The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (good romance books to read .txt) 📕

“I’ll see to her,” rejoined the first speaker. “You and Tony had best find the others. Tell them I shall be round directly.”

It all seemed like a dream. The woman dared not open her eyes lest reality⁠—hideous and brutal⁠—once more confronted her. Then all at once she felt that her poor, weak body, encircled by strong arms, was lifted off the ground, and that she was being carried down the street, away from the light projected by the lantern overhead, into the sheltering darkness of a yawning porte-cochère. But she was not then fully conscious.

When she reopened her eyes she was in what appeared to be the lodge of a concierge. She was lying on a horsehair sofa. There was a sense of warmth and of security around her. No wonder that it still seemed like a dream. Before her stood a man, tall and straight, surely a being from another world⁠—or so he appeared to the poor wretch who, since uncountable time, had set eyes on none but the most miserable dregs of struggling humanity, who had seen little else but rags, and faces either cruel or wretched. This man was clad in a huge caped coat, which made his powerful figure seem preternaturally large. His hair was fair and slightly curly above his low, square brow; the eyes beneath their heavy lids looked down on her with unmistakable kindness.

The poor woman struggled to her feet. With a quick and pathetically humble gesture she drew her ragged, muddy skirts over her ankles and her tattered kerchief across her breast.

“I had best go now, Monsieur⁠ ⁠… citizen,” she murmured, while a hot flush rose to the roots of her unkempt hair. “I must not stop here.⁠ ⁠… I⁠—”

“You are not going, Madame,” he broke in, speaking now in perfect French and with a great air of authority, as one who is accustomed to being implicitly obeyed, “until you have told me how, a lady of culture and of refinement, comes to be masquerading as a street-dancer. The game is a dangerous one, as you have experienced tonight.”

“It is no game, Monsieur⁠ ⁠… citizen,” she stammered; “nor yet a masquerade. I have been a street-dancer all my life, and⁠—”

By way of an answer he took her hand, always with that air of authority which she never thought to resent.

“This is not a street-dancer’s hand; Madame,” he said quietly. “Nor is your speech that of the people.”

She drew her hand away quickly, and the flush on her haggard face deepened.

“If you will honour me with your confidence, Madame,” he insisted.

The kindly words, the courtesy of the man, went to the poor creature’s heart. She fell back upon the sofa and with her face buried in her arms she sobbed out her heart for a minute or two. The man waited quite patiently. He had seen many women weep these days, and had dried many a tear through deeds of valour and of self-sacrifice, which were forever recorded in the hearts of those whom he had succoured.

When this poor woman had succeeded in recovering some semblance of self-control, she turned her wan, tear-stained face to him and said simply:

“My name is Madeleine Lannoy, Monsieur. My husband was killed during the émeutes at Versailles, whilst defending the persons of the Queen and of the royal children against the fury of the mob. When I was a girl I had the misfortune to attract the attentions of a young doctor named Jean Paul Marat. You have heard of him, Monsieur?”

The other nodded.

“You know him, perhaps,” she continued, “for what he is: the most cruel and revengeful of men. A few years ago he threw up his lucrative appointment as Court physician to Monseigneur le Comte d’Artois, and gave up the profession of medicine for that of journalist and politician. Politician! Heaven help him! He belongs to the most bloodthirsty section of revolutionary brigands. His creed is pillage, murder, and revenge; and he chooses to declare that it is I who, by rejecting his love, drove him to these foul extremities. May God forgive him that abominable lie! The evil we do, Monsieur, is within us; it does not come from circumstance. I, in the meanwhile, was a happy wife. My husband, M. de Lannoy, who was an officer in the army, idolised me. We had one child, a boy⁠—”

She paused, with another catch in her throat. Then she resumed, with calmness that, in view of the tale she told, sounded strangely weird:

“In June last year my child was stolen from me⁠—stolen by Marat in hideous revenge for the supposed wrong which I had done him. The details of that execrable outrage are of no importance. I was decoyed from home one day through the agency of a forged message purporting to come from a very dear friend whom I knew to be in grave trouble at the time. Oh! the whole thing was thoroughly well thought out, I can assure you!” she continued, with a harsh laugh which ended in a heartrending sob. “The forged message, the suborned servant, the threats of terrible reprisals if anyone in the village gave me the slightest warning or clue. When the whole miserable business was accomplished, I was just like a trapped animal inside a cage, held captive by immovable bars of obstinate silence and cruel indifference. No one would help me. No one ostensibly knew anything; no one had seen anything, heard anything. The child was gone! My servants, the people in the village⁠—some of whom I could have sworn were true and sympathetic⁠—only shrugged their shoulders. ‘Que voulez-vous, Madame? Children of bourgeois as well as of aristos were often taken up by the State to be brought up as true patriots and no longer pampered like so many lapdogs.’

“Three days later I received a letter from that inhuman monster, Jean Paul Marat. He told me that he had taken my child away from me, not from any idea of revenge