The Scarlet Pimpernel
“I protest you mistake me, Sir Percy,” she said hurriedly, and drawing
a little closer to him; “the estrangement, which, alas! has arisen
between us, was none of my making, remember.”
“Begad! you must pardon me there, Madame!” he protested coldly, “my
memory was always of the shortest.”
He looked her straight in the eyes, with that lazy nonchalance which
had become second nature to him. She returned his gaze for a moment,
then her eyes softened, as she came up quite close to him, to the foot
of the terrace steps.
“Of the shortest, Sir Percy? Faith! how it must have altered! Was it
three years ago or four that you saw me for one hour in Paris, on your
way to the East? When you came back two years later you had not
forgotten me.”
She looked divinely pretty as she stood there in the moonlight, with
the fur-cloak sliding off her beautiful shoulders, the gold embroidery
on her dress shimmering around her, her childlike blue eyes turned up
fully at him.
He stood for a moment, rigid and still, but for the clenching of his
hand against the stone balustrade of the terrace.
“You desired my presence, Madame,” he said frigidly. “I take it that it
was not with a view to indulging in tender reminiscences.”
His voice certainly was cold and uncompromising: his attitude before
her, stiff and unbending. Womanly decorum would have suggested that
Marguerite should return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past
him without another word, only with a curt nod of the head: but womanly
instinct suggested that she should remain—that keen instinct, which
makes a beautiful woman conscious of her powers long to bring to her
knees the one man who pays her no homage. She stretched out her hand to
him.
“Nay, Sir Percy, why not? the present is not so glorious but that I
should not wish to dwell a little in the past.”
He bent his tall figure, and taking hold of the extreme tip of the
fingers which she still held out to him, he kissed them ceremoniously.
“I’ faith, Madame,” he said, “then you will pardon me, if my dull wits
cannot accompany you there.”
Once again he attempted to go, once more her voice, sweet, childlike,
almost tender, called him back.
“Sir Percy.”
“Your servant, Madame.”
“Is it possible that love can die?” she said with sudden, unreasoning
vehemence. “Methought that the passion which you once felt for me would
outlast the span of human life. Is there nothing left of that love,
Percy . . . which might help you . . . to bridge over that sad
estrangement?”
His massive figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen
still more, the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy
crept into the habitually lazy blue eyes.
“With what object, I pray you, Madame?” he asked coldly.
“I do not understand you.”
“Yet ’tis simple enough,” he said with sudden bitterness, which seemed
literally to surge through his words, though he was making visible
efforts to suppress it, “I humbly put the question to you, for my slow
wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship’s sudden new
mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which
you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a
love-sick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the
pleasure of kicking me aside, like a troublesome lap-dog?”
She had succeeded in rousing him for the moment: and again she looked
straight at him, for it was thus she remembered him a year ago.
“Percy! I entreat you!” she whispered, “can we not bury the past?”
“Pardon me, Madame, but I understood you to say that your desire was to
dwell in it.”
“Nay! I spoke not of _that_ past, Percy!” she said, while a tone of
tenderness crept into her voice. “Rather did I speak of the time when
you loved me still! and I . . . oh! I was vain and frivolous; your
wealth and position allured me: I married you, hoping in my heart that
your great love for me would beget in me a love for you . . . but,
alas! . . .”
The moon had sunk low down behind a bank of clouds. In the east a soft
grey light was beginning to chase away the heavy mantle of the night.
He could only see her graceful outline now, the small queenly head,
with its wealth of reddish golden curls, and the glittering gems
forming the small, star-shaped, red flower which she wore as a diadem
in her hair.
“Twenty-four hours after our marriage, Madame, the Marquis de St. Cyr
and all his family perished on the guillotine, and the popular rumour
reached me that it was the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney who helped to
send them there.”
“Nay! I myself told you the truth of that odious tale.”
“Not till after it had been recounted to me by strangers, with all its
horrible details.”
“And you believed them then and there,” she said with great vehemence,
“without a proof or question—you believed that I, whom you vowed you
loved more than life, whom you professed you worshipped, that _I_ could
do a thing so base as these _strangers_ chose to recount. You thought I
meant to deceive you about it all—that I ought to have spoken before I
married you: yet, had you listened, I would have told you that up to
the very morning on which St. Cyr went to the guillotine, I was
straining every nerve, using every influence I possessed, to save him
and his family. But my pride sealed my lips, when your love seemed to
perish, as if under the knife of that same guillotine. Yet I would have
told you how I was duped! Aye! I, whom that same popular rumour had
endowed with the sharpest wits in France! I was tricked into doing this
thing, by men who knew how to play upon my love for an only brother,
and my desire for revenge. Was it unnatural?”
Her voice became choked with tears. She paused for a moment or two,
trying to regain some sort of composure. She looked appealingly at him,
almost as if he were her judge. He had allowed her to speak on in her
own vehement, impassioned way, offering no comment, no word of
sympathy: and now, while she paused, trying to swallow down the hot
tears that gushed to her eyes, he waited, impassive and still. The dim,
grey light of early dawn seemed to make his tall form look taller and
more rigid. The lazy, good-natured face looked strangely altered.
Marguerite, excited, as she was, could see that the eyes were no longer
languid, the mouth no longer good-humoured and inane. A curious look of
intense passion seemed to glow from beneath his drooping lids, the
mouth was tightly closed, the lips compressed, as if the will alone
held that surging passion in check.
Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman’s
fascinating foibles, all a woman’s most lovable sins. She knew in a
moment that for the past few months she had been mistaken: that this
man who stood here before her, cold as a statue, when her musical voice
struck upon his ear, loved her, as he had loved her a year ago: that
his passion might have been dormant, but that it was there, as strong,
as intense, as overwhelming, as when first her lips met his in one
long, maddening kiss.
Pride had kept him from her, and, woman-like, she meant to win back
that conquest which had been hers before. Suddenly it seemed to her
that the only happiness life could ever hold for her again would be in
feeling that man’s kiss once more upon her lips.
“Listen to the tale, Sir Percy,” she said, and her voice now was low,
sweet, infinitely tender. “Armand was all in all to me! We had no
parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I,
his tiny mother; we loved one another so. Then one day—do you mind me,
Sir Percy? the Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand
thrashed—thrashed by his lacqueys—that brother whom I loved better than
all the world! And his offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love
the daughter of the aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed .
. . thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered!
his humiliation had eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity
occurred, and I was able to take my revenge, I took it. But I only
thought to bring that proud marquis to trouble and humiliation. He
plotted with Austria against his own country. Chance gave me knowledge
of this; I spoke of it, but I did not know—how could I guess?—they
trapped and duped me. When I realised what I had done, it was too
late.”
“It is perhaps a little difficult, Madame,” said Sir Percy, after a
moment of silence between them, “to go back over the past. I have
confessed to you that my memory is short, but the thought certainly
lingered in my mind that, at the time of the Marquis’ death, I
entreated you for an explanation of those same noisome popular rumours.
If that same memory does not, even now, play me a trick, I fancy that
you refused me _all_ explanation then, and demanded of my love a
humiliating allegiance it was not prepared to give.”
“I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You
used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me, and
for love of me.”
“And to probe that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine
honour,” he said, whilst gradually his impassiveness seemed to leave
him, his rigidity to relax; “that I should accept without murmur or
question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress.
My heart overflowing with love and passion, I _asked_ for no
explanation—I _waited_ for one, not doubting—only hoping. Had you
spoken but one word, from you I would have accepted any explanation and
believed it. But you left me without a word, beyond a bald confession
of the actual horrible facts; proudly you returned to your brother’s
house, and left me alone . . . for weeks . . . not knowing, now, in
whom to believe, since the shrine, which contained my one illusion, lay
shattered to earth at my feet.”
She need not complain now that he was cold and impassive; his very
voice shook with an intensity of passion, which he was making
superhuman efforts to keep in check.
“Aye! the madness of my pride!” she said sadly. “Hardly had I gone,
already I had repented. But when I returned, I found you, oh, so
altered! wearing already that mask of somnolent indifference which you
have never laid aside until . . . until now.”
She was so close to him that her soft, loose hair was wafted against
his cheek; her eyes, glowing with tears, maddened him, the music in her
voice sent fire through his veins. But he would not yield to the magic
charm of this woman whom he had so deeply loved, and at whose hands his
pride had suffered so bitterly. He closed his eyes to shut out the
dainty vision of that sweet face, of that snow-white neck and graceful
figure, round which the faint rosy light of dawn was just beginning to
hover playfully.
“Nay, Madame, it is no mask,” he said icily; “I swore to you . . .
once, that my life was yours. For months now it has been your plaything
. . . it has served its purpose.”
But now she knew that that very coldness was a mask. The trouble, the
sorrow she had gone through last night, suddenly came back to her mind,
but no longer with bitterness, rather with a feeling that this man who
loved her, would help her to bear the burden.
“Sir Percy,” she said impulsively, “Heaven knows you have been at pains
to make the task, which I had set to myself, terribly difficult to
accomplish. You spoke of my mood just now; well! we will call it that,
if you will. I wished to speak to you . . . because . . . because I was
in trouble . . . and had need . . . of your sympathy.”
“It is yours to command, Madame.”
“How cold you are!” she sighed. “Faith! I can scarce believe that but a
few months ago one tear in my eye had set you well-nigh crazy. Now I
come to you . . . with a half-broken heart . . . and . . . and . . .”