The Scarlet Pimpernel
nearer to Chauvelin, “and I swear by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I
would obey your Honour most absolutely, and that I would not move from
this place until your Honour once more deigned to shed the light of
your countenance upon your humble servant; but remember, your Honour, I
am a poor old man; my nerves are not as strong as those of a young
soldier. If midnight marauders should come prowling round this lonely
road, I might scream or run in my fright! And is my life to be forfeit,
is some terrible punishment to come on my poor old head for that which
I cannot help?”
The Jew seemed in real distress; he was shaking from head to foot.
Clearly he was not the man to be left by himself on this lonely road.
The man spoke truly; he might unwittingly, in sheer terror, utter the
shriek that might prove a warning to the wily Scarlet Pimpernel.
Chauvelin reflected for a moment.
“Will your horse and cart be safe alone, here, do you think?” he asked
roughly.
“I fancy, citoyen,” here interposed Desgas, “that they will be safer
without that dirty, cowardly Jew than with him. There seems no doubt
that, if he gets scared, he will either make a bolt of it, or shriek
his head off.”
“But what am I to do with the brute?”
“Will you send him back to Calais, citoyen?”
“No, for we shall want him to drive back the wounded presently,” said
Chauvelin, with grim significance.
There was a pause again—Desgas, waiting for the decision of his chief,
and the old Jew whining beside his nag.
“Well, you lazy, lumbering old coward,” said Chauvelin at last, “you
had better shuffle along behind us. Here, Citoyen Desgas, tie this
handkerchief tightly round the fellow’s mouth.”
Chauvelin handed a scarf to Desgas, who solemnly began winding it round
the Jew’s mouth. Meekly Benjamin Rosenbaum allowed himself to be
gagged; he, evidently, preferred this uncomfortable state to that of
being left alone, on the dark St. Martin Road. Then the three men fell
in line.
“Quick!” said Chauvelin, impatiently, “we have already wasted much
valuable time.”
And the firm footsteps of Chauvelin and Desgas, the shuffling gait of
the old Jew, soon died away along the footpath.
Marguerite had not lost a single one of Chauvelin’s words of command.
Her every nerve was strained to completely grasp the situation first,
then to make a final appeal to those wits which had so often been
called the sharpest in Europe, and which alone might be of service now.
Certainly the situation was desperate enough; a tiny band of
unsuspecting men, quietly awaiting the arrival of their rescuer, who
was equally unconscious of the trap laid for them all. It seemed so
horrible, this net, as it were drawn in a circle, at dead of night, on
a lonely beach, round a few defenceless men, defenceless because they
were tricked and unsuspecting; of these one was the husband she
idolised, another the brother she loved. She vaguely wondered who the
others were, who were also calmly waiting for the Scarlet Pimpernel,
while death lurked behind every boulder of the cliffs.
For the moment she could do nothing but follow the soldiers and
Chauvelin. She feared to lose her way, or she would have rushed forward
and found that wooden hut, and perhaps been in time to warn the
fugitives and their brave deliverer yet.
For a second, the thought flashed through her mind of uttering the
piercing shrieks, which Chauvelin seemed to dread, as a possible
warning to the Scarlet Pimpernel and his friends—in the wild hope that
they would hear, and have yet time to escape before it was too late.
But she did not know how far from the edge of the cliff she was; she
did not know if her shrieks would reach the ears of the doomed men. Her
effort might be premature, and she would never be allowed to make
another. Her mouth would be securely gagged, like that of the Jew, and
she, a helpless prisoner in the hands of Chauvelin’s men.
Like a ghost she flitted noiselessly behind that hedge: she had taken
her shoes off, and her stockings were by now torn off her feet. She
felt neither soreness nor weariness; indomitable will to reach her
husband in spite of adverse Fate, and of a cunning enemy, killed all
sense of bodily pain within her, and rendered her instincts doubly
acute.
She heard nothing save the soft and measured footsteps of Percy’s
enemies on in front; she saw nothing but—in her mind’s eye—that wooden
hut, and he, her husband, walking blindly to his doom.
Suddenly, those same keen instincts within her made her pause in her
mad haste, and cower still further within the shadow of the hedge. The
moon, which had proved a friend to her by remaining hidden behind a
bank of clouds, now emerged in all the glory of an early autumn night,
and in a moment flooded the weird and lonely landscape with a rush of
brilliant light.
There, not two hundred mètres ahead, was the edge of the cliff, and
below, stretching far away to free and happy England, the sea rolled on
smoothly and peaceably. Marguerite’s gaze rested for an instant on the
brilliant, silvery waters; and as she gazed, her heart, which had been
numb with pain for all these hours, seemed to soften and distend, and
her eyes filled with hot tears: not three miles away, with white sails
set, a graceful schooner lay in wait.
Marguerite had guessed rather than recognised her. It was the _Day
Dream_, Percy’s favourite yacht, with old Briggs, that prince of
skippers, aboard, and all her crew of British sailors: her white sails,
glistening in the moonlight, seemed to convey a message to Marguerite
of joy and hope, which yet she feared could never be. She waited there,
out at sea, waited for her master, like a beautiful white bird all
ready to take flight, and he would never reach her, never see her
smooth deck again, never gaze any more on the white cliffs of England,
the land of liberty and of hope.
The sight of the schooner seemed to infuse into the poor, wearied woman
the superhuman strength of despair. There was the edge of the cliff,
and some way below was the hut, where presently, her husband would meet
his death. But the moon was out: she could see her way now: she would
see the hut from a distance, run to it, rouse them all, warn them at
any rate to be prepared and to sell their lives dearly, rather than be
caught like so many rats in a hole.
She stumbled on behind the hedge in the low, thick grass of the ditch.
She must have run on very fast, and had outdistanced Chauvelin and
Desgas, for presently she reached the edge of the cliff, and heard
their footsteps distinctly behind her. But only a very few yards away,
and now the moonlight was full upon her, her figure must have been
distinctly silhouetted against the silvery background of the sea.
Only for a moment, though; the next she had cowered, like some animal
doubled up within itself. She peeped down the great rugged cliffs—the
descent would be easy enough, as they were not precipitous, and the
great boulders afforded plenty of foothold. Suddenly, as she gazed, she
saw at some little distance on her left, and about midway down the
cliffs, a rough wooden construction, through the walls of which a tiny
red light glimmered like a beacon. Her very heart seemed to stand
still, the eagerness of joy was so great that it felt like an awful
pain.
She could not gauge how distant the hut was, but without hesitation she
began the steep descent, creeping from boulder to boulder, caring
nothing for the enemy behind, or for the soldiers, who evidently had
all taken cover since the tall Englishman had not yet appeared.
On she pressed, forgetting the deadly foe on her track, running,
stumbling, foot-sore, half-dazed, but still on . . . When, suddenly, a
crevice, or stone, or slippery bit of rock, threw her violently to the
ground. She struggled again to her feet, and started running forward
once more to give them that timely warning, to beg them to flee before
he came, and to tell him to keep away—away from this death-trap—away
from this awful doom. But now she realised that other steps, quicker
than her own, were already close at her heels. The next instant a hand
dragged at her skirt, and she was down on her knees again, whilst
something was wound round her mouth to prevent her uttering a scream.
Bewildered, half frantic with the bitterness of disappointment, she
looked round her helplessly, and, bending down quite close to her, she
saw through the mist, which seemed to gather round her, a pair of keen,
malicious eyes, which appeared to her excited brain to have a weird,
supernatural green light in them.
She lay in the shadow of a great boulder; Chauvelin could not see her
features, but he passed his thin, white fingers over her face.
“A woman!” he whispered, “by all the Saints in the calendar.”
“We cannot let her loose, that’s certain,” he muttered to himself. “I
wonder now . . .”
Suddenly he paused, and after a few seconds of deadly silence, he gave
forth a long, low, curious chuckle, while once again Marguerite felt,
with a horrible shudder, his thin fingers wandering over her face.
“Dear me! dear me!” he whispered, with affected gallantry, “this is
indeed a charming surprise,” and Marguerite felt her resistless hand
raised to Chauvelin’s thin, mocking lips.
The situation was indeed grotesque, had it not been at the same time so
fearfully tragic: the poor, weary woman, broken in spirit, and half
frantic with the bitterness of her disappointment, receiving on her
knees the _banal_ gallantries of her deadly enemy.
Her senses were leaving her; half choked with the tight grip round her
mouth, she had no strength to move or to utter the faintest sound. The
excitement which all along had kept up her delicate body seemed at once
to have subsided, and the feeling of blank despair to have completely
paralysed her brain and nerves.
Chauvelin must have given some directions, which she was too dazed to
hear, for she felt herself lifted from off her feet: the bandage round
her mouth was made more secure, and a pair of strong arms carried her
towards that tiny, red light, on ahead, which she had looked upon as a
beacon and the last faint glimmer of hope.
CHAPTER XXIX.
TRAPPED
She did not know how long she was thus carried along, she had lost all
notion of time and space, and for a few seconds tired nature,
mercifully, deprived her of consciousness.
When she once more realised her state, she felt that she was placed
with some degree of comfort upon a man’s coat, with her back resting
against a fragment of rock. The moon was hidden again behind some
clouds, and the darkness seemed in comparison more intense. The sea was
roaring some two hundred feet below her, and on looking all round she
could no longer see any vestige of the tiny glimmer of red light.
That the end of the journey had been reached, she gathered from the
fact that she heard rapid questions and answers spoken in a whisper
quite close to her.
“There are four men in there, citoyen; they are sitting by the fire,
and seem to be waiting quietly.”
“The hour?”
“Nearly two o’clock.”
“The tide?”
“Coming in quickly.”
“The schooner?”
“Obviously an English one, lying some three kilometres out. But we
cannot see her boat.”
“Have the men taken cover?”
“Yes, citoyen.”
“They will not blunder?”
“They will not stir until the tall Englishman comes, then they will
surround and overpower the five men.”
“Right. And the lady?”
“Still dazed, I fancy. She’s close beside you, citoyen.”
“And the Jew?”
“He’s gagged, and his legs strapped together. He cannot move or
scream.”
“Good. Then have your gun ready, in case you want it. Get close to the
hut and leave me to look after the lady.”
Desgas evidently obeyed, for Marguerite heard him creeping away along