The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [280]
Milady had listened to this whole threatening tirade with a scornful smile on her lips but rage in her heart.
Supper was served. Milady felt she had need of strength; she did not know what might happen during that night, which approached menacingly, for big clouds were rolling across the sky, and distant lightning heralded a storm.
The storm broke towards ten o’clock in the evening. Milady felt consoled to see nature share the disorder of her heart. Thunder rumbled in the air like the anger in her mind; it seemed that the squall, in passing, disheveled her hair as it did the trees whose branches it bent, stripping away their leaves; she howled like the storm, and her voice was lost in the great voice of nature, which also seemed to wail and despair.
Suddenly she heard a tapping on the windowpane, and, in a flash of lightning, she saw a man’s face appear beyond the bars.
She ran to the window and opened it.
“Felton!” she cried. “I’m saved!”
“Yes,” said Felton, “but silence, silence! I need time to cut through your bars. Only be careful they don’t see you through the peephole.”
“Oh, that is a proof that the Lord is with us, Felton,” replied Milady. “They’ve boarded up the peephole.”
“That’s good. God has deprived them of reason!” said Felton.
“But what am I to do?” asked Milady.
“Nothing, nothing; just close the window. Go to bed, or at least get into bed fully dressed. When I’m finished, I’ll tap on the windowpane. But will you be able to go with me?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Your wound?”
“It hurts, but it doesn’t prevent me from walking.”
“Be ready, then, for the first signal.”
Milady closed the window again, put out the lamp, and went, as Felton had recommended, to huddle in her bed. Amidst the howling of the storm, she heard the grating of the file on the bars, and, with each flash of lightning, she made out Felton’s shadow outside the window.
She spent an hour breathless, panting, sweat on her brow, and her heart gripped by dreadful anguish at each movement she heard in the corridor.
There are hours that last a year.
At the end of an hour, Felton tapped again.
Milady leaped out of bed and went to open the window. Two bars less made an opening a man could pass through.
“Are you ready?” asked Felton.
“Yes. Must I bring anything?”
“Gold, if you have any.”
“Yes, luckily they left me what I had.”
“So much the better, for I used all mine to charter a boat.”
“Take it,” said Milady, putting a pouch full of gold into Felton’s hand.
Felton took the pouch and dropped it to the foot of the wall.
“Now,” he said, “will you come?”
“Here I am.”
Milady climbed onto a chair and passed the upper part of her body through the window. She saw the young officer hanging above the abyss on a rope ladder.
For the first time, a fit of terror reminded her that she was a woman.
The void appalled her.
“I was afraid of that,” said Felton.
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” said Milady. “I’ll go down with my eyes shut.”
“Do you trust me?” asked Felton.
“Need you ask?”
“Bring your hands together. Cross them. That’s good.”
Felton tied her wrists with his handkerchief, then, over the handkerchief, with a rope.
“What are you doing?” Milady asked in surprise.
“Put your arms around my neck, and don’t be afraid of anything.”
“But I’ll make you lose your balance, and we’ll both be dashed on the rocks.”
“Don’t worry, I’m a sailor.”
There was not a second to lose. Milady put her arms around Felton’s neck and let herself slide out the window.
Felton