He walked six or seven times round the Place Royale, turning every ten steps to look at the light in milady’s apartment, which was to be seen through the blinds. It was evident that this time the young woman was not in such haste to retire to her bedroom as she had been the first.
At length the light disappeared.
With this light was extinguished the last irresolution in D’Artagnan’s heart. He recalled to his mind the details of the first night, and with beating heart and brain on fire he re-entered the h?tel and rushed up to Kitty’s chamber.
The young girl, pale as death, and trembling in all her limbs, wished to delay her lover; but milady, listening intently, had heard the noise made by D’Artagnan, and opening the door,
“Come,” said she.
The door closed after them.
She immediately came close to him again.
We cannot say how long the night seemed to milady, but D’Artagnan imagined he had been with her scarcely two hours when day began to appear at the window-blinds, and soon invaded the chamber with its pallid light.
Then milady, seeing that D’Artagnan was about to quit her, recalled to his mind for the last time the promise he had made to avenge her on the Comte de Wardes.
“I am quite ready,” said D’Artagnan; “but in the first place, I should like to be certain of one thing.”
“What?”
“Whether you love me.”
“I have proved to you that I do.”
“Yes, and so I am yours body and soul. But if you love me as you say,” continued he, “do you not feel a little fear on my account?”
“What have I to fear?”
“Why, that I may be dangerously wounded—even killed.”
“Impossible!” cried milady; “you are such a valiant man, and such an expert swordsman.”
“You would not, then, prefer a means,” resumed D’Artagnan, “which would avenge you all the same, while rendering the combat useless?”
Milady looked at her lover in silence. The wan light of the first rays of day gave to her clear eyes a strangely baneful expression.
“Really,” said she, “I believe you are now beginning to hesitate.”
“No, I do not hesitate; but I really pity poor Comte de Wardes, since you have ceased to love him. And it seems to me that a man must be so severely punished merely by the loss of your love that he needs no other chastisement.”
“Indeed!” said milady, with a look of some anxiety. “Explain yourself, for I really cannot tell what you mean.”
And she looked at D’Artagnan, who held her in his arms, while his eyes seemed gradually to turn into flames.
“Yes, I am a man of honour,” said D’Artagnan, determined to end the matter. “and since your love is mine, and I am sure I possess it— for I do possess it, do I not?”
“Absolutely and entirely. Go on.”
“Well, I feel as if transformed—a confession weighs on my mind.”
“Your confession,” said she, growing paler—“what is this confession of yours?”
“You invited De Wardes on Thursday last to meet you here, in this very room, did you not?”
“I? No, certainly not!” said milady, in a tone so firm and with a face so unconcerned that if D’Artagnan had not been so absolutely certain he would have doubted.
“Do not tell a lie, my angel!” exclaimed D’Artagnan, smiling; “it would do no good.”
“What do you mean? Speak! You frighten me to death!”
“Oh, reassure yourself; you are not guilty toward me, and I have already pardoned you.”
“What more? what more?”
“De Wardes cannot boast of anything.”
“How so? You yourself told me that my ring—”
“My love, I have your ring. The Duc de Wardes of last Thursday and the D’Artagnan of to-night are one and the same person.”
The imprudent young man expected to see surprise mixed with shame—a slight storm resolving itself into tears. But he was strangely mistaken, and his error was of brief duration.
Pale and terrible, milady started up, repulsed D’Artagnan with a violent blow on the chest, and leaped from the bed. It was then almost broad daylight.
D’Artagnan held her back by her nightdress, of fine India muslin, in order to implore her pardon, but by a powerful and determined effort she struggled to escape. Then the cambric gave way, leaving her neck bare, and on one of her beautiful, white, round shoulders D’Artagnan, with an indescribable shock, recognized the fleur-de-lis, that indelible stamp imprinted by the executioner’s debasing hand.
“Great God!” cried D’Artagnan, loosing his hold of her nightrobe; and he remained on the bed, mute, motionless, and frozen.
But milady felt herself denounced by his very terror. Doubtless he had seen all. The young man now knew her secret, her terrible secret, of which every one, except him, was ignorant.
She turned on him, no longer a furious woman, but like a wounded panther.
“Ah, wretch,” she cried, “you have basely betrayed me! And what is worse, you know my secret. You shall die!”
And she flew to a little marquetry casket standing on the toilet-table, opened it with a feverish, trembling hand, took out of it a small gold-handled poniard with a sharp, slender blade, and then half-naked flung herself on D’Artagnan with one bound.
Though the young man was brave, as we have seen, he was terrified at her wild face, her horribly staring eyes, her pale cheeks, her bleeding lips. He crept over to the farther side of the bed as he would have done if a viper had been crawling toward him, and as his hand, covered with sweat, touched his sword, he drew it from the scabbard.
But without heeding the sword, milady tried to climb on the bed again so that she might stab him, nor did she desist till she felt the keen point at her throat.
She then tried to seize the blade with her hands; but D’Artagnan kept it free from her grasp, and while presenting the point, sometimes at her eyes, sometimes at her breast, he slid off the bed, designing to make his escape by the door leading to Kitty’s apartment.
Milady meantime kept rushing at him with horrible fury, screaming in a blood-curdling manner.
As all this, however, was like a duel, D’Artagnan soon began to recover himself.
“Very well, pretty lady, very well,” said he; “but, by the gods, if you don’t calm yourself, I will mark you with a second fleur-de-lis on one of those pretty cheeks!”
“Scoundrel! scoundrel!” howled milady.
But D’Artagnan, while approaching the door, kept all the time on the defensive.
At the noise they made, she in overturning the furniture in her efforts to get at him, he in screening himself behind the furniture to keep out of her reach, Kitty opened the door. D’Artagnan, who had constantly man?uvred to gain this door, was not more than three paces from it. With one spring he flew from milady’s chamber into the maid’s, and, quick as lightning, shut the door, against which he leaned with all his weight, while Kitty bolted it.
“Quick, quick, Kitty!” said D’Artagnan, in a low voice, as soon as the bolts were fast, “let me get out of the h?tel; for if we leave her time to turn round, she will have me killed by the servants!”
“But you can’t go out so,” said Kitty; “you have hardly any clothes on.”
“That’s true,” said D’Artagnan, then, for the first time, taking note of the costume in which he appeared—“that’s true. But dress me as well as you are able, only make haste. Think, my dear girl, it’s life and death!”
Kitty was but too well aware of that. In a moment she muffled him up in a flowered dress, a capacious hood, and a cloak. She gave him some slippers, which he put on his naked feet, then she conducted him downstairs. It was time. Milady had already rung her bell, and roused the whole h?tel. The porter had just opened the street door as milady, only half-dressed, was shouting down from the window,
“Don’t open the door!”
Chapter 33 - How, without Incommoding himself, Athos got his Outfit
The young man made his escape while she was still threatening him with an impotent gesture. At the moment she lost sight of him milady sank back fainting into her bedroom.
D’Artagnan was so completely upset that, without considering what would become of Kitty, he ran at full speed across half Paris, and did not stop till he reached Athos’s door.
Grimaud, his eyes swollen with sleep, came to open for him. D’Artagnan darted so violently into the room that he nearly knocked him over.
In spite of his habitual silence, the poor fellow this time found his tongue.
“Helloa, there!” cried he; “what do you want, you strumpet? What’s your business here, you hussy?”
“Grimaud,” said Athos, coming out of his apartment in a dressing-gown—“Grimaud, I believe you are permitting yourself to speak?”
“Ah, monsieur, but—”
“Silence!”
Grimaud contented himself with pointing at D’Artagnan.
Athos recognizing his comrade, and phlegmatic as he was, he burst into a laugh made quite excusable by the strange masquerade before his eyes—hood askew, petticoats falling over shoes, sleeves tucked up, and moustaches stiff with agitation.
“Don’t laugh, my friend!” cried D’Artagnan; “for Heaven’s sake, don’t laugh, for, on my soul, I tell you it’s no laughing matter!”
“Well?” said Athos.
“Well,” replied D’Artagnan, bending down to Athos’s ear, and lowering his voice, “milady is marked with a fleur-de-lis on her shoulder!”
“Ah!” cried the musketeer, as if he had received a ball in his heart.
“Come, now,” said D’Artagnan, “are you sure that the other is dead?”
“The other?” said Athos, in such a stifled voice that D’Artagnan scarcely heard him.
“Yes; she of whom you told me one day at Amiens.”
Athos uttered a groan and let his head sink into his hands.
“This one is a woman of from twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age.”
“Fair,” said Athos, “is she not?”
“Very.”
“Clear, blue eyes, of a strange brilliancy, with black eyelashes and eyebrows?”
“Yes.”
“Tall, well-made? She has lost a tooth, next to the eye-tooth on the left?”
“Yes.”
“The fleur-de-lis is small, rose-coloured, and somewhat faint from the coat of paste applied to it?”
“Yes.”
“But you say she is an Englishwoman?”
“She is called milady, but she may be French. Lord Winter is only her brother-in-law.”
“I will see her, D’Artagnan!” and he rang the bell.
Grimaud entered.
Athos made him a sign to go to D’Artagnan’s residence and bring back some clothes.
Grimaud replied by another sign that he understood perfectly, and set off.
“Come, now, my dear friend, but this does not help toward your equipment,” said Athos, “for if I am not mistaken, you have left all your clothes at milady’s, and she certainly will not have the politeness to return them to you. Fortunately, you have the sapphire.”
“The sapphire is yours, my dear Athos! Did you not tell me it was a family ring?”
“Yes; my father gave two thousand crowns for it, as he once told me. It formed part of the wedding present he made my mother, and it is magnificent. My mother gave it to me; and I, madman that I was, instead of keeping the ring as a holy relic, gave it to that wretched woman.”
“Then, my dear, take back your ring, to which, it is plain, you attach much value.”
“I take back the ring after it has passed through that infamous creature’s hands! Never! D’Artagnan, this ring is defiled.”
“Sell it, then.”
“Sell a jewel that came from my mother! I confess I should regard it as a sacrilege.”
“Pawn it, then. You can raise at least a thousand crowns on it. With such a sum you will be master of the situation. Then, when you get more money, you can redeem it, and have it back cleansed from its stains, for it will have passed through the usurer’s hands.”
Athos smiled.
“You are a capital comrade, my dear D’Artagnan,” said he. “Your never-failing cheerfulness lifts up poor souls in affliction. Well, let us pawn the ring, but on one condition.”
“What?”
“That five hundred crowns of it shall be yours and five hundred mine.”
“Well, then, I will take it,” said D’Artagnan.
At this moment Grimaud came in accompanied by Planchet, who was anxious about his master and curious to know what had happened to him, and so had taken advantage of the opportunity and brought the clothes himself. D’Artagnan dressed; Athos did the same. Then when both were ready to go out, Athos imitated the action of a person taking aim, and Grimaud immediately took down his musketoon and got ready to follow his master.
They arrived without mishap at the Rue des Fossoyeurs. Bonacieux was at the door; he looked banteringly at D’Artagnan.
“Ah, my dear tenant!” said he. “Hurry up; you have a very pretty girl waiting at your room, and you know women don’t like to be kept waiting.”
“It’s Kitty,” said D’Artagnan to himself, and darted into the passage.
In fact, there on the landing that led to his chamber he found the poor girl all of a tremble and crouching against the door.
As soon as she saw him.
“You promised me your protection; you promised to save me from her anger,” said she. “Remember, you are the one who ruined me!”
“Yes, certainly I did,” said D’Artagnan. “Be at ease, Kitty. But what happened after I left?”
“How can I tell?” said Kitty. “The lackeys came when they heard her cries. She was mad with anger. Every imaginable curse she poured forth against you. Then I thought she would remember that you went through my chamber into hers, and that then she would suppose I was your accomplice. So I took what little money I had, and the best of my things, and I ran away.”
“Poor girl! But what can I do with you? I am going away the day after to-morrow.”
“Do what you please, chevalier. Help me out of Paris; help me out of France!”
“I cannot take you, however, to the siege of Rochelle,” said D’Artagnan.
“No; but you can get me a place in the provinces with some lady of your acquaintance—in your own country, for instance.”
“Ah, my dear love, in my country the ladies do without chambermaids. But stop! I can manage it for you—Planchet, go and find M. Aramis. Have him come here immediately. We have something very important to say to him.”
When Aramis arrived the matter was explained to him, and he was told that he must find a place for Kitty with some of his high connections.
Aramis reflected for a minute, and then said, colouring,
“Will it be rendering you a service, D’Artagnan?”
“I shall be grateful to you all my life.”
“Very well. Madame de Bois-Tracy asked me, in behalf of a friend of hers who resides in the provinces, I believe, for a trustworthy chambermaid; and, my dear D’Artagnan, if you can answer for this young girl—”
“O sir, be assured that I shall be entirely devoted to the person who will afford me the means of leaving Paris.”
“Then,” said Aramis, “this turns out all for the best.”
He sat down at the table and wrote a little note, which he sealed with a ring and gave to Kitty.
“And now, my dear girl,” said D’Artagnan, “you know that it is not well for any of us to be here. Therefore let us separate. We shall meet again in better days.”
