The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

comrades’ savage oaths had been. “You are pretty and you have pleased me. ’Tis no small matter, forsooth!” he added, with loud-voiced bombast, “to have earned the goodwill of citizen Merri. You, my wench, are in luck’s way. You realise what has occurred just now. You are amenable to the law which has decreed you to be suspect. I hold an order for your arrest. I can have you seized at once by my men, dragged to the Conciergerie, and from thence nothing can save you⁠—neither your good looks nor the protection of citizen Merri. It means the guillotine. You understand that, don’t you?”

She sat quite still; only her hands were clutched convulsively together. But she contrived to say quite firmly:

“I do, and I am not afraid.”

Merri waved a huge and very dirty hand with a careless gesture.

“I know,” he said with a harsh laugh. “They all say that, don’t they, citizen Rateau?”

“Until the time comes,” assented that worthy dryly.

“Until the time comes,” reiterated the other. “Now, my wench,” he added, once more turning to Esther, “I don’t want that time to come. I don’t want your pretty head to go rolling down into the basket, and to receive the slap on the face which the citizen executioner has of late taken to bestowing on those aristocratic cheeks which Mme. la Guillotine has finally blanched forever. Like this, you see.”

And the inhuman wretch took up one of the round cushions from the nearest chair, held it up at arm’s length, as if it were a head which he held by the hair, and then slapped it twice with the palm of his left hand. The gesture was so horrible and withal so grotesque, that Esther closed her eyes with a shudder, and her pale cheeks took on a leaden hue. Merri laughed aloud and threw the cushion down again.

“Unpleasant, what? my pretty wench! Well, you know what to expect⁠ ⁠… unless,” he added significantly, “you are reasonable and will listen to what I am about to tell you.”

Esther was no fool, nor was she unsophisticated. These were not times when it was possible for any girl, however carefully nurtured and tenderly brought up, to remain ignorant of the realities and the brutalities of life. Even before Merri had put his abominable proposition before her, she knew what he was driving at. Marriage⁠—marriage to him! that ignoble wretch, more vile than any dumb creature! In exchange for her life!

It was her turn now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange, hysterical laughter.

“By Satan and all his ghouls!” he cried, and jumped to his feet, his cheeks paling beneath the grime.

Then rage seized him at his own cowardice. His egregious vanity, wounded by that laughter, egged him on. He tried to seize Esther by the waist. But she, quick as some panther on the defence, had jumped up, too, and pounced upon a knife⁠—the very one she had been using for that happy little supper with her lover a brief half hour ago. Unguarded, unthinking, acting just with a blind instinct, she raised it and cried hoarsely:

“If you dare touch me, I’ll kill you!”

It was ludicrous, of course. A mouse threatening a tiger. The very next moment Rateau had seized her hand and quietly taken away the knife. Merri shook himself like a frowsy dog.

“Whew!” he ejaculated. “What a vixen! But,” he added lightly, “I like her all the better for that⁠—eh, Rateau? Give me a wench with a temperament, I say!”

But Esther, too, had recovered herself. She realised her helplessness, and gathered courage from the consciousness of it! Now she faced the infamous villain more calmly.

“I will never marry you,” she said loudly and firmly. “Never! I am not afraid to die. I am not afraid of the guillotine. There is no shame attached to death. So now you may do as you please⁠—denounce me, and send me to follow in the footsteps of my dear father, if you wish. But whilst I am alive you will never come nigh me. If you ever do but lay a finger upon me, it will be because I am dead and beyond the reach of your polluting touch. And now I have said all that I will ever say to you in this life. If you have a spark of humanity left in you, you will, at least, let me prepare for death in peace.”

She went round to where poor old Lucienne still sat, like an insentient log, panic-stricken. She knelt down on the floor and rested her arm on the old woman’s knees. The light of the lamp fell full upon her, her pale face, and mass of chestnut-brown hair. There was nothing about her at this moment to inflame a man’s desire. She looked pathetic in her helplessness, and nearly lifeless through the intensity of her pallor, whilst the look in her eyes was almost maniacal.

Merri cursed and swore, tried to hearten himself by turning on his friend. But Rateau had collapsed⁠—whether with excitement or the ravages of disease, it were impossible to say. He sat upon a low chair, his long legs, his violet-circled eyes staring out with a look of hebetude and overwhelming fatigue. Merri looked around him and shuddered. The atmosphere of the place had become strangely weird and uncanny; even the tablecloth, dragged half across the table, looked somehow like a shroud.

“What shall we do, Rateau?” he asked tremulously at last.

“Get out of this infernal place,” replied the other huskily. “I feel as if I were in my grave-clothes already.”

“Hold your tongue, you miserable coward! You’ll make the aristo think that we are afraid.”

“Well?” queried Rateau blandly. “Aren’t you?”

“No!” replied Merri fiercely. “I’ll go now because⁠ ⁠… because⁠ ⁠… well! because I have had enough today. And the wench sickens me. I wish to serve the Republic by marrying her, but just now I feel as if I