, sullen and obstinate. “You know it, even though you choose to close your eyes and ears to what is common knowledge.”

There was silence after that for a while in the narrow porch, where two hearts once united were filled now with bitterness, one against the other. Even out in the street it had become quite dark, the darkness of a spring night, full of mysterious lights and grey, indeterminate shadows. The girl shivered as with cold and drew her tattered shawl more closely round her shoulders. She was vainly trying to swallow her tears. Goaded into saying more than she had ever meant to, she felt the finality of what she had said. Something had finally snapped just now: something that could never in after years be put together again. The boy and girl love which had survived the past two years of trouble and of stress, lay wounded unto death, bleeding at the foot of the shrine of a man’s infatuation and a woman’s vanity. How impossible this would have seemed but a brief while ago!

Through the darkness, swift visions of past happy times came fleeting before the girl’s tear-dimmed gaze: visions of walks in the woods round Auteuil, of drifting downstream in a boat on the Seine on hot August days⁠—aye! even of danger shared and perilous moments passed together, hand in hand, with bated breath, in