Part 50

"At last, I saw the lamp rise slowly and disappear into the depths of the ceiling; my room filled with shadows, but I made an effort to pierce the darkness with my gaze.

"About ten minutes passed. I heard no sound other than the beating of my heart.

"I begged Heaven for him to come.

"At last I heard the all-too-familiar sound of the door opening and closing; I heard, despite the thickness of the carpet, a footstep that made the floorboards creak; I saw, despite the darkness, a shadow approaching my bed.

"—Hurry, hurry! said Felton, don't you see that each of your words burns me like molten lead?

"—Then, continued Milady, then I gathered all my strength, I remembered that the moment of vengeance, or rather of justice, had struck; I saw myself as another Judith; I coiled within myself, my knife in hand, and when I saw him near me, reaching out his arms to find his victim, then, with a final cry of pain and despair, I struck him in the middle of the chest.

"The wretch! He had foreseen everything: his chest was covered by a coat of mail; the knife was blunted.

"'Ah! ah!' he cried, seizing my arm and tearing from me the weapon that had served me so poorly, 'you want my life, my beautiful Puritan! But this is more than hatred—this is ingratitude! Come, come, calm yourself, my lovely child! I had thought you were softened. I am not of those tyrants who keep women by force: you do not love me—I doubted it with my usual fatuity; now I am convinced. Tomorrow, you will be free.'

"I had but one wish: that he would kill me.

"'Beware!' I said to him, 'for my freedom means your dishonor.'

"'Explain yourself, my beautiful sibyl.'

"'Yes, for as soon as I leave here, I will tell everything; I will tell of the violence you have used against me; I will tell of my captivity. I will denounce this palace of infamy; you stand very high, Milord, but tremble! Above you there is the king, above the king there is God.'

"As master of himself as he appeared, my persecutor let an angry movement escape. I could not see the expression on his face, but I had felt his arm, on which my hand rested, quiver.

"'Then you shall not leave here,' he said.

"'Good, good!' I cried, 'then the place of my torture shall also be my tomb. Good! I shall die here, and you will see whether a ghost that accuses is not even more terrible than a living being that threatens!'

"'No weapon will be left to you.'

"'There is one that despair places within reach of every creature who has the courage to use it. I will starve myself to death.'

"'Come now,' said the wretch, 'is not peace better than such a war? I give you your freedom this very instant, I proclaim you a virtuous woman, I call you the Lucretia of England.'

"'And I say that you are her Sextus; I denounce you to men as I have already denounced you to God; and if I must, like Lucretia, sign my accusation with my blood, I will sign it.'

"'Ah! ah!' said my enemy in a mocking tone, 'that is a different matter. Upon my word, after all, you are well enough here; you shall lack nothing, and if you starve yourself to death, it will be your own fault.'

"With these words, he withdrew; I heard the door open and close again, and I remained crushed, less, I confess, by my grief than by the shame of not having avenged myself.

"He kept his word. The entire day and the following night passed without my seeing him again. But I, too, kept my word, and I neither ate nor drank; I was, as I had told him, resolved to starve myself to death.

"I spent the day and the night in prayer, for I hoped that God would forgive me my suicide.

"The second night the door opened; I was lying on the floor, my strength beginning to fail me.

"At the noise, I raised myself on one hand.

"'Well,' said a voice that vibrated too terribly in my ear for me not to recognize it, 'well, have we softened a little, and shall we pay for our freedom with a single promise of silence?'

"'Look, I am a good prince,' he added, 'and although I do not love Puritans, I do them justice, and the Puritan women too, when they are pretty. Come, give me a little oath on the cross—I ask no more than that.'

"'On the cross!' I cried, rising up, for at that abhorred voice I had regained all my strength; 'on the cross! I swear that no promise, no threat, no torture shall close my mouth; on the cross! I swear to denounce you everywhere as a murderer, as a robber of honor, as a coward; on the cross! I swear that if ever I manage to leave this place, I will demand vengeance against you from all of mankind.'

"'Beware!' said the voice with an accent of menace I had not yet heard, 'I have a supreme means, which I will employ only as a last resort, to close your mouth or at least to prevent anyone from believing a single word you say.'

"I gathered all my strength to answer with a burst of laughter.

"He saw that from then on it was an eternal war between us, a war to the death.

"'Listen,' he said, 'I give you still the rest of this night and tomorrow's day: reflect. Promise to be silent, and wealth, consideration, even honors shall surround you. Threaten to speak, and I condemn you to infamy.'

"'You!' I cried, 'you!'

"'To eternal, indelible infamy!'

"'You!' I repeated. Oh! I tell you, Felton, I thought him mad!

"'Yes, I!' he replied.

"'Ah! leave me,' I said, 'go out, unless you want me to dash my head against the wall before your eyes!'

"'Very well,' he replied, 'you wish it; tomorrow evening!'

"'Tomorrow evening!' I answered, letting myself fall and biting the carpet in rage…"

Felton leaned against a piece of furniture, and Milady saw with demonic joy that his strength might fail him before the end of her story.

CHAPTER LVII. A MEANS OF CLASSICAL TRAGEDY

After a moment of silence, which Milady used to observe the young man who was listening to her, she continued her story:

"For nearly three days I had neither drunk nor eaten; I suffered atrocious torments. At times clouds passed before me, tightening my brow and veiling my eyes: it was delirium.

"Evening came; I was so weak that I fainted at every moment, and each time I fainted I thanked God, for I believed I was about to die.

"In the midst of one of these fainting spells, I heard the door open; terror brought me back to myself.

"My persecutor entered, followed by a masked man; he himself was masked, but I recognized his step, I recognized that imposing air which Hell has given to his person for the misfortune of humanity.

"'Well,' he said to me, 'are you resolved to make me the oath I asked of you?'

"'As you said, Puritans have but one word: mine you have heard—it is to pursue you on earth before the tribunal of men, and in Heaven before the tribunal of God!'

"'So you persist?'

"'I swear before this God who hears me: I will take the entire world as witness to your crime, and this until I find an avenger.'

"'You are a prostitute,' he said in a thundering voice, 'and you shall suffer the punishment of prostitutes! Branded in the eyes of the world you will invoke, try to prove to that world that you are neither guilty nor mad!'

"Then, addressing the man accompanying him:

"'Executioner,' he said, 'do your duty.'

"Oh! his name, his name! cried Felton; his name, tell it to me!

"Then, despite my cries, despite my resistance (for I began to understand that something worse than death was in store for me), the executioner seized me, threw me to the floor, crushed me in his grip, and stifled by sobs, almost unconscious, invoking God who did not hear me, I suddenly let out a frightful cry of pain and shame; a burning iron, a red-hot iron, the executioner's iron, was imprinted on my shoulder."

Felton gave a roar.

"Look," said Milady, rising then with queenly majesty, "look, Felton, see how a new martyrdom was invented for the pure young girl who was nonetheless the victim of a scoundrel's brutality. Learn to know the hearts of men, and henceforth make yourself less readily the instrument of their unjust vengeances."

Milady, with a swift gesture, opened her dress, tore the batiste covering her breast, and, red with feigned anger and simulated shame, showed the young man the indelible mark that dishonored that beautiful shoulder.

"But," cried Felton, "that is a fleur-de-lis I see there!"

"And that is precisely where the infamy lies," replied Milady. "The brand of England!… I would have had to prove which tribunal imposed it on me, and I would have made a public appeal to all the courts of the kingdom; but the brand of France… oh! by that, I was truly branded."

It was too much for Felton.

Pale, motionless, crushed by this frightful revelation, dazzled by the superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself to him with a shamelessness he found sublime, he ended by falling on his knees before her, as the early Christians did before those pure and holy martyrs whom imperial persecution delivered in the circus to the bloodthirsty lust of the mobs. The brand disappeared; only beauty remained.

"Pardon, pardon!" cried Felton, "oh! pardon!"

Milady read in his eyes: Love, love.

"Pardon for what?" she asked.

"Pardon for having joined your persecutors."

Milady held out her hand to him.

"So beautiful, so young!" cried Felton, covering that hand with kisses.

Milady cast upon him one of those looks that make a slave a king.

Felton was a Puritan: he left that woman's hand to kiss her feet.

He no longer loved her—he adored her.

When this crisis had passed, when Milady seemed to have recovered her composure (which she had never lost), when Felton had seen those treasures of love close again under the veil of chastity, which were only so well hidden from him to make him desire them more ardently:

"Ah! now," he said, "I have only one thing to ask you: the name of your true tormentor; for to me there is only one; the other was the instrument, that is all."

"What, brother!" cried Milady, "must I still name him to you, and have you not guessed?"

"What!" resumed Felton, "he!… again he!… always he!… What! the true guilty one…"

"The true guilty one," said Milady, "is the plunderer of England, the persecutor of true believers, the cowardly ravisher of the honor of so many women; he who, for a whim of his corrupted heart, will cause so much blood to be shed in two kingdoms, who protects the Protestants today and will betray them tomorrow…"

"Buckingham! It is Buckingham, then!" cried Felton, exasperated.

Milady hid her face in her hands, as if she could not bear the shame that name recalled.

"Buckingham, the torturer of this angelic creature!" cried Felton. "And you did not strike him down, my God! And you left him noble, honored, powerful, to the ruin of us all!"

"God abandons those who abandon themselves," said Milady.

"Then He means to draw down upon his head the punishment reserved for the damned!" continued Felton with growing exaltation. "Then He wants human vengeance to precede heavenly justice!"

"Men fear him and spare him."

"Oh! I," said Felton, "I do not fear him, and I will not spare him!…"

Milady felt her soul bathed in infernal joy.

"But how does Lord de Winter, my protector, my father," asked Felton, "come to be mixed up in all this?"

"Listen, Felton," resumed Milady, "for alongside cowardly and contemptible men, there are also great and generous natures. I had a betrothed, a man I loved and who loved me; a heart like yours, Felton, a man like you. I went to him and told him everything; he knew me, and did not doubt for an instant. He was a great lord, a man in every way Buckingham's equal. He said nothing; he only girded his sword, wrapped himself in his cloak, and went to Buckingham Palace."

"Yes, yes," said Felton, "I understand; although with such men it is not the sword that should be used, but the dagger."

"Buckingham had left the day before, sent as ambassador to Spain, where he was to ask for the hand of the Infanta for King Charles I, who was then only Prince of Wales. My betrothed returned.

"'Listen,' he said to me, 'that man has left, and for the moment, therefore, he escapes my vengeance; but in the meantime, let us be united as we were meant to be, and trust Lord de Winter to uphold his honor and that of his wife.'"

"Lord de Winter!" cried Felton.

"Yes," said Milady, "Lord de Winter; and now you must understand everything, must you not? Buckingham remained absent for over a year. A week before his return, Lord de Winter died suddenly, leaving me his sole heir. Whence came the blow? God, who knows all, knows it, no doubt; I accuse no one…"

"Oh! what an abyss, what an abyss!" cried Felton.

"Lord de Winter died without telling his brother anything. The terrible secret had to be hidden from everyone, until it burst like thunder upon the head of the guilty one. Your protector had seen with displeasure this marriage of his elder brother to a penniless young girl. I felt that I could expect no support from a man disappointed in his hopes of inheritance. I went to France, resolved to stay there for the rest of my life. But all my fortune is in England; communications were cut off by the war; everything failed me; I was forced to return. Six days ago I landed at Portsmouth."

"Well?" said Felton.

"Well, Buckingham learned of my return, no doubt; he spoke of it to Lord de Winter, already prejudiced against me, and told him that his sister-in-law was a prostitute, a branded woman. My husband's pure and noble voice was no longer there to defend me. Lord de Winter believed everything he was told, all the more easily because he had an interest in believing it. He had me arrested, brought me here, placed me under your guard. You know the rest: the day after tomorrow he banishes me, he deports me; the day after tomorrow he relegates me among the infamous. Oh! the plot is well woven, I tell you! The scheme is clever, and my honor will not survive it. You see that I must die, Felton; Felton, give me that knife!"

And at these words, as if all her strength were exhausted, Milady let herself fall, weak and languishing, into the arms of the young officer, who, drunk with love, anger, and unknown voluptuousness, received her with transport, pressed her to his heart, trembling at the breath of that beautiful mouth, utterly beside himself at the contact of that so-palpitating breast.

"No, no," he said; "no, you shall live honored and pure; you shall live to triumph over your enemies."

Milady slowly pushed him away with her hand while drawing him with her gaze; but Felton, in turn, seized her, imploring her like a divinity.

"Oh! death, death!" she said, veiling her voice and her eyelids; "oh! death rather than shame; Felton, my brother, my friend, I implore you!"

"No," cried Felton, "no, you shall live, and you shall be avenged!"

"Felton, I bring misfortune to all who surround me! Felton, abandon me! Felton, let me die!"

"Well then, we shall die together!" he cried, pressing his lips to those of the prisoner.

Several knocks resounded at the door; this time Milady really pushed him away.

"Listen," she said, "they have heard us; someone is coming! It is over; we are lost!"

"No," said Felton, "it is the sentry warning me only that a patrol is approaching."

"Then run to the door and open it yourself."

Felton obeyed; this woman was already his every thought, his very soul.

He found himself face to face with a sergeant commanding a surveillance patrol.

"Well, what is it?" asked the young lieutenant.

"You told me to open the door if I heard a cry for help," said the soldier, "but you forgot to leave me the key; I heard you shouting without understanding what you said; I tried to open the door, it was locked from inside; so I called the sergeant."

"And here I am," said the sergeant.

Felton, bewildered, nearly mad, stood speechless.

Milady understood that it was up to her to take control of the situation; she ran to the table and seized the knife Felton had placed there.

"And by what right do you try to prevent me from dying?" she said.

"Great God!" cried Felton, seeing the knife gleam in her hand.

At that moment, an ironic burst of laughter rang out in the corridor.

The baron, drawn by the noise, in his dressing gown, his sword under his arm, stood on the threshold of the door.

"Ah! ah!" he said, "we are at the last act of the tragedy; you see, Felton, the drama has followed all the stages I indicated; but be at ease, no blood will be shed."

Milady understood that she was lost if she did not give Felton an immediate and terrible proof of her courage.

"You are mistaken, Milord; blood will be shed, and may that blood fall back upon those who cause it to be shed!"

Felton gave a cry and rushed toward her; it was too late: Milady had struck herself. But the knife had fortunately (we should say adroitly) met the steel busk which, at that time, defended a woman's breast like a cuirass; it had slipped, tearing the dress, and entered obliquely between the flesh and the ribs.

Milady's dress was nonetheless stained with blood in a second.

Milady fell backward and seemed to have fainted.

Felton tore the knife away.

"See, Milord," he said gloomily, "here is a woman who was under my guard and who has killed herself!"

"Be at ease, Felton," said Lord de Winter; "she is not dead; demons do not die so easily. Rest assured, and go wait for me in my quarters."

"But, Milord…"

"Go, I order you."

At this command from his superior, Felton obeyed; but as he left, he put the knife into his bosom.

As for Lord de Winter, he merely called the woman who attended Milady, and when she came, entrusting the still-fainting prisoner to her, he left her alone with her.

Nevertheless, all things considered, despite his suspicions, the wound might be serious; so he immediately sent a man on horseback to fetch a doctor.

CHAPTER LVIII. ESCAPE

As Lord de Winter had thought, Milady's wound was not dangerous; so as soon as she found herself alone with the woman the baron had summoned and who was hastening to undress her, she opened her eyes again.

Still, she had to play weakness and pain; these were not difficult things for an actress like Milady; so the poor woman was so completely deceived by her prisoner that, despite her entreaties, she insisted on staying with her all night.

But the presence of this woman did not prevent Milady from thinking.

There was no longer any doubt: Felton was convinced; Felton was hers; if an angel appeared to the young man to accuse Milady, he would certainly take him, in the state of mind he was in, for a messenger of the devil.

Milady smiled at this thought, for Felton was now her only hope, her only means of escape.

But Lord de Winter might have suspected him; but Felton now might himself be watched.

Toward four in the morning, the doctor arrived. But since the time Milady had struck herself, the wound had already closed; the doctor could therefore measure neither its direction nor its depth; he only recognized from the patient's pulse that the case was not serious.

In the morning, Milady, on the pretext that she had not slept all night and needed rest, dismissed the woman who was watching over her.

She had one hope: that Felton would come at breakfast time, but Felton did not come.

Had her fears been realized? Was Felton, suspected by the baron, going to fail her at the decisive moment? She had only one day left: Lord de Winter had announced her embarkation for the 23rd, and it was now the morning of the 22nd.

Nevertheless, she waited quite patiently until dinner time.

Although she had not eaten in the morning, dinner was brought at the usual hour; Milady then noticed with dismay that the uniform of the soldiers guarding her had been changed.

Then she ventured to ask what had become of Felton. She was told that Felton had mounted a horse an hour before and had left.

She asked if the baron was still at the castle; the soldier replied that he was, and that he had orders to notify him if the prisoner wished to speak to him.

Milady answered that she was too weak at the moment, and that her only wish was to be left alone.

The soldier left, leaving the dinner served.

Felton was removed; the marines had been changed; therefore, Felton was distrusted.

This was the final blow to the prisoner.

Left alone, she rose; this bed, where she had stayed out of prudence and to make people believe she was seriously wounded, burned her like a glowing brazier. She cast a glance at the door: the baron had had a board nailed over the peephole; he no doubt feared that through that opening she might still, by some diabolical means, seduce the guards.

Milady smiled with joy; she could therefore give free rein to her transports without being observed: she paced the room with the exaltation of a raving madwoman or a tigress shut in an iron cage. Certainly, if the knife had remained with her, she would have thought, not of killing herself, but this time of killing the baron.

At six o'clock, Lord de Winter entered; he was armed to the teeth. This man, in whom Milady had until then seen only a rather foolish gentleman, had become an admirable jailer: he seemed to foresee everything, guess everything, forestall everything.

A single glance at Milady told him what was passing in her soul.

"So be it," he said, "but you will not kill me yet today; you have no weapon left, and besides, I am on my guard. You had begun to pervert my poor Felton; he was already succumbing to your infernal influence, but I mean to save him; he will see you no more; all is over. Pack your things; tomorrow you leave. I had set the embarkation for the 24th, but I thought the sooner it happened, the safer it would be. Tomorrow at noon I shall have the order for your exile, signed by Buckingham. If you say a single word to anyone before you are on the ship, my sergeant will blow your brains out—he has orders to do so. If on the ship you say a word to anyone before the captain allows it, the captain will have you thrown into the sea—that is agreed. Farewell; that is what I had to tell you for today. Tomorrow I shall see you again to bid you adieu!"

And with these words, the baron went out.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”