The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy [most popular novels .TXT] 📗

passionate vehemence, “Do you not know that I would at any time lay down my life for yours?”

Theresia shrugged her statuesque shoulders.

“Of course, of course, Bertrand,” she said a little impatiently, though obviously trying to be kind. “But I do entreat you not to go into heroics at this hour, and not to put on tragic airs. You must see that for yourself as well as for me it would be fatal if you were found here, and⁠—”

“And I am going, Theresia,” he broke in seriously. “I ought never to have come. I was a fool, as usual!” he added with bitterness. “But after that awful fracas I was dazed and hardly knew what I was doing.”

The frown of vexation reappeared upon the woman’s fair, smooth brow.

“The fracas?” she asked quickly. “What fracas?”

“In the Rue St. Honoré. I thought you knew.”

“No. I know nothing,” she retorted, and her voice was now trenchant and hard. “What happened?”

“They were deifying that brute Robespierre⁠—”

“Silence!” she broke in harshly. “Name no names.”

“And they were deifying a bloodthirsty tyrant, and I⁠—”

“And you rose from your seat,” she broke in again, and this time with a laugh that was cruel in its biting irony; “and lashed yourself into a fury of eloquent vituperation. Oh, I know! I know!” she went on excitedly. “You and your Fatalists, or whatever you call yourselves! And that rage for martyrdom!⁠ ⁠… Senseless, stupid, and selfish! Oh, my God! how selfish! And then you came here to drag me down with you into an abyss of misery, along with you to the guillotine⁠ ⁠… to⁠ ⁠…”

It seemed as if she were choking, and her small white hands, with a gruesome and pathetic gesture, went up to her neck, smoothed it and fondled it, as if to shield it from that awful fate.

Bertrand tried to pacify her. It was he who was the more calm of the two now. It seemed as if her danger had brought him back to full consciousness. He forgot his own danger, the threat of death which lay in wait for him, probably on the very threshold of this house. He was a marked man now; martyrdom had ceased to be a dream: it had become a grim reality. But of this he did not think. Theresia was in danger, compromised by his own callous selfishness, his mind was full of her; and Régine, the true and loyal friend, the beloved of past happier years, had no place in his thoughts beside the exquisite enchantress, whose very nearness was paradise.

“I am going,” he said earnestly. “Theresia, my beloved, try to forgive me. I was a fool⁠—a criminal fool! But lately⁠—since I thought that you⁠—you did not really care; that all my hopes of future happiness were naught but senseless dreams; since then I seem to have lost my head⁠—I don’t know what I am doing!⁠ ⁠… And so⁠—”

He got no farther. Ashamed of his own weakness, he was too proud to let her see that she made him suffer. For the moment, he only bent the knee and kissed the hem of her diaphanous gown. He looked so handsome then, despite his bedraggled, woebegone appearance⁠—so young, so ardent, that Theresia’s egotistical heart was touched, as it had always been when the incense of his perfect love rose to her sophisticated nostrils. She put out her hand and brushed with a gentle, almost maternal, gesture the matted brown hair from his brow.

“Dear Bertrand,” she murmured vaguely. “What a foolish boy to think that I do not care!”

Already he had been brought back to his senses. The imminence of her danger lent him the courage which he had been lacking, and unhesitatingly now he jumped to his feet and turned to go. But she, quick in the transition of her moods, had already seized him by the arm.

“No, no!” she murmured in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t go just yet⁠ ⁠… not before Pepita has seen if the stairs are clear.”

Her small hand held him as in a vice, whilst Pepita, obedient and silent, was shuffling across the vestibule in order to execute her mistress’s commands. But, even so, Bertrand struggled to get away. An epitome of their whole life, this struggle between them!⁠—he trying to free himself from those insidious bonds that held him one moment and loosed him the next; that numbed him to all that he was wont to hold sacred and dear⁠—his love for Régine, his loyalty, his honour. An epitome of her character and his: he, weak and yielding, every a ready martyr thirsting for self-immolation; and she, just a bundle of feminine caprice, swayed by sentiment one moment and by considerations of ambition or of personal safety the next.

“You must wait, Bertrand,” she urged insistently. “Citizen Tallien may be on the stairs⁠—he or⁠—or the other. If they saw you!⁠ ⁠… My God!”

“They would conclude that you had turned me out of doors,” he riposted simply. “Which would, in effect, be the truth. I entreat you to let me go!” he added earnestly. “ ’Twere better they met me on the stairs than in here.”

The old woman’s footsteps were heard hurrying back. Bertrand struggled to free himself⁠—did in truth succeed; and Theresia smothered a desperate cry of warning as he strode rapidly through the door and across the vestibule only to be met here by Pepita, who pushed him with all her might incontinently back.

Theresia held her tiny handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the scream that forced itself to her lips. She had followed Bertrand out of the salon, and now stood in the doorway, a living statue of fear.

“Citizen Tallien,” Pepita had murmured hurriedly. “He is on the landing. Come this way.”

She dragged Bertrand by the arm, not waiting for orders from her mistress this time, along a narrow dark passage, which at its extreme end gave access to a tiny kitchen. Into this she pushed him and locked the door upon him.

“Name of a name!” she muttered as she shuffled back to the vestibule. “If they should find him here!”

Citoyenne