As she neared the terrace, she became conscious of several forms movingabout at the foot of the steps, some few feet below where she wasstanding. Soon she saw the glimmer of lanthorns, heard whisperingvoices, and the lapping of the water against the side of a boat.
Anon a figure, laden with cloaks and sundry packages, passed down thesteps close beside her. Even in the darkness Marguerite recognizedBenyon, her husband's confidential valet. Without a moment's hesitation,she flew along the terrace towards the wing of the house occupied by SirPercy. She had not gone far before she discerned his tall figure walkingleisurely 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 asusual buried in the pockets of his breeches, and on his head he wore thefolding chapeau-bras which he habitually affected.
Before she had time to think, or to realize that he was going, beforeshe could utter one single word, she was in his arms, clinging to himwith passionate intensity, trying in the gloom to catch every expressionof 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 shouldersin a wild agony of despair.
"If you really loved me, Percy," she murmured, "you would not go, youwould not go..."
He would not trust himself to speak; it well-nigh seemed as if hissinews cracked with the violent effort at self-control. Oh! how sheloved him, when she felt in him the passionate lover, the wild, untamedcreature that he was at heart, on whom the frigid courtliness of mannersat but as a thin veneer. This was his own real personality, and therewas little now of the elegant and accomplished gentleman of fashion,schooled to hold every emotion in check, to hide every thought, everydesire save that for amusement or for display.
She--feeling her power and his weakness now--gave herself wholly to hisembrace, not grudging one single, passionate caress, yielding her lipsto him, the while she murmured:
"You cannot go... you cannot... why should you go?... It is madness toleave me... I cannot let you go..."
Her arms clung tenderly round him, her voice was warm and faintly shakenwith suppressed tears, and as he wildly murmured: "Don't! for pity'ssake!" she almost felt that her love would be triumphant.
"For pity's sake, I'll go on pleading, Percy!" she whispered. "Oh! mylove, my dear! do not leave me!... we have scarce had time to savour ourhappiness.. 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 inthe eyes, my dear, and tell me if you can leave now?"
He did not reply, but, almost roughly, he placed his hand over hertear-dimmed eyes, which were turned up to his, in an agony of tenderappeal. Thus he blindfolded her with that wild caress. She shouldnot see--no, not even she!--that for the space of a few seconds sternmanhood was well-nigh vanquished by the magic of her love.
All that was most human in him, all that was weak in this strong anduntamed nature, cried aloud for peace and luxury and idleness: for longsummer afternoons spent in lazy content, for the companionship of horsesand dogs and of flowers, with no thought or cares save those for thenext evening's gavotte, no graver occupation save that of sitting at HERfeet.
And during these few seconds, whilst his hand lay across her eyes, thelazy, idle fop of fashionable London was fighting a hand-to-hand fightwith the bold leader of a band of adventurers: and his own passionatelove for his wife ranged itself with fervent intensity on the side ofhis weaker self. Forgotten were the horrors of the guillotine, thecalls of the innocent, the appeal of the helpless; forgotten the daringadventures, the excitements, the hair's-breadth escapes; for those fewseconds, heavenly in themselves, he only remembered her--his wife--herbeauty and her tender appeal to him.
She would have pleaded again, for she felt that she was winning in thisfight: her instinct--that unerring instinct of the woman who loves andfeels herself beloved--told her that for the space of an infinitesimalfraction of time, his iron will was inclined to bend; but he checked herpleading with a kiss.
Then there came a change.
Like a gigantic wave carried inwards by the tide, his turbulent emotionseemed suddenly to shatter itself against a rock of self-control. Wasit a call from the boatmen below? a distant scrunching of feet upon thegravel?--who knows, perhaps only a sigh in the midnight air, a ghostlysummons from the land of dreams that recalled him to himself.
Even as Marguerite was still clinging to him, with the ardent fervour ofher own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the powerof his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim in his eyes.
He kissed her fondly, tenderly, and with infinite gentleness smoothedaway the little damp curls from her brow. There was a wistfulness now inhis 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 shehad met him here in this lonely part of the garden, and his voicewas perfectly steady, conventional and cold. An icy pang shot throughMarguerite's heart. It was as if she had been abruptly wakened from abeautiful dream.
"You are not going, Percy!" she murmured, and her own voice now soundedhollow 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 whenhe repeated those words with such a sigh of tenderness, such a world oflonging, that the bitterness of her great pain vanished, giving place totears. He took her hand in his. The passion was momentarily conquered,forced within his innermost soul, by his own alter ego, that secondpersonality in him, the cold-blooded and coolly-calculating adventurerwho juggled with his life and tossed it recklessly upon the sea ofchance 'twixt a doggerel and a smile. But the tender love lingered on,fighting the enemy a while longer, the wistful desire was there for herkiss, 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 ofhis 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 lifeof no account? My sorrows? My fears? My misery? Oh!" she added withvehement bitterness, "why should it always be others? What are othersto you and to me, Percy?... Are we not happy here?... Have you notfulfilled to its uttermost that self-imposed duty to people who can benothing to us?... Is not your life ten thousand times more precious tome 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 hismouth.
"Nay, m'dear," he said gently, "'tis not ten thousand lives that call tome to-day... only one at best.... Don't you hate to think of that poorlittle old cure sitting in the midst of his ruined pride and hopes:the jewels so confidently entrusted to his care, stolen from him, hewaiting, perhaps, in his little presbytery for the day when those bruteswill march him to prison and to death.... Nay! I think a little seavoyage and English country air would suit the Abbe Foucquet, m'dear, andI 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 ofhis, which seemed always to close any discussion between them on thatpoint, "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? CouldI refuse the challenge before His Royal Highness and the ladies? Icouldn't. ... Faith! that was it.... Just a case of couldn't.... Fatedid it all... the quarrel... my interference... the challenge.... HE hadplanned it all of co
urse.... Let us own that he is a brave man, seeingthat he and I are not even yet, for that beating he gave me on theCalais cliffs."
"Yes! he has planned it all," she retorted vehemently. "The quarrelto-night, your journey to France, your meeting with him face to face ata given hour and place where he can most readily, most easily close thedeath-trap upon you."
This time he broke into a laugh. A good, hearty laugh, full of the joyof living, of the madness and intoxication of a bold adventure, a laughthat had not one particle of anxiety or of tremor in it.
"Nay! m'dear!" he said, "but your ladyship is astonishing.... Close adeath-trap upon your humble servant?... Nay! the governing citizensof France will have to be very active and mighty wide-awake ere theysucceed in stealing a march on me.... Zounds! but we'll give them anexciting chase this time.... Nay! little woman, do not fear!" he saidwith sudden infinite gentleness, "those demmed murderers have not got meyet."
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 tookhim, the lover, away from her side. She knew so well the finality ofit all, the amazing hold which that unconquerable desire for these madadventures had upon him. Impulsive, ardent as she was, Margueritefelt in her very soul an overwhelming fury against herself for herown weakness, her own powerlessness in the face of that which foreverthreatened to ruin her life and her happiness.
Yes! and his also! for he loved her! he loved her! he loved her! thethought 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 tohold him back; the tendrils which fastened his soul to hers were notso tenacious as those which made him cling to suffering humanity, overthere in France, where men and women were in fear of death and torture,and looked upon the elusive and mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel as aheaven-born hero sent to save them from their doom. To them at thesetimes his very heartstrings seemed to turn with unconquerable force, andwhen, with all the ardour of her own passion, she tried to play uponthe cords of his love for her, he could not respond, for they--thestrangers--had the stronger claim.
And yet through it all she knew that this love of humanity, this maddesire 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 ofperfect intercourse the poetic and subtle fragrance of ever-recurringpain.
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 uponher very soul. This seemed so different to any other parting, that hadperforce been during the past year. The presence of Chauvelin in herhouse, the obvious planning of this departure for France, had filledher with a foreboding, nay, almost a certitude of a gigantic and deadlycataclysm.
Her senses began to reel; she seemed not to see anything verydistinctly: even the loved form took on a strange and ghostlike shape.He now looked preternaturally tall, and there was a mist between her andhim.
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 bosquetof 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 themopen any longer; and as she closed them it seemed to her as if he foldedher in one last, long, heavenly embrace.
He felt her graceful figure swaying in his arms like a tall and slenderlily bending to the wind. He saw that she was but half-conscious, andthanked heaven for this kindly solace to his heart-breaking farewell.
There was a sloping, mossy bank close by, there where the marble terraceyielded to the encroaching shrubbery: a tangle of pale pink monthlyroses made a bower overhead. She was just sufficiently conscious toenable him to lead her to this soft green couch. There he laid heramongst the roses, kissed the dear, tired eyes, her hands, her lips, hertiny feet, and went.
Chapter XVI: The Passport
The Elusive Pimpernel Page 15
