A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Susan Fenimore Cooper - "The Lumley Autograph"

B.M. Bower - "The Heritage of the Sioux"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Der Tragoedie zweiter Teil"

Philip Sidney - "A Defence of Poesie and Poems"

El Dorado

B >> Baroness Orczy >> El Dorado




Marguerite gazed on the picture which the waning moon had so
suddenly revealed; but she gazed with eyes that knew not what they
saw. The moon had risen on her right--there lay the east--and the
coach must have been travelling due north, whereas Crecy ...

In the absolute silence that reigned she could perceive from far,
very far away, the sound of a church clock striking the midnight
hour; and now it seemed to her supersensitive senses that a firm
footstep was treading the soft earth, a footstep that drew
nearer--and then nearer still.

Nature did pause to listen. The wind was hushed, the night-birds
in the forest had gone to rest. Marguerite's heart beat so fast
that its throbbings choked her, and a dizziness clouded her
consciousness.

But through this state of torpor she heard the opening of the
carriage door, she felt the onrush of that pure, briny air, and
she felt a long, burning kiss upon her hands.

She thought then that she was really dead, and that God in His
infinite love had opened to her the outer gates of Paradise.

"My love!" she murmured.

She was leaning back in the carriage and her eyes were closed, but
she felt that firm fingers removed the irons from her wrists, and
that a pair of warm lips were pressed there in their stead.

"There, little woman, that's better so--is it not? Now let me get
hold of poor old Armand!"

It was Heaven, of course, else how could earth hold such heavenly
joy?

"Percy!" exclaimed Armand in an awed voice.

"Hush, dear!" murmured Marguerite feebly; "we are in Heaven you
and I--"

Whereupon a ringing laugh woke the echoes of the silent night.

"In Heaven, dear heart!" And the voice had a delicious earthly
ring in its whole-hearted merriment. "Please God, you'll both be
at Portel with me before dawn."

Then she was indeed forced to believe. She put out her hands and
groped for him, for it was dark inside the carriage; she groped,
and felt his massive shoulders leaning across the body of the
coach, while his fingers busied themselves with the irons on
Armand's wrist.

"Don't touch that brute's filthy coat with your dainty fingers,
dear heart," he said gaily. "Great Lord! I have worn that
wretch's clothes for over two hours; I feel as if the dirt had
penetrated to my bones."

Then with that gesture so habitual to him he took her head between
his two hands, and drawing her to him until the wan light from
without lit up the face that he worshipped, he gazed his fill into
her eyes.

She could only see the outline of his head silhouetted against the
wind-tossed sky; she could not see his eyes, nor his lips, but she
felt his nearness, and the happiness of that almost caused her to
swoon.

"Come out into the open, my lady fair," he murmured, and though
she could not see, she could feel that he smiled; "let God's pure
air blow through your hair and round your dear head. Then, if you
can walk so far, there's a small half-way house close by here. I
have knocked up the none too amiable host. You and Armand could
have half an hour's rest there before we go further on our way."

"But you, Percy?--are you safe?"

"Yes, m'dear, we are all of us safe until morning-time enough to
reach Le Portel, and to be aboard the Day-Dream before mine
amiable friend M. Chambertin has discovered his worthy colleague
lying gagged and bound inside the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre.
By Gad! how old Heron will curse--the moment he can open his
mouth!"

He half helped, half lifted her out of the carriage. The strong
pure air suddenly rushing right through to her lungs made her feel
faint, and she almost fell. But it was good to feel herself
falling, when one pair of arms amongst the millions on the earth
were there to receive her.

"Can you walk, dear heart?" he asked. "Lean well on me--it is not
far, and the rest will do you good."

"But you, Percy--"

He laughed, and the most complete joy of living seemed to resound
through that laugh. Her arm was in his, and for one moment he
stood still while his eyes swept the far reaches of the country,
the mellow distance still wrapped in its mantle of indigo, still
untouched by the mysterious light of the waning moon.

He pressed her arm against his heart, but his right hand was
stretched out towards the black wall of the forest behind him,
towards the dark crests of the pines in which the dying wind sent
its last mournful sighs.

"Dear heart," he said, and his voice quivered with the intensity
of his excitement, "beyond the stretch of that wood, from far away
over there, there are cries and moans of anguish that come to my
ear even now. But for you, dear, I would cross that wood to-night
and re-enter Paris to-morrow. But for you, dear--but for you," he
reiterated earnestly as he pressed her closer to him, for a bitter
cry had risen to her lips.

She went on in silence. Her happiness was great--as great as was
her pain. She had found him again, the man whom she worshipped,
the husband whom she thought never to see again on earth. She had
found him, and not even now--not after those terrible weeks of
misery and suffering unspeakable--could she feel that love had
triumphed over the wild, adventurous spirit, the reckless
enthusiasm, the ardour of self-sacrifice.



CHAPTER XLIX
THE LAND OF ELDORADO

It seems that in the pocket of Heron's coat there was a
letter-case with some few hundred francs. It was amusing to think
that the brute's money helped to bribe the ill-tempered keeper of
the half-way house to receive guests at midnight, and to ply them
well with food, drink, and the shelter of a stuffy coffee-room.

Marguerite sat silently beside her husband, her hand in his.
Armand, opposite to them, had both elbows on the table. He looked
pale and wan, with a bandage across his forehead, and his glowing
eyes were resting on his chief.

"Yes! you demmed young idiot," said Blakeney merrily, "you nearly
upset my plan in the end, with your yelling and screaming outside
the chapel gates."

"I wanted to get to you, Percy. I thought those brutes had got you
there inside that building."

"Not they!" he exclaimed. "It was my friend Heron whom they had
trussed and gagged, and whom my amiable friend M. Chambertin will
find in there to-morrow morning. By Gad! I would go back if only
for the pleasure of hearing Heron curse when first the gag is
taken from his mouth."

"But how was it all done, Percy? And there was de Batz--"

"De Batz was part of the scheme I had planned for mine own escape
before I knew that those brutes meant to take Marguerite and you
as hostages for my good behaviour. What I hoped then was that
under cover of a tussle or a fight I could somehow or other
contrive to slip through their fingers. It was a chance, and you
know my belief in bald-headed Fortune, with the one solitary hair.
Well, I meant to grab that hair; and at the worst I could but die
in the open and not caged in that awful hole like some noxious
vermin. I knew that de Batz would rise to the bait. I told him in
my letter that the Dauphin would be at the Chateau d'Ourde this
night, but that I feared the revolutionary Government had got wind
of this fact, and were sending an armed escort to bring the lad
away. This letter Ffoulkes took to him; I knew that he would make
a vigorous effort to get the Dauphin into his hands, and that
during the scuffle that one hair on Fortune's head would for one
second only, mayhap, come within my reach. I had so planned the
expedition that we were bound to arrive at the forest of Boulogne
by nightfall, and night is always a useful ally. But at the
guard-house of the Rue Ste. Anne I realised for the first time
that those brutes had pressed me into a tighter corner than I had
pre-conceived."

He paused, and once again that look of recklessness swept over his
face, and his eyes--still hollow and circled--shone with the
excitement of past memories.

"I was such a weak, miserable wretch, then," he said, in answer to
Marguerite's appeal. "I had to try and build up some strength,
when--Heaven forgive me for the sacrilege--I had unwittingly
risked your precious life, dear heart, in that blind endeavour to
save mine own. By Gad! it was no easy task in that jolting
vehicle with that noisome wretch beside me for sole company; yet I
ate and I drank and I slept for three days and two nights, until
the hour when in the darkness I struck Heron from behind,
half-strangled him first, then gagged him, and finally slipped
into his filthy coat and put that loathsome bandage across my
head, and his battered hat above it all. The yell he gave when
first I attacked him made every horse rear--you must remember
it--the noise effectually drowned our last scuffle in the coach.
Chauvelin was the only man who might have suspected what had
occurred, but he had gone on ahead, and bald-headed Fortune had
passed by me, and I had managed to grab its one hair. After that
it was all quite easy. The sergeant and the soldiers had seen
very little of Heron and nothing of me; it did not take a great
effort to deceive them, and the darkness of the night was my most
faithful friend. His raucous voice was not difficult to imitate,
and darkness always muffles and changes every tone. Anyway, it
was not likely that those loutish soldiers would even remotely
suspect the trick that was being played on them. The citizen
agent's orders were promptly and implicitly obeyed. The men never
even thought to wonder that after insisting on an escort of twenty
he should drive off with two prisoners and only two men to guard
them. If they did wonder, it was not theirs to question. Those
two troopers are spending an uncomfortable night somewhere in the
forest of Boulogne, each tied to a tree, and some two leagues
apart one from the other. And now," he added gaily, "en voiture,
my fair lady; and you, too, Armand. 'Tis seven leagues to Le
Portel, and we must be there before dawn."

"Sir Andrew's intention was to make for Calais first, there to
open communication with the Day-Dream and then for Le Portel,"
said Marguerite; "after that he meant to strike back for the
Chateau d'Ourde in search of me."

"Then we'll still find him at Le Portel--I shall know how to lay
hands on him; but you two must get aboard the Day-Dream at once,
for Ffoulkes and I can always look after ourselves."

It was one hour after midnight when--refreshed with food and
rest--Marguerite, Armand and Sir Percy left the half-way house.
Marguerite was standing in the doorway ready to go. Percy and
Armand had gone ahead to bring the coach along.

"Percy," whispered Armand, "Marguerite does not know?"

"Of course she does not, you young fool," retorted Percy lightly.
"If you try and tell her I think I would smash your head."

"But you--" said the young man with sudden vehemence; "can you
bear the sight of me? My God! when I think--"

"Don't think, my good Armand--not of that anyway. Only think of
the woman for whose sake you committed a crime--if she is pure and
good, woo her and win her--not just now, for it were foolish to go
back to Paris after her, but anon, when she comes to England and
all these past days are forgotten--then love her as much as you
can, Armand. Learn your lesson of love better than I have learnt
mine; do not cause Jeanne Lange those tears of anguish which my
mad spirit brings to your sister's eyes. You were right, Armand,
when you said that I do not know how to love!"

But on board the Day-Dream, when all danger was past, Marguerite
felt that he did.

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.