“A man, a woman, a passion–what else matters?”–Sardou.
“A man, a woman, a passion–what else matters?”
–Sardou.
“Tall Mose” Bledsoe and the Rev. Mr. Douglas conveyed Don Rodrigo to the back room, and here Driscoll and Boone joined them. They did not disarm the Mexican. It did not occur to them that any man would risk drawing a weapon in such company. And as to Fra Diavolo they surmised correctly. He sulked a little at first, for there were sore tendons that ached. But in the end he grew reasonable, and his white teeth gleamed acquiescence to all that the señores were pleased to say. He agreed to bivouac his men apart from the Missourians and go his own way at daybreak. The Contras were routed. The Tiger had barely escaped. There was no further need of combined forces. Indeed, Don Rodrigo feared a night attack so little that he meant to reward his men with many copitas of aguardiente. Might he send a barrel over to his esteemed allies?
Mose Bledsoe turned a pleading look on the parson, and to his surprise the Rev. Mr. Douglas beamed tolerant benevolence. “Why yes, my friend,” he himself said to Don Rodrigo, “good liquor is always acceptable, especially when soldiers must sleep on the wet ground.”
The brigand was then allowed to depart, and Old Brothers and Sisters explained. It was best to let Rodrigo send the brandy, for then one knew what to expect. Otherwise the Christian brother and rascal would hatch up some other plot, and any other plot might take them off their guard.
316When an hour later, Rodrigo did in fact attack the presumably somnolent Americans, more happened than either he or they expected. A third was also waiting to strike for the sake of a woman. He was Dupin, who wanted nothing better than the allies at each other’s throat. Crouching warily near, the Tiger sprang at both of them. In the rain and the black night, the three-cornered fight raged like firecrackers under a tin bucket. The guerrillas, repulsed by the Americans, fled upon the Contras, whereat the Americans swept them both back indiscriminately. Instead of a lady, the Tiger carried off Don Rodrigo, and was quite glad to carry himself off. But Boone, scouting near, reported that Rodrigo was held a prisoner instead of being executed at once. This meant something. It meant beyond any doubt that the Mexican and the Frenchman would combine, Rodrigo for his life, Dupin to rescue Jacqueline.
The Missourians held council in Daniel’s sanctum. To restore the captives to Dupin had been Driscoll’s intention from the first. But now it was a question of trading them against Rodrigo. Dupin must know the American offer before he and Rodrigo should attack. Driscoll proposed for himself alone the errand to the Tiger’s camp. Rising to his feet, he left his protesting friends without a word further. But he had to pass through the front room first, to get the cape coat hanging there. It was, in fact, his own. The two girls were seated before the fire, Jacqueline still in revery, Berthe nervously agitated from the late racket of battle. Daniel Boone had laid before them a ranchman’s supper with tropical garnishing, but it was untouched. Driscoll nodded, crossed the room, took the coat from its nail, and started for the outer door as he drew it on.
“Snubbing–an acquaintance,” spoke an impersonal little voice, “is cheap.”
He stopped, waited.
317“Of a gentleman, I reckon you’d say,” he interrupted uneasily. “Maybe not, but a ruffian’s got his instincts too. When he’s afraid of hurting someone, he hides himself.”
“I was mistaken,” she said gravely, with that quaintest inflection of the English he had ever heard, “yes, mistaken. Hé mais–but it is just that the complaint. You hurt more bynotspeaking.”
“But there’s nothing to say,” he faltered. “I’m just going to Old Tige’s–to Dupin’s camp, and get him to come here for you.”
“Monsieur, monsieur, you fight for your captives only–only to give them up?”
“That’s not the question. You can overtake the Empress yet. Dupin will––”
“But it is not that I want to overtake empresses at all. I–Berthe, would you mind carrying back these supper things?–I,” she continued, when they were alone, “have no wish to go back to Paris. I shall return to the City.”
Again the liaison with Maximilian, he thought bitterly. And Charlotte away! It was infamous. However, he had no right to be concerned.
“Very well,” he said, “then Dupin can take you to the City, or wherever you wish.”
“Ma foi, what trouble to be rid of your prisoners, monsieur, and after two battles too!”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
She meant, though, to have him confess that she had had a great deal to do with it. She was taken with the self-cruel fancy to lay bare and contemplate his love for her, that she might feel more poignantly the happiness she had lost. But he abruptly turned again to leave, and all else was forgotten in terror.
“You go to that Tiger!” she cried. “Do you not know318that––” She darted between him and the door–“that he recognizes no rules of war? He will shoot you, he will, he will!”
Driscoll laughed.
“Oh, I’ll be safe enough all right, thank you. Dupin holds Rodrigo, we hold you. So it’s simply an exchange of prisoners. And he’ll not do anything to me, for fear of what might happen to you here. You’re not a hostage, sure not, but as long as he thinks so, I’ll profit by it.”
“You are right,” she admitted, yet not heeding his anxiety to pass. “Dupin will not even detain you. He will judge you Missou-riens by himself. So, voilá, he frees Diavolo. He comes for me. And–and you, monsieur?”
“Me? W’y, I’ll wait for the boys at Dupin’s camp, after he takes charge here. Then we’ll march.”
“And–you do not come back?”
“No need to. Now will you please get away from that door?”
“Not coming back!” she repeated. Could the Coincidence be for naught after all? Could not real life be for once as complacent as art? He was going, and when, where, in the wide world, in all time, might they ever meet again? And he was going, like that! Except for her, he would not even have spoken.
But–if he were the man to hold her, despite herself? If he were primal man of primal nature, the demigod raptor who seizes his mate? Yes, she would forgive him–if only he were that man. If, as such, he would but hold her from her duty, from her sacrifice, despite herself, if–if–if––And so her daring fancy raced, raced as desire and hope to outrun sorrow. And why not? She could look him in the eye with that honesty which pertains to woman, for she knew that the shame he thought of her was only in the evidence of what he had seen, of what he had heard the world say, and not–no, not in fact.319And for the kindness of that fact she thanked Providence. Then, daring to the end, her insane hope for happiness gave her to remember that there was a clergyman among these Americans, and to see in that the ordering of fate.
But Reality was still there, grim and greater than either Providence or Art. The man was waiting for her to step aside, and when she did, he would pass through the door and out of her life. She gazed, as for the last time, on his stalwart shoulders, on his splendid head, the head of a young Greek, on his flushed face, his mouth, and those obstinate little waves of his hair. How good he was to look upon–for her, that is! No, no, she could not let him go.
And she tempted him. With all her woman’s beauty she tempted him. If beauty were aught, it must win her now what she held dear. Afterward, when she should tell him why, he would forgive her the unmaidenly strategy. She had noted with a passionate joy that the lines of his face were tightly drawn, were even haggard, that his breath came short; in a word, that he suffered. It told her that his gruff manner was not indifference, but the rugged front of self-control. What a will the man had! Knowing that strength, she must have been an odd young woman indeed not to try to break it.
“I suppose,” she said, lowering her head and shaking it in demure resignation, “no, I suppose a captive has not the littlest thing to say of her disposal? But if the poor child has curiosity, monsieur? If, for the instant, she wonders why a monsieur fights for her, and then why he hazards his life to be rid of her?” With which she raised her eyes inquiringly. It was disconcerting.
“We’ll not talk of that any more,” he grumbled. “Are you going to let me pass?”
Frail creature between him and the door, how easy to remove her! But he feared the warmth of her hand, should he but320touch it, or the faint odor from her hair, should a stray lock no more than brush his cheek.
“Even a captive will wonder why she is so little prized,” observed the perverse maid.
She considered with glee that the window was too small, and with yet keener delight that his wits for strategy had left him. He did not once think of exit by the inner door.
“Why do you keep me?” he demanded.
His tone was harsh command, and for the moment it frightened her. She all but gave way, when she perceived that the menacing growl was really a plea. The poor fellow was at bay. She very nearly laughed. Then, too, he would not meet her eye again.
“Oh, amIkeeping you?” she exclaimed in innocent dismay.
It provoked him to what she wanted. He came toward her angrily, while she stepped back against the door and spread her arms across it. Her pose was a dare; and the trouble was, he had to look. He had to see the girlish, the wonderful line of head and shoulder, the color flooding cheek and neck, and most dangerous of all, the challenging gray eyes. His teeth snapped to, and his hand closed over her wrist. He pulled, she yielded. He felt her other hand laid on his. The touch seemed to sear his flesh.
“You must not go,” she whispered, “must not!”
He drew her farther from the door, toward himself.
“Must not!” she repeated. He could feel the breath of her whisper.
“Don’t–Jack-leen!”
She barely heard the words, but she knew the agony there. And he, as he gripped her wrist, sensed the throbbing that passed through her whole body. For pity, he was powerless to thrust aside a lass who pitied him.
“It is that common, yes. It is not the instinct of––”
321Yet, all the while, like another Brunhilde, she was praying in her heart that she had not taunted him in vain. A very eerie Valkyrie, she had taunted him to be the stronger, stronger than his will, stronger than herself, to strive with her, to master her. And now she saw a fury of love and hate aroused in him, a fury against herself for making him love her more than his great will could bear. In her lust for seeing this anger of his, she forgot her mission absolutely, forgot why she had come to Mexico, forgot all but the prayer in her heart.
Nothing was left her but to learn the answer, and this she did, by tugging firmly, coyly, to free her wrist. The answer was rapture; his grip had tightened. She pulled harder, and felt herself being drawn toward him. Yes, yes, her triumph was a fact. Slowly an arm of iron, a tremulous, masterful vandal, circled her waist.
She pushed at him with her fists, and panting, tried to fight him off, however the blood stung in her veins and coursed hot as in his. The matter had gone far enough. It was time for explanations, for an adjustment. But he did not seem to think so. He was relentless. Barbarian Siegfried with the warrior virgin was not more so. The tendons in that arm of his suddenly went rigid, and crushed her body against him. It was then that a sudden horror took her, and she struggled like a tigress. She gasped out a cry for help, but the scream had no volume. Before she could try again, his hand covered her mouth.
And then, and then–oh, the words he was whispering! Even as he smothered her shriek, she heard them.
“Well–we’ll just have in Clem Douglas. You’ve seen Clem, little girl? He’s our parson.”
His life long, Driscoll had never dreamed of heaven as he saw it then in her eyes. Never, his whole life long, as she raised those eyes to his. And the sweet relaxing of herself, the322trustful pillowing of her head on his breast, the soulful content as she softly breathed there, instead of that wild panting of a moment before! Blinded to the world, he fervently thanked God that he had been made.
He touched her white brow lovingly, and gently tilted back her chin. Again her eyes lifted, confidingly. His head bent. She waited. His lips drew nearer to hers, very slowly. He was held in a deep reverence, in an awe of something sacred. It was a rite of adoration before a shrine. And she, seeing that look in his eyes, wanted him to know that the shrine was truly as pure as in his oblivion to the world he for the moment believed. For later memory would come to him, and that she could not bear. He must know now, before their lips met. Yet a good woman may not brazenly avow that rumor and evidence speak what is false. But for all that he still must know, in some way. With a playful gesture she intercepted his lips against the soft palm of her hand, her eyes the while holding his in their communion of soul. And thus she spoke, prettily, saucily, and blushing the while,
“And are you so sure, sir, that you are the first?”
She had looked for protestation, and she would have answered. And he would have believed. He must have believed. But instead the spell of faith broke sharply. Poisoned memory rushed in before it could be belied. She could see the tragedy of it in his changed look, in his ashen face, cold and gray. He thought her question a gloating over his weakness, and it revolted him. He was, then, but a caprice for her. He remembered that after all he had only happened by, and that she was returning to Maximilian. But still she was hardly less tempting. He had a moment of cruel conflict with himself, which left him with a sullen rage against the princelet in Mexico, against the order of princelets, that thus fell a deathly pall between an honest man and a true love kiss. Yet, she was there in his arms, dear and fearfully clinging and–no less tempting.
323“Take this woman to my mother?” the question rose.
As one might close the eyes of his dead wife, he loosed the arms about his neck, and let them fall at her side. Once free, he leaped to the door, flung it open, and was gone.
“And thus they led a quiet lifeDuring their princely raine.”–Ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid.
“And thus they led a quiet lifeDuring their princely raine.”
–Ballad of King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid.
Some years after the events recorded here, there appeared in the Boonville Javelin (post-bellum and revived) a serial of reminiscences, which, behind an opalescent gossamer of romance, pictured the Missourians and the chivalrous rôle they played around that forlornly chastened and be-chased damsel, la República Mexicana.
Quite aside from the prodigious deeds set forth therein, the journalistic epic is of itself naïvely prodigious, as anyone knowing Mr. Boone with pen in hand will at once suspect. All the little Trojan band–call them Gascons if you will, but own that if they boasted they were ever keen to substantiate the bluff–all of them, then, strove and blazed away invariably as heroes and were just as peerless as could be. You wouldn’t look for anything else from Mr. Boone. He must, however, be credited with one peculiarity, that he never hinted at himself as one of the glorious company. Daniel knew his newspaper ethics. He knew that the newspaper man isnotthe story, however they may regard it in France, for instance, where the reporter is ever the bright particular cynosure of any interview that bears his signature.
A few strokes of the Meagre Shanks brush in the way of excerpts from his narrative, with plenty of extenuating dots in between, should make an impression, even though impressionistic, and serve perhaps as a sketch of what befell after Din325Driscoll had bearded the Tiger, freed Don Rodrigo, and surrendered his own two captives. To begin:
A retreat was had [Daniel always got under way slowly, as though fore-resolved not to stampede.] Echo demands, “Retreat?–The Iron Brigade in retreat?” ’Twas true. Rallied once again, but under another flag than the Bars, the Missourians rode all that dank, wet night lest they meet and have to fight their new friends, the guerrillas under Rodrigo Galán. It was a weird predicament. Two days before, they were peaceful settlers in the land–omne solum forti patria–their blood-flecked swords as ploughshares fleshed in earth’s warm bosom.... But tyrannical confiscation of the soil they tilled loomed foreboding.... Pestered nigh unto forceful phrases with shooing robbers of both sides out of their melon patches, and fired at last by the sentiment that it behooved them to sally forth and regulate things themselves.... They only lacked a Cincinnatus. Their old general would not lead them. Wearing his bright chaplet of renown, Joe Shelby now drove mules, a captain over long wagon trains....
Then gallant Din Driscoll appeared among them, the dry-humored, reckless Jack Driscoll of other days, attired now in the brave, dashing regimentals of the Republic[!] From out the wilds of distant Michoacan he came with the long gallop that never would tire, and pausing at cabin after cabin in the Colony’s broad acres, summoned his old comrades to arms ... to arms against the invader.... Who, now, will argue bucolic content? Those lusty young planters smelled the battle from afar. What now were waving tassels to the glory of deeds?–a cuspide corona–to a wreath of powder-burned laurel? That very day the Iron Brigade rallied again, gathered once again at the oft remembered bugle’s full, resonant blare.
Fighting came sooner than the Missourians hoped. Even as they started for Michoacan, a ragged Indito, whose village326had been razed by the Cossacks, met the command and asked for the Señor Coronel Gringo. Driscoll heard what he had to tell, and was greatly concerned, though the others laughed at first and scoffed. For it seemed that the Indito did not know who sent him, except that it was a señor chaparrito, a short little señor. “Then you must be a Shorter Yet?” said Driscoll. “Well, what do you bring?” The Indito produced from his ragged shirt a bit of parchment, whereon Colonel Driscoll was urged to join with his new recruits in an attack on Maximilian’s escort, for Maximilian was on his way to Vera Cruz. The parchment was signed, “El Chaparrito.”
“Shorty! That word means ‘Shorty’,” the troopers guffawed. But Driscoll showed them another handwriting at the bottom. The parchment had been countersigned in blank, thus: “Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma.” The Missourians were respectful after that. Many thought that the mysterious guardian angel of the Republic’s battles must be the Presidente himself, though the Presidente was thousands of miles away.
After the victory won against Dupin’s Contra Guerrillas [so the chronicle goes on], the Missourians found their ally to be none other than that picturesque buccaneer of the Sierras, Don Rodrigo, wild as a prairie wolf, handsome as Lucifer; and their captives to be not the Emperor and suite but two beautiful women....
When the prisoners had been exchanged–i. e., the two fair girls restored to Dupin, and Rodrigo freed–and Rodrigo had hurried away to gather his scattered vagabonds from among the foothills, the Missourians realized their predicament. That day they had fought the Empire. Then they had turned and fought the Republic in the person of the guerrilla chief, Rodrigo Galán. They had rebelled against the rebels, so were doubly rebel, doubly outlawed. Ye gods, itwasbizarre! And as morning dawned on them trailing along a327dreary inferno gorge of the Sierra Gorda, they blinked at each other ruefully. Poor waifs, they had lost their native country. And now, one rainy morning, they found they had lost an adopted one. But each man looked into a face likewise so rueful that his own broke into a grin.
“We’ll just start anewcountry,” cried Driscoll abruptly.
His voice sounded strange and very unlike him, but the inspiration was characteristic of the man, and true to the old irrepressible Storm Centre they had known. Hunted outlaws, they too were in the mood for any desperate venture. Spontaneous as wildfire, they seconded this one ere they had asked a question. They never did ask “How?”
“A new country,” roared Tall Mose, “but where?”
“And when?” Old Brothers and Sisters inquired gently.
“We’ll start right after breakfast,” their intrepid leader replied. “And right here in Mexico. It’s anybody’s country yet, and we might as well slice off a little private republic for ourselves.”
“And won’t we fight, by Jiminy!” drawled Cal Grinders, with Ozarkian deliberation.
“And it don’t matter whom we fight,” Marmaduke added. “Let ’em show themselves, Slim Max or Don Benito. We’ll meet all comers.”
That was the mood they were in, and they were in it to the chin. Submit a wholesale fighting order, and they bid for it like neither bulls nor bears, but like wolves.
“About taxation?” asked Clay of Carroll dubiously.
But as a good general, or as another Romulus, Driscoll had figured it all out. His answer brought comfort.
“We’ll not have any. We will levy on commerce, as republics have the right to do.”
“Then,” said Carroll of Clay, “we’ll need a seaport?”
“Of course. Ain’t Tampico simply waiting for us? The French aren’t there now. They are concentrating in Mexico328City for evacuation. There’s no more of a garrison than what Old Tige left, a few hundred Cossacks. If we get there before the Liberals––” ...
... And why not? They were nearly five hundred and greater than Romulus. They were Missourians, sir. They were from that State which gave the best fighters to both sides; which, population considered, gave more to the North than any other Northern state, more to the South than any other Southern state, and yet as a state would be a Republic unto herself. What, then, might not be possible to these her sons on a foreign shore? Intrepid youngsters, they were of royal State lineage, Missourians from Kentucky, Kentuckians from Virginia, which was in the beginning. Dauntless cavaliers of the Blood, if they chose to carve themselves a kingdom, why not?
But they themselves answered the questions, questions that had men’s lives in them thicker than hard words in the Blue-back speller. The business was as already done, and Mose Bledsoe could go back to his chant with an easy mind. And once more Missouri’s revered saga echoed among the crags:
“I come from old Missouri,Yes, all the way from Pike.I’ll tell you why I left there,And why I came to roamAnd leave my poor old mammy,So far away from home.”
“I come from old Missouri,Yes, all the way from Pike.I’ll tell you why I left there,And why I came to roamAnd leave my poor old mammy,So far away from home.”
Then, the bard leading in a fashion vociferous, the whole command helped out:
“Says she to me, ‘Joe Bowers,You are the man to win;Here’s a kiss to bind the bargain,’And she hove a dozen in....”
“Says she to me, ‘Joe Bowers,You are the man to win;Here’s a kiss to bind the bargain,’And she hove a dozen in....”
... Bivouacked under the black-lipped howitzers of Tampico’s sullen heights.... Dismal fens ... where fever exhaled its dread gray breath thick over swamp and lagoon ... above, the vast ægis of the firmament,329wrought in a diamond dust of stars ... a sickly, jaundiced, moon tilted drunkenly.... Through ooze and fetid slime the Americans crept stealthily out of the reeds; and on, over cypress roots, silently in the silent night; on, up the hill under the low walls of Fort Iturbide. Gently and fleeting as a dark beauty’s sigh in old Castile, they were come in canister range.
“Steady, men,” their leader whispered.
“Unto death,” came the low-breathed response.
[No such words were uttered, as Daniel knew perfectly well, but he knew that they should be–in the telling.].... A sharp cry ... fearful alarums from the crest of the hill ... next a belching fury of grape.... But Tall Mose was happier for it. The seal was off his lips at last, and out thundered his stentorian war-song:
“O Sally! dearest Sally!O Sally! for your sake....”
“O Sally! dearest Sally!O Sally! for your sake....”
... still upward, until the cannon fumes broke as a dun-colored wave over pennant and plume ... and grimy troops fell as spring blossoms in a balmy south breeze.... Dying as they loved to die, game to the last ... they stumbled back to the river, which swept over the gallant stranger slain....
“... It’s enough to make me swear!–That Sally had a baby,And the baby had red hair....”
“... It’s enough to make me swear!–That Sally had a baby,And the baby had red hair....”
... Then piercing and wildly plaintive, the clarions rang out, clamoring for victory andvæ victis... and Din Driscoll’s hoarse voice.... “We are the last of the race, let us be the best as well.”... “Back at ’em, fellows!” Bledsoe bellows.... And the parson murmurs, “He prays best who fights best, both great and small” ... his soft voice tremulous enough for Glory, his superb330trigger finger disturbing enough for Chaos.... At last, the supreme command “like volley’d lightning”–“Give ’em the revolver.Charge!”...
Not until the story is told shall ... for over the battered masonry, in through the splintered doors, felling shadowy foes on every hand.... When well within-side ... the prowess of each unto himself ... tempest of pistol cracking ... bleeding deathfully ... ah, the killing is fast and desperate ... and not a candle over the pitiless fray.... Huddled together for a brief last stand, the Cossacks ... panic, flight....The fort is taken!
When the incarnadine embers of sunrise glowed in the east, the Missourians stood on the battlements and surveyed their domain. “You are the man to win, Joe Bowers,” Mose hummed with an I-told-you-so air, but softly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But “the Doc,” of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet’s nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with a perforated humerus as climax. [The modest Boone might have catalogued similarly his own casualties.] Old Brothers and Sisters, that cool Christian, had lost a lens out of his spectacles, and was now replacing it from a supply he always carried. What, though, were fractured arms and busted specs to becoming a republic over night?
But eternal vigilance is ever ... and menace was not long in coming. Three French gunboats, like sluggish water beetles, crossed the bar and steamed up the river.... Promptly the howitzers on the ramparts were trained....331But there was no need ... a white flag ... a naval lieutenant at the fortress gate.... The gunboats had not come to fight. Bazaine had sent them to carry off the endangered garrison, it being expected that a Liberal army under a General Pavon would shortly besiege the place. The Frenchman was astounded to find that the Liberals, as he imagined the Missourians, had already arrived. Driscoll allowed him to embark the dislodged garrison, as well as the defenders of the other fort, Casa Mata; that is, all except those who might want to change sides. And nearly every Mexican among the Cossacks did change. It was a sign of the panic that had spread throughout the Empire. Driscoll also insisted on the burial of certain guerrilla corpses which Dupin had left hanging to the town’s lamp posts. After which the gunboats took themselves out of republican waters.
Yet they left behind expectancy. So, a Liberal army two thousand strong was approaching? The Missourians provisioned themselves from the town and rested on their arms. The Liberal host appeared, variegated of costume, piratical of aspect.... Again a flag of truce.... “If the señores Imperialistas desired to surrender?”... “We are not Imperialists,” came the reply from the fort, “and we’re blessedly d-n-d if we desire to surrender.”... “Then, the saints bless us,whoare you?”... “The Republic of Tampico, de facto and determined.”
The dumfounded Liberals scratched their heads. They were Republicans, and here was a republic, and naturally it bothered them. But when they had gotten it tangled unmistakably enough, they decided that they wanted surrender anyhow, if the señores Tampicoistas would have the kindness ... and on refusal from the fort, they withdrew to load their siege guns.
They had sent a shot or two and received a dozen, when an Indito, emaciated and loathsome from scales of dirt, dashed332from nowhere through the cross-fire and pounded at the fortress door. Driscoll ordered him admitted. The first President of the Tampico Republic seemed extraordinarily anxious about this ragged vagabond, especially as he had perceived a second one, likewise from nowhere, dash into the Liberal camp. Ten minutes later the enemy ceased firing. “Now come, all of you,” Driscoll then said to his little army, “and hear what he’s got to tell. I reckon he’s a Shorter Yet.”... “From Shorty, then!” exclaimed his men. And so it proved, for the Indito produced the usual bit of parchment, signed El Chaparrito and countersigned Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma. The message thereon demanded why the Coronel Driscoll and his new recruits for the cause had turned against it.... “’Cause we don’t hanker after hanging,” Cal Grinders interposed.... Was it, Driscoll continued to read, because they thought they had lost favor by fighting Rodrigo Galán? If so, there was naught against them, nothing, because President Juarez had outlawed Galán for robbing a bullion convoy. It was true that the writer of the parchment had used the said Rodrigo, in the hope of capturing Maximilian, but the bandit was not for that reason a Republican officer.... “In other words,” lisped Crittenden of Nodaway, “we’re in-lawed because the good patriot Don Rodrigo is away outlawed.”... “Therefore,” the parchment went on, “His Excellency the Presidente through the writer has herewith sent a message to General Pavon of the besieging camp to comply with whatever Their Mercies the Americans may deem fit to require. Further, knowing the temper of Their Mercies, General Pavon is ordered to at once cease operations and leave Their Mercies in possession.”
The Missourians looked at one another and were reluctant. They hated to forego a battle. But it takes two sides to make one. Not outlawed, not even threatened, they had no excuse to hold against the Liberals.
333“But,” said Crittenden, “as an ally of this sister Republic, we’ll still have our fighting.”
“Well,” demanded Driscoll, “what will you ask for?”
“Our Córdova lands back, after we’ve won them from the Empire.”
“And,” put in Grinders, “equality. We want republican equality.”
“Then we’ll all be privates?”
“No sir-ee, by cracken! Equality high up, that’s what! We’ll be colonels, breveted colonels, every last one of us–Colonel Driscoll, Colonel Grinders, Colonel Brothers and Sisters, Colonel––”
“That’s easy,” said Driscoll smiling. “Now I’ll go and fix it up with General Pavon, before he gets away.”
... To conclude this chapter on the Missourians’ Republic, there is yet a word, which perhaps is also explanation of the saddened change that had come over Din Driscoll since that night after the battle with Don Rodrigo. It must be remembered that the peerless lad had just won his old comrades to the Mexican Republican cause. While yet rejoicing that here he more than made good the three hundred Liberals he had helped to capture when a captain under the Empire, he found that he had only cast his recruits out of the pale of law, first against the Empire, and then against the Republic.... Then he proposed their own republic, and for themselves they took Tampico from the French. But why? What was the real object in Driscoll’s innermost thought? The suspicion arises: Was it to win a peace-offering wherewith to make friends again with the Liberals? Such an explanation of his otherwise wild scheme is but a theory, but the theory fits, for John D. Driscoll, though as reckless as any and quick for any forlorn hope, was, when a leader, scrupulously practical.
The above suggestion, moreover, is apropos in these later334days, when the Tampico Republic has become to be folklore throughout Missouri, and when our cousins, the Kentuckians, even those proud colonels by acclamation, cannot rank beside these five hundred colonels scattered over the sister state; so that, when a stranger questions, a Missourian answers: “He a colonel? W’y yes, of course, sir. And, by God sir, a Tampico colonel, too! Yes, one of the five hundred!” and the stranger’s eyes bulge as he takes off his hat.
[The deposition of Meagre Shanks ends here.]
“... O restless fate of pride,That strives to learn what Heaven resolves to hide.”–The Iliad.
“... O restless fate of pride,That strives to learn what Heaven resolves to hide.”
–The Iliad.
On returning to the capital, Jacqueline did not once set foot in any Imperial palace, but she established her own salon of a grande dame, and there installed herself mid a simple elegance. What was left of the mortgaged château in the Bourbonnais went to pay for it. Jacqueline would accept not a louis out of Napoleon’s Black Chest. A French gentlewoman, she impoverished herself to work for France. And when, a little later, Napoleon dishonored his own name and that of France in his dealings with Maximilian, she thanked the instinct that had kept her free. Puddles muddied one’s skirt so! The valiant maid broke her sword. She would serve no longer. At least, she was quite certain that she would not.
Napoleon’s shame lay in this. Maximilian had accepted his harsh ultimatum regarding the Mexican customs, and in return for such humiliation he depended on the presence of the French troops for yet another year. But the United States threatened war, and Napoleon cringed. He would withdraw the troops immediately. He would abandon Maximilian, treaty or no treaty. Thus the quiet forces in the American Legation at Paris battled against the proud House of Orleans. The princess of that House failed. She could not save her husband’s throne, and her own. Her mind gave way. She became a raving maniac. So much for Charlotte’s mission.
336With the news Maximilian was a broken man. He seemed to remember his promise to rejoin her in Europe, for he set out coastward and left the marshal a letter that was virtually his abdication. Yet in the Hot Country he stopped for his health. An Austrian frigate waited for him. But behind him was his capital. Would he return? History will never know, perhaps, the soul-despairing network of intrigue and counter-intrigue that wound and tightened about the young sapling roots that would strike deep in an unnourishing soil and become a dynastic oak. The rabid clericals, who were Maximilian’s ministers at the time, thought their puppet gone, and in terror of an avenging Republic they resigned. But Bazaine, urged to it by Padre Fischer, prevailed upon them to remain, and Fischer gave his word that the puppet would not escape. So France lost another chance to take back the Mexican Empire, and thereby pave a way out of her shame. For while Maximilian recuperated, he reconsidered. Clerical generals assured him of armies, the ministers talked eloquently of treasure from the Church coffers. The fat padre manipulated generals and ministers and Emperor, He was supreme. None might come near the royal ear except at his pleasure.
It was at this time, about the first of the year, some six months after Charlotte had sailed to Europe, and only a few weeks before the French would do the same, that one evening Jacqueline’s footman brought her a plainly sealed envelope, without crest, without writing. She tore it open, and started as she looked at a simple autograph on the card inside.
“His–this gentleman, Tobie, you admitted him?”
The well-trained servant stood impassive. “What would madame have?” he replied. “The man walked in like a lord, keeping his face hid in a cloak. But if madame––”
“Was there a carriage?”
“No, madame, but I noticed a saddle horse at a little distance, held by a mounted soldier with a carbine. But if madame––”
337“He is in the drawing-room, then?”
“Oui, madame, and without removing his Mexican sombrero. But if madame desires that this citizen find himself–h’m–pressed to go––”
“Tobie! No, on the contrary, you will permit him to wait undisturbed, until I come.”
A few minutes later Jacqueline beheld a tall figure in elegant charro garb striding the length of her salon. As she entered, her guest threw off sombrero and Spanish cloak, and revealed the drawn and troubled features of the Emperor of Mexico.
“Your Majesty has returned to His capital!” she exclaimed. “Then it is true––”
“That I shall cling to my play-empire? But I do not know yet, mademoiselle, I do not know yet. If I did, I should not be here, here in your house for the first time, and against your wishes––”
“Will Your Highness be seated?”
Maximilian flung himself wearily into an armchair. The fire of the enthusiast had died out of his eyes, and the fire of fever had left them faded. They reminded one of the blue of old-fashioned china.
“But why––” she began.
“Why come to you, you mean? I don’t know; instinct, I suppose.”
“Isn’t that rather vague? Your Imperial Highness returns to the City, to his palace––”
“Not to his palace, mademoiselle, not while it would seem a mockery of my poor imperial state, but to an hacienda in the suburbs. If I enter my Mexican palace again, it will be because I have decided to remain an emperor.”
“And for the reason that you havenotso decided, you do me the honor––”
“I do myself the service, mademoiselle. I can bear this torment of indecision no longer, and you can help me, for you,338dear lady, see clearly where the vision of others is distorted. The enthusiasm of the others is unsafe. Yes,” he sighed, with a little superior air of resignation to all human foibles, “those on whose loyalty I can depend are indeed few, but I am thankful that among them are my ministers, and my faithful secretary, Father Augustin Fischer––”
“Then why, in heaven’s name, does Your Highness come to me?”
“Instinct, or–perhaps it’s mania. Something has forced me to learn whatyouwould say.”
Jacqueline’s foot–a small digression, at most–was slippered in blue, and this she pillowed on a cushion of red. And on another cushion she settled her elbow; and the sleeve of the chemisette, or blouse, or whatever the high-necked filmy white garment was, fell away, revealing a rounded forearm clasped in a band of gold. And resting her chin on her thumb, she regarded the young prince thoughtfully. In her look there may have been a sedate twinkle of amusement, but all was gently, pityingly sympathetic.
“Let me know,” she said, “more of the doubts that trouble Your Highness.”
Unerringly she touched the right chord. Doubts, yes, doubts of a broken dreamer. Illusions shattered as bubbles. A dweller in an ideal shadow, believing that subjects needed only lofty phrases, Maximilian was finding himself tragically maladjusted to the modern day in which he lived. But as the words tumbled from his lips in the passionate relief of unburdening, it quickly appeared that his misgivings arose only because he had fallen short of Dark Age standards. He recalled bitterly how, unlike the illustrious among his ancestors, he had not stirred until others had won his crown for him. But destiny was kind. He had the chance for redemption. To hold his empire now depended on him alone. He would mount his horse, give to the light a true Hapsburg blade,339and valiantly ride forth to conquer or perish, and in any hazard be worthy of his House.
Then, without abrupt change, he talked of Austria’s late woes. Had he but commanded his country’s ships at Lissa! Could he but have risked his life at Sadowa! And moreover, he was still needed over there. But in some quick recollection a moisture dimmed the blue eyes. He drew from his vaquero jacket a dispatch. It was from Franz Josef. If Maximilian returned to Austria, the message ran, then he must leave behind the title of Emperor–leave behind even the title!
“And will that hurt so much?” asked Jacqueline.
The Ritual again! For it a man withheld asylum from his brother.
“Is there no mother,” cried the exasperated girl, “to spank both your Majesties?”
“’Tis of Her Serene Highness––” Maximilian began with dignity.
“Highness? Yes, I forgot, but not high enough to chide majesty, though she be a mother.”
“Yet she has only just warned me of her deep displeasure if–No, her message shall wait. I wish to hear first what you think. Tell me, shall I go, or shall I stay? Tell me, tell me, and why!”
Feverishly the man craved one frank word. There was in his look the prayer of a desperate gambler who watches a card poised between the dealer’s fingers. Jacqueline had one answer only. But exactly how to express it, lest she be wrongly taken, made her pause.
“In the first place,” she began slowly, “there is only a single consideration involved, and in that lies the solution of Your Majesty’s doubts. I mean the consideration of honor. Now if Your Highness is–whippedoff his throne–thatis ignominy–But wait, wait, I am not through. I––”
“Almost my mother’s words!” he cried triumphantly. And340with a hand that trembled, he got out the letter from that Archduchess Sophia who had given one son a crown and loved this other as her darling.
“‘Rather than suffer humiliation by a French policy’” he read from her letter, “‘stay, stay, though you be buried under the walls of Mexico!’”
“But––” Jacqueline interposed. She had been taken amiss after all.
“You too bid me stay,” he insisted. “But I might have known. I might have known. One who never errs said that this would be your counsel. The Padre is wonderful–wonderful!”
Father Fischer, of course! What else? How consummate was the snake in his cunning! He counted on honesty and nobility in another, though having none himself. He knew Jacqueline. He thought that, both good and frank, she must advise the Emperor as his mother had done. Accordingly, when Maximilian became afflicted with doubts, the priest allowed him to go to Jacqueline. She would be an accomplice despite herself. Only his judgment did not go quite far enough. Jacqueline had not spokenallher mind.
Imperiously she compelled Maximilian’s attention. “I said ignominy, yes,” she persisted, “but I would have added that honor–the modern and the decent–and the only courage, lies in facing this same ignominy. Listen. If the least of impure ambition enters in your decision to remain, then for each death in the civil war that must result, Your Highness may hold himself to account, and so be held by history. Now,” she went on, unmoved by the fact that he had winced, “the question remains with Your Highness–does aught besides honor hold you to stay?”
To himself he answered as she spoke, and guilt confessed mounted his brow.
“But there,” she said, “Father Fischer will interpret the341will of the Almighty. Before Your Imperial Highness retires to-night, my words will be forgotten.”
The lash fell on flesh already raw and smarting. To predict that he would change yet again, when to change he branded himself a wilful murderer–no! That was more than he could endure. She must not think that of him. He held out his hand. “Jeanne!” he murmured imploringly.
“Don’t!” she cried, “Don’t call me that!”
Then she bit her lip, and her fury turned against herself. “Jeanne” was feminine and French for “John,” which was masculine and–American. This important discovery she had made months ago when riding beside a man whose horse was “Demijohn.” As a girl in love, she had found a cozy joy in their names being the same. But for that very reason any recollection of it, since then, was the less to be borne.
Blushing indignantly, she saw that Maximilian was regarding her with a puzzled expression. Manlike, he referred it to himself, and suddenly, he too started. Only once before had he addressed her thus familiarly, which was during that memorable afternoon beside the artificial lake at Cuernavaca. Here, therefore, must lie the association that caused her agitation. Yet, since that afternoon, she had permitted no reference to their interview, unless to raise her brows quizzically at his continued presence in Mexico. But now, what of the self-betrayal into which he had just surprised her? It could not but be connected with that other time when he had murmured her name. There was, however, no conscious vanity in the remarkable explanation. It was remorse. He thought of Charlotte, his wife. And this other woman, had he wronged her also? For during the past weeks of trouble he had forgotten that he had loved her, and she had not forgotten. In two such facts, falling together, was the wrong, and one that a woman scarcely ever forgives, as he had had reason to know.
“I could not help supposing, mademoiselle,” he ventured342diffidently, “that what you said at Cuernavaca was inspired by–by no feeling toward myself. I could suppose nothing else in the light of your utter indifference since then, and–and your aversion for my very presence.”
Jacqueline laughed pleasantly. “In that Your Highness deceives himself. I did then, as I do now, feel for Your Highness enough to wish him safely out of Mexico.”
“Charity, then?”
She did not protest.
“As I thought,” he said. “There was no feeling in–in––”
Jacqueline raised her eyes and met his frankly.
“When a woman feels in the sense you mean, sire,” she said, “then she does not make an empire, even the Austrian Empire, a condition. If the man in question has no more than his horse, his pistols, even his pipe, then the woman––” But she stopped abruptly.
“With you,” he granted honestly, “it was not a matter of personal ambition either. But if neither of these, then what–NowI see!” he cried. “A state reason! A decoy, to tempt me out of Mexico! Yes, yes, now I see!”
“It is good to know,” said Jacqueline, not ungratefully, “that Your Majesty at least, if no other, can see a high motive in my self abasement.”
“Now what can she mean by that?” he demanded of himself. “What other, in particular, thinks hard of her that she should care?”
Éloin was the only other man who could have seen them, there at Cuernavaca. No, little it mattered to her what Éloin thought. But–yes, there was another. There was the American who had intruded and wanted to save his empire. Maximilian recalled now her change to bitterness after the American had left them, and a moment ago he had seen the identical pain of self-contempt tug at her lips. And yet, once343she had left the American to die. But Maximilian answered even that objection. Leaving him to die was a necessity for her country. And the sacrifice had gone farther. It had not faltered before the self-degradation of which she had just spoken.
The admiration in his eyes grew. The chivalry in his race awoke within him, and exalted him. He felt himself become the true knight, in the purity of devotion to a woman–a gentleman, as real chivalry would have the term. Poor man and poet, he felt even the impulse to bend the knee and crave as a boon some risk of life in her service, without thought of boon thereafter–a knightly impulse nearly obsolete in chivalry, if ever customary. But he knew now that the impulse was really possible, and the proof was this: that the constraint between them had vanished, that soon he was talking with her easily and naturally.
For Jacqueline also the air had become blessedly pure, and deeply, gratefully, she breathed of it. Because now she talked with one whose respect was a fact, whoknewher for what she was, and during a moment’s space she was happy, with the happiness of delusion. It seemed that other men, that one other man, might one day know her too, and give her his esteem. But the phantasy passed. The knowledge must forever be restricted to the man before her, and for him she did not care.
Maximilian, very strangely, was thinking of the very self-same thing. Here was a service in her behalf already offering. If he could cause that other man to know? But it was out of the question. Men may convince one another of a woman’s guilt, and only too easily. But of her innocence? No, it was absurdly out of the question. Besides, next day the true knight would be starting back for Europe. Had he not just decided?