The Scarlet Pimpernel
“Answer!” he again commanded, as the Jew with trembling lips seemed too
frightened to speak.
“Yes, your Honour,” stammered the poor wretch.
“You remember, then, the one you and I made together in Calais, when
you undertook to overtake Reuben Goldstein, his nag and my friend the
tall stranger? Eh?”
“B . . . b . . . but . . . your Honour . . .”
“There is no ‘but.’ I said, do you remember?”
“Y . . . y . . . y . . . yes . . . your Honour!”
“What was the bargain?”
There was dead silence. The unfortunate man looked round at the great
cliffs, the moon above, the stolid faces of the soldiers, and even at
the poor, prostrate, inanimate woman close by, but said nothing.
“Will you speak?” thundered Chauvelin, menacingly.
He did try, poor wretch, but, obviously, he could not. There was no
doubt, however, that he knew what to expect from the stern man before
him.
“Your Honour . . .” he ventured imploringly.
“Since your terror seems to have paralyzed your tongue,” said
Chauvelin, sarcastically, “I must needs refresh your memory. It was
agreed between us, that if we overtook my friend the tall stranger,
before he reached this place, you were to have ten pieces of gold.”
A low moan escaped from the Jew’s trembling lips.
“But,” added Chauvelin, with slow emphasis, “if you deceived me in your
promise, you were to have a sound beating, one that would teach you not
to tell lies.”
“I did not, your Honour; I swear it by Abraham . . .”
“And by all the other patriarchs, I know. Unfortunately, they are still
in Hades, I believe, according to your creed, and cannot help you much
in your present trouble. Now, you did not fulfil your share of the
bargain, but I am ready to fulfil mine. Here,” he added, turning to the
soldiers, “the buckle-end of your two belts to this confounded Jew.”
As the soldiers obediently unbuckled their heavy leather belts, the Jew
set up a howl that surely would have been enough to bring all the
patriarchs out of Hades and elsewhere, to defend their descendant from
the brutality of this French official.
“I think I can rely on you, citoyen soldiers,” laughed Chauvelin,
maliciously, “to give this old liar the best and soundest beating he
has ever experienced. But don’t kill him,” he added drily.
“We will obey, citoyen,” replied the soldiers as imperturbably as ever.
He did not wait to see his orders carried out: he knew that he could
trust these soldiers—who were still smarting under his rebuke—not to
mince matters, when given a free hand to belabour a third party.
“When that lumbering coward has had his punishment,” he said to Desgas,
“the men can guide us as far as the cart, and one of them can drive us
in it back to Calais. The Jew and the woman can look after each other,”
he added roughly, “until we can send somebody for them in the morning.
They can’t run away very far, in their present condition, and we cannot
be troubled with them just now.”
Chauvelin had not given up all hope. His men, he knew, were spurred on
by the hope of the reward. That enigmatic and audacious Scarlet
Pimpernel, alone and with thirty men at his heels, could not reasonably
be expected to escape a second time.
But he felt less sure now: the Englishman’s audacity had baffled him
once, whilst the wooden-headed stupidity of the soldiers, and the
interference of a woman had turned his hand, which held all the trumps,
into a losing one. If Marguerite had not taken up his time, if the
soldiers had had a grain of intelligence, if . . . it was a long “if,”
and Chauvelin stood for a moment quite still, and enrolled thirty odd
people in one long, overwhelming anathema. Nature, poetic, silent,
balmy, the bright moon, the calm, silvery sea spoke of beauty and of
rest, and Chauvelin cursed nature, cursed man and woman, and, above
all, he cursed all long-legged, meddlesome British enigmas with one
gigantic curse.
The howls of the Jew behind him, undergoing his punishment, sent a balm
through his heart, overburdened as it was with revengeful malice. He
smiled. It eased his mind to think that some human being at least was,
like himself, not altogether at peace with mankind.
He turned and took a last look at the lonely bit of coast, where stood
the wooden hut, now bathed in moonlight, the scene of the greatest
discomfiture ever experienced by a leading member of the Committee of
Public Safety.
Against a rock, on a hard bed of stone, lay the unconscious figure of
Marguerite Blakeney, while some few paces further on, the unfortunate
Jew was receiving on his broad back the blows of two stout leather
belts, wielded by the stolid arms of two sturdy soldiers of the
Republic. The howls of Benjamin Rosenbaum were fit to make the dead
rise from their graves. They must have wakened all the gulls from
sleep, and made them look down with great interest at the doings of the
lords of the creation.
“That will do,” commanded Chauvelin, as the Jew’s moans became more
feeble, and the poor wretch seemed to have fainted away, “we don’t want
to kill him.”
Obediently the soldiers buckled on their belts, one of them viciously
kicking the Jew to one side.
“Leave him there,” said Chauvelin, “and lead the way now quickly to the
cart. I’ll follow.”
He walked up to where Marguerite lay, and looked down into her face.
She had evidently recovered consciousness, and was making feeble
efforts to raise herself. Her large, blue eyes were looking at the
moonlit scene round her with a scared and terrified look; they rested
with a mixture of horror and pity on the Jew, whose luckless fate and
wild howls had been the first signs that struck her, with her returning
senses; then she caught sight of Chauvelin, in his neat, dark clothes,
which seemed hardly crumpled after the stirring events of the last few
hours. He was smiling sarcastically, and his pale eyes peered down at
her with a look of intense malice.
With mock gallantry, he stooped and raised her icy-cold hand to his
lips, which sent a thrill of indescribable loathing through
Marguerite’s weary frame.
“I much regret, fair lady,” he said in his most suave tones, “that
circumstances, over which I have no control, compel me to leave you
here for the moment. But I go away, secure in the knowledge that I do
not leave you unprotected. Our friend Benjamin here, though a trifle
the worse for wear at the present moment, will prove a gallant defender
of your fair person, I have no doubt. At dawn I will send an escort for
you; until then, I feel sure that you will find him devoted, though
perhaps a trifle slow.”
Marguerite only had the strength to turn her head away. Her heart was
broken with cruel anguish. One awful thought had returned to her mind,
together with gathering consciousness: “What had become of Percy?—What
of Armand?”
She knew nothing of what had happened after she heard the cheerful
song, “God save the King,” which she believed to be the signal of
death.
“I, myself,” concluded Chauvelin, “must now very reluctantly leave you.
_Au revoir_, fair lady. We meet, I hope, soon in London. Shall I see
you at the Prince of Wales’ garden party?—No?—Ah, well, _au
revoir!_—Remember me, I pray, to Sir Percy Blakeney.”
And, with a last ironical smile and bow, he once more kissed her hand,
and disappeared down the footpath in the wake of the soldiers, and
followed by the imperturbable Desgas.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE ESCAPE
Marguerite listened—half-dazed as she was—to the fast-retreating, firm
footsteps of the four men.
All nature was so still that she, lying with her ear close to the
ground, could distinctly trace the sound of their tread, as they
ultimately turned into the road, and presently the faint echo of the
old cart-wheels, the halting gait of the lean nag, told her that her
enemy was a quarter of a league away. How long she lay there she knew
not. She had lost count of time; dreamily she looked up at the moonlit
sky, and listened to the monotonous roll of the waves.
The invigorating scent of the sea was nectar to her wearied body, the
immensity of the lonely cliffs was silent and dreamlike. Her brain only
remained conscious of its ceaseless, its intolerable torture of
uncertainty.
She did not know!—
She did not know whether Percy was even now, at this moment, in the
hands of the soldiers of the Republic, enduring—as she had done
herself—the gibes and jeers of his malicious enemy. She did not know,
on the other hand, whether Armand’s lifeless body did not lie there, in
the hut, whilst Percy had escaped, only to hear that his wife’s hands
had guided the human bloodhounds to the murder of Armand and his
friends.
The physical pain of utter weariness was so great, that she hoped
confidently her tired body could rest here for ever, after all the
turmoil, the passion, and the intrigues of the last few days—here,
beneath that clear sky, within sound of the sea, and with this balmy
autumn breeze whispering to her a last lullaby. All was so solitary, so
silent, like unto dreamland. Even the last faint echo of the distant
cart had long ago died away, afar.
Suddenly . . . a sound . . . the strangest, undoubtedly, that these
lonely cliffs of France had ever heard, broke the silent solemnity of
the shore.
So strange a sound was it that the gentle breeze ceased to murmur, the
tiny pebbles to roll down the steep incline! So strange, that
Marguerite, wearied, overwrought as she was, thought that the
beneficial unconsciousness of the approach of death was playing her
half-sleeping senses a weird and elusive trick.
It was the sound of a good, solid, absolutely British “Damn!”
The sea-gulls in their nests awoke and looked round in astonishment; a
distant and solitary owl set up a midnight hoot, the tall cliffs
frowned down majestically at the strange, unheard-of sacrilege.
Marguerite did not trust her ears. Half-raising herself on her hands,
she strained every sense to see or hear, to know the meaning of this
very earthly sound.
All was still again for the space of a few seconds; the same silence
once more fell upon the great and lonely vastness.
Then Marguerite, who had listened as in a trance, who felt she must be
dreaming with that cool, magnetic moonlight overhead, heard again; and
this time her heart stood still, her eyes large and dilated, looked
round her, not daring to trust to her other sense.
“Odd’s life! but I wish those demmed fellows had not hit quite so
hard!”
This time it was quite unmistakable, only one particular pair of
essentially British lips could have uttered those words, in sleepy,
drawly, affected tones.
“Damn!” repeated those same British lips, emphatically. “Zounds! but
I’m as weak as a rat!”
In a moment Marguerite was on her feet.
Was she dreaming? Were those great, stony cliffs the gates of paradise?
Was the fragrant breath of the breeze suddenly caused by the flutter of
angels’ wings, bringing tidings of unearthly joys to her, after all her
suffering, or—faint and ill—was she the prey of delirium?
She listened again, and once again she heard the same very earthly
sounds of good, honest British language, not the least akin to
whisperings from paradise or flutter of angels’ wings.
She looked round her eagerly at the tall cliffs, the lonely hut, the
great stretch of rocky beach. Somewhere there, above or below her,
behind a boulder or inside a crevice, but still hidden from her
longing, feverish eyes, must be the owner of that voice, which once
used to irritate her, but which now would make her the happiest woman
in Europe, if only she could locate it.
“Percy! Percy!” she shrieked hysterically, tortured between doubt and
hope, “I am here! Come to me! Where are you? Percy! Percy! . . .”
“It’s all very well calling me, m’dear!” said the same sleepy, drawly