Now I could not really tell you, citizens, what suspicions had by this time entered Hercule"s head or mine; certainly what suspicions we did have were still very vague.
I prepared the soup for the men and they ate it heartily, after which my husband led the way to the outhouse where we sometimes stabled a traveller"s horse when the need arose.
It is nice and dry, and always filled with warm, fresh straw. The entrance into it immediately faces the road; the corporal declared that nothing would suit him and his men better.
They retired to rest apparently, but we noticed that two men remained on the watch just inside the entrance, whilst the two others curled up in the straw.
Hercule put out the lights in the coffee-room, and then he and I went upstairs-not to bed, mind you-but to have a quiet talk together over the events of the past half-hour.
The result of our talk was that ten minutes later my man quietly stole downstairs and out of the house. He did not, however, go out by the front door, but through a back way which, leading through a cabbage-patch and then across a field, cuts into the main road some two hundred metres higher up.
Hercule and I had decided that he would walk the three leagues into Calais, despite the cold, which was intense, and the blizzard, which was nearly blinding, and that he would call at the post of gendarmerie at the city gates, and there see the officer in command and tell him the exact state of the case. It would then be for that officer to decide what was to be done; our responsibility as loyal citizens would be completely covered.
Hercule, you must know, had just emerged from our cabbage-patch on to the field when he was suddenly challenged:
"Qui va la?"
He gave his name. His certificate of citizenship was in his pocket; he had nothing to fear. Through the darkness and the veil of snow he had discerned a small group of men wearing the uniform of the 9th Regiment of the Line.
"Four men," said the foremost of these, speaking quickly and commandingly, "wearing the same uniform that I and my men are wearing ... have you seen them?"
"Yes," said Hercule hurriedly.
"Where are they?"
"In the outhouse close by."
The other suppressed a cry of triumph.
"At them, my men!" he said in a whisper, "and you, citizen, thank your stars that we have not come too late."
"These men ..." whispered Hercule. "I had my suspicions."
"Aristocrats, citizen," rejoined the commander of the little party, "and one of them is that cursed Englishman-the Scarlet Pimpernel."
Already the soldiers, closely followed by Hercule, had made their way through our cabbage-patch back to the house.
The next moment they had made a bold dash for the barn. There was a great deal of shouting, a great deal of swearing and some firing, whilst Hercule and I, not a little frightened, remained in the coffee-room, anxiously awaiting events.
Presently the group of soldiers returned, not the ones who had first come, but the others. I noticed their leader, who seemed to be exceptionally tall.
He looked very cheerful, and laughed loudly as he entered the coffee-room. From the moment that I looked at his face I knew, somehow, that Hercule and I had been fooled, and that now, indeed, we stood eye to eye with that mysterious personage who is called the Scarlet Pimpernel.
I screamed, and Hercule made a dash for the door; but what could two humble and peaceful citizens do against this band of desperate men, who held their lives in their own hands? They were four and we were two, and I do believe that their leader has supernatural strength and power.
He treated us quite kindly, even though he ordered his followers to bind us down to our bed upstairs, and to tie a cloth round our mouths so that our cries could not be distinctly heard.
Neither my man nor I closed an eye all night, of course, but we heard the miscreants moving about in the coffee-room below. But they did no mischief, nor did they steal any of the food or wines.
At daybreak we heard them going out by the front door, and their footsteps disappearing toward Calais. We found their discarded uniforms lying in the coffee-room. They must have entered Calais by daylight, when the gates were opened-just like other peaceable citizens. No doubt they had forged pa.s.sports, just as they had stolen uniforms.
Our maid-of-all-work released us from our terrible position in the course of the morning, and we released the soldiers of the 9th Regiment of the Line, whom we found bound and gagged, some of them wounded, in the outhouse.
That same afternoon we were arrested, and here we are, ready to die if we must, but I swear that I have told you the truth, and I ask you, in the name of justice, if we have done anything wrong, and if we did not act like loyal and true citizens, even though we were pitted against an emissary of the devil?
IV
THE OLD SCARECROW
n.o.body in the quartier could quite recollect when it was that the new Public Letter-Writer first set up in business at the angle formed by the Quai des Augustins and the Rue Dauphine, immediately facing the Pont Neuf; but there he certainly was on the 28th day of February, 1793, when Agnes, with eyes swollen with tears, a market basket on her arm, and a look of dreary despair on her young face, turned that selfsame angle on her way to the Pont Neuf, and nearly fell over the rickety construction which sheltered him and his stock-in-trade.
"Oh, mon Dieu! citizen Lepine, I had no idea you were here," she exclaimed as soon as she had recovered her balance.
"Nor I, citizeness, that I should have the pleasure of seeing you this morning," he retorted.
"But you were always at the other corner of the Pont Neuf," she argued.
"So I was," he replied, "so I was. But I thought I would like a change. The Faubourg St. Michel appealed to me; most of my clients came to me from this side of the river-all those on the other side seem to know how to read and write."
"I was just going over to see you," she remarked.
"You, citizeness," he exclaimed in unfeigned surprise, "what should procure a poor public writer the honour of-"
"Hush, in G.o.d"s name!" broke in the young girl quickly as she cast a rapid, furtive glance up and down the quai and the narrow streets which converged at this angle.
She was dressed in the humblest and poorest of clothes, her skimpy shawl round her shoulders could scarce protect her against the cold of this cruel winter"s morning; her hair was entirely hidden beneath a frilled and starched cap, and her feet were encased in coa.r.s.e worsted stockings and sabots, but her hands were delicate and fine, and her face had that n.o.bility of feature and look of patient resignation in the midst of overwhelming sorrow which proclaimed a lofty refinement both of soul and of mind.
The old Letter-Writer was surveying the pathetic young figure before him through his huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and she smiled on him through her fast-gathering tears. He used to have his pitch at the angle of the Pont Neuf, and whenever Agnes had walked past it, she had nodded to him and bidden him "Good morrow!" He had at times done little commissions for her and gone on errands when she needed a messenger; to-day, in the midst of her despair, she had suddenly thought of him and that rumour credited him with certain knowledge which she would give her all to possess.
She had sallied forth this morning with the express purpose of speaking with him; but now suddenly she felt afraid, and stood looking at him for a moment or two, hesitating, wondering if she dared tell him-one never knew these days into what terrible pitfall an ill-considered word might lead one.
A scarecrow he was, that old Public Letter-Writer, more like a great, gaunt bird than a human being, with those spectacles of his, and his long, very spa.r.s.e and very lanky fringe of a beard which fell from his cheeks and chin and down his chest for all the world like a crumpled grey bib. He was wrapped from head to foot in a caped coat which had once been green in colour, but was now of many hues not usually seen in rainbows. He wore his coat all b.u.t.toned down the front, like a dressing-gown, and below the hem there peeped out a pair of very large feet encased in boots which had never been a pair. He sat upon a rickety, straw-bottomed chair under an improvised awning which was made up of four poles and a bit of sacking. He had a table in front of him-a table partially and very insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole-and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple of quill pens.
The young girl"s hesitation had indeed not lasted more than a few seconds.
Furtively, like a young creature terrified of lurking enemies, she once more glanced to right and left of her and down the two streets and the river bank, for Paris was full of spies these days-human bloodhounds ready for a few sous to sell their fellow-creatures" lives. It was middle morning now, and a few pa.s.sers-by were hurrying along wrapped to the nose in m.u.f.flers, for the weather was bitterly cold.
Agnes waited until there was no one in sight, then she leaned forward over the table and whispered under her breath:
"They say, citizen, that you alone in Paris know the whereabouts of the English milor"-of him who is called the Scarlet Pimpernel...."
"Hush-sh-sh!" said the old man quickly, for just at that moment two men had gone by, in ragged coats and torn breeches, who had leered at Agnes and her neat cap and skirt as they pa.s.sed. Now they had turned the angle of the street and the old man, too, sank his voice to a whisper.
"I know nothing of any Englishman," he muttered.
"Yes, you do," she rejoined insistently. "When poor Antoine Carre was somewhere in hiding and threatened with arrest, and his mother dared not write to him lest her letter be intercepted, she spoke to you about the English milor", and the English milor" found Antoine Carre and took him and his mother safely out of France. Mme. Carre is my G.o.dmother.... I saw her the very night when she went to meet the English milor" at his commands. I know all that happened then.... I know that you were the intermediary."
"And if I was," he muttered sullenly as he fiddled with his pen and paper, "maybe I"ve had cause to regret it. For a week after that Carre episode I dared not show my face in the streets of Paris; for nigh on a fortnight I dared not ply my trade ... I have only just ventured again to set up in business. I am not going to risk my old neck again in a hurry...."
"It is a matter of life and death," urged Agnes, as once more the tears rushed to her pleading eyes and the look of misery settled again upon her face.