The Scarlet Pimpernel
The _Day Dream_ had set sail, and Marguerite Blakeney stood alone on
the edge of the cliff for over an hour, watching those white sails,
which bore so swiftly away from her the only being who really cared for
her, whom she dared to love, whom she knew she could trust.
Some little distance away to her left the lights from the coffee-room
of “The Fisherman’s Rest” glittered yellow in the gathering mist; from
time to time it seemed to her aching nerves as if she could catch from
thence the sound of merry-making and of jovial talk, or even that
perpetual, senseless laugh of her husband’s, which grated continually
upon her sensitive ears.
Sir Percy had had the delicacy to leave her severely alone. She
supposed that, in his own stupid, good-natured way, he may have
understood that she would wish to remain alone, while those white sails
disappeared into the vague horizon, so many miles away. He, whose
notions of propriety and decorum were supersensitive, had not suggested
even that an attendant should remain within call. Marguerite was
grateful to her husband for all this; she always tried to be grateful
to him for his thoughtfulness, which was constant, and for his
generosity, which really was boundless. She tried even at times to curb
the sarcastic, bitter thoughts of him, which made her—in spite of
herself—say cruel, insulting things, which she vaguely hoped would
wound him.
Yes! she often wished to wound him, to make him feel that she too held
him in contempt, that she too had forgotten that once she had almost
loved him. Loved that inane fop! whose thoughts seemed unable to soar
beyond the tying of a cravat or the new cut of a coat. Bah! And yet! .
. . vague memories, that were sweet and ardent and attuned to this calm
summer’s evening, came wafted back to her memory, on the invisible
wings of the light sea-breeze: the time when first he worshipped her;
he seemed so devoted—a very slave—and there was a certain latent
intensity in that love which had fascinated her.
Then suddenly that love, that devotion, which throughout his courtship
she had looked upon as the slavish fidelity of a dog, seemed to vanish
completely. Twenty-four hours after the simple little ceremony at old
St. Roch, she had told him the story of how, inadvertently, she had
spoken of certain matters connected with the Marquis de St. Cyr before
some men—her friends—who had used this information against the
unfortunate Marquis, and sent him and his family to the guillotine.
She hated the Marquis. Years ago, Armand, her dear brother, had loved
Angèle de St. Cyr, but St. Just was a plebeian, and the Marquis full of
the pride and arrogant prejudices of his caste. One day Armand, the
respectful, timid lover, ventured on sending a small poem—enthusiastic,
ardent, passionate—to the idol of his dreams. The next night he was
waylaid just outside Paris by the valets of the Marquis de St. Cyr, and
ignominiously thrashed—thrashed like a dog within an inch of his
life—because he had dared to raise his eyes to the daughter of the
aristocrat. The incident was one which, in those days, some two years
before the great Revolution, was of almost daily occurrence in France;
incidents of that type, in fact, led to the bloody reprisals, which a
few years later sent most of those haughty heads to the guillotine.
Marguerite remembered it all: what her brother must have suffered in
his manhood and his pride must have been appalling; what she suffered
through him and with him she never attempted even to analyse.
Then the day of retribution came. St. Cyr and his kind had found their
masters, in those same plebeians whom they had despised. Armand and
Marguerite, both intellectual, thinking beings, adopted with the
enthusiasm of their years the Utopian doctrines of the Revolution,
while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family fought inch by inch for the
retention of those privileges which had placed them socially above
their fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive, thoughtless, not calculating
the purport of her words, still smarting under the terrible insult her
brother had suffered at the Marquis’ hands, happened to hear—amongst
her own coterie—that the St. Cyrs were in treasonable correspondence
with Austria, hoping to obtain the Emperor’s support to quell the
growing revolution in their own country.
In those days one denunciation was sufficient: Marguerite’s few
thoughtless words anent the Marquis de St. Cyr bore fruit within
twenty-four hours. He was arrested. His papers were searched: letters
from the Austrian Emperor, promising to send troops against the Paris
populace, were found in his desk. He was arraigned for treason against
the nation, and sent to the guillotine, whilst his family, his wife and
his sons, shared this awful fate.
Marguerite, horrified at the terrible consequences of her own
thoughtlessness, was powerless to save the Marquis: her own coterie,
the leaders of the revolutionary movement, all proclaimed her as a
heroine: and when she married Sir Percy Blakeney, she did not perhaps
altogether realise how severely he would look upon the sin, which she
had so inadvertently committed, and which still lay heavily upon her
soul. She made full confession of it to her husband, trusting to his
blind love for her, her boundless power over him, to soon make him
forget what might have sounded unpleasant to an English ear.
Certainly at the moment he seemed to take it very quietly; hardly, in
fact, did he appear to understand the meaning of all she said; but what
was more certain still, was that never after that could she detect the
slightest sign of that love, which she once believed had been wholly
hers. Now they had drifted quite apart, and Sir Percy seemed to have
laid aside his love for her, as he would an ill-fitting glove. She
tried to rouse him by sharpening her ready wit against his dull
intellect; endeavoured to excite his jealousy, if she could not rouse
his love; tried to goad him to self-assertion, but all in vain. He
remained the same, always passive, drawling, sleepy, always courteous,
invariably a gentleman: she had all that the world and a wealthy
husband can give to a pretty woman, yet on this beautiful summer’s
evening, with the white sails of the _Day Dream_ finally hidden by the
evening shadows, she felt more lonely than that poor tramp who plodded
his way wearily along the rugged cliffs.
With another heavy sigh, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back upon the
sea and cliffs, and walked slowly back towards “The Fisherman’s Rest.”
As she drew near, the sound of revelry, of gay, jovial laughter, grew
louder and more distinct. She could distinguish Sir Andrew Ffoulkes’
pleasant voice, Lord Tony’s boisterous guffaws, her husband’s
occasional, drawly, sleepy comments; then realising the loneliness of
the road and the fast gathering gloom round her, she quickened her
steps . . . the next moment she perceived a stranger coming rapidly
towards her. Marguerite did not look up: she was not the least nervous,
and “The Fisherman’s Rest” was now well within call.
The stranger paused when he saw Marguerite coming quickly towards him,
and just as she was about to slip past him, he said very quietly:
“Citoyenne St. Just.”
Marguerite uttered a little cry of astonishment, at thus hearing her
own familiar maiden name uttered so close to her. She looked up at the
stranger, and this time, with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, she put out
both her hands effusively towards him.
“Chauvelin!” she exclaimed.
“Himself, citoyenne, at your service,” said the stranger, gallantly
kissing the tips of her fingers.
Marguerite said nothing for a moment or two, as she surveyed with
obvious delight the not very prepossessing little figure before her.
Chauvelin was then nearer forty than thirty—a clever, shrewd-looking
personality, with a curious fox-like expression in the deep, sunken
eyes. He was the same stranger who an hour or two previously had joined
Mr. Jellyband in a friendly glass of wine.
“Chauvelin . . . my friend . . .” said Marguerite, with a pretty little
sigh of satisfaction. “I am mightily pleased to see you.”
No doubt poor Marguerite St. Just, lonely in the midst of her grandeur,
and of her starchy friends, was happy to see a face that brought back
memories of that happy time in Paris, when she reigned—a queen—over the
intellectual coterie of the Rue de Richelieu. She did not notice the
sarcastic little smile, however, that hovered round the thin lips of
Chauvelin.
“But tell me,” she added merrily, “what in the world, or whom in the
world, are you doing here in England?”
She had resumed her walk towards the inn, and Chauvelin turned and
walked beside her.
“I might return the subtle compliment, fair lady,” he said. “What of
yourself?”
“Oh, I?” she said, with a shrug of the shoulders. “Je m’ennuie, mon
ami, that is all.”
They had reached the porch of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” but Marguerite
seemed loth to go within. The evening air was lovely after the storm,
and she had found a friend who exhaled the breath of Paris, who knew
Armand well, who could talk of all the merry, brilliant friends whom
she had left behind. So she lingered on under the pretty porch, while
through the gaily-lighted dormer-window of the coffee-room came sounds
of laughter, of calls for “Sally” and for beer, of tapping of mugs, and
clinking of dice, mingled with Sir Percy Blakeney’s inane and mirthless
laugh. Chauvelin stood beside her, his shrewd, pale, yellow eyes fixed
on the pretty face, which looked so sweet and childlike in this soft
English summer twilight.
“You surprise me, citoyenne,” he said quietly, as he took a pinch of
snuff.
“Do I now?” she retorted gaily. “Faith, my little Chauvelin, I should
have thought that, with your penetration, you would have guessed that
an atmosphere composed of fogs and virtues would never suit Marguerite
St. Just.”
“Dear me! is it as bad as that?” he asked, in mock consternation.
“Quite,” she retorted, “and worse.”
“Strange! Now, I thought that a pretty woman would have found English
country life peculiarly attractive.”
“Yes! so did I,” she said with a sigh. “Pretty women,” she added
meditatively, “ought to have a good time in England, since all the
pleasant things are forbidden them—the very things they do every day.”
“Quite so!”
“You’ll hardly believe it, my little Chauvelin,” she said earnestly,
“but I often pass a whole day—a whole day—without encountering a single
temptation.”
“No wonder,” retorted Chauvelin, gallantly, “that the cleverest woman
in Europe is troubled with _ennui_.”
She laughed one of her melodious, rippling, childlike laughs.
“It must be pretty bad, mustn’t it?” she said archly, “or I should not
have been so pleased to see you.”
“And this within a year of a romantic love match! . . .”
“Yes! . . . a year of a romantic love match . . . that’s just the
difficulty . . .”
“Ah! . . . that idyllic folly,” said Chauvelin, with quiet sarcasm,
“did not then survive the lapse of . . . weeks?”
“Idyllic follies never last, my little Chauvelin. . . . They come upon
us like the measles . . . and are as easily cured.”
Chauvelin took another pinch of snuff: he seemed very much addicted to
that pernicious habit, so prevalent in those days; perhaps, too, he
found the taking of snuff a convenient veil for disguising the quick,
shrewd glances with which he strove to read the very souls of those
with whom he came in contact.
“No wonder,” he repeated, with the same gallantry, “that the most
active brain in Europe is troubled with _ennui_.”
“I was in hopes that you had a prescription against the malady, my
little Chauvelin.”
“How can I hope to succeed in that which Sir Percy Blakeney has failed
to accomplish?”