The Scarlet Pimpernel (18 page)

"You desired my presence, Madame," he said frigidly. "I take it that it
was not with the view to indulging in tender reminiscences."

His voice certainly was cold and uncompromising: his attitude before
her, stiff and unbending. Womanly decorum would have suggested
Marguerite should return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past
him without another word, only with a curt nod of her head: but womanly
instinct suggested that she should remain—that keen instinct, which
makes a beautiful woman conscious of her powers long to bring to her
knees the one man who pays her no homage. She stretched out her hand to
him.

"Nay, Sir Percy, why not? the present is not so glorious but that I
should not wish to dwell a little in the past."

He bent his tall figure, and taking hold of the extreme tip of the
fingers which she still held out to him, he kissed them ceremoniously.

"I' faith, Madame," he said, "then you will pardon me, if my dull wits
cannot accompany you there."

Once again he attempted to go, once more her voice, sweet, childlike,
almost tender, called him back.

"Sir Percy."

"Your servant, Madame."

"Is it possible that love can die?" she said with sudden, unreasoning
vehemence. "Methought that the passion which you once felt for me would
outlast the span of human life. Is there nothing left of that
love, Percy . . . which might help you . . . to bridge over that sad
estrangement?"

His massive figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen still
more, the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy crept
into the habitually lazy blue eyes.

"With what object, I pray you, Madame?" he asked coldly.

"I do not understand you."

"Yet 'tis simple enough," he said with sudden bitterness, which seemed
literally to surge through his words, though he was making visible
efforts to suppress it, "I humbly put the question to you, for my slow
wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship's sudden new
mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which
you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more
a love-sick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the
pleasure of kicking me aside, like a troublesome lap-dog?"

She had succeeded in rousing him for the moment: and again she looked
straight at him, for it was thus she remembered him a year ago.

"Percy! I entreat you!" she whispered, "can we not bury the past?"

"Pardon me, Madame, but I understood you to say that your desire was to
dwell in it."

"Nay! I spoke not of THAT past, Percy!" she said, while a tone of
tenderness crept into her voice. "Rather did I speak of a time when you
loved me still! and I . . . oh! I was vain and frivolous; your wealth and
position allured me: I married you, hoping in my heart that your great
love for me would beget in me a love for you . . . but, alas! . . ."

The moon had sunk low down behind a bank of clouds. In the east a soft
grey light was beginning to chase away the heavy mantle of the night.
He could only see her graceful outline now, the small queenly head, with
its wealth of reddish golden curls, and the glittering gems forming the
small, star-shaped, red flower which she wore as a diadem in her hair.

"Twenty-four hours after our marriage, Madame, the Marquis de St. Cyr
and all his family perished on the guillotine, and the popular rumour
reached me that it was the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney who helped to send
them there."

"Nay! I myself told you the truth of that odious tale."

"Not till after it had been recounted to me by strangers, with all its
horrible details."

"And you believed them then and there," she said with great vehemence,
"without a proof or question—you believed that I, whom you vowed you
loved more than life, whom you professed you worshipped, that
I
could
do a thing so base as these STRANGERS chose to recount. You thought I
meant to deceive you about it all—that I ought to have spoken before I
married you: yet, had you listened, I would have told you that up to the
very morning on which St. Cyr went to the guillotine, I was straining
every nerve, using every influence I possessed, to save him and his
family. But my pride sealed my lips, when your love seemed to perish,
as if under the knife of that same guillotine. Yet I would have told you
how I was duped! Aye! I, whom that same popular rumour had endowed with
the sharpest wits in France! I was tricked into doing this thing, by men
who knew how to play upon my love for an only brother, and my desire for
revenge. Was it unnatural?"

Her voice became choked with tears. She paused for a moment or two,
trying to regain some sort of composure. She looked appealingly at him,
almost as if he were her judge. He had allowed her to speak on in her
own vehement, impassioned way, offering no comment, no word of sympathy:
and now, while she paused, trying to swallow down the hot tears that
gushed to her eyes, he waited, impassive and still. The dim, grey light
of early dawn seemed to make his tall form look taller and more rigid.
The lazy, good-natured face looked strangely altered. Marguerite,
excited, as she was, could see that the eyes were no longer languid,
the mouth no longer good-humoured and inane. A curious look of intense
passion seemed to glow from beneath his drooping lids, the mouth was
tightly closed, the lips compressed, as if the will alone held that
surging passion in check.

Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman's
fascinating foibles, all a woman's most lovable sins. She knew in a
moment that for the past few months she had been mistaken: that this
man who stood here before her, cold as a statue, when her musical voice
struck upon his ear, loved her, as he had loved her a year ago: that his
passion might have been dormant, but that it was there, as strong, as
intense, as overwhelming, as when first her lips met his in one long,
maddening kiss. Pride had kept him from her, and, woman-like, she meant
to win back that conquest which had been hers before. Suddenly it seemed
to her that the only happiness life could every hold for her again would
be in feeling that man's kiss once more upon her lips.

"Listen to the tale, Sir Percy," she said, and her voice was low, sweet,
infinitely tender. "Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and
brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother;
we loved one another so. Then one day—do you mind me, Sir Percy? the
Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed—thrashed by his
lacqueys—that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his
offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the
aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed . . . thrashed like a
dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered! his humiliation had
eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred, and I was able
to take my revenge, I took it. But I only thought to bring that proud
marquis to trouble and humiliation. He plotted with Austria against his
own country. Chance gave me knowledge of this; I spoke of it, but I did
not know—how could I guess?—they trapped and duped me. When I realised
what I had done, it was too late."

"It is perhaps a little difficult, Madame," said Sir Percy, after
a moment of silence between them, "to go back over the past. I have
confessed to you that my memory is short, but the thought certainly
lingered in my mind that, at the time of the Marquis' death, I entreated
you for an explanation of those same noisome popular rumours. If that
same memory does not, even now, play me a trick, I fancy that you
refused me ALL explanation then, and demanded of my love a humiliating
allegiance it was not prepared to give."

"I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You
used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me, and
for love of me."

"And to probe that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine
honour," he said, whilst gradually his impassiveness seemed to leave
him, his rigidity to relax; "that I should accept without murmur or
question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my
mistress. My heart overflowing with love and passion, I ASKED for no
explanation—I WAITED for one, not doubting—only hoping. Had you
spoken but one word, from you I would have accepted any explanation and
believed it. But you left me without a word, beyond a bald confession of
the actual horrible facts; proudly you returned to your brother's house,
and left me alone . . . for weeks . . . not knowing, now, in whom
to believe, since the shrine, which contained my one illusion, lay
shattered to earth at my feet."

She need not complain now that he was cold and impassive; his very
voice shook with an intensity of passion, which he was making superhuman
efforts to keep in check.

"Aye! the madness of my pride!" she said sadly. "Hardly had I gone,
already I had repented. But when I returned, I found you, oh, so
altered! wearing already that mask of somnolent indifference which you
have never laid aside until . . . until now."

She was so close to him that her soft, loose hair was wafted against
his cheek; her eyes, glowing with tears, maddened him, the music in her
voice sent fire through his veins. But he would not yield to the magic
charm of this woman whom he had so deeply loved, and at whose hands
his pride had suffered so bitterly. He closed his eyes to shut out the
dainty vision of that sweet face, of that snow-white neck and graceful
figure, round which the faint rosy light of dawn was just beginning to
hover playfully.

"Nay, Madame, it is no mask," he said icily; "I swore to you . . . once,
that my life was yours. For months now it has been your plaything . . .
it has served its purpose."

But now she knew that the very coldness was a mask. The trouble, the
sorrow she had gone through last night, suddenly came back into her
mind, but no longer with bitterness, rather with a feeling that this man
who loved her, would help her bear the burden.

"Sir Percy," she said impulsively, "Heaven knows you have been at pains
to make the task, which I had set to myself, difficult to accomplish.
You spoke of my mood just now; well! we will call it that, if you will.
I wished to speak to you . . . because . . . because I was in trouble
. . . and had need . . . of your sympathy."

"It is yours to command, Madame."

"How cold you are!" she sighed. "Faith! I can scarce believe that but
a few months ago one tear in my eye had set you well-nigh crazy. Now I
come to you . . . with a half-broken heart . . . and . . . and . . ."

"I pray you, Madame," he said, whilst his voice shook almost as much as
hers, "in what way can I serve you?"

"Percy!—Armand is in deadly danger. A letter of his . . . rash,
impetuous, as were all his actions, and written to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes,
has fallen into the hands of a fanatic. Armand is hopelessly compromised
. . . to-morrow, perhaps he will be arrested . . . after that the
guillotine . . . unless . . . oh! it is horrible!" . . . she said, with a
sudden wail of anguish, as all the events of the past night came rushing
back to her mind, "horrible! . . . and you do not understand . . . you
cannot . . . and I have no one to whom I can turn . . . for help . . . or
even for sympathy . . ."

Tears now refused to be held back. All her trouble, her struggles, the
awful uncertainty of Armand's fate overwhelmed her. She tottered, ready
to fall, and leaning against the tone balustrade, she buried her face in
her hands and sobbed bitterly.

At first mention of Armand St. Just's name and of the peril in which he
stood, Sir Percy's face had become a shade more pale; and the look of
determination and obstinacy appeared more marked than ever between his
eyes. However, he said nothing for the moment, but watched her, as her
delicate frame was shaken with sobs, watched her until unconsciously his
face softened, and what looked almost like tears seemed to glisten in
his eyes.

"And so," he said with bitter sarcasm, "the murderous dog of the
revolution is turning upon the very hands that fed it? . . . Begad,
Madame," he added very gently, as Marguerite continued to sob
hysterically, "will you dry your tears? . . . I never could bear to see a
pretty woman cry, and I . . ."

Instinctively, with sudden overmastering passion at the sight of her
helplessness and of her grief, he stretched out his arms, and the next,
would have seized her and held her to him, protected from every evil
with his very life, his very heart's blood. . . . But pride had the
better of it in this struggle once again; he restrained himself with a
tremendous effort of will, and said coldly, though still very gently,—

"Will you not turn to me, Madame, and tell me in what way I may have the
honour to serve you?"

She made a violent effort to control herself, and turning her
tear-stained face to him, she once more held out her hand, which he
kissed with the same punctilious gallantry; but Marguerite's fingers,
this time, lingered in his hand for a second or two longer than was
absolutely necessary, and this was because she had felt that his hand
trembled perceptibly and was burning hot, whilst his lips felt as cold
as marble.

"Can you do aught for Armand?" she said sweetly and simply. "You have so
much influence at court . . . so many friends . . ."

"Nay, Madame, should you not seek the influence of your French friend,
M. Chauvelin? His extends, if I mistake not, even as far as the
Republican Government of France."

"I cannot ask him, Percy. . . . Oh! I wish I dared to tell you . . . but
. . . but . . . he has put a price on my brother's head, which . . ."

She would have given worlds if she had felt the courage then to tell him
everything . . . all she had done that night—how she had suffered and
how her hand had been forced. But she dared not give way to that impulse
. . . not now, when she was just beginning to feel that he still loved
her, when she hoped that she could win him back. She dared not make
another confession to him. After all, he might not understand; he might
not sympathise with her struggles and temptation. His love still dormant
might sleep the sleep of death.