Books: The Elusive Pimpernel

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy [Full name] >> The Elusive Pimpernel

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The ghouls seemed to pass and repass along in front of her and to be
laughing audibly because that mad Englishman had been offered his life in
exchange for his honour. They laughed and laughed, no doubt because he
refused the bargain--Englishmen were always eccentric, and in these days
of equality and other devices of a free and glorious revolution, honour
was such a very marketable commodity that it seemed ridiculous to prize
it quite so highly. Then they strolled away again and disappeared, whilst
Marguerite distinctly heard the scrunching of the path beneath their feet.
She leant forward to peer still further into the darkness, for this sound
had seemed so absolutely real, but immediately a detaining hand was
place upon her arm and a sarcastic voice murmured at her elbow:

"The result, fair lady, would only be a broken leg or arm; the height is not
great enough for picturesque suicides, and believe me these ramparts are
only haunted by ghosts."

She drew back as if a viper had stung her; for the moment she had
become oblivious of Chauvelin's presence. However, she would not take
notices of his taunt, and, after a slight pause, he asked her if she could
hear the town crier over in the public streets.

"Yes," she replied.

"What he says at this present moment is of vast importance to your
ladyship," he remarked drily.

"How so?"

"Your ladyship is a precious hostage. We are taking measures to guard
our valuable property securely."

Marguerite thought of the Abbe Foucquet, who no doubt was still quietly
telling his beads, even if in his heart he had begun to wonder what had
become of her. She thought of Francois, who was the breadwinner, and
of Felicite, who was blind.

"Methinks you and your colleagues have done that already," she said.

"Not as completely as we would wish. We know the daring of the Scarlet
Pimpernel. We are not even ashamed to admit that we fear his luck, his
impudence and his marvellous ingenuity. ... Have I not told you that I
have the greatest possible respect for that mysterious English hero. ... An
old priest and two young children might be spirited away by that
enigmatical adventurer, even whilst Lady Blakeney herself is made to
vanish from our sight."

"Ah! I see your ladyship is taking my simple words as a confession of
weakness," he continued, noting the swift sigh of hope which had
involuntarily escaped her lips. "Nay! and it please you, you shall despise
me for it. But a confession of weakness is the first sign of strength. The
Scarlet Pimpernel is still at large, and whilst we guard our hostage
securely, he is bound to fall into our hands."

"Aye! still at large!" she retorted with impulsive defiance. "Think you that
all your bolts and bars, the ingenuity of yourself and your colleagues, the
collaboration of the devil himself, would succeed in outwitting the Scarlet
Pimpernel, now that his purpose will be to try and drag ME from out
your clutches."

She felt hopeful and proud. Now that she had the pure air of heaven in
her lungs, that from afar she could smell the sea, and could feel that
perhaps in a straight line of vision from where she stood, the "Day-
Dream" with Sir Percy on board, might be lying out there in the roads, it
seemed impossible that he should fail in freeing her and those poor
people--an old man and two children--whose lives depended on her own.

But Chauvelin only laughed a dry, sarcastic laugh and said:

"Hm! perhaps not! ... It of course will depend on you and your
personality ... your feelings in such matters ... and whether an English
gentleman likes to save his own skin at the expense of others."

Marguerite shivered as if from cold.

"Ah! I see," resumed Chauvelin quietly, "that your ladyship has not quite
grasped the position. That public crier is a long way off: the words have
lingered on the evening breeze and have failed to reach your brain. Do
you suppose that I and my colleagues do not know that all the ingenuity
of which the Scarlet Pimpernel is capable will now be directed in piloting
Lady Blakeney, and incidentally the Abbe Foucquet with his nephew and
niece, safely across the Channel! Four people! ... Bah! a bagatelle, for
this mighty conspirator, who but lately snatched twenty aristocrats from
the prisons of Lyons. ... Nay! nay! two children and an old man were not
enough to guard our precious hostage, and I was not thinking of either
the Abbe Foucquet or of the two children, when I said that an English
gentleman would not save himself at the expense of others."

"Of whom then were you thinking, Monsieur Chauvelin? Whom else have
you set to guard the prize which you value so highly?"

"The whole city of Boulogne," he replied simply.

"I do not understand."

"Let me make my point clear. My colleague, Citizen Collot d'Herbois,
rode over from Paris yesterday; like myself he is a member of the
Committee of Public Safety whose duty it is to look after the welfare of
France by punishing all those who conspire against her laws and the
liberties of the people. Chief among these conspirators, whom it is our
duty to punish is, of course, that impudent adventurer who calls himself
the Scarlet Pimpernel. He has given the government of France a great
deal of trouble through his attempts--mostly successful, as I have already
admitted,--at frustrating the just vengeance which an oppressed country
has the right to wreak on those who have proved themselves to be tyrants
and traitors."

"Is it necessary to recapitulate all this, Monsieur Chauvelin?" she asked
impatiently.

"I think so," he replied blandly. "You see, my point is this. We feel that in
a measure now the Scarlet Pimpernel is in our power. Within the next
few hours he will land at Boulogne ... Boulogne, where he has agreed to
fight a duel with me ... Boulogne, where Lady Blakeney happens to be at
this present moment ... as you see, Boulogne has a great responsibility to
bear: just now she is to a certain extent the proudest city in France, since
she holds within her gates a hostage for the appearance on our shores of
her country's most bitter enemy. But she must not fall from that high
estate. Her double duty is clear before her: she must guard Lady
Blakeney and capture the Scarlet Pimpernel; if she fail in the former she
must be punished, if she succeed in the latter she shall be rewarded."

He paused and leaned out of the window again, whilst she watched him,
breathless and terrified. She was beginning to understand.

"Hark!" he said, looking straight at her. "Do you hear the crier now? He
is proclaiming the punishment and the reward. He is making it clear to
the citizens of Boulogne that on the day when the Scarlet Pimpernel falls
into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety a general amnesty will
be granted to all natives of Boulogne who are under arrest at the present
time, and a free pardon to all those who, born within these city walls, are
to-day under sentence of death. ... A noble reward, eh? well-deserved
you'll admit. ... Should you wonder then if the whole town of Boulogne
were engaged just now in finding that mysterious hero, and delivering
him into our hands? ... How many mothers, sisters, wives, think you, at
the present moment, would fail to lay hands on the English adventurer, if
a husband's or a son's life or freedom happened to be at stake? ... I have
some records there," he continued, pointing in the direction of the table,
"which tell me that there are five and thirty natives of Boulogne in the
local prisons, a dozen more in the prisons of Paris; of these at least
twenty have been tried already and are condemned to death. Every hour
that the Scarlet Pimpernel succeeds in evading his captors so many deaths
lie at his door. If he succeeds in once more reaching England safely three
score lives mayhap will be the price of his escape. ... Nay! but I see your
ladyship is shivering with cold ..." he added with a dry little laugh, "shall I
close the window? or do you wish to hear what punishment will be meted
out to Boulogne, if on the day that the Scarlet Pimpernel is captured,
Lady Blakeney happens to have left the shelter of these city walls?"

"I pray you proceed, Monsieur," she rejoined with perfect calm.

"The Committee of Public Safety," he resumed, "would look upon this
city as a nest of traitors if on the day that the Scarlet Pimpernel becomes
our prisoner Lady Blakeney herself, the wife of that notorious English
spy, had already quitted Boulogne. The whole town knows by now that
you are in our hands--you, the most precious hostage we can hold for the
ultimate capture of the man whom we all fear and detest. Virtually the
town-crier is at the present moment proclaiming to the inhabitants of this
city: 'We want that man, but we already have his wife, see to it, citizens,
that she does not escape! for if she do, we shall summarily shoot the
breadwinner in every family in the town!'"

A cry of horror escaped Marguerite's parched lips.

"Are you devils then, all of you," she gasped, "that you should think of
such things?"

"Aye! some of us are devils, no doubt," said Chauvelin drily; "but why
should you honour us in this case with so flattering an epithet? We are
mere men striving to guard our property and mean no harm to the
citizens of Boulogne. We have threatened them, true! but is it not for you
and that elusive Pimpernel to see that the threat is never put into
execution?"

"You would not do it!" she repeated, horror-stricken.

"Nay! I pray you, fair lady, do not deceive yourself. At present the
proclamation sounds like a mere threat, I'll allow, but let me assure you
that if we fail to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel and if you on the other
hand are spirited out of this fortress by that mysterious adventurer we
shall undoubtedly shoot or guillotine every able-bodied man and woman
in this town."

He had spoken quietly and emphatically, neither with bombast, nor with
rage, and Marguerite saw in his face nothing but a calm and ferocious
determination, the determination of an entire nation embodied in this one
man, to be revenged at any cost. She would not let him see the depth of
her despair, nor would she let him read in her face the unutterable
hopelessness which filled her soul. It were useless to make an appeal to
him: she knew full well that from him she could obtain neither gentleness
nor mercy.

"I hope at last I have made the situation quite clear to your ladyship?" he
was asking quite pleasantly now. "See how easy is your position: you
have but to remain quiescent in room No. 6, and if any chance of escape
be offered you ere the Scarlet Pimpernel is captured, you need but to
think of all the families of Boulogne, who would be deprived of their
breadwinner--fathers and sons mostly, but there are girls too, who
support their mothers or sisters; the fish curers of Boulogne are mostly
women, and there are the net-makers and the seamstresses, all would
suffer if your ladyship were no longer to be found in No. 6 room of this
ancient fort, whilst all would be included in the amnesty if the Scarlet
Pimpernel fell into our hands ..."

He gave a low, satisfied chuckle which made Marguerite think of the evil
spirits in hell exulting over the torments of unhappy lost souls.

"I think, Lady Blakeney," he added drily and making her an ironical bow,
"that your humble servant hath outwitted the elusive hero at last."

Quietly he turned on his heel and went back into the room, Marguerite
remaining motionless beside the open window, where the soft, brine-
laden air, the distant murmur of the sea, the occasional cry of a sea-mew,
all seemed to mock her agonizing despair.

The voice of the town-crier came nearer and nearer now: she could hear
the words he spoke quite distinctly: something about "amnesty" and
pardon, the reward for the capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the lives of
men, women and children in exchange for his.

Oh! she knew what all that meant! that Percy would not hesitate one
single instant to throw his life into the hands of his enemies, in exchange
for that of others. Others! others! always others! this sigh that had made
her heart ache so often in England, what terrible significance it bore now!

And how he would suffer in his heart and in his pride, because of her
whom he could not even attempt to save since it would mean the death of
others! of others, always of others!

She wondered if he had already landed in Boulogne! Again she
remembered the vision on the landing stage: his massive figure, the
glimpse she had of the loved form, in the midst of the crowd!

The moment he entered the town he would hear the proclamation read,
see it posted up no doubt on every public building, and realize that she
had been foolish enough to follow him, that she was a prisoner and that
he could do nothing to save her.

What would he do? Marguerite at the thought instinctively pressed her
hands to her heart, the agony of it all had become physically painful. She
hoped that perhaps this pain meant approaching death! oh! how easy
would this simple solution be!

The moon peered out from beneath the bank of clouds which had
obscured her for so long; smiling, she drew her pencilled silver lines
along the edge of towers and pinnacles, the frowning Beffroi and those
stony walls which seemed to Marguerite as if they encircled a gigantic
graveyard.

The town-crier had evidently ceased to read the proclamation. One by
one the windows in the public square were lighted up from within. The
citizens of Boulogne wanted to think over the strange events which had
occurred without their knowledge, yet which were apparently to have
such direful or such joyous consequences for them.

A man to be captured! the mysterious English adventurer of whom they
had all heard, but whom nobody had seen. And a woman--his wife-- to be
guarded until the man was safely under lock and key.

Marguerite felt as if she could almost hear them talking it over and
vowing that she should not escape, and that the Scarlet Pimpernel should
soon be captured.

A gentle wind stirred the old gnarled trees on the southern ramparts, a
wind that sounded like the sigh of swiftly dying hope.

What could Percy do now? His hands were tied, and he was inevitably
destined to endure the awful agony of seeing the woman he loved die a
terrible death beside him.

Having captured him, they would not keep him long; no necessity for a
trial, for detention, for formalities of any kind. A summary execution at
dawn on the public place, a roll of drums, a public holiday to mark the
joyful event, and a brave man will have ceased to live, a noble heart have
stilled its beatings forever, whilst a whole nation gloried over the deed.

"Sleep, citizens of Boulogne! all is still!"

The night watchman had replaced the town-crier. All was quiet within the
city walls: the inhabitants could sleep in peace, a beneficent government
was wakeful and guarding their rest.

But many of the windows of the town remained lighted up, and at a little
distance below her, round the corner so that she could not see it, a small
crowd must have collected in front of the gateway which led into the
courtyard of the Gayole Fort. Marguerite could hear a persistent murmur
of voices, mostly angry and threatening, and once there were loud cries
of: "English spies," and "a la lanterne!"

"The citizens of Boulogne are guarding the treasures of France!"
commented Chauvelin drily, as he laughed again, that cruel, mirthless
laugh of his.

Then she roused herself from her torpor: she did not know how long she
had stood beside the open window, but the fear seized her that that man
must have seen and gloated over the agony of her mind. She straightened
her graceful figure, threw back her proud head defiantly, and quietly
walked up to the table, where Chauvelin seemed once more absorbed in
the perusal of his papers.

"Is this interview over?" she asked quietly, and without the slightest
tremor in her voice. "May I go now?"

"As soon as you wish," he replied with gentle irony.

He regarded her with obvious delight, for truly she was beautiful: grand
in this attitude of defiant despair. The man, who had spent the last half-
hour in martyrizing her, gloried over the misery which he had wrought,
and which all her strength of will could not entirely banish from her face.

"Will you believe me, Lady Blakeney?" he added, "that there is no
personal animosity in my heart towards you or your husband? Have I not
told you that I do not wish to compass his death?"

"Yet you propose to send him to the guillotine as soon as you have laid
hands on him."

"I have explained to you the measures which I have taken in order to
make sure that we DO lay hands on the Scarlet Pimpernel. Once he is in
our power, it will rest with him to walk to the guillotine or to embark
with you on board his yacht."

"You propose to place an alternative before Sir Percy Blakeney?"

"Certainly."

"To offer him his life?"

"And that of his charming wife."

"In exchange for what?"

"His honour."

"He will refuse, Monsieur."

"We shall see."

Then he touched a handbell which stood on the table, and within a few
seconds the door was opened and the soldier who had led Marguerite
hither, re-entered the room.

The interview was at an end. It had served its purpose. Marguerite knew
now that she must not even think of escape for herself, or hope for safety
for the man she loved. Of Chauvelin's talk of a bargain which would
touch Percy's honour she would not even think: and she was too proud to
ask anything further from him.

Chauvelin stood up and made her a deep bow, as she crossed the room
and finally went out of the door. The little company of soldiers closed in
around her and she was once more led along the dark passages, back to
her own prison cell.

Chapter XXIV : Colleagues

As soon as the door had closed behind Marguerite, there came from
somewhere in the room the sound of a yawn, a grunt and a volley of
oaths.

The flickering light of the tallow candles had failed to penetrate into all
the corners, and now from out one of these dark depths, a certain
something began to detach itself, and to move forward towards the table
at which Chauvelin had once more resumed his seat.

"Has the damned aristocrat gone at last?" queried a hoarse voice, as a
burly body clad in loose-fitting coat and mud-stained boots and breeches
appeared within the narrow circle of light.

"Yes," replied Chauvelin curtly.

"And a cursed long time you have been with the baggage," grunted the
other surlily. "Another five minutes and I'd have taken the matter in my
own hands.

"An assumption of authority," commented Chauvelin quietly, "to which
your position here does not entitle you, Citizen Collot."

Collot d'Herbois lounged lazily forward, and presently he threw his ill-
knit figure into the chair lately vacated by Marguerite. His heavy, square
face bore distinct traces of the fatigue endured in the past twenty-four
hours on horseback or in jolting market waggons. His temper too
appeared to have suffered on the way, and, at Chauvelin's curt and
dictatorial replies, he looked as surly as a chained dog.

"You were wasting your breath over that woman," he muttered, bringing
a large and grimy fist heavily down on the table, "and your measures are
not quite so sound as your fondly imagine, Citizen Chauvelin."

"They were mostly of your imagining, Citizen Collot," rejoined the other
quietly, "and of your suggestion."

"I added a touch of strength and determination to your mild milk-and-
water notions, Citizen," snarled Collot spitefully. "I'd have knocked that
intriguing woman's brains out at the very first possible opportunity, had I
been consulted earlier than this."

"Quite regardless of the fact that such violent measures would completely
damn all our chances of success as far as the capture of the Scarlet
Pimpernel is concerned," remarked Chauvelin drily, with a contemptuous
shrug of the shoulders. "Once his wife is dead, the Englishman will never
run his head into the noose which I have so carefully prepared for him."

"So you say, Chauvelin; and therefore I suggested to you certain
measures to prevent the woman escaping which you will find adequate, I
hope."

"You need have no fear, Citizen Collot," said Chauvelin curtly, "this
woman will make no attempt at escape now."

"If she does ..." and Collot d'Herbois swore an obscene oath.

"I think she understands that we mean to put our threat in execution."

"Threat? ... It was no empty threat, Citizen. ... Sacre tonnerre! if that
woman escapes now, by all the devils in hell I swear that I'll wield the
guillotine myself and cut off the head of every able-bodied man or
woman in Boulogne, with my own hands."

As he said this his face assumed such an expression of inhuman cruelty,
such a desire to kill, such a savage lust for blood, that instinctively
Chauvelin shuddered and shrank away from his colleague. All through his
career there is no doubt that this man, who was of gentle birth, of gentle
breeding, and who had once been called M. le Marquis de Chauvelin,
must have suffered in his susceptibilities and in his pride when in contact
with the revolutionaries with whom he had chosen to cast his lot. He
could not have thrown off all his old ideas of refinement quite so easily,
as to feel happy in the presence of such men as Collot d'Herbois, or
Marat in his day--men who had become brute beats, more ferocious far
than any wild animal, more scientifically cruel than any feline prowler in
jungle or desert.

One look in Collot's distorted face was sufficient at this moment to
convince Chauvelin that it were useless for him to view the proclamation
against the citizens of Boulogne merely as an idle threat, even if he had
wished to do so. That Marguerite would not, under the circumstances,
attempt to escape, that Sir Percy Blakeney himself would be forced to
give up all thoughts of rescuing her, was a foregone conclusion in
Chauvelin's mind, but if this high-born English gentleman had not
happened to be the selfless hero that he was, if Marguerite Blakeney were
cast in a different, a rougher mould--if, in short, the Scarlet Pimpernel in
the face of the proclamation did succeed in dragging his wife out of the
clutches of the Terrorists, then it was equally certain that Collot
d'Herbois would carry out his rabid and cruel reprisals to the full. And if
in the course of the wholesale butchery of the able-bodied and wage-
earning inhabitants of Boulogne, the headsman should sink worn out,
then would this ferocious sucker of blood put his own hand to the
guillotine, with the same joy and lust which he had felt when he ordered
one hundred and thirty-eight women of Nantes to be stripped naked by
the soldiery before they were flung helter-skelter into the river.

A touch of strength and determination! Aye! Citizen Collot d'Herbois had
plenty of that. Was it he, or Carriere who at Arras commanded mothers
to stand by while their children were being guillotined? And surely it was
Maignet, Collot's friend and colleague, who at Bedouin, because the Red
Flag of the Republic had been mysteriously town down over night, burnt
the entire little village down to the last hovel and guillotined every one of
the three hundred and fifty inhabitants.

And Chauvelin knew all that. Nay, more! he was himself a member of
that so-called government which had countenanced these butcheries, by
giving unlimited powers to men like Collot, like Maignet and Carriere.
He was at one with them in their republican ideas and he believed in the
regeneration and the purification of France, through the medium of the
guillotine, but he propounded his theories and carried out his most
bloodthirsty schemes with physically clean hands and in an immaculately
cut coat.

Even now when Collot d'Herbois lounged before him, with mud-
bespattered legs stretched out before him, with dubious linen at neck and
wrists, and an odour of rank tobacco and stale, cheap wine pervading his
whole personality, the more fastidious man of the world, who had
consorted with the dandies of London and Brighton, winced at the
enforced proximity.

But it was the joint characteristic of all these men who had turned France
into a vast butchery and charnel-house, that they all feared and hated one
another, even more whole-heartedly than they hated the aristocrats and
so-called traitors whom they sent to the guillotine. Citizen Lebon is said
to have dipped his sword into the blood which flowed from the guillotine,
whilst exclaiming: "Comme je l'aime ce sang coule de traitre!" but he and
Collot and Danton and Robespierre, all of them in fact would have
regarded with more delight still the blood of any one of their colleagues.

At this very moment Collot d'Herbois and Chauvelin would with utmost
satisfaction have denounced, one the other, to the tender mercies of the
Public Prosecutor. Collot made no secret of his hatred for Chauvelin, and
the latter disguised it but thinly under the veneer of contemptuous
indifference.

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