“Der sicherste Weg nicht sehr unglücklich zu sein ist das Glück nicht erwarten.”–Schopenhauer.
“Der sicherste Weg nicht sehr unglücklich zu sein ist das Glück nicht erwarten.”
–Schopenhauer.
Everybody he met seemed to twist Driscoll’s business into a vital personal issue, and it did not take him long to place M. Éloin. The supercilious Belgian of the rancid brow, as Driscoll mentally described him, wanted the perpetuation of the empire, and he wanted it for the very simple reason that the favorite of a realmless prince does not amount to much. Hence he intrigued for the acceptance of Driscoll’s offer and for the confusion of Jacqueline.
A small escort of Belgians joined him and Driscoll at the garita, or little customs house, on the edge of the City. Accompanying them was a burly priest with a head shaped like a pear. The padre had very small eyes for so large a man, but they were exceedingly bright and roved adventurously. They would settle with crafty calculation on Éloin time and again, though his manner toward the favorite was always a thing of humble deference.
“His Dutch Holiness from Murgie’s!” Driscoll observed to himself.
But there might be an ecclesiastical college along, for all the Missourian cared. His own thoughts were battalions. “When it’s over, one way or another,” he kept deciding, “I’ll speak to her, yes I will! What’s there to be afraid of? W’y, she’s–only a girl.” It might be an unfair advantage, his not dying after the confession in her farewell letter to him,254but he would have her, he would have her! The Lord be good to him, hehadto have her!
Late in the afternoon they arrived at the quaint old Aztec village of Cuernavaca, which had been the country seat of Cortez, and was now that of a second fair god and a second Hernando. After dismounting at the hotel near the conquistador’s palace, Éloin hurried Driscoll across the plaza into the beautiful Italian gardens where Maximilian made his home. At the villa, Charlotte’s own residence in the gardens, Éloin had himself announced to Her Majesty. The American reflected that women seemed to have a great deal to do with the reigning business. In the drawing room, the Empress received them.
She was a slender young woman whose lips were thin and proud, whose eyes were dark and lustrous. Her hair was black and very heavy, coiled in the old fashioned style away from a high forehead that was beautifully white. She could not be older than twenty-five, and there was even a girlishness in her bearing. But she had a steadiness of gaze–one eye seemed the least heavy lidded–and there was a firmness to the slightly large mouth, which gave an impression of strong lines to what was really a soft, oval face. Yet the temperament could not be mistaken. She was a woman of acute nerves. She was tensely strung, inordinately sensitive.
Driscoll believed now what he had heard, that the Empire fared better when Charlotte was regent and her lord on a journey. Maximilian dreamed, while she realized. The Hapsburg cadet, gazing over the Adriatic from the marble steps of Miramar, had brooded fondly on what Destiny must hold for him. He would be king of a Poland born again among the nations. Then Louis Napoleon whispered of another throne in the building. Whereuponshebegan the study of Spanish;shedecided her half hesitating spouse to accept,255however loftily they both scorned the adventurer who helped them to it.
Carlota, for so the natives called her, amiably greeted the Missourian. She was a woman of tact, and though one Din Driscoll was for her as impersonal a thing as some opportune event, yet events must be neatly turned to account.
“His Majesty and I have discussed your presence in our country, sir,” she began in English, “and feeling that he desires to see you again, I requested M. Éloin to bring you to Cuernavaca.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” said Driscoll.
She all but reproved the form of address. But, for her at least, common sense was beginning to prevail. The rigid court punctilio, largely of her own enthusiastic designing, had gone hard with her. Her husband had proved no more than consistent to the medieval revival. He was but true to that old chivalry which distinguished between the divinely fair damsel to be won and the mere woman won already. He was the monarch, she his consort. Classifying others, the Empress found herself classified. He was her liege, and she might not even enter his presence unannounced. But how much happier was she in the blithe sailor prince who came a-wooing, who wooed for love, in accordance with that same ancient chivalry!
A princess of the Blood, of the House of Orleans, Charlotte had had that nicest poise of good breeding, the kind that is unconscious. But here among the Mexicans, she had to proclaim a superiority not taken for granted, and the nice poise was gone. In her the generations–Henry IV., the Grand Monarch, and all of that stately line–in her they stooped. And an element of sheerest vulgarity, as plebeian as a Jew’s diamond, crept in perforce. Poor tarnished escutcheon of Orleans! Poor princess of the Blood, become menial with scouring it! She was weary. Over this New World there floated too much of obscuring democratic dust. So she256allowed “ma’am,” like a homely fleck, to settle unreproved on the ancestral doorplate.
Driven to expediency for her very Empire’s sake, she herself trampled on the Ritual. Waiving all formalities, they would go and seek out His Majesty. He must be somewhere in the gardens, perhaps beside the pond with its fringe of deep shadows from the trees. There they expected to find him, breathing the air of orange blossoms, gazing enraptured into the water, and on the gold fish and the swans and the fountains. He would be teasing Nature for a sonnet’s inspiration.
Driscoll went ahead, since Carlota and Éloin talked earnestly in French, intent on their plot for the persuasion of the Emperor. But as the American parted a clump of oleanders and laden rosebushes that hid the little lake, he stopped, his eyes wide on something just beyond. In the instant he fell back, and confronted the other two with such a look on his face that both started in vague alarm. They saw the sickened look of one who turns from a revolting sight. A wretch stricken suddenly blind may know at once the fact of a terrible grief, yet he cannot quite at first gather to himself the fullness of the horror. He is only aware that, afterward, the meaning will slowly take shape, like a gradually darkening despair.
Driscoll gazed uncertainly at the Empress, as though she had somehow arrested his thoughts. Then, as a strong man rushing from danger, he comprehended that here was a frail woman near the same peril.
“You will not go, ma’am,” he ordered in a kind of terror for her.
Éloin had already hastened on to the screen of roses. Being a fellow of the arras and closets, he scented a royal secret. The Empress lifted her shoulders and would have followed, but Driscoll did not hesitate. He took her by the elbow and gently turned her the other way.
257“You must not!” he said again, with that same scared manner on him.
She bridled indignantly, but when she saw how white he was, and how earnest, something there awed her. In a flash she understood. Her lip curled, baring teeth of the purest pearl, and a sneer quivered on the highbred nostrils. But suddenly, in piteous tumult, her breast heaved once, and betrayed the wound. It gave him to know the knighthood which covets blows in a woman’s behalf. But she, with a will that held him in admiration and reverence for her, spoke to him, and her tone was even, was unbroken.
“I dare say you are right,” she said, and turned to retrace her steps. But, as if to drink deeper of the bitter cup, she paused, and forced herself to a last word.
“I suppose I should thank you,” she went on, and her eyes, still dry of tears, were lustrous as they lifted to his, “but a gentleman–and I have never known one more than you, sir, this minute past–will understand that I cannot–There, I am going now. And after–after this that you have just beheld, I shall never see you again, sir. Alas, it’s the more pity. Such as you are rare, even in–in my world.”
Driscoll watched her blankly as she left him, her head poised high, her step as slow as dignity itself. His own face was cruelly drawn, with the first sickened ghastliness still on him. He stumbled to a bench, and sat down. But there was nothing to think about, nothing he could think about, just then. Yet his brain was full to throbbing, and he had no consciousness of where he was, nor of the passage of time.
“The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.”–Ben Jonson.
“The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.”
–Ben Jonson.
Stealthily Éloin drew aside the bushes, and peered through. The tiny pond with its crystal surface sunk deep in foliage, its flowering island in the centre, looked not unlike a mirror on a dining table luxuriantly wreathed by garlands. The Belgian stared greedily. He did not see quite what Driscoll had seen, yet he saw enough to draw his brow to a narrowing fold of keenest interest. Jacqueline was seated on the raised edge of the basin, pensively dipping a hand into the water. Her plump wrist showed rosy, like coral, and glancing sideways now and again at a poor agitated prince striding up and down, she looked as she did that day in the small boat, while tempting a shark. As she leaned over, the line of her waist and neck was stately and beautiful; and there were the maddening baby tendrils of soft, glowing copper. Maximilian had evidently found her there, in a reverie perhaps, and was at sight of her lured to some act bold and desirous; for just as evidently, if his flushed face and the way he bit his lip were tokens, he had that moment been repelled. Éloin watched them avidly, the tall archduke pacing up and down, the demure lady seated on the basin’s edge.
“It was but the lowly homage of a prince,” Maximilian cried out peevishly. Such was his apology.
“Homage of a play-king,” she corrected him with exasperating sweetness.
259He turned on her angrily. “Why do you say that–a play-king?”
“Whose embassies,” she proceeded calmly, “cringe for recognition. Like beggars they prowl about that White House at Washington, yet never cross the threshold.”
Maximilian was too amazed for denial. “How do you know?” he exclaimed.
“While at the same time,” she went on, “the same neighbor receives the minister of the Mexican republic, and sends one in turn. But no matter. The marionettes of empire can dance, so long as Napoleon holds the strings. Was the princely homage a make-believe, too?”
“But–but, if I should convince you, mademoiselle, that the majesty which only asks to kneel is genuine?”
Her eyelids narrowed, and she looked at him with the oddest smile.
“You know–sire–that I only ask to be convinced. Where will Your Imperial Highness begin?”
“Know then that the American peasant named Lincoln, who would not recognize a Hapsburg, is dead. He has been assassinated. He will no longer encourage our rebels in Mexico.”
“That poor gentleman whom you call a peasant,” she returned with galling frankness, “was greater than any Hapsburg. He was fifty million people, and one million are still under arms. Your rebels know it. They still cry, ‘Viva la Intervención del Norte!’ But go on,sire.”
He chafed under her mockery in the title. But sitting there, goading an imaginary shark, she was no less inciting than when he had ventured his caress.
“They are of no consequence,” he burst forth, “neither the Americans, nor the dissidents. Your own countrymen, mademoiselle, will, and must, assure my empire.”
“H’m’n,” she ejaculated, with a quick shrug. “Even the260marshal, greatly against his will, has had to inform Your Majesty that we will shortly withdraw.”
“Then I shall depend on my subjects alone!”
She contented herself with repeating, “Viva la Intervención del Norte!” That too, was ample comment as to the loyalty of his subjects. The Emperor paused in his walk. “Alas,” he sighed wearily, “a Hapsburg sacrifices himself to regenerate a people, and–they do not appreciate it.”
Jacqueline bent her head to hide a smile. She dreamily made rings in the water, and seemed to fall into his mood of poetic melancholy. “A comedietta of an empire,” she mused sympathetically, “a harlequinade, nothing more. Grands dieux, I do not wonder that Your Highness finds it unworthy!”
There is no such incense to a man as when he imagines himself understood by a pretty woman.
Yet the temptress now found herself the harder to master. It was the thought of what she must yet do. But she gave her head an impatient toss, and the tears that had come were gone. The lines of her mouth tightened, and the dangerous glint shone in her eyes. “So,” she added, almost in a whisper, “you did not mean it, sire, when you offered only a play-empire–to me.”
She knew that he started violently, and was looking down at her. But she kept her gaze averted, that he might not see the hard expression there that was merciless for them both. He did see, though, the long lashes, and the warm pink of her forearm, so tantalizing for shark or man.
“These imperial gardens, they are beautiful,” she went on softly, “but, hélas, they are not the Schönbrunn. Nor is Chapultepec more than a feeble miniature of the Hofburg. Oh, the wretched farce! The wretched farce, sire, in your pretension to–to honor me! A wooer from the throne, indeed? A straw throne–no, no, I do not like it!”
261Then she let him see her eyes. Half raised, half veiled; they held the daring suggestion hidden in her words.
“And if,” he cried, “and if wewerein the Schönbrunn––”
“Yes, yes,” and she clapped her hands with delight, “yes, where the heroic figures on the crest of the hill are silhouetted against the sky, where––”
“Never mind the heroic figures! But where I shall be really an emperor,theEmperor over Austria, over Hungary. Then, what then? Jeanne–Jacqueline, tell me!”
She had brought him to it. Yet her face clouded pitifully, as that day in the small boat, when she told Ney that a woman might only give. Such a woman too, would be lost for the reason that she wouldnothesitate. Here was the errand of the Sphinx, and achievement at her hand. Dainty flower of France, yes! But in truth, what was she?
“And then?” she repeated, and the maddening promise in her voice thrilled him. “Why, sire, I suppose that I could not help but listen to you. Yet first,” she hastened to add with subtle emphasis, “first, you would have to give up your play kingdom here.”
His blue eyes flashed. “I will!” he cried. “It shall be mine, the Roman empire of Charles V. They are tired of my brother Franz. Already they cry out for me. Our mother made an uncle abdicate for him, I will do as much for myself. I will, Jeanne, I will!”
Éloin behind his screen moved uneasily.
“The devil go with her!” the eavesdropper muttered. “She’ll have him abdicating himself in another minute. She must be stopped, she must!”
He tiptoed back, and once out of hearing, he ran. He found Driscoll on a bench, slowly passing his fingers through his hair, and staring fixedly at the ground.
“Coom,” said Éloin, “coom quick! He is alone. You find your chance. He is that happy, he say yes to anything.”
262Driscoll got heavily to his feet. There was his mission. For the sake of that, for the sake of comrades depending on him, he would go and once more offer succor to this libertine princelet.
“No, not that way,” the Belgian directed. “The path here, it leads the more direct at the pond, so. Quick!” He knew that foliage would hide the couple until Driscoll should turn the corner of the hedge and burst on them squarely. The American hastened down the walk. “A nice surprise, mutual.” Éloin chuckled to himself.
Jacqueline did not falter before her victory. She knew that Maximilian rated the Mexican throne as a stepping-stone to another in Europe. She knew of a certain family pact among the Hapsburgs and how it rankled in Maximilian’s breast. Therein he had, on accepting the Mexican throne, solemnly renounced all right of inheritance to that of Austro-Hungary. But she knew also that he considered his oath as void, since Franz Josef had forced it on him. Craftily she pictured the Mexican enterprise, how instead of enhancing his prestige at home, it but turned him into a sorry and ridiculous figure. And so she won the child of Destiny. Yet, when in a sudden fervent outburst he came and sat beside her, and would have taken her hand, she still did not falter. Napoleon would have the glory, and she a shame unexplained, but for all that her country would have Mexico. Her country would have Mexico! Would have a vast expanse of empire, greater and more enduring than any won for her by Bonaparte himself.
Nevertheless, she brushed away the gallant’s arm with more vigor than her coy rôle demanded. “No, no,” she moaned faintly, “not yet!”
“But,cruelle––”
“Not yet, not until I know that you will try to win in Austria, not until–you abdicate here!”
“But, I shall sail this very month, I––”
263“And never return, never to Mexico?”
“Never!”
Frankly, then, she placed her hands in his.
That moment Driscoll turned the corner of the hedge, and was before them. He fell back, and reddened as though himself caught in wrongdoing. It was strange how he noted, at such a time, that she was clothed in light blue, in the very dress he had given her. But no, he perceived at once that it was of some delicate silk from Japan. Yet the pattern was so nearly the same. She must have selected it–she had selected it!–with him in mind. And now, against a girl’s love so quaintly, shyly revealed, to behold this contrast, her hands there, wantonly surrendered!
Instantly she tore herself free and confronted him.
“Oh, why,why,” she cried fiercely, “did you not let them kill you?”
Suddenly her hands flew up to her hot face. “Then,” she moaned, “then you would not have lived to see!”
The Emperor stepped between them. Tall, severe, he was cold in anger.
“It’s the intrusion of a rowdy, mademoiselle.” To Driscoll he said, “Now, go!”
Utterly confused, the trooper turned to obey. But at the first step he swung round, looking as he had never looked in the bloodiest of cavalry charges.
“I am here for your answer, sir,” he said.
“Answer? What answer, fellow?”
Driscoll breathed once, he breathed twice, and yet again. It may be he counted them. Then he spoke.
“You understand, of course, that I might call you a puppy? Or break you over my knee? But I’ve got something harder on hand. It’s to make you honor your promise. I’ve ridden forty miles for what you were to give me six hours ago at Chapultepec. Now then, shall I bring the men to save your264empire? Think well. You need not take the question from me. Take it from them, from an army of fifty thousand men. Now, answer! And remember, you can save your empire.”
“Save my empire?” Maximilian repeated the words.
There was a reluctant note in the query. Jacqueline heard. And the bravest act of her life was when she raised her head and faced her shame, withhimto see. She must begin her fight all over again.
“Yes, your play empire, sire,” she said, wielding two weapons, the mockery in her voice, the seduction of her eyes.
Driscoll saw his cause forlorn against eyes like those.
“It’s unfair!” he protested involuntarily.
She turned on him in defiance. “It isnotunfair! And you, monsieur, of all men, know that it is not. You, and you alone, know what I, what I would give–what I tried to give–that I might win in this!”
He could not help a thrill of admiration. She was battling against all men and women to change the destinies of two continents.
“W’y, I take it back then,” he said.
She stared at him in wonder, and drew farther away. It was his tone, altered as she could never have thought possible, nor had she known that aught on earth might hurt her so. She heard a decent man addressing some unavoidable word to a strumpet. All vestige of respect was gone, gone unconsciously, except that respect for himself which would not allow that the word be coarse or an insult. She looked in vain, too, for a trace of anger. Once she had sought to kill him, but that had not changed his big heart. While now! How much–oh, how much easier–was that other sacrifice of hers than this!
“Perhaps, sir,” she found the strength to say, “perhaps I have even, in my humble opinion, favored the acceptance265of your offer. But His Majesty knows far better than I under what conditions he might accept.”
Driscoll turned to Maximilian direct. “Name them.”
“There is but one. We cannot give refuge to the enemies of the United States––”
“The conditions?”
“Therefore, to avoid complications, your men must lay down their arms on entering Mexico. Then we would deliver the arms to the United States on their recognizing Our Empire––”
“Trade us off, you mean?”
“Or, in case the United States still held aloof, then, as citizens of Mexico, you could take up your arms again.”
Driscoll looked at Jacqueline. She, the inspiration of such a condition, knew quite well beforehand that he would not submit.
“This is final, is it?” he demanded.
“It is, because We cannot provoke war with the United States, but,” Maximilian urged querulously, “you have only to surrender your swords.”
“After refusing them to the Federals, to the men whofoughtfor them? And now we are to give them up to a pack of––” Driscoll stopped short and took another breath. “By God, sir, no sir!” he cried.
“Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.”–Cervantes.
“Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.”
–Cervantes.
When Driscoll had gone, Jacqueline would not linger. Maximilian sought to detain her, but something had happened that he could not fathom. She was no more the same person.
“Not even a token to bid me be brave so far away in Austria?” he pleaded.
“There have been tokens enough,” she returned shortly. “I ask Your Majesty’s leave. Good-night.”
She gained her room, and worked till late on a cipher dispatch to Napoleon. Its purport was, that now, if ever, Maximilian must be discouraged absolutely. Following on what she herself had done, such would bring his abdication. She implored, above all things, that Bazaine be kept from meddling, from extending false hopes. Poor girl, after what it had cost, she was passionately bent on success. A courier took her packet to the City the next day, whence the message was to be sped to Paris.
“That foolish Prince Max,” she thought, “if he does give it up and go, I am really saving him from terrible sorrow. But, who will save me from mine, I wonder? Mine, that is come already! God in Heaven cannot.”
Maximilian had watched her as she left him, till her stately girlish figure was lost in the dusk under the trees. Then with a sigh he turned away. At the villa he found his wife. She was seated apart from her maids, and Éloin was talking to her,267in tones low and swift. Charlotte only half listened. Her agitation was nearly hysterical. Her eyes gleamed wildly, and sometimes they would close, as though they ached for the soothing that tears might bring.
“Who,” demanded Maximilian, “has had the presumption to introduce a spy on these grounds?”
Éloin glanced quickly at the Empress. “A spy, sire?” he said uneasily.
“I mean that American, sir. But shall I ask the sentinels at the gate?”
“That, Ferdinand,” Charlotte interposed icily, “is not necessary. Monsieur Éloin, at my command, brought the American here. You should know why.”
“To save my play-empire, I suppose?”
“An empire,” she cried, catching up the word the more hotly because she knew it to be Jacqueline’s own gage of battle, “an empire, August Sire, to be gained by fighting, as your forefathers, as mine, won theirs. And that is nobler,Isuppose, than puny inheritance. I do not know what the Hapsburg may be fallen to, but a daughter of Orleans still has the right to expect a crown from her husband. If not, she is unworthily mated.”
Maximilian thought of that other empire, which that other temptress exacted of him. It seemed that he had many realms to conquer. But the grimmest humor of all was that he blithely imagined himself capable of satisfying the whims, not of one woman, but of two. Deluded Prince Max!
But the Emperor was not there to discuss empire building, much less to face the tigerish light in his lady’s eyes.
“Monsieur Éloin,” he said, “this is my first personal complaint against you, but there have been others, long, insistent ones, from French and Mexicans alike. You lose me my friends, sir, however I assure them that you have not the268slightest influence over my policy. So, after the awkward intrusion of to-day, I am resolved that you had best leave us.”
“Your Majesty desires––”
“That you leave the country at once, Monsieur Éloin.”
“But,” protested Charlotte, “that is open disgrace. At least cover it with the pretext of some mission.”
The downcast courtier took heart. Watching his master with narrowed sycophant eyes, he said, “But it need not be a pretext, sire. Since I must leave Your Highness, permit me, then, to find my mission, and one in which I can still serve my sovereign, though in spite of himself.”
Imperceptibly Maximilian fell under the spell of the old fawning.
“And what mission could that be, my good friend?”
“To feel the Austrian pulse, sire. To know when the time is ripe, to hasten the time––”
“The time for what?”
“For Your Majesty’s return. Even now the unpopularity of His Imperial Highness, Franz––”
“Éloin!” Maximilian stopped him sharply. But he could not hide the flash of his own blue eyes.
“What would Your Majesty? In Vienna, in Budapest, in your own Venetia, sire, they long for you; at least as regent till the crown prince shall come of age. Would you rebuke them also, as you do me?”
Charlotte stared at the Belgian in amazement and distrust. He had only just warned her how Jacqueline had kindled Maximilian’s Austrian hopes in order to get him out of Mexico, and here he was borrowing that woman’s guile. And here was Maximilian, too, softening under the enervating blandishment, softening behind his frowns for the officious meddler.
“There, there, Éloin,” he said, “you know that I must be inexorable. But in the Journal Officiel it will appear that you269are gone on a secret mission, though you have no mission at all. None at all, do you understand, sir?”
Éloin protested that he understood.
“None,” repeated the Emperor, “except to win back my confidence. When you have taken leave of Her Majesty, you may come to my cabinet to bid me farewell.”
As Maximilian left them, Charlotte turned on the favorite. “Indeed, Monsieur Éloin?” she said in utter scorn.
“But, Your Majesty––”
“Is Napoleon, then, so liberal a paymaster?”
“Your Majesty!” and in genuine distress the courtier hurried on. “If you would listen, Madame! ’Tis true that Jeanne d’Aumerle has found the surest lever to pry His Highness out of Mexico––”
“So good a lever, that you would use it too, to topple over my throne.”
“Not so, Madame. It’s a cunning lever, yes; butIshall use another fulcrum.”
“Really, monsieur, if I were in the mood for riddles and such pretty trifles, I’d ask you to favor Us with a chansonnette.”
“But this is as plain as day. First, our little intrigante knows that if His Majesty tries for the Austrian throne, he must leave Mexico.Thatis her lever to move him. But suppose we shift it to my fulcrum. Then, whatever encourages his hopes for Austria, will make him but the more determined to cling to Mexico. For to succeed in Austria, he must triumph first in Mexico. He must prove to Europe that he can reign brilliantly. But if he abandons Mexico, as Jacqueline would persuade him, what of his prestige then? What of his glory to dazzle the Austrians? If Your Majesty would suggest to him this phase––”
“And you, meanwhile in Europe?”
“Oh, I shall find his chances good over there, but conditional on his success here.”
270“Monsieur Éloin, I find that I must congratulate you. More, I even regret that you are going, for I dread that some other will replace you in favor with the Emperor who––”
“Who may not be in accord with our views, Your Majesty would say? But if you will permit, Madame, I believe I know quite a different man. Moreover, he has already made an impression on His Highness, during our brief stay at an hacienda in the Huasteca. Now he is here. I brought him to commend as a future loyal follower.”
“Pray, who is the paragon?”
“A priest, Madame, a German priest, who perhaps would not refuse the Bishopric of Durango. The hope of that rich see would insure his devotion. His name is Fischer. He is a clerical, he is an imperialist, he is resourceful. Our Jacqueline will have much to do to outwit him. This corpulent padre, Madame, would wheedle the sulky pope himself into a good humor with us. If I might venture so far as to present him before––”
“Oh, I suppose so,” said Charlotte wearily.
“The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.”–Emerson.
“The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.”
–Emerson.
“... and should a man full of talk be justified?”–Book of Job.
“... and should a man full of talk be justified?”
–Book of Job.
At the hotel in the City of Mexico where Driscoll stopped, the entrance was big enough for a stage coach to drive through. But as to height, it did not seem any too great for the attenuation of Mr. Daniel Boone, who therein had propped himself at his ease, delightfully suggesting a tropical gentleman lounging on a veranda under the live oaks. One shoulder was impinged on the casing of the archway, from which contact his spare frame drifted out and downward, to the supporting base of one boot sole. The other boot crossed it over, and the edge of the toe rested on the pavement of the Calle de los Plateros, familiarly so-called.
Mr. Boone hailed from Boonville, but in Missouri, with Kentucky for ancestral State, such was not a strained coincidence by any means. An individual there of the name of Boone, and a bit of geography likewise distinguished, are bound to fall together occasionally. For instance, a flea’s hop over the map, and Mr. Boone and Boonville both might have claimed the county of Boone. Under the circumstances, Daniel’s Christian name was the most obviously Christian thing his parents could do, and followed (to precede thereafter) as a matter of course.
Now, Missouri, in the beginning of the Civil War, was a very Flanders for battles, and this sort of thing had ended by disturbing Mr. Boone considerably in the manipulation of an274old hand-press, dubbed his Gutenberg, which worked with a lever and required some dozen processes for each impression of theBoonville Semi-Weekly Javelin. Finally, when Joe Shelby and his pack of fire-eaters were raiding Missouri for the second time, Daniel plaintively laid down his stick in the middle of an editorial on Black Republicans, and what should be done to them. The shooting outside had gotten on his nerves at last. That blazing away of Missourians back home made him homesick. He was like the repressed boy called out by the gang to go coasting. And he went. An editorial by example, he went to do unto the Black Republicans somewhat personally. The Javelinier was a young man yet.
“There’s been rumors hitherto about the pen and the sword,” he mused, “but type, now–that’shot!” Wherewith he emptied his cases into a sack, took down a squirrel rifle, chased off his devil, locked in the Gutenberg, and joined the raiders. Flinging his burden of metal at General Shelby’s feet, he said, “There sir, isThe Javelinin embryo for months to come. Now it’s pi, which we’ll sho’ly feed out by the bullet weight, sir.”
From then on the newspaper man followed his proclivities and turned scout, and it was a vigilant foe that could scoop him on the least of their movements, whether in the field or in their very stronghold, St. Louis itself.
At the present moment Mr. Boone was retrieving a lost familiarity with good cigars. There was a black one of the Valle Nacional in his mouth, and also in his mouth there was a wisp of straw. The steel-blue smoke floated out lazily, which his steel-blue eyes regarded with appreciation. It was an Elysium of indolence. The cigar, the not having to kill anybody for a few minutes, and a place to lean against, these were content. Troubadour phrases droned soothingly in his brain. Of course he had to apostrophize the snow-clads:
275“Popo, out there, grand, towering, whose frosty nose sniffs the vault of heaven, whose mantle of fleecy cloud wraps him as the hoary locks of a giant, whose–Sho’, if I had some copy paper now, I’d get you fixedright, you slippery old codger!”
The wisp of straw hardly tallied with poesy of soul, nor did the lank figure and lean face, nor the cavalry uniform, badly worn, though lately new, nor yet the sagging belt with dragoon pistols. But the eyes did. Those eyes held the eloquence of the youth of a race. They were gentle, or they flashed, according to what passed within. It did not matter necessarily what might be going on without. They would as likely dart sparks during prayer meeting, or soften as a lover’s mid the charge on a battery. Shaggy moustached Daniel, not yet thirty, was a scholar too, of the true old school, where dead languages lived to consort familiarly with men, and neither had to be buried out of the world because of the comradeship. Once, in Pompeii, Daniel blundered suddenly on that mosaic doormat which bears the warning, “Cave canem”; and before he thought, he glanced anxiously around, half expecting a dog that could have barked at Saint Peter himself. From which it appears that the editor had traveled, and it would not be long in also appearing that he had gathered enough of polite and variegated learning to fill a warehouse, in which junk-shop he was constantly rummaging, and bringing forth queer specimens of speech wherewith to flower his inspirations.
Streaming back and forth before the shops in lively Plateros street were elegance and fashion and display, the languishing beauty of Spain, the brilliancy of the Second Empire, the Teuton’s martial strutting, the Mexican’s elation that Europe had come to him and with the money to pay for it. The toughened Boone gazed on the bright morning parade of ravishing shoppers and ogling cavaliers with the unterrified innocence of a child, or of an American. He had the air of276doing nothing, such as only a newspaper man can have when really at work. He did not look as though he were waiting for some one. But only a half-hour before he had gotten from the saddle. He had just ridden four hundred and fifty miles for the express purpose of waiting for someone now.
Finally the keen, lazy eyes singled out an immense yellow horse and rider from among the luxurious turnouts. “Jack!” he exclaimed gladly. “The Storm Centre,” he improvised, as the new comer approached, “straight as Tecumseh, a great bronzed Ajax, mighty thewed, as strong of hand as of digestion–w’y, bless my soul, the boy looks pow’ful dejected, knocked plum’ galley-west! I never saw him look like that before.”
Man and horse had come all night from Cuernavaca. But Din Driscoll never tired, wherefore Boone knew thatsomethingwas the matter. At the doorway Driscoll flung himself from the saddle, gave the bridle to a porter of the hotel, and was following, his face the picture of gloom, when he heard the words, “How’ yuh, Jack?” His brow cleared in the instant. “Shanks!” he cried, gripping the other’s hand.
Mr. Boone untwined his boots and for the first time during a half-hour stood in them. As he shook Driscoll’s hand, he shook his own head, and at last observed, in the way of continuing a conversation, “It was the almightiest soaking rain, Din, for the land’s sake!” And he shook his head again, quite mournfully.
Driscoll had not seen Mr. Boone since leaving Shelby’s camp back in Arkansas. He naturally wished to know what was being talked about. But his woeful friend only kept on, “It wet all Texas, heavier’n a sponge, and,” he added, “they ain’t coming.”
“Shanks! You don’t mean––”
“Don’t I? But I do. They’re a surrendered army. The277whole Trans-Mississippi Department of ’em, pretty near. But not quite, bear that in––”
“But the rain? What in––”
“What did you come down here for, I’d like to know? To say how the Trans-Mississippi wouldn’t surrender, didn’t you? Well?”
“Oh, go on!”
“Well, it rained, I tell you. Didn’t it rain before Waterloo? Didn’t it now?”
Mr. Boone believed in trouble as an antidote for trouble. When he had stirred Driscoll out of his dejection enough to make him want to fight, he deigned to clear the atmosphere of that befogging downpour in Texas.
“You rec’lect, Din, that there war god we put up in Kirby Smith’s place, who so dashingly would lead us on to Mexico?”
“Buckner, yes.”
“Him, Simon Bolivar B., whose gold lace glittered as though washed by the dew and wiped with the sunshine––”
“Now, Shanks, drop it!” Driscoll was referring to the editorial pen which Mr. Boone would clutch and get firmly in hand with the least rise of emotion. Against his other conversation, the clutching always became at once apparent.
“Anyhow,” said Daniel meekly, “he wilted, did our Simon of B. B. calibre, and he gave back the command to Smith. And Smith’s first order, his very first order, sir, was that the Department, the whole fifty thousand, should march into Shrevepoht and–andsurrender, by thunder!”
“Dan, you’re not going to tell me––”
“Thatwesurrendered, we, the Missourians, the flower of ’em all? Now s’pose you just wait till Joe Shelby gets back to us in Arkansas, after that conference with the other generals? Then you’ll see whathedoes. He proclaims things, on wall paper. The Missouri Cavalry Division will march to Shrevepoht, will depose Smith for good, will head off the surrender,278will lead the other divisions on to Mexico. And we started to do it too. And then, and then–it rained. Rained, sir, till our trains and guns were mired, and we couldn’t budge! And all the time we knew that regiment after regiment was stacking arms off there at Shrevepoht. Did Little Joe rave? Opened Job his mouth? He did. His fluency gave the rain pointers. I sho’ly absorbed some myself, me, that have language tanks of my own. Well, I reckon all our hearts pretty near broke. But we had our Missouri general and our Missouri governor, and the Old Brigade just decided to come along anyhow. And we’re a coming, Din, we’re a coming!”
Driscoll’s face went blank. He thought of the scant welcome his homeless comrades would get. But Mr. Boone did not notice. He had only stretched his canvas, a big one, and there was a picture to paint. His long body began to straighten out, and his eyes glowed. From Xenophon to Irving’s Astoria, from Hannibal crossing the Alps to Marching Through Georgia, he ransacked both romance and the classics for adequate tints, but in vain. The colors would have to be of his own mixing.
“Din Driscoll,” he began solemnly, “youknow that devil breed? Of coh’se, you’re one of ’em. You’re a chunk of brimstone, yourself. And you’ll maybe rec’lect they did some fighting off and on. There was that raw company, f’r instance–boys, hardly a one broke in his yoke of oxen yet–and they hadn’t even gotten their firearms, but they took a battery with their naked hands, and got themselves all tangled up in the fiery woof of death. But you’ll not be rec’lecting that that there Brigade everlosta gun. And those raids, Din, back into Missouri, a handful back into the Federal country, when men dozed and dropped from their saddles and still did not wake up, and some went clean daft for want of sleep, and fighting steady all around the clock too, fair and279square over into Kansas! And there was the night they buried eight hundred!”
In all this Daniel might have said “We,” but reportorial modesty forbade.
“And,” he went on, gaining momentum, “I don’t reckon you’ll be forgetting Arkansas, and the ague and rattlesnakes? And how the small-pox swooped down on that camp of cane shacks? And how the quinine gave out, and–and thetobacco? Lawd!–And how those boys forgot how to sew patches, their rags being so far gone! And how they made bridles out of bark, and coffee out of corn! And how they kneaded dough in old rubber blankets and cooked it on rocks! Well, Jack, there they were, in Arkansas like that, and the War was over at last, and Missouri was just a waiting for ’em. And then, to think that they had to face square around another way entirely! Din, you’ll just try to imagine that there devil breed facing any other way except to’ds home!”
“Don’t, Shanks, you––”
“Devils? They were the wildest things that are. It’s a mighty good thing they didn’t go back. Think of their neighbors across the Kansas line, getting ready for ’em with every sort of legal persecution under the sun, and carpet-bag judges to help! Outlaw decrees? Well, I reckon those decrees will make a few outlaws, all right, and there’ll be unsurrendered Johnny Rebs ten years from now. Shelby’s boys had the look of it. Your own Jackson county regiment would have flared into desperadoes at sight of a United States marshal. They were all in just that sort o’ mood, as they turned their backs on Missouri. And after four years, too! But there, it’s a stiff wind that has no turning, so cheer up!Theydid, as soon as that deluge got done with and they were headed for Mexico, one thousand of ’em. Soldiers mus’n’t repine, you know. For them, Fate arrays herself in April’s capricious sunshine.”
280Driscoll had to smile. “Careful, there, Dan, don’t stampede.”
“I ain’t, but if now ‘I hold my tongue I shall give up the ghost,’ and I want to tell you first that Texas is a handsome state. We–they–were considerable interested all the way through it.”
“But, Meagre Shanks, where’d you leave ’em?”
“Back in Monterey, drinking champagne with Fat Jenny. Alas, ‘who can stay the bottles of heaven?’”
“Fat–who’s she?”
“Now you wait. They’ve got heaps to do in Texas yet, before they get to Fat Jenny. First, they helped themselves out of their own commissary departments, horses, provisions trains, cannon, everything. Decently uniformed for the first time, and the War over! You should of seen ’em, a forest of Sharpe’s carbines, a regular circulating library of Beecher Bibles. There were four Colts and a dragoon sabre and thousands of rounds of ammunition to each man. They had fighting tools to spare, and they cached a lot of the stuff up in the state of Coahuila. And they fed, and got sleek. This ain’t editorial, my boy. It’s God’s own truth. Adventures every step of the way only did ’em good. They saved whole towns from renegade looters by just mentioning Shelby’s name. They fought all day and danced all night. San Antone was the best. There they gathered in generals, governors, senators, and even Kirby Smith, all yearning to join Old Joe–our Old Joe, who ain’t thirty-four yet.”
The speaker paused, and when he began again, there was a light ominous of inspiration in his eyes.
“At the Rio Grande,” he said, solemnly, “they crossed out of the Confederacy forever, so it was meet and right that there, in midstream, they should consign their old battle-flag to the past. They had not surrendered it, but as a standard it existed for those gallant hearts no more. Woman’s loyal281hand had bestowed it. Coy victory had caressed its folds mid the powder pall and horror of ten score desperate fields. And now it floated over the last of its followers, ere the waves should close over it forevermore. With bowed heads, they gathered sadly about––”
“Lay it down, Shanks, lay it down,” Driscoll pleaded. He was referring again to the pen in hand.
“All right, Din,” Boone answered hastily. “Yes, I know, we all got kind of weepy too. No wonder Colonel Slayback wrote some verses. Reckon you can stand just one? This one?