“Il y a deux êtres en nous: l’acteur et le spectateur.”–Sienkiewicz.
“Il y a deux êtres en nous: l’acteur et le spectateur.”
–Sienkiewicz.
The same evening, though two hours later, a public hack entered an outlying quarter of the City of Mexico called San Cosme, and drew up before a white mansion with beautiful gardens. A young girl with soft brown hair and gentle eyes got out, ran to the door, and brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation. To the flunkey, who noted the public hack and was reproachful, she said, “I must see His Excellency. Here, I have written my name on Mademoiselle d’Aumerle’s card. I am her maid. Say to Monsieur le Maréchal that he will regret it, if I do not see him at once. Quick now, you!”
If possessed of guile, Berthe could not have done better. With Jacqueline’s card, used only because it had a blank side, her admittance was certain and immediate.
She passed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine’s private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. The marshal, thick necked, heavy cheeked and stocky, was standing, waiting for her.
“So,” he exclaimed, “milady is arrived, eh, and you bring me her commands?”
“No, Your Excellency, my mistress does not know that I am here. When she learns, she will dismiss me. I––”
220The marshal of France grew cold. “It was a decoy then, the card you used?” he interrupted. “And was that one also, young woman, when you threatened that I should regret––”
“You will indeed regret, monsieur, if you do not let me speak. There’s a mistake to correct if–if it’s not too late.”
The chief of the Army of Occupation shrugged his shoulders until the back of his neck folded over itself. He had been correcting mistakes ever since Maximilian’s landing. But he was a child of the people himself, and the distress in her eyes made him patient. “Well, what is it?” he asked.
“It is an American. They will shoot him, monsieur!”
“Ah, one who interests the young person now before me, eh?”
“And I want you to stop them, monsieur! I want––”
“Child, child, whom am I to stop?”
“Colonel Lopez, monsieur. The American escaped once, but mademoiselle gave him up again. He’d saved mademoiselle’s life, too. And mine.”
The veteran soldier rubbed his finger tips on his bald, bullet-like head. “He saves her, and she gives him to Lopez. He must be an important species of American!”
“Yes, yes, monsieur.”
“There, don’t worry. His Majesty will pardon your friend to-morrow–if,” he added to himself, “only from habit.”
“But Lopez will shoot him before the Emperor knows.”
The marshal had shrewd eyes, and now they opened wide. “Getting more important, our American!” he grumbled uneasily. “Berthe, did your mistress know that Lopez would shoot him before he could be pardoned?”
“Oh yes, monsieur.”
“BERTHE”“... Brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that itabashed her, for all her present agitation”
“BERTHE”“... Brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that itabashed her, for all her present agitation”
221“Name of a name, what does she want him killed for? Why is this drôle of a Lopez in such a hurry?–See here, child, you know something more. What did you mean by my regretting––”
“Because, because everybody seemed to think that the poor brave American had come with an offer of aid for Maximilian, and as you need more troops, I thought––”
“Who, in all mercy, is this American?”
“A Confederate officer, monsieur.”
Not one man, but two, paced the floor because of Jacqueline that evening. The second was the marshal of France, and he went at it now, on hearing of the first man. “A Confederate officer?” There were twin creases over his straight nose, furrows of vexed and intense thinking. The lone Southerner was linked intimately in his reflections with the parliament of a great nation. The people of France had never warmed to the Mexican dream, and the Chambers already were clamoring for the return of the troops. And now, for every Confederate enlisted, a pantalon rouge could be sent back home. But why–name of a name–should Jacqueline try to prevent?
“Did she,” he asked, but not very hopefully, “did she have any cause to dislike this American?”
“Oh, monsieur!” The cry was pained surprise. That her mistress could or would pay a grudge! “On the contrary,” she protested vehemently, “I have never seen her so moved, never, and ifyouhad seen her, monsieur, as we left Tuxtla! I thought she must surely lose her mind. One cannot imagine her terror. She cried to the driver, to the outriders, to lash the mules, harder, faster, till it’s a miracle we did not crash over a cliff. And all the time she would look back, and at every sound she would clap her hands over her ears and cry out to know if that was shooting. And then she would pound at the window to them to go faster. She wanted to get out of hearing, monsieur. It was only when we were really here in the City that she quieted, but that was worse. She lay and moaned. I cried, I could not help it, hearing her. She would222mutter things, too. ‘France, France!’ she said once, and it made me shudder. One almost thought she had a dagger in her hand––”
“Never mind, what else did she say?”
“She said, ‘Oh, I hate thee, my country!’ but she wasn’t in her mind, oh no, monsieur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet. Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could see, for we were passing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. ‘God bless him! God–Oh, I hope thereisa God, just for this, to bless him, and keep him!’”
“H’m’m,” said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed than ever.
Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline; that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon’s wish, however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great deal to catch the Sphinx’s whisper at all. Besides, he owed his elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.
223“Berthe,” he said at last, “there’s just one man who can interfere where Mademoiselle d’Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the Emperor of France.”
The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. “My dear mistress!” she sobbed.
There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was brushed aside.
“Perhaps,” came a softly ironical voice, “a woman might so much as veto our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho.”
Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband’s secret was never one for her.
“Step into this little room,” she said to Berthe, opening a door. “It will not take long,” she added, an assured light in her dark Spanish eyes.
“You will save him, madame? You––”
“Against all the marshals of France, child. Go, wait in there.”
The marshal of France present smiled on his bride indulgently, admiringly, as she closed the door and faced him.
She was less than half his age, the girl wife of a gray-haired veteran, and as his wife she was second lady of the land. A Mexican aristocrat, small and slender, of a subtle, winsome beauty, with the prettiest mouth and the most pyramidal of crinolines, she had reminded Bazaine of his first wife, and he had courted her. At the wedding Maximilian had stood padrino for the groom, and Charlotte madrina for the bride. The imperial gift to groom and bride was Buena Vista, as the white mansion and gardens in San Cosme were called. Naturally, then, Madame la Maréchale approved of Napoleon’sofficialinstructions, which directed that Monsieur le Maréchal was to establish the Mexican empire solidly and for all time.
224Now her manner of calling the marshal Pancho was considerable of an argument, especially when, archly formal, she made it Don Pancho. What if this Confederate aid were to go to the Mexican rebels, as it surely would if the emissary at Tuxtla were shot? And, without either French or Confederates, the Empire would fall, the rebels would win; and then, she wanted to know, what would become of their beautiful home, of their high position? Moreover, the United States was threatening to drive the French from Mexico, and Madame la Maréchale believed it a very good thing for the French to have at their side some of the very men who had held those Yankees back for four long years.
Bazaine wavered. Then he smiled. This Mexican bride of his was Mexican all the time; and French, sometimes not at all. She had not the big trust in the pantalons rouges when it came to those Yankees.
“But, Pancho mio,” she went on softly, “now for the real reason, the one that holds you back. It is your Emperor Napoleon, verdad? You think that he does not want this offer to reach Maximilian. Bien, have you had any intimation of what he wants? Any orders? Of course you haven’t. Then save this American. Look at me–Don Pancho, I say-if––”
“Sapristi, call the girl in! No, first I must have––”
When madame could free herself from what he must have, she opened the door and triumphantly called to Jacqueline’s maid.
A half-hour later, in one of the marshal’s own carriages, Berthe returned to the castle of Chapultepec. At once she hastened to her mistress’s apartments, and confessed what she had done. Still in the blue flowered calico, with the dust of their frantic ride still on her, Jacqueline was seated before a little desk. Her head was buried in her arms, and her loosened hair fell like a shower of copper over her shoulders. She did225not move as Berthe entered, nor give any sign. But when in a word the story was told, she got to her feet and stared blankly at the girl. Berthe expected dismissal, but the next instant two arms were about her, and lips were pressed to hers, and hot tears, not her own, wetted her cheek.
“Berthe, you little addle-pated goose! You–oh you little ninny, you, you––” Her phrases were broken by laughter, then by an uncontrollable peal that was near a shriek, “Little, little fool, dost thou know, thou hast this night lost to France fifteen thousand leagues of empire? Thou–thou––” Yet kisses were again the portion of the thief of fifteen thousand leagues.
“But do you think they will be in time, Berthe? Yes, yes, you’ve answered that once. And Michel leads them, you say?”
“Oui, madame, Monsieur Ney was most eager to go, above all when His Excellency gave him Frenchmen to command. They are the cuirassiers. They will surely save the American monsieur.”
“But will they be in time? Yes, yes, I think I’ve asked that already.”
Her hysteric glee, changing to anxiety, now changed as quickly to something else. Her face went deathly white, the pretty jaws set hard, and there was the glint of resolution in the gray eyes. She seized a cloak and threw it about her.
“Come,” she said to the maid.
“Madame is going––”
“Yes, toundoyour mischief. Bazaine must send to overtake Ney, must command himnotto interfere with the execution. Bazaine will do this, when I see him.”
“But you will not find His Excellency to-night. Madame la Maréchale ordered the carriage for them both, as I was leaving there.”
226“Indeed? Then she knew you were coming here to me? Then she did not mention where they were going?”
“No, madame.”
“Of course not. Oh, she is cunning, your Madame la Maréchale!”
Alas for Jacqueline! She might conquer herself, but add to herself a second woman against her, and she was beaten. She confessed defeat by throwing off the cloak.
“Tuxtla is far, you think they will–will––”
“Oh I think they will, madame!”
“Say youknowthey will! Say it, Berthe, say it!”
“Oh, I hope so, madame. Monsieur the American is lucky.”
The American? Somehow the blood swept hotly into Jacqueline’s cheeks. “Say they willnotsave him, Berthe. Say no, no, no!” she commanded, and imperiously stamped her foot, but stamp as she would, her furious shame was there still, flaunting its glorious color. She was thinking of her letter, of her avowal to a doomed man. After that,anyman was under obligations to get himself shot. Only, this one was of a contrary fibre.
In such an April mood, Jacqueline was capable of yet another caprice. “Berthe,” she cried, even as the whim came, “one is tired after playing the goose, n’est-ce pas? Do you, then, rest–yes, yes, while I comb your hair.”
“Madame!” Berthe protested with what breath astonishment left her.
“Do ye call me chief?” demanded the mistress. “Then, de grace, sit still! And why shouldn’t I, parbleu? If it took our big French Revolution to throw me up an ancestor out of the common kettle, there has just now been another revolution here”–she pressed a hand against her breast–“to stir me back among the people again. Do you know, dear, that your hair is beautiful!”
227And so they were two girls, girl-like, passing the evening together.
Of a sudden Jacqueline stopped, the braiding arrested by a most startling thought.
“Grands dieux,” she told herself slowly, for it had to be believed, however improbable, “until this very moment I’ve never once stopped to think of all the emotions I have been having this day. I’ve never once examined them, and such emotions–Oh, là, là, they’re a collection, a veritable museum of creeps! And here I’ve hurried through that museum, till I’ve even forgotten my umbrella at the check stand!”
“Quand on est aimé d’une belle femme, on se tire toujours d’affaire.”–Zoroaster, vide Voltaire
“Quand on est aimé d’une belle femme, on se tire toujours d’affaire.”
–Zoroaster, vide Voltaire
The Storm Centre chafed under a mad desire to verify his name, which was not unusual. But it was the first time he had ever craved active danger as an antidote for his thoughts. The sound of bars lifting came as a relief, and he shook off the dark mood and was himself. Before the door opened, he thrust her letter into the candle flame. He had kept it till the last minute, but now he burned it, as she knew he would.
Instead of executioners, he beheld a tray, gripped by chocolate hands. Involuntarily he looked up to the face above the tray.
“Johnny the Baptist!” he exclaimed. “Well, well, how goes it itself to Your Mercy this evening?”
“Pues bien, señor,” returned the Baptist, grinning sheepishly. “Would, would Y’r Mercy like another bath?” The grimace was not unamiable. It betokened that this time he, and not the prisoner, might have a game to play.
“A thousand thanks,” replied Driscoll, “but I’ll try to make that other bath answer.”
“But señor, you wasted it.”
“Well, perhaps so. You see, Johnny, it was this way. I had only one bath coming, and on the other hand there were two things to save. Do you know, Johnny, I’ve been mortified ever since, to think how I squandered my one bath in229saving just my life, and how I left my soul to bustle along for itself.”
The Baptist drew nearer. “But suppose, señor,” he whispered, “suppose the need of absolution was again postponed, even now?”
Driscoll’s fork stopped half way to his mouth. There was no superstition in the affair this time. The once gullible Dragoon, moreover, was playing all the leads. “Of course,” Driscoll agreed heartily, “I’d certainly like it right well,” and he went on eating. But his wits were in a receptive state, alert for the meaning when it should come. The opening innuendoes exasperated him, for the guard was a clumsy agent. The man must needs feign a great dread of discovery, and tremble lest his colonel, Don Miguel Lopez, should find him out. As though supper, instead of a shooting squad, did not belie it all?
“Still your move, Johnny,” Driscoll had to remind him.
In the end it was to be gathered that Don Benito Juarez, the fugitive Señor Presidente of the fugitive Republic, might welcome an offer of Confederate aid, and ’twas a pity that the condemned señor should have no chance to escape. But if he did escape, he might find his way to the Señor Presidente far off in the state of Chihuahua.
So, the cards were dealt at last. Driscoll looked over his hand. He recognized a crooked game, a game of treachery and dark dealing; but even so he perceived that a trump or two had fallen to him, perhaps unwittingly, and he decided to “sit in for a spell.”
He began, with coy hesitancy, to beat his scruples around the bush, which was not a bad lead. Supposing he turned his offer from Maximilian to President Juarez, wouldn’t it, well, look as though he did so to save his hide? Brown Johnny opened his eyes as at something unfamiliar. Driscoll went on. If he were shot, how was he to go to Juarez? But if he, uh, happened to get loose, he might just possibly be influenced230to think of the Juarez proposal. But actually buying his way out would look dishonorable. “Now,” he concluded abruptly, “run along, and put it that way to whoever sent you.”
The man protested, and in some genuine alarm, that he had no employers.
“Oh all right,” said Driscoll easily, “then you’re bound to help me. Because if you don’t, I’ll sure tell Lopez what you’ve just been trying to hatch up here.”
The trap worked beautifully, for the guard tried hard to quake. But his fright was not spontaneous enough. Driscoll smiled. Now he knew the real player in the game.
“Cheer up, Johnny,” he spoke soothingly, “I’d not tell on you. But hadn’t you better go and think it over by yourself a little?”
The Baptist would hasten straight to Lopez, and Lopez, Driscoll foresaw, would interpret his scruples into a disguised acceptance. The crookedness of the game left the American no other trump, and he played it–against immediate death. Lopez, of course, would send him under guard to Juarez, but Driscoll thought he could trust that staunch old Roman, when once informed, to call for a new deck and an honest deal.
Juan Bautista “thought it over” outside, and directly returned with an answer. But when he again left Driscoll, he did not bar the door behind him. Within ten minutes thereafter Driscoll was creeping past a sleeping sentinel, on between rows of maguey, toward the road. Around him hovered five or six shadows. They were to be his escort and take him to Juarez. They would join him openly a safe distance away, at a place where their horses waited. But as he emerged upon the road, for the moment alone, a voice in French challenged sharply. “Halte-là!”
The shadows hesitated an instant, then showed themselves with energy. They sprang out and closed on their “escaped” prisoner. They handled him more roughly than did the231Contra Guerrillas, who had first cried “Halt,” and who were now appearing as by magic. The blended anger and gratification of the shadows over the escape and recapture was vociferously sincere.
“Take them all, mes enfants,” a huge tone of command filled the darkness. It was Colonel Dupin. He had that moment arrived. Jacqueline’s message had reached him in the City not an hour before. The American had escaped, it said; he was at Tuxtla. The Tiger, knowing nothing of Lopez lying in wait for the same American at the same place, had dismounted his men, surrounded town and farms, and was closing in, when Driscoll himself fell among them.
The interview between Dupin and Lopez brewed stormy at first. The latter turned gray under his ruddy skin when Dupin walked in upon him in the front room of the farmhouse. But seeing that his own men were holding Driscoll, he nervously congratulated them upon the capture.
“How did he escape this second time?” demanded the Frenchman. “It seems to me, mon colonel, that the question would occur to you too.”
Lopez was sufficiently alive to his peril. He quickly sent two Dragoons to the temporary guard house to investigate. Dupin curtly ordered two Cossacks to accompany them. Soon they brought back the sentinel who had been conveniently asleep when Driscoll slipped past. The sentinel rubbed his eyes as he faced Lopez. So far everything had passed according to arrangement, and he looked for a severe mock examination. But the Tiger had been left out of the calculations, and the Tiger forthwith shouldered himself into the inquisition.
“Do you understand, Colonel Lopez, that your guard here was asleep? Si, señor, asleep! What now, mon colonel, is the little custom as to guards who sleep?”
Lopez glared at the sentinel. It was a fine simulation of outraged discipline, and so life-like that when he spoke of a232court martial, the culprit weakened. He opened his mouth. At that Lopez’s stern anger became real. He feared the sentinel would tell all he knew.
“Si señor,” cried Lopez, “we don’t have to be taught, we Mexicans. We shoot them. Here, six of you, out with him! Quick, before he can whine!”
“Go with them,” added Dupin quietly to six of his Cossacks.
The sentinel was dragged out. His cries, whether for mercy or not, were smothered first by a sabre belt, and then for all time by musketry. The Cossacks returned and assured their chief that the execution was bona fide. This allayed Dupin’s suspicions.
“Permit me to suggest, Colonel Lopez,” he said courteously, “that you likewise honor our friend the American. I came from the City to do it myself, but it is a pleasure to give way before your superior vigilance.”
It had already occurred to Lopez that Driscoll also might talk. “You are very amiable, Señor Dupin,” he replied. “My court martial found him guilty, and as a matter of fact, he would have paid the penalty by now had Your Mercy not arrived. Between us, Colonel Dupin, he will hardly escape a third time.”
At his command six of the crack Dragoons stood forth. They were brown, and Mexicans. Lopez bowed to Dupin, who called forth as many Contras. The Contras were of variously hued races, but they were all the Tiger’s whelps. The file of Dragoons was jaunty crimson, the other corroded red. Driscoll fell in meekly between them.
“Sacred name of a dog, you are honored, señor!” Dupin exclaimed reprovingly. It angered him when a victim quailed. The present one ought to appreciate, too, that he was answering for two besides himself, for Murguía and Rodrigo, whose escape had wrenched the old warrior’s bowels.
The Storm Centre glanced at the picked hussars, at the233famously infamous Cossacks, and assented modestly. So plain in gray, he did indeed look colorless among them. The Contra at his elbow was an American, whose brutish, swaggering scowl meant the world to know what a bad man he was. The type gives the decent citizen a mad desire to be bad himself just once, only long enough to prove the tough a contemptible sham. Driscoll’s neighbor leered ferociously, that the prisoner flanked by sabres and muskets might respect him and be cowed. Driscoll kept him in mind, and in the tail of his eye.
There was one anxiety for the Storm Centre. If they should bind him! But they had not, he was so docile. And as they marched out the door, he exulted, and could hardly wait. Wouldn’t it be a lovely row, though! Just one good, last good time! He did not feel hard toward them, not when they had left off the ropes. He felt that he was to have value received, and all the while he figured out his desperate campaign.
As they passed outside beyond the window’s sphere of light, docility changed to whirlwind. A blow with his left, a jerk with his right, and he had the tough’s carbine. He swung it between the two files, a grazing circle. He got blows in return, but not a man fired. That was because of the darkness, and a first shot would inspire a wild, general fusillade, endangering them all. As it was, the blows were impartial, except one, which came down with pointed favoritism on the tough’s cranium. After that Driscoll helped one side or another, and when they were nicely mixed, he ran. He got as far as the road, but to find a troop of cavalry charging down upon him. Changing ends with the carbine, he fired from the waist at the leader of the new arrivals. This leader dropped his sabre, plunged heavily, and was dragged by the stirrup. Driscoll had not the time to change back to club musket, he used the barrel as such. But being for the instant alone, he was marked234out, and Cossacks and Dragoons threw themselves upon him and brought him down.
“Itwaslovely,” he muttered under the heap.
They brought him back to the house, swathed in a mesh of lariats. Lopez awaited them, frothing oaths. Dupin was there too, and he looked an epicure’s satisfaction as they stood his victim against the wall. He did not regret the incident, since it had turned porridge into so choice a morsel.
“’Tis you, monsieur,” he confessed with rugged grace, “who have honored us.”
“Oh, your grandmother!” said Driscoll.
“Well, be patient. It will be all over in a minute more.”
The Tiger was, in fact, ordering the shooting squad, when through the open door glittering helmets and excited French and clanking sabres flooded the room. It was still another wondrous uniform for Driscoll, this of the cuirassiers, with so much of brass, and a queue of horse’s hair, and loose pantaloons that merged into gigantic black boots. In they strode, an agitated host of bristling moustaches, while outside was the restless sound of many hard breathed horses. The cuirassiers bore their wounded leader, and laid him on the iron bed in the room. But the man struggled to his feet. He called loudly for “Monsieur le Colonel,” and only by force, though gentle, could they hold him quiet.
“What is it?” responded both Dupin and Lopez.
“I, I mean the American Colonel. He–he––”
“Hello, Mike!” cried Driscoll.
He could not see for the others, nor move, but he recognized the voice of Michel Ney. He knew, too, that Michel must be the cavalry leader he had just shot. “Darn it, Mike!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry! But weren’t there enough of ’em without you?”
“Monsieur Ney,” the Tiger interrupted, “let your men tend235you here, and we will be back at once to see what can be done for your hurt. But just now––”
He signed to Lopez, and Cossacks and Dragoons caught up the prisoner and started for the door.
“Wait!” Ney moaned feebly.
“Tonnerre, mon prince, your wound must be paid for, first. Hurry there, Messieurs les Imbeciles!”
“Wait!” Ney gasped. He half raised himself, but sank back with closing eyes. He made a gesture to his breast. All halted as in the presence of death.
“Help him, you there!” cried Driscoll. “Open his coat!”
The cuirassiers, eager, awkward nurses, fluttered round the bed, and tore away the sky-blue jacket, thinking to find the wound beneath. Instead, they drew out a paper. One of them read the address on it.
“Al Señor Coronel Don Miguel Lopez.”
Lopez broke the seal, frowned, and put the message in his pocket. “Nothing–oh, nothing important,” he volunteered. “Now, once for all, let us finish our work.”
“Wait!” a faint whisper came from the bed.
“He says to wait,” doggedly repeated a cuirassier.
“Yes, wait,” Driscoll pleaded suddenly. “Just a minute, before I go, before we both go, perhaps,”–he thought in a flash that it might be a last word from Jacqueline–“perhaps, gentlemen, he, he has something to tell me.”
But Ney’s head, moving weakly on the pillow, was a negative.
The prisoner’s voice grew firm again.
“Then hurry up!” he ordered in the old querulous drawl. “Don’t you know I’m in a hurry?”
Ney opened his eyes as he heard the shuffling of feet. Men were carrying out the prisoner. With feeble anger he brushed aside the hand of a cuirassier who was trying to staunch the blood at his groin.
“I–I––” His lips barely moved.
236The cuirassier sprang to his feet. He looked to his fellows, spoke to them. Puzzled, mystified, they rushed to the door and barred the way.
“We don’t know why we came,” stammered one, “and he can’t speak. But his signs are enough for us. It’s, it’s––”
“It’s something to do with the American,” declared a second cuirassier.
Dupin pounded back his half unsheathed blade. Brusquely he wheeled and faced the colonel of Dragoons. “Lopez,” he roared, “what was that message?”
“N-nothing, mi coronel, absolutely.”
“If it was from Maximilian, I’d know it to be a pardon, and not blame you. But I recognized the marshal’s seal, and that’s different.”
Lopez blanched, yet insisted again that the message was nothing. “Besides, señor,” he added, “I do not take orders from His Excellency, the marshal.”
“ButIdo,” thundered Dupin. “And I see them obeyed too. Oh, you can protest to your Emperor afterwards, my royal guardsman, if you want to, but a marshal of France is the law when I am near.”
Grunting contemptuously, Dupin turned to the bedside. The cuirassiers had gathered cobwebs from the rafters, and were dressing the wound. Michel tossed and groaned in the beginning of delirium. Dupin muttered with vexation, but he took hold of the lad’s wrist, and firmly closed his hand over it.
“Listen,” he said, very distinctly, putting into his tones every timbre of quiet, compelling will. “Listen, hear me!”
Slowly the feverish man grew still.
“Hear me,” said Dupin. “There are two questions–two, only two. You are to answer them.–You will shake your head, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’–do you hear me?”
The Chasseur’s eyes opened wide, and they were calm.
237“Good, that’s the brave gentleman! Now then, steady. The first question: Shall we shoot this American?”
Slowly, painfully, the head rocked on the pillow, from one side to the other.
“It’s ‘No’!” cried a score of men.
“Silence!” roared the Tiger. “Now, the second question: Does this order come from Marshal Bazaine?”
Michel’s chin sank to his breast. He groaned, he could not lift it again.
“Yes, thank––” Ney himself, his voice!
Dupin swung round. “Colonel Lopez,” he ordered savagely, “you will turn your prisoner over to Sergeant Ney, at once, sir! Open your mouth, you dog, and every Dragooning dandy of a Mexican among you––”
The Tiger’s pistols were drawn. His whelps looked hopeful. The cuirassiers bristled in sympathy.
Cracking his finger nails, fawning to the marrow, Lopez agreed.
“Unbind the prisoner,” ordered Dupin.
“Thank God!” came faintly from the bed.
“La politique, première des sciences inexactes.”–Emile Augier.
“La politique, première des sciences inexactes.”
–Emile Augier.
Jacqueline had divined in Bazaine another obstacle to her mission. And yet it seemed preposterous that he should not be her staunchest ally, since Napoleon had found a marshal’s baton for him in his knapsack, just as he had transformed his own policeman’s club into a sceptre. Nevertheless Jacqueline had her doubts, and they were homage to her sex. In other words, she returned to Mexico to find that His Excellency had married again.
The very day after her arrival she called to see her dear friend, now Madame la Maréchale. The two women were hardly more than girls, but who shall fathom the depth of their guile? They kissed each other affectionately on the cheek, and while the marshal was in the other room, reading the packet Jacqueline had brought him from Napoleon, they expressed earnestly their joy at meeting again.
When Bazaine returned, madame rose to leave them to their “stupid state affairs.” The marshal smiled, knowing how ravenous was his bride for the same stupid affairs of state, but Jacqueline agreed that indeed they were wearisome. Of course she might tell His Excellency much about Paris, but as to politics–and her little shrug bespoke a Sahara of ignorance.
In the packet delivered by Jacqueline, the Sphinx had by no means turned oracle, and Bazaine wished to know what239his crafty master would have said between the lines. But the first topic of their conference was Driscoll.
“Your prisoner is incommunicado then?” said she.
“Have no fears, he is comfortable, here in this very house?”
“He has sent no word to Maximilian of his arrival?”
“Not as yet, mademoiselle.”
“And why not, pray?”
“Because I anticipated the honor of seeing you before permitting him so much. I must know the campaign better. A plain soldier is dense at guessing, mademoiselle, while you–you have talked with Napoleon. If––”
“Oh, don’t be tedious. You alone hold the knight that means royalty triumphant or checkmated, and you know that you do.”
“But you who are inspired, tell me how I shall play.”
“You forget that I left this man to be shot?”
“Then I am to destroy him?”
Jacqueline shuddered. “That was my only way, but you, monsieur, you can lift him off the board entirely.”
Bazaine rose from his chair and stood before her. “I am no poet,” he said, “and these flowers of speech hide the trenches. My American means that I may have thousands more like him, and he is a good one to be multiplied even tenfold. Mademoiselle,whatam I to understand?”
“Does Napoleon’s letter satisfy none of your doubts?”
Without a word he handed her the packet. It was from Napoleon’s minister of finance, and it exuded woe. The French loans were exhausted by Maximilian’s luxury and mismanagement, and therefore Bazaine was instructed not to advance a cent further. He was, moreover, to take charge of the Mexican ports, and administer the customs. Here, then, was the annihilation of Maximilian’s sway. Here was the whispering of the Sphinx. France herself would take over the Empire.
240“Hardly,” returned the marshal, “but we will frighten His Majesty into bettering his finances,” and he handed her a confidential missive that had accompanied the other. Bazaine was therein authorized, when the security of the Mexican Empire absolutely demanded it, to advance ten millions of francs.
Jacqueline sank back disheartened. Not even Napoleon would help her. The Sphinx had not the courage of his own designs, and she contemptuously flung him out of her way. She would strive alone, and against him, Napoleon, among the rest. First of all, there was his captain general, the man before her.
“Monsieur le Maréchal,” she began, as impersonally as though quoting a dry paragraph of history, “there is a party among the Mexicans who fear the republicans and what the Republic would do. Yet their hope for the Empire is gone, and they want no more of it. These, monsieur, are the moderate liberals, and strange to say, they are the clericals too; in a word, the great landowners. They are for what is good in Mexico. They demand order. But they would not take it from the United States. They look to France–to France, which is Catholic, and liberal.”
“I know,” said the marshal. “They have already hinted at annexation.”
“Annexation to France, of course. Now then, monsieur, if we stay at all, we shall have to fight the United States. But do you imagine that we would undertake such a fight for Maximilian? Parbleu, the French people would mob Napoleon over night. But, supposing we were to do it for ourselves, and not for an impecunious archduke––”
His Excellency’s eyes blazed. “Ah, it would be a fight superb!”
“And you commanding, Monsieur le Maréchal. And behind you, with our own pantalons rouges, those Confederates against241their old enemies.Thenwould be the moment to set your knight on the chess board. And,” she added insidiously, “France would need a viceroy over here.”
The plain soldier started as though shot.
“Mademoiselle,” he gasped, “you–youare Napoleon! ThegreatNapoleon, I salute you, mademoiselle!”
“Hélas, monsieur, that I am not in a position to credit Napoleon III. with what I have said!”
“Yet you wish me to believe that you are only inspired by him? Pardon me, mademoiselle, butheis the inspired one, and–mon Dieu, I do not blame him!”
“But it’s very simple,” said Jacqueline, “and honorable too. Maximilian’s bad faith nullifies our treaty with him. Très bien, we are free, free to withdraw our troops. At least we may threaten as much. Then he will, he must abdicate, unless–well, unless he first sees Your Excellency’s prisoner.”
She arose, feeling that she was leaving a good Frenchman behind her. But Madame la Maréchale appeared to bid her adieu, and Madame la Maréchale looked sharply from one to another, noting especially Bazaine’s flush of enthusiasm. The good Frenchman straightway became uneasy. And Jacqueline, riding back to Chapultepec in her carriage with its coronet and arms and footmen, did not know that Driscoll had not been incommunicado against Madame la Maréchale. Who could be? And Madame la Maréchale betimes had paid her respects to a third woman, who also was but little more than a girl. She and the Empress Charlotte had discussed both the prisoner and Jacqueline.
“Receive then this young hero with all becoming state;’Twere ill advis’d to merit so fierce a champion’s hate.”–Nibelungenlied.
“Receive then this young hero with all becoming state;’Twere ill advis’d to merit so fierce a champion’s hate.”
–Nibelungenlied.
In his bedroom at Buena Vista, the marshal’s residence, Driscoll the next day received a personage, and offered him a cigar. Declined, with bow from shoulder. Hoped he would have a nip of peach brandy? Declined, with sweep from hips. Hewasa personage. Driscoll noted regalia, medals, cordon; and apologized for the temerity of Missouri hospitality.
“Especially,” he said, “as you’re a Grand Divinity.”
“Dignity, señor,” the hidalgo corrected him, “Grand Dignity.”
“You’ll have to pardon me again,” said Driscoll, “but I really didn’t intend any short measure at all.”
It was the Imperial Grand Chamberlain himself. There were no incomunicado doors beforehim; he came from the Emperor. The Empress had spoken to His Majesty, having just had her discussion aforementioned with Madame la Maréchale, so that Monsieur le Maréchal had had to lift from his prisoner the ban of the incomunicado. But monsieur had been extremely reluctant about it.
The Chamberlain’s name went well with his exalted fourth degree of proximity to the throne. It was Velasquez de Leon, a very bristling of Castilian pride. He looked over the battered American in homespun gray, and wondered where the mistake243was. For, as arbiter of precedence, appraiser of inequality between men, and supervisor over court functions generally, he had been sent in the way of business. Driscoll felt sorry for him.
“Just tell them to let me out of here,” said the prisoner, “then I’ll call in on the Emperor whenever it’s convenient for him.”
“But, señor,” the don objected testily, “with what status, pray? Has your country a representative here? You must obtain a letter from your ambassador, or have him present you.”
Driscoll shook his head. “Can’t,” he said, “haven’t any country.”
The minion of etiquette despaired.
“But,” Driscoll added, “I’ve got as good as credentials from what used to be my country.”
Velasquez de Leon grasped at the straw. “Then,” he cried, “we can register you as an ambassador.”
“Bringing my country with me,” Driscoll suggested.
So it was all straightened out pleasantly, and quite in the orthodox manner, too. The American’s status was defined. His reception would fall under the rubric: “Private Audience.” There remained only one grave drawback. The protocol allowed no hints as to the un-protocol aspect of an ambassador’s wardrobe. The hidalgo could only finger nervously the Imperial Crown in his Grand Uniform, and with stiff dignity take his leave.
The ambassador who was his own country rode in the marshal’s landau to court, with a retinue of Lancers that was also his guard. Soon they entered the Paseo, which Maximilian was making beautiful at inordinate cost as a link between the City and his summer palace, the alcázar of Chapultepec. Turning into the wide, stately boulevard, Driscoll was that moment plunged into an eddying splendor of Europe transplanted,244and he blinked his eyes, half humorously. There were mettlesome steeds, and coaches with a high polish, and silver weighted harness, and the insolence of livery, and armorial bearings, and the gilt of coronets on carriage panels. There were silk hats and peaked sombreros, lace mantillas and Parisian bonnets. A lavish use of French money was doing these things, and the Mexicans, believing in their aristocracy since the revival of titles never heard of in Gotha, believed also that such brilliancy of display made their capital the peer of Vienna, or of the Quartier St. Germain. The Mexicans were very happy and arrogant over it.
“I wonder how they can fight and yet keep their clothes so pretty,” thought the Missourian.
The gallant carpet-knighthood of uniforms was bothering him again. They were dashing, militant, these paladins, a bal masqué of luxurious oddity and color. They twisted waxed moustaches, and their coursers cantered to and fro in the gay parade, and among them only the charro cavaliers with a glitter of spangle let one guess that this could be Mexico. There was the Austrian dragoon with his Tyrolean feather, and the Polish uhlan, fur fringed, and the Hungarian hussar, whose pelisse dangled romantically, and there were some fellows in low boots and tights and high busbies, who were cross-braided on the chest and scroll-embroidered on the front of the leg, and looked exactly like Tzigane bandmasters or lion tamers. The Slav, the Magyar, the Czech, and yet others of the Emperor’s score of native races, all were here out of the nearer Orient, with curved swords and ferocious bearing. There were the countrymen of the Empress, too; the Belgians, who were as bedecked of sleeve as a drum corps. And as to the French, there they were in green and silver, in sky blue, in cuirassier helmets, in the zouave fez, or in any of the other ways in which they boretheirchips on the shoulder.
Shelby’s ragged Missourians had tossed on straw for the245lack of quinine, and yet were presuming to save this gorgeous empire of golden spurred gentlemen. The thought of his mission gave Driscoll an ironic twinge.
But there was the pantalon rouge, the little soldier boy of France who did the work, and the sight of him put the American into a friendly humor. He was everywhere, the little pantalon rouge, streaming the walks, dotting the cafés with red, and every wee piou-piou under the great big epaulettes of a great big comic opera generalissimo. His huge military coat fitted him awkwardly, and the crimson pompon cocked on his little fighting képi was more often awry, and he could not by any effort achieve a strut. He was only bon enfant, this unconquered soldier lad; so he gave over trying to be martial, and left to his officers the rôle of the Gallic rooster, taking it all as a droll joke on himself, while his vivacious eyes danced with fun.
The ambassador’s coach passed under the cypresses and wound round the Aztec hill of the Grasshopper, and came at last to the castle on the summit. And as Guatemotzin had once ventured to this place to plead with Moctezuma to save his empire, and to show him how to do it, so Driscoll now entered the portals of Chapultepec on a very similar errand.
The superb Indian lord was never so hedged in with barbaric ceremony as was his Teuton successor of three centuries later. But Driscoll was patient. He advanced as the red tape gave way, humming under his breath “Green Grows the Grass,” a schottische which the American invaders of ’48 had sung in taking this same fortress, which also had given all Americans the name of “Gringo.”
Guardias Palatinas saluted the Missourian at the entrance. Two Secretaries of Ceremony, Grand Uniform, with cordon and the Imperial eagle, bowed before him in the Gran Patio. One stepped to his right, the other to his left, with all the ceremony of which they were secretaries, and the three walked abreast the length of the Galería de Iturbide, where they were246joined by the Lesser Service of Honor. Thus, swelling by cumulative degrees of impressiveness, Trooper Driscoll came at last into the Sala de Audiencias, and gazed with admiration at its beautiful Gobelin suite.
The Emperor was there, tall, white browed, refined. He bowed. Driscoll bowed, and started toward him, for they were scarcely in speaking distance. But His Imperial Highness bowed again. He was absent-minded, evidently, but Driscoll bowed also, and pretended not to notice. Then yet a third time the monarch bowed. And with true courtesy the American overlooked what was growing ridiculous, and did likewise. Thus the ritualistic three obeisances were accomplished.
Maximilian dismissed the Lesser Service, and he and his guest were alone. Now Driscoll supposed, considering the discommoding interest his mission had awakened in everybody except in the Emperor, that the Emperor himself would this time be concerned enough to “get down to business.” But not so. There were yet the formalities.
“I understand, Señor Embajador,” Maximilian began in the language of his court, “that Your Excellency––”
“Thank you, sir, but my name is Driscoll.”
“That Your Excellency comes accredited from a government that no longer exists. But We will waive that, since the said power existed at the moment of Your Excellency’s departure.”
This was to harmonize the absurdity with the Ritual. Maximilian liked to play at receiving an American representative. It grieved him sorely that the United States had never recognized his dignity, but that it had consistently rated him as merely “the Prince Maximilian.”
Driscoll’s first words cut short the make-believe.
“You’d hardly call them credentials,” he said. “Our president, it is true, helped me on my way, but I have nothing from247him to you. And yet I bring more than Mr. Jefferson Davis could send. Here,” and he produced the memorandum from the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippi department, which in his belt Jacqueline had had restored to him with his other effects.
Maximilian took the note handed him, but stared at the emissary. Charlotte had induced the monarch to grant the audience. She had hinted at its importance, but not until now did Maximilian recognize his guest. Driscoll was attired in the full uniform of a lieutenant colonel of cavalry, which, by the way, was what he had carried so jealously in the bundle behind his saddle. From the dignified young officer in gray back to the desperado young giant in homespun proved considerable of a reach for the Hapsburg; but at last, by virtue of much caressing of his silky beard with delicate finger tips, he arrived.
“So, it was you the marshal saved!” he exclaimed. “Yes, yes, I should have remembered sooner. Colonel Lopez told me. A capable, faithful officer, is Lopez! I could not but approve the finding of his court martial. And yet, against his urgent advice, I have decided to pardon you.”
“To apologize, you mean?”
The Emperor looked hurt. As a foil for his royal clemency, there should be humble gratitude. Maximilian often mistook fawning for such.
“Isn’t it a bit odd,” Driscoll queried whimsically, “that an ambassador should be arrested?”
“Jove, that’s a fact! I hadn’t thought.”
“Certainly. But if it don’t occur again, we’ll just let the apology go.”
“No, no,” protested the monarch. “You must have your apology. You will receive it from the Grand Chamberlain to-morrow, and it will appear in the Journal Officiel.”
“Oh, all right,” said Driscoll, “anything to clear the way.” Whereupon he plunged and stated his business.
248With debonair Prince Max it was not a question of even who talked best. It was who talked last. And Driscoll, being for the moment an exhorter of both descriptions, drove home conviction as a sabre point. He spoke bluntly, earnestly; and, at the scent of opposition, he spoke fiercely. The South was defeated, he said, and the North would now make good its threat to drive out the French. And the French would go, too. Suppose they were even willing to undertake a great war for Maximilian, yet they would go just the same. And why? Because they had fought the Russians. They had fought the Austrians. And they were keeping the Italians out of Rome to help the Pope. So they had not a friend left, not one, to help them against the enemy they must soon fight, which was Prussia. Consequently they would draw every bayonet out of Mexico, and Maximilian would be left alone to face his rebels. But Maximilian could not face the rebels alone. They had been dominant before the French came. To replace thirty thousand French, Driscoll offered fifty thousand Southerners, fifty thousand well-equipped, splendid veterans. Twenty-five thousand were already on the frontier, he meaning those under General Slaughter at Brownsville, and Shelby and the others were not far behind.
“But,” said Maximilian, smiling bitterly, “you forget that the United States would still object to my poor Empire.”
“Not when the French leave, they wouldn’t. We would become citizens. We would not be a foreign intervention. You would be backed up by Mexicans against Mexicans, and the North could not interfere. But, suppose that the French remain, wouldn’t they have to fight? And they would need our aid to do it, too. Don’t you see, sir, that in any case you should make us very welcome?”
“There is assuredly no other way to look at it!” admitted the prince uneasily.
Dreaming himself a monarch of chivalry days, Maximilian249was subtly enthralled by the idea of a band of heroes flocking to his standard, their swords on high. Stouter than those warriors who had helped Siegfried to his bride, they would hold for him a treasure greater than that under the Rhine. Themselves and their children forever, they would be the real mainstay of the dynasty founded by Maximilian the Great. They were Anglo-Saxons, Germanic, his own kindred, and to him they came for new homes and a new country. They would be his landed gentry, his barons, his hidalgos. It was a prospect for an emperor; above all, for a poet emperor. As he looked now on the young Confederate officer, on him who had seemed a desperado, Maximilian thought that here stood one who was the instrument of Destiny.
“Can–can they really come?” he demanded breathlessly.
Driscoll smiled. “Of course, there’s no time to lose,” he replied. “For instance, if I’d had your answer there at Murguía’s ranch, I’d have gotten back in time to head off whole regiments who’ve probably given up their arms since then. But you can still count on an army west of the Mississippi that hasn’t surrendered yet. At leastmygeneral hasn’t, not Old Joe, and he won’t either. But you must say ‘yes’ pretty quick. We’re restless, and might conclude to run the French out of here. We haven’t forgotten how Napoleon forgot to help us.”
It was a cunning stroke. Maximilian would have asked nothing better than independence from his “dear imperial brother,” and just this was the bribe so temptingly held out by the instrument of Destiny. But the Hapsburg of the heavy, trembling underlip credited wavering as statesmanlike prudence.
“To-morrow,” he said, “no, the day after, you shall have my decision.”
Jacqueline witnessed the ambassador’s departure. Hidden among the roses of the fortress rock, where she sat with a book, she peeped out as he came down the steps to the marshal’s250landau. The glacial Secretaries of Ceremony flanked him on either side, and the statuesque Palatine Guards saluted. She could not be mistaken, the corners of his mouth were twitching. It was such an inimitable commentary on the Ritual that she had much to do not to dart out and laugh with him in gleeful mischief.
Then, she noted his uniform. After the ornate regimentals of all Europe, what a relief was the simple gray! There was the long coat, the belt, the dragoon sabre, the unobtrusive insignia on the collar, and she murmured her verdict advisedly. It was beautiful! Next she noted the man–as though she had not in the first place. His easy frame still had that charm of gaucherie, and the rollicking daredeviltry lurked quiescent in the brown eyes, but enough to recall the rider of fury, her chevalier de Missour-i, plunging through a wall and cloud of dust on a big-boned yellow charger. And though now he was in this beautiful simplicity of gray, she looked in vain for some hint of martial stride or pompous chest.
She wondered for a moment why he had worn the uniform. It signified nothing, since the Confederacy had fallen. Then she understood.Hehad not surrendered. Nor had those he represented. The gray, for him, still had its reason, and was a power yet; the power to decide an empire’s fate. It was the grave dignity of a lost cause; striving, before being doffed forever, to leave behind a new cause. Or, if failing, to accept the lot of surrender. In either case, her chevalier de Missour-iwas wearing the dear uniform for the last time. With her keenness for intuition and sympathy, Jacquelineknew. She knew what it must mean. And he looked so strong, so splendid! Her eyes unexpectedly dimmed in tenderness for him.
Driscoll, being now a free man, established himself at a hotel near the diligencia office in the busy Plateros street. He drilled through the following day with tedious waiting for the day after, when he was to have the promised reply. Used to251men who knew their own minds, he hoped for strength in this emperor fellow. Then, his mission successful, he would be in the saddle by the next night, perhaps by noon, and hastening toward the border with tidings of homes and more fighting for his comrades of the Old Brigade. But the next morning, even as he was mounting Demijohn to go to Chapultepec, a thin man in riding breeches entered the hotel patio and accosted him.
“I am Monsieur Éloin,” the stranger announced in English that could be understood, “of Her Majesty’s household. Also aide and secretary in private to the Emperor. I see, you go to horse. It is well, sir. Mine is outside.”
“What’s the answer?” asked Driscoll. “I’m not up on conundrums.”
“It is that we go to Cuernavaca.”
“You don’t say! Now where’s that, and what for?”
“Cuernavaca is His Majesty’s country sit-down, about a douzaine of leagues from here. You have not read of this morning the Journal Officiel? Here it is. The court went there yesterday. His Majesty has to need rest.”
“But he was to see me to-day! What’s the matter with him?”
M. Éloin’s brow contracted narrowly, and he shrugged his shoulders. “His Imperial Highness is much worked. He is worse of good health. Her Majesty sought at having him stay, to give you that same-self answer he had promised already. And the Marshal Bazaine, sensible this once, did talk yesterday night before last, after you were there, and beseeched him to accept your offer. And they all beseeched, Her Majesty and Madame la Maréchale, and I.–But, what would you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. What the devil––”
“No, not him! But her, sir, her!”
“Her, who?”
“Why, her. We all talk, argue, beseech; and she, in one252little whisper, she only tell His Majesty he has to need that rest–and, poof! off they all go to Cuernavaca, and I know nothing. Her Majesty leave me a note. I bring you it here.”
“But who is the ‘she?’ You don’t mean––”
“Yes, we others call her Jacqueline. She did it, against everybody who beseech. But we–how you say?–we fool her, you and me. Come, we are there to-night, at Cuernavaca.”
“Just that little girl––” Driscoll murmured wonderingly.