The Scarlet Pimpernel

The laugh which accompanied this remark was evidently intended to reassure Sir Percy as to the gravity of the incident. It apparently succeeded in that, for echoing the laugh, he rejoined placidly—

“La, m’dear! you don’t say so. Begad! who was the bold man who dared to tackle you—eh?”

Lord Tony tried to interpose, but had no time to do so, for the young Vicomte had already quickly stepped forward.

“Monsieur,” he said, prefixing his little speech with an elaborate bow, and speaking in broken English, “my mother, the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive, has offenced Madame, who, I see, is your wife. I cannot ask your pardon for my mother; what she does is right in my eyes. But I am ready to offer you the usual reparation between men of honour.”

The young man drew up his slim stature to its full height and looked very enthusiastic, very proud, and very hot as he gazed at six foot odd of gorgeousness, as represented by Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart.

“Lud, Sir Andrew,” said Marguerite, with one of her merry infectious laughs, “look on that pretty picture—the English turkey and the French bantam.”

The simile was quite perfect, and the English turkey looked down with complete bewilderment upon the dainty little French bantam, which hovered quite threateningly around him.

“La! sir,” said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye glass and surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment, “where, in the cuckoo’s name, did you learn to speak English?”

“Monsieur!” protested the Vicomte, somewhat abashed at the way his warlike attitude had been taken by the ponderous-looking Englishman.

“I protest ‘tis marvellous!” continued Sir Percy, imperturbably, “demmed marvellous! Don’t you think so, Tony—eh? I vow I can’t speak the French lingo like that. What?”

“Nay, I’ll vouch for that!” rejoined Marguerite, “Sir Percy has a British accent you could cut with a knife.”

“Monsieur,” interposed the Vicomte earnestly, and in still more broken English, “I fear you have not understand. I offer you the only posseeble reparation among gentlemen.”

“What the devil is that?” asked Sir Percy, blandly.

“My sword, Monsieur,” replied the Vicomte, who, though still bewildered, was beginning to lose his temper.

“You are a sportsman, Lord Tony,” said Marguerite, merrily; “ten to one on the little bantam.”

But Sir Percy was staring sleepily at the Vicomte for a moment or two, through his partly closed heavy lids, then he smothered another yawn, stretched his long limbs, and turned leisurely away.

“Lud love you, sir,” he muttered good-humouredly, “demmit, young man, what’s the good of your sword to me?”

What the Vicomte thought and felt at that moment, when that long-limbed Englishman treated him with such marked insolence, might fill volumes of sound reflections. . . . What he said resolved itself into a single articulate word, for all the others were choked in his throat by his surging wrath—

“A duel, Monsieur,” he stammered.

Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—“a bloodthirsty young ruffian, Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? . . . As for me, sir, I never fight duels,” he added, as he placidly sat down and stretched his long, lazy legs out before him. “Demmed uncomfortable things, duels, ain’t they, Tony?”

Now the Vicomte had no doubt vaguely heard that in England the fashion of duelling amongst gentlemen had been surpressed by the law with a very stern hand; still to him, a Frenchman, whose notions of bravery and honour were based upon a code that had centuries of tradition to back it, the spectacle of a gentleman actually refusing to fight a duel was a little short of an enormity. In his mind he vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady’s presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.

“I pray you, Lord Tony,” she said in that gentle, sweet, musical voice of hers, “I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is bursting with rage, and,” she added with a SOUPCON of dry sarcasm, “might do Sir Percy an injury.” She laughed a mocking little laugh, which, however, did not in the least disturb her husband’s placid equanimity. “The British turkey has had the day,” she said. “Sir Percy would provoke all the saints in the calendar and keep his temper the while.”

But already Blakeney, good-humoured as ever, had joined in the laugh against himself.

“Demmed smart that now, wasn’t it?” he said, turning pleasantly to the Vicomte. “Clever woman my wife, sir. . . . You will find THAT out if you live long enough in England.”

“Sir Percy is right, Vicomte,” here interposed Lord Antony, laying a friendly hand on the young Frenchman’s shoulder. “It would hardly be fitting that you should commence your career in England by provoking him to a duel.”

For a moment longer the Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he said with becoming dignity,—

“Ah, well! if Monsieur is satisfied, I have no griefs. You mi’lor’, are our protector. If I have done wrong, I withdraw myself.”

“Aye, do!” rejoined Blakeney, with a long sigh of satisfaction, “withdraw yourself over there. Demmed excitable little puppy,” he added under his breath, “Faith, Ffoulkes, if that’s a specimen of the goods you and your friends bring over from France, my advice to you is, drop ‘em ‘mid Channel, my friend, or I shall have to see old Pitt about it, get him to clap on a prohibitive tariff, and put you in the stocks an you smuggle.”

“La, Sir Percy, your chivalry misguides you,” said Marguerite, coquettishly, “you forget that you yourself have imported one bundle of goods from France.”

Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow before his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—

“I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”

“More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.

“Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going to allow my body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who don’t like the shape of your nose?”

“Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint and pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ‘Tis not the MEN who dislike the shape of my nose.”

“Afraid be demmed! Do you impugn my bravery, Madame? I don’t patronise the ring for nothing, do I, Tony? I’ve put up the fists with Red Sam before now, and—and he didn’t get it all his own way either—”

“S’faith, Sir Percy,” said Marguerite, with a long and merry laugh, that went echoing along the old oak rafters of the parlour, “I would I had seen you then . . . ha! ha! ha! ha!—you must have looked a pretty picture . . . and . . . and to be afraid of a little French boy . . . ha! ha! . . . ha! ha!”

“Ha! ha! ha! he! he! he!” echoed Sir Percy, good-humouredly. “La, Madame, you honour me! Zooks! Ffoulkes, mark ye that! I have made my wife laugh!—The cleverest woman in Europe! . . . Odd’s fish, we must have a bowl on that!” and he tapped vigorously on the table near him. “Hey! Jelly! Quick, man! Here, Jelly!”

Harmony was once more restored. Mr. Jellyband, with a mighty effort, recovered himself from the many emotions he had experienced within the last half hour. “A bowl of punch, Jelly, hot and strong, eh?” said Sir Percy. “The wits that have just made a clever woman laugh must be whetted! Ha! ha! ha! Hasten, my good Jelly!”

“Nay, there is no time, Sir Percy,” interposed Marguerite. “The skipper will be here directly and my brother must get on board, or the DAY DREAM will miss the tide.”

“Time, m’dear? There is plenty of time for any gentleman to get drunk and get on board before the turn of the tide.”

“I think, your ladyship,” said Jellyband, respectfully, “that the young gentleman is coming along now with Sir Percy’s skipper.”

“That’s right,” said Blakeney, “then Armand can join us in the merry bowl. Think you, Tony,” he added, turning towards the Vicomte, “that the jackanapes of yours will join us in a glass? Tell him that we drink in token of reconciliation.”

“In fact you are all such merry company,” said Marguerite, “that I trust you will forgive me if I bid my brother good-bye in another room.”

It would have been bad form to protest. Both Lord Antony and Sir Andrew felt that Lady Blakeney could not altogether be in tune with them at the moment. Her love for her brother, Armand St. Just, was deep and touching in the extreme. He had just spent a few weeks with her in her English home, and was going back to serve his country, at the moment when death was the usual reward for the most enduring devotion.

Sir Percy also made no attempt to detain his wife. With that perfect, somewhat affected gallantry which characterised his every movement, he opened the coffee-room door for her, and made her the most approved and elaborate bow, which the fashion of the time dictated, as she sailed out of the room without bestowing on him more than a passing, slightly contemptuous glance. Only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed keener, more gentle, more innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of intense longing, of deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and flippant Sir Percy followed the retreating figure of his brilliant wife.

CHAPTER VII THE SECRET ORCHARD

Once outside the noisy coffee-room, alone in the dimly-lighted passage, Marguerite Blakeney seemed to breathe more freely. She heaved a deep sigh, like one who had long been oppressed with the heavy weight of constant self-control, and she allowed a few tears to fall unheeded down her cheeks.

Outside the rain had ceased, and through the swiftly passing clouds, the pale rays of an after-storm sun shone upon the beautiful white coast of Kent and the quaint, irregular houses that clustered round the Admiralty Pier. Marguerite Blakeney stepped on to the porch and looked out to sea. Silhouetted against the ever-changing sky, a graceful schooner, with white sails set, was gently dancing in the breeze. The DAY DREAM it was, Sir Percy Blakeney’s yacht, which was ready to take Armand St. Just back to France into the very midst of that seething, bloody Revolution which was overthrowing a monarchy, attacking a religion, destroying a society, in order to try and rebuild upon the ashes of tradition a new Utopia, of which a few men dreamed, but which none had the power to establish.

In the distance two figures were approaching “The Fisherman’s Rest”: one, an oldish man, with a curious fringe of grey hairs round a rotund and massive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait which invariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure, neatly and becomingly dressed in a dark, many caped overcoat; he was clean-shaved, and his dark hair was taken well back over a clear and noble forehead.

“Armand!” said Marguerite Blakeney, as soon as she saw him approaching from the distance, and a happy smile shone on her sweet face, even through the tears.