The Scarlet Pimpernel
Paris.
Physically, Sir Percy Blakeney was undeniably handsome—always excepting
the lazy, bored look which was habitual to him. He was always
irreproachably dressed, and wore the exaggerated “Incroyable” fashions,
which had just crept across from Paris to England, with the perfect
good taste innate in an English gentleman. On this special afternoon in
September, in spite of the long journey by coach, in spite of rain and
mud, his coat set irreproachably across his fine shoulders, his hands
looked almost femininely white, as they emerged through billowy frills
of finest Mechlin lace: the extravagantly short-waisted satin coat,
wide-lapelled waistcoat, and tight-fitting striped breeches, set off
his massive figure to perfection, and in repose one might have admired
so fine a specimen of English manhood, until the foppish ways, the
affected movements, the perpetual inane laugh, brought one’s admiration
of Sir Percy Blakeney to an abrupt close.
He had lolled into the old-fashioned inn parlour, shaking the wet off
his fine overcoat; then putting up a gold-rimmed eye-glass to his lazy
blue eye, he surveyed the company, upon whom an embarrassed silence had
suddenly fallen.
“How do, Tony? How do, Ffoulkes?” he said, recognising the two young
men and shaking them by the hand. “Zounds, my dear fellow,” he added,
smothering a slight yawn, “did you ever see such a beastly day? Demmed
climate this.”
With a quaint little laugh, half of embarrassment and half of sarcasm,
Marguerite had turned towards her husband, and was surveying him from
head to foot, with an amused little twinkle in her merry blue eyes.
“La!” said Sir Percy, after a moment or two’s silence, as no one
offered any comment, “how sheepish you all look. . . . What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing, Sir Percy,” replied Marguerite, with a certain amount of
gaiety, which, however, sounded somewhat forced, “nothing to disturb
your equanimity—only an insult to your wife.”
The laugh which accompanied this remark was evidently intended to
reassure Sir Percy as to the gravity of the incident. It apparently
succeeded in that, for, echoing the laugh, he rejoined placidly—
“La, m’dear! you don’t say so. Begad! who was the bold man who dared to
tackle you—eh?”
Lord Tony tried to interpose, but had no time to do so, for the young
Vicomte had already quickly stepped forward.
“Monsieur,” he said, prefixing his little speech with an elaborate bow,
and speaking in broken English, “my mother, the Comtesse de Tournay de
Basserive, has offenced Madame, who, I see, is your wife. I cannot ask
your pardon for my mother; what she does is right in my eyes. But I am
ready to offer you the usual reparation between men of honour.”
The young man drew up his slim stature to its full height and looked
very enthusiastic, very proud, and very hot as he gazed at six foot odd
of gorgeousness, as represented by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.
“Lud, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite, with one of her merry infectious
laughs, “look on that pretty picture—the English turkey and the French
bantam.”
The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with
complete bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which
hovered quite threateningly around him.
“La! sir,” said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye-glass and
surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment, “where, in
the cuckoo’s name, did you learn to speak English?”
“Monsieur!” protested the Vicomte, somewhat abashed at the way his
warlike attitude had been taken by the ponderous-looking Englishman.
“I protest ’tis marvellous!” continued Sir Percy, imperturbably,
“demmed marvellous! Don’t you think so, Tony—eh? I vow I can’t speak
the French lingo like that. What?”
“Nay, I’ll vouch for that!” rejoined Marguerite. “Sir Percy has a
British accent you could cut with a knife.”
“Monsieur,” interposed the Vicomte earnestly, and in still more broken
English, “I fear you have not understand. I offer you the only
posseeble reparation among gentlemen.”
“What the devil is that?” asked Sir Percy, blandly.
“My sword, Monsieur,” replied the Vicomte, who, though still
bewildered, was beginning to lose his temper.
“You are a sportsman, Lord Tony,” said Marguerite, merrily; “ten to one
on the little bantam.”
But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two,
through his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn,
stretched his long limbs, and turned leisurely away.
“Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly. “Demmit, young man,
what’s the good of your sword to me?”
What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed
Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes
of sound reflections. . . . What he said resolved itself into a single
articulate word, for all the others were choked in his throat by his
surging wrath—
“A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.
Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on
the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he
seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own
pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the
capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—
“A duel? La! is that what he meant? Odd’s fish! you are a bloodthirsty
young ruffian. Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? . . .
As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added, as he placidly sat
down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him. “Demmed
uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”
Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion
of duelling amongst gentlemen had been suppressed by the law with a
very stern hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery
and honour were based upon a code that had centuries of tradition to
back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel
was little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered
whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and
call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady’s presence might
be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.
“I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical voice
of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting with
rage, and,” she added with a _soupçon_ of dry sarcasm, “might do Sir
Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh, which, however,
did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid equanimity. “The
British turkey has had the day,” she said. “Sir Percy would provoke all
the saints in the calendar and keep his temper the while.”
But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh
against himself.
“Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning pleasantly to the
Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir. . . . You will find _that_ out if
you live long enough in England.”
“Sir Percy is in the right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony,
laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would
hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by
provoking him to a duel.”
For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of
the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour
prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—
“Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You, mi’lor’,
are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself.”
“Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction,
“withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he added
under his breath. “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of the goods
you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is, drop
’em ’mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to see old Pitt about it,
get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and put you in the stocks an
you smuggle.”
“La, Sir Percy, your chivalry misguides you,” said Marguerite,
coquettishly, “you forget that you yourself have imported one bundle of
goods from France.”
Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow
before his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—
“I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”
“More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.
“Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going to allow my
body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who don’t
like the shape of your nose?”
“Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint and
pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ’Tis not the _men_ who dislike
the shape of my nose.”
“Afraid be demmed! Do you impugn my bravery, Madame? I don’t patronise
the ring for nothing, do I, Tony? I’ve put up the fists with Red Sam
before now, and—and he didn’t get it all his own way either—”
“S’faith, Sir Percy,” said Marguerite, with a long and merry laugh,
that went echoing along the old oak rafters of the parlour, “I would I
had seen you then . . . ha! ha! ha! ha!—you must have looked a pretty
picture . . . and . . . and to be afraid of a little French boy . . .
ha! ha! . . . ha! ha!”
“Ha! ha! ha! he! he! he!” echoed Sir Percy, good-humouredly. “La,
Madame, you honour me! Zooks! Ffoulkes, mark ye that! I have made my
wife laugh!—The cleverest woman in Europe! . . . Odd’s fish, we must
have a bowl on that!” and he tapped vigorously on the table near him.
“Hey! Jelly! Quick, man! Here, Jelly!”
Harmony was once more restored. Mr. Jellyband, with a mighty effort,
recovered himself from the many emotions he had experienced within the
last half hour.
“A bowl of punch, Jelly, hot and strong, eh?” said Sir Percy. “The
wits that have just made a clever woman laugh must be whetted! Ha! ha!
ha! Hasten, my good Jelly!”
“Nay, there is no time, Sir Percy,” interposed Marguerite. “The skipper
will be here directly and my brother must get on board, or the _Day
Dream_ will miss the tide.”
“Time, m’dear? There is plenty of time for any gentleman to get drunk
and get on board before the turn of the tide.”
“I think, your ladyship,” said Jellyband, respectfully, “that the young
gentleman is coming along now with Sir Percy’s skipper.”
“That’s right,” said Blakeney, “then Armand can join us in the merry
bowl. Think you, Tony,” he added, turning towards the Vicomte, “that
that jackanapes of yours will join us in a glass? Tell him that we
drink in token of reconciliation.”
“In fact you are all such merry company,” said Marguerite, “that I
trust you will forgive me if I bid my brother good-bye in another
room.”
It would have been bad form to protest. Both Lord Antony and Sir Andrew
felt that Lady Blakeney could not altogether be in tune with them at
that moment. Her love for her brother, Armand St. Just, was deep and
touching in the extreme. He had just spent a few weeks with her in her
English home, and was going back to serve his country, at a moment when
death was the usual reward for the most enduring devotion.
Sir Percy also made no attempt to detain his wife. With that perfect,
somewhat affected gallantry which characterised his every movement, he
opened the coffee-room door for her, and made her the most approved and
elaborate bow, which the fashion of the time dictated, as she sailed
out of the room without bestowing on him more than a passing, slightly
contemptuous glance. Only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought
since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed keener, more gentle, more
innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of intense longing, of
deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and flippant Sir Percy
followed the retreating figure of his brilliant wife.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECRET ORCHARD