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

“You have seen him?” asked Sir Andrew, carelessly.

“Yes, today,” muttered Brogard, sullenly. Then he quietly took Sir Andrew’s hat from a chair close by, put it on his own head, tugged at his dirty blouse, and generally tried to express in pantomime that the individual in question wore very fine clothes. “Sacrré aristo!” he muttered, “that tall Englishman!”

Marguerite could scarce repress a scream.

“It’s Sir Percy right enough,” she murmured, “and not even in disguise!”

She smiled, in the midst of all her anxiety and through her gathering tears, at the thought of “the ruling passion strong in death”; of Percy running into the wildest, maddest dangers, with the latest-cut coat upon his back, and the laces of his jabot unruffled.

“Oh! the foolhardiness of it!” she sighed. “Quick, Sir Andrew! ask the man when he went.”

“Ah yes, my friend,” said Sir Andrew, addressing Brogard, with the same assumption of carelessness, “my lord always wears beautiful clothes; the tall Englishman you saw, was certainly my lady’s friend. And he has gone, you say?”

“He went⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… but he’s coming back⁠ ⁠… here⁠—he ordered supper⁠ ⁠…”

Sir Andrew put his hand with a quick gesture of warning upon Marguerite’s arm; it came none too soon, for the next moment her wild, mad joy would have betrayed her. He was safe and well, was coming back here presently, she would see him in a few moments perhaps.⁠ ⁠… Oh! the wildness of her joy seemed almost more than she could bear.

“Here!” she said to Brogard, who seemed suddenly to have been transformed in her eyes into some heaven-born messenger of bliss. “Here!⁠—did you say the English gentleman was coming back here?”

The heaven-born messenger of bliss spat upon the floor, to express his contempt for all and sundry aristos, who chose to haunt the Chat Gris.

“Heu!” he muttered, “he ordered supper⁠—he will come back⁠ ⁠… Sacrré Anglais!” he added, by way of protest against all this fuss for a mere Englishman.

“But where is he now?⁠—Do you know?” she asked eagerly, placing her dainty white hand upon the dirty sleeve of his blue blouse.

“He went to get a horse and cart,” said Brogard, laconically, as with a surly gesture, he shook off from his arm that pretty hand which princes had been proud to kiss.

“At what time did he go?”

But Brogard had evidently had enough of these questionings. He did not think that it was fitting for a citizen⁠—who was the equal of anybody⁠—to be thus catechised by these “sacrrés aristos,” even though they were rich English ones. It was distinctly more fitting to his newborn dignity to be as rude as possible; it was a sure sign of servility to meekly reply to civil questions.

“I don’t know,” he said surlily. “I have said enough, voyons, les aristos!⁠ ⁠… He came today. He ordered supper. He went out.⁠—He’ll come back. Voilà!”

And with this parting assertion of his rights as a citizen and a free man, to be as rude as he well pleased, Brogard shuffled out of the room, banging the door after him.

“Faith, Madame!” said Sir Andrew, seeing that Marguerite seemed desirous to call her surly host back again, “I think we’d better leave him alone. We shall not get anything more out of him, and we might arouse his suspicions. One never knows what spies may be lurking around these Godforsaken places.”

“What care I?” she replied lightly, “now I know that my husband is safe, and that I shall see him almost directly!”

“Hush!” he said in genuine alarm, for she had talked quite loudly, in the fullness of her glee, “the very walls have ears in France, these days.”

He rose quickly from the table, and walked round the bare, squalid room, listening attentively at the door, through which Brogard has just disappeared, and whence only muttered oaths and shuffling footsteps could be heard. He also ran up the rickety steps that led to the attic, to assure himself that there were no spies of Chauvelin’s about the place.

“Are we alone, Monsieur, my lackey?” said Marguerite, gaily, as the young man once more sat down beside her. “May we talk?”

“As cautiously as possible!” he entreated.

“Faith, man! but you wear a glum face! As for me, I could dance with joy! Surely there is no longer any cause for fear. Our boat is on the beach, the Foam Crest not two miles out at sea, and my husband will be here, under this very roof, within the next half hour perhaps. Sure! there is naught to hinder us. Chauvelin and his gang have not yet arrived.”

“Nay, madam! that I fear we do not know.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was at Dover at the same time that we were.”

“Held up by the same storm, which kept us from starting.”

“Exactly. But⁠—I did not speak of it before, for I feared to alarm you⁠—I saw him on the beach not five minutes before we embarked. At least, I swore to myself at the time that it was himself; he was disguised as a curé, so that Satan, his own guardian, would scarce have known him. But I heard him then, bargaining for a vessel to take him swiftly to Calais; and he must have set sail less than an hour after we did.”

Marguerite’s face had quickly lost its look of joy. The terrible danger in which Percy stood, now that he was actually on French soil, became suddenly and horribly clear to her. Chauvelin was close upon his heels; here in Calais, the astute diplomatist was all-powerful; a word from him and Percy could be tracked and arrested and⁠ ⁠…

Every drop of blood seemed to freeze in her veins; not even during the moments of her wildest anguish in England had she so completely realised the imminence of the peril in which her husband stood. Chauvelin had sworn to bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to the guillotine, and now the daring plotter, whose anonymity hitherto had been his safeguard, stood revealed through