The Scarlet Pimpernel (25 page)

"Faith! our host and hostess are not cheerful people," said Sir Andrew,
seeing the look of horror on Marguerite's face. "I would I could offer
you a more hearty and more appetising meal . . . but I think you will
find the soup eatable and the wine good; these people wallow in dirt,
but live well as a rule."

"Nay! I pray you, Sir Andrew," she said gently, "be not anxious about
me. My mind is scarce inclined to dwell on thoughts of supper."

Brogard was slowly pursuing his gruesome preparations; he had placed
a couple of spoons, also two glasses on the table, both of which Sir
Andrew took the precaution of wiping carefully.

Brogard had also produced a bottle of wine and some bread, and
Marguerite made an effort to draw her chair to the table and to make
some pretence at eating. Sir Andrew, as befitting his ROLE of lacquey,
stood behind her chair.

"Nay, Madame, I pray you," he said, seeing that Marguerite seemed quite
unable to eat, "I beg of you to try and swallow some food—remember you
have need of all your strength."

The soup certainly was not bad; it smelt and tasted good. Marguerite
might have enjoyed it, but for the horrible surroundings. She broke the
bread, however, and drank some of the wine.

"Nay, Sir Andrew," she said, "I do not like to see you standing. You
have need of food just as much as I have. This creature will only think
that I am an eccentric Englishwoman eloping with her lacquey, if you'll
sit down and partake of this semblance of supper beside me."

Indeed, Brogard having placed what was strictly necessary upon the
table, seemed not to trouble himself any further about his guests. The
Mere Brogard had quietly shuffled out of the room, and the man stood
and lounged about, smoking his evil-smelling pipe, sometimes under
Marguerite's very nose, as any free-born citizen who was anybody's equal
should do.

"Confound the brute!" said Sir Andrew, with native British wrath,
as Brogard leant up against the table, smoking and looking down
superciliously at these two SACRRRES ANGLAIS.

"In Heaven's name, man," admonished Marguerite, hurriedly, seeing that
Sir Andrew, with British-born instinct, was ominously clenching his
fist, "remember that you are in France, and that in this year of grace
this is the temper of the people."

"I'd like to scrag the brute!" muttered Sir Andrew, savagely.

He had taken Marguerite's advice and sat next to her at table, and they
were both making noble efforts to deceive one another, by pretending to
eat and drink.

"I pray you," said Marguerite, "keep the creature in a good temper, so
that he may answer the questions we must put to him."

"I'll do my best, but, begad! I'd sooner scrag him than question him.
Hey! my friend," he said pleasantly in French, and tapping Brogard
lightly on the shoulder, "do you see many of our quality along these
parts? Many English travellers, I mean?"

Brogard looked round at him, over his near shoulder, puffed away at his
pipe for a moment or two as he was in no hurry, then muttered,—

"Heu!—sometimes!"

"Ah!" said Sir Andrew, carelessly, "English travellers always know
where they can get good wine, eh! my friend?—Now, tell me, my lady was
desiring to know if by any chance you happen to have seen a great friend
of hers, an English gentleman, who often comes to Calais on business; he
is tall, and recently was on his way to Paris—my lady hoped to have met
him in Calais."

Marguerite tried not to look at Brogard, lest she should betray before
him the burning anxiety with which she waited for his reply. But a
free-born French citizen is never in any hurry to answer questions:
Brogard took his time, then he said very slowly,—

"Tall Englishman?—To-day!—Yes."

"Yes, to-day," muttered Brogard, sullenly. Then he quietly took Sir
Andrew's hat from a chair close by, put it on his own head, tugged at
his dirty blouse, and generally tried to express in pantomime that
the individual in question wore very fine clothes. "SACRRE ARISTO!" he
muttered, "that tall Englishman!"

Marguerite could scarce repress a scream.

"It's Sir Percy right enough," she murmured, "and not even in disguise!"

She smiled, in the midst of all her anxiety and through her gathering
tears, at the thought of "the ruling passion strong in death"; of Percy
running into the wildest, maddest dangers, with the latest-cut coat upon
his back, and the laces of his jabot unruffled.

"Oh! the foolhardiness of it!" she sighed. "Quick, Sir Andrew! ask the
man when he went."

"Ah yes, my friend," said Sir Andrew, addressing Brogard, with the same
assumption of carelessness, "my lord always wears beautiful clothes;
the tall Englishman you saw, was certainly my lady's friend. And he has
gone, you say?"

"He went . . . yes . . . but he's coming back . . . here—he ordered supper
. . ."

Sir Andrew put his hand with a quick gesture of warning upon
Marguerite's arm; it came none too sone, for the next moment her wild,
mad joy would have betrayed her. He was safe and well, was coming back
here presently, she would see him in a few moments perhaps. . . . Oh!
the wildness of her joy seemed almost more than she could bear.

"Here!" she said to Brogard, who seemed suddenly to have been
transformed in her eyes into some heaven-born messenger of bliss.
"Here!—did you say the English gentleman was coming back here?"

The heaven-born messenger of bliss spat upon the floor, to express his
contempt for all and sundry ARISTOS, who chose to haunt the "Chat Gris."

"Heu!" he muttered, "he ordered supper—he will come back . . . SACRRE
ANGLAIS!" he added, by way of protest against all this fuss for a mere
Englishman.

"But where is he now?—Do you know?" she asked eagerly, placing her
dainty white hand upon the dirty sleeve of his blue blouse.

"He went to get a horse and cart," said Brogard, laconically, as with a
surly gesture, he shook off from his arm that pretty hand which princes
had been proud to kiss.

"At what time did he go?"

But Brogard had evidently had enough of these questionings. He did
not think that it was fitting for a citizen—who was the equal of
anybody—to be thus catechised by these SACRRES ARISTOS, even though
they were rich English ones. It was distinctly more fitting to his
newborn dignity to be as rude as possible; it was a sure sign of
servility to meekly reply to civil questions.

"I don't know," he said surlily. "I have said enough, VOYONS, LES
ARISTOS! . . . He came to-day. He ordered supper. He went out.—He'll
come back. VOILA!"

And with this parting assertion of his rights as a citizen and a free
man, to be as rude as he well pleased, Brogard shuffled out of the room,
banging the door after him.

"Faith, Madame!" said Sir Andrew, seeing that Marguerite seemed desirous
to call her surly host back again, "I think we'd better leave him alone.
We shall not get anything more out of him, and we might arouse his
suspicions. One never knows what spies may be lurking around these
God-forsaken places."

"What care I?" she replied lightly, "now I know that my husband is safe,
and that I shall see him almost directly!"

"Hush!" he said in genuine alarm, for she had talked quite loudly, in
the fulness of her glee, "the very walls have ears in France, these
days."

He rose quickly from the table, and walked round the bare, squalid
room, listening attentively at the door, through which Brogard has just
disappeared, and whence only muttered oaths and shuffling footsteps
could be heard. He also ran up the rickety steps that led to the attic,
to assure himself that there were no spies of Chauvelin's about the
place.

"Are we alone, Monsieur, my lacquey?" said Marguerite, gaily, as the
young man once more sat down beside her. "May we talk?"

"As cautiously as possible!" he entreated.

"Faith, man! but you wear a glum face! As for me, I could dance with
joy! Surely there is no longer any cause for fear. Our boat is on the
beach, the FOAM CREST not two miles out at sea, and my husband will be
here, under this very roof, within the next half hour perhaps. Sure!
there is naught to hinder us. Chauvelin and his gang have not yet
arrived."

"Nay, madam! that I fear we do not know."

"What do you mean?"

"He was at Dover at the same time that we were."

"Held up by the same storm, which kept us from starting."

"Exactly. But—I did not speak of it before, for I feared to alarm
you—I saw him on the beach not five minutes before we embarked.
At least, I swore to myself at the time that it was himself; he was
disguised as a CURE, so that Satan, his own guardian, would scarce have
known him. But I heard him then, bargaining for a vessel to take him
swiftly to Calais; and he must have set sail less than an hour after we
did."

Marguerite's face had quickly lost its look of joy. The terrible danger
in which Percy stood, now that he was actually on French soil, became
suddenly and horribly clear to her. Chauvelin was close upon his heels;
here in Calais, the astute diplomatist was all-powerful; a word from him
and Percy could be tracked and arrested and . . .

Every drop of blood seemed to freeze in her veins; not even during the
moments of her wildest anguish in England had she so completely realised
the imminence of the peril in which her husband stood. Chauvelin had
sworn to bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to the guillotine, and now the
daring plotter, whose anonymity hitherto had been his safeguard, stood
revealed through her own hand, to his most bitter, most relentless
enemy.

Chauvelin—when he waylaid Lord Tony and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes in the
coffee-room of "The Fisherman's Rest"—had obtained possession of all
the plans of this latest expedition. Armand St. Just, the Comte de
Tournay and other fugitive royalists were to have met the Scarlet
Pimpernel—or rather, as it had been originally arranged, two of his
emissaries—on this day, the 2nd of October, at a place evidently known
to the league, and vaguely alluded to as the "Pere Blanchard's hut."

Armand, whose connection with the Scarlet Pimpernel and disavowal of
the brutal policy of the Reign of Terror was still unknown to his
countryman, had left England a little more than a week ago, carrying
with him the necessary instructions, which would enable him to meet the
other fugitives and to convey them to this place of safety.

This much Marguerite had fully understood from the first, and Sir Andrew
Ffoulkes had confirmed her surmises. She knew, too, that when Sir Percy
realized that his own plans and his directions to his lieutenants had
been stolen by Chauvelin, it was too late to communicate with Armand, or
to send fresh instructions to the fugitives.

They would, of necessity, be at the appointed time and place, not
knowing how grave was the danger which now awaited their brave rescuer.

Blakeney, who as usual had planned and organized the whole expedition,
would not allow any of his younger comrades to run the risk of almost
certain capture. Hence his hurried note to them at Lord Grenville's
ball—"Start myself to-morrow—alone."

And now with his identity known to his most bitter enemy, his every step
would be dogged, the moment he set foot in France. He would be tracked
by Chauvelin's emissaries, followed until he reached that mysterious hut
where the fugitives were waiting for him, and there the trap would be
closed on him and on them.

There was but one hour—the hour's start which Marguerite and Sir Andrew
had of their enemy—in which to warn Percy of the imminence of his
danger, and to persuade him to give up the foolhardy expedition, which
could only end in his own death.

But there WAS that one hour.

"Chauvelin knows of this inn, from the papers he stole," said Sir
Andrew, earnestly, "and on landing will make straight for it."

"He has not landed yet," she said, "we have an hour's start on him, and
Percy will be here directly. We shall be mid-Channel ere Chauvelin has
realised that we have slipped through his fingers."

She spoke excitedly and eagerly, wishing to infuse into her young friend
some of that buoyant hope which still clung to her heart. But he shook
his head sadly.

"Silent again, Sir Andrew?" she said with some impatience. "Why do you
shake your head and look so glum?"

"Faith, Madame," he replied, "'tis only because in making your
rose-coloured plans, you are forgetting the most important factor."

"What in the world do you mean?—I am forgetting nothing. . . . What
factor do you mean?" she added with more impatience.

"It stands six foot odd high," replied Sir Andrew, quietly, "and hath
name Percy Blakeney."

"I don't understand," she murmured.

"Do you think that Blakeney would leave Calais without having
accomplished what he set out to do?"

"You mean . . . ?"

"There's the old Comte de Tournay . . ."

"The Comte . . . ?" she murmured.

"And St. Just . . . and others . . ."

"My brother!" she said with a heart-broken sob of anguish. "Heaven help
me, but I fear I had forgotten." "Fugitives as they are, these men at
this moment await with perfect confidence and unshaken faith the arrival
of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who has pledged his honour to take them safely
across the Channel."

Indeed, she had forgotten! With the sublime selfishness of a woman who
loves with her whole heart, she had in the last twenty-four hours had
no thought save for him. His precious, noble life, his danger—he, the
loved one, the brave hero, he alone dwelt in her mind.

"My brother!" she murmured, as one by one the heavy tears gathered
in her eyes, as memory came back to her of Armand, the companion and
darling of her childhood, the man for whom she had committed the deadly
sin, which had so hopelessly imperilled her brave husband's life.