"How can I," laughed the other contemptuously, "if I don't know who he is?"
"If you did," retorted Chauvelin, "it wouldn't help you ... much. But beware of every man you don't know; be[68]ware of every stranger you meet; trust no one; above all, follow no one. He is there where you least expect him under a disguise you would scarcely dream of."
"Tell me who he is then—since you know him—so that I may duly beware of him."
"No," rejoined Chauvelin with the same slow deliberation, "I will not tell you who he is. Knowledge in this case would be a very dangerous thing."
"Dangerous? To whom?"
"To yourself probably. To me and to the Republic most undoubtedly. No! I will not tell you who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. But take my advice, citizen Martin-Roget," he added emphatically, "go back to Paris or to Nantes and strive there to serve your country rather than run your head into a noose by meddling with things here in England, and running after your own schemes of revenge."
"My own schemes of revenge!" exclaimed Martin-Roget with a hoarse cry that was like a snarl.... It seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but that the words choked him even before they reached his lips. The hot flush died down from his forehead and his face was once more the colour of lead. He took up a log from the corner of the hearth and threw it with a savage, defiant gesture into the fire.
Somewhere in the house a clock struck nine.
V
Martin-Roget waited until the last echo of the gong had died away, then he said very slowly and very quietly:
"Forgo my own schemes of revenge? Can you even remotely guess, citizen Chauvelin, what it would mean to a[69] man of my temperament and of my calibre to give up that for which I have toiled and striven for the past four years? Think of what I was on that day when a conglomeration of adverse circumstances turned our proposed expedition against the château de Kernogan into a disaster for our village lads, and a triumph for the duc. I was knocked down and crushed all but to death by the wheels of Mlle. de Kernogan's coach. I managed to crawl in the mud and the cold and the rain, on my hands and knees, hurt, bleeding, half dead, as far as the presbytery of Vertou where the curé kept me hidden at risk of his own life for two days until I was able to crawl farther away out of sight. The curé did not know, I did not know then of the devilish revenge which the duc de Kernogan meant to wreak against my father. The news reached me when it was all over and I had worked my way to Paris with the few sous in my pocket which that good curé had given me, earning bed and bread as I went along. I was an ignorant lout when I arrived in Paris. I had been one of the ci-devant Kernogan's labourers—his chattel, what?—little better or somewhat worse off than a slave. There I heard that my father had been foully murdered—hung for a crime which I was supposed to have committed, for which I had not even been tried. Then the change in me began. For four years I starved in a garret, toiling like a galley-slave with my hands and muscles by day and at my books by night. And what am I now? I have worked at books, at philosophy, at science: I am a man of education. I can talk and discuss with the best of those d——d aristos who flaunt their caprices and their mincing manners in the face of the outraged democracy of two continents. I speak English—almost like a native—and Danish and German too. I can quote English poets and criticise M. de Voltaire. I am an aristo, what? For this[70] I have worked, citizen Chauvelin—day and night—oh! those nights! how I have slaved to make myself what I now am! And all for the one object—the sole object without which existence would have been absolutely unendurable. That object guided me, helped me to bear and to toil, it cheered and comforted me! To be even one day with the duc de Kernogan and with his daughter! to be their master! to hold them at my mercy!... to destroy or pardon as I choose!... to be the arbiter of their fate!... I have worked for four years: now my goal is in sight, and you talk glibly of forgoing my own schemes of revenge! Believe me, citizen Chauvelin," he concluded, "it would be easier for me to hold my right hand into those flames until it hath burned to a cinder than to forgo the hope of that vengeance which has eaten into my soul. It would hurt much less."
He had spoken thus at great length, but with extraordinary restraint. Never once did he raise his voice or indulge in gesture. He spoke in even, monotonous tones, like one who is reciting a lesson; and he sat straight in front of the fire, his elbow on his knee, his chin resting in his hand and his eyes fixed upon the flames.
Chauvelin had listened in perfect silence. The scorn, the resentful anger, the ill-concealed envy of the fallen man for the successful upstart had died out of his glance. Martin-Roget's story, the intensity of feeling betrayed in that absolute, outward calm had caused a chord of sympathy to vibrate in the other's atrophied heart. How well he understood that vibrant passion of hate, that longing to exact an eye for an eye, an outrage for an outrage! Was not his own life given over now to just such a longing?—a mad aching desire to be even once with that hated enemy, that maddening, mocking, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel who had fooled and baffled him so often?
[71]
VI
Some few moments had gone by since Martin-Roget's harsh, monotonous voice had ceased to echo through the low raftered room: silence had fallen between the two men—there was indeed nothing more to say; the one had unburthened his over-full heart and the other had understood. They were of a truth made to understand one another, and the silence between them betokened sympathy.
Around them all was still, the stillness of a mist-laden night; in the house no one stirred: the shutter even had ceased to creak; only the crackling of the wood fire broke that silence which soon became oppressive.
Martin-Roget was the first to rouse himself from this trance-like state wherein memory was holding such ruthless sway: he brought his hands sharply down on his knees, turned to look for a moment on his companion, gave a short laugh and finally rose, saying briskly the while:
"And now, citizen, I shall have to bid you adieu and make my way back to Bath. The nags have had the rest they needed and I cannot spend the night here."
He went to the door and opening it called a loud "Hallo, there!"
The same woman who had waited on him on his arrival came slowly down the stairs in response.
"The man with the horses," commanded Martin-Roget peremptorily. "Tell him I'll be ready in two minutes."
He returned to the room and proceeded to struggle into his heavy coat, Chauvelin as before making no attempt to help him. He sat once more huddled up in the ingle-nook hugging his elbows with his thin white hands. There was a smile half scornful, but not wholly dissatisfied around[72] his bloodless lips. When Martin-Roget was ready to go he called out quietly after him:
"The Hollandia remember! At Portishead on the last day of the month. Captain K U Y P E R."
"Quite right," replied Martin-Roget laconically. "I'm not like to forget."
He then picked up his hat and riding whip and went out.
VII
Outside in the porch he found the woman bending over the recumbent figure of his guide.
"He be azleep, Mounzeer," she said placidly, "fast azleep, I do believe."
"Asleep?" cried Martin-Roget roughly, "we'll soon see about waking him up."
He gave the man a violent kick with the toe of his boot. The man groaned, stretched himself, turned over and rubbed his eyes. The light of the swinging lanthorn showed him the wrathful face of his employer. He struggled to his feet very quickly after that.
"Stir yourself, man," cried Martin-Roget savagely, as he gripped the fellow by the shoulder and gave him a vigorous shaking. "Bring the horses along now, and don't keep me waiting, or there'll be trouble."
"All right, Mounzeer, all right," muttered the man placidly, as he shook himself free from the uncomfortable clutch on his shoulder and leisurely made his way out of the porch.
"Haven't you got a boy or a man who can give that lout a hand with those sacré horses?" queried Martin-Roget impatiently. "He hardly knows a horse's head from its tail."[73]
> "No, zir, I've no one to-night," replied the woman gently. "My man and my son they be gone down to Watchet to 'elp with the cargo and the pack-'orzes. They won't be 'ere neither till after midnight. But," she added more cheerfully, "I can straighten a saddle if you want it."
"That's all right then—but...."
He paused suddenly, for a loud cry of "Hallo! Well! I'm ..." rang through the night from the direction of the rear of the house. The cry expressed both surprise and dismay.
"What the —— is it?" called Martin-Roget loudly in response.
"The 'orzes!"
"What about them?"
To this there was no reply, and with a savage oath and calling to the woman to show him the way Martin-Roget ran out in the direction whence had come the cry of dismay. He fell straight into the arms of his guide, who promptly set up another cry, more dismal, more expressive of bewilderment than the first.
"They be gone," he shouted excitedly.
"Who have gone?" queried the Frenchman.
"The 'orzes!"
"The horses? What in —— do you mean?"
"The 'orzes have gone, Mounzeer. There was no door to the ztables and they be gone."
"You're a fool," growled Martin-Roget, who of a truth had not taken in as yet the full significance of the man's jerky sentences. "Horses don't walk out of the stables like that. They can't have done if you tied them up properly."
"I didn't tie them up," protested the man. "I didn't know 'ow to tie the beastly nags up, and there was no one to 'elp me. I didn't think they'd walk out like that."[74]
"Well! if they're gone you'll have to go and get them back somehow, that's all," said Martin-Roget, whose temper by now was beyond his control, and who was quite ready to give the lout a furious thrashing.
"Get them back, Mounzeer," wailed the man, "'ow can I? In the dark, too. Besides, if I did come nose to nose wi' 'em I shouldn't know 'ow to get 'em. Would you, Mounzeer?" he added with bland impertinence.
"I shall know how to lay you out, you satané idiot," growled Martin-Roget, "if I have to spend the night in this hole."
He strode on in the darkness in the direction where a little glimmer of light showed the entrance to a wide barn which obviously was used as a rough stabling. He stumbled through a yard and over a miscellaneous lot of rubbish. It was hardly possible to see one's hands before one's eyes in the darkness and the fog. The woman followed him, offering consolation in the shape of a seat in the coffee-room whereon to pass the night, for indeed she had no bed to spare, and the man from Chelwood brought up the rear—still ejaculating cries of astonishment rather than distress.
"You are that careless, man!" the woman admonished him placidly, "and I give you a lanthorn and all for to look after your 'orzes properly."
"But you didn't give me a 'and for to tie 'em up in their stalls, and give 'em their feed. Drat 'em! I 'ate 'orzes and all to do with 'em."
"Didn't you give 'em the feed I give you for 'em then?"
"No, I didn't. Think you I'd go into one o' them narrow stalls and get kicked for my pains."
"Then they was 'ungry, pore things," she concluded, "and went out after the 'ay what's just outside. I don't know 'ow you'll ever get 'em back in this fog."[75]
There was indeed no doubt that the nags had made their way out of the stables, in that irresponsible fashion peculiar to animals, and that they had gone astray in the dark. There certainly was no sound in the night to denote their presence anywhere near.
"We'll get 'em all right in the morning," remarked the woman with her exasperating placidity.
"To-morrow morning!" exclaimed Martin-Roget in a passion of fury. "And what the d——l am I going to do in the meanwhile?"
The woman reiterated her offers of a seat by the fire in the coffee-room.
"The men won't mind ye, zir," she said, "heaps of 'em are Frenchies like yourself, and I'll tell 'em you ain't a spying on 'em."
"It's no more than five mile to Chelwood," said the man blandly, "and maybe you get a better shakedown there."
"A five-mile tramp," growled Martin-Roget, whose wrath seemed to have spent itself before the hopelessness of his situation, "in this fog and gloom, and knee-deep in mud.... There'll be a sovereign for you, woman," he added curtly, "if you can give me a clean bed for the night."
The woman hesitated for a second or two.
"Well! a zovereign is tempting, zir," she said at last. "You shall 'ave my son's bed. I know 'e'd rather 'ave the zovereign if 'e was ever zo tired. This way, zir," she added, as she once more turned toward the house, "mind them 'urdles there."
"And where am I goin' to zleep?" called the man from Chelwood after the two retreating figures.
"I'll look after the man for you, zir," said the woman; "for a matter of a shillin' 'e can sleep in the coffee-room, and I'll give 'im 'is breakfast too."[76]
"Not one farthing will I pay for the idiot," retorted Martin-Roget savagely. "Let him look after himself."
He had once more reached the porch. Without another word, and not heeding the protests and curses of the unfortunate man whom he had left standing shelterless in the middle of the yard, he pushed open the front door of the house and once more found himself in the passage outside the coffee-room.
But the woman had turned back a little before she followed her guest into the house, and she called out to the man in the darkness:
"You may zleep in any of them outhouses and welcome, and zure there'll be a bit o' porridge for ye in the mornin'!"
"Think ye I'll stop," came in a furious growl out of the gloom, "and conduct that d——d frogeater back to Chelwood? No fear. Five miles ain't nothin' to me, and 'e can keep the miserable shillin' 'e'd 'ave give me for my pains. Let 'im get 'is 'orzes back 'izelf and get to Chelwood as best 'e can. I'm off, and you can tell 'im zo from me. It'll make 'im sleep all the better, I reckon."
The woman was obviously not of a disposition that would ever argue a matter of this sort out. She had done her best, she reckoned, both for master and man, and if they chose to quarrel between themselves that was their business and not hers.
So she quietly went into the house again; barred and bolted the door, and finding the stranger still waiting for her in the passage she conducted him to a tiny room on the floor above.
"My son's room, Mounzeer," she said; "I 'ope as 'ow ye'll be comfortable."
"It will do all right," assented Martin-Roget. "Is 'the[77] Captain' sleeping in the house to-night?" he added as with an afterthought.
"Only in the coffee-room, Mounzeer. I couldn't give 'im a bed. 'The Captain' will be leaving with the pack 'orzes a couple of hours before dawn. Shall I tell 'im you be 'ere."
"No, no," he replied promptly. "Don't tell him anything. I don't want to see him again: and he'll be gone before I'm awake, I reckon."
"That 'e will, zir, most like. Good-night, zir."
"Good-night. And—mind—that lout gets the two horses back again for my use in the morning. I shall have to make my way to Chelwood as early as may be."
"Aye, aye, zir," assented the woman placidly. It were no use, she thought, to upset the Mounzeer's temper once more by telling him that his guide had decamped. Time enough in the morning, when she would be less busy.
"And my John can see 'im as far as Chelwood," she thought to herself as she finally closed the door on the stranger and made her way slowly down the creaking stairs.
* * *
[78]
CHAPTER III
THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS
I
The sigh of satisfaction was quite unmistakable.
It could be heard from end to end, from corner to corner of the building. It sounded above the din of the orchestra who had just attacked with vigour the opening bars of a schottische, above the brouhaha of moving dancers and the frou-frou of skirts: it travelled from the small octagon hall, through the central salon to the tea-room, the ball-room and the card-room: it reverberated from the gallery in the ball-room to the maids' gallery: it distracted
the ladies from their gossip and the gentlemen from their cards.
It was a universal, heartfelt "Ah!" of intense and pleasurable satisfaction.
Sir Percy Blakeney and his lady had just arrived. It was close on midnight, and the ball had positively languished. What was a ball without the presence of Sir Percy? His Royal Highness too had been expected earlier than this. But it was not thought that he would come at all, despite his promise, if the spoilt pet of Bath society remained unaccountably absent; and the Assembly Rooms had worn an air of woe even in the face of the gaily dressed throng which filled every vast room in its remotest angle.
But now Sir Percy Blakeney had arrived, just before the clocks had struck midnight, and exactly one minute[79] before His Royal Highness drove up himself from the Royal Apartments. Lady Blakeney was looking more radiant and beautiful than ever before, so everyone remarked, when a few moments later she appeared in the crowded ball-room on the arm of His Royal Highness and closely followed by my lord Anthony Dewhurst and by Sir Percy himself, who had the young Duchess of Flintshire on his arm.
"What do you mean, you incorrigible rogue," her Grace was saying with playful severity to her cavalier, "by coming so late to the ball? Another two minutes and you would have arrived after His Royal Highness himself: and how would you have justified such solecism, I would like to know."
"By swearing that thoughts of your Grace had completely addled my poor brain," he retorted gaily, "and that in the mental contemplation of such charms I forgot time, place, social duties, everything."
"Even the homage due to truth," she laughed. "Cannot you for once in your life be serious, Sir Percy?"
"Impossible, dear lady, whilst your dainty hand rests upon mine arm."
II
It was not often that His Royal Highness graced Bath with his presence, and the occasion was made the excuse for quite exceptional gaiety and brilliancy. The new fashions of this memorable year of 1793 had defied the declaration of war and filtrated through from Paris: London milliners had not been backward in taking the hint, and though most of the more starchy dowagers obstinately adhered to the pre-war fashions—the huge hooped skirts,[80] stiff stomachers, pointed waists, voluminous panniers and monumental head erections—the young and smart matrons were everywhere to be seen in the new gracefully flowing skirts innocent of steel constructions, the high waist line, the pouter pigeon-like draperies over their pretty bosoms.
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