CHAPTER XX. THE GRATITUDE OF OMBREVAL

What La Boulaye may have lacked in knowledge of woman's ways he made up for by his knowledge of Cecile, and from this he apprehended that there was no time to be lost if he would carry out his purpose. Touching her dismissal of him, he permitted himself no illusions. He rated it at its true value. He saw in it no sign of relenting of generosity, but only a desire to put an end to the shame which his presence was occasioning her.

He could imagine the lengths to which the thirst of vengeance would urge a scorned woman, and of all women he felt that Cecile scorned was the most to be feared. She would not sit with folded hands. Once she overcame the first tempestuous outburst of her passion she would be up and doing, straining every sense to outwit and thwart him in his project, whose scope she must have more than guessed.

Reasoning thus, he clearly saw not only that every moment was of value, but that flight was the only thing remaining him if he would save himself as well as Ombreval. And so he hired him a cabriolet, and drove in all haste to the house of Billaud Varennes, the Deputy, from whom he sought to obtain one of the two signatures still needed by his order of release. He was disappointed at learning that Varennes was not at home—though, had he been able to peep an hour or so into the future, he would have offered up thanks to Heaven for that same Deputy's absence. His insistent and impatient questions elicited the information that probably Verennes would be found at Fevrier's. And so to Fevrier's famous restaurant in the old Palais Royal went La Boulaye, and there he had the good fortune to find not only Billaud Varennes, but also the Deputy Carnot. Nor did fortune end her favours there. She was smiling now upon Caron, as was proved by the fact that neither to Varennes nor Carnot did the name of Ombreval mean anything. Robespierre's subscription of the document was accepted by each as affording him a sufficient warrant to append his own signature, and although Carnot asked a question or two, it was done in an idle humour, and he paid little attention to such replies as Caron made him.

Within five minutes of entering the restaurant, La Boulaye was in the street again, driving, by way of the Pont Neuf, to the Luxembourg.

At the prison he encountered not the slightest difficulty. He was known personally to the officer, of whom he demanded the person of the ci-devant Vicomte, and his order of release was too correct to give rise to any hesitation on the part of the man to whom it was submitted. He was left waiting a few moments in a chamber that did duty as a guard-room, and presently the Vicomte, looking pale, and trembling with excitement at his sudden release, stood before him.

“You?” he muttered, upon beholding La Boulaye. But the Republican received him very coldly, and hurried him out of the prison with scant ceremony.

The officer attended the Deputy to the door of his cabriolet, and in his hearing Caron bade the coachman drive to the Porte St. Martin. This, however, was no more than a subterfuge to which he was resorting with a view to baffling the later possibility of their being traced. Ombreval naturally enough plied him with questions as they went, to which La Boulaye returned such curt answers that in the end, discouraged and offended, the nobleman became silent.

Arrived at the Porte St. Martin they alighted, and La Boulaye dismissed the carriage. On foot he now led his companion as far as the church of St. Nicholas des Champs, where he hired a second cabriolet, bidding the man drive him to the Quai de la Greve. Having reached the riverside they once more took a short walk, crossing by the Pont au Change, and thence making their way towards Notre Dame, in the neighbourhood of which La Boulaye ushered the Vicomte into a third carriage, and thinking that by now they had done all that was needed to efface their tracks, he ordered the man to proceed as quickly as possible to Choisy.

They arrived at that little village on the Seine an hour or so later, and having rid themselves of their conveyance, Caron inquired and discovered the way to the house of Citoyenne Godelliere.

Mademoiselle was within, and at sound of Caron's voice questioning the erstwhile servant who had befriended her, she made haste to show herself. And at a word from her, Henriette admitted the two men and ushered them into a modest parlour, where she left them with Mademoiselle.

La Boulaye was the first to speak.

“I trust that I have not kept you waiting overlong, Citoyenne,” he said, by way of saying something.

“Monsieur,” she answered him, with a look that was full of gratitude and kindliness “you have behaved nobly, and to my dying day I shall remember it.”

This La Boulaye deprecated by a gesture, but uttered no word as the Vicomte now stepped forward and bore Suzanne's hand to his lips.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “Monsieur La Boulaye here was very reticent touching the manner in which my release has been gained. But I never doubted that I owed it to your good efforts, and that you had adopted the course suggested to you by my letter, and bought me from the Republic.”

La Boulaye flushed slightly as much at the contemptuous tone as at the words in which Ombreval referred to the Republic.

“It is not to me but to our good friend, M. La Boulaye, that you should address your thanks, Monsieur.”

“Ah? Vraiment?” exclaimed the Vicomte, turning a supercilious eye upon the Deputy, for with his freedom he seemed to have recovered his old habits.

“I have not sold you to the Citoyenne,” said La Boulaye, the words being drawn from him by the other's manner. “I am making her a present of you—a sort of wedding gift.” And his lips smiled, for all that his eyes remained hard.

Ombreval made him no answer, but stood looking from the Deputy to Suzanne in some hesitation. The expressions which his very lofty dignity prompted, his sense of fitness—feeble though it was—forbade him. And so there followed a pause, which, however, was but brief, for La Boulaye had yet something to say.

It had just come to him with a dismaying force that in the haste of his escape from Paris with the Vicomte he had forgotten to return to his lodging for a passport that he was fortunately possessed of. It was a laissez-passer, signed and left in blank, with which he had been equipped—against the possibility of the need for it arising—when he had started upon the Convention's errand to the Army of Dumouriez. Whilst on his way to Robespierre's house to secure the order of release, he had bethought him of filling in that passport for three persons, and thus, since to remain must entail his ruin and destruction, make his escape from France with Mademoiselle and the Vicomte. It was his only chance. Then in the hurry of the succeeding incidents, the excitement that had attended them, and the imperative need for haste in getting the Vicomte to Choisy, he had put the intended return to his lodging from his mind—overlooking until now the fact that not only must he go back for the valise which he had bidden Brutus pack, but also for that far more precious passport.

It now became necessary to explain the circumstances to his companions, and in explaining them the whole affair, from Robespierre's refusal to grant him the life of the Vicomte down to the means to which he had had recourse, could not be kept from transpiring. As she listened, Suzanne's expression changed into one of ineffable wonder.

“And you have done this for me?” she cried, when at last he paused, “you have ruined your career and endangered your life?”

La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders.

“I spoke over-confidently when I said that I could obtain you the Vicomte's pardon. There proved to be a factor on which I had not counted. Nevertheless, what I had promised I must fulfil. I was by honour bound to leave nothing undone that might result in the Vicomte's enlargement.”

Ornbreval laughed softly, but with consummate amusement.

“A sans-culotte with a sense of honour is such an anomaly—” he began, when Mademoiselle interposed, a note of anger sounding in her voice.

“M. d'Ombreval means to pay you a compliment,” she informed La Boulaye, “but he has such an odd way of choosing his expressions that I feared you might misunderstand him.”

La Boulaye signified his indifference by a smile.

“I am afraid the ci-devant Vicomte has not yet learnt his lesson,” said he; “or else he is like the sinner who upon recovering health forgot the penitence that had come to him in the days of sickness. But we have other matters to deal with, Citoyenne, and, in particular, the matter of the passport. Fool that I am!” he cried bitterly.

“I must return to Paris at once,” he announced briskly. “There is no help for it. We will hope that as yet the way is open to me, and that I shall be permitted to go and to return unmolested. In such a case the rest is easy—except that you will have to suffer my company as far as the frontier.”

It was Mademoiselle who accompanied him to the door.

“Monsieur,” she said, in a voice that shook with the sincere intensity of her feelings, “think me not ungrateful that I have said so little. But your act has overwhelmed me. It is so truly noble, that to offer you thanks that are but words, seems tome little short of a banality.”

“Tut!” he laughed. “I have not yet done half. It will be time to thank me when we are out of France.”

“And you speak so lightly of leaving France?” she cried. “But what is to become of you? What of your career?”

“Other careers are possible in other countries,” he answered, with a lightness he did not feel. “Who knows perhaps the English or the Prussians might be amenable to a change of government. I shall seek to induce one or the other of them to became a republic, and then I shall become once more a legislator.”

With that, and vowing that every moment he remained their chances of leaving France grew more slender, he took his leave of her, expressing the hope that he might be back within a couple of hours. Mademoiselle watched him to the garden gate, then closing the door she returned within.

She discovered her betrothed—he whom La Boulaye had called her lover—standing with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him, the very picture of surliness. He made none of the advances that one might look for in a man placed as he was at that moment. He greeted her, instead, with a complaint.

“Will you permit me, Mademoiselle, to say that in this matter you have hardly chosen the wiser course?”

“In what matter?” quoth she, at a loss to understand him.

“In the matter of my release. I advised you in my letter to purchase my freedom. Had you done so, we should now be in a position to start for the frontier—for you would have made a passport a part of your bargain. Instead of this, not only are we obliged to run the risk of waiting, but even if this fellow should return, we shall be affronted by his company for some days to come.” And the Vicomte sniffed the air in token of disgust.

Suzanne looked at him in an amazement that left her speechless for a moment. At last:

“And this is your gratitude?” she demanded. “This is all that you have to say in thanks for the discomfort and danger that I have suffered on your behalf? Your tone is oddly changed since you wrote me that piteous, pitiable letter from Belgium, M. le Vicomte.”

He reddened slightly.

“I am afraid that I have been clumsy in my expressions,” he apologised. “But never doubt my gratitude, Mademoiselle. I am more grateful to you than words can tell. You have done your duty to me as few women could.”

The word “duty” offended her, yet she let it pass. In his monstrous vanity it was often hopeless to make him appreciate the importance of anything or anybody outside of himself. Of this the present occasion was an instance.

“You must forgive me my seeming thanklessness, Mademoiselle,” he pursued. “It was the company of that sans-culotte rascal that soured me. I had enough of him a month ago, when he brought me to Paris. It offended me to have him stand here again in the same room with me, and insolently refer to his pledged word as though he were a gentleman born.”

“To whom do you refer?” quoth she.

“Ma foi! How many of them are there? Why, to this fellow, La Boulaye?”

“So it seemed, and yet I could not believe it of you. Do you not realise that your ingratitude approaches the base?”

He vouchsafed her a long, cold stare of amazement.

“Mordieu!” he ejaculated at last. “I am afraid that your reason has been affected by your troubles. You seem, Mademoiselle, to be unmindful of the station into which you have had the honour to be born.”

“If your bearing is to be accepted as a sign that you remember it, I will pray God that I may, indeed, forget it—completely and for all time.”

And then the door opened to admit the good Henriette, who came to announce that she had contrived a hasty meal, and that it was served and awaiting them.

“Diable!” he laughed. “Those are the first words of true wit that I have heard these many days. I swear,” he added, with a pleasantness that was oddly at variance with his sullen humour of a moment back, “that I have not tasted human food these four weeks, and as for my appetite—it is capable of consuming the whole patrimony of St. Peter. Lead the way, my good Henriette. Come, Mademoiselle.”