“La belle chose que l’aristocratie quand on a le chance d’en être.”––Voltaire.
“La belle chose que l’aristocratie quand on a le chance d’en être.”
––Voltaire.
That garish daub which was sopped up from the burning homes of men and bespattered over the forest’s dark crest was already mellowing under the gentler touch of dawn, when the three travelers gained the open country.
“Poor, dirty, little Inditos,” Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. “Fire and sword,” Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, “they make the final tableau, but–it’s gaudy, it’s cheap.”
The trail had broadened into a high road, and now it wound among the hills like a soiled white ribbon. Driscoll turned in his saddle. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he observed in the full-toned drawl that was peculiar to him, “but what we’d better be projecting a change of venue. This route is too public, and publicity around here strikes me as sort of prejudiced. S’pose we just stir up an alibi?”
A certain stately old judge back in Missouri would have smiled thus to hear the scion of his house. But the marchioness, confident in her mastery of English, thought it was the veriest jargon. What was the boy trying to say? His next words grew fairly intelligible. “We are now headed for Valles. Well, we’ve decided not to go to Valles.”
Perhaps they had, but she at least had ceased deciding anything,109since the overruling of her veto in the matter of precedence when one is hoisted upon a burro.
A narrow pony path crossed the road. “First trail to the left, after leaving the wood,” Driscoll said aloud, “and this must be it.” Campaigner in an unfamiliar country, he had informed himself, and it was with confidence that he led his little party into the bridlepath. But he looked anxiously at the forest behind. He did not doubt but that Rodrigo, if it were he back there, would terrify Murguía into betraying their destination, or their supposed destination, which was Valles.
“Can’t you hurry ’em up a bit?” he called back.
“We do try,” protested Jacqueline, holding aloft a broken switch, “but they only smile at us.”
Driscoll got down and undid the spurs from his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle’s high heel, passing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her. Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched him doing the same service for Berthe. Perhaps he was too far away, or perhaps practice brought indifference, but at any rate, his neck was no longer tinged in that fiery way.
“Now dig ’em!” said he. “We want to make that clump of mesquite yonder, now pretty quick.”
The trees he pointed to were two or three miles away, but the travelers covered the distance at an easy lope. Driscoll kept an eye on the road they had just left, and once hidden by the mesquite he called a halt. As he expected, a number of horsemen appeared at a trot from the direction of the forest. They did not pause at the cross trail, however, but kept to the110highway in the direction of Valles. The American and the two girls could now safely continue their journey along the bridlepath.
“Monsieur,” Jacqueline questioned demurely, and in her most treacherous way, “how much longer do we yet follow you up and down mountains?”
“W’y, uh–I’mgoing to the City of Mexico.”
“And we others, we may tag along, n’est-ce pas? But the city is far, far. And, to-night?”
“Of course,” said Driscoll, “if you should happen to know of a good hotel––” He paused and gazed inquiringly over hills covered with banana and coffee to the frost line. He would not have tried a frailer temper so, but to provoke hers was incense to his own.
“You others, the Americans,” she said tentatively, as though explaining him to herself, “you are so greedy of this New World! You won’t give us of it, no, not even a poor little answer of information. Alas, Monseigneur the American, I apologize for being on this side the ocean at all–in a tattered frock.”
Driscoll looked, but he could see nothing wrong. She seemed as crisp and dainty as ever. If there were any disarray, it was a fetching sort, with a certain rakish effect.
“Oh that’s all right,” he assured her heartily, “youcan stay.”
“Really, and after you’ve been writing us notes from Washington to–to ‘get out’? We French people do not think that was polite.”
“I never wrote you any notes, and,” he added in a lowered tone, “the devil take Washington, since Lee didn’t!”
Jacqueline’s lips pursed suddenly like a cherry. “Oh pardon me,” she exclaimed. “I did not know. And so you are a–a Confederate? But,” and the gray eyes fastened upon him. She rode, too, so that she could see his face, just ahead111of her, “but your faction, the–yes, the South–she is already vanquis–no!–whipped? I–I heard.”
He did not reply, but his expression disturbed her unaccountably. She could almost note the whimsical daredeviltry fade from his face, as there came instead the grimmest and strangest locking of the jaws. She tried to imagine the French beaten and her feelings then, but it was difficult, for her countrymen were “the bravest of the world, the unconquered.” They had borne victory over four continents, into two hemispheres. But this American, what must he feel? He was thinking, in truth, of many things. Of his leave taking with his regiment, with those lusty young savages of Missourians whom perhaps he was never to see again. He was thinking of his ride through the South to Mobile, of the misery in stubborn heroism, of the suffering everywhere, matching that in the dreary fever camp of the Old Brigade. He was thinking of all the beautiful Southland torn and ravaged and of the lowering cloud of finality. Of the Army of Northern Virginia so hard pressed; of the doom of Surrender, a knell already sounded, perhaps. Never had Jacqueline seen such bitterness on a human face. It was a man’s bitterness. And almost a desperado’s. At least there was the making of a desperado in the youth of a moment before. She caught herself shuddering. There was something so like a lurking death astride the yellow horse in front of her.
But over her also there came a change, and it grew as she saw and appreciated the man in him. Her caprices fell from her, and she was the shrewd woman of the world, a deft creature of courts, a cunning weaver of the delicate skeins of intrigue and politics. A glint of craft and purpose struck from the gray eyes, as in preparation for battle. Her mischievous bantering had really been fraught with design, and by it she had revealed to herself this man. But the change in her came when he proved an antagonist, as she now supposed him to be. For in the uncloaking he stood forth a Confederate. His cause was112lost. He was in Mexico. He was on a mission, no doubt. One question remained, what could the mission be?
Abrupt frankness, with its guileful calculation to surprise one into betrayal, was the subtlest diplomacy. “Let us see,” she mused aloud, “you, your comrades, monsieur, you have no country now? Bien, that accounts for your interest in Maximilian?”
“And what is your interest, Miss–Jack-leen?”
She staggered before the riposte. The “Jack-leen” was innocent blundering, she knew that. He had heard Rodrigo address her so, and he used it in all respect. But there was her own question turned on herself. By “her interest” he of course meant the interest she was showing in himself; he was not referring it to Maximilian. And yet the double meaning was there, just the same. He had struck back, that was certain, but because she could not tell where, nor even whether he had wounded, she was afraid to parry, much more to venture another thrust. Those who had sent the rustic evidently knew what they were about. He could shoot well, which was exhilarating. To redeem one’s country’s discredited bills, was quixotic. She rose to that, because she was French. But to fence with herself–well, that was quality. Instinctive, inbred, unconscious, and unregistered in any studbook of Burke or Gotha–but quality. And she recognized it, for there was deference in the silence which her baffled diplomacy now counseled.
They passed many natives plodding on to Valles with market stuff, going at the Inditos’ tireless foxtrot, now a man in loincloth stooped under a great bundle of straw or charcoal, or a family entire, including burro and dog. Of a gray-bearded patriarch with a chicken coop strapped to his back, Driscoll inquired the distance to an hacienda of the region which had the name of Moctezuma. “Probablemente, it will be ten leagues farther on, señor,” the Huastecan replied.
113“We are going,” Driscoll now informed his companions, “to drop in on Murgie–the hospitable old anaconda.”
They acquired a pineapple by purchase, and stopped for their morning coffee at a hut among numberless orange trees, and at another farther on for their midday lunch, where they learned that the Hacienda de Moctezuma was only just beyond the first hill, and only just beyond the first hill they learned that they had six leagues more to go. They covered three of these leagues, and were rewarded with the information that it was fully seven leagues yet. Geography in Mexico was clearly an elastic quantity. But towards three o’clock a young fellow on a towering stack of fagots waved his arm over the landscape, and said, “Why, señor, you are there now.” Yes, it was the hacienda, but how far was it to the hacienda house? Oh, that was still a few little leagues.
In the end, after nightfall, they rode into a very wide valley, where two broad, shallow rivers joined and flowed on as one through the lowland. Here, on the brow of a slope, they perceived the walls and the church tower of what seemed to be a small town. But after one last inquiry, they learned that it was the seat of Anastasio Murguía’s baronial domain.
“Les grenouilles se lassantDe l’état démocratique,Par leur clameurs firent tantQue Jupin les soumit au pouvoir monarchique.”La Fontaine.
“Les grenouilles se lassantDe l’état démocratique,Par leur clameurs firent tantQue Jupin les soumit au pouvoir monarchique.”
La Fontaine.
A wide country road swept up the slope of the hill, curved in toward the low outer wall of the little town on the brow, then swept down again. The portico of the hacienda house was set in the wall where the road almost touched, so that the traveler could alight at the very threshold of the venerable place. Mounting the half-dozen steps, Driscoll crossed a vast porch whose bare cement columns stood as sentinels the entire length of the high, one-storied façade, and on the heavy double doors he found a knocker. Visitors were infrequent there, but at last a surprised barefoot mozo answered the rapping, and in turn brought a short man of burly girth and charro tightness of breeches. This chubby person bowed many times and assured Their Mercies over and over again that here they had their house. Driscoll replied with thanks that in that case he thought that he and the other two Mercies would be taking possession, for the night at least.
The man was Murguía’s administrador, or overseer. He took it for granted that the French señor (in those days Mexico called all foreigners French) and the French señoras were friends of his employer, and Driscoll did not undeceive him. The trooper’s habits were those of war, and war admitted quartering yourself on an enemy. He brought the news, too,115that Murguía had come safely through his last blockade run, which alone insured him a welcome without the fact that ranchero hospitality may be almost Arabian and akin to a sacrament.
Plunging into apologies for every conceivable thing that could or might be amiss, Don Anastasio’s steward led them into the sala, a long front room, the hacendado’s hall of state. To all appearances it had not been so used in many years, but the old furnishing of some former Spanish owner still told the tale of coaches before the colonnade outside and of hidalgo guests within the great house. There was the stately sofa of honor flanked by throne-like armchairs, with high-backed ones next in line, all once of bright crimson satin and now frazzled and stained. The inevitable mirror leaned from its inevitable place over the sofa, but it was cracked and the gilt of the heavy frame had tarnished to red. At the other end of the sala, a considerable journey, there hung a token of the later and Mexican family in possession. The token was of course the Virgin of Guadelupe in her flame of gold, as she had gaudily emblazoned herself on the blanket, or serape, of a poor Indian. Murguía’s print was one of thousands of copies of that same revered serape.
Urging them to be seated, clapping his hands for servants, giving orders, ever apologizing, the overseer finally got the travelers convinced that it was their house and that supper would be ready now directly. With a glance at his two companions, Driscoll inquired for the señoras of the family, whereupon a sudden embarrassment darkened the administrador’s fat amiable features.
“Doña Luz, Your Mercy means? Ai, caballero, you are most kind. And you tell me that her father will come to-morrow, that he will–surely come?”
“Might we,” Jacqueline interposed, “pay our respects to Señor Murguía’s daughter?”
116The poor fellow begged Their Mercies’ indulgence, but Doña Matilde, the señora aunt of Doña Luz, lay sick in the house. As for Doña Luz, yes, Doña Luz had gone to the chapel, as she often did of an evening lately, to pray for her aunt’s recovery. Doña Luz had vowed to wear sackcloth for six months if her dear patron saint, María de la Luz, would but hear her petition. Out of compassion, Jacqueline said no more.
Next morning Driscoll was astir early. He wandered through a thick-walled labyrinth of corridors and patios, and came at last into a rankly luxuriant tropical garden, where the soft perfume of china-tree blossoms filled his nostrils. Keeping on he passed many of the hacienda buildings, a sugar mill, a cotton factory, warehouses, stables with corrals, and entered a tortuous street between adobes, where he found the hacienda store. Here the administrador was watching the clerks who sold and the peons who bought. The latter were mostly women, barefooted and scantily clothed. Their main want was corn, weevil-eaten corn, which they carried away in their aprons. They made tortillas of it for their men laboring in the hacienda fields, or on the hacienda coffee hills. The store was a curious epitome of thrift and improvidence. One wench grumbled boldly of short measure. She dared, because she was comely and buxom, and her chemise fell low on her full, olive breast. She counted her purchase of frijoles to the last grain, using her fingers, and glaring at the clerk half coaxingly, half resentfully. But an intensely scarlet percale caught her barbarian eye, and she took enough of it for a skirt. A dozen cigarettes followed, and by so much she increased her man’s debt to the hacienda.
A shrunken and ancient laborer was expostulating earnestly with much gesturing of skeleton arms, while the administrador listened as one habituated and bored. The feeble peon protested that he could not work that day. He parted the yellow117rags over one leg and revealed decaying flesh, sloughing away in the ravages of bone leprosy. He showed it without emotion, as some argument in the abstract. And he was arguing for a little corn, just a little, and he made his palm into a tiny cup to demonstrate. The administrador opened a limp account book, held his pudgy forefinger against a page for a second, then shut it decisively. “No, no, Pedro, not while you owe these twelve reales. Think, man, if you should die. You have no sons; we would lose.”
“But, mi patron, there’s my nephew.”
“True, and he has his own father’s debt waiting for him.”
“Just a wee little,” begged the man.
The overseer shook his head. “When you’ve worked to-day, yes. Then you may have six cents’ worth, and the other six cents of the day’s wages counted off your debt. There now, get along with you to the timber cutting.”
The administrador brightened on perceiving Driscoll. “How was His Mercy? How had His Mercy passed the night? How––”
“Where,” interposed Driscoll, “might one find the nearest stage to Mexico?”
Almost nowhere, was the reply. What with the French intervention and guerrillas, the Compañia de Diligencias had about suspended its service altogether. “Then,” said Driscoll, “could we hire some sort of a rig from you?” The administrador believed so, though he regretted continuously that Their Mercies must be leaving so soon.
With a nod of thanks Driscoll turned curiously to the loaded shelves, and gazed at the bolts of manta, calico, and red flannel. “Jiminy crickets,” he burst forth, “is there anybody on this ranch who can sew?”
Yes, the wife of one of the clerks was a passable seamstress. She did such work for the Doñas at the House.
118“And can she do some to-day, and can you send it on to overtake me by to-morrow?”
Most certainly.
Then Driscoll invested in a number of varas of calico print. It was the best available. But the light blue flowering was modest enough, and there was even a cheery freshness about it that called up mellowing recollections of bright-eyed Missouri girls. Yet each time he thought of the costumes he had ordered, he blushed until his hair roots tingled.
Intent once more on departure, Din Driscoll hastened back to the House. But he only learned that Jacqueline and Berthe were not up yet. He mumbled at such looseness in discipline, until he remembered that they were not troopers, but girls. And since girls are to be waited for, he did it in his own room. From his saddlebags he laid out shaving material. The Old Brigade had advised these things, while speculating with dry concern on what was correct among emperors. After much sharp snapping of eyes, for the razor pulled, the clean line of his jaw emerged from lather and stubble. “Just in case any emperor should happen in,” he tried to explain it, taking a transparently jocose manner with himself.
Eight o’clock! Even civilized people do not stay abed that late! Yet he found only Berthe in the dining room. She had come on a foraging expedition. He watched the little Bretonne’s deft arranging of a battered tray, and offered droll suggestions until she began to suspect that he really did not mean them. Berthe was a nice girl with soft brown hair, and a serious, gentle way about her.
The maid found mademoiselle not only still abed, but stretched on a rack of torture as well, her helpless gaze fixed on a Mexican woman with a hot iron. It was a flatiron, and it was being applied to Jacqueline’s poor rumpled frock. The dress was spread over a cloth on the floor, and the woman119strove tantalizingly, and Jacqueline was trying to direct her.
“Madame is served,” Berthe announced.
Madame raised herself on an elbow and looked at the tray, at the sorry chinaware, at the earthen supplements. “Served?” she repeated. “Berthe, exaggeration is a very bad habit. But child, what are you about? This is not a petit déjeuner!”
“I know, madame, but he told me to bring it. He said we’d be traveling, and there wouldn’t be time for a second breakfast.”
“He?Who in the world––”
“Why, the, the American monsieur. He said just coffee wasn’t enough, and for me to bring along the entire contest of marksmanship–the, the whole shooting match–and for madame to hurry.”
“Berthe! one would say you thought him a prince.”
“He–he is a kind of prince,” said the little Bretonne doggedly.
Madame whistled softly. Still, she ate a hearty breakfast.
Meantime, outside two resplendent horsemen were galloping up the curving sweep of the wide road. Their haste smacked of vast importance, and the very dazzling flash of their brass helmets in the sunlight had a certain arrogance. The foremost jerked his horse’s bit with a cruel petulance and drew up before the hacienda house. Several natives were basking on the steps, and he cut at them sharply with his whip.
“Wake, you r-rats!” A Teutonic thickness of speech clogged his utterance, and he turned to his companion. “Tell this canaille,” he snarled in Flemish, “to go fetch their master here at once.”
The administrador came hurrying, and was overcome. His hospitable flow gushed and choked at its source before the splendor of the two cavaliers. They were Belgians. The first wore a long blue coat bedecked with golden leaves and belted with a sash. Crosses and stars dangled on his breast.120His breeches were white doe, and his high glossy boots had wrinkles like a mousquetaire’s. Heavy tassels flapped from his sword hilt. A brass eagle was perched on his helmet. Altogether, here was a glittering bit of flotsam from the new Mexican Empire. But a narrowness between the man’s eyes affected one unpleasantly. It was a mean and a sour scowl, of a fellow lately come into authority. The other man graced the ornate uniform of an aide in Maximilian’s imperial household.
“Your Mercy is–is the Emperor?” stammered the poor fat administrador.
He had, indeed, heard rumors of Maximilian on one of his ostentatious voyages. The first Belgian, however, was in no way embarrassed at the question. It was a natural mistake, in his opinion.
“Explain to this imbecile,” he ordered, “since there’s no better here to receive us.”
The aide explained. His Imperial Majesty, Maximiliano, was returning to his capital. Fascinated by the beauty of the tropics, as well as ill of a cough, he had lingered for a week past at the adjoining hacienda of Las Palmas. He had also been deep in studies for the welfare of his people. But now the business of the Empire demanded that he relieve the Empress of her regency. Accordingly, His Majesty and His Majesty’s retinue had left Las Palmas that very morning, and would shortly pass by the hacienda of Moctezuma. His Majesty, when en voyage, always took a loving interest in his subjects, and a sincere ovation never failed to touch his heart. So Monsieur Éloin–here the aide glanced with some irony at the first Belgian–so Monsieur Éloin thought that the master of La Moctezuma would be grateful to know of His Majesty’s approach, in order to gather the peons from the fields to welcome him. It would be as well, perhaps, to reveal nothing to the Emperor of this thoughtful hint.
121“To make it quite plain,” concluded the speaker, “can you assemble enough men within an hour to do a seeming and convincing reverence to your ruler?”
“And tell him,” interrupted Monsieur Éloin, “not to forget the green boughs waving in their hands. Make him understand that there will be consequences if it’s not spontaneous.”
As they galloped back to rejoin Maximilian, the imperial aide was thoughtful. “I can’t help it,” he said aloud, “I feel sorry for him. How his blue eyes glisten–there are actually tears in them–when he talks to these Indians of freedom and a higher life! He thinks they love him! And all this elegance–no wonder they believe that the Fair God is come at last to right their sorrows.”
“The loathsome beasts!”
“But I do feel sorry. He really believes that he will verify the tradition and be their savior. It’s his sincere goodness of heart. Man, how exalted he is!”
“But where’s the harm?”
“Because, because the poor devils were fooled once before. And their new Messiah may deceive them as bitterly with unwise meddling as Cortez did with greed and cruelty.”
“Messiah for these pigs!” Éloin sneered. “What pleasure it gives him,Ican’t see.”
“... a bearded man,Pamper’d with rank luxuriousness and ease.”–Dante.
“... a bearded man,Pamper’d with rank luxuriousness and ease.”
–Dante.
The Emperor was coming–elaborately, by august degrees.
First, and far in advance, arrived a haughty pack liveried in the royal green of ancient Aztec dynasties. New tenants might have been moving on this bright May day, for the flunkies attended a small caravan of household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts into a goose’s maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty’s absolute necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and portiéres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then–there was the Ritual.
The Ritual was a massive tome, of glazed, gilt-edged paper, of print as big for the proclaiming of truth as the Family Bible, of weight to burden a strong man, of contents to stagger a giant brain, unless the giant brain had in it the convolution of a smile. Maximilian and Charlotte had reigned a year, and so far the Ritual was the supreme monument to the glory and usefulness of their Empire. It decreed, by Imperial dictation and signature, the etiquette that must and should be observed in the courtly circle. But alas, you can’t codify genuflections, nor yet a handshake.
123The next degree in the imperial advent was the imperial courier, who proclaimed from a curveting steed what everybody suspected. “Our August Sovereign” was approaching.
Several hundred peons stared with open mouths. Gathered before the house, they prattled to one another in childlike expectancy of the Señor Emperador. Most of them were learning for the first time that they had an emperor. Still, it sufficed to know this was an occasion for auto-inspiring vivas, like once when the Ilustrísimo Bishop came. They took new hold on the green boughs they were to wave. A handkerchief here and there fluttered from a bamboo pole. Down in an adobe village by the river junction, every gala scrap of calico print, whether shirt or skirt, pended from cords stretched across the street; and cotton curtains, some of crude drawn work, hung outside the windows. All the poor finery of the Indians was on exhibition to do honor to a gorgeous Old World court. But the fiesta air had already gotten into the susceptible native lungs, and that alone, with only a trumpet’s blare, would make for a hurrah in genuine fervor.
The roomy porch of the old mansion was crowded with the chief people of the hacienda, clerks, foremen, house servants, besides the administrador and the chaplain. Behind a remote column were the three wanderers in the wilderness; the Storm Centre, the Marchioness, and the Maid. They were to have been gone by now, and yet it was not the coming of the emperor that had stopped them. The cause was nearer at hand. Smoking a long black cigar, “grizzled and fierce, as ornate in braid and decorations as a bullfighter,” Colonel Dupin had delayed them.
His Cossacks thronged the colonnade. The brick-red of their raw leather jackets splotched every other color with rust. The Contra Guerrillas were many things. They were Frenchmen and Mexicans. They were Americans, Confederate deserters, Union deserters. They were Negroes and Arabs.124They were the ruined of fortune, now soldiers of fortune. They were pirates and highwaymen. They were gold hunters, gamblers, swindlers. They were fugitives from the noose, from the garrote, from the guillotine. But they were all right willing desperadoes. And there was not a softened feature on a man of the troop. Only a tigerish ferocity could lead them, could hold them.
They surrounded the Missourian on the hacienda portico. If only for his debonnaire indifference, they knew him for a “bad man” such as none of them might ever hope to be. And they watched him like lynxes, though he was unarmed. Yet he did not look “bad.” He merely looked bored. He was a prisoner, but not the only one. Anastasio Murguía fidgetted among the Cossacks on his own porch. His restless eyes roved incessantly over the crowd, seeking his daughter, but they were steadily baffled.
Down in the valley, where the Rio Moctezuma joined its course with the Pánuco, a dusty mist moved nearer along the old Spanish highway, and faintly there came the sound of clarions. An eager murmuring arose from the throng on the hillside. It swelled more confidently to a buzz as the far-away dust lifted at the ford and revealed the beaded stringing of a numerous company. The distant bugles rang clearer on the pure air. “Yes, he comes,” the people cried, “There! Seest thou, hombre?–There!Viva el Señor Emperador!”
For Colonel Dupin the cloud of dust would shortly evolve into a staying hand of mercy, into the exasperating stupidity of mercy. He had captured the American not ten minutes before, and here was interference in a gauzy haze of dust. He signed to one of his men to follow with Murguía, and he himself placed a gauntleted hand on Driscoll’s shoulder. “Now,” he said.
But a white figure of Mexican rebosa and silken instep moved swiftly from behind a column and touched the Tiger’s125arm. Both Jacqueline and Berthe had been watching the Cossack chief rather than the spectacle in the valley. And as he turned on his prisoner, Berthe half screamed and clutched at the bosom of her dress. It was Jacqueline who gained his side. She addressed him sharply as one who hates to reopen a tedious argument.
“Monsieur Dupin,” she cried, “have I not already permitted myself to tell you–yes, I repeat, you are mistaken. He is in no sense whatever an accomplice of Rodrigo Galán.”
The Tiger heard, no doubt, but he did not stop. He kept on toward the door, Driscoll beside him, and his men around him. He meant to pass through the house. Some secluded corral in the back would do for the execution. Driscoll seemed as indifferent as ever, though there was a lithe, alert spring in his step. Behind him Murguía was moaning, praying to see his daughter. Berthe followed, bewildered, and silently wringing her hands. But the death march was so business-like, and every one else was so intent on the approach of a royally born person, that the crowds shoved aside by the little group never once suspected that they had just brushed elbows with tragedy in the making.
Jacqueline caught her breath, sucked it in rather, in a pang of angry despair; and plucking up her skirts she ran ahead until she could oppose her slender figure squarely in front of the burly Frenchman. If he were to move on, he must trample her down. Her eyes, usually so big and round and shading to a depth of blue with their lively mischief, were all but closed, and through the narrowed lashes they gleamed like white steel. Her voice, though, was clear and even, of a studied courtesy.
“Yes, I know, Monsieur le Coronel, suspicion with you is quite enough. But,” she went on in contempt and feigned surprise at his dullness, “this rage of yours at being outwitted by Rodrigo Galán blinds you to something else.–Pardon,126monsieur, a Frenchman does not jostle a woman.–Thank you.”
“But the jostling by a woman’s tongue, mademoiselle.–Well, what is it? Have mercy, be brief, since I am not even to breathe while my lady talks.”
“I was thinking, dear monsieur, of the feelings of an artist, to which you are very, very blind.”
“Feelings, artist? Name of a name, mademoiselle!”
“Precisely, Maximilian’s feelings. You know how he abhors the sight of blood. Ma foi, and I agree with him.”
“Go it, Miss Jack-leen!” Driscoll abetted her. Never a word of their French did he understand, but he knew that she had a power of speech. Dupin evidently knew it better yet, for though he laughed, he did not laugh easily.
“Never fear,” he said, “His Majesty’s delicate prejudices are safe. It will be all underground before he comes, and no muss at all.”
“But you forget,” Jacqueline cried testily, “you forget the imagination of a poet.”
“And he will imagine––”
“Yes, because I shall tell him.”
“Sacré––”
“And possibly he would brace his feelings to a second æsthetic horror as a rebuke for the first. In a word, my colonel, there will be one more body to follow–underground. Now is this quite clear, or–do you require my promise on it?”
The savage old brow manifested the desire to make her a victim as well, but in this extra blood-thirst she knew that Driscoll was safe. “I understand, Mademoiselle la Marquise,” he said, laying on heavily the suave gallantry of a Frenchman. “Yes, I understand. Prince Max values Your Ladyship’s good taste so highly–– Pardi, I believe he would certainly shoot me if you told him to.”
“Exactly,” Jacqueline coldly assented.
127“And Monsieur l’Americain may congratulate himself on the influence of mademoiselle, the arbiter elegantiarum–with His Majesty.”
“As Monsieur le Tigre may congratulate himself that the American does not understand this insult, sir.”
Behind her rose a dry hysterical cackle of renewed hope. “The Little Black Crow!” she exclaimed. “See, my colonel, he is not worth an execution all to himself, so do we all go back to contemplate Prince Max’s loving ovation.”
“The Emperor arrives!” she cried gayly, returning to the porch. With the others she was once more behind the remote column, an end of the rebosa hanging over her arm ready to be flung across her face. “But what–Hélas, I haven’t my Ritual with me.”–The Ritual classified every movement, every breath of the Court, as rigidly and with as little consciousness of humor as Linnæus did his flowers.–“It can’t be a Minor Palace Luncheon of the Third Class,” she mused, “and it isn’t Grand Court Mourning of the First Degree. Ha, I have it, He–that ‘H’ is a capital, please, not as a sacrilege, but to be Ritualistic–He is out on a voyage of the Minor Class, Small Service of Honor, Lesser Cortège. Now then, all’s comfortable; no room for plebeian misconceptions.”
On they came, each rigidly after his kind, a Noah’s procession of Dignitaries with the August Sovereign first of all. To bring on the majestic climax so early was illogical, of course, but dust having happened to be created before precedence, the Cortège was changed the other way round for a voyage, so that the First Category people breathed what the August Sovereign kicked up and kicked up some additional for the Second Category, and the Second did the same for the Third, and so on down to the Ninth, or “And all others,” who breathed the best they could and paid the bill.
Nothing preceded the royal coach except the royal escort, and that by exactly two hundred paces, in which interval a128canonical obligation was laid on the dust to settle. It was a particularly gallant royal escort. The Empress’s Own, or the Dragoons, or Lancers, or Guardsmen, or Hussars, or whatever they were, were picked Mexicans; and they were frankly proud of their rich crimson tunics; also, perhaps, of their heavily fringed standard worked by Carlota herself. A cavalry detachment in fur caps with a feather completed the body guard. Mexico is a hot country, but that was no reason why an Austrian regiment should sacrifice its furry identity.
“Belgians too!” exclaimed Jacqueline. “And the Mexican emigrés! They came back when we made it safe for them. But where, oh where, are the French?”
“Everywhere,” growled the Tiger, “in mountains and swamps, dying everywhere, fighting for this Austrian archduke. But he doesn’t like to be seen with them.”
Behind eight white mules of Spain, four abreast, rolled the coach of the Emperor, solitary and marked as majesty itself. There were postilions and outriders and footmen arrayed in the Imperial livery with the Imperial crown. And on the coach door flashed Maximilian’s escutcheon, his archducal arms grafted on the torso of his new imperial estate. There were the winged griffins with absurd scrolls for tails. They had voracious claws, had these droll beasts of prey, and they clutched at an oval frame ruthlessly, as though to shatter it and get at a certain bird within. Poor bird, his shelter looked very fragile, and he about to be smothered under an enormous diadem as under an extinguisher. He was none other than the Mexican eagle perched on his own native cactus, and he desired only peace and quiet while he throttled the snake of ignorance in his talons, which snake had been his worry ever since the Aztec hordes from the north had first caged him in. Beneath the Imperial arms was the motto, “Equidad en la Justicia,” but it seemed an idle promise.
In the huge traveling coach, with a greyhound at his feet,129sat one lone man. He had a soft skin, rosy like a baby’s, and blue eyes, and what some called a beautiful golden beard. The huzzas swelled and surged from all sides, and he smiled on the people. But he gazed beyond them, and into the blue eyes came the light of exaltation such as is inspired by music that starts a heartstring in vague trembling.
The Cortège followed in carriages one hundred paces apart. The first held the First Grand Dignitary, the only Dignitary of Third Category rank, and hence the only one who could stand near the throne after Highnesses, Grand Collars, and Ambassadors. He was the Grand Marshal of the Court and Minister of the Imperial Household. His privileges consisted of seeing “His Majesty when called for,” and of “communicating with Him in writing.” But he could not see Him when not called for. In reality the Grand Marshal was a quiet old Mexican gentleman who seemed ill at ease. He was General Almonte, one of those conservatives who had sought their country’s tranquillity in foreign intervention. But Maximilian had bespangled him into a Dignidad, and thus lost to himself an able politician’s usefulness. The real man of affairs was an obscure Belgian who openly and insolently despised everything Mexican. He also sang chansonettes. He was the sour-browed Monsieur Éloin already mentioned.
Dignidades enough to make up the Lesser Cortège were not lacking. Riding alone was the Chief of the Military Household, who could return no salutes when near His Majesty except from First and Second Category personages. Under the circumstances, recognition of his own father would have been rank heresy. Then there was the Grand Physician, the Grand Chaplain, and Honorary Physicians and Chaplains, who could wear Grand Uniforms and a Cordon and eat at the Grand Marshal’s table; and there were Chamberlains and Secretaries of Ceremony and Aides. Many surreptitiously peeped into a monster volume as they130rode. It was not a mass book nor a materia medica. It was the Ritual.
The Sixth Grand Dignitary of Cabellerizo Mayor helped His Majesty to descend from His coach. He did it mid vociferous cheering and waving of boughs and agitation of handkerchiefs on bamboo poles. Aides and Deputy Dignitaries worked industriously driving back the simple Inditos.
“‘The General Aide de Camp,’” Jacqueline quoted reverently, “‘will keep the people from the Imperial coach, but without maiming them.’”
“And let us make a name.”–Genesis.
“And let us make a name.
”–Genesis.
The flame of lofty resolve burned with a high, present heat in Maximilian’s dreamy eyes. But the thing was not statesmanship. The danger dial pointed to some latest darling phantasy.
When the young prince–he was but thirty-three–descended from his carriage, he signed that the Cortège should not form as yet. And instead of mounting the colonnade steps, he turned and mingled with his humble subjects. A pleased murmur arose among the Indians. “Que simpático!” they breathed in little gasps of admiring awe.
The unusually tall and very fair young man, in the simplicity of black, with only the grand cross of St. Stephen about his neck, moved about among the ragged peons. Now and again he spoke to one and another, questioning earnestly. Anxious orderlies were quick to brush aside the touch of an elbow, but to those outside the circle, watching what he would do, he seemed alone with his people. And in thought, he really was. There was a great pity upon his face, and it was the more poignant because these timorous children could not comprehend the wretchedness which so appealed to him.
“And thou?” he demanded of an aged man whose tatters hung heavy in filth.
A look of poor simple craft came into the Indian’s face. “I, señor? María purísima, I am cursed of heaven. But the132rich señor wishes to know–see!” and ere Monsieur Éloin could prevent, he bared a limb of rotting flesh. “If it were not for my leg, Your Mercy––”
“Animal,” snarled Éloin in his ear, “can’t you say ‘Your Majesty’?”
“Your–Majesty, or if I had children, I could make my debt–oh, grande, grande, twenty reales, maybe. And then, and then I should have a red and purple scrape, with a green eagle, like my nephew Felipe has.–He owes,” the man added in a kind of pride, “thirty reales, my nephew Felipe does.”
But his wiles failed. The rich señor turned toward the colonnade, his sailor’s easy swing giving way to a tread of determination. Also, the pure flame burned consumingly.
From the top of the steps, between files of dismounted Dragoons, Maximilian looked over the people, beyond, in some far away gaze of the spirit.
Jacqueline hid the golden gleam of her hair under the rebosa. “Silencium!” she whispered, laying a finger across her lips. “For now we’ll have the mountains to frisk, and the little hills to skip. In all the Orient there blooms no flower of eloquence like unto his.”
The monarch’s inspired look promised as much. “Mexicans,” he began. The peons huddled closer, their responsive natures quickened. His sonorous voice was electrical, despite an accent, despite the German over-gush of stammering when words could not keep pace with the vast idea. But the one word of address gave the peons a dignity they had never suspected.
“Mexicans: you have desired me. Acceding to the spontaneous expression of your wishes, I have come to your noble country–our dear patria–to watch over and direct your destinies. And with me came one who feels for you all the tenderness of a mother, who is your Empress and my August Spouse.”
“But not,” murmured the sententious lady of the rebosa,133“august enough to appear before Him unless He sends for Her.”
Proceeding, the speaker solemnly told them of his divine right as a Hapsburg, as one of the Cæsars, and of his anointment by the Vicar of God at Rome, so that to God alone was he responsible. As a Mexican he gloried with them in their liberties, in the True Liberty he brought, for had not the Holy Father said to him, “Great are the rights of a people, but greater and more sacred are the rights of the Church?” Hence he burned with Heaven-given fire to lift them, his subjects, into the vanguard of Nineteenth Century Progress.
Here Maximilian paused mid cheers, and thinking on his next words, his delicate hand of a gentleman clenched.
“Mexicans,” he began again, now in the vibrant tone of an overpowering emotion. “I pray to fulfil the mission for which God has placed me here. There are six millions of you, a sober and industrious race. Cortez found you so, and you astounded him with your civilization. But the conditions that followed have enslaved you. Enslaved, I repeat, for you are bound by debt. Your hacendado master contrives that you cannot pay even his usurious interest. The food you eat, you must buy from him, at his prices, of the quality he prescribes. And if your debt be not sufficient, that is, if there seems a chance of your paying it off, then you must increase it to obtain your daily bread. Your very children are slaves at birth, since with their first birth they inherit your chains. And if you or your children run away, you or they may be brought back as runaway slaves. It is thus that I find you, Mexicans. And I find you awaiting a liberator, waiting vainly through the centuries. But now, at last, the reward of your suffering and your faith has come. In a word, which shall be formally recorded in the Journal Official, We this day decree––”
“I knew it,” exclaimed Jacqueline, “he always coins his inspirations.”
134“––We this day decree your debts extinguished, and each and every peon in all our beautiful country–a free man!”
“Yet with not,” said Jacqueline, “a foot of land to be free on. But you know, messieurs, that Utopia is an asylum for the blind.”
“It’s a spider on his ceiling,” muttered Colonel Dupin, touching his own head significantly.
The emancipator’s face was beatific. He heard the peons acclaim him, as gradually they began to understand that there was to be no more unhappiness. But it was curious how far, far away the sweet music sounded, even when some belated “Viva el Señor Emperador!” cracked in ludicrous falsetto. For the poet-prince these human chords might have been the strings of a harp, softly touched. And as far away as posterity.
Jacqueline fell to clapping her hands noiselessly. “Oh, lá-lá,” she cried, “if we are not to have an epic flight from Monsieur Éloin!”
It was true in a degree. Five minutes of stupendous history making had just elapsed, and some graceful tribute was due. The royal favorite had foreseen the need, and he was prepared; but whether by borrowing or originating, it is impossible to say.