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

Cabarrus had not moved. Her eyes, dilated with terror, mutely questioned the old woman as the latter made ready to admit the visitor. Pepita gave reply as best she could, by silent gestures, indicating the passage and the action of turning a key in the lock. Her wrinkled old lips hardly stirred, and then only in order to murmur quickly and with a sudden assumption of authority:

“Self-possession, my cabbage, or you’ll endanger yourself and us all!”

Theresia pulled herself together. Obviously the old woman’s warning was not to be ignored, nor had it been given a moment too soon. Outside, the visitor had renewed his impatient rat-tat against the door. The eyes of mistress and maid met for one brief second. Theresia was rapidly regaining her presence of mind; whereupon Pepita smoothed out her apron, readjusted her cap, and went to open the door, even whilst Theresia said in a firm voice, loudly enough for the new visitor to hear:

“One of my guests, at last! Open quickly, Pepita!”

IX A Hideous, Fearful Hour I

A young man⁠—tall, spare, with sallow skin and shifty, restless eyes⁠—pushed unceremoniously past the old servant, threw his hat and cane down on the nearest chair, and hurrying across the vestibule, entered the salon where the beautiful Spaniard, a picture of serene indifference, sat ready to receive him.

She had chosen for the setting of this scene a small settee covered in old rose brocade. On this she half sat, half reclined, with an open book in her hand, her elbow resting on the frame of the settee, her cheek leaning against her hand. Immediately behind her, the light from an oil lamp tempered by a shade of rose-coloured silk, outlined with a brilliant, glowing pencil the contour of her small head, one exquisite shoulder, and the mass of her raven hair, whilst it accentuated the cool halftones of her diaphanous gown, on the round bare arms and bust, the tiny sandalled feet and cross-gartered legs.

A picture in truth to dazzle the eyes of any man! Tallien should have been at her feet in an instant. The fact that he paused in the doorway bore witness to the unruly thoughts that ran riot in his brain.

“Ah, citizen Tallien!” the fair Theresia exclaimed with a perfect assumption of sangfroid. “You are the first to arrive, and are indeed welcome; for I was nearly swooning with ennui. Well!” she added, with a provocative smile, and extended a gracious arm in his direction. “Are you not going to kiss my hand?”

“I heard a voice,” was all the response which he gave to this seductive invitation. “A man’s voice. Who was it?”

She raised a pair of delicately pencilled eyebrows. Her eyes became as round and as innocent-looking as a child’s.

“A man’s voice?” she riposted with a perfect air of astonishment. “You are crazy, mon ami; or else are crediting my faithful Pepita with a virile bass, which in truth she doth not possess!”

“Whose voice was it?” Tallien reiterated, making an effort to speak calmly, even though he was manifestly shaking with choler.

Whereupon the fair Theresia, no longer gracious or arch, looked him up and down as if he were no better than a lackey.

“Ah, ça!” she rejoined coldly. “Are you perchance trying to cross-question me? By what right, I pray you, citizen Tallien, do you assume this hectoring tone in my presence? I am not yet your wife, remember; and ’tis not you, I image, who are the dictator of France.”

“Do not tease me, Theresia!” the man interposed hoarsely. “Bertrand Moncrif is here.”

For the space of a second, or perhaps less, Theresia gave no reply to the taunt. Her quick, alert brain had already faced possibilities, and she was far too clever a woman to take the risks which a complete evasion of the truth would have entailed at this moment. She did not, in effect, know whether Tallien was speaking from positive information given to him by spies, or merely from conjecture born of jealousy. Moreover, another would be here presently⁠—another, whose spies were credited with omniscience, and whom she might not succeed in dominating with a smile or a frown, as she could the lovesick Tallien. Therefore, after that one brief instant’s reflection she decided to temporise, to shelter behind a half-truth, and replied, with a quick glance from under her long lashes:

“I am not teasing you, citizen. Bertrand came here for shelter awhile ago.”

Tallien drew a quick sigh of satisfaction, and she went on carelessly:

“But, obviously, I could not keep him here. He seemed hurt and frightened⁠ ⁠… He has been gone this past half-hour.”

For a moment it seemed as if the man, in face of this obvious lie, would flare out into a hot retort; but Theresia’s luminous eyes subdued him, and before the cool contempt expressed by those exquisite lips, he felt all his blustering courage oozing away.

“The man is an abominable and an avowed traitor,” he said sullenly. “Only two hours ago⁠—”

“I know,” she broke in coldly. “He vilified Robespierre. A dangerous thing to do. Bertrand was ever a fool, and he lost his head.”

“He will lose it more effectually tomorrow,” Tallien retorted grimly.

“You mean that you would denounce him?”

“That I will denounce him. I would have done so tonight, before coming here, only⁠—only⁠—”

“Only what?”

“I was afraid he might be here.”

Theresia broke into a ringing if somewhat artificial peal of laughter.

“I must thank you, citizen, for this consideration of my feelings. It was, in truth, thoughtful of you to think of sparing me a scandal. But, since Bertrand is not here⁠—”

“I know where he lodges. He’ll not escape, citoyenne. My word on it!”

Tallien spoke very quietly, but with that concentrated fury of which a fiercely jealous man is ever capable. He had remained standing in the doorway all this while, his eyes fixed on the beautiful woman before him, but his attention feverishly divided between her and what might be going on in the