MEMORIES
§1
When Marguerite Blakeney finally recovered consciousness, the sun was
low down in the west. She was in a coach--not her own--which was being
whisked along the road at terrific speed. She was alone, her mouth
gagged, her wrists and her ankles tied with cords, so that she could
neither speak nor move--a helpless log, being taken . . . whither? . . .
and by whom?
Bertrand was not there. Through the front window of the coach she could
perceive the vague outline of two men sitting on the driver's seat,
whilst another was riding the off-leader. Four horses were harnessed to
the light coach. It flew along in a south-easterly direction, the while
the shades of evening were fast drawing in.
Marguerite had seen too much of the cruelties and barbarities of this
world, too much of the hatred that existed between enemy countries and
too much of the bitter rancour felt by certain men against her husband,
and indirectly against herself, not to realise at once whence the blow
had come that had struck her. Something too in the shape of that back
which she perceived through the window in front of her, something in the
cut of the threadbare coat, the set of the black bow at the nape of the
neck, was too familiar to leave her even for a moment in doubt. Here was
no ordinary foot-pad, no daring abduction with a view to reward or
ransom. This was the work of her husband's enemies, who, through her,
were once more striving to get at him.
Bertrand Moncrif had been the decoy. Whence had come the hatred which
prompted him to raise his hand against the very man to whom he owed his
life. Marguerite was still too dazed to conjecture. He had gone, and
taken his secret of rancour with him, mayhap for ever. Lying pinioned
and helpless as she was, Marguerite had but the one thought: in what way
would those fiends who had her a prisoner use her as a leverage against
the life and the honour of the Scarlet Pimpernel? They had held her once
before--not so very long ago--in Boulogne, and he had emerged unscathed,
victorious over them all.
Marguerite, helpless and pinioned, forced her thoughts to dwell on that
time, when his enemies had filled to the brim the cup of humiliation and
of dread which was destined to reach him through her hands, and his
ingenuity and his daring dashed the cup to the ground ere it reached her
lips. In truth, her plight then, at Boulogne, was in no way less
terrible, less seemingly hopeless than now. She was a prisoner then,
just as she was now; in the power of men whose whole life and entire
range of thought had for the past two years been devoted to the undoing
and annihilation of the Scarlet Pimpernel. And there was a certain grim
satisfaction for the pinioned, helpless woman in recalling the many
instances where the daring adventurer had so completely outwitted his
enemies, as well as in the memory of those days at Boulogne when the
life of countless innocents was to be the price of her own.
§2
The embarkation took place somewhere on the coast around Birchington.
When, at dead of night the coach came to a halt, and the tang of sea air
and salt spray reached Marguerite's burning cheeks and parched lips, she
tried with all her might to guess at her exact position. But that was
impossible.
She was lifted out of the coach, and at once a shawl was thrown over her
face, so that she could not see. It was more instinct than anything else
that guided her perceptions. Even in the coach she had been vaguely
conscious of the direction in which she had been travelling. All that
part of the country was entirely familiar to her. So often had she
driven down with Sir Percy, either to Dover or more often to some lonely
part of the coast, where he took ship for unknown destinations, that in
her mind she could, even blinded with tears and half conscious as she
was, trace in her mind the various turnings and side-roads along which
she was being borne at unabating speed.
Birchington--one of the favourite haunts of the smuggling fraternity,
with its numberless caves and retreats dug by the sea in the chalk
cliffs, as if for the express benefit of ne'er-do-wells--seemed the
natural objective of the miscreants who had her in their power. In fact,
at one moment she was quite sure that the square tower of old Minster
church flitted past her vision through the window of the coach, and that
the horses immediately after that sprinted the hill between Minster and
Acoll.
Be that as it may, there was no doubt that the coach came to a halt at a
desolate spot. The day which had begun in radiance and sunshine, had
turned to an evening of squall and drizzle. A thin rain soon wetted
Marguerite's clothes and the shawl on her head through and through,
greatly adding to her misery and discomfort. Though she saw nothing, she
could trace every landmark of the calvary to the summit of which she was
being borne like an insentient log.
For a while she lay at the bottom of a small boat, aching in body as
well as in mind, her eyes closed, her limbs cramped by the cords which
owing to the damp were cutting into her flesh, faint with cold and want
of food, wet to the skin yet with eyes and head and hands burning hot,
and her ears filled with the dreary, monotonous sound of the oars
creaking in the rowlocks and the boom of the water against the sides of
the boat.
She was lifted out of the boat and carried, as she judged, by two men up
a companion ladder, then down some steps and finally deposited on some
hard boards; after which the wet shawl was removed from her face. She
was in the dark. Only a tiny streak of light found its way through a
chink somewhere close to the floor. A smell of tar and of stale food
gave her a wretched sense of nausea. But she had by now reached a stage
of physical and mental prostration wherein even acute bodily suffering
counts as nothing, and is endurable because it is no longer felt.
After a while the familiar motion, the well-known sound of a ship
weighing anchor, gave another blow to her few lingering hopes. Every
movement of the ship now bore her farther and farther from England and
home, and rendered her position more utterly miserable and hopeless.
Far be it from me to suggest even for a moment that Marguerite Blakeney
lost either spirit or courage during this terrible ordeal. But she was
so completely helpless that instinct forced her to remain motionless and
quiescent, and not to engage in a fight against overwhelming odds. In
mid-Channel, surrounded by miscreants who had her in their power, she
could obviously do nothing except safeguard what dignity she could by
silence and seeming acquiescence.
§3
She was taken ashore in the early dawn, at a spot not very far from
Boulogne. Precautions were no longer taken against her possible calls
for help; even the cords had been removed from her wrists and ankles as
soon as she was lowered into the boat that brought her to shore. Cramped
and stiff though she was, she disdained the help of an arm which was
held out to her to enable her to step out of the boat.
All the faces around her were unfamiliar. There were four or five men,
surly and silent, who piloted her over the rocks and cliffs and then
along the sands, to the little hamlet of Wimereux, which she knew well.
The coast at this hour was still deserted; only at one time did the
little party meet with a group of buxom young women, trudging along
barefooted with their shrimping nets over their shoulders. They stared
wide-eyed but otherwise indifferent, at the unfortunate woman in torn,
damp clothes, and with golden hair all dishevelled, who was bravely
striving not to fall whilst urged on by five rough fellows in ragged
jerseys, tattered breeches, and barekneed.
Just for one moment--a mere flash--Marguerite at sight of these girls
had the wild notion to run to them, implore their assistance in the name
of their sweethearts, their husbands, their sons; to throw herself at
their feet and beg them to help her, seeing that they were women and
could not be without heart or pity. But it was a mere flash, the wild
vagary of an over-excited brain, the drifting straw that mocks the
drowning man. The next moment the girls had gone by, laughing and
chattering. One of them intoned the "Ça ira!" and Marguerite,
fortunately for her own dignity, was not seriously tempted to essay so
futile, so senseless an appeal.
Later on, in a squalid little hovel on the outskirts of Wimereux, she
was at last given some food which, though of the poorest and roughest
description, was nevertheless welcome, for it revived her spirit and
strengthened her courage, of which she had sore need.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. Within the first hour of making
a fresh start, she had realised that she was being taken to Paris. A few
words dropped casually by the men who had charge of her apprised her of
that fact. Otherwise they were very reticent--not altogether rough or
unkind.
The coach in which she travelled during this stage of the journey was
roomy and not uncomfortable, although the cushions were ragged and the
leatherwork mildewed. Above all, she had the supreme comfort of privacy.
She was alone in the coach, alone during the halts at way-side
hostelries when she was allowed food and rest, alone throughout those
two interminable nights when, with brief intervals whilst relays of
horses were put into the shafts or the men took it in turns to get food
or drink in some house unseen in the darkness, she vainly tried to get a
snatch or two of sleep and a few moments of forgetfulness; alone
throughout that next long day, whilst frequent summer showers sent heavy
raindrops beating against the window-panes of the coach and familiar
landmarks on the way to Paris flitted like threatening ghouls past her
aching eyes.
Paris was reached at dawn of the third day. Seventy-two hours had crept
along leaden-footed, since the moment when she had, stepped into her own
coach outside her beautiful home in Richmond, surrounded by her own
servants, and with that traitor Moncrif by her side. Since then, what a
load of sorrow, of anxiety, of physical and mental suffering had she
borne! And yet, even that sorrow, even those sufferings and that
anxiety, seemed as nothing beside the heartrending thoughts of her
beloved, as yet ignorant of her terrible fate and of the schemes which
those fiends who had so shamefully trapped her were even now concocting
for the realisation of their vengeance against him.