"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 Hogue[8]--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.
[Footnote 8: In those days none possessed naval uniform, and, from
admiral downward, all wore what they chose.]
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 Aurelie 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. Mere Eglise who said that loud sounds of firing were
heard all last night out to sea; and another, _a pecheur 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 a pied et a 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,
_scelerat_! _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--Aurelie 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 Andre, 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 Andre. "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."