The Scarlet Pimpernel (34 page)

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.

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 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 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
voice, "but odd's life, I cannot come to you: those demmed frog-eaters
have trussed me like a goose on a spit, and I am weak as a mouse . . . I
cannot get away."

And still Marguerite did not understand. She did not realise for at
least another ten seconds whence came that voice, so drawly, so dear,
but alas! with a strange accent of weakness and of suffering. There was
no one within sight . . . except by that rock . . . Great God! . . . the
Jew! . . . Was she mad or dreaming? . . .

His back was against the pale moonlight, he was half crouching, trying
vainly to raise himself with his arms tightly pinioned. Marguerite ran
up to him, took his head in both her hands . . . and look straight into
a pair of blue eyes, good-natured, even a trifle amused—shining out of
the weird and distorted mask of the Jew.

"Percy! . . . Percy! . . . my husband!" she gasped, faint with the fulness
of her joy. "Thank God! Thank God!"

"La! m'dear," he rejoined good-humouredly, "we will both do that anon,
an you think you can loosen these demmed ropes, and release me from my
inelegant attitude."

She had no knife, her fingers were numb and weak, but she worked away
with her teeth, while great welcome tears poured from her eyes, onto
those poor, pinioned hands.

"Odd's life!" he said, when at last, after frantic efforts on her part,
the ropes seemed at last to be giving way, "but I marvel whether it has
ever happened before, that an English gentleman allowed himself to be
licked by a demmed foreigner, and made no attempt to give as good as he
got."

It was very obvious that he was exhausted from sheer physical pain, and
when at last the rope gave way, he fell in a heap against the rock.

Marguerite looked helplessly round her.

"Oh! for a drop of water on this awful beach!" she cried in agony,
seeing that he was ready to faint again.

"Nay, m'dear," he murmured with his good-humoured smile, "personally I
should prefer a drop of good French brandy! an you'll dive in the pocket
of this dirty old garment, you'll find my flask. . . . I am demmed if I
can move."

When he had drunk some brandy, he forced Marguerite to do likewise.

"La! that's better now! Eh! little woman?" he said, with a sigh of
satisfaction. "Heigh-ho! but this is a queer rig-up for Sir Percy
Blakeney, Bart., to be found in by his lady, and no mistake. Begad!" he
added, passing his hand over his chin, "I haven't been shaved for nearly
twenty hours: I must look a disgusting object. As for these curls . . ."

And laughingly he took off the disfiguring wig and curls, and stretched
out his long limbs, which were cramped from many hours' stooping. Then
he bent forward and looked long and searchingly into his wife's blue
eyes.

"Percy," she whispered, while a deep blush suffused her delicate cheeks
and neck, "if you only knew . . ."

"I do know, dear . . . everything," he said with infinite gentleness.

"And can you ever forgive?"

"I have naught to forgive, sweetheart; your heroism, your devotion,
which I, alas! so little deserved, have more than atoned for that
unfortunate episode at the ball."

"Then you knew? . . ." she whispered, "all the time . . ."

"Yes!" he replied tenderly, "I knew . . . all the time. . . . But,
begad! had I but known what a noble heart yours was, my Margot, I should
have trusted you, as you deserved to be trusted, and you would not have
had to undergo the terrible sufferings of the past few hours, in order
to run after a husband, who has done so much that needs forgiveness."

They were sitting side by side, leaning up against a rock, and he had
rested his aching head on her shoulder. She certainly now deserved the
name of "the happiest woman in Europe."

"It is a case of the blind leading the lame, sweetheart, is it not?" he
said with his good-natured smile of old. "Odd's life! but I do not know
which are the more sore, my shoulders or your little feet."