The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy [best big ereader .txt] 📗

“And their driver?” muttered Bibot, as a superstitious shudder ran down his spine.

“Sacré tonnerre,” said the captain, “but it is feared that it was that accursed Englishman himself⁠—the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

In the kitchen Sally was extremely busy⁠—saucepans and frying-pans were standing in rows on the gigantic hearth, the huge stockpot stood in a corner, and the jack turned with slow deliberation, and presented alternately to the glow every side of a noble sirloin of beef. The two little kitchen-maids bustled around, eager to help, hot and panting, with cotton sleeves well tucked up above the dimpled elbows, and giggling over some private jokes of their own, whenever Miss Sally’s back was turned for a moment. And old Jemima, stolid in temper and solid in bulk, kept up a long and subdued grumble, while she stirred the stockpot methodically over the fire.

“What ho! Sally!” came in cheerful if none too melodious accents from the coffee-room close by.

“Lud bless my soul!” exclaimed Sally, with a good-humoured laugh, “what be they all wanting now, I wonder!”

“Beer, of course,” grumbled Jemima, “you don’t ’xpect Jimmy Pitkin to ’ave done with one tankard, do ye?”

“Mr. ’Arry, ’e looked uncommon thirsty too,” simpered Martha, one of the little kitchen-maids; and her beady black eyes twinkled as they met those of her companion, whereupon both started on a round of short and suppressed giggles.

Sally looked cross for a moment, and thoughtfully rubbed her hands against her shapely hips; her palms were itching, evidently, to come in contact with Martha’s rosy cheeks⁠—but inherent good-humour prevailed, and with a pout and a shrug of the shoulders, she turned her attention to the fried potatoes.

“What ho, Sally! hey, Sally!”

And a chorus of pewter mugs, tapped with impatient hands against the oak tables of the coffee-room, accompanied the shouts for mine host’s buxom daughter.

“Sally!” shouted a more persistent voice, “are ye goin’ to be all night with that there beer?”

“I do think father might get the beer for them,” muttered Sally, as Jemima, stolidly and without further comment, took a couple of foam-crowned jugs from the shelf, and began filling a number of pewter tankards with some of that home-brewed ale for which the Fisherman’s Rest had been famous since the days of King Charles. “ ’E knows ’ow busy we are in ’ere.”

“Your father is too busy discussing politics with Mr. ’Empseed to worry ’isself about you and the kitchen,” grumbled Jemima under her breath.

Sally had gone to the small mirror which hung in a corner of the kitchen, and was hastily smoothing her hair and setting her frilled cap at its most becoming angle over her dark curls; then she took up the tankards by their handles, three in each strong, brown hand, and laughing, grumbling, blushing, carried them through into the coffee-room.

There, there was certainly no sign of that bustle and activity which kept four women busy and hot in the glowing kitchen beyond.

The coffee-room of the Fisherman’s Rest is a show place now at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of the eighteenth, in the year of grace 1792, it had not yet gained the notoriety and importance which a hundred additional years and the craze of the age have since bestowed upon it. Yet it was an old place, even then, for the oak rafters and beams were already black with age⁠—as were the panelled seats, with their tall backs, and the long polished tables between, on which innumerable pewter tankards had left fantastic patterns of many-sized rings. In the leaded window, high up, a row of pots of scarlet geraniums and blue larkspur gave the bright note of colour against the dull background of the oak.

That Mr. Jellyband, landlord of the Fisherman’s Rest at Dover, was a prosperous man, was of course clear to the most casual observer. The pewter on the fine old dressers, the brass above the gigantic hearth, shone like silver and gold⁠—the red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window sill⁠—this meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which necessitated the keeping up of the coffee-room to a high standard of elegance and order.

As Sally came in, laughing through her frowns, and displaying a row of dazzling white teeth, she was greeted with shouts and chorus of applause.

“Why, here’s Sally! What ho, Sally! Hurrah for pretty Sally!”

“I thought you’d grown deaf in that kitchen of yours,” muttered Jimmy Pitkin, as he passed the back of his hand across his very dry lips.

“All ri’! all ri’!” laughed Sally, as she deposited the freshly-filled tankards upon the tables, “why, what a ’urry to be sure! And is your gran’mother a-dyin’ an’ you wantin’ to see the pore soul afore she’m gone! I never see’d such a mighty rushin’!”

A chorus of good-humoured laughter greeted this witticism, which gave the company there present food for many jokes, for some considerable time. Sally now seemed in less of a hurry to get back to her pots and pans. A young man with fair curly hair, and eager, bright blue eyes, was engaging most of her attention and the whole of her time, whilst broad witticisms anent Jimmy Pitkin’s fictitious grandmother flew from mouth to mouth, mixed with heavy puffs of pungent tobacco smoke.

Facing the hearth, his legs wide apart, a long clay pipe in his mouth, stood mine host himself, worthy Mr. Jellyband, landlord of the Fisherman’s Rest, as his father had before him, aye, and his grandfather and great-grandfather too, for that matter. Portly in build, jovial in countenance and somewhat bald of pate, Mr. Jellyband was indeed a typical rural John Bull of those days⁠—the days when our prejudiced insularity was at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality and the rest of the world an unexploited land of savages and cannibals.

There he stood,