The Scarlet Pimpernel
she was Sir Percy’s wife, and a friend of the Princess of Wales to
boot.
As for Lord Antony and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, their very hearts seemed to
stand still with horror at this gratuitous insult. One of them uttered
an exclamation of appeal, the other one of warning, and instinctively
both glanced hurriedly towards the door, whence a slow, drawly, not
unpleasant voice had already been heard.
Alone among those present Marguerite Blakeney and the Comtesse de
Tournay had remained seemingly unmoved. The latter, rigid, erect and
defiant, with one hand still upon her daughter’s arm, seemed the very
personification of unbending pride. For the moment Marguerite’s sweet
face had become as white as the soft fichu which swathed her throat,
and a very keen observer might have noted that the hand which held the
tall, beribboned stick was clenched, and trembled somewhat.
But this was only momentary; the next instant the delicate eyebrows
were raised slightly, the lips curved sarcastically upwards, the clear
blue eyes looked straight at the rigid Comtesse, and with a slight
shrug of the shoulders—
“Hoity-toity, citizeness,” she said gaily, “what fly stings you, pray?”
“We are in England now, Madame,” rejoined the Comtesse, coldly, “and I
am at liberty to forbid my daughter to touch your hand in friendship.
Come, Suzanne.”
She beckoned to her daughter, and without another look at Marguerite
Blakeney, but with a deep, old-fashioned curtsey to the two young men,
she sailed majestically out of the room.
There was silence in the old inn parlour for a moment, as the rustle of
the Comtesse’s skirts died away down the passage. Marguerite, rigid as
a statue, followed with hard, set eyes the upright figure, as it
disappeared through the doorway—but as little Suzanne, humble and
obedient, was about to follow her mother, the hard, set expression
suddenly vanished, and a wistful, almost pathetic and childlike look
stole into Lady Blakeney’s eyes.
Little Suzanne caught that look; the child’s sweet nature went out to
the beautiful woman, scarce older than herself; filial obedience
vanished before girlish sympathy; at the door she turned, ran back to
Marguerite, and putting her arms round her, kissed her effusively; then
only did she follow her mother, Sally bringing up the rear, with a
pleasant smile on her dimpled face, and with a final curtsey to my
lady.
Suzanne’s sweet and dainty impulse had relieved the unpleasant tension.
Sir Andrew’s eyes followed the pretty little figure, until it had quite
disappeared, then they met Lady Blakeney’s with unassumed merriment.
Marguerite, with dainty affectation, had kissed her hand to the ladies,
as they disappeared through the door, then a humorous smile began
hovering round the corners of her mouth.
“So that’s it, is it?” she said gaily. “La! Sir Andrew, did you ever
see such an unpleasant person? I hope when I grow old I sha’n’t look
like that.”
She gathered up her skirts, and assuming a majestic gait, stalked
towards the fireplace.
“Suzanne,” she said, mimicking the Comtesse’s voice, “I forbid you to
speak to that woman!”
The laugh which accompanied this sally sounded perhaps a trifle forced
and hard, but neither Sir Andrew nor Lord Tony were very keen
observers. The mimicry was so perfect, the tone of the voice so
accurately reproduced, that both the young men joined in a hearty
cheerful “Bravo!”
“Ah! Lady Blakeney!” added Lord Tony, “how they must miss you at the
Comédie Française, and how the Parisians must hate Sir Percy for having
taken you away.”
“Lud, man,” rejoined Marguerite, with a shrug of her graceful
shoulders, “’tis impossible to hate Sir Percy for anything; his witty
sallies would disarm even Madame la Comtesse herself.”
The young Vicomte, who had not elected to follow his mother in her
dignified exit, now made a step forward, ready to champion the Comtesse
should Lady Blakeney aim any further shafts at her. But before he could
utter a preliminary word of protest, a pleasant, though distinctly
inane laugh, was heard from outside, and the next moment an unusually
tall and very richly dressed figure appeared in the doorway.
CHAPTER VI.
AN EXQUISITE OF ’92
Sir Percy Blakeney, as the chronicles of the time inform us, was in
this year of grace 1792, still a year or two on the right side of
thirty. Tall, above the average, even for an Englishman,
broad-shouldered and massively built, he would have been called
unusually good-looking, but for a certain lazy expression in his
deep-set blue eyes, and that perpetual inane laugh which seemed to
disfigure his strong, clearly-cut mouth.
It was nearly a year ago now that Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., one of the
richest men in England, leader of all the fashions, and intimate friend
of the Prince of Wales, had astonished fashionable society in London
and Bath by bringing home, from one of his journeys abroad, a
beautiful, fascinating, clever, French wife. He, the sleepiest,
dullest, most British Britisher that had ever set a pretty woman
yawning, had secured a brilliant matrimonial prize for which, as all
chroniclers aver, there had been many competitors.
Marguerite St. Just had first made her _début_ in artistic Parisian
circles, at the very moment when the greatest social upheaval the world
has ever known was taking place within its very walls. Scarcely
eighteen, lavishly gifted with beauty and talent, chaperoned only by a
young and devoted brother, she had soon gathered round her, in her
charming apartment in the Rue Richelieu, a coterie which was as
brilliant as it was exclusive—exclusive, that is to say, only from one
point of view: Marguerite St. Just was from principle and by conviction
a republican—equality of birth was her motto—inequality of fortune was
in her eyes a mere untoward accident, but the only inequality she
admitted was that of talent. “Money and titles may be hereditary,” she
would say, “but brains are not,” and thus her charming salon was
reserved for originality and intellect, for brilliance and wit, for
clever men and talented women, and the entrance into it was soon looked
upon in the world of intellect—which even in those days and in those
troublous times found its pivot in Paris—as the seal to an artistic
career.
Clever men, distinguished men, and even men of exalted station formed a
perpetual and brilliant court round the fascinating young actress of
the Comédie Française, and she glided through republican,
revolutionary, bloodthirsty Paris like a shining comet with a trail
behind her of all that was most distinguished, most interesting, in
intellectual Europe.
Then the climax came. Some smiled indulgently and called it an artistic
eccentricity, others looked upon it as a wise provision, in view of the
many events which were crowding thick and fast in Paris just then, but
to all, the real motive of that climax remained a puzzle and a mystery.
Anyway, Marguerite St. Just married Sir Percy Blakeney one fine day,
just like that, without any warning to her friends, without a _soirée
de contrat_ or _dîner de fiançailles_ or other appurtenances of a
fashionable French wedding.
How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within the
intellectual circle which revolved round “the cleverest woman in
Europe,” as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured to
guess—a golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more
malignantly inclined.
Enough, she married him, and “the cleverest woman in Europe” had linked
her fate to that “demmed idiot” Blakeney, and not even her most
intimate friends could assign to this strange step any other motive
than that of supreme eccentricity. Those friends who knew, laughed to
scorn the idea that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool for the sake
of the worldly advantages with which he might endow her. They knew, as
a matter of fact, that Marguerite St. Just cared nothing about money,
and still less about a title; moreover, there were at least half a
dozen other men in the cosmopolitan world equally well-born, if not so
wealthy as Blakeney, who would have been only too happy to give
Marguerite St. Just any position she might choose to covet.
As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be totally
unqualified for the onerous post he had taken upon himself. His chief
qualifications for it seemed to consist in his blind adoration for her,
his great wealth, and the high favour in which he stood at the English
court; but London society thought that, taking into consideration his
own intellectual limitations, it would have been wiser on his part had
he bestowed those worldly advantages upon a less brilliant and witty
wife.
Although lately he had been so prominent a figure in fashionable
English society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His
father, the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune
of seeing an idolized young wife become hopelessly insane after two
years of happy married life. Percy had just been born when the late
Lady Blakeney fell a prey to the terrible malady which in those days
was looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of
God upon the entire family. Sir Algernon took his afflicted young wife
abroad, and there presumably Percy was educated, and grew up between an
imbecile mother and a distracted father, until he attained his
majority. The death of his parents following close upon one another
left him a free man, and as Sir Algernon had led a forcibly simple and
retired life, the large Blakeney fortune had increased tenfold.
Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought
home his beautiful, young, French wife. The fashionable circles of the
time were ready to receive them both with open arms. Sir Percy was
rich, his wife was accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great
liking to them both. Within six months they were the acknowledged
leaders of fashion and of style. Sir Percy’s coats were the talk of the
town, his inanities were quoted, his foolish laugh copied by the gilded
youth at Almack’s or the Mall. Everyone knew that he was hopelessly
stupid, but then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all
the Blakeneys, for generations, had been notoriously dull, and that his
mother had died an imbecile.
Thus society accepted him, petted him, made much of him, since his
horses were the finest in the country, his _fêtes_ and wines the most
sought after. As for his marriage with “the cleverest woman in Europe,”
well! the inevitable came with sure and rapid footsteps. No one pitied
him, since his fate was of his own making. There were plenty of young
ladies in England, of high birth and good looks, who would have been
quite willing to help him to spend the Blakeney fortune, whilst smiling
indulgently at his inanities and his good-humoured foolishness.
Moreover, Sir Percy got no pity, because he seemed to require none—he
seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care little that she took
no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she evidently
felt for him, and that she even amused herself by sharpening her ready
wits at his expense.
But then Blakeney was really too stupid to notice the ridicule with
which his clever wife covered him, and if his matrimonial relations
with the fascinating Parisienne had not turned out all that his hopes
and his dog-like devotion for her had pictured, society could never do
more than vaguely guess at it.
In his beautiful house at Richmond he played second fiddle to his
clever wife with imperturbable _bonhomie_; he lavished jewels and
luxuries of all kinds upon her, which she took with inimitable grace,
dispensing the hospitality of his superb mansion with the same
graciousness with which she had welcomed the intellectual coterie of