The Scarlet Pimpernel. Baroness Orczy

thoughts seemed unable to soar beyond the tying of a cravat or the new cut of a coat. Bah! And yet! … vague memories, that were sweet and ardent and attuned to this calm summer’s evening, came wafted back to her memory, on the invisible wings of the light sea-breeze: the tie when first he worshipped her; he seemed so devoted – a very slave – and there was a certain latent intensity in that love which had fascinated her.

      Then suddenly that love, that devotion, which throughout his courtship she had looked upon as the slavish fidelity of a dog, seemed to vanish completely. Twenty-four hours after the simple little ceremony at old St. Roch, she had told him the story of how, inadvertently, she had spoken of certain matters connected with the Marquis de St. Cyr before some men – her friends – who had used this information against the unfortunate Marquis, and sent him and his family to the guillotine.

      She hated the Marquis. Years ago, Armand, her dear brother, loved Angele de St. Cyr, but St. Just was a plebeian, and the Marquis full of the pride and arrogant prejudices of his caste. One day Armand, the respectful, timid lover, ventured on sending a small poem – enthusiastic, ardent, passionate – to the idol of his dreams. The next night he was waylaid just outside Paris by the valets of Marquis de St. Cyr, and ignominiously thrashed – thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life – because he had dared to raise his eyes to the daughter of the aristocrat. The incident was one which, in those days, some two years before the great Revolution, was of almost daily occurrence in France; incidents of that type, in fact, led to bloody reprisals, which a few years later sent most of those haughty heads to the guillotine.

      Marguerite remembered it all: what her brother must have suffered in his manhood and his pride must have been appalling; what she suffered through him and with him she never attempted even to analyse.

      Then the day of retribution came. St. Cyr and his kin had found their masters, in those same plebeians whom they had despised. Armand and Marguerite, both intellectual, thinking beings, adopted with the enthusiasm of their years the Utopian doctrines of the Revolution, while the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family fought inch by inch for the retention of those privileges which had placed them socially above their fellow-men. Marguerite, impulsive, thoughtless, not calculating the purport of her words, still smarting under the terrible insult her brother had suffered at the Marquis’ hands, happened to hear – amongst her own coterie – that the St. Cyrs were in treasonable correspondence with Austria, hoping to obtain the Emperor’s support to quell the growing revolution in their own country.

      In those days one denunciation was sufficient: Marguerite’s few thoughtless words anent the Marquis de St. Cyr bore fruit within twenty-four hours. He was arrested. His papers were searched: letters from the Austrian Emperor, promising to send troops against the Paris populace, were found in his desk. He was arraigned for treason against the nation, and sent to the guillotine, whilst his family, his wife and his sons, shared in this awful fate.

      Marguerite, horrified at the terrible consequences of her own thoughtlessness, was powerless to save the Marquis: his own coterie, the leaders of the revolutionary movement, all proclaimed her as a heroine: and when she married Sir Percy Blakeney, she did not perhaps altogether realise how severely he would look upon the sin, which she had so inadvertently committed, and which still lay heavily upon her soul. She made full confession of it to her husband, trusting his blind love for her, her boundless power over him, to soon make him forget what might have sounded unpleasant to an English ear.

      Certainly at the moment he seemed to take it very quietly; hardly, in fact, did he appear to understand the meaning of all she said; but what was more certain still, was that never after that could she detect the slightest sign of that love, which she once believed had been wholly hers. Now they had drifted quite apart, and Sir Percy seemed to have laid aside his love for her, as he would an ill-fitting glove. She tried to rouse him by sharpening her ready wit against his dull intellect; endeavouring to excite his jealousy, if she could not rouse his love; tried to goad him to self-assertion, but all in vain. He remained the same, always passive, drawling, sleepy, always courteous, invariably a gentleman: she had all that the world and a wealthy husband can give to a pretty woman, yet on this beautiful summer’s evening, with the white sails of the Day Dream finally hidden by the evening shadows, she felt more lonely than that poor tramp who plodded his way wearily along the rugged cliffs.

      With another heavy sigh, Marguerite Blakeney turned her back upon the sea and cliffs, and walked slowly back towards “The Fisherman’s Rest.” As she drew near, the sound of revelry, of gay, jovial laughter, grew louder and more distinct. She could distinguish Sir Andrew Ffoulkes’ pleasant voice, Lord Tony’s boisterous guffaws, her husband’s occasional, drawly, sleepy comments; then realising the loneliness of the road and the fast gathering gloom round her, she quickened her steps … the next moment she perceived a stranger coming rapidly towards her. Marguerite did not look up: she was not the least nervous, and “The Fisherman’s Rest” was now well within call.

      The stranger paused when he saw Marguerite coming quickly towards him, and just as she was about to slip past him, he said very quietly:

      “Citoyenne St. Just.”

      Marguerite uttered a little cry of astonishment, at thus hearing her own familiar maiden name uttered so close to her. She looked up at the stranger, and this time, with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, she put out both her hands effusively towards him.

      “Chauvelin!” she exclaimed.

      “Himself, citoyenne, at your service,” said the stranger, gallantly kissing the tips of her fingers.

      Marguerite said nothing for a moment or two, as she surveyed with obvious delight the not very prepossessing little figure before her. Chauvelin was then nearer forty than thirty – a clever, shrewd-looking personality, with a curious fox-like expression in the deep, sunken eyes. He was the same stranger who an hour or two previously had joined Mr. Jellyband in a friendly glass of wine.

      “Chauvelin … my friend …” said Marguerite, with a pretty little sigh of satisfaction. “I am mightily pleased to see you.”

      No doubt poor Marguerite St. Just, lonely in the midst of her grandeur, and of her starchy friends, was happy to see a face that brought back memories of that happy time in Paris, when she reigned – a queen – over the intellectual coterie of the Rue de Richelieu. She did not notice the sarcastic little smile, however, that hovered round the thin lips of Chauvelin.

      “But tell me,” she added merrily, “what in the world, or whom in the world, are you doing here in England?”

      “I might return the subtle compliment, fair lady,” he said. “What of yourself?”

      “Oh, I?” she said, with a shrug of the shoulders. “Je m’ennuie, mon ami, that is all.”

      They had reached the porch of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” but Marguerite seemed loth to go within. The evening air was lovely after the storm, and she had found a friend who exhaled the breath of Paris, who knew Armand well, who could talk of all the merry, brilliant friends whom she had left behind. So she lingered on under the pretty porch, while through the gaily-lighted dormer-window of the coffee-room sounds of laughter, of calls for “Sally” and for beer, of tapping of mugs, and clinking of dice, mingled with Sir Percy Blakeney’s inane and mirthless laugh. Chauvelin stood beside her, his shrewd, pale, yellow eyes fixed on the pretty face, which looked so sweet and childlike in this soft English summer twilight.

      “You surprise me, citoyenne,” he said quietly, as he took a pinch of snuff.

      “Do I now?” she retorted gaily. “Faith, my little Chauvelin, I should have thought that, with your penetration, you would have guessed that an atmosphere composed of fogs and virtues would never suit Marguerite St. Just.”

      “Dear me! is it as bad as that?” he asked, in mock consternation.

      “Quite,” she retorted, “and worse.”

      “Strange! Now, I thought that a pretty woman would have found English country life peculiarly attractive.”

      “Yes! so did I,” she said with a sigh, “Pretty women,” she added meditatively,