Books: The Elusive Pimpernel
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Baroness Emmuska Orczy [Full name] >> The Elusive Pimpernel
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How different 'twixt her and her husband.
Percy loved her truly and with a depth of passion proportionate to his
own curious dual personality: it were sacrilege, almost, to doubt the
intensity of his love. But nevertheless she had at all times a feeling as if he
were holding himself and his emotions in check, as if his love, as if she,
Marguerite, his wife, were but secondary matters in his life; as if her
anxieties, her sorrow when he left her, her fears for his safety were but
small episodes in the great book of life which he had planned out and
conceived for himself.
Then she would hate herself for such thoughts: they seemed like doubts
of him. Did any man ever love a woman, she asked herself, as Percy
loved her? He was difficult to understand, and perhaps --oh! that was an
awful "perhaps"--perhaps there lurked somewhere in his mind a slight
mistrust of her. She had betrayed him once! unwittingly 'tis true! did he
fear she might do so again?
And to-night after her guests had gone she threw open the great windows
that gave on the beautiful terrace, with its marble steps leading down to
the cool river beyond. Everything now seemed so peaceful and still; the
scent of the heliotrope made the midnight air swoon with its intoxicating
fragrance: the rhythmic murmur of the waters came gently echoing from
below, and from far away there came the melancholy cry of a night-bird
on the prowl.
That cry made Marguerite shudder: her thoughts flew back to the
episodes of this night and to Chauvelin, the dark bird of prey with his
mysterious death-dealing plans, his subtle intrigues which all tended
towards the destruction of one man: his enemy, the husband whom
Marguerite loved.
Oh! how she hated these wild adventures which took Percy away from
her side. Is not a woman who loves--be it husband or child-- the most
truly selfish, the most cruelly callous creature in the world, there, where
the safety and the well-being of the loved one is in direct conflict with the
safety and well-being of others.
She would right gladly have closed her eyes to every horror perpetrated
in France, she would not have known what went on in Paris, she wanted
her husband! And yet month after month, with but short intervals, she
saw him risk that precious life of his, which was the very essence of her
own soul, for others! for others! always for others!
And she! she! Marguerite, his wife, was powerless to hold him back!
powerless to keep him beside her, when that mad fit of passion seized
him to go on one of those wild quests, wherefrom she always feared he
could not return alive: and this, although she might use every noble
artifice, every tender wile of which a loving and beautiful wife is capable.
At times like those her own proud heart was filled with hatred and with
envy towards everything that took him away from her: and to-night all
these passionate feelings which she felt were quite unworthy of her and
of him seemed to surge within her soul more tumultuously than ever. She
was longing to throw herself in his arms, to pour out into his loving ear
all that she suffered, in fear and anxiety, and to make one more appeal to
his tenderness and to that passion which had so often made him forget
the world at her feet.
And so instinctively she walked along the terrace towards that more
secluded part of the garden just above the river bank, where she had so
oft wandered hand in hand with him, in the honeymoon of their love.
There great clumps of old-fashioned cabbage roses grew in untidy
splendour, and belated lilies sent intoxicating odours into the air, whilst
the heavy masses of Egyptian and Michaelmas daisies looked like ghostly
constellations in the gloom.
She thought Percy must soon be coming this way. Though it was so late,
she knew that he would not go to bed. After the events of the night, his
ruling passion, strong in death, would be holding him in its thrall.
She too felt wide awake and unconscious of fatigue; when she reached
the secluded path beside the river, she peered eagerly up and down, and
listened for a sound.
Presently it seemed to her that above the gentle clapper of the waters she
could hear a rustle and the scrunching of the fine gravel under carefully
measured footsteps. She waited a while. The footsteps seemed to draw
nearer, and soon, although the starlit night was very dark, she perceived a
cloaked and hooded figure approaching cautiously toward her.
"Who goes there?" she called suddenly.
The figure paused: then came rapidly forward, and a voice said timidly:
"Ah! Lady Blakeney!"
"Who are you?" asked Marguerite peremptorily.
"It is I ... Desiree Candeille," replied the midnight prowler.
"Demoiselle Candeille!" ejaculated Marguerite, wholly taken by surprise.
"What are you doing here? alone? and at this hour?"
"Sh-sh-sh ..." whispered Candeille eagerly, as she approached quite close
to Marguerite and drew her hood still lower over her eyes. "I am all alone
... I wanted to see someone--you if possible, Lady Blakeney ... for I
could not rest ... I wanted to know what had happened."
"What had happened? When? I don't understand."
"What happened between Citizen Chauvelin and your husband?" asked
Candeille.
"What is that to you?" replied Marguerite haughtily.
"I pray you do not misunderstand me ..." pleaded Candeille eagerly. "I
know my presence in your house ... the quarrel which I provoked must
have filled your heart with hatred and suspicion towards me ... but oh!
how can I persuade you? ... I acted unwillingly ... will you not believe
me? ... I was that man's tool ... and ... Oh God!" she added with sudden,
wild vehemence, "if only you could know what tyranny that accursed
government of France exercises over poor helpless women or men who
happen to have fallen within reach of its relentless clutches ..."
Her voice broke down in a sob. Marguerite hardly knew what to say or
think. She had always mistrusted this woman with her theatrical ways and
stagy airs, from the very first moment she saw her in the tent on the
green: and she did not wish to run counter against her instinct, in
anything pertaining to the present crisis. And yet in spite of her mistrust
the actress' vehement words found an echo in the depths of her own
heart. How well she knew that tyranny of which Candeille spoke with
such bitterness! Had she not suffered from it, endured terrible sorrow and
humiliation, when under the ban of that same appalling tyranny she had
betrayed the identity-- then unknown to her--of the Scarlet Pimpernel?
Therefore when Candeille paused after those last excited words, she said
with more gentleness than she had shown hitherto, though still quite
coldly:
"But you have not yet told me why you came back here to-night? If
Citizen Chauvelin was your taskmaster, then you must know all that has
occurred."
"I had a vague hope that I might see you."
"For what purpose?"
"To warn you if I could."
"I need no warning."
"Or are too proud to take one. ... Do you know, Lady Blakeney, that
Citizen Chauvelin has a personal hatred against your husband?"
"How do you know that?" asked Marguerite, with her suspicions once
more on the qui-vive. She could not understand Candeille's attitude. This
midnight visit, the vehemence of her language, the strange mixture of
knowledge and ignorance which she displayed. What did this woman
know of Chauvelin's secret plans? Was she his open ally, or his helpless
tool? And was she even now playing a part taught her or commanded her
by that prince of intriguers?
Candeille, however, seemed quite unaware of the spirit of antagonism
and mistrust which Marguerite took but little pains now to disguise. She
clasped her hands together, and her voice shook with the earnestness of
her entreaty.
"Oh!" she said eagerly, "have I not seen that look of hatred in Chauvelin's
cruel eyes? ... He hates your husband, I tell you. ... Why I know not ...
but he hates him .. and means that great harm shall come to Sir Percy
through this absurd duel. ... Oh! Lady Blakeney, do not let him go ... I
entreat you, do not let him go!"
But Marguerite proudly drew back a step or two, away from the reach of
those hands, stretched out towards her in such vehement appeal.
"You are overwrought, Mademoiselle," she said coldly. "Believe me, I
have no need either of your entreaties or of your warning. ... I should like
you to think that I have no wish to be ungrateful ... that I appreciate any
kind thought you may have harboured for me in your mind. ... But
beyond that ... please forgive me if I say it somewhat crudely--I do not
feel that the matter concerns you in the least. ... The hour is late," she
added more gently, as if desiring to attenuate the harshness of her last
words. "Shall I send my maid to escort you home? She is devoted and
discreet ..."
"Nay!" retorted the other in tones of quiet sadness, "there is no need of
discretion ... I am not ashamed of my visit to you to-night. ... You are
very proud, and for your sake I will pray to God that sorrow and
humiliation may not come to you, as I feared. ... We are never likely to
meet again, Lady Blakeney ... you will not wish it, and I shall have passed
out of your life as swiftly as I had entered into it. ... But there was
another thought lurking in my mind when I came to-night. ... In case Sir
Percy goes to France ... the duel is to take place in or near Boulogne ...
this much I do know ... would you not wish to go with him?"
"Truly, Mademoiselle, I must repeat to you ..."
"That 'tis no concern of mine ... I know ... I own that. ... But, you see
when I came back here to-night in the silence and the darkness--I had not
guessed that you would be so proud ... I thought that I, a woman, would
know how to touch your womanly heart. ... I was clumsy, I suppose. ... I
made so sure that you would wish to go with your husband, in case ... in
case he insisted on running his head into the noose, which I feel sure
Chauvelin has prepared for him. ... I myself start for France shortly.
Citizen Chauvelin has provided me with the necessary passport for myself
and my maid, who was to have accompanied me. ... Then, just now,
when I was all alone ... and thought over all the mischief which that fiend
had forced me to do for him, it seemed to me that perhaps ..."
She broke off abruptly, and tried to read the other woman's face in the
gloom. But Marguerite, who was taller than the Frenchwoman, was
standing, very stiff and erect, giving the young actress neither
discouragement nor confidence. She did not interrupt Candeille's long
and voluble explanation: vaguely she wondered what it was all about, and
even now when the Frenchwoman paused, Marguerite said nothing, but
watched her quietly as she took a folded paper from the capacious
pocked of her cloak and then held it out with a look of timidity towards
Lady Blakeney.
"My maid need not come with me," said Desiree Candeille humbly. "I
would far rather travel alone ... this is her passport and ... Oh! you need
not take it out of my hand," she added in tones of bitter self-deprecation,
as Marguerite made no sign of taking the paper from her. "See! I will
leave it here among the roses! ... You mistrust me now ... it is only
natural ... presently, perhaps, calmer reflection will come ... you will see
that my purpose now is selfless ... that I only wish to serve you and him."
She stooped and placed the folded paper in the midst of a great clump of
centifolium roses, and then without another word she turned and went
her way. For a few moments, whilst Marguerite still stood there, puzzled
and vaguely moved, she could hear the gentle frou-frou of the other
woman's skirts against the soft sand of the path, and then a long-drawn
sigh that sounded like a sob.
Then all was still again. The gentle midnight breeze caressed the tops of
the ancient oaks and elms behind her, drawing murmurs from their dying
leaves like unto the whisperings of ghosts.
Marguerite shuddered with a slight sense of cold. Before her, amongst
the dark clump of leaves and the roses, invisible in the gloom, there
fluttered with a curious, melancholy flapping, the folded paper placed
there by Candeille. She watched it for awhile, as, disturbed by the wind, it
seemed ready to take its flight towards the river. Anon it fell to the
ground, and Marguerite with sudden overpowering impulse, stooped and
picked it up. Then clutching it nervously in her hand, she walked rapidly
back towards the house.
Chapter XV : Farewell
As she neared the terrace, she became conscious of several forms moving
about at the foot of the steps, some few feet below where she was
standing. Soon she saw the glimmer of lanthorns, heard whispering
voices, and the lapping of the water against the side of a boat.
Anon a figure, laden with cloaks and sundry packages, passed down the
steps close beside her. Even in the darkness Marguerite recognized
Benyon, her husband's confidential valet. Without a moment's hesitation,
she flew among the terrace towards the wing of the house occupied by
Sir Percy. She had not gone far before she discerned his tall figure
walking leisurely along the path which here skirted part of the house.
He had on his large caped coat, which was thrown open in front,
displaying a grey travelling suit of fine cloth; his hands were as usual
buried in the pockets of his breeches, and on his head he wore the folding
chapeau-bras which he habitually affected.
Before she had time to think, or to realize that he was going, before she
could utter one single word, she was in his arms, clinging to him with
passionate intensity, trying in the gloom to catch every expression of his
eyes, every quiver of the face now bent down so close to her.
"Percy, you cannot go ... you cannot go! ..." she pleaded.
She had felt his strong arms closing round her, his lips seeking hers, her
eyes, her hair, her clinging hands, which dragged at his shoulders in a
wild agony of despair.
"If you really loved me, Percy," she murmured, "you would not go, you
would not go ..."
He would not trust himself to speak; it well-nigh seemed as if his sinews
cracked with the violent effort at self-control. Oh! how she loved him,
when she felt in him the passionate lover, the wild, untamed creature that
he was at heart, on whom the frigid courtliness of manner sat but as a
thin veneer. This was his own real personality, and there was little now of
the elegant and accomplished gentleman of fashion, schooled to hold
every emotion in check, to hide every thought, every desire save that for
amusement or for display.
She--feeling her power and his weakness now--gave herself wholly to his
embrace, not grudging one single, passionate caress, yielding her lips to
him, the while she murmured:
"You cannot go ... you cannot ... why should you go? ... It is madness to
leave me ... I cannot let you go ..."
Her arms clung tenderly round him, her voice was warm and faintly
shaken with suppressed tears, and as he wildly murmured: "Don't! for
pity's sake!" she almost felt that her love would be triumphant.
"For pity's sake, I'll go on pleading, Percy!" she whispered. "Oh! my love,
my dear! do not leave me! ... we have scarce had time to savour our
happiness .. we have such arrears of joy to make up. ... Do not go, Percy
... there's so much I want to say to you. ... Nay! you shall not! you shall
not!" she added with sudden vehemence. "Look me straight in the eyes,
my dear, and tell me if you can leave now?"
He did not reply, but, almost roughly, he placed his hand over her tear-
dimmed eyes, which were turned up to his, in an agony of tender appeal.
Thus he blindfolded her with that wild caress. She should not see--no,
not even she!--that for the space of a few seconds stern manhood was
well-nigh vanquished by the magic of her love.
All that was most human in him, all that was weak in this strong and
untamed nature, cried aloud for peace and luxury and idleness: for long
summer afternoons spent in lazy content, for the companionship of
horses and dogs and of flowers, with no thought or cares save those for
the next evening's gavotte, no graver occupation save that of sitting at
HER feet.
And during these few seconds, whilst his hand lay across her eyes, the
lazy, idle fop of fashionable London was fighting a hand-to-hand fight
with the bold leader of a band of adventurers: and his own passionate
love for his wife ranged itself with fervent intensity on the side of his
weaker self. Forgotten were the horrors of the guillotine, the calls of the
innocent, the appeal of the helpless; forgotten the daring adventures, the
excitements, the hair's-breadth escapes; for those few seconds, heavenly
in themselves, he only remembered her--his wife--her beauty and her
tender appeal to him.
She would have pleaded again, for she felt that she was winning in this
fight: her instinct--that unerring instinct of the woman who loves and
feels herself beloved--told her that for the space of an infinitesimal
fraction of time, his iron will was inclined to bend; but he checked her
pleading with a kiss.
Then there came a change.
Like a gigantic wave carried inwards by the tide, his turbulent emotion
seemed suddenly to shatter itself against a rock of self-control. Was it a
call from the boatmen below? a distant scrunching of feet upon the
gravel?--who knows, perhaps only a sigh in the midnight air, a ghostly
summons from the land of dreams that recalled him to himself.
Even as Marguerite was still clinging to him, with the ardent fervour of
her own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the power of
his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim in his eyes.
He kissed her fondly, tenderly, and with infinite gentleness smoothed
away the little damp curls from her brow. There was a wistfulness now in
his caress, and in his kiss there was the finality of a long farewell.
"'Tis time I went," he said, "or we shall miss the tide."
These were the first coherent words he had spoken since first she had
met him here in this lonely part of the garden, and his voice was perfectly
steady, conventional and cold. An icy pang shot through Marguerite's
heart. It was as if she had been abruptly wakened from a beautiful dream.
"You are not going, Percy!" she murmured, and her own voice now
sounded hollow and forced. "Oh! if you loved me you would not go!"
"If I love you!"
Nay! in this at least there was no dream! no coldness in his voice when he
repeated those words with such a sigh of tenderness, such a world of
longing, that the bitterness of her great pain vanished, giving place to
tears. He took her hand in his. The passion was momentarily conquered,
forced within his innermost soul, by his own alter ego, that second
personality in him, the cold-blooded and coolly-calculating adventurer
who juggled with his life and tossed it recklessly upon the sea of chance
'twixt a doggerel and a smile. But the tender love lingered on, fighting the
enemy a while longer, the wistful desire was there for her kiss, the tired
longing for the exquisite repose of her embrace.
He took her hand in his, and bent his lips to it, and with the warmth of his
kiss upon it, she felt a moisture like a tear.
"I must go, dear," he said, after a little while.
"Why? Why?" she repeated obstinately. "Am I nothing then? Is my life of
no account? My sorrows? My fears? My misery? Oh!" she added with
vehement bitterness, "why should it always be others? What are others to
you and to me, Percy? ... Are we not happy here? ... Have you not
fulfilled to its uttermost that self-imposed duty to people who can be
nothing to us? ... Is not your life ten thousand times more precious to me
than the lives of ten thousand others?"
Even through the darkness, and because his face was so close to hers, she
could see a quaint little smile playing round the corners of his mouth.
"Nay, m'dear," he said gently, "'tis not ten thousand lives that call to me
to-day ... only one at best. ... Don't you hate to think of that poor little
old cure sitting in the midst of his ruined pride and hopes: the jewels so
confidently entrusted to his care, stolen from him, he waiting, perhaps, in
his little presbytery for the day when those brutes will march him to
prison and to death. ... Nay! I think a little sea voyage and English
country air would suit the Abbe Foucquet, m'dear, and I only mean to ask
him to cross the Channel with me! ..."
"Percy!" she pleaded.
"Oh! I know! I know!" he rejoined with that short deprecatory sigh of
his, which seemed always to close any discussion between them on that
point, "you are thinking of that absurd duel ..." He laughed lightly, good-
humouredly, and his eyes gleamed with merriment.
"La, m'dear!" he said gaily, "will you not reflect a moment? Could I
refuse the challenge before His Royal Highness and the ladies? I couldn't.
... Faith! that was it. ... Just a case of couldn't. ... Fate did it all ... the
quarrel ... my interference ... the challenge. ... HE had planned it all of
course. ... Let us own that he is a brave man, seeing that he and I are not
even yet, for that beating he gave me on the Calais cliffs."
"Yes! he has planned it all," she retorted vehemently. "The quarrel to-
night, your journey to France, your meeting with him face to face at a
given hour and place where he can most readily, most easily close the
death-trap upon you."
This time he broke into a laugh. A good, hearty laugh, full of the joy of
living, of the madness and intoxication of a bold adventure, a laugh that
had not one particle of anxiety or of tremor in it.
"Nay! m'dear!" he said, "but your ladyship is astonishing. ... Close a
death-trap upon your humble servant? ... Nay! the governing citizens of
France will have to be very active and mighty wide-awake ere they
succeed in stealing a march on me. ... Zounds! but we'll give them an
exciting chase this time. ... Nay! little woman, do not fear!" he said with
sudden infinite gentleness, "those demmed murderers have not got me
yet."
Oh! how often she had fought with him thus: with him, the adventurer,
the part of his dual nature that was her bitter enemy, and which took him,
the lover, away from her side. She knew so well the finality of it all, the
amazing hold which that unconquerable desire for these mad adventures
had upon him. Impulsive, ardent as she was, Marguerite felt in her very
soul an overwhelming fury against herself for her own weakness, her own
powerlessness in the face of that which forever threatened to ruin her life
and her happiness.
Yes! and his also! for he loved her! he loved her! he loved her! the
thought went on hammering in her mind, for she knew of its great truth!
He loved her and went away! And she, poor, puny weakling, was unable
to hold him back; the tendrils which fastened his soul to hers were not so
tenacious as those which made him cling to suffering humanity, over
there in France, where men and women were in fear of death and torture,
and looked upon the elusive and mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel as a
heaven-born hero sent to save them from their doom. To them at these
times his very heartstrings seemed to turn with unconquerable force, and
when, with all the ardour of her own passion, she tried to play upon the
cords of his love for her, he could not respond, for they--the strangers--
had the stronger claim.
And yet through it all she knew that this love of humanity, this mad
desire to serve and to help, in no way detracted from his love for her.
Nay, it intensified it, made it purer and better, adding to the joy of perfect
intercourse the poetic and subtle fragrance of ever-recurring pain.
But now at last she felt weary of the fight: her heart was aching, bruised
and sore. An infinite fatigue seemed to weigh like lead upon her very
soul. This seemed so different to any other parting, that had perforce
been during the past year. The presence of Chauvelin in her house, the
obvious planning of this departure for France, had filled her with a
foreboding, nay, almost a certitude of a gigantic and deadly cataclysm.
Her senses began to reel; she seemed not to see anything very distinctly:
even the loved form took on a strange and ghostlike shape. He now
looked preternaturally tall, and there was a mist between her and him.
She thought that he spoke to her again, but she was not quite sure, for
his voice sounded like some weird and mysterious echo. A bosquet of
climbing heliotrope close by threw a fragrance into the evening air, which
turned her giddy with its overpowering sweetness.
She closed her eyes, for she felt as if she must die, if she held them open
any longer; and as she closed them it seemed to her as if he folded her in
one last, long, heavenly embrace.
He felt her graceful figure swaying in his arms like a tall and slender lily
bending to the wind. He saw that she was but half-conscious, and
thanked heaven for this kindly solace to his heart-breaking farewell.
There was a sloping, mossy bank close by, there where the marble terrace
yielded to the encroaching shrubbery: a tangle of pale pink monthly roses
made a bower overhead. She was just sufficiently conscious to enable
him to lead her to this soft green couch. There he laid her amongst the
roses, kissed the dear, tired eyes, her hands, her lips, her tiny feet, and
went.
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