CHAPTER IXTO-MORROW
EVERY day at noon the prisoners walked for an hour in the garden and courtyard of the Temple. They were quite cheerful, and sometimes even gay. Madame Guillotine was grown familiar to their thoughts. They paid each other compliments upon their courage, and made little jokes on very grim subjects. The honeymoon of the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde amused, but also touched their fellow prisoners. Among these was a pretty boy of sixteen,the Vicomte d’Aronda. His father had died, as had Victor, Count of Floramour, gallantly fighting in La Vendée. His mother and sister had perished in the embrace of Madame Guillotine. The boy alone remained. He felt himself every inch a man, and showed more than a man’s courage. He was immensely captivated by the Duke of Belgarde’s dashing air, which he still retained in spite of his patched coat and shabby hat, and when the duke introduced the little vicomte to Trimousette, the boy fell, if possible, more in love with her than with the duke. Every day during their hour of exercise in the garden he watched for them, and his boyish face reddened with pleasure when they would ask him to join them on their promenade up and down the broken flags. It diverted the duke to pretend to be jealous of so gallant a fellow as the little vicomte, and the boy himself, half bashful and half saucy, was charmed with the notion of being treated as a gay dog. Neitherthe duke nor Trimousette ever spoke to the boy of the fate that lay before him, as well as themselves, for he was so young—but sixteen years old—and the soul is not full fledged at sixteen. One day, however, the lad himself broached the subject.
“You see, madame and monsieur,” he said, quite serenely, “all the men of my line have known how to die, whether in their beds of old age, or falling from their horses in battle, and I, too, know how to die. I shall be perfectly easy, and not let the villains who execute me see that I care anything about it. My mother died as bravely as the Queen herself; so did my sister, only twenty years old; and I shall not disgrace them. But I should like very much to go the same day with you. It would seem quite lonely to walk in this garden without you.”
When he said this, a woman’s passion of pity for the boy overwhelmed Trimousette. She felt nothing like pity for her own fate orthat of the man she loved; they had entered into Paradise before their time, that was all. But the boy was too young to have had even a glimpse of that Paradise. At least he would go in his white-souled youth, and this thought comforted Trimousette.
So passed the happiest month of Trimousette’s life. Her pale cheek grew rosy and rounded like a child’s. Her black eyes lost their tragic and melancholy expression and now shone with a soft splendor of deep peace and even joy. Trimousette, Duchess of Belgarde, had come into her own at last. She received from her husband the constant tribute of his adoring and admiring love. When she glanced up from her sewing, it was to find the duke’s eyes lifted from his book or his writing and fixed upon her. If she moved across the narrow little cell, he watched her, noting the grace of her movements. He told her twenty times a day that she had the most beautiful, dainty feet in the world. When shesang her little songs to him in a small pretty voice, the duke thought it the most exquisite melody he had ever heard. They were as far removed from the world as if they were upon another planet, and standing on the lonely peak of existence between the two abysms from which man emerges and into which he descends, it was as if they contained in themselves the universe.
It was now April; the days were long and bright, and the nights short and brilliant with moonlight and star shine. One day—it was the twenty-first of April—the air was so warm and Maylike that Trimousette laid aside her heavy black gown and put on the only other one she possessed—her white one, which she had saved for her bridal with death. Her husband had not seen her in a white gown for a long, long time, and paid her such loverlike compliments that Trimousette blushed with delight. When the time came for them to go into the gardens for their one hour of freshair many of the prisoners remarked upon Trimousette’s white gown, and the little Vicomte d’Aronda, coming up, said gallantly:
“Madame, I beg to present you with a bouquet I gathered for you this morning,” and handed her five puny dandelions and some milkweed, tied together with a bit of grass.
Trimousette was charmed, and thanked the boy so prettily that he blushed redder than ever, and the duke declared the vicomte was a dangerous fellow with the ladies—at which the lad answered saucily:
“Ah, monsieur, if I could live until I am grown up! Then I should indeed be devoted to the ladies.”
The duke turned away his head. The boy was but sixteen years old and he would not live to be much older.
That day was illuminated for Trimousette; it was so softly bright. As the afternoon wore on, its languid beauty, its sad sweetness entered into the soul of Trimousette. She didnot busy herself as usual with the little tasks she had devised for herself, but sat and moved in a soft and composed reverie. Then, for a long time she watched the rude sundial, studying the motto, and, almost involuntarily, she wrote upon the table with her pen the old motto about the passing of the shadows called man. She was serious, but not sad, and when the duke, taking her hand, said to her:
“My little Trimousette, does your heart ache because we, shadows that we are, shall no more pass this way?” Trimousette replied:
“I tell you truly, my heart has not once ached for myself since I have been in this prison.”
And with a lovely sidelong glance from her black eyes, now no longer sad, she continued, smiling:
“We have had our honeymoon, and no price can be too dear for that.”
For the hundredth time the duke beggedher pardon for those early years of neglect, and Trimousette, answering his burning kisses, whispered:
“It does not matter now. All the great joys and griefs color the past as well as the present. Since you were to love me, I could wait.”
The perfect day had a sunset of unearthly beauty. Together at the low-arched window in the great prison wall Trimousette and her best beloved watched the rosy sunset glow give way to the keen flashing stars shining in the deep blue heavens. They talked a little, softly, but presently an eloquent silence fell between them. Trimousette’s head was upon her husband’s shoulder, and after a time she slept. The duke drew her mantle about her and held her close. And thus, in warmth and peace and love, Trimousette slept an hour. It was close upon nine o’clock and a great vivid moon flooded the little cell with its silvery radiance when the duke heard the keyturning quietly in the heavy lock. Duval, the turnkey, entered, and obeying a sign from the duke, walked noiselessly toward him. The turnkey’s coarse face was pale, and his rough hands shook. He said in a whisper to the duke:
“It is to-morrow—at seven in the evening—sunset time.”
The duke nodded coolly. The hour being at hand he was all courage.
The turnkey pointed to the sleeping Trimousette, then turned away putting his sleeve to his face. Trimousette stirred, and withdrawing herself from the duke’s arm, looked with calm, wide-open eyes from her husband to the turnkey and back again. In the strong white moonlight she saw clearly the faces of both men.
“It is to-morrow, I think,” she said.
“It is to-morrow,” replied the duke, without a tremor.
“Monsieur Robespierre—” began the turnkey,and then in terror and rage stopped, shaking his fist in the direction of the Rue St. Honoré, where Robespierre lodged.
“After all, it is well to leave a feast before the candles are burned out,” said the duke, smiling, and Trimousette added:
“It is not Monsieur Robespierre. It is the will of the good God who calls us, and we pass over the short bridge, not the long one of age and disease, but the shortest of all—and we pass together.”
The turnkey kept on in a shaking voice:
“Not a soul but you knows who is to be posted to-morrow, but I can tell you of two—the sister of Louis Capet, Madame Elizabeth, and the little boy who calls himself Vicomte d’Aronda, and saunters about the garden so jauntily.”
“It is a great honor to us that we go with the King’s sister, and as for the little lad—well, he has no father, no mother, no brother, no sister——”
It was the duke who said this. Trimousette had never shown something like weakness about the boy, and, falling back in her chair, struck her hands together with a gesture of anguish.