"What shall I say, dear lad?" Blakeney responded, and gently disengaged his hand. "That I could not bear to see an English gentleman, the son of my old friend, thrown to those hyenas."
"How you must despise me!"
"I despise no one, Johnnie. I have seen too much of sorrow, misguided enthusiasm, even of crime, not to understand many, many things I had not even dreamed of before."
"Crime? There is no worse crime in the world than mine."
"And no worse punishment, lad, than what you will endure."
"God, yes!" Devinne said fervently. "Then why did you risk your precious life to save my miserable one?"
Blakeney broke into his infectious laugh.
"Why? Why? I don't know, Johnnie. Ask Ffoulkes-he will give you a sentimental reason. Ask Tony and he will say it is for the love of sport, and I am not sure that good old Tony wouldn't be right after all. Thanks to you, lad, I have had one of the most exhilarating runs across country I have ever had in my life."
Devinne sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
"How they will all loathe the sight of me," he murmured.
"Well, you will have to put up with that, my good fellow, and with other things as well. Anyway, your father knows nothing and never will. After that . . . Well! England is at war with France, so you will know what to do."
"Percy . . . I . . ."
"Easy now. Here's Holte coming with his banquet."
And the three of them sat down to a sumptuous meal of pig's meat and stale bread and drank hot wine, which put warmth into them. Blakeney was at his merriest.
"You should have seen," he said to Holte, "that miserable catiff who, much against his will, impersonated the Scarlet Pimpernel. The one thing I shall regret to my dying day is that I was not present when my dear Monsieur Chambertin first gazed on his beautiful countenance and saw that it was not that of his friend, Sir Percy Blakeney."
Holte did a great deal of talking, and asked numberless questions, but Devinne, with aching soul and aching body, soon made his way to one of the other rooms in the house where there was a truckle bed on which he had slept more than once in the happy olden days.
He sat down on the edge of it, and burying his head in his hands, he sobbed like a child.
EPILOGUE
Often, after the curtain has been rung down on the last act of a play, comedy or drama, one would wish to peep through and see what is going on on the darkened stage. A moment ago it was full of light, of animation, of that tense atmosphere which pervades the closing scene of a moving story, and now there are only the scene-shifters moving about like ghosts through the dimmed light, the stage-manager talking to the carpenter or the electricians, the minor rôles still chattering in the wings, or the principals hurrying to their dressing-rooms.
In the same way it seems to me that one would wish to see just once more those actors who each in their individual way have played their part in that strange drama which had for its chief characters a young traitor and a light-hearted adventurer, reckless of his life, a true sportsman who in a spirit of sublime devilry achieved one of the noblest exploits it has ever been the good fortune of an historian to relate.
Thus it is possible to have a peep at the minor rôles, to see Monsieur le Docteur Pradel and Cécile, his pretty young wife, in their humble home in the village of Kensington. They are supremely happy, but are as poor as the proverbial church mice, as poor as all those unfortunate French men and women whom a lucky chance has enabled to find a refuge in hospitable England-chance or the devotion of a man whose real identity they will never discover. Sometimes one among them who is over-sensitive, perhaps, will feel a thrill when meeting a pair of lazy, good-natured blue eyes, the true expression of which is veiled behind heavy lids. Such a one is Cécile Pradel who, when she meets those eyes, or hears the timbre of a quaint rather inane laugh, will suddenly recall a day of torment in the old château of La Rodière, a dance, the music of the rigaudon, a fiddler with grimy face and ringing voice and strange compelling eyes. The same voice? The same eyes? No! no! it couldn't be! And she would look up almost with apology for those foolish thoughts on the magnificent figure of Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., the friend of the Prince of Wales, the most exquisite dandy that ever graced a ballroom, the most inane fop that ever caused society to laugh.
And she would see the greatest ladies in the land crowd round him, smirk and flirt their fans, entreating him to repeat the silly doggerel which he vowed had come to him as an inspiration while tying his cravat:
"We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven! Is he in h-ll?
That demmed elusive Pimpernel."
He would recite this for the entertainment of his admirers with many airs and graces which of a certainty could only belong to a man who had no thought save of vanity and pleasure.
More often than not the talk in ballrooms would be of the Scarlet Pimpernel and his exploits, and Sir Percy Blakeney, who usually was half asleep in a chair whenever the subject cropped up, was dragged out of his slumbers by the ladies and asked with many a jest what he thought of the national hero. Whereupon he would endeavour to be polite and to smother a yawn, whilst he gave reply:
"Excuse me, ladies, but on my honour I would prefer not to think of that demmed fellow."
And he would turn to a group of friends and call to them:
"Come Froggie, Ffoulkes, you too, Tony, a manly game of hazard, what? while the ladies sit around and worship a cursed shadow."
No, no, a thousand times no! this empty-headed dandy, this fool, this sybarite, could never have been the grimy out-at-elbows fiddler who slung a man over his shoulder as if he were a bundle of shavings, or the sergeant who carried maman in his arms over rough ground from the coach to the lonely house by the roadside. But the next moment, as Sir Percy Blakeney strode out of the room, Cécile would catch a quick glance which flew to him from the deep violet eyes of Lady Blakeney, his exquisite wife, and another which that perfect grand dame exchanged with His Royal Highness, and Cécile Pradel, who owed her life to the Scarlet Pimpernel, was left wondering. Wondering!
Still peeping through the curtain which has fallen on the last act of the drama one likes to see little Blanche Levet as a young matron now, married to a well-to-do and kindly fellow who stands well with the authorities that are in power after the terrible days of the Terror and the fall of Robespierre. There are times when memories and regrets become over-poignant, and she sheds tears over the bundle of tiny garments which she has fashioned in view of a happy eventuality, just as there are times when Dr. Pradel would gladly exchange the life of peace in England for one of activity in Choisy and in his beloved hospital in Manderieu. But with him regrets soon vanish, whereas with Blanche they will always abide.
And one last peep at St. John Devinne, home on leave after the English victory over the French at Valenciennes, and kneeling by the death-bed of his father. Percy Blakeney stands beside him. Some of the last words the old man spoke were:
"Percy, you will look after the boy, won't you? He is headstrong, but his heart is in the right place, and, thank God! his honour is intact."
The End