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

darkened rooms, with curtains drawn and ears straining to hear the distant cannonade, the shouts of an infuriated populace or the rattle of death carts upon the cobblestones. Swift visions of past sorrows and past joys! An immense self-pity filled the girl’s heart to bursting. An insistent sob that would not be suppressed rose to her throat.

“Oh, Mother of God, have mercy!” she murmured through her tears.

Bertrand, shamed and confused, his heart stirred by the misery of this girl whom he had so dearly loved, his nerves strained beyond endurance through the many mad schemes which his enthusiasm was forever evolving, felt like a creature on the rack, torn between compunction and remorse on the one hand and irresistible passion on the other.

“Régine,” he pleaded, “forgive me! I am a brute, I know⁠—a brute to you, who have been the kindest little friend a man could possibly hope for. Oh, my dear,” he added pitiably, “if you would only understand⁠ ⁠…”

At once her tender, womanly sentiment was to the fore, sweeping pride and just resentment out of the way. Hers was one of those motherly natures that are always more ready to comfort than to chide. Already she had swallowed her tears, and now that with a wearied gesture he had buried his face in his hands, she put her arm around his neck, pillowed his head against her breast.

“I do understand, Bertrand,” she said gently. “And you must never ask my forgiveness, for you and I have loved one another too well to bear anger or grudge one toward the other. There!” she said, and rose to her feet, and seemed by that sudden act to gather up all the moral strength of which she stood in such sore need. “It is getting late, and maman will be anxious. Another time we must have a more quiet talk about our future. But,” she added, with renewed seriousness, “if I concede you Theresia Cabarrus without another murmur, you must give me back Joséphine and Jacques, If⁠—if I⁠—am to lose you⁠—I could not bear to lose them as well. They are so young⁠ ⁠…”

“Who talks of losing them?” he broke in, once more impatient, enthusiastic⁠—his moodiness gone, his remorse smothered, his conscience dead to all save to his schemes. “And what have I to do with it all? Joséphine and Jacques are members of the Club. They may be young, but they are old enough to know the value of an oath. They are pledged just like I am, just like we all are. I could not, even if I would, make them false to their oath.” Then, as she made no reply, he leaned over to her, took her hands in his, tried to read her inscrutable face through the shadows of night. He thought that he read obstinacy in her rigid attitude, the unresponsive placidity of her hands. “You would not have them false to their oath?” he insisted.

She made no reply to that, only queried dully:

“What are you going to do tonight?”

“Tonight,” he said with passionate earnestness, his eyes glowing with the fervid adour of self-immolation, “we are going to let hell loose around the name of Robespierre.”

“Where?”

“At the open-air supper in the Rue St. Honoré. Joséphine and Jacques will be there.”

She nodded mechanically, quietly disengaged her hands from his feverish grasp.

“I know,” she said quietly. “They told me they were going. I have no influence to stop them.”

“You will be there, too?” he asked.

“Of course. So will poor maman,” she replied simply.

“This may be the turning point, Régine,” he said with passionate earnestness, “in the history of France!”

“Perhaps!”

“Think if it, Régine! Think of it! Your sister, your young brother! Their name may go down to posterity as the saviours of France!”

“The saviours of France!” she murmured vaguely.

“One word has swayed a multitude before now. It may do so again⁠ ⁠… tonight!”

“Yes,” she said. “And those poor children believe in the power of their oratory.”

“Do not you?”

“I only remember that you, Bertrand, have probably spoken of your plan to Theresia Cabarrus, that the place will be swarming with the spies of Robespierre, and that you and the children will be recognised, seized, dragged into prison, then to the guillotine! My God!” she added, in a pitiful murmur. “And I am powerless to do anything but look on like an insentient log, whilst you run your rash heads into a noose, and then follow you all to death, whilst maman is left alone to perish in misery and in want.”

“A pessimist again, Régine!” he said with a forced laugh, and in his turn rose to his feet. “ ’Tis little we have accomplished this evening,” he added bitterly, “by talking.”

She said nothing more. An icy chill had hold of her heart. Not only of her heart, but of her brain and her whole being. Strive as she might, she could not enter into Bertrand’s schemes, and as his whole entity was wrapped up in them she felt estranged from him, out of touch, shut out from his heart. Unspeakable bitterness filled her soul. She hated Theresia Cabarrus, who had enslaved Bertrand’s fancy, and above all she mistrusted her. At this moment she would gladly have given her life to get Bertrand away from the influence of that woman and away from that madcap association which called itself “the Fatalists,” and into which he had dragged both Joséphine and Jacques.

Silently she preceded him out of the little church porch, the habitual trysting-place, where at one time she had spent so many happy hours. Just before she turned off into the street, she looked back, as if through the impenetrable darkness which enveloped it now she would conjure up, just once more, those happy images of the past, but the darkness made no response to the mute cry of her fancy, and with a last sigh of intense bitterness, she followed Bertrand down the street.

II

Less than five minutes after Bertrand and Régine had left the porch