The Scarlet Pimpernel
“but here there is no need for his kind mediation. . . . Your amiable
reception of me at our last meeting still dwells pleasantly in my
memory.”
“We poor exiles, Madame,” rejoined the Comtesse, frigidly, “show our
gratitude to England by devotion to the wishes of Monseigneur.”
“Madame!” said Marguerite, with another ceremonious curtsey.
“Madame,” responded the Comtesse with equal dignity.
The Prince in the meanwhile was saying a few gracious words to the
young Vicomte.
“I am happy to know you, Monsieur le Vicomte,” he said. “I knew your
father well when he was ambassador in London.”
“Ah, Monseigneur!” replied the Vicomte, “I was a leetle boy then . . .
and now I owe the honour of this meeting to our protector, the Scarlet
Pimpernel.”
“Hush!” said the Prince, earnestly and quickly, as he indicated
Chauvelin, who had stood a little on one side throughout the whole of
this little scene, watching Marguerite and the Comtesse with an amused,
sarcastic little smile around his thin lips.
“Nay, Monseigneur,” he said now, as if in direct response to the
Prince’s challenge, “pray do not check this gentleman’s display of
gratitude; the name of that interesting red flower is well known to
me—and to France.”
The Prince looked at him keenly for a moment or two.
“Faith, then, Monsieur,” he said, “perhaps you know more about our
national hero than we do ourselves . . . perchance you know who he is.
. . . See!” he added, turning to the groups round the room, “the ladies
hang upon your lips . . . you would render yourself popular among the
fair sex if you were to gratify their curiosity.”
“Ah, Monseigneur,” said Chauvelin, significantly, “rumour has it in
France that your Highness could—an you would—give the truest account of
that enigmatical wayside flower.”
He looked quickly and keenly at Marguerite as he spoke; but she
betrayed no emotion, and her eyes met his quite fearlessly.
“Nay, man,” replied the Prince, “my lips are sealed! and the members of
the league jealously guard the secret of their chief . . . so his fair
adorers have to be content with worshipping a shadow. Here in England,
Monsieur,” he added, with wonderful charm and dignity, “we but name the
Scarlet Pimpernel, and every fair cheek is suffused with a blush of
enthusiasm. None have seen him save his faithful lieutenants. We know
not if he be tall or short, fair or dark, handsome or ill-formed; but
we know that he is the bravest gentleman in all the world, and we all
feel a little proud, Monsieur, when we remember that he is an
Englishman.”
“Ah, Monsieur Chauvelin,” added Marguerite, looking almost with
defiance across at the placid, sphinx-like face of the Frenchman, “His
Royal Highness should add that we ladies think of him as of a hero of
old . . . we worship him . . . we wear his badge . . . we tremble for
him when he is in danger, and exult with him in the hour of his
victory.”
Chauvelin did no more than bow placidly both to the Prince and to
Marguerite; he felt that both speeches were intended—each in their
way—to convey contempt or defiance. The pleasure-loving, idle Prince he
despised; the beautiful woman, who in her golden hair wore a spray of
small red flowers composed of rubies and diamonds—her he held in the
hollow of his hand: he could afford to remain silent and to await
events.
A long, jovial, inane laugh broke the sudden silence which had fallen
over everyone.
“And we poor husbands,” came in slow, affected accents from gorgeous
Sir Percy, “we have to stand by . . . while they worship a demmed
shadow.”
Everyone laughed—the Prince more loudly than anyone. The tension of
subdued excitement was relieved, and the next moment everyone was
laughing and chatting merrily as the gay crowd broke up and dispersed
in the adjoining rooms.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SCRAP OF PAPER
Marguerite suffered intensely. Though she laughed and chatted, though
she was more admired, more surrounded, more _fêted_ than any woman
there, she felt like one condemned to death, living her last day upon
this earth.
Her nerves were in a state of painful tension, which had increased a
hundredfold during that brief hour which she had spent in her husband’s
company, between the opera and the ball. The short ray of hope—that she
might find in this good-natured, lazy individual a valuable friend and
adviser—had vanished as quickly as it had come, the moment she found
herself alone with him. The same feeling of good-humoured contempt
which one feels for an animal or a faithful servant, made her turn away
with a smile from the man who should have been her moral support in
this heart-rending crisis through which she was passing: who should
have been her cool-headed adviser, when feminine sympathy and sentiment
tossed her hither and thither, between her love for her brother, who
was far away and in mortal peril, and horror of the awful service which
Chauvelin had exacted from her, in exchange for Armand’s safety.
There he stood, the moral support, the cool-headed adviser, surrounded
by a crowd of brainless, empty-headed young fops, who were even now
repeating from mouth to mouth, and with every sign of the keenest
enjoyment, a doggerel quatrain which he had just given forth.
Everywhere the absurd, silly words met her: people seemed to have
little else to speak about, even the Prince had asked her, with a
laugh, whether she appreciated her husband’s latest poetic efforts.
“All done in the tying of a cravat,” Sir Percy had declared to his
clique of admirers.
“We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel?”
Sir Percy’s _bon mot_ had gone the round of the brilliant
reception-rooms. The Prince was enchanted. He vowed that life without
Blakeney would be but a dreary desert. Then, taking him by the arm, had
led him to the card-room, and engaged him in a long game of hazard.
Sir Percy, whose chief interest in most social gatherings seemed to
centre round the card-table, usually allowed his wife to flirt, dance,
to amuse or bore herself as much as she liked. And to-night, having
delivered himself of his _bon mot_, he had left Marguerite surrounded
by a crowd of admirers of all ages, all anxious and willing to help her
to forget that somewhere in the spacious reception-rooms, there was a
long, lazy being who had been fool enough to suppose that the cleverest
woman in Europe would settle down to the prosaic bonds of English
matrimony.
Her still overwrought nerves, her excitement and agitation, lent
beautiful Marguerite Blakeney much additional charm: escorted by a
veritable bevy of men of all ages and of most nationalities, she called
forth many exclamations of admiration from everyone as she passed.
She would not allow herself any more time to think. Her early, somewhat
Bohemian training had made her something of a fatalist. She felt that
events would shape themselves, that the directing of them was not in
her hands. From Chauvelin she knew that she could expect no mercy. He
had set a price upon Armand’s head, and left it to her to pay or not,
as she chose.
Later on in the evening she caught sight of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and
Lord Antony Dewhurst, who seemingly had just arrived. She noticed at
once that Sir Andrew immediately made for little Suzanne de Tournay,
and that the two young people soon managed to isolate themselves in one
of the deep embrasures of the mullioned windows, there to carry on a
long conversation, which seemed very earnest and very pleasant on both
sides.
Both the young men looked a little haggard and anxious, but otherwise
they were irreproachably dressed, and there was not the slightest sign,
about their courtly demeanour, of the terrible catastrophe, which they
must have felt hovering round them and round their chief.
That the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had no intention of abandoning
its cause, she had gathered through little Suzanne herself, who spoke
openly of the assurance she and her mother had had that the Comte de
Tournay would be rescued from France by the league, within the next few
days. Vaguely she began to wonder, as she looked at the brilliant and
fashionable crowd in the gaily-lighted ball-room, which of these
worldly men round her was the mysterious “Scarlet Pimpernel,” who held
the threads of such daring plots, and the fate of valuable lives in his
hands.
A burning curiosity seized her to know him: although for months she had
heard of him and had accepted his anonymity, as everyone else in
society had done; but now she longed to know—quite impersonally, quite
apart from Armand, and oh! quite apart from Chauvelin—only for her own
sake, for the sake of the enthusiastic admiration she had always
bestowed on his bravery and cunning.
He was at the ball, of course, somewhere, since Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and
Lord Antony Dewhurst were here, evidently expecting to meet their
chief—and perhaps to get a fresh _mot d’ordre_ from him.
Marguerite looked round at everyone, at the aristocratic high-typed
Norman faces, the squarely-built, fair-haired Saxon, the more gentle,
humorous caste of the Celt, wondering which of these betrayed the
power, the energy, the cunning which had imposed its will and its
leadership upon a number of high-born English gentlemen, among whom
rumour asserted was His Royal Highness himself.
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes? Surely not, with his gentle blue eyes, which were
looking so tenderly and longingly after little Suzanne, who was being
led away from the pleasant _tête-à-tête_ by her stern mother.
Marguerite watched him across the room, as he finally turned away with
a sigh, and seemed to stand, aimless and lonely, now that Suzanne’s
dainty little figure had disappeared in the crowd.
She watched him as he strolled towards the doorway, which led to a
small boudoir beyond, then paused and leaned against the framework of
it, looking still anxiously all round him.
Marguerite contrived for the moment to evade her present attentive
cavalier, and she skirted the fashionable crowd, drawing nearer to the
doorway, against which Sir Andrew was leaning. Why she wished to get
closer to him, she could not have said: perhaps she was impelled by an
all-powerful fatality, which so often seems to rule the destinies of
men.
Suddenly she stopped: her very heart seemed to stand still, her eyes,
large and excited, flashed for a moment towards that doorway, then as
quickly were turned away again. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was still in the
same listless position by the door, but Marguerite had distinctly seen
that Lord Hastings—a young buck, a friend of her husband’s and one of
the Prince’s set—had, as he quickly brushed past him, slipped something
into his hand.
For one moment longer—oh! it was the merest flash—Marguerite paused:
the next she had, with admirably played unconcern, resumed her walk
across the room—but this time more quickly towards that doorway whence
Sir Andrew had now disappeared.
All this, from the moment that Marguerite had caught sight of Sir
Andrew leaning against the doorway, until she followed him into the
little boudoir beyond, had occurred in less than a minute. Fate is
usually swift when she deals a blow.
Now Lady Blakeney had suddenly ceased to exist. It was Marguerite St.
Just who was there only: Marguerite St. Just who had passed her
childhood, her early youth, in the protecting arms of her brother
Armand. She had forgotten everything else—her rank, her dignity, her
secret enthusiasms—everything save that Armand stood in peril of his
life, and that there, not twenty feet away from her, in the small
boudoir which was quite deserted, in the very hands of Sir Andrew
Ffoulkes, might be the talisman which would save her brother’s life.