The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  Pursuing his investigations, D’Artagnan suddenly came upon a glove. It lay close to the wall … a woman’s glove undoubtedly … and torn … its palm muddy, the top immaculate … the type of perfumed glove an eager lover longs to snatch from a shapely hand … but a glove which had been wrenched off that hand in a violent tussle.…

  As the impact of his discoveries made itself felt, an icier and more abundant sweat broke in large beads over D’Artagnan’s forehead. A terrible anguish gripped him, his heart was oppressed, his breath came short and fast. Striving for self-control, he told himself that this lodge had nothing to do with Madame Bonacieux … that his Constance had specified he was to stand opposite the lodge, not to enter it … that her duties might conceivably have kept her in Paris … that a jealous husband had prevented her coming.… And yet he realized this was but wishful thinking.

  An inevitable instinct, filled with foreboding, convinced him beyond per-adventure of reasoning, that misfortune was upon him.

  A savage rage swept over him as, losing all sense of reality, he ran ahead down the lane as though the Devil himself were at his heels. Time passed and he ran on, this way and that, until eventually he found himself at the riverside in front of the ferry. The boatman was at hand; D’Artagnan questioned him feverishly.

  At seven o’clock that evening, the boatman said, he had rowed a lady across the river. The lady wore a heavy black cloak and wrapped it closely about her as though wishing to go unrecognized and for that very reason he had looked at her attentively. She was, he added, both young and pretty. Of course young and pretty women had come to Saint-Cloud in the past, came to Saint-Cloud daily, and would continue to come to Saint-Cloud in the future, all of them chary of recognition. Nevertheless D’Artagnan felt certain that the boatman’s client was Constance Bonacieux.

  By the light in the boatman’s shed, he read his inamorata’s note once again to make sure of its contents. No, there could be no doubt: the appointment was for Saint-Cloud and nowhere else, for ten o’clock and at no other time, and in front of Monsieur d’Estrées’ lodge. D’Artagnan’s worst fears were confirmed; something terrible had occurred.

  He ran back to the château, hoping against hope that in his absence some new development might shed light on the mystery.

  The lane was still deserted; the same calm, soft light still shone from the window. In despair he looked about him and once again saw the dark silent hut at the end of the garden. Someone must surely live there, he thought, someone who might have heard or seen what had happened and who might be persuaded to talk.

  The gate of the enclosure was shut but he vaulted over the hedge and despite the angry barking of a dog—he noticed it was chained—approached the hut.

  To his first frantic knocking there was no reply. He stood quite still for a moment, his heart heavy as lead. A deathly silence reigned over the tumble-down dwelling, a silence as sinister as that he had found at the lodge. But fully aware that this was his last resort, he kept knocking with a sort of blind fury.

  Presently he fancied he heard a slight noise within, a timid noise as though someone was fearful of being overheard amid the silence. D’Artagnan at once stopped knocking and pleaded to be admitted; his voice was so full of anxiety and promise, so appealing in its terror and persuasive in its cajolery that the most fearful of persons could not have apprehended any danger. At length an old worm-eaten shutter swung ajar on creaky hinges but was slammed shut as soon as the rays of a wretched lamp in one corner of the hovel had lighted up D’Artagnan’s sword-belt, the pommel of his sword and the butts of the pistols in his holsters. Swift though the movement was, D’Artagnan nevertheless managed to catch a glimpse of an old man’s head.

  “In the name of Heaven, listen to me,” he begged. “I have been waiting for someone who has not come; I am dying of anxiety. Has any mishap occurred here? Have you noticed anything untoward in the last few hours? Speak, I implore you!”

  Slowly the window swung open again and the same face appeared again, looking even paler than before. D’Artagnan told his story simply and accurately without mentioning any names of course: how he had an appointment with a young woman … how he had been invited to wait near the lodge … how he had waited and, seeing no one, had climbed the tree … and what he had seen when he looked into the house.…

  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 been by cries and tears, said compassionately:

  “Come, my good gentleman, do not take on so! There is still hope, Monsieur. They did not kill your lady, and that’s a comfort.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the ringleader?”

  “I never saw him before, Monsieur, I never knew any of them.”

  “But you spoke to him? You saw him?”

  “Oh, you want me to tell you what he looked like?”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  “Well, Monsieur, he was a tall, dark, spare man with a swarthy complexion, black mustaches and eyes as black as the ace of spades. He looked like a nobleman.”

  “That’s the man!” D’Artagnan gasped. “Once again and for ever, my demon, the man of Meung.” He wrung his hands, then, more calmly: “What about the other man?” he asked.

  “Which one do you mean?”

  “The little oldish one.”

  “Oh, he was no nobleman, Monsieur, I can vouch for that. Besides he did not wear a sword and the others ordered him about every which way.”

  “Some lackey, I dare say,” D’Artagnan murmured. And, as he thought of his mistress: “Poor woman, poor woman!” he sighed. “What have they done to you?”

  “You swore to keep my secret, Monsieur?” the old man reminded him.

  “I repeat my promise. I gave you my word as a gentleman; a gentleman has but one word, my friend, so you need worry about nothing.”

  With a heavy heart D’Artagnan retraced his steps toward the ferry, a prey to the most sanguine sentiments one moment and to the bitterest the next. Now he hoped that it could not have been Madame Bonacieux who was so brutally attacked and he looked forward to finding her at the Louvre on the morrow; now he feared she had had some intrigue with a jealous rival who had surprised her and carried her off. Doubt, grief and despair made their battleground of his heart.

  “Ah, God! if only my friends were with me!” he exclaimed. “Athos, Porthos, Aramis, you would give me some hope of finding her. But who knows what on earth has become of you?”

  It was past midnight. The next thing to do was to find Planchet. D’Artagnan called successively at five taverns where a light was burning but found Planchet in none. At the sixth, he decided that his search was vain. He had made arrangements to meet his lackey at six in the morning and the lackey’s time was his own so that he appeared punctually. Further, he reflected, by remaining close to the spot where the tragedy had occurred, he might perhaps discover some fact to shed light on the appalling mystery. D’Artagnan therefore settled down in the sixth tavern, ordered a bottle of the best wine and, ensconced in the darkest corner of the room, determined to wait for daybreak. But here again his hopes were vain; though he strained his ears, he heard only oaths, coarse jokes and insults bandied about by the laborers, lackeys and carters who comprised the distinguished clientèle of the inn. There was not the merest hint of a scandal or abduction and no faintest clue to put him on the scent of his unhappy and beloved Constance. Having downed his bottle, for want of anything else to do, he decided to sit on in order to pass the time and to avoid suspicion. Sinking back comfortably into his corner, he composed himself for sleep. He had experienced a great ordeal, to be sure; but on a man of twenty, sleep exercises its imprescriptible rights though the sleeper’s heart be utterly broken.

  Toward six o’clock in the morning, D’Artagnan awakened with all the discomfort that usually follows a bad night. He was not long in tidying his rumpled clothes, making sure that his diamond was still on his finger, his purse in his pocket and his pistols in his belt. He rose, paid for his bottle and ventured out to try if he might have better luck in his search for his lackey than the night before. Through the damp gray mist the first object he discerned was honest Planchet, two horses in hand, waiting by the door of a disreputable looking tavern—a blind pig, so to speak—which D’Artagnan had passed the night before without even suspecting its existence.

  XXV

  OF WHAT HAPPENED TO PORTHOS

  D’Artagnan did not go straight home. Instead he stopped off to call on Monsieur de Tréville. Taking the stairs three at a pace, he determined to tell the Captain of Musketeers about all that had befallen him. Monsieur de Tréville could give him excellent advice and since he saw the Queen daily could perhaps find out something about poor Constance, who was assuredly paying dearly for her devotion to her mistress.

  The Captain of Musketeers listened patiently to his young protégé’s story. His serious attention proved that he saw more in the matter than a mere love affair. When D’Artagnan had finished:

  “This all reeks of the Cardinal,” he commented.

  “But what can be done, Monsieur?”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing, for the time being. You must leave Paris as soon as possible just as I told you last night. For my part I shall see the Queen and tell her about the disappearance of her maidservant. Probably Her Majesty knows nothing of it. At any rate I shall inform her and perhaps I shall have good news for you on your return.”

  D’Artagnan knew that, although a Gascon, Monsieur de Tréville was not a man to make promises that he did not intend to keep; usually indeed he went beyond his word. Very grateful for past favors and confident in the future, he bowed deeply as he took his leave of the old soldier. Monsieur de Tréville for his part felt a lively interest in his brave and resolute young compatriot. Shaking D’Artagnan’s hand affably he wished him a pleasant journey.

  Encouraged by Monsieur de Tréville’s attitude, D’Artagnan resolved to follow his advice immediately and made for the Rue des Fossoyeurs. Planchet would be waiting but his packing required supervision. There was Monsieur Bonacieux too.

  D’Artagnan found his landlord on the doorstep, clad in morning dress and staring up at the sky. All that the prudent Planchet had said about the Bonacieux’s sinister personality the evening before now recurred to D’Artagnan’s mind and as he drew near he looked at his landlord more closely than he had ever done. The fellow’s complexion was yellow and sickly with that pallor which indicates an excess of bile in the blood. To be sure that might be accidental, yet D’Artagnan perceived something particularly crafty and perfidious in his wrinkled features. A rascal does not laugh in the same manner as an honest man nor does a hypocrite shed tears in the same way as a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask which, however well fashioned, reveals its shams upon close inspection. To D’Artagnan it seemed that Monsieur Bonacieux wore a mask and a very ugly one to look upon at that.

  Repelled by Bonacieux’s unpleasing exterior, our Gascon intended to pass by without speaking but Monsieur Bonacieux accosted him as he had done the day before.

  “Well young man!” he declared with mock joviality, “we seem to have made quite a night of it, eh? Home at seven in the morning, I see! You do turn things topsy-turvy, I declare; you come home to sleep just as other folk are setting out to work.”

  “No one can hold that against you, Monsieur Bonacieux; you are a model of conventional behavior. Of course I cannot blame you. When a man possesses as young and as pretty a wife as you do, he need not seek happiness elsewhere because happiness comes to meet him, does it not?”

  Bonacieux turned pale and smiled wrily.

  “What a gay blade you are, Monsieur; you will have your joke, won’t you? But what the deuce were you up to last night?” He stared at D’Artagnan’s boots. “Very muddy, eh? Dirty work at the crossroads?”

  D’Artagnan, having surveyed his own boots, noticed that the haberdasher’s shoes and stockings were muddy too. Suddenly D’Artagnan thought: a fat, short, elderly man with graying hair and dressed in mean black clothes … a man who was no noblema
n for he wore no sword … a man whom the others ordered every which ways … a lackey, no doubt … Bonacieux himself! Yes, D’Artagnan was sure of it; the husband had actually presided at the brutality and outrage visited upon his wife.

  A fury seized D’Artagnan; his fingers itched to grasp the haberdasher by the throat and throttle him. But for all his ardor our Gascon was prudent, too; effortfully he mastered himself. Bonacieux, frightened, stepped back but as the door behind him was closed, he had perforce to stand his ground.

  “Come, my good man, you’re joking! Did you mention dirty work at the crossroads? God help me, if my boots could do with a sponging, your shoes and stockings could do with a brush! Have you been gadding about too, my dear landlord? By God, that would be unpardonable for a man of your age with a wife as beautiful as Madame Bonacieux.”

  “No, no, no, Monsieur, I was not gadding about. I went out to Saint-Mandé to find out about a servant. I cannot do without one and you remember the last one left the night I was arrested. It was muddy going, I can tell you.”

  To D’Artagnan the fact that Bonacieux cited Saint-Mandé was eminently suspicious for Saint-Mandé was south west of Paris, Saint-Cloud north east. Bonacieux’s guile offered D’Artagnan a glimmer of consolation, the first he had experienced. If the haberdasher knew where his wife was, somewhere and somehow he might be persuaded by forcible means to divulge his secret. The question was to change what D’Artagnan considered a probability into an absolute certainty.

  “My dear landlord, do you mind if I do not stand on ceremony with you?” D’Artagnan inquired.

  “Of course, go ahead, Monsieur.”

  “I’m parched with thirst; as you know nothing makes a man so thirsty as lack of sleep! May I go drink a glass of water in your kitchen? After all, as neighbor to neighbor—”

  And without awaiting his landlord’s permission, he went quickly into the house. As he passed through the apartment a rapid glance at the bed told him that no one had slept in it; therefore Bonacieux must have returned only an hour or two ago; therefore, again, he must have accompanied his wife to her place of confinement or, leastways, to the first relay.