The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (book recommendations TXT) 📗

satisfaction. “Heigh-ho! but this is a queer rig-up for Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., to be found in by his lady, and no mistake. Begad!” he added, passing his hand over his chin, “I haven’t been shaved for nearly twenty hours: I must look a disgusting object. As for these curls⁠ ⁠…”

And laughingly he took off the disfiguring wig and curls, and stretched out his long limbs, which were cramped from many hours’ stooping. Then he bent forward and looked long and searchingly into his wife’s blue eyes.

“Percy,” she whispered, while a deep blush suffused her delicate cheeks and neck, “if you only knew⁠ ⁠…”

“I do know, dear⁠ ⁠… everything,” he said with infinite gentleness.

“And can you ever forgive?”

“I have naught to forgive, sweetheart; your heroism, your devotion, which I, alas! so little deserved, have more than atoned for that unfortunate episode at the ball.”

“Then you knew?⁠ ⁠…” she whispered, “all the time⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes!” he replied tenderly, “I knew⁠ ⁠… all the time.⁠ ⁠… But, begad! had I but known what a noble heart yours was, my Margot, I should have trusted you, as you deserved to be trusted, and you would not have had to undergo the terrible sufferings of the past few hours, in order to run after a husband, who has done so much that needs forgiveness.”

They were sitting side by side, leaning up against a rock, and he had rested his aching head on her shoulder. She certainly now deserved the name of “the happiest woman in Europe.”

“It is a case of the blind leading the lame, sweetheart, is it not?” he said with his good-natured smile of old. “Odd’s life! but I do not know which are the more sore, my shoulders or your little feet.”

He bent forward to kiss them, for they peeped out through her torn stockings, and bore pathetic witness to her endurance and devotion.

“But Armand⁠ ⁠…” she said with sudden terror and remorse, as in the midst of her happiness the image of the beloved brother, for whose sake she had so deeply sinned, rose now before her mind.

“Oh! have no fear for Armand, sweetheart,” he said tenderly, “did I not pledge you my word that he should be safe? He with de Tournay and the others are even now on board the Daydream.”

“But how?” she gasped, “I do not understand.”

“Yet, ’tis simple enough, m’dear,” he said with that funny, half-shy, half-inane laugh of his, “you see! when I found that that brute Chauvelin meant to stick to me like a leech, I thought the best thing I could do, as I could not shake him off, was to take him along with me. I had to get to Armand and the others somehow, and all the roads were patrolled, and everyone on the lookout for your humble servant. I knew that when I slipped through Chauvelin’s fingers at the Chat Gris, that he would lie in wait for me here, whichever way I took. I wanted to keep an eye on him and his doings, and a British head is as good as a French one any day.”

Indeed it had proved to be infinitely better, and Marguerite’s heart was filled with joy and marvel, as he continued to recount to her the daring manner in which he had snatched the fugitives away, right from under Chauvelin’s very nose.

“Dressed as the dirty old Jew,” he said gaily, “I knew I should not be recognized. I had met Reuben Goldstein in Calais earlier in the evening. For a few gold pieces he supplied me with this rig-out, and undertook to bury himself out of sight of everybody, whilst he lent me his cart and nag.”

“But if Chauvelin had discovered you,” she gasped excitedly, “your disguise was good⁠ ⁠… but he is so sharp.”

“Odd’s fish!” he rejoined quietly, “then certainly the game would have been up. I could but take the risk. I know human nature pretty well by now,” he added, with a note of sadness in his cheery, young voice, “and I know these Frenchmen out and out. They so loathe a Jew, that they never come nearer than a couple of yards of him, and begad! I fancy that I contrived to make myself look about as loathsome an object as it is possible to conceive.”

“Yes!⁠—and then?” she asked eagerly.

“Zooks!⁠—then I carried out my little plan: that is to say, at first I only determined to leave everything to chance, but when I heard Chauvelin giving his orders to the soldiers, I thought that Fate and I were going to work together after all. I reckoned on the blind obedience of the soldiers. Chauvelin had ordered them on pain of death not to stir until the tall Englishman came. Desgas had thrown me down in a heap quite close to the hut; the soldiers took no notice of the Jew, who had driven Citoyen Chauvelin to this spot. I managed to free my hands from the ropes, with which the brute had trussed me; I always carry pencil and paper with me wherever I go, and I hastily scrawled a few important instructions on a scrap of paper; then I looked about me. I crawled up to the hut, under the very noses of the soldiers, who lay under cover without stirring, just as Chauvelin had ordered them to do, then I dropped my little note into the hut through a chink in the wall, and waited. In this note I told the fugitives to walk noiselessly out of the hut, creep down the cliffs, keep to the left until they came to the first creek, to give a certain signal, when the boat of the Daydream, which lay in wait not far out to sea, would pick them up. They obeyed implicitly, fortunately for them and for me. The soldiers who saw them were equally obedient to Chauvelin’s orders. They did not stir! I waited for nearly half an hour; when I knew that the fugitives were safe I gave the signal, which caused so much stir.”

And