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

water for a passerby who was in pain. A jug of water was at once handed to her by a sympathetic concierge, and with it she went back to complete her simple act of mercy.

For a moment she was puzzled, not seeing the poor vagabond there, where she had left him half-swooning against the wall. But soon she spied him, in the very act of turning under the little church porch of Petit St. Antoine, the hallowed spot of her frequent meetings with Bertrand.

IV

He seemed to have crawled there for shelter, and there he collapsed upon the wooden bench, in the most remote angle of the porch. Of Bertrand there was not a sign.

Régine was soon by the side of the unfortunate. She held up the jug of water to his quaking lips, and he drank eagerly. After that he felt better, muttered vague words of thanks. But he seemed so weak, despite his stature, which appeared immense in this narrow enclosure, that she did not like to leave him. She sat down beside him, suddenly conscious of fatigue. He seemed harmless enough, and after awhile began to tell her of his trouble. This awful asthma, which he had contracted in the campaign against the English in Holland, where he and his comrades had to march in snow and ice, often shoeless and with nothing but bass mats around their shoulders. He had but lately been discharged out of the army as totally unfit, and he had no money wherewith to pay a doctor, he would no doubt have been dead by now but that a comrade had spoken to him of Mother Théot, a marvellous sorceress, who knew the art of drugs and simples, and could cure all ailments of the body by the mere laying on of hands.

“Ah, yes,” the girl sighed involuntarily, “of the body!”

Through the very act of sitting still, a deadly lassitude had crept into her limbs. She was thankful not to move, to say little, and to listen with half an ear to the vagabond’s jeremiads. Anyhow, she was sure that Bertrand would no longer be waiting. He was ever impatient if he thought that she failed him in anything, and it was she who had appointed five o’clock for their meeting. Even now the church clock way above the porch was striking half-past six. And the asthmatic giant went glibly on. He had partially recovered his breath.

“Aye!” he was saying, in response to her lament, “and of the mind, too. I had a comrade whose sweetheart was false to him while he was fighting for his country. Mother Théot gave him a potion which he administered to the faithless one, and she returned to him as full of ardour as ever before.”

“I have no faith in potions,” the girl said, and shook her head sadly the while tears once more gathered in her eyes.

“No more have I,” the giant assented carelessly. “But if my sweetheart was false to me I know what I would do.”

This he said in so droll a fashion, and the whole idea of this ugly, ungainly creature having a sweetheart was so comical, that despite her will, the ghost of a smile crept round the young girl’s sensitive mouth.

“What would you do, citizen?” she queried gently.

“Just take her away, out of the reach of temptation,” he replied sententiously. “I should say, ‘This must stop,’ and ‘You come away with me, ma mie!’ ”

“Ah!” she retorted impulsively, “it is easy to talk. A man can do so much. What can a woman do?”

She checked herself abruptly, ashamed of having said so much. What was this miserable caitiff to her that she should as much as hint her troubles in his hearing? In these days of countless spies, of innumerable confidence tricks set to catch the unwary, it was more than foolhardy to speak of one’s private affairs to any stranger, let alone to an out-at-elbows vagabond who was just the sort of refuse of humanity who would earn a precarious livelihood by the sale of information, true or false, wormed out of some innocent fellow-creature. Hardly, then, were the words out of her mouth than the girl repented of her folly, turned quick, frightened eyes on the abject creature beside her.

But he appeared not to have heard. A wheezy cough came out of his bony chest. Nor did he meet her terrified gaze.

“What did you say, citoyenne?” he muttered fretfully. “Are you dreaming?⁠ ⁠… or what?⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes⁠—yes!” she murmured vaguely, her heart still beating with that sudden fright. “I must have been dreaming⁠ ⁠… But you⁠ ⁠… you are better⁠—?”

“Better? Perhaps,” he replied, with a hoarse laugh. “I might even be able to crawl home.”

“Do you live very far?” she asked.

“No. Just by the Rue de l’Anier.”

He made no attempt to thank her for her gentle ministration, and she thought of how ungainly he looked⁠—almost repellent⁠—sprawling right across the porch, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands buried in the pockets of his breeches. Nevertheless, he looked so helpless and so pitiable that the girl’s kind heart was again stirred with compassion, and when presently he struggled with difficulty to his feet, she said impulsively:

“The Rue de l’Anier is on my way. If you will wait, I’ll return the jug to the kind concierge who let me have it and I’ll walk with you. You really ought not to be about the street alone.”

“Oh, I am better now,” he muttered, in the same ungracious way. “You had best leave me alone. I am not a suitable gallant for a pretty wench like you.”

But already the girl had tripped away with the jug, and returned two minutes later to find that the curious creature had already started on his way and was fifty yards or more farther up the street by now. She shrugged her shoulders, feeling mortified at his ingratitude, and not a little ashamed that she had forced her compassion where it was