The Scarlet Pimpernel
gallantly offered his arm to the Comtesse.
“May I have the honour?” he added ceremoniously, as he led her towards
the supper table.
There was general bustle in the coffee-room: Mr. Hempseed and most of
the yokels and fisher-folk had gone to make way for “the quality,” and
to finish smoking their pipes elsewhere. Only the two strangers stayed
on, quietly and unconcernedly playing their game of dominoes and
sipping their wine; whilst at another table Harry Waite, who was fast
losing his temper, watched pretty Sally bustling round the table.
She looked a very dainty picture of English rural life, and no wonder
that the susceptible young Frenchman could scarce take his eyes off her
pretty face. The Vicomte de Tournay was scarce nineteen, a beardless
boy, on whom the terrible tragedies which were being enacted in his own
country had made but little impression. He was elegantly and even
foppishly dressed, and once safely landed in England he was evidently
ready to forget the horrors of the Revolution in the delights of
English life.
“Pardi, if zis is England,” he said as he continued to ogle Sally with
marked satisfaction, “I am of it satisfied.”
It would be impossible at this point to record the exact exclamation
which escaped through Mr. Harry Waite’s clenched teeth. Only respect
for “the quality,” and notably for my Lord Antony, kept his marked
disapproval of the young foreigner in check.
“Nay, but this _is_ England, you abandoned young reprobate,” interposed
Lord Antony with a laugh, “and do not, I pray, bring your loose foreign
ways into this most moral country.”
Lord Antony had already sat down at the head of the table with the
Comtesse on his right. Jellyband was bustling round, filling glasses
and putting chairs straight. Sally waited, ready to hand round the
soup. Mr. Harry Waite’s friends had at last succeeded in taking him out
of the room, for his temper was growing more and more violent under the
Vicomte’s obvious admiration for Sally.
“Suzanne,” came in stern, commanding accents from the rigid Comtesse.
Suzanne blushed again; she had lost count of time and of place whilst
she had stood beside the fire, allowing the handsome young Englishman’s
eyes to dwell upon her sweet face, and his hand, as if unconsciously,
to rest upon hers. Her mother’s voice brought her back to reality once
more, and with a submissive “Yes, Mama,” she too took her place at the
supper table.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
They all looked a merry, even a happy party, as they sat round the
table; Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Antony Dewhurst, two typical
good-looking, well-born and well-bred Englishmen of that year of grace
1792, and the aristocratic French comtesse with her two children, who
had just escaped from such dire perils, and found a safe retreat at
last on the shores of protecting England.
In the corner the two strangers had apparently finished their game; one
of them arose, and standing with his back to the merry company at the
table, he adjusted with much deliberation his large triple caped coat.
As he did so, he gave one quick glance all around him. Everyone was
busy laughing and chatting, and he murmured the words “All safe!”: his
companion then, with the alertness borne of long practice, slipped on
to his knees in a moment, and the next had crept noiselessly under the
oak bench. The stranger then, with a loud “Good-night,” quietly walked
out of the coffee-room.
Not one of those at the supper table had noticed this curious and
silent manœuvre, but when the stranger finally closed the door of the
coffee-room behind him, they all instinctively sighed a sigh of relief.
“Alone, at last!” said Lord Antony, jovially.
Then the young Vicomte de Tournay rose, glass in hand, and with the
graceful affectation peculiar to the times, he raised it aloft, and
said in broken English,—
“To His Majesty George Three of England. God bless him for his
hospitality to us all, poor exiles from France.”
“His Majesty the King!” echoed Lord Antony and Sir Andrew as they drank
loyally to the toast.
“To His Majesty King Louis of France,” added Sir Andrew, with
solemnity. “May God protect him, and give him victory over his
enemies.”
Everyone rose and drank this toast in silence. The fate of the
unfortunate King of France, then a prisoner of his own people, seemed
to cast a gloom even over Mr. Jellyband’s pleasant countenance.
“And to M. le Comte de Tournay de Basserive,” said Lord Antony,
merrily. “May we welcome him in England before many days are over.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said the Comtesse, as with a slightly trembling hand
she conveyed her glass to her lips, “I scarcely dare to hope.”
But already Lord Antony had served out the soup, and for the next few
moments all conversation ceased, while Jellyband and Sally handed round
the plates and everyone began to eat.
“Faith, Madame!” said Lord Antony, after a while, “mine was no idle
toast; seeing yourself, Mademoiselle Suzanne and my friend the Vicomte
safely in England now, surely you must feel reassured as to the fate of
Monsieur le Comte.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” replied the Comtesse, with a heavy sigh, “I trust in
God—I can but pray—and hope . . .”
“Aye, Madame!” here interposed Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, “trust in God by
all means, but believe also a little in your English friends, who have
sworn to bring the Count safely across the Channel, even as they have
brought you to-day.”
“Indeed, indeed, Monsieur,” she replied, “I have the fullest confidence
in you and in your friends. Your fame, I assure you, has spread
throughout the whole of France. The way some of my own friends have
escaped from the clutches of that awful revolutionary tribunal was
nothing short of a miracle—and all done by you and your friends—”
“We were but the hands, Madame la Comtesse . . .”
“But my husband, Monsieur,” said the Comtesse, whilst unshed tears
seemed to veil her voice, “he is in such deadly peril—I would never
have left him, only . . . there were my children . . . I was torn
between my duty to him, and to them. They refused to go without me . .
. and you and your friends assured me so solemnly that my husband would
be safe. But, oh! now that I am here—amongst you all—in this beautiful,
free England—I think of him, flying for his life, hunted like a poor
beast . . . in such peril. . . . Ah! I should not have left him . . . I
should not have left him! . . .”
The poor woman had completely broken down; fatigue, sorrow and emotion
had overmastered her rigid, aristocratic bearing. She was crying gently
to herself, whilst Suzanne ran up to her and tried to kiss away her
tears.
Lord Antony and Sir Andrew had said nothing to interrupt the Comtesse
whilst she was speaking. There was no doubt that they felt deeply for
her; their very silence testified to that—but in every century, and
ever since England has been what it is, an Englishman has always felt
somewhat ashamed of his own emotion and of his own sympathy. And so the
two young men said nothing, and busied themselves in trying to hide
their feelings, only succeeding in looking immeasurably sheepish.
“As for me, Monsieur,” said Suzanne, suddenly, as she looked through a
wealth of brown curls across at Sir Andrew, “I trust you absolutely,
and I _know_ that you will bring my dear father safely to England, just
as you brought us to-day.”
This was said with so much confidence, such unuttered hope and belief,
that it seemed as if by magic to dry the mother’s eyes, and to bring a
smile upon everybody’s lips.
“Nay! you shame me, Mademoiselle,” replied Sir Andrew; “though my life
is at your service, I have been but a humble tool in the hands of our
great leader, who organised and effected your escape.”
He had spoken with so much warmth and vehemence that Suzanne’s eyes
fastened upon him in undisguised wonder.
“Your leader, Monsieur?” said the Comtesse, eagerly. “Ah! of course,
you must have a leader. And I did not think of that before! But tell me
where is he? I must go to him at once, and I and my children must throw
ourselves at his feet, and thank him for all that he has done for us.”
“Alas, Madame!” said Lord Antony, “that is impossible.”
“Impossible?—Why?”
“Because the Scarlet Pimpernel works in the dark, and his identity is
only known under a solemn oath of secrecy to his immediate followers.”
“The Scarlet Pimpernel?” said Suzanne, with a merry laugh. “Why! what a
droll name! What is the Scarlet Pimpernel, Monsieur?”
She looked at Sir Andrew with eager curiosity. The young man’s face had
become almost transfigured. His eyes shone with enthusiasm;
hero-worship, love, admiration for his leader seemed literally to glow
upon his face.
“The Scarlet Pimpernel, Mademoiselle,” he said at last, “is the name
of a humble English wayside flower; but it is also the name chosen to
hide the identity of the best and bravest man in all the world, so
that he may better succeed in accomplishing the noble task he has set
himself to do.”
“Ah, yes,” here interposed the young Vicomte, “I have heard speak of
this Scarlet Pimpernel. A little flower—red?—yes! They say in Paris
that every time a royalist escapes to England that devil,
Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, receives a paper with that
little flower dessinated in red upon it. . . . Yes?”
“Yes, that is so,” assented Lord Antony.
“Then he will have received one such paper to-day?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Oh! I wonder what he will say!” said Suzanne, merrily. “I have heard
that the picture of that little red flower is the only thing that
frightens him.”
“Faith, then,” said Sir Andrew, “he will have many more opportunities
of studying the shape of that small scarlet flower.”
“Ah! Monsieur,” sighed the Comtesse, “it all sounds like a romance, and
I cannot understand it all.”
“Why should you try, Madame?”
“But, tell me, why should your leader—why should you all—spend your
money and risk your lives—for it is your lives you risk, Messieurs,
when you set foot in France—and all for us French men and women, who
are nothing to you?”
“Sport, Madame la Comtesse, sport,” asserted Lord Antony, with his
jovial, loud and pleasant voice; “we are a nation of sportsmen, you
know, and just now it is the fashion to pull the hare from between the
teeth of the hound.”
“Ah, no, no, not sport only, Monsieur . . . you have a more noble
motive, I am sure, for the good work you do.”
“Faith, Madame, I would like you to find it then . . . as for me, I
vow, I love the game, for this is the finest sport I have yet
encountered.—Hair-breadth escapes . . . the devil’s own risks!—Tally
ho!—and away we go!”
But the Comtesse shook her head, still incredulously. To her it seemed
preposterous that these young men and their great leader, all of them
rich, probably well-born, and young, should for no other motive than
sport, run the terrible risks, which she knew they were constantly
doing. Their nationality, once they had set foot in France, would be no
safeguard to them. Anyone found harbouring or assisting suspected
royalists would be ruthlessly condemned and summarily executed,
whatever his nationality might be. And this band of young Englishmen
had, to her own knowledge, bearded the implacable and bloodthirsty
tribunal of the Revolution, within the very walls of Paris itself, and
had snatched away condemned victims, almost from the very foot of the
guillotine. With a shudder, she recalled the events of the last few
days, her escape from Paris with her two children, all three of them
hidden beneath the hood of a rickety cart, and lying amidst a heap of
turnips and cabbages, not daring to breathe, whilst the mob howled “À
la lanterne les aristos!” at that awful West Barricade.