John Bloundelle-Burton

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.

[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 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."