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

differed but little in all its grim detail of misery and humiliation from the thousand and one other similar tales which had been poured for the past three years into her sympathetic ear. She had always understood, had always been ready to comfort and to help. But this time she felt very much as if she had come across a sick or wounded reptile, something weak and dumb and helpless, and yet withal unworthy of compassion.

However, Marguerite Blakeney was surely not the woman to allow such fancies to dry the well of her pity. The gallant Scarlet Pimpernel was not wont to pause in his errands of mercy in order to reflect whether the objects of his selfless immolation were worthy of it or no. So Marguerite, with a determined little sigh, chided herself for her disloyalty and cowardice, and having dried her tears she went within.

XVI A Lover of Sport

For the first five minutes, Sir Percy Blakeney and Madame de Fontenay walked side by side in silence. Then she spoke.

“You are silent, milor?” she queried, speaking in perfect English.

“I was thinking,” he replied curtly.

“What?”

“What a remarkably fine actress is lost in the fashionable Theresia Cabarrus.”

“Madame de Fontenay, I pray you, milor,” she retorted drily.

“Theresia Cabarrus nevertheless. Madame Tallien probably tomorrow: for Madame divorced that weak-kneed marquis as soon as the lay ‘contre les émigrés’ allowed her to regain her freedom.”

“You seem very well informed, milor.”

“Almost as well as Madame herself,” he riposted with a pleasant laugh.

“Then you do not believe my story?”

“Not one word of it!” he replied.

“Strange!” she mused. “For every word of it is true.”

“Demmed strange!” he assented.

“Of course, I did not tell all,” she went on, with sudden vehemence. “I could not. My lady would not understand. She has become⁠—what shall I say?⁠—very English. Marguerite St. Just would understand⁠ ⁠… Lady Blakeney⁠—no?”

“What would Lady Blakeney not understand?”

“Eh bien! About Bertrand Moncrif.”

“Ah?”

“You think I did harm to the boy⁠ ⁠… I know⁠ ⁠… you took him away from me⁠ ⁠… You! The Scarlet Pimpernel!⁠ ⁠… You see, I know! I know everything! Chauvelin told me⁠ ⁠…”

“And guided you most dexterously to my door,” he concluded with a pleasant laugh. “There to enact a delicious comedy of gruff-voiced bully and pathetic victim of merciless persecution. It was all excellently done! Allow me to offer you my sincere congratulations!”

She said nothing for a moment or two, then queried abruptly:

“You think that I am here in order to spy upon you?”

“Oh!” he riposted lightly, “how could I be so presumptuous as to suppose that the beautiful Cabarrus would bestow attention on so unworthy an object as I?”

“ ’Tis you now, milor,” she rejoined drily, “who choose to play a role. A truce on it, I pray you; and rather tell me what you mean to do.”

To this query he gave no reply, and his silence appeared to grate on Theresia’s nerves, for she went on harshly:

“You will betray me to the police, of course. And as I am here without papers⁠—”

He put up his hand with that gently deprecating gesture which was habitual to him.

“Oh!” he said, with his quiet little laugh, “why should you think I would do anything so unchivalrous?”

“Unchivalrous?” she retorted with a pathetic sigh of weariness. “I suppose, here in England, it would be called an act of patriotism or self-preservation⁠ ⁠… like fighting an enemy⁠ ⁠… or denouncing a spy⁠—”

She paused a moment or two, and as he once more took refuge in silence, she resumed with sudden, moving passion:

“So it is to be a betrayal after all! The selling of an unfortunate woman to her bitterest enemy! Oh, what wrong have I ever done you, that you should persecute me thus?”

“Persecute you?” he exclaimed. “Pardi, Madame; but this is a subtle joke which by your leave my dull wits are unable to fathom.”

“It is no joke, milor,” she rejoined earnestly. “Will you let me explain? For indeed it seems to me that we are at cross purposes, you and I.”

She came to a halt, and he perforce had to do likewise. They had come almost to the end of the little lane; a few yards farther on it debouched on the main road. Beyond that, the lights of Dover Town and the Harbour lights glinted in the still, starry night. Behind them the lane, sunk between grassy slopes and overhung by old elms of fantastic shapes, appeared dark and mysterious. But here, where they stood, the moon shed its full radiance on the broad highway, the clump of copper beeches over on the left, that tiny cottage with its thatched roof nestling at the foot of the cliff; and far away, on the picturesque mass of Dover Castle, the church and towers. Every bit of fencing, every tiny twig in the hawthorn hedges, stood out clear cut, sharp like metal in the cold, searching light. Theresia⁠—divinely slender and divinely tall, graceful despite the rough masculine clothes which she wore⁠—stood boldly in the full light; the tendrils of her jet black hair were gently stirred by an imperceptible breeze, her eyes, dark and luminous, were fixed upwards at the man whom she had set out to subjugate.

“That boy,” she went on quite gently, “Bertrand Moncrif, was just a young fool. But I liked him, and I could see the abyss to which his folly was tending. There was never anything but friendship between us; but I knew that sooner or later he would run his head into a noose, and then what good would his pasty-faced sweetheart have been to him? Whilst I⁠—I had friends, influence⁠—quoi? And I liked the boy; I was sorry for him. Then the catastrophe came⁠ ⁠… the other night. There was what those ferocious beasts over in Paris were pleased to call a Fraternal Supper. Bertrand Moncrif was there. Like a young food, he started to vilify Robespierre⁠—Robespierre, who is the idol of France! There!⁠—in the very midst of the crowd! They would have torn him limb