CHAPTER XXV.
"I KNOW YOUR FACE."
The deserted road along which he now walked was, in a way, a relief to him. Nothing could have better suited his present needs than to be thus outside the life of any town and free from all observation, for he had much to meditate upon – many plans to form for his safety. And of those plans, the first to be carried out was to free himself from any appearance of conspicuousness which would draw attention on him.
There was, to begin with, the officer's jacket and cap which he had assumed, and the naval sword by his side, from which he had by now removed all damp it might have received from being in the sea. Yet how to deprive himself of the latter, and still be safe, he knew not.
As for the jacket – which was, indeed, a short coat filled with pockets, outside and in – he could dispense with it very well. He had dragged it on over his own coat when quitting the burning transport, simply as a disguise, as a safeguard. It could now be discarded.
His clothes – the plain English clothes which he had worn in London, and in which he had joined Rooke's flagship and fought through Barfleur and La Hogue8 – would attract no attention. They were suitable to any one in the middle class; but with the cap it was not the same thing, since he had nothing wherewith to replace it, and if he rejected that he must go bareheaded. This would not do; he had, therefore, to cast about for some headdress.
At last, however, he was obliged to retain it, altering it as well as he was able with his fingers, tearing off a strip of lace round it and throwing away the gilt cockade. As for the jacket, that was easily disposed of; he rolled up some stones in it and flung it into a pool of water among the reeds by the wayside, where it soon sank beneath the surface. But the sword still remained – a good enough blade, in a leather scabbard, and with not too much to proclaim that it was a sailor's except an anchor – on, of course, the eternal sun, Louis's emblem – fastened to the top of its handle. There was also a sword knot, which followed the jacket into another pool, and he decided that he must take his chance with the weapon itself.
"At least," he thought grimly, "none will have much chance to observe it closely if I am using it against them; if I am not, I can keep my hand on the emblem. Under any circumstances it cannot be parted with."
And now he neared Bayeux, worn and spent with all he had gone through in the last twenty-four hours, since he had hardly slept at all, and that only by snatches after the battle off Barfleur had begun; also his immersion in the sea and his long ride had made him very weary.
"Rest! rest!" he muttered to himself, "a long rest I must have. And then for Troyes and my child – and for Aurélie de Roquemaure. Ay, for her!"
He trudged along by the horse's side, still carrying the saddle over his arm to ease it, and it was not until the gates and walls of Bayeux came into sight that he mounted it again. It would have a good night in a stall before long; that small addition to its day's work would not hurt it much. And he could not present himself on foot before the custodian without raising suspicion of having come a long distance, without courting remark.
"You are from the coast?" the man asked, as he rode through the gate. "How goes it with the marshal's army there? Have they invaded England yet?"
"Not yet, so far as I am aware," he answered. He knew it would be madness to appear cognizant of what had taken place at La Hogue. The whole town would clamour for news, and he would be for the time the most conspicuous man in it. "Not yet."
"We have heard strange rumours," the man said. "But this morning one came in from St. Mère Eglise who said that loud sounds of firing were heard all last night out to sea; and another, a pêcheur de mer, says that great fleets have been seen passing from the west. Mon Dieu! it cannot be that those English chiens would dare to attack us!"
"Impossible, mon ami, impossible! There can be no chance of that. Tourville's fleet would prevent that."
"Je crois bien. Yet why fire all through the night? One fires not on imaginary foes."
"True. Well, later, no doubt, we shall hear more. My friend, tell me a good inn, where I may rest awhile."
"Oh! as for that, there are several. The Pomme d'Or, among others, is good and cheap; also Les Rochers de Calvados. Try one of those and you will be content."
Thanking him, St. Georges passed into the old city, though without the slightest intention of going to either of those houses. His object was to remove every trace of himself as he passed onward to the goal ahead of him – to obliterate his tracks entirely.
He rode quietly through the town, therefore, observing what good and comfortable-looking inns those were which the man had mentioned, but at the same time regretfully avoiding them. For under no circumstances would he have felt justified in alighting at either – he doubted if he could have afforded to do so. When he received Rooke's hasty summons to join him he had but forty-five guineas, saved after two years of an existence that at best had been a hard one. It had been a task to accumulate even that sum, a task entailing careful living, abstinence, almost even a life of total deprivation; when he had paid scrupulously every farthing he owed in the neighbourhood where he lodged, the sum had dwindled down to thirty-five guineas. It was little enough to enable him now to reach Troyes and provide for himself and the horse he had become possessed of on the road, to regain his child, and find his way back to England – if he succeeded in doing so.
To find his way back to England! Would that be possible? Could he pass through the north of France undiscovered? Could he, the ex-galley slave, the man whose face had become known to hundreds of persons connected with the galleys, besides having been known to hundreds of soldiers also, with whom he had been quartered, hope to escape recognition?
"God only knows!" he murmured as he rode through the empty streets of the already dead-and-gone city. "He alone knows. Yet, ere I will be taken alive – ere the mark upon my shoulder shall ever testify against me – I will end it all! Yet, courage! courage! At present I am safe."
He reached the neighbourhood of the east gate, for he had traversed the whole of Bayeux by now, and knew that if he would rest for a night in the old city he must make choice of a halting place. Casting, therefore, his eyes round the wide streets, he saw an auberge – a place, indeed, that in France is known as a pant– a low-roofed, poor drinking place, yet with, inscribed upon its walls over the door, the usual words, "Logement à pied et à cheval."
Around the door several scraggy chickens were picking up anything they could find in the interstices of the stones, and two or three gaunt half-starved-looking dogs lay about basking in the sun and snapping at real or imaginary flies. The place looked none too clean. Yet it was obscure, and it would do for one night. None would molest him here.
"Can I have a room until daybreak to-morrow and a meal?" he asked of a slatternly looking woman leaning against the doorpost; "I have ridden some distance and am very fatigued."
"Without doubt," she answered. "'Tis for that we keep house. Come in."
"And my horse?"
"That also – hard by," she said. "I will call my good man," and uttering a shriek, which was answered from the back by a gruff male voice, she called out again: "Come and take the traveller's horse, scélérat! Mon Dieu, have you nothing else to do but sit drinking there all day?"
A heavy footfall sounded in the passage, and presently a large, unkempt man came along it, and, seeing the traveller standing there, put up a dirty hand to his tousled hair and said, "Bon jour, voyageur." But the next moment he pushed that hair away from his eyes and, staring at St. Georges, said: "I know your face, stranger. Where have I seen it before?"
"How can I say?" St. Georges asked in reply. "I at least do not know yours."
Yet he turned pale as he answered, and regarded the man fixedly, for he had recognised the other at once. The fellow before him had been one of the comites of a galley in which St. Georges had rowed before being transferred to L'Idole – had thrashed and belaboured him often. Of all the brutal overseers this man had been, perhaps, the most cruel! He was in a trap if he should recall where he had seen him before, a trap from which escape would be difficult. For at a word from him he would never be allowed to pass the gates of Bayeux, but would be arrested at once, taken before the president of the city, and – sent back to the galleys if not executed, as he would undoubtedly be if it leaked out that he had fought against France!
"All the same, I know you," the man replied. "I must reflect. I must think. In my time I have known – "
"Dinde!" shrieked the woman at him, "will you keep the traveller standing all day in the passage while you indulge in your accursed recollections? Mon Dieu! are we so overrun with customers that you have naught else to do but gape at them? Sot! take his horse to the forge outside."
The fellow – who seemed bemused by frequent drinkings in the back place whence the termagant had called him forth – did as he was bid, and, seizing the nag's head, led it down an alley running at a left angle to the house, and so to a forge – in which, however, there was no sign of any work being done. And St. Georges, whose old soldier instincts never deserted him, followed by his side, intent on seeing where the animal was taken. The horse was to him – as once, four years ago, another and a dearly loved horse had been – his one chance of reaching Troyes easily, of finding his child, and – Aurélie de Roquemaure!
"A poor place," he said, speaking in as unnatural a tone as possible, while all the time he wondered if the fellow recognised him. And he took heart in recollecting that while he had been subject to this man's brutalities, with scores of other victims, his head had always been either shaved or cropped close and his mustache absent from his face. Now, both hair and mustache were grown again; it might be that the ex-comite could not recall where he had known him. "A poor place for a good horse! And none too secure, I imagine. It has no door. On a winter night a horse stabled here would be chilled to the bone."
"It is not winter now," the man replied. "Your horse will come to no hurt. And we have no thieves in Bayeux. We send them to the galleys!" and his eye roved over St. Georges as he spoke.
The latter was, however, too wary to start at the hateful word; moreover, since this man had been an overseer of the galleys, it was not strange, perhaps, that the name of the system by which he had once subsisted should rise to his mind. Therefore he replied quietly:
"That is well. Now for my room; but, first, a meal."
As he sat over that meal, a plain enough one as befitted the cabaret in which he was, and partook of it in a squalid room which represented the combined functions of living room for the man and his wife, drinking place for those who patronized the house, and general common room, he saw the fellow still casting long glances at him and regarding him from under his eyelids.
And over and over again he asked himself: "Does he recognise me; and, if so, what will he do?"
Presently the woman – who had been knitting behind a counter at which she sat, superintending the bringing in of his sparse meal, and ordering her husband, whom she addressed as André, to call to the serving maid for one thing after another – left the room to see to "monsieur's appartement." He had said to her he was very tired; he would go to it at once if it was ready, early in the evening as it was.
Then he rose as she disappeared and requested the man to show him where it was, and, when he too rose, followed him upstairs.
It was a poor enough place when he got there, in keeping with the whole of the house – a room in which there was a bed in one corner and a chair in another, and with some washing utensils in a third, but nothing more.
"Call me at daybreak," he said to the man André. "I shall sleep until then if I can. Then I must be on my way to – Paris."
"Si, si," the other replied. "You shall be called," and he went toward the door, though, both there and before, he did not cease to glance furtively at him. These glances had not been unobserved, however, by St. Georges, who in his turn had been equally watching him to see if any absolute recognition appeared to dawn upon him. And now, as the man prepared to depart and leave him alone, he said, speaking as carelessly as possible:
"Well! you thought you knew my face, friend. Have you been able to recall yet where you saw it last?" and he looked him straight in the eyes.
But the other only shook his head, and grumbled out:
"No, no. I cannot remember. Perhaps – it may be – I am mistaken."
CHAPTER XXVI.
IN THE SNARE
Had St. Georges followed the impulse that first occurred to him when he recognised the man André, he would have made some excuse for not remaining a night in Bayeux, but would have proceeded at once on his journey to Troyes – though not to Paris as he had said, only with a desire to throw dust in his late oppressor's eyes. For to Paris he had no intention of going under any circumstances, deeming it likely to be full of danger to him. There he would be known to countless military men; he might be seen at any moment and recognised; and the result would, in all likelihood, be ruinous. He meant, however, to proceed some distance toward it and then to strike into another road, and so, leaving the capital a little to the north of him, reach Troyes. He thought he could do this by branching off at Evreux and passing through Fontainebleau, but at present he was not even sure that this would be the direction to take – was, indeed, uncertain if such a course would lead him to the goal he sought, though he believed it would.
But the impulse to quit André's auberge had to be resisted at once as soon as it arose – to follow it would be fraught with, possibly, as much danger as remaining there for a night. For if André really suspected who he was, he would not permit him to quit Bayeux – not at least without extorting something from him for his silence – while, if he could not absolutely remember him, his suspicions would be so much aroused by St. Georges's suddenly altered plans as, perhaps, to absolutely verify them, or to cause him to have the stranger denied exit from the city. Therefore, at all hazards, he must remain the intended night. It was the only way in which to avoid aiding the fellow's hazy recollections, which, after all, might not have taken actual form by the next day's dawn. And there was another thing: however much he might overmaster Nature sufficiently to be able to proceed without rest, the horse could not do so. He must, he decided, remain, and trust to chance.
"What a miserable, what an untoward fate is mine!" he murmured; "could Fortune play me worse? Of all men to light on, that it must be this brute – whom, if I could do so in safety, I would slay for his countless cruelties to me and others! It is hard, hard, hard! There are thousands of inns in France to which I might have gone without meeting any who could recognise me, yet at the very first I stumble on I encounter one who knows me, and knows what I have been. A galley slave! – a man doomed for life, while there, to that brutal work; a man who, since he has escaped, is doomed to death. Ah! well! I am in God's hands. As he has protected me before, may he do so again!"
He threw himself upon the bed as he uttered his little prayer – he must sleep at all cost. Even though André should denounce him to-morrow ere he could quit Bayeux – even though he should have to join la chaine again on its road to the galleys – ay! even though the scaffold was to witness his death in the morning, his wornout frame must rest. He had been without sleep for now almost the whole time that had elapsed since Tourville's fleet had first loomed up before the English; it seemed to him that he could scarce recall when he slept last. And what terrible events he had gone through since that time!
Had he tried to keep awake, he could scarce have done so; as it was he made no such effort. Wrapped in the coverlet, the sword unbuckled but grasped in his hand, he stretched his body out and gave himself up to slumber – slumber deep and heavy as that of a drugged man.
He would not have awakened when he did, would have slept on, perhaps, for hours longer, had not a continued deep, droning, noise – interrupted now and again by a shriller one – at last succeeded in thoroughly rousing him – a noise that came as it seemed from below the bed he lay on, and was only interrupted and drowned once by the booming of the cathedral clock striking three. Three! and he had lain down in early evening had slept for hours. Yet how weary he still felt! It was as yet quite dark – the dawn would not come for another hour, he knew – what could those sounds below mean? He raised himself on his elbow to listen and hear more plainly.
At first he could distinguish nothing but the deep hum, broken now and again by the sharper, more metallic sound; but as he bent over the bed – being now quite wide awake and with his senses naturally very acute – he recognised what those sounds were. And more especially was he enabled to do so from the fact that the planks of the floor were not joined very closely together – or had come apart since they were first laid down – as he had observed when he entered the room the day before.
The sounds were André and his wife talking. At this hour of the night, or morning! And gradually, with his senses strained to the utmost, he was enabled to catch almost every word that they uttered.
"But," said the woman, "I like it not. It is treachery —bassesse. And he is beau. Mon Dieu! mais il est beau– "
"Peste!" the man replied. "It is always of les beaux you think. Once 'twas the fisher from Havre, then Le Bic, of the maréchausse, now this one. And why base? The king pays a hundred gold pistoles for such as he. And if not to us, then others will get it. Why not we?"
"You are sure? You are not mistaken?"
"Sure! From the first moment. Though I held my peace. Ho! why frighten the bird away from the nest? At first the hair and mustache puzzled me – then – "
St. Georges started as he heard this. Now he knew of whom they talked.
" – it came back to me. A galérien in the Raquin, a surly dog – one of the worst; one of those who had been gentlemen. Gentlemen! Ma foi! I have made their backs tingle often, often!"
"Ay!" muttered St. Georges between his teeth, "you have! 'Tis true."
"You are certain?" the woman asked again. "A mistake would be terrible – would send you back to the galleys yourself, only as beaten slave – not overseer."
"Certain! So will the others be when he is taken – alive or dead. There on his shoulder, ma belle, they will see proof – the fleur-de-lis. Fortunate for him he was not a religious prisoner, a victim of our holy Church. Otherwise it would have been burnt into his cheek, and he would have been so marked he could not have escaped a day!"
"Will it be alive —or dead?"
"Dead, if he resists, at daybreak, in an hour. Then they will come for him; it is arranged. And take him – doubtless slay him. What matter? The reward is the same. 'Alive or dead,' says the paper – they showed it me at La Poste – 'one hundred gold pistoles.' And the horse will be ours, too."
"How will they do it?"
"Hist! Listen. And get you to bed before they come. You need not be in it. I have arranged it, je te dis."
"But how – how – how?"
"I will awake him, bid him hurry; tell him he is discovered, lost, unless he flies. Then, doubtless, he will rush to the door, and, poof! they will cut him down as he rushes out. I have told them he is violent. They must strike at once. Tu comprends?"
"Yes," and it seemed to the listener as if the woman had answered with a shudder.
"And," the man said again, "the horse will be ours, too. I have not told them of that. No! we shall have that and the pistoles. Now, get you to bed. They will be here ere long. The day is coming. His last on earth if he runs out suddenly or resists."
The listener heard a moment or two later a stealthy tread upon the stairs outside – a tread that passed his door and went on upstairs and was then no more apparent. It was the woman withdrawing from the place where he was to be slain.
To be slain! Possibly. Yet, he determined, not as the man had arranged it. To be slain it might be, but not without a struggle, an attempt for life; without himself slaying others.
He crept to the window after finding that the door had been locked from the outside – no doubt during his long slumber! – and gazed out. It was not yet near daybreak; the miserable street was still in darkness; in no window was there any light – but above in the heavens there was, however, a gray tinge that told of the coming day. Then he looked around.
Beneath the window, which was a common dormer one, as is almost always the case in northern France and the Netherlands, there was nothing but the rain pipe running beneath it along the length of the house. Below was the street full of cobble and other stones – a good thirty feet below! To drop that height, even though hanging by his hands to the rain pipe and thereby diminishing the distance some eight feet would, however, be impossible; it would mean broken ankles and legs and dislocated thigh bones. Yet, what else to do? Behind him was the locked door; in front, through the window, an escape that would leave him mangled and at the mercy of those who were coming to slay him.
Still peering out into the darkness – that was now not all darkness – he saw about six feet to the left of him the mouth of the perpendicular pipe into which the horizontal one emptied itself and which must run down the side of the house. His chance, he thought, was here. Yet if he would avail himself of it he must be quick; the day would come ere long; at any moment those who had been summoned by the landlord must be approaching; he would be discovered.
He fastened his sword to his back with his sash – he could not drag it by his side – then head first he crept out of the window, testing with his right hand the water pipe – for six feet he would have to rely upon that to fend him from destruction, to prevent him from rolling off the roof to death below on the cobblestones! With that right hand pressed against it he could – if it did not give way under the pressure – reach the spout of the upright pipe. As he tried it it seemed strong, securely fastened to the lip of the roof; he might venture.
Face downward, his chest to the sloping roof, of which there was three feet between the sill of the window and the pipe at the edge, he lowered himself – his right hand on the pipe, his left, until obliged to loose it, clinging to the window frame. And at last he was on the roof itself, with the right hand still firmly pressed against that pipe, and the top joints of his left-hand fingers, and even his nails, dug into the rough edges of the tiles. That frail pipe and those tiles were all there was now to save him – nothing else but them between him and destruction! Slowly he thus propelled himself along, feeling every inch of the pipe carefully ere he bore any weight on it, feeling also each tile he touched to see if it was loose or tight. For he knew that one slip – one detached tile, one inch of yielding of the pipe – and he would go with a sudden rush over the sloping precipice to the stones below. And as he dragged himself along, hearing the grating of his body and the scraping of the buttons on his clothes against the roof, he prayed that the man watching below might not hear them also. At last he reached the mouth of the upright pipe, grasped it, and, as before, pressed against it to discover if it was firm – as it proved to be – then drew his body up over it, and gradually prepared to descend by it, feeling with his feet for the continuance of it below.
But, to his horror, there was no such continuance! His legs, hanging down from his groin over the roof – while his body was supported on the wide mouth of the pipe and by his hands being dug into the sides of the tiles, where they were joined to each other – touched nothing but the bare space of the wall. There was no pipe! It was broken off short a foot below the horizontal one, and the wall, he could feel, was damp from the water which had escaped and flowed down from where it was so broken.
He was doomed now, he knew; which doom should he select – to fall below and be crushed and mangled, or return to the room and, refusing to come out, be either done to death or taken prisoner? As he pondered thus in agony, away down the street he heard voices breaking on the morning air, he heard the clank of loosely fastened sabres on the stones – they were coming to take him – to, as André had said, "cut him down." And, scarce knowing what he did, or why in his frenzy he decided thus, he let his body further down into space, and, with his hands grasping the pipe's mouth, swung over that space. And once, ere he let go, which he must do in another moment, for the sides of the spout were cutting into his palms, he twisted his head and glanced down beneath him.
Then as he did so he gave a gasp – almost a cry of relief unspeakable. Beneath him, not two yards below his dangling feet, was the stone roof of the porch or doorway of the inn. The fall to that could not break his legs surely! – he prayed God the sound of it might not disturb the man within, who must be on the alert.
Closing his feet so that both should alight as nearly as possible on the same spot, pressing his body as near to the wall as he could, he let go the spout and dropped.