PRESENTLY the first agitation was past, and Trimousette told, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, the story of her journey alone by diligence from the Breton coast to Paris, and how she forced her way into Robespierre’s presence and had wrung from him the boon of being with her husband.
“But let us not deceive ourselves,” said the duke gently, still holding her to his breast. “I shall not escape from the Temple this time. No man has ever got away from this prison twice. I am destined to follow his Majesty the King and her Majesty the Queen to the guillotine.”
He expected that Trimousette would faint or shriek when he said this, but she looked at him with calm eyes and answered in a soft, unbroken voice:
“So it may be, but Robespierre has promised me that when you leave the prison I shall go with you.”
The duke held her a little way from him and studied her reflectively. Yes, it was better so. In a flash had been revealed to him the height and depth of her adoration. What would be her fate if left alone among those howling wolves who now ravened France? He would have taken with him any creature that he loved, as he would have saved a bullet for that creature if he had been surrounded and overwhelmed by savages, whose blood thirst must be appeased.
“Well, then,” continued Trimousette, still smiling and composed, “let us here await God’s will.”
“And that of the National Assembly,” grimly replied the duke, who had not become either pious or forgiving under the shadow of the guillotine, but, like most men, was the same in all circumstances. Some, however, mistake fear for repentance—not so Fernand, Duke of Belgarde.
There was but one chair, one bed, one table in the room, and when the turnkey brought the duke’s supper, there was only one cup, one plate, and no spoon or knife at all. To the turnkey’s surprise, Citizen and Citizeness Belgarde made merry at this. Trimousette was to have a little cell opening into the duke’s, but when the rusty door was forced wide, there was nothing but the bare walls and floor. The duke, assuming an air of authority as if he were giving orders to a lackey at the Château de Belgarde, directed the turnkey to bring what was necessary for the comfort of the Duchess of Belgarde, and the turnkey, appreciating the joke, grinned and winked at the duke. Then the duchess, in her sweet, complaisant manner, said to him:
“Pray, take no offense at the Duke of Belgarde. He is not yet used to being in prison. But do me the favor, please, kind sir, to give me at least a bed to sleep upon and a chair to sit in. Not so good as your wife has at home, perhaps, but I shall be easily satisfied.”
The turnkey Duval went, and returned after a few minutes to say that not only might the duchess have a bed and a chair and a table, but he would even get an old counterpane and hang it up as a curtain between the cells. This was luxury undreamed of by Trimousette, and she overwhelmed Duval with pretty thanks. The turnkey of his own accord put up the bed and placed the chair and table which all prisoners were allowed, and, having himself a taste for luxury, actually laid a piece of carpet by the side of the bed and put a coarse cover on the table.
This prison supper was the first time the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde had ever supped together alone with each other. They felt a furtive and secret joy at being together, for the duke had been steadily falling in love with his wife ever since she appeared in his cell an hour before. He noticed a new expression in her black eyes, an expression of hope and even of joy. Trimousette, with a woman’s keenness, knew she was on the road to her kingdom—her husband’s heart. It was so odd that it was almost comical, the way the duke examined his wife. She certainly had beautiful eyes, and a slim figure, and although dressed in the simplest manner, as became a lady who traveled alone, Trimousette had not forgotten her solitary piece of coquetry—her delicious little shoes. Also, she had suddenly found her tongue, and talked to her husband so freely and even gayly that he was astounded. Was this the silent, shy, awkward girl he had married so many years ago and who had seemed to be growing shyer, more silent, more awkward every year? He was so surprised, so pleased, so touched, that he scarcely knew what to make of it. The sky was still alight when their supper was over, and Trimousette produced some needlework which she had been allowed to bring into the prison. She was very artful, was this artless Trimousette, and not meaning to thrust her company on her husband, retired to her own little cell. There a charming surprise awaited her. The turnkey, over whom Trimousette had thrown a spell of enchantment, had placed upon her table a pot containing a geranium with ten leaves and two brilliant scarlet blossoms. Trimousette, after admiring her treasure, sat down upon her one chair and began to stitch diligently by the fading light. She was ever a good needlewoman. Most prisoners, as soon as they were incarcerated, begged for pen, ink, and paper, to write to their friends, and to begin their struggle to get out of prison. Not so Trimousette. She had no one to write to, and particularly did not wish to get out of prison.
As she sat sewing, she heard the duke moving restlessly about in the next cell, beyond the ragged curtain. A mysterious smile came into Trimousette’s eyes and upon her lips; her husband was uneasy without her; he must come and seek her—oh, rapturous thought! Presently, the duke knocked quite timidly at the side of the door. It might have been Trimousette herself, the knock was so gentle; and when Trimousette softly bade him enter, he said, quite shamefacedly:
“I have never been lonely in this place before, for my thoughts, although painful enough, always kept me busy. But I have grown very lonely without you in the last five minutes. May I enter?”
In that hour began Trimousette’s long-delayed honeymoon.
Trimousette, being by nature orderly and the duke philosophic, they regulated their lives as if they expected to die of old age in the prison of the Temple. The duke had never before had much leisure for reading, his time having been chiefly taken up with war and the ladies, nor had he felt the need of any proficiency in writing until he became the guest of the Revolution. His newly found accomplishment with the pen revealed to him a gift which neither he nor anyone else ever suspected in him. He could write verses, very pretty verses, all addressed to Trimousette. These she set to music and sang in a sweet little voice. Some of these songs were quite gay and coquettish, and Trimousette sang them gayly and coquettishly. Thus was the kingdom of poetry and song opened to them and they entered it hand in hand. When they sat together at the rude table in the purple April nights, the duke teaching Trimousette his verses and she singing them softly to him, they gazed with rapture into each other’s eyes, and wondered how they could ever have lived apart.
They had no watch or clock and no means of telling the time except by the prison bells, until the duke contrived, with a wooden peg driven into the bare table, a rude sundial. They would not put upon it the motto of the sundial in the old garden where Trimousette had first dreamed of the duke; it was too sad. The duke suggested the old, old one, “Only the happy hours I mark,” but Trimousette shook her head.
“Are not all our hours happy when we are together?” she asked, and her husband for answer caught her to his breast.
“I know another motto,” she whispered; “it is on the sundial on the broken terrace at Boury, ‘’Tis always morning somewhere in the world.’”
The duke therefore etched, with a piece of a nail out of his shoe, this motto upon the table, and Trimousette said it meant that when they made their journey some evening to the Place de la Révolution, they would close their eyes for a few minutes and open them upon the Eternal Morning. She had many sweet superstitions, but behind them lay a noble courage and faith itself.
Trimousette was not always employed with poetry and music, however, but devised for herself many graceful and feminine employments, the duke watching her meanwhile with great delight. In the mornings she, like a good housewife, would sew with diligence, and patched and mended the duke beautifully. Her own wardrobe contained but two gowns, a black one, which she wore every day, and a white one, which she saved carefully for a certain great occasion likely to arrive any day; for although she and her duke lived in their two cells with love and peace, neither of them expected release except by the road which led to the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution. Robespierre had promised it, and in these matters he never broke his word. They faced the future with a composure which amazed themselves. The duke had the courage of a soldier who is always ready to answer the last roll call; Trimousette’s simple and sublime faith would have made her walk to the stake as calmly as to the guillotine.
It must not be supposed, however, that a man with red blood in him like Fernand, Duke of Belgarde, could see a new, sweet life of love opening before him, and then could always bring himself to resignation. He said little when these moods, like slaves in revolt, possessed him. At such times he would rise from his bed in the night, grinding his teeth and quivering with a dumb rage, and walk stealthily like a cunning madman, up and down, up and down, his narrow cell. Trimousette waking, would rise, and going to him in the darkness, gently recall him to his manhood, his fortitude, his heart of a soldier, and then with the earnestness of an angel and the simplicity of a child, she would tell him of the strange certainty she felt that they would not be separated even in the passage of the abyss called death. The duke, listening to her, and feeling the soft clasp of her arm about his neck, would find something like repose descend upon his tumultuous soul. At least, they would go together—that much of comfort was theirs. But it was only at times that this mood came upon the duke. Soldier-like, he had always looked upon death as an incident, and the only really important thing about it was how the thing could be done with the greatest ease and dignity.
“And surely,” Trimousette would say, drawing up her slight figure and showing the pride that was always alive, but secret in her heart, “to die for one’s loyalty is a very good way for the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde to make their exit.” Let no one feel sorry for Trimousette. She had passed through the Gate of Tears forever, and was already in that Garden of All Delight, which men call Perfect Love.