LibriVox · The Scarlet Pimpernel
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Orczy's revolution-era adventure read by Karen Savage. Elegant, dramatic prose at natural speed with plenty of dialogue.
From "The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy, read by Karen Savage — a community-favorite LibriVox recording in the public domain.
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01CHAPTER II.
02DOVER.
03THE FISHERMAN'S REST.
04In the kitchen Sally was extremely busy.
05Saucepans and frying-pans were standing in rows on the gigantic hearth.
06The huge stock-pot stood in a corner, and the jack turned with slow deliberation, and presented alternately to the glow, every side of a noble sirloin of beef.
07The two little kitchen-maids bustled around, eager to help, hot and panting, with cotton sleeves well tucked up above the dimpled elbows, and giggling over some private jokes of their own, whenever Miss Sally's back was turned for a moment.
08And old Jemima, stolid in temper and solid in bulk, kept up a long and subdued grumble, while she stirred the stock-pot methodically over the fire.
09"'What ho, Sally?' came in cheerful, if none too melodious, accents from the coffee-room close by.
10"'Lord bless my soul!' exclaimed Sally, with a good-humoured laugh.
11"'What be they all wanting now, I wonder?' "'Beer, of course,' grumbled Jemima.
12"'You don't expect Jimmy Pitkin to have done with one tankard, do you?' "'Mr.
13Arry, he looked uncommon thirsty, too,' simpered Martha, one of the little kitchen-maids, and her beady black eyes twinkled as they met those of her companion, whereupon both started on a round of short and suppressed giggles.
14Sally looked cross for a moment, and thoughtfully rubbed her hands against her shapely hips.
15Her palms were itching, evidently, to come in contact with Martha's rosy cheeks.
16But inherent good-humour prevailed, and with a pout and a shrug of the shoulders, she turned her attention to the fried potatoes.
17"'What ho, Sally!
18Hey, Sally!' And a chorus of pewter mugs, tapped with impatient hands against the oak tables of the coffee-room, accompanied the shouts for mine host's buxom daughter.
19"'Sally!' shouted a more persistent voice.
20"'Are you going to be all night with that there beer?' "'I do think Father might get the beer for them,' muttered Sally, as Jemima stolidly and without further comment took a couple of foam-crowned jugs from the shelf, and began filling a number of pewter tankards with some of that home-brewed ale for which the fisherman's rest had been famous since the days of King Charles.
21"'He knows how busy we are in here.' "'Your father is too busy discussing politics with Mr.
22Empsey to worry herself about you and the kitchen,' grumbled Jemima under her breath.
23Sally had gone to the small mirror which hung in a corner of the kitchen, and was hastily smoothing her hair and setting her frilled cap at its most becoming angle over her dark curls.
24Then she took up the tankards by their handles, three in each strong brown hand, and, laughing, grumbling, blushing, carried them through into the coffee-room.
25There, there was certainly no sign of that bustle and activity which kept four women busy and hot in the glowing kitchen beyond.
26The coffee-room of the fisherman's rest is a show-place now at the beginning of the twentieth century.
27At the end of the eighteenth, in the year of grace, 1792, it had not yet gained the notoriety and importance which a hundred additional years and the craze of the age have since bestowed upon it.
28Yet it was an old place, even then, for the oak rafters and beams were already black with age, as were the panelled seats, with their tall backs, and the long polished tables between, on which innumerable pewter's handkerts had left fantastic patterns of many-sized rings.
29In the leaded window high up, a row of pots of scarlet geraniums and blue larkspur gave the bright note of colour against the dull background of the oak.
30That Mr.
31Jellyband, landlord of the fisherman's rest at Dover, was a prosperous man, was, of course, clear to the most casual observer.
32The pewter on the fine old dresses, the brass on the gigantic hearth, shone like silver and gold.
33The red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window-sill.
34This meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which necessitated the keeping up of the coffee-room to a high standard of elegance and order.
35As Sally came in, laughing through her frowns and displaying a row of dazzling white teeth, she was greeted with shouts and chorus of applause.
36"'Why, here's Sally!
37What ho, Sally!
38Hurrah for pretty Sally!' "'I thought you'd grown deaf in that kitchen of yours,' muttered Jimmy Pidkin, as he passed the back of his hand across his very dry lips.
39"'All right, all right,' laughed Sally, as she deposited the freshly-filled tankins upon the tables.
40"'Why, what are we, to be sure?
41And is your grandmother a-dying, and you wanting to see the poor soul afore she'm gone?' "'I never seed such a mighty Russian!' A chorus of good-humoured laughter greeted this witticism, which gave the company there present food for many jokes for some considerable time.
42Sally now seemed in less of a hurry to get back to her pots and pans.
43A young man with fair curly hair and eager bright blue eyes was engaging most of her attention, and the whole of her time, whilst broad witticisms anent Jimmy Pidkin's fictitious grandmother flew from mouth to mouth, mixed with heavy puffs of pungent tobacco-smoke.
44Facing the hearth, his legs wide apart, a long clay pipe in his mouth, stood mine host himself, worthy Mr.
45Jellyband, landlord of the fisherman's rest, as his father had before him—I, and his grandfather and great-grandfather, too, for that matter.
46Portly in build, jovial in countenance, and somewhat bald of pate, Mr.
47Jellyband was indeed a typical rural John Bull of those days, the days when our prejudiced insularity was at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality, and the rest of the world an unexploited land of savages and cannibals.
48There he stood, mine worthy host, firm and well set up on his limbs, smoking his long churchwarden, and caring nothing for nobody at home, and despising everybody abroad.
49He wore the typical scarlet waistcoat, with shiny brass buttons, the corduroy breeches, and the grey worsted stockings and smart buckled shoes that characterised every self-respecting innkeeper in Great Britain in these days.
50And while pretty motherless Sally had need of four pairs of brown hands to do all the work that fell on her shapely shoulders, worthy Jellyband discussed the affairs of nations with his most privileged guests.
51The coffee-room indeed, lighted by two well-polished lamps which hung from the raftered ceiling, looked cheerful and cosy in the extreme.
52Through dense clouds of tobacco smoke that hung about in every corner, the faces of Mr.
53Jellyband's customers appeared red and pleasant to look at, and on good terms with themselves, their host, and all the world.
54From every side of the room, loud guffaws accompanied pleasant, if not highly intellectual, conversation, while Sally's repeated giggles testified to the good use Mr.
55Harry Waite was making of the short time she seemed inclined to spare him.
56They were mostly fisher-folk who patronised Mr.
57Jellyband's coffee-room.
58But fishermen are known to be very thirsty people.
59The sort which they breathe in when they are on the sea accounts for their parched throats when on shore.
60But the fishermen's rest was something more than a rendezvous for these humble folk.
61The London and Dover coach started from the hostel daily, and passengers who had come across the channel, and those who started for the grand tour, all became acquainted with Mr.
62Jellyband, his French wines, and his home-brewed ales.
63It was towards the close of September 1792, and the weather, which had been brilliant and hot throughout the month, had suddenly broken up.
64For two days torrents of rain had deluged the south of England, doing its level best to ruin what chances the apples and pears and late plums had of becoming really fine, self-respecting fruit.
65Even now it was beating against the leaded windows, and tumbling down the chimney, making the cheerful wood-fire sizzle in the hearth.
66"'Lud!
67did you ever see such a wet September, Mr.
68Jellyband?' asked Mr.
69Hempseed.
70He sat in one of the seats inside the hearth, did Mr.
71Hempseed, for he was an authority and important personage, not only at the Fisherman's Rest, where Mr.
72Jellyband always made a special selection of him as a foil for political arguments, but throughout the neighbourhood, where his learning, and notably his knowledge of the Scriptures, was held in the most profound awe and respect.
73With one hand buried in the capacious pockets of his corduroys, underneath his elaborately worked, well-worn smock, the other holding his long clay pipe, Mr.
74Hempseed sat there, looking dejectedly across the room at the rivulets of moisture which trickled down the window-panes.
75Mr.
76Jellyband was not ready with his usual flow of argument.
77"'It do seem more like April than September, don't it?' continued Mr.
78Hempseed dolefully, as a shower of raindrops fell with a sizzle upon the fire.
79"'Aye, that it do,' assented the worthy host.
80"'But then, what can you spect, Mr.
81Hempseed, I says, with sich a government as we've got?' Mr.
82Hempseed shook his head with an infinity of wisdom, tempered by deeply rooted mistrust of the British climate and the British government.
83"'I don't spect nothing, Mr.
84Jellyband,' he said.
85"'Poor folks like us is of no account up there in London.
86"'I knows that, and it's not often as I do complain.
87"'But when it comes to such wet weather in September, and all me fruit a-rotting and a-dying, like the guption mothers first-born, "'and doing no more good than they did, poor dears, save a lot more Jews, peddlers and such, "'with their oranges and such like foreign ungodly fruit, which nobody'd buy if English apples and pears was nicely swelled.
88"'As the scriptures say—' "'That's quite right, Mr.
89Hempseed,' retorted Jellyband.
90"'And as I says—' "'What can you spect?' "'There's all them Frenchy devils over the channel yonder a-murd'rin their king and nobility, "'and Mr.
91Pitt and Mr.
92Fox and Mr.
93Burke a-fightin and a-ranglin between them, "'if we Englishmen should low them to go on in their ungodly way.' "'Let him murder,' says Mr.
94Pitt.
95"'Stop him,' says Mr.
96Burke.
97"'And let him murder, says I, and be dem to him,' said Mr.
98Hempseed, emphatically, for he had but little liking for his friend Jellyband's political arguments, wherein he always got out of his step, and had but little chance for displaying those pearls of wisdom which had earned for him so high a reputation in the neighbourhood, and so many free tankards of ale at the fisherman's rest.
99"'Let em murder,' he repeated again, "'but don't let's ave such rain in September, for that is agin the law, and the scriptures, which says—' "'Lud, Mr.
100Arry, ah, you made me jump!' It was unfortunate for Sally, and her flirtation, that this remark of hers should have occurred at the precise moment when Mr.
101Hempseed was collecting his breath, in order to deliver himself one of those scriptural utterances which made him famous, for it brought down upon her pretty head the full flood of her father's wrath.
102"'Now then, Sally, me girl, now then,' he said, trying to force a frown upon his good-humoured face, "'stop that foolin' with them young jack-knaves and get on with the work.
103The work's gettin' on all right, father.' But Mr.
104Jellyband was peremptory.
105He had other views for his buxom daughter, his only child, who would, in God's good time, become the owner of the fisherman's rest, than to see her married to one of these young fellows who earned but a precarious livelihood with their net.
106"'Did ye hear me speak, my girl?' he said in that quiet tone, which no one inside the inn dared to disobey.
107"'Get on with my lord Tony's supper, for if it ain't the best we can do, and he not satisfied, see what you'll get, that's all.' Reluctantly, Sally obeyed.
108"'Is you expecting special guests then, tonight, Mr.
109Jellyband?' asked Jimmy Pidkin, in a loyal attempt to divert his host's attention from the circumstances connected with Sally's exit from the room.
110"'Aye, that I be,' replied Jellyband, "'friends o my lord Tony isself, dukes and duchesses from over the water yonder, whom the young lord and his friend Sir Andrew Foulkes and the other young noblemen have helped out of the clutches of them murderin' devils.
111But this was too much for Mr.
112Hempseed's querulous philosophy.
113"'Light,' he said, "'what do they do that for, I wonder?
114I don't hold not with interferin' in other folks' ways.
115As the scriptures say, "'May be, Mr.
116Jempseed,' interrupted Jellyband with biting sarcasm, "'as you're a personal friend of Mr.
117Pitt, and as you says along with Mr.
118Fox, "'Let a murder,' says you.' "'Bardon me, Mr.
119Jellyband,' feebly protested Mr.
120Hempseed.
121"'I don't know as I ever did.' But Mr.
122Jellyband had at last succeeded in getting upon his favourite hobby-horse, and had no intention of dismounting in any hurry.
123"'Or maybe you've made friends with some of them French chaps who they do say have come over here a purpose to make us Englishmen agree with their murderin' ways.' "'I don't know what you mean, Mr.
124Jellyband,' suggested Mr.
125Hempseed.
126"'All I know is—all I know is,' loudly asserted mine host, "'that there was my friend Peppercorn, who owns the Blue-Faced Boar, and as true and loyal an Englishman as you'd see in the land.
127And now look at him.
128He made friends with some of them frog-eaters, obnobbed with them, just as if they was Englishmen, and not just a lot of immoral, godforsaken furrin spies.
129"'Well, and what happened?
130Peppercorn, he now ups and talks of revolutions and liberty, and down with the aristocrats, just like Mr.
131Hempseed over here.' "'Pardon me, Mr.
132Jellyband,' again interposed Mr.
133Hempseed feebly, "'I dunno as I ever did,' Mr.
134Jellyband had appealed to the company in general, who were listening awestruck and open-mouthed at the recital of Mr.
135Peppercorn's defalcations.
136At one table, two customers, gentlemen apparently by their clothes, had pushed aside their half-finished game of dominoes, and had been listening for some time, and evidently with much amusement, at Mr.
137Jellyband's international opinions.
138One of them now, with a quiet, sarcastic smile still lurking round the corners of his mobile mouth, turned towards the centre of the room where Mr.
139Jellyband was standing.
140"'You seem to think,' my honest friend,' he said quietly, "'that these Frenchmen—spies, I think you called them—are mighty clever fellows to have made mincemeat, so to speak, of your friend Mr.
141Peppercorn's opinions.
142How did they accomplish that now, think you?' "'Lud, sir, I suppose they talked him over.
143Those Frenchies I've heard it said, I've got the gift of gab, and Mr.
144Hempsey, dear, will tell you how it is that they just twist some people round their little finger like.' "'Indeed, and is that so, Mr.
145Hempseed?' inquired the stranger, politely.
146"'Nay, sir,' replied Mr.
147Hempseed, much irritated.
148"'I dunno as I can give you the information you require.' "'Faith, then,' said the stranger, "'let us hope, my worthy host, that these clever spies will not succeed in upsetting your extremely loyal opinions.' But this was too much for Mr.
149Jellyband's pleasant equanimity.
150He burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, which was soon echoed by those who happened to be in his debt.
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481ha I'm sure you're very polite, sir," said Mr.
482Jellyband, wiping his eyes, which were still streaming with the abundance of his laughter, and I don't mind if I do.
483The stranger poured out a couple of tankards full of wine, and having offered one to mine host, he took the other himself.
484"'Loyal Englishmen as we all are,' he said, whilst the same humorous smile played around the corners of his thin lips.
485"'Loyal as we are!
486we must admit that this, at least, is one good thing which comes to us from France." "'Aye, will none of us deny that, sir,' assented mine host.
487"'And here's to the best landlord in England, our worthy host, Mr.
488Jellyband,' said the stranger, in a loud tone of voice.
489"'Hip-hip!
490hurrah!' retorted the whole company present.
491Then there was a loud clapping of hands, and mugs and tankards made a rattling music upon the tables to the accompaniment of loud laughter at nothing in particular, and of Mr.
492Jellyband's muttered exclamations.
493"'Just fancy me being talked over by any godforsaken foreigner!
494What?
495I'd love you, sir, but you do say some queer things!' To which obvious fact the stranger heartily assented.
496It was certainly a preposterous suggestion that any one could ever upset Mr.
497Jellyband's firmly-rooted opinions anent the utter worthlessness of the inhabitants of the whole continent of Europe.
498End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2
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