I Will Repay
By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
“Coward! Coward! Coward!”
The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of agonized humiliation.
The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst, with a convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears of shame which were blinding him.
“Coward!” He tried to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly, nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he still contrived to mutter: “Coward!”
The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed, quite prepared for the adventure that must inevitably ensue, the only possible ending to a quarrel such as this.
Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Déroulède should have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adèle de Montchéri when the little Vicomte de Marny’s infatuation for the notorious beauty had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months past.
Adèle was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly arrived from its ancestral cote.
The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him, Adèle was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle on her behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavor to justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most dissolute women of the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and his friends had already learned that it was best to avoid all allusions to Adèle’s beauty and weaknesses.
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Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Baroness Emma Orczy (full name: Emma Magdalena Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci) ( 23 September 1865 – 12 November 1947), usually known as Baroness Orczy (the name under which she was published) or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright.
Biography.
She is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist to save French aristocrats from “Madame Guillotine” during the French Revolution, establishing the “hero with a secret identity” in popular culture. Opening in London’s West End on 5 January 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel became a favorite of British audiences. Some of Orczy’s paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. She established the Women of England’s Active Service League during World War I to empower women to convince men to enlist in the military.
Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary. She was the daughter of the composer Baron Félix Orczy de Orci (1835–1892) and Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyed et Cege (1839–1892). Her paternal grandfather, Baron László Orczy (1787–1880) was a royal councilor, and knight of the Sicilian order of Saint George, her paternal grandmother, Baroness Magdolna, born Magdolna Müller (1811–1879), was of Austrian origin. Her maternal grandparents were Count Sámuel Wass de Szentegyed et Cege (1815–1879), a member of the Hungarian parliament, and Rozália Eperjessy de Károlyfejérvár (1814–1884). Emma’s parents left their estate for Budapest in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris, where Emma studied music unsuccessfully. Finally, in 1880, the 14-year-old Emma and her family moved to London, England where they lodged with their countryman, Francis Pichler, at 162 Great Portland Street. Orczy attended the West London School of Art and then the Heatherley School of Fine Art. Although not destined to be a painter, it was at art school that she met a young illustrator named Henry George Montagu MacLean Barstow, the son of an English clergyman; they were married at St Marylebone parish church on 7 November 1894. It was the start of a happy marriage, which she described as “for close on half a century, one of perfect happiness and understanding, of perfect friendship and communion of thought.”
Baroness Emmuska Orczy
