The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [123]
The old man listened to him attentively with an occasional nod of approval; when D’Artagnan had finished he shook his head with a rueful air that presaged nothing good.
“What is it?” D’Artagnan cried in alarm. “For God’s sake, tell me everything.”
“Ah, Monsieur, ask me no questions, I beg of you for if I told you what I had seen some evil would surely befall me.”
“So you saw something, eh? If so, in the name of Heaven, tell me exactly what happened!” D’Artagnan tossed the old man a pistole. “Tell me what you saw and I give you my word as a gentleman that I shall not repeat one syllable of it.”
The old man read such suffering and such sincerity in D’Artagnan’s expression that he motioned to him to listen and said in a low voice:
“It was just about nine o’clock. I heard a noise in the land and wondered what it could be. As I went to my door I could see somebody at the gate in the hedge, trying to get in. I am a poor man, Monsieur, I own nothing worth stealing, so I opened. Three men stood by the gate. Over there in the shadows stood a carriage with two horses; a groom, a few paces away, held three saddle horses which doubtless belonged to my three visitors.
“‘Well, gentlemen,’ I cried, ‘what can I do for you?’
“‘Have you a ladder?’ one of the gentlemen asked me. From his tone and air, I judged him to be the leader of the group.
“‘Ay, Monsieur, the ladder I use when I pick my fruit.’
“‘Lend it to us and then go back to your house again. Here is a crown for your trouble. Now remember this! However much we may threaten you, you will probably watch us and listen to us; but if you breathe one word of what you see or hear, you are a dead man.’
“With these words, he flung me a coin which I picked up and he took my ladder.
“I shut the hedge gate behind them and went back into the house but I went right out through the back door and stole through the shadows to that clump of elders yonder. From there I could see everything without being spotted.
“The three men drew the carriage up quietly and a little man got out, a fat, short elderly man with graying hair and dressed in mean black clothes. He climbed the ladder very carefully, glanced slily into the room, came down as quietly as he had gone up, and told the others:
“‘She’s there, all right!’
“Then the man who had spoken to me went to the lodge, drew a key from his pocket and opened the door; then he went in, closed the door behind him and disappeared; then I saw the two others climbing the ladder. The little old man stayed by the door of the carriage; the coachman tended the carriage horses, the lackey held the saddle horses.
“All at once, Hell broke loose in the lodge, what with the screaming and howling of a thousand devils. A lady rushed to the window and opened it as if to jump out; but when she saw two men on the ladder, she ran back into the room. They immediately climbed in, more quickly than I can tell you, Monsieur.
“Then I saw no more, but I can tell you this: there was a hullabaloo and a smashing of furniture such as I hope never to hear again. The lady cried for help, but what could I do, old as I am, Monsieur, and against six men? The lady’s cries grew fainter and fainter. Then two men came down the ladder with the lady in their arms. They carried her into the carriage, the little old man got in too and slammed the door shut. A minute later the one who had stayed in the lodge shut the window and came out through the front door. He went over to the coach and looked in to make sure the lady was there. His two companions were already mounted and waiting for him. The lackey jumped on the box beside the coachman and the carriage set off briskly with the three riders for escort.
“There you have the story, Monsieur. After that the only thing I heard was yourself knocking and the only thing I saw were your weapons shining in the dark.”
Overcome by the horror of this story, D’Artagnan stood stock-still, gaping, whilst all the demons of jealousy and anger rioted in his heart. The old man, more deeply moved by the youth’s mute despair than he could have