Yonder — by the leg of the Incorruptible’s chair — he espied the ball of paper, and to reach it he stretched to his full length, lying prone beneath a table in an attitude scarce becoming a Deputy of the French Republic. But it was worth the effort and the disregard of dignity, for when presently on his knees he smoothed out that document, he discovered it to be the one he sought the order upon the gaolers of the Luxembourg to set at liberty a person or persons whose names were to be filled in, signed by Maximilien Robespierre.
He rose, absorbed in his successful find, and he pursued upon the table the process of smoothing the creases as much as possible from that priceless document. That done he took up a pen and attached his own signature alongside of Robespierre’s; then into the blank space above he filled the name of Anatole d’Ombreval ci-devant Vicomte d’Ombreval. He dropped the pen and took up the sand-box. He sprinkled the writing, creased the paper, and dusted the sand back into the receptacle. And then of a sudden his blood seemed to freeze, and beads of cold sweat stood out upon his brow. There had been the very slightest stir behind him, and with it had come a warm breath upon his bowed neck. Someone was looking over his shoulder. An instant he remained in that bowed attitude with head half-raised. Then suddenly straightening himself he swung round and came face to face with Cecile Deshaix.
Confronting each other and very close they now stood and each was breathing with more than normal quickness. Her cheeks were white, her nostrils dilated and quivering, her blue eyes baleful and cruel, whilst her lips wore never so faint a smile. For a second La Boulaye looked the very picture of foolishness and alarm. Then it seemed as if he drew a curtain, and his face assumed the expressionless mask that was habitual to it in moments of great tension. Instinctively he put behind him his hands which held the paper. Cecile’s lips took on an added curl of scorn as she observed the act.
“You thief!” she said, very low, but very fiercely. “That was the paper that you left behind you, was it?”
“The paper that I have is certainly the paper that I left behind,” he answered serenely, for he had himself well in hand by now. “And as for dubbing me a thief so readily” — he paused, and shrugged his shoulders— “you are a woman,” he concluded, with an air suggesting that that fact was a conclusion to all things.
“Fool!” she blazed. “Do you think to overcome me by quibbles? Do you think to dupe me with words and shrugs?”
“My dear Cecile” he begged half-whimsically, “may I implore you to use some restraint? Inured as I am to the unbounded licence of your tongue and to the abandon that seems so inherent in you, let me assure you that—”
“Ah! You can say Cecile now?” she cried, leaving the remainder of his speech unheeded. “Now that you need me; now that you want me to be a party to your treacherous designs against my uncle. Oh, you can say ‘Cecile’ and ‘dear Cecile’ instead of your everlasting ‘Citoyenne’.
“It seems I am doomed to be always misunderstood by you,” he laughed, and at the sound she started as if he had struck her.
Had she but looked in his eyes she had seen no laughter there; she might have realised that murder rather than mirth was in his soul — for, at all costs, he was determined to hold the paper he had been at such pains to get.
“I understand you well enough,” she cried hotly, her cheeks flaming red of a sudden. “I understand you, you thief, you trickster. Do you think that I heard nothing of what passed this morning between my uncle and you? Do you think I do not know whose name you have written on that paper? Answer me,” she commanded him.
“Since you know so much, what need for any questions?” quoth he coolly, transferring the coveted paper to his pocket as he spoke. “And since we are so far agreed that I am not contradicting anything you say — nor, indeed, intend to — perhaps you will see the convenience of ending an interview that promises to be fruitless. My dear Cecile, I am very grateful to you for the key of this room. I beg that you will make my compliments to the Citizen your uncle upon his return, and inform him of how thoroughly you ministered to my wants.”
With that and a superb air of insouciance, he made shift to go. But fronting him she barred his way.
“Give me that paper, sclerat,” she demanded imperiously. “You shall not go until you surrender it. Give it to me or I will call Duplay.”
“You may call the devil for aught I care, you little fool,” he answered her, very pleasantly. “Do you think Duplay will be mad enough to lay hands upon a Deputy of the Convention in the discharge of the affairs of the Nation?”
“It is a lie!”
“Why, of course it is,” he admitted sweetly. “But Duplay will not be aware of that.”
“I shall tell him.”
“Tut! He won’t believe you. I’ll threaten him with the guillotine if he does. And I should think that Duplay has sufficient dread of the national barber not to risk having his toilet performed by him. Now, be reasonable, and let me pass.”
Enraged beyond measure by his persiflage and very manifest contempt of her, she sprang suddenly upon him, and caught at the lapels of his redingote.
“Give me that paper!” she screamed, exerting her entire strength in a vain effort to boldly shake him.
Coldly he eyed this golden-haired virago now, and looked in vain for some trace of her wonted beauty in the stormy distortion of her face.
“You grow tiresome with your repetitions,” he answered her impatiently, as, snatching at her wrists, he made her release her hold. “Let me go.” And with that he flung her roughly from him.
A second she staggered, then, recovering her balance and without an instant’s hesitation, she sped to the door. Imagining her intent to be to lock him in La Boulaye sprang after her. But it seemed that his mind had been more swift to fasten upon the wiser course than had hers. Instead, she snatched the key and closed the door on the inside. She wasted a moment fumbling at the lock, and even as he caught her by the waist the key slipped in, and before he dragged her back she had contrived to turn it, and now held it in her hand. He laughed a trifle angrily as she twisted out of his grasp, and stood panting before him.
“You shall not leave this room with that paper,” she gasped, her anger ever swelling, and now rendering her speech almost incoherent.
He set his arms akimbo, and surveyed her whimsically.
“My dear Cecile,” quoth he, “if you will take no thought for my convenience, I beg that, at least, you will take some for your good name. Thousand devils woman! Will you have it said in Paris that you were found locked in a room with me? What will your uncle — your virtuous, prudish, incorruptible uncle — say when he learns of it? If he does not demand a heavy price from you for so dishonouring him, he is not the man I deem him. Now be sensible, child, and open that door while there is yet time, and before anybody discovers us in this most compromising situation.”
He struck the tone most likely to win him obedience, and that he had judged astutely her face showed him. In the place of the anger that had distorted it there came now into that countenance a look of surprise and fear. She saw herself baffled at every point. She had threatened him with Duplay — the only man available — and he had shown her how futile it must prove to summon him. And now she had locked herself in with him, thinking to sit there until he should do her will, and he showed her the danger to herself therein, which had escaped her notice.
There was a settle close behind her, and on to this she sank, and bending her head she opened the floodgates of her passionate little soul, and let the rage that had so long possessed her dissolve in tears. At sight of that sudden change of front La Boulaye stamped his foot. He appreciated the fact that she was about to fight him with weapons that on a previous occasion — when, however, it is true, they were wielded by another — had accomplished his undoing.
And for all that he steeled his heart, and evoked the memory of Suzanne to strengthen him in his purpose: he approached her with a kindly exterior. He sat him down beside her; he encompassed her w
aist with his arm, and drawing her to him he set himself to soothe her as one soothes a wilful child. Had he then recalled what her attitude had been towards him in the past he had thought twice before adopting such a course. But in his mind there was no sentiment that was not brotherly, and far from his wishes was it to invest his action with any other than a fraternal kindness.
But she, feeling that caressing arm about her, and fired by it in her hapless passion for this man, was quick to misinterpret him, and to translate his attitude into one of a kindness far beyond his dreams. She nestled closer to him; at his bidding her weeping died down and ceased.
“There, Cecile, you will give me the key now?” he begged.
She glanced up at him shyly through wet lashes — as peeps the sun through April clouds.
“There is nothing I will not do for you, Caron,” she murmured. “See, I will even help you to play the traitor on my uncle. For you love me a little, cher Caron, is it not so?”
He felt himself grow cold from head to foot, and he grew sick at the thought that by the indiscretion of his clumsy sympathy he had brought this down upon his luckless head. Mechanically his arm relaxed the hold of her waist and fell away. Instinctively she apprehended that all was not as she had thought. She turned on the seat to face him squarely, and caught something of the dismay in his glance of the loathing almost (for what is more loathsome to a man than to be wooed by a woman he desires not?) Gradually, inch by inch, she drew away from him, ever facing him, and her eyes ever on his, as if fascinated by the horror of what she saw. Thus until the extremity of the settle permitted her to go no farther. She started, then her glance flickered down, and she gave a sudden gasp of passion. Simultaneously the key rang on the boards at Caron’s feet angrily flung there by Cecile.
“Go!” she exclaimed, in a suffocating voice, “and never let me see your face again.”
For a second or two he sat quite still, his eyes observing her with a look of ineffable pity, which might have increased her disorder had she perceived it. Then slowly he stooped, and took up the key.
He rose from the settle, and without a word — for words he realised, could do no more than heighten the tragic banality of the situation — he went to the door, unlocked it, and passed out.
Huddled in her corner sat Cecile, listening until his steps had died away on the stairs. Then she cast herself prone upon the settle, and in a frenzy of sobs and tears she vented some of the rage and shame that were distracting her.
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 rema
ined 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.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 81
