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

“Do you know aught of Sir Percy?” Lord Tony asked.

“No, my lord,” the sailor gave answer; “not since he went ashore early this morning. ’Er Ladyship was waitin’ for ’im on the pier. Sir Percy just ran up the steps and then ’e shouted to us to get back quickly. ‘Tell their lordships,’ ’e says, ‘I’ll meet them at The Rest.’ And then Sir Percy and ’er ladyship just walked off and we saw naun more of them.”

“That was many hours ago,” Sir Andrew Ffoulkes mused, with an inward smile. He too saw visions of meeting his pretty Suzanne very soon, and walking away with her into the land of dreams.

“ ’Twas just six o’clock when Sir Percy ’ad the boat lowered,” the sailor rejoined. “And we rowed quick back after we landed ’im, but the Daydream, she ’ad to wait for the tie. We wurr a long while gettin’ into port.”

Sir Andrew nodded.

“You don’t know,” he said, “if the skipper had any further orders?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the man replied. “But we mun be in readiness always. No one knows when Sir Percy may wish to set sail again.”

The two young men said nothing more, and presently the sailors touched their forelocks and went away. Lord Tony and Sir Andrew exchanged knowing smiles. They could easily picture to themselves their beloved chief, indefatigable, like a boy let out from school, exhilarated by the deadly danger through which he had once more passed unscathed, clasping his adored wife in his arms and wandering off with her, heaven knew whither, living his life of joy and love and happiness during the brief hours which his own indomitable energy, his reckless courage, accorded to the sentimental side of his complex nature.

Far too impatient to wait until the tide allowed the Daydream to get into port, he had been rowed ashore in the early dawn, and his beautiful Marguerite⁠—punctual to the assignation conveyed to her by one of those mysterious means of which Percy alone knew the secret⁠—was ready there to receive him, to forget in the shelter of his arms the days of racking anxiety and of cruel terror for her beloved through which she had again and again been forced to pass.

Neither Lord Tony nor Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, the Scarlet Pimpernel’s most faithful and devoted lieutenants, begrudged their chief these extra hours of bliss, the while they were left in charge of the party so lately rescued from horrible death. They knew that within a day or two⁠—within a few hours, perhaps⁠—Blakeney would tear himself away once more from the clinging embrace of his exquisite wife, from the comfort of luxury of an ideal home, from the adulation of friends, the pleasures of wealth and of fashion, in order mayhap to grovel in the squalor and filth of some outlandish corner of Paris, where he could be in touch with the innocents who suffered⁠—the poor, the terror-stricken victims of the merciless revolution. Within a few hours, mayhap, he would be risking his life again every moment of the day, in order to save some poor hunted fellow-creature⁠—man, woman or child⁠—from death that threatened them at the hands of inhuman monsters who knew neither mercy nor compunction.

And for the nineteen members of the League, they took it in turns to follow their leader where danger was thickest. It was a privilege eagerly sought, deserved by all, and accorded to those who were most highly trusted. It was invariably followed by a period of rest in happy England, with wife, friends, joy and luxury. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Anthony Dewhurst and my lord Hastings had been of the expedition which brought Mme. de Serval with her three children and Bertrand Moncrif safely to England, after adventures more perilous, more reckless of danger, than most. Within a few hours they would be free to forget in the embrace of clinging arms every peril and every adventure save the eternal one of love, free to forswear everything outside that, save their veneration for their chief and their loyalty to his cause.

An excellent dinner served by Mistress Sally and her attendant little wenches put everybody into rare good-humour. Madame de Serval⁠—pale, delicate, with gentle, plaintive voice and eyes that had acquired a pathetically furtive look⁠—even contrived to smile, her heart warmed by the genuine welcome, the rare gaiety that irradiated this fortunate corner of God’s earth. Wars and rumours of war reached it only as an echo of great things that went on in the vast outside world; and though more than one of Dover’s gallant sons had perished in one or the other of the Duke of York’s unfortunate incursions into Holland, or in one of the numerous naval engagements off the Western shores of France, on the whole, the war, intermittent and desultory, had not yet cast its heavy gloom over the entire country.

Joséphine and Jacques de Serval, whose enthusiasm for martyrdom had received so severe a check in the course of the Fraternal Supper in the Rue. St. Honoré, had at first with the self-consciousness of youth adopted an attitude of obstinate and irreclaimable sorrow, until the antics of Master Harry Waite, pretty Sally’s husband⁠—jealous as a young turkey-cock of every gallant who dared to ogle his buxom wife⁠—brought laughter to their lips. My Lord Hastings’ comical attempts at speaking French, the droll mistakes he made, easily did the rest; and soon their lively, high-pitched Latin voices mingled with unimpaired gaiety with the more mellow sound of Anglo-Saxon tongues.

Even Régine de Serval had smiled when my lord Hastings had asked her with grave solemnity whether Mme. de Serval would wish “le fou de descendre”⁠—the lunatic to come downstairs⁠—meaning all the while whether she wanted the fire in the big hearth to be let down, seeing that the atmosphere in the coffee-room was growing terribly hot.

The only one who seemed quite unable to shake off his moroseness was Bertrand Moncrif. He