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

which reminded her of the presence of a loathsome wretch, who should not have had a part in her soothing dream.

Thus many hours must have gone by.

Then, all at once, she was inside a house⁠—a room, and she felt that she was being lowered very gently to the ground. She was on her feet, but she could not see where she was. There was furniture; a carpet; a ceiling; the man Rateau with the sabots and the dirty coat, and the merry English voice, and a pair of deep-set blue eyes, thoughtful and lazy and infinitely kind.

But before she could properly focus what she saw, everything began to whirl and to spin around her, to dance a wild and idiotic saraband, which caused her to laugh, and to laugh, until her throat felt choked and her eyes hot; after which she remembered nothing more.

VII

The first thing of which Esther Vincent was conscious, when she returned to her senses, was of her English lover kneeling beside her. She was lying on some kind of couch, and she could see his face in profile, for he had turned and was speaking to someone at the far end of the room.

“And was it you who knocked me down?” he was saying, “and sat on my chest, and trussed me like a fowl?”

“La! my dear sir,” a lazy, pleasant voice riposted, “what else could I do? There was no time for explanations. You were half-crazed, and would not have understood. And you were ready to bring all the nightwatchmen about our ears.”

“I am sorry!” Kennard said simply. “But how could I guess?”

“You couldn’t,” rejoined the other. “That is why I had to deal so summarily with you and with Mademoiselle Esther, not to speak of good old Lucienne, who had never, in her life, been inside a cabaret. You must all forgive me ere you start upon your journey. You are not out of the wood yet, remember. Though Paris is a long way behind, France itself is no longer a healthy place for any of you.”

“But how did we ever get out of Paris? I was smothered under a pile of cabbages, with Lucienne on one side of me and Esther, unconscious, on the other. I could see nothing. I know we halted at the barrier. I thought we would be recognised, turned back! My God! how I trembled!”

“Bah!” broke in the other, with a careless laugh. “It is not so difficult as it seems. We have done it before⁠—eh, Ffoulkes? A market-gardener’s cart, a villainous wretch like myself to drive it, another hideous object like Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Bart., to lead the scraggy nag, a couple of forged or stolen passports, plenty of English gold, and the deed is done!”

Esther’s eyes were fixed upon the speaker. She marvelled now how she could have been so blind. The cadaverous face was nothing but a splendid use of grease paint! The rags! the dirt! the whole assumption of a hideous character was masterly! But there were the eyes, deep-set, and thoughtful and kind. How did she fail to guess?

“You are known as the Scarlet Pimpernel,” she said suddenly. “Suzanne de Tournai was my friend. She told me. You saved her and her family, and now⁠ ⁠… oh, my God!” she exclaimed, “how shall we ever repay you?”

“By placing yourselves unreservedly in my friend Ffoulkes’ hands,” he replied gently. “He will lead you to safety and, if you wish it, to England.”

“If we wish it!” Kennard sighed fervently.

“You are not coming with us, Blakeney?” queried Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, and it seemed to Esther’s sensitive ears as if a tone of real anxiety and also of entreaty rang in the young man’s voice.

“No, not this time,” replied Sir Percy lightly. “I like my character of Rateau, and I don’t want to give it up just yet. I have done nothing to arouse suspicion in the minds of my savoury compeers up at the Cabaret de la Liberté. I can easily keep this up for some time to come, and frankly I admire myself as citizen Rateau. I don’t know when I have enjoyed a character so much!”

“You mean to return to the Cabaret de la Liberté!” exclaimed Sir Andrew.

“Why not?”

“You will be recognised!”

“Not before I have been of service to a good many unfortunates, I hope.”

“But that awful cough of yours! Percy, you’ll do yourself an injury with it one day.”

“Not I! I like that cough. I practised it for a long time before I did it to perfection. Such a splendid wheeze! I must teach Tony to do it some day. Would you like to hear it now?”

He laughed, that perfect, delightful, lazy laugh of his, which carried every hearer with it along the path of lighthearted merriment. Then he broke into the awful cough of the consumptive Rateau. And Esther Vincent instinctively closed her eyes and shuddered.

“Needs Must⁠—” I

The children were all huddled up together in one corner of the room. Etienne and Valentine, the two eldest, had their arms round the little one. As for Lucile, she would have told you herself that she felt just like a bird between two snakes⁠—terrified and fascinated⁠—oh! especially by that little man with the pale face and the light grey eyes and the slender white hands unstained by toil, one of which rested lightly upon the desk, and was only clenched now and then at a word or a look from the other man or from Lucile herself.

But Commissary Lebel just tried to browbeat her. It was not difficult, for in truth she felt frightened enough already, with all this talk of “traitors” and that awful threat of the guillotine.

Lucile Clamette, however, would have remained splendidly loyal in spite of all these threats, if it had not been for the children. She was little mother to them; for father was a cripple, with speech and mind already impaired by creeping paralysis, and maman had died