Patrice pointed out for me an omission from my Robert E. Howard's
Bookshelf (for which I have now made some more corrections and which
will, hopefully, actually get posted to the web one of these days or
another), concerning an oblique reference in some notes Tevis Clyde
Smith had made in preparation for his (alas! never to be written)
biography of his good friend REH. (I published these notes under
Clyde's title of "So Far the Poet" in the Necronomicon Press chapbook,
Report on a Writing Man and Other Reminiscences of Robert E. Howard,
still available from NP.)
Here's what Clyde wrote: "His defense of Milady de Winter and her son
Mordaunt. ‘She was his mother’; We argued over this several times."
Of course, as a lover of classic adventure and a fan of the Richard
Lester 3 Musketeers movies, I knew that Milady de Winter was the wicked
agent of Cardinal Richelieu's nefarious schemes (played lusciously by
Faye Dunaway). But I was unfamiliar with her devoted son Mordaunt, so
off to Project Gutenberg I hied me.
Mordaunt is a major character in Twenty Years After, one of the sequels
to The Three Musketeers. In the course of the novel, he learns what
happened to his mother and sets out to avenge her. The following is the
confrontation between Mordaunt and his uncle, the new Lord De Winter,
from the Project Gutenberg edition of the story. In view of Clyde's
assertion that Bob took Mordaunt's side, and that they argued over this
"several times," I find this quite interesting.
*****************************
"And how does it concern me what you have learned?" said De Winter.
"Oh, it concerns you very closely, my uncle, I am sure, and you will
soon be of my opinion," added he, with a smile which sent a shudder
through the veins of him he thus addressed. "When I presented myself
before you for the first time in London, it was to ask you what had
become of my fortune; the second time it was to demand who had sullied
my name; and this time I come before you to ask a question far more
terrible than any other, to say to you as God said to the first
murderer: `Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother Abel?' My lord, what
have you done with your sister -- your sister, who was my mother?"
De Winter shrank back from the fire of those scorching eyes.
"Your mother?" he said.
"Yes, my lord, my mother," replied the young man, advancing into the
room until he was face to face with Lord de Winter, and crossing his
arms. "I have asked the headsman of Bethune," he said, his voice hoarse
and his face livid with passion and grief. "And the headsman of Bethune
gave me a reply."
De Winter fell back in a chair as though struck by a thunderbolt and in
vain attempted a reply.
"Yes," continued the young man; "all is now explained; with this key I
open the abyss. My mother inherited an estate from her husband, you have
assassinated her; my name would have secured me the paternal estate, you
have deprived me of it; you have despoiled me of my fortune. I am no
longer astonished that you knew me not. I am not surprised that you
refused to recognize me. When a man is a robber it is hard to call him
nephew whom he has impoverished; when one is a murderer, to recognize
the man whom one has made an orphan."
These words produced a contrary effect to that which Mordaunt had
anticipated. De Winter remembered the monster that Milady had been; he
rose, dignified and calm, restraining by the severity of his look the
wild glance of the young man.
"You desire to fathom this horrible secret?" said De Winter; "well,
then, so be it. Know, then, what manner of woman it was for whom to-day
you call me to account. That woman had, in all probability, poisoned my
brother, and in order to inherit from me she was about to assassinate me
in my turn. I have proof of it. What say you to that?"
"I say that she was my mother."
"She caused the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham to be stabbed by a man
who was, ere that, honest, good and pure. What say you to that crime, of
which I have the proof?"
"She was my mother."
"On our return to France she had a young woman who was attached to one
of her opponents poisoned in the convent of the Augustines at Bethune.
Will this crime persuade you of the justice of her punishment -- for of
all this I have the proofs?"
"She was my mother!" cried the young man, who uttered these three
successive exclamations with constantly increasing force.
"At last, charged with murders, with debauchery, hated by every one and
yet threatening still, like a panther thirsting for blood, she fell
under the blows of men whom she had rendered desperate, though they had
never done her the least injury; she met with judges whom her hideous
crimes had evoked; and that executioner you saw – that executioner who
you say told you everything – that executioner, if he told you
everything, told you that he leaped with joy in avenging on her his
brother's shame and suicide. Depraved as a girl, adulterous as a wife,
an unnatural sister, homicide, poisoner, execrated by all who knew her,
by every nation that had been visited by her, she died accursed by
Heaven and earth."
A sob which Mordaunt could not repress burst from his throat and his
livid face became suffused with blood; he clenched his fists, sweat
covered his face, his hair, like Hamlet's, stood on end, and racked with
fury he cried out: "Silence, sir! she was my mother! Her crimes, I know
them not; her disorders, I know them not; her vices, I know them not.
But this I know, that I had a mother, that five men leagued against one
woman, murdered her clandestinely by night -- silently -- like cowards.
I know that you were one of them, my uncle, and that you cried louder
than the others: `She must die.' Therefore I warn you, and listen well
to my words, that they may be engraved upon your memory, never to be
forgotten: this murder, which has robbed me of everything -- this
murder, which has deprived me of my name -- this murder, which has
impoverished me – this murder, which has made me corrupt, wicked,
implacable – I shall summon you to account for it first and then those
who were your accomplices, when I discover them!"
