Once outside the noisy coffee-room, alone in the dimly-lighted passage,Marguerite Blakeney seemed to breathe more freely. She heaved a deepsigh, like one who had long been oppressed with the heavy weight ofconstant self-control, and she allowed a few tears to fall unheeded downher cheeks.
Outside the rain had ceased, and through the swiftly passing clouds, thepale rays of an after-storm sun shone upon the beautiful white coast ofKent and the quaint, irregular houses that clustered round the AdmiraltyPier. Marguerite Blakeney stepped on to the porch and looked out to sea.Silhouetted against the ever-changing sky, a graceful schooner, withwhite 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 backto France into the very midst of that seething, bloody Revolution whichwas overthrowing a monarchy, attacking a religion, destroying a society,in order to try and rebuild upon the ashes of tradition a new Utopia, ofwhich 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 rotundand massive chin, and who walked with that peculiar rolling gait whichinvariably betrays the seafaring man: the other, a young, slight figure,neatly and becomingly dressed in a dark, many caped overcoat; he wasclean-shaved, and his dark hair was taken well back over a clear andnoble forehead.
"Armand!" said Marguerite Blakeney, as soon as she saw him approachingfrom the distance, and a happy smile shone on her sweet face, eventhrough the tears.
A minute or two later brother and sister were locked in each other'sarms, while the old skipper stood respectfully on one side.
"How much time have we got, Briggs?" asked Lady Blakeney, "before M. St.Just need go on board?"
"We ought to weigh anchor before half an hour, your ladyship," repliedthe old man, pulling at his grey forelock.
Linking her arm in his, Marguerite led her brother towards the cliffs.
"Half an hour," she said, looking wistfully out to sea, "half an hourmore and you'll be far from me, Armand! Oh! I can't believe that you aregoing, dear! These last few days--whilst Percy has been away, and I'vehad you all to myself, have slipped by like a dream."
"I am not going far, sweet one," said the young man gently, "a narrowchannel to cross--a few miles of road--I can soon come back."
"Nay, 'tis not the distance, Armand--but that awful Paris . . . just now. . ."
They had reached the edge of the cliff. The gentle sea-breeze blewMarguerite's hair about her face, and sent the ends of her soft lacefichu waving round her, like a white and supple snake. She tried topierce the distance far away, beyond which lay the shores of France:that relentless and stern France which was exacting her pound of flesh,the blood-tax from the noblest of her sons.
"Our own beautiful country, Marguerite," said Armand, who seemed to havedivined her thoughts.
"They are going too far, Armand," she said vehemently. "You are arepublican, so am I . . . we have the same thoughts, the same enthusiasmfor liberty and equality . . . but even YOU must think that they aregoing too far . . ."
"Hush!--" said Armand, instinctively, as he threw a quick, apprehensiveglance around him.
"Ah! you see: you don't think yourself that it is safe even to speak ofthese things--here in England!" She clung to him suddenly with strong,almost motherly, passion: "Don't go, Armand!" she begged; "don't goback! What should I do if . . . if . . . if . . ."
Her voice was choked in sobs, her eyes, tender, blue and loving, gazedappealingly at the young man, who in his turn looked steadfastly intohers.
"You would in any case be my own brave sister," he said gently, "whowould remember that, when France is in peril, it is not for her sons toturn their backs on her."
Even as he spoke, that sweet childlike smile crept back into her face,pathetic in the extreme, for it seemed drowned in tears.
"Oh! Armand!" she said quaintly, "I sometimes wish you had not so manylofty virtues. . . . I assure you little sins are far less dangerousand uncomfortable. But you WILL be prudent?" she added earnestly.
"As far as possible . . . I promise you."
"Remember, dear, I have only you . . . to . . . to care for me. . . ."
"Nay, sweet one, you have other interests now. Percy cares foryou . . ."
A look of strange wistfulness crept into her eyes as she murmured,--
"He did . . . once . . ."
"But surely . . ."
"There, there, dear, don't distress yourself on my account. Percy isvery good . . ."
"Nay!" he interrupted energetically, "I will distress myself on youraccount, my Margot. Listen, dear, I have not spoken of these things toyou before; something always seemed to stop me when I wished to questionyou. But, somehow, I feel as if I could not go away and leave you nowwithout asking you one question. . . . You need not answer it if youdo not wish," he added, as he noted a sudden hard look, almost ofapprehension, darting through her eyes.
"What is it?" she asked simply.
"Does Sir Percy Blakeney know that . . . I mean, does he know the partyou played in the arrest of the Marquis de St. Cyr?"
She laughed--a mirthless, bitter, contemptuous laugh, which was like ajarring chord in the music of her voice.
"That I denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, you mean, to the tribunal thatultimately sent him and all his family to the guillotine? Yes, he doesknow. . . . . I told him after I married him. . . ."
"You told him all the circumstances--which so completely exonerated youfrom any blame?"
"It was too late to talk of 'circumstances'; he heard the story fromother sources; my confession came too tardily, it seems. I could nolonger plead extenuating circumstances: I could not demean myself bytrying to explain--"
"And?"
"And now I have the satisfaction, Armand, of knowing that the biggestfool in England has the most complete contempt for his wife."
She spoke with vehement bitterness this time, and Armand St. Just, wholoved her so dearly, felt that he had placed a somewhat clumsy fingerupon an aching wound.
"But Sir Percy loved you, Margot," he repeated gently.
"Loved me?--Well, Armand, I thought at one time that he did, or I shouldnot have married him. I daresay," she added, speaking very rapidly, asif she were about to lay down a heavy burden, which had oppressed herfor months, "I daresay that even you thought--as everybody else did--thatI married Sir Percy because of his wealth--but I assure you, dear,that it was not so. He seemed to worship me with a curious intensity ofconcentrated passion, which went straight to my heart. I had neverloved any one before, as you know, and I was four-and-twenty then--soI naturally thought that it was not in my nature to love. But it hasalways seemed to me that it MUST be HEAVENLY to be loved blindly,passionately, wholly . . . worshipped, in fact--and the very fact thatPercy was slow and stupid was an attraction for me, as I thought hewould love me all the more. A clever man would naturally have otherinterests, an ambitious man other hopes. . . . I thought that a foolwould worship, and think of nothing else. And I was ready to respond,Armand; I would have allowed myself to be worshipped, and given infinitetenderness in return. . . ."
She sighed--and there was a world of disillusionment in that sigh.Armand St. Just had allowed her to speak on without interruption: helistened to her, whilst allowing his own thoughts to run riot. Itwas terrible to see a young and beautiful woman--a girl in all butname--still standing almost at the threshold of her life, yet bereftof hope, bereft of illusions, bereft of all those golden and fantasticdreams, which should have made her youth one long, perpetual holiday.
Yet perhaps--though he loved his sister dearly--perhaps he understood:he had studied men in many countries, men of all ages, men of everygrade of social and intellectual status, and inwardly he understood whatMarguerite had left unsaid. Granted that Percy Blakeney was dull-witted,but in his slow-going mind, there would still be room for thatineradicable pride of a descendant of a long line of English gentlemen.A
Blakeney had died on Bosworth field, another had sacrified lifeand fortune for the sake of a treacherous Stuart: and that samepride--foolish and prejudiced as the republican Armand would callit--must have been stung to the quick on hearing of the sin which layat Lady Blakeney's door. She had been young, misguided, ill-advisedperhaps. Armand knew that: her impulses and imprudence, knew itstill better; but Blakeney was slow-witted, he would not listen to"circumstances," he only clung to facts, and these had shown him LadyBlakeney denouncing a fellow man to a tribunal that knew no pardon:and the contempt he would feel for the deed she had done, howeverunwittingly, would kill that same love in him, in which sympathy andintellectuality could never have a part.
Yet even now, his own sister puzzled him. Life and love have suchstrange vagaries. Could it be that with the waning of her husband'slove, Marguerite's heart had awakened with love for him? Strangeextremes meet in love's pathway: this woman, who had had halfintellectual Europe at her feet, might perhaps have set her affectionson a fool. Marguerite was gazing out towards the sunset. Armand couldnot see her face, but presently it seemed to him that something whichglittered for a moment in the golden evening light, fell from her eyesonto her dainty fichu of lace.
But he could not broach that subject with her. He knew her strange,passionate nature so well, and knew that reserve which lurked behindher frank, open ways. They had always been together, these two, for theirparents had died when Armand was still a youth, and Marguerite but achild. He, some eight years her senior, had watched over her until hermarriage; had chaperoned her during those brilliant years spent in theflat of the Rue de Richelieu, and had seen her enter upon this new lifeof hers, here in England, with much sorrow and some foreboding.
This was his first visit to England since her marriage, and the fewmonths of separation had already seemed to have built up a slight, thinpartition between brother and sister; the same deep, intense lovewas still there, on both sides, but each now seemed to have a secretorchard, into which the other dared not penetrate.
There was much Armand St. Just could not tell his sister; the politicalaspect of the revolution in France was changing almost every day; shemight not understand how his own views and sympathies might becomemodified, even as the excesses, committed by those who had been hisfriends, grew in horror and in intensity. And Marguerite could not speakto her brother about the secrets of her heart; she hardly understoodthem herself, she only knew that, in the midst of luxury, she feltlonely and unhappy.
And now Armand was going away; she feared for his safety, she longed forhis presence. She would not spoil these last few sadly-sweet moments byspeaking about herself. She led him gently along the cliffs, then downto the beach; their arms linked in one another's, they had still so muchto say that lay just outside that secret orchard of theirs.
CHAPTER VIII THE ACCREDITED AGENT
The Scarlet Pimpernel Page 7