IN THE SNARE.
Had St. Georges followed the impulse that first occurred to him when
he recognised the man Andre, 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 Andre'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 Andre 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 Andre 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 Andre 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 _marechausse_,
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 _galerien_ 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 Andre 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.