THE BEGINNING OF THE HONEYMOON
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.
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