The Elusive Pimpernel Baroness Orczy (read more books txt) 📖

throne always contrives to be thirsty when I am satiated, which is Tantalus’ torture magnified a thousandfold, or to be satiated when my parched palate most requires solace; in either case I am a most pitiable man.”

“In either case you contrive to talk a deal of nonsense, Sir Percy,” said Marguerite gaily.

“What else would your ladyship have me do this lazy, hot afternoon?”

“Come and view the booths with me,” she said. “I am dying for a sight of the fat woman and the lean man, the pig-faced child, the dwarfs and the giants. There! Monsieur Déroulède,” she added, turning to the young Frenchman who was standing close beside her, “take Mlle. Juliette to hear the clavecin players. I vow she is tired of my company.”

The gaily-dressed group was breaking up. Juliette and Paul Déroulède were only too ready to stroll off arm-in-arm together, and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was ever in attendance on his young wife.

For one moment Marguerite caught her husband’s eye. No one was within earshot.

“Percy,” she said.

“Yes, m’dear.”

“When did you return?”

“Early this morning.”

“You crossed over from Calais?”

“From Boulogne.”

“Why did you not let me know sooner?”

“I could not, dear. I arrived at my lodgings in town, looking a disgusting object.⁠ ⁠… I could not appear before you until I had washed some of the French mud from off my person. Then His Royal Highness demanded my presence. He wanted news of the Duchesse de Verneuil, whom I had the honour of escorting over from France. By the time I had told him all that he wished to hear, there was no chance of finding you at home, and I thought I should see you here.”

Marguerite said nothing for a moment, but her foot impatiently tapped the ground, and her fingers were fidgeting with the gold fringe of her scarf. The look of joy, of exquisite happiness, seemed to have suddenly vanished from her face; there was a deep furrow between her brows.

She sighed a short, sharp sigh, and cast a rapid upward glance at her husband.

He was looking down at her, smiling good-naturedly, a trifle sarcastically perhaps, and the frown on her face deepened.

“Percy,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, m’dear.”

“These anxieties are terrible to bear. You have been twice over to France within the last month, dealing with your life as lightly as if it did not now belong to me. When will you give up these mad adventures, and leave others to fight their own battles and to save their own lives as best they may?”

She had spoken with increased vehemence, although her voice was scarce raised above a whisper. Even in her sudden, passionate anger she was on her guard not to betray his secret. He did not reply immediately, but seemed to be studying the beautiful face on which heartbroken anxiety was now distinctly imprinted.

Then he turned and looked at the solitary booth in the distance, across the frontal of which a large placard had been recently affixed, bearing the words: “Come and see the true representation of the guillotine!”

In front of the booth a man dressed in ragged breeches, with Phrygian cap on his head, adorned with a tricolour cockade, was vigorously beating a drum, shouting volubly the while:

“Come in and see, come in and see! the only realistic presentation of the original guillotine. Hundreds perish in Paris every day! Come and see! Come and see! the perfectly vivid performance of what goes on hourly in Paris at the present moment.”

Marguerite had followed the direction of Sir Percy’s eyes. She too was looking at the booth, she heard the man’s monotonous, raucous cries. She gave a slight shudder and once more looked imploringly at her husband. His face⁠—though outwardly as lazy and calm as before⁠—had a strange set look about the mouth and firm jaw, and his slender hand, the hand of a dandy accustomed to handle cards and dice and to play lightly with the foils, was clutched tightly beneath the folds of the priceless Mechlin frills.

It was but a momentary stiffening of the whole powerful frame, an instant’s flash of the ruling passion hidden within that very secretive soul. Then he once more turned towards her, the rigid lines of his face relaxed, he broke into a pleasant laugh, and with the most elaborate and most courtly bow he took her hand in his and raising her fingers to his lips, he gave the answer to her questions:

“When your ladyship has ceased to be the most admired woman in Europe, namely, when I am in my grave.”

VI For the Poor of Paris

There was no time to say more then. For the laughing, chatting groups of friends had once more closed up round Marguerite and her husband, and she, ever on the alert, gave neither look nor sign that any serious conversation had taken place between Sir Percy and herself.

Whatever she might feel or dread with regard to the foolhardy adventures in which he still persistently embarked, no member of the League ever guarded the secret of his chief more loyally than did Marguerite Blakeney.

Though her heart overflowed with a passionate pride in her husband, she was clever enough to conceal every emotion save that which Nature had insisted on imprinting in her face, her present radiant happiness and her irresistible love. And thus before the world she kept up that bantering way with him, which had characterized her earlier matrimonial life, that good-natured, easy contempt which he had so readily accepted in those days, and which their entourage would have missed and would have enquired after, if she had changed her manner towards him too suddenly.

In her heart she knew full well that within Percy Blakeney’s soul she had a great and powerful rival: his wild, mad, passionate love of adventure. For it he would sacrifice everything, even his life; she dared not ask herself if he would sacrifice his love.

Twice in a few weeks he had been over to France: every time he went she could not know if she