The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [287]
So long as he sat in the rowboat bearing him to land, he kept his eyes on Milady. She too, standing on deck, gazed steadfastly at him. Each knew there was no immediate danger of pursuit.
Felton jumped ashore, climbed the little slope that led to the clifftop, waved to Milady for the last time, and made for the city. A thousand yards further he could barely distinguish the mast of the sloop bobbing up and down on the distant waters. Portsmouth stood about two miles ahead of him; across the haze of early morning, he could make out its houses and towers. He sped on. Beyond Portsmouth lay the sea, dotted with vessels whose masts, like a forest of poplars in winter, bent with each gust of wind.
Felton looked back over his life, his underprivileged youth, his years among the Puritans, and all the accusations these Puritans leveled at Buckingham, the favorite of two kings, James I and Charles I.
Comparing the crimes with which public opinion charged this minister—glaring, national and even European crimes, so to speak—with the humbler, private and unknown crimes that Milady invoked, Felton was convinced that, in Buckingham’s dual conduct, the latter were the more reprehensible. In love for the first time in his life, swayed by a novel and strange and ardent urge, he viewed the infamous and imaginary accusations of Milady as through a magnifying glass. In his eyes, her grievances assumed an infinitely exaggerated stature. Thus a scientist, looking through a lens at a molecule invisible to the naked eye when placed beside an ant, sees it as a monster of titanic proportions.
As Felton raced on, his ardor grew apace. His temples throbbed as the blood rose to his head. Was he to leave the woman he loved or, better, the saint he adored, at the mercy of the most dastardly vengeance? The variety of emotions he had experienced, his present fatigue, and his rising excitement contributed to exalt his mind above all rational, human considerations.
Reaching Portsmouth at eight, he found the whole population astir. Drums were beating in the streets and in the port; the troops about to embark were marching toward the docks. Covered with dust and streaming with perspiration, his face purple with heat and excitement, Felton sought to enter the Admiralty Building. The sentry refused him access; Felton called for the Orderly Officer.
“I am Lieutenant Felton, sir, of the Royal Navy,” he said, coming to attention and saluting smartly. “I bear urgent dispatches from Lord Winter.”
And he produced the letter his protector had addressed to Buckingham.
As Lord Winter was known to be an intimate of the Duke’s, the officer motioned to him to pass and Felton darted into the palace. Just as he passed into the vestibule another man entered, dusty and breathless as Felton. (So great was his haste that he had left his posthorse at the gate without flinging the reins to a groom. The horse had fallen on its foreknees, exhausted.) Shoulder to shoulder, the two men raced up the steps; they addressed Patrick, the Duke of Buckingham’s confidential valet, simultaneously. But Felton named Lord Winter, whereas the stranger declined to identify himself to anyone save His Grace in person. Each sought to gain access to Buckingham before the other.
Patrick knew that Lord Winter belonged to the service and that he was a personal friend of his master’s. Quite naturally, therefore, he gave preference to Felton. The stranger, who had perforce to wait, could not conceal his displeasure.
Patrick led Felton across a large hall where the deputies of La Rochelle, headed by the Prince de Soubise, who three years before had seized Oléron from the Royalists and had fought doggedly for the Huguenots for some years. Hard on Patrick’s heels, Felton proceeded down a corridor to a dressing room where Buckingham, just out of the bathtub, was putting on his clothes,