The Scarlet Pimpernel (6 page)

Marguerite Blakeney was then scarcely five-and-twenty, and her beauty
was at its most dazzling stage. The large hat, with its undulating and
waving plumes, threw a soft shadow across the classic brow with the
auerole of auburn hair—free at the moment from any powder; the sweet,
almost childlike mouth, the straight chiselled nose, round chin, and
delicate throat, all seemed set off by the picturesque costume of the
period. The rich blue velvet robe moulded in its every line the graceful
contour of the figure, whilst one tiny hand held, with a dignity all
its own, the tall stick adorned with a large bunch of ribbons which
fashionable ladies of the period had taken to carrying recently.

With a quick glance all around the room, Marguerite Blakeney had taken
stock of every one there. She nodded pleasantly to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes,
whilst extending a hand to Lord Antony.

"Hello! my Lord Tony, why—what are YOU doing here in Dover?" she said
merrily.

Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned and faced the Comtesse and
Suzanne. Her whole face lighted up with additional brightness, as she
stretched out both arms towards the young girl.

"Why! if that isn't my little Suzanne over there. PARDIEU, little
citizeness, how came you to be in England? And Madame too?"

She went up effusive to them both, with not a single touch of
embarrassment in her manner or in her smile. Lord Tony and Sir Andrew
watched the little scene with eager apprehension. English though they
were, they had often been in France, and had mixed sufficiently with the
French to realise the unbending hauteur, the bitter hatred with which
the old NOBLESSE of France viewed all those who had helped to contribute
to their downfall. Armand St. Just, the brother of beautiful Lady
Blakeney—though known to hold moderate and conciliatory views—was
an ardent republican; his feud with the ancient family of St. Cyr—the
rights and wrongs of which no outsider ever knew—had culminated in the
downfall, the almost total extinction of the latter. In France, St.
Just and his party had triumphed, and here in England, face to face with
these three refugees driven from their country, flying for their lives,
bereft of all which centuries of luxury had given them, there stood a
fair scion of those same republican families which had hurled down a
throne, and uprooted an aristocracy whose origin was lost in the dim and
distant vista of bygone centuries.

She stood there before them, in all the unconscious insolence of beauty,
and stretched out her dainty hand to them, as if she would, by that one
act, bridge over the conflict and bloodshed of the past decade.

"Suzanne, I forbid you to speak to that woman," said the Comtesse,
sternly, as she placed a restraining hand upon her daughter's arm.

She had spoken in English, so that all might hear and understand; the
two young English gentlemen was as well as the common innkeeper and
his daughter. The latter literally gasped with horror at this foreign
insolence, this impudence before her ladyship—who was English, now that
she was Sir Percy's wife, and a friend of the Princess of Wales to boot.

As for Lord Antony and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, their very hearts seemed to
stand still with horror at this gratuitous insult. One of them uttered
an exclamation of appeal, the other one of warning, and instinctively
both glanced hurriedly towards the door, whence a slow, drawly, not
unpleasant voice had already been heard.

Alone among those present Marguerite Blakeney and these Comtesse de
Tournay had remained seemingly unmoved. The latter, rigid, erect and
defiant, with one hand still upon her daughter's arm, seemed the very
personification of unbending pride. For the moment Marguerite's sweet
face had become as white as the soft fichu which swathed her throat, and
a very keen observer might have noted that the hand which held the tall,
beribboned stick was clenched, and trembled somewhat.

But this was only momentary; the next instant the delicate eyebrows were
raised slightly, the lips curved sarcastically upwards, the clear blue
eyes looked straight at the rigid Comtesse, and with a slight shrug of
the shoulders—

"Hoity-toity, citizeness," she said gaily, "what fly stings you, pray?"

"We are in England now, Madame," rejoined the Comtesse, coldly, "and I
am at liberty to forbid my daughter to touch your hand in friendship.
Come, Suzanne."

She beckoned to her daughter, and without another look at Marguerite
Blakeney, but with a deep, old-fashioned curtsey to the two young men,
she sailed majestically out of the room.

There was silence in the old inn parlour for a moment, as the rustle of
the Comtesse's skirts died away down the passage. Marguerite, rigid as
a statue followed with hard, set eyes the upright figure, as it
disappeared through the doorway—but as little Suzanne, humble and
obedient, was about to follow her mother, the hard, set expression
suddenly vanished, and a wistful, almost pathetic and childlike look
stole into Lady Blakeney's eyes.

Little Suzanne caught that look; the child's sweet nature went out
to the beautiful woman, scarcely older than herself; filial obedience
vanished before girlish sympathy; at the door she turned, ran back to
Marguerite, and putting her arms round her, kissed her effusively; then
only did she follow her mother, Sally bringing up the rear, with a final
curtsey to my lady.

Suzanne's sweet and dainty impulse had relieved the unpleasant tension.
Sir Andrew's eyes followed the pretty little figure, until it had quite
disappeared, then they met Lady Blakeney's with unassumed merriment.

Marguerite, with dainty affection, had kissed her hand to the ladies, as
they disappeared through the door, then a humorous smile began hovering
round the corners of her mouth.

"So that's it, is it?" she said gaily. "La! Sir Andrew, did you ever see
such an unpleasant person? I hope when I grow old I sha'n't look like
that."

She gathered up her skirts and assuming a majestic gait, stalked towards
the fireplace.

"Suzanne," she said, mimicking the Comtesse's voice, "I forbid you to
speak to that woman!"

The laugh which accompanied this sally sounded perhaps a trifled forced
and hard, but neither Sir Andrew nor Lord Tony were very keen observers.
The mimicry was so perfect, the tone of the voice so accurately
reproduced, that both the young men joined in a hearty cheerful "Bravo!"

"Ah! Lady Blakeney!" added Lord Tony, "how they must miss you at the
Comedie Francaise, and how the Parisians must hate Sir Percy for having
taken you away."

"Lud, man," rejoined Marguerite, with a shrug of her graceful shoulders,
"'tis impossible to hate Sir Percy for anything; his witty sallies would
disarm even Madame la Comtesse herself."

The young Vicomte, who had not elected to follow his mother in her
dignified exit, now made a step forward, ready to champion the Comtesse
should Lady Blakeney aim any further shafts at her. But before he could
utter a preliminary word of protest, a pleasant though distinctly inane
laugh, was heard from outside, and the next moment an unusually tall and
very richly dressed figure appeared in the doorway.

Sir Percy Blakeney, as the chronicles of the time inform us, was in this
year of grace 1792, still a year or two on the right side of thirty.
Tall, above the average, even for an Englishman, broad-shouldered and
massively built, he would have been called unusually good-looking,
but for a certain lazy expression in his deep-set blue eyes, and that
perpetual inane laugh which seemed to disfigure his strong, clearly-cut
mouth.

It was nearly a year ago now that Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., one of the
richest men in England, leader of all the fashions, and intimate friend
of the Prince of Wales, had astonished fashionable society in London
and Bath by bringing home, from one of his journeys abroad, a beautiful,
fascinating, clever, French wife. He, the sleepiest, dullest, most
British Britisher that had ever set a pretty woman yawning, had secured
a brilliant matrimonial prize for which, as all chroniclers aver, there
had been many competitors.

Marguerite St. Just had first made her DEBUT in artistic Parisian
circles, at the very moment when the greatest social upheaval the
world has ever known was taking place within its very walls. Scarcely
eighteen, lavishly gifted with beauty and talent, chaperoned only by
a young and devoted brother, she had soon gathered round her, in
her charming apartment in the Rue Richelieu, a coterie which was as
brilliant as it was exclusive—exclusive, that is to say, only from one
point of view. Marguerite St. Just was from principle and by conviction
a republican—equality of birth was her motto—inequality of fortune
was in her eyes a mere untoward accident, but the only inequality she
admitted was that of talent. "Money and titles may be hereditary,"
she would say, "but brains are not," and thus her charming salon was
reserved for originality and intellect, for brilliance and wit, for
clever men and talented women, and the entrance into it was soon looked
upon in the world of intellect—which even in those days and in those
troublous times found its pivot in Paris—as the seal to an artistic
career.

Clever men, distinguished men, and even men of exalted station formed a
perpetual and brilliant court round the fascinating young actress of
the Comedie Francaise, and she glided through republican, revolutionary,
bloodthirsty Paris like a shining comet with a trail behind her of all
that was most distinguished, most interesting, in intellectual Europe.

Then the climax came. Some smiled indulgently and called it an artistic
eccentricity, others looked upon it as a wise provision, in view of the
many events which were crowding thick and fast in Paris just then, but
to all, the real motive of that climax remained a puzzle and a mystery.
Anyway, Marguerite St. Just married Sir Percy Blakeney one fine day,
just like that, without any warning to her friends, without a SOIREE DE
CONTRAT or DINER DE FIANCAILLES or other appurtenances of a fashionable
French wedding.

How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within
the intellectual circle which revolved round "the cleverest woman in
Europe," as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured
to guess—golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more
malignantly inclined.

Enough, she married him, and "the cleverest woman in Europe" had linked
her fate to that "demmed idiot" Blakeney, and not even her most intimate
friends could assign to this strange step any other motive than that of
supreme eccentricity. Those friends who knew, laughed to scorn the idea
that Marguerite St. Just had married a fool for the sake of the worldly
advantages with which he might endow her. They knew, as a matter of
fact, that Marguerite St. Just cared nothing about money, and still less
about a title; moreover, there were at least half a dozen other men in
the cosmopolitan world equally well-born, if not so wealthy as Blakeney,
who would have been only too happy to give Marguerite St. Just any
position she might choose to covet.

As for Sir Percy himself, he was universally voted to be totally
unqualified for the onerous post he had taken upon himself. His chief
qualifications for it seemed to consist in his blind adoration for her,
his great wealth and the high favour in which he stood at the English
court; but London society thought that, taking into consideration his
own intellectual limitations, it would have been wiser on his part had
he bestowed those worldly advantages upon a less brilliant and witty
wife.

Although lately he had been so prominent a figure in fashionable English
society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His father, the
late Sir Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune of seeing
an idolized young wife become hopelessly insane after two years of happy
married life. Percy had just been born when the late Lady Blakeney
fell prey to the terrible malady which in those days was looked upon as
hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of God upon the entire
family. Sir Algernon took his afflicted young wife abroad, and there
presumably Percy was educated, and grew up between an imbecile mother
and a distracted father, until he attained his majority. The death of
his parents following close upon one another left him a free man, and
as Sir Algernon had led a forcibly simple and retired life, the large
Blakeney fortune had increased tenfold.

Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought
home his beautiful, young, French wife. The fashionable circles of the
time were ready to receive them both with open arms; Sir Percy was rich,
his wife was accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great liking
to them both. Within six months they were the acknowledged leaders of
fashion and of style. Sir Percy's coats were the talk of the town, his
inanities were quoted, his foolish laugh copied by the gilded youth at
Almack's or the Mall. Everyone knew that he was hopelessly stupid, but
then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all the Blakeneys
for generations had been notoriously dull, and that his mother died an
imbecile.

Thus society accepted him, petted him, made much of him, since his
horses were the finest in the country, his FETES and wines the most
sought after. As for his marriage with "the cleverest woman in Europe,"
well! the inevitable came with sure and rapid footsteps. No one pitied
him, since his fate was of his own making. There were plenty of young
ladies in England, of high birth and good looks, who would have been
quite willing to help him to spend the Blakeney fortune, whilst
smiling indulgently at his inanities and his good-humoured foolishness.
Moreover, Sir Percy got no pity, because he seemed to require none—he
seemed very proud of his clever wife, and to care little that she took
no pains to disguise that good-natured contempt which she evidently felt
for him, and that she even amused herself by sharpening her ready wits
at his expense.