“O poor and wretched ones!That, feeble in the mind’s eye, lean your trustUpon unstaid perverseness.”–Dante.
“O poor and wretched ones!That, feeble in the mind’s eye, lean your trustUpon unstaid perverseness.”
–Dante.
Her gestures, her every word, were an effervescence. There was something near hysteria in the bright flashes of her wit. However gay, joyous, cynical, Jacqueline may have seemed to herself, to Berthe, terrified though the girl was, Jacqueline’s mood was a sham.
“Thefrisson, oh, those few exquisite seconds of emotion, eh Berthe?” she exclaimed. “Pursued by robbers–the chase–the rescue–and the jolting, the jolting that took our breaths! Why, Berthe, what more would you have? Hélas, to be over so quickly! And here we are, left alone in our coach, robbers gone, rescuers gone! Berthe, do you know, I believe they compared notes and decided we weren’t worth it. But Ishouldhave thought,” she went on in mock bitterness, “I should indeed, that at least our Fra Diavolo would have been more gallant, even if––”
“Even if?” prompted Berthe, then bit her lip.
“Even–Oh Berthe,fi donc, to catch me so because I was wandering!–even if one could expect no such gallantry from the Chevalier de Missour-i. There now, do you tell Tobie to drive on––”
“But mademoiselle––”
“Say ‘Jeanne’,” the marchioness commanded, stamping her foot.
407“My lady,” the girl persisted, but added with affectionate earnestness, “and my only friend, I was simply going to say that we are not deserted after all.”
“But didn’t I see him riding away?”
“Him, yes, but look out of the window. See, he’s left six or eight–O–oh––”
It was a joyful cry, which got smothered at once in confusion. Turning quickly, Jacqueline beheld a little Bretonne with eyes cast down and cheeks aflame. Yet even then Berthe gave a cosy sigh of relief. There was cannonading not far away. They had just been taken by brigands, and as suddenly left alone on the road. Thus Jacqueline’s company ever cost her many a tremor. Yet somehow one of those chevaliers de Missour-ineeded only to appear, and she felt as secure as a kitten on the hearth rug. A chevalier de Missour-ihad but now ridden up to the coach door.
“Berthe!” whispered Jacqueline severely, so that the girl thought her dress was awry. “Quick, tuck your heart away in your pocket. It’s right there on your sleeve.” Whereat Berthe employed the sleeve to hide her higher mantling color.
Jacqueline turned on the chevalier at the window, and surveyedhissleeve. It was covered with dust, but Jacqueline’s big eyes could see through dust. She felt about her a subtle atmosphere that made her an outsider.
“Ah, Monsieur le Troubadour?” came her bantering recognition.
Mr. Boone’s French crowded pleasantly to his tongue tip. “Mademoiselle,” he returned, “and,” he added, with an odd glance toward Berthe, “Madame l’Imperatrice, uh–how goes it?”
Jacqueline’s lashes raised inquiringly, until she remembered how the lank gentleman before her, with the tender heart of a Quixote, had mistaken Berthe for the Empress, months408before at the Córdova plantation. She liked him somehow better now for persisting in it.
“Her Imperial Highness,” she explained, very soberly, “may deign presently to observe that you are here, monsieur, though, as you see, her thoughts are far away. However, if you can possibly give your own to a humbler person, to myself, dear Troubadour, I should very much like to know what is to happen next. Use fine words, if you must; even put it into verse, only tell me––” With an impulsive shove she flung open the door and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll’s troop, or rather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Querétaro, but her arm swept the horizon impersonally. “Only tell me,” she demanded, “what’s happening now, over yonder?”
“Pressing business, ma’am–mademoiselle, and,” Daniel lied promptly, “Colonel Driscoll wished me to make you his excuses.”
“The minstrels of old, sir,” said Jacqueline, “usually accompanied their more gallant fibs with a harp.”
Her vivacity was rising fast, and for some reason, Berthe darted an angry look of warning on Mr. Boone. But the poor fellow was blind to Jacqueline’s jealousy of a distant conflict, and he blundered further.
“Jack Driscoll’s just that way,” he apologized for his friend cheerfully. “Abundat dulcibus vitiis–he’s chuck full of pleasant faults. When there’s a clash of arms around, let the most alluring Peri that ever wore sweet jessamine glide by, and–she can just glide. While with me––”
“I see.Youhave stayed. But I, too, like battles, monsieur. Tobie, get back up there with the driver. There’s no admission charge, I imagine, to this battle?”
Boone gladly offered to take them for a nearer view, but he saw Berthe–his eyes were never elsewhere–shrink involuntarily.
409“Stop, arretaz! Hey there!” he ordered, and the driver stopped.
Jacqueline’s pretty jaw fell in wonder. The natural order of things was prevailing over the artificial. Social status to the contrary notwithstanding, it was Berthe who commanded here, and not Mlle. la Marquise. But Jacqueline was happy in it, and perhaps a little envious too. Ah, thoseMissouriens! This one, who would rather stay than fight! And that other, who was now fighting for quite the opposite reason! They had a capacity for variety, thoseMissouriens!
It was much later, after a lunch from Jacqueline’s hampers under the nearest trees, and after the distant fusillades had quieted to an occasional angry spat, that the ladies’ escort of Gringo Grays, bearing a flag of truce, set out with their charge toward the town. Daniel rode beside the coach window, and the flaps of the old hacienda conveyance were drawn aside. He wondered how it happened that the hours had passed so quickly. He would not believe that his comrades had been fighting, that many of them had died, so blissfully fleeting were those hours to himself.
“It’s all according,” he mused profoundly.
And he could not help singing. He hummed the forlorn chanson of Joe Bowers of the State of Pike, which Bledsoe, then lying cold and stiff under a mountain howitzer, had so often bellowed forth.
“It said that Sal was false to me,Her love for me had fled,She’s got married to a butcher–The butcher’s hair was red.”
“It said that Sal was false to me,Her love for me had fled,She’s got married to a butcher–The butcher’s hair was red.”
But he sung it as a plaint, yet not hopelessly, and Mademoiselle Berthe was the maid entreated of his melody.
The sharpshooters on both sides paused as the coach drove into the little sweet-scented wood that was called the Alameda, and the Missourians, with sabres at salute, transferred their410charge to the Imperialists crowding around. Among the latter were some of Jacqueline’s own countrymen, and those, in starvation and defeat, were as debonair as the cadets of Gascogne.
“A rose, mademoiselle,” said one, bowing low. He had an arm bandaged, and his sword was broken. “An early merciful bullet plucked it for you, so that it fell unhurt, though the petals of all the others are scattered everywhere among the leaves, among the fallen branches, among the shattered statues of our classic grove here. See, like the rose I tender, you come among us poor broken soldiers of fortune. I think, dear lady, there will be those above to bless you for it.”
Jacqueline smiled behind her tears. “Always a Frenchman, eh, mon lieutenant?” she said.
The fragrance of the place was smothered under gunpowder and sluggish fumes. The pleasant drives, the grass, the flowers, were trampled by gaunt soldiers bearing their wounded, but the young officer murmured on in the speech of the Alameda’s one time fashionable promenade.
“Who is that?” she interrupted.
She pointed over the heads around her to a man bearing someone off the late bloody field, and that moment staggering across the trenches into the Alameda. It was an act that moved her, for the rescuer was a richly uniformed officer, and the other but a common soldier. With Berthe close behind, she alighted from the coach and hurried forward to help. The wounded soldier’s face lay on the officer’s breast, and she saw only his hair, matted and very white, from which a rusty brown wig had partly fallen. But more to the purpose she saw that he was bleeding, and the callous warriors there knew that the angels of the siege had come at last.
“Lay him in my carriage–but carefully, you!” she said, and was obeyed, while Berthe deftly fixed cloaks and blankets around the withered form. Someone mounted with Toby411and the driver, and the coach rolled slowly away to the hospital, leaving behind the two girls staring at the richly uniformed officer, and the officer staring tenfold harder at them. He was a large man, with big hands and feet, and for a Mexican he had a mongrel floridness of skin. His cap was in his hand, and his hair was red and thin. Amazement and a startled prying anxiety choked his utterance.
“Now then, Colonel Lopez,” Jacqueline addressed him calmly, “may I ask you the way? I have come to speak with Maximilian.”
“La Señorita d-d’Aumerle!” he stuttered.
“Faith, no other, who is awaiting your pleasure, señor.”
“You come from, from–Mexico?”
“But hardly to chat with you all the afternoon, caballero.”
“From Mexico! From the capital!” he kept repeating. The man’s finger nails cracked disagreeably, and his features worked in an extreme of agitation. He tried to fix his shifting blue eyes upon first one and then the other of the two girls, as though to ferret out what they must know. “You do bring news from there?” he said huskily. “What of Marquez? Is he coming? Shall we have the aid he went for? When––”
“Ah, the medal for military valor!” observed Jacqueline. “Indeed, mi coronel, all must acclaim your bravery, as well as–your loyalty. But take me to your beloved Prince Max, for I do assure you, señor, my news goes not without myself.”
“He visits the hospital every day,” Lopez advised reluctantly. “Perhaps if I should take Your Mercy there first––”
Passing on through the ravaged Alameda, they entered the streets of Querétaro.
“Hear!” Jacqueline exclaimed. “Such a quantity of vivas and clarins and national hymns and triumphant dianas, one would imagine, for example, that there had been a great victory?”
“Eh? Oh yes, or a hearty breakfast, señorita.”
412Which was more essential. And why not? Hope’s bright hue blotted out emaciation. They had broken through to food that day. Bueno, could they not do it again? Old croons had returned to their stalls and accustomed corners in the market place, and as in days of peace were already squatted before corn or beans heaped on the stone pavement in portions for a quartilla, a media, or a real, as though the pyramids were not so pitifully little, as though the wholesale purchase were not made just that morning in heavy terms of blood.
Behind the ponderous Assyrian-like church of Santa Rosa, in the old, half ruined monastery and garden, was the hospital of the besieged. A stifling, fetid odor, far worse than of drugs merely, sickened the two girls as a foul breath when they passed with their guide between thick walls into the large, overcrowded rooms. Military medical service was not yet become an institution in Mexico, and this place was like some horrible antechamber of the grave. Every cot had its ghastly transient, and so had the benches, brought here from the different plazas. More and more wounded were arriving constantly, and those found to be still alive were laid on the flagstones wherever space for a blanket remained. But in spite of the morning’s fight, in spite of almost daily skirmishes for weeks past, the sick outnumbered all others; and those who did come with wounds, and survived them, stayed on to swell the longer list. Men tossed in fever, craving what they might not have, a cooling draught, a proper food, and effective medicine, until, with waking, they craved an easier boon, and died. But the hospital fever, the calenturas, the gangrene, were not to be all. Out of the diseased air, mid the fumes of pious tapers, the spectre of epidemic was taking hideous shape over the many, many upturned faces. The spectre was the tifo, a plague more dreaded in high altitudes than black vomit in the low.
Jacqueline found Maximilian bending over a stricken413cavalry officer. The Emperor was far from a well man, and his fair skin more than ever contrasted as something foreign and lonely among the swarthy faces on every side. His ostentation was now simplicity, as befitted a monarch in camp. He wore neither sword nor star. His garb was plain charro, in which he often walked among citizens and soldiers, inquiring about rations, or requesting a light for his cigar, never minding if a shell burst and kicked dust over him, and always affable, always ready to smile and praise. It was a rôle that came naturally to his gentle soul. One would like to believe–if one could, alas!–that he had in mind no kingly precedent.
Pausing unseen, Jacqueline noted tears in the blue eyes as he pinned some decoration on the officer’s bloodstained shirt. A good heart, she thought, yet ever the prince. In his divine right was he even here, presuming to send a dying subject to the Sovereign in Heaven with a “character,” with a recommendation for service faithfully done. His hands trembled from haste, for he would have the soldier appear before that dread Throne above as a Caballero of the Mexican Eagle. In pity for them both, Jacqueline asked herself what precedence awaited the new Caballero of the Mexican Eagle in a Court, not Imperial, but Divine.
Jacqueline had not journeyed her perilous way out of simple friendship for a desolate prince, but could she have foreseen how his eyes lighted with gladness to behold one friend who remembered, in sweet charity she would almost have come for that alone.
“When Your Highness has finished here,” she said, glancing at the inquisitive Lopez near her, “or whenever I can speak with Your Highness in private––”
There was beseeching in Maximilian’s quick scrutiny of her face, as though the helpless messenger had aught of power over her tidings. “In–in a moment, mademoiselle,” he said tremulously. “I always see the–new ones, before I go.”
414The “new ones” were still being brought in, until any first aid from the distracted surgeons was of the most casual–the ripping of bandaged cloth, a knot tied, and so on to the next. Followed by Lopez, the two girls, and several officers of the hospital staff, Maximilian passed from ward to ward. But Jacqueline’s hand seemed always to be threading a needle, or holding a ligature, or lightly touching a hot forehead, and in every case the surgeon would nod quickly, gratefully, as to a fellow craftsman. Berthe the while gazed in tender wonder on her calm mistress, and nerved herself someway to help also.
And so they came to the withered form in brave red coat, and green pantaloon whom Lopez had carried off the field. One of the nurses had placed a handkerchief over his face, because of the stinging flies, but Jacqueline recognized the thin white hair and the twisted wig as of the old man whom she had sent ahead in her coach. At first he seemed to be dead, for he lay very still on the floor, though a surgeon was probing his wound, and his blood was fast filling the bowl held by the nurse. But now and again, the straining cords in his emaciated wrist twitched with the protest of life. Maximilian stooped to raise the handkerchief. Lopez made a movement to prevent, but restrained the impulse as useless. And then Maximilian revealed the gaunt, leaden features of Anastasio Murguía, the father of María de la Luz.
Jacqueline fell back with bloodless lips. The father of that dead girl–and Maximilian! They were face to face, these two! But the Emperor’s expression was of pity only. He sank to his knees, the better to make the wounded man understand the words of comfort on his lips. For Jacqueline, the horror of it chilled her. Surely, surely, she thought, the hidden tragedy must now unmask; because of its very awfulness, it must! That the prince should be thus oblivious of such a knowledge, and yet kneeling there, made the scene ghastly beyond words.
415“I remember him,” said Maximilian softly, looking up to the others. “One of your orderlies, Colonel Lopez, I believe? Of course I remember him, for I see him often. He is always near me. Even to-day, on the llano, during the thickest of the battle, there he was at my stirrup, and there he must have fallen, in humble, unquestioning loyalty.”
Jacqueline drew back in relief, and she imagined that Lopez did also. Maximilian had forgotten the hacendado utterly.
With a grunt of satisfaction the surgeon drew forth his forceps from the wound and dropped a bullet to the floor. Next he gently rolled the patient over on his back, and then it was that Jacqueline saw in Murguía’s hand, in the hand that had been under him, a little ivory cross. Fainting, unconscious, he still clutched it, from Driscoll’s leaving him on the battlefield until the present moment. By now the stains of his child’s blood were washed away in his own. Jacqueline’s quick eyes caught an inscription on the gold mounting, and leaning close she read the dead girl’s name, “María de la Luz.”
With the gripping of the bullet and its extraction, or possibly at the sound of a voice–Maximilian’s–the old man’s eyes opened, and held the Emperor’s in a deathly stare. Jacqueline watched the piercing beads grow smaller and smaller in their cavernous sockets, and all the while they seemed to concentrate their intense fire. The others, except Lopez, thought it delirium, but Jacqueline would have named it the very blackest hate. “This man will live!” she said to herself, and shuddered.
Maximilian, seeing consciousness returned, spoke cheerily. “Ah, doctor, you will have him well and sound within a week, I know? Look to it, sir; a heroic veteran like this cannot be spared.”
A strange distortion wrapped the visage of suffering. “Could416that be a smile?” Jacqueline wondered. But the Imperial party took its leave, and the tragedy lurking beneath was not revealed, as yet.
Through the throng waiting outside the hospital to acclaim him again as a prince victorious, Maximilian led the two girls to their coach, and went with them to the convent of Santa Clara, where he asked that they be received as guests by the sisters. Here, in the comfortlessparloirof the retreat, he learned the reason of Jacqueline’s daring journey from the capital.
“I bring Your Highness,” said she, “the most spiteful news my feeble sex can ever bring.”
Again the involuntary plea for fair tidings swept his face.
“And, and that is, mademoiselle?”
“‘I told you so.’”
Maximilan’s cheeks paled to the marble whiteness of his brow. He had just heard the answer to the one question, to the one hope, of all Querétaro.
“You, you mean Marquez?”
“Yes.” And then she told him, and seeing how stricken he was, her exasperation at his vain incapacity changed to pity for his breaking pride–which may be called his breaking heart.
“But mademoiselle, I gave my empire into his keeping,” he protested, as though such trust in a man of itself proved that man’s constancy. But the messenger, but Truth, would not recant.
“Then,” moaned the Emperor suddenly, “Marquez is not coming back?”
“Nor ever meant to, sire. Listen, Your Highness made him lieutenant of the Empire, and sent him to the capital for aid. Bien, he turned out the ministers. He broke into homes, and pillaged even the stanchest Imperialists. He heard that Puebla was besieged by a Liberal general, Porfirio Diaz, so417instead of coming here, Marquez marches all his army down there. You will observe, sire, that he wanted the road kept open to Vera Cruz.”
“But why? Tell me!”
“Ma foi, to sell the capital more easily. In any case to be able to save himself.”
“Sell the capital?”
“Just a little patience, sire. Now what did Diaz do, but take Puebla by assault before Marquez could arrive? Then he turned on Marquez, and Marquez turned and ran. Oui, oui, sire, heran, ran like the little ugly, skulking Leopard that he is. To cross a creek, he filled it with all the ammunition, and kept on running, leaving his army defenseless behind him. Groan if you must, sire; others have died in groans. But the Leopard had done this kind of thing before, it should have been remembered. He got back safely though, and squandered the army that might have relieved Querétaro to do it. Mon Dieu, what that panic must have been! One entire battalion surrendered to fifty guerrillas. Yet the Austrian cavalry, the Hungarians, and some others fought, fought with their sabres, and won victories too. Hélas, they only proved what might have been. They only proved how Marquez, if he had not hesitated, might perhaps have saved Puebla and destroyed the Liberals. As it was, they could only retreat, and hardly two thousand of them, ragged and bleeding and filthy, straggled back into Mexico during the next few days. Now they are besieged there. Oui, oui,besieged, by Diaz, by the army of the East, by twelve thousand Republicans, formerly called brigands. And inside is the Leopard, snarling as ever with his regency of terror. Oh no, he will not come to Querétaro. Bonté divine, he cannot. Nor would he. He still holds the capital–for sale.”
“No, no, mademoiselle, there you wrong him, surely. Or tell me, then, who would buy?”
418“Probably no one. At least not Santa Anna. The buyer must have an army.”
“My friend, this is a cruel jest.”
“Earnest enough, parbleu, to make the Leopard forget Querétaro, once he was safely away.”
“Then why doesn’t he sell out to Diaz?”
Jacqueline’s eyes snapped contemptuously. “Young Diaz,” she replied, “is not a fighter to buy what he can take. It’s only a question of a few weeks.”
“Then by all that’s mysterious,whowould buy? I cannot.”
“Of course you cannot. That is why Marquez wants you out of the way, sire. So he left you here. The Liberals will attend to that for him.”
“Then who will buy? Who? Who?”
The blood shot into the girl’s cheeks, and one small hand clenched tightly.
“France–possibly,” she said.
The Emperor started as from an acute shock. His thoughts raced backward, then forward, gathering the whole heinous truth about the perfidy of Marquez.
“And I,” Jacqueline added calmly, though she was still flushed, “I have forwarded his offer to Napoleon.”
“You, mademoiselle? You, an accessory?”
“To Your Imperial Highness’s downfall? Ah no, sire! Your Highness is no longer a factor. Your August Majesty will be eliminated absolutely before Napoleon can reply to my despatch. As I said, the Liberals around Querétaro will attend to that. Your Highness has merely delayed the profit my country might have had from his abdication. Meantime Your Highness himself has made his own ruin inevitable. But I, sire, I would not see Marquez, nor receive a word from him, until we were actually besieged in the capital, and he beyond the hope of coming to Your Highness here.419Now then, if Marquez only holds out until the army of France returns––”
A deep sigh interrupted her. “No longer a factor,” murmured the Emperor. Thus quickly, then, could the world take up its affairs again after his elimination!
“Mademoiselle,” he cried suddenly, generously, “you are–superb! Dear little Frenchwoman, you are, you are!”
“Poof!” said Jacqueline. “But don’t you see, sire,” she hurried on eagerly, “that we will have to fight the Americans? Yes, yes, then they can no longer say theydroveus out.”
“Indeed they cannot. And I, among the first, and the most heartily, do wish you a warlike answer from that firebrand of a Napoleon. But tell me, why do you come to Querétaro? How did you come?”
“How? Easily. All the guerrilla bands–except one, which I escaped–are concentrated either here or with Diaz.”
“And Marquez let you come, you who are so important to him now?”
“As though he could help it, parbleu! My message to Napoleon was in my own cipher, and after he had sent it by a scout to Vera Cruz, I informed him that in it I had directed Napoleon to send his answer to me at Querétaro. Otherwise Marquez would have kept me in prison rather than let me go. But as it was, he assisted me through the Republican lines by a secret way he has arranged for his own escape, if need be. So––”
“But why did you wish to come at all?”
“Ma foi, as if I knew! A matter of conscience, I suppose.”
“Matters of conscience are usually riddles.”
“Like this one? Bien, I am still trying to get Your Highness to leave the country. But this time, sire, it is to save you.”
“To save me?”
“Of course, on account of France.”
“Oh, on account of France?”
“Why else? If–if anything happens to Maximilian, France420will be blamed. Oh why, why did you not escape this morning, while the road was open?”
For the first time during the interview the fire of high resolve leaped into the prince’s eyes. “But could I, in honor?” he demanded sternly. “Think of the townspeople, abandoned to the Liberal fury. Their Emperor, mademoiselle, means to face the end with them, here, in Querétaro.”
The dignity of his catastrophe was already beginning to appeal to him, to exalt him, even as the vision of a Hapsburg winning his empire had so often done before.
“But,” protested the girl, “if they capture Your Highness, if they–if they hold you for trial?”
She stopped, for Maximilian was laughing, and laughing heartily. The idea of hands laid on him, an Archduke of Austria–ha, he was grateful to her. Its very absurdity had given him the first relaxation of a laugh in months.
“Nevertheless,” persisted Jacqueline, whose heritage of a revolution was an obstinate bundle of these same absurdities, “nevertheless, I had hoped to save Your Highness with my news, since it is news that leaves no hope. Why not, then, escape? Treat for terms, do anything, only save your followers and–yourself, sire?”
But she found it impossible to sway him from this, his latest conceit. His new rôle, the more desperate it looked, only ensnared him as the more worthy. He contemplated the end serenely. As a military captain he was culling laurels against theatric odds. His heroic loyalty to a lost cause, with perhaps a little martyrdom (of personal inconvenience), how these would count and be not denied when he should return to his destiny in Europe!
His was even a mood to consort with lofty traits in others, and in a kind of poetic ecstasy he thought of Jacqueline’s steadfast devotion to her country’s glory. And he was moved again by the vague, chivalrous longing to bend the knee, to do her421some knightly service. But–yes, he seemed to remember, therewassuch a service to be done, yet and yet–no, he had forgotten.
Then quite curiously, yet still without remembering, he dwelt in reverie on that man named Driscoll who had so filled the morning with valiant deeds.
“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”–Emerson.
“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”
–Emerson.
Just outside Driscoll’s tent, under the stars, a fragrant steak was broiling. The colonel’s mozo had learned the magic of the forked stick, and he manipulated his wand with a conscious pride, so that the low sizzling of flesh and flame was as the mystic voice in some witch’s brew. There were many other tents on the plain, a blurred city of whitish shadows against the night, and there were many other glowing coals to mark where the earth lay under the stars, and the witching murmur, the tantalizing charm of each was–supper. In this wise, and thinking themselves very patient, men were waiting for other men to starve to death. The besieged had tried, but they had not again cut through to food.
In Driscoll’s tent there was a galaxy of woolen-shirted warriors, a constellation of quiescent Berserkers. For they were Missouri colonels, except one, who being a Kansan, required no title. They were tobacco-chewing giants, famous for expectoration. Except Meagre Shanks, who tilted his inevitable black cigar now toward one eye, now toward the other. Except the Storm Centre, who fondly closed his palm over his cob meerschaum and felt its warmth and seemed far away, a dangerous poet. Except Old Brothers and Sisters, most austere of Wesleyans, who had neither pipe nor quid. He was cleaning his pistols. They were men hewn for mighty deeds, but–cringe must we all423before the irony that neither life nor romance may dodge–it was not a mighty deed which that night was to exact of them, which yet they were brave enough to do, though sorry the figures they thought they made.
Politics was their theme, since men, though busy with war and death, must yet relieve their statesmen, especially after supper, and neatly arrange the Tariff, Resumption, or whatever else. Like oracles the ex-Confederates held forth that the Yankees had only driven out the French to march in themselves, and so tutor the Mexicans in self-government. To which the Kansan ventured a minority opinion, though being thus a judge of the bench, as it were, he had no need of the oaths he took.
“Why God help me and to thunder with you, the United States ain’t aiming at any protectorate. You unreconstructed Rebs simply cain’t and won’t see good faith in the Federal government!”
“Carpet bags?” Driscoll murmured sweetly. It was the majority opinion.
“Yes sir’ee,” and Daniel took the cue as a bit in the mouth, “there’s blood on the face of the moon up there,acerrima proximorum odia, by God sir! Look at the troops at our elections! Look at the Drake Test Oath! Look at––” Mr. Boone was fast getting vitriolic, in heavy editorial fashion, when a famished face, a wolfish face, appeared between the flaps of the tent. “Look at–that!”
Politics vanished, war and death resumed their own.
The whole mess stared.
“Sth-hunderation, it’s an Imperialist!” lisped Crittenden of Nodaway. He pointed at the newcomer’s uniform, which was of the Batallon del Emperador.
“Well, bring him on in,” said Driscoll to the pickets gripping the man by either arm.
“He was trying to pass through our lines,” one explained.424“And when we stopped him, he begged hard to be brought to the Coronel Gringo, that is, to you, señor.”
The mess turned curiously on Driscoll. Why a half dead soldier of the Batallon del Emperador should have a preference as to his jailer was beyond them. But they were yet more puzzled to hear Driscoll address the prisoner by name.
“See here, Murgie,” he said, “is this the occasion Rodrigo meant when he talked about my meeting you soon? Is it? Come, crawl out of the grass. Show us what you’re up to. No, wait, feed first. There’s plenty left.”
But the old man had not once glanced toward the table. Whatever the pangs of hunger, another torment was uppermost.
“What do you mean by this,” Boone demanded, as though personally offended, “you’ve got the hospital color, dull lead on yellow? Here, take a drink. Yes, I know, it’s mescal, out-and-out embalmed deviltry that no self-respecting drunkard would touch, but Lord A’mighty, man, you needsomething!”
Murguía shook his head irritably. Offers of what his body craved were annoying hindrances before the craving of his soul. He twitched himself free of the sentinels, and limped painfully to where Driscoll sat. He wore no coat, but his green pantaloons with their crimson stripes were rolled to the knee, and the white calzoncillos beneath flapped against his skeleton ankles. His feet were bare, the better for an errand of stealth in the night. He was a pitiful spectacle, yet a repulsive, and the Americans despised themselves for the strange impulse they had to kick him out like a dog. They watched him wonderingly as he tried to speak. He panted from his late rough handling by the sentry, and his half-closed wound gave excruciating pain. The muscles of his face jerked horribly, but his will was tremendous, merciless, and at last the cords of the jaw knotted and hardened.
“To-morrow morn–morning,” he began, “the Emperor425will fight. It is arranged for–for daybreak, señores. To to fight–to break through–to–to ESCAPE!”
“W’y then,” exclaimed Harry Collins, the Kansan, “goodfor him!”
The parson snatched off his brass-bowed spectacles, and his brow lowered fiercely over his cherubic eyes.
“And soyouhad to come and tell us?” he demanded.
But the traitorous old man had not the smallest thought of his shame, nor could have.
“You–you will let himescape?” he challenged them in frantic anger.
The mess stole abashed glances at one another. They would, they knew well enough, have to act on this information. But they were men for a fair fight, and they had no stomach to rob the besieged of a last desperate chance. For a moment they were enraged against the informer.
“We’ll just keep him here,” said one.
“Yes, till morning. Then he’ll tell no one else, andwewon’t. Poor old Maxie!”
“Sure,” ejaculated Collins, “give Golden Whiskers a show!”
The wolfish light in the sunken eyes quickened to a flash. Lust for Maximilian’s capture turned to chagrin.
“Señores, señores mios,” he whined, “you do not know yet, you do not know, that if Maximilian is not taken––”
“Ah, here now,” growled Clay of Carroll, “you needn’t worry so much. He’ll be driven back into the town all right, I reckon.”
“And what then, señor? No, you do not know. Your general, señores–General Escobedo–has orders to–to raise the siege.”
“What?”
“Si señor, toraisethe siege! The orders are from San Luis, from the Señor Presidente there. He–he thinks the siege has lasted long enough.”
426“Great Scot!”
“Precisamente. Yes, it would look like–defeat. It would, if–you don’t capture Maximilian by daybreak.”
Meagre Shanks brought his boot soles wrathfully to the ground, kicking the stool back of him. His whole mien exuded a newspaper man’s contempt for faking. “Now then, young fellow,” and he shook a long finger at the ancient Mexican, “here you know all that Maximilian knows. And here again you know all that the Presidente knows. All right, s’pose you just tell us now more or less about how mighty little youdoknow?”
“It’s–it’s like a message from El Chaparrito,” the parson demurred.
“From Shorty?” Daniel almost roared. “Oh come, Clem, don’t you go to mixing up the unseen and all-seeing guardian of the República with this dried-up, wild-eyed specimen of a dried-up–of, of an old rascal. No one ever hears from El Chaparrito ’less there’s a crisis on, and is there one on now? You know there ain’t. If there was, someone would be hearing from Shorty–Driscoll there, prob’bly. But there ain’t. Shucks, this old codger is only plum’ daft. Aren’t you now”–he appealed querulously to Murguía, “aren’t you just crazy–say?”
But even as the Americans breathed easier, they stared aghast at the old man.
“Crazy?” he repeated. “Crazy?” he fairly shrieked, clutching Boone by the sleeve. “No, I am not! Señor, say that I am not! No, no, no, I am not crazy, not yet–not–not before it is done, not–before––”
“God!” Boone half whispered. “Look at his eyes now!”
The old man checked himself in trembling. No help for him lay in human testimony. But there was his own will, which had driven his frail body. Now as a demon it gripped his mind and held it from the brink.
427“Go, out of here, all of you!” he burst on them. “Go, I have more to tell–more, more, more, do you understand?–but I’ll tell it to no one, to no one, unless to Mister Dreescol.”
A raving maniac or not, canards or not, there might be in all this what was vital. The Americans stirred uneasily, in a kind of awe, and at a nod from Driscoll they left the tent.
Murguía grew quieter at once. His faculties tightened on the effort before him. He was alone with the man who would understand, so he thought; who had the same reason to understand, so he thought.
Driscoll had shared nothing of the late emotions. He had smoked impassively. His interest was of the coldest. Only his eyes, narrowed fixedly on the Mexican, betrayed the heed he gave. When the others were gone, he uncrossed his legs, and crossed them the other way, and thrust the corncob into his pocket.
“Sit down!”
Murguía dropped to the nearest camp stool.
“Now then, you with your dirty little affairs, why do you come to me?”
Murguía leaned forward over the table between them, his bony arms among candles and a litter of earthen plates. The odor of meat assailed his nostrils. But the hunger in his leer had no scent for food.
“Thisisthe time I meant, señor, when Rodrigo told you that you would see me.”
“About the ivory cross? But I gave you that a month ago.”
“A month ago–a month, wasted! How much sooner I would have come, only another had to be–persuaded–first.”
“Oh, had he? Then it’s not about the cross? And this other? Suppose I guess? He was–he was the red-haired puppy, my old friend the Dragoon, who carried you off wounded that day? Humph, the very first guess, too!”
Murguía darted at him a look of uneasy admiration.
428“I would have told Your Mercy, anyway,” he said, half cringing. “Yes, he is Colonel Lopez.”
“And you ‘persuaded’ him?”
“Events did. Since the siege began I’ve tried, I’ve worked, to convince him that these same events would happen. Ugh, the dull fool, he had to wait for them.”
“I can almost guess again,” said Driscoll, as though it were some curious game, “but if you’d just as soon explain––”
“Listen! You remember two years ago at my hacienda, when Lopez sentenced you to death? But why did he sentence you to death, why, señor?”
“That’s an easy one. It was because he didn’t want my offer of Confederate aid to reach Maximilian.”
“But why not? I will tell you. It was because he was trying even then to buy the Republic’s good will, in case–in case anything should happen. But he wasafraidto change, the coward! He must firstknowwhich side would win. I am his orderly–heknows why I am–and I’ve tried to drive it into his thick wits that the Empire is damned and has been, but he still doubted, even when we were starving again, even when every crumb was gathered into the common store, even when it was useless to shoot men for not declaring hidden corn, even when forced loans were vain, since money could no longer buy. No señor, even with proofs like these, Miguel Lopez was stubborn.”
“I’d prob’bly guess he was a loyal scoundrel, after all.”
“More yet, he has fought bravely, making himself a marked man in the Republic’s eyes.”
“Then why––”
“Because so long as the Empire had a chance, or he thought it had, he hoped for more coddling. You see, señor, he thought Marquez was coming back with relief. There was that–that Frenchwoman you know of–who brought news from the429capital. But Maximilian dared not make the news public. He forged a letter instead, a letter from Marquez, and he had its contents proclaimed. Marquez had been delayed, so all Querétaro read, but he had at last destroyed the Liberals in his path, and was then hurrying here with his victorious army. This false hope blinded Lopez with the others in there. But when Marquez did not come, when utter demoralization set in, when we were a starving town against thirty-five thousand outside, when there were scores of deserters every day, when any man who talked of surrender was executed, and still no Marquez, then Lopez began––”
“I see, he began to be persuaded?”
“Still, he wanted to be a general. But the other generals forced Maximilian not to promote him.”
“So he was disappointed?”
“And persuaded, señor. The sally was already planned for this morning, but Lopez argued obstacles, and so got it postponed until to-morrow morning. He wanted to–to act on his–persuasion. And that is why,” Murguía got to his feet and limped around the table to Driscoll, “and that is why,” he ended in a croaking whisper, “why I am here!”
“And the red puppy, how near here didhecome with you?”
Again Murguía darted at his questioner that uneasy glance of admiration.
“Lopez is waiting between the lines,” he replied. “As to our own lines, we passed them easily, since Lopez commands the reserve brigade and places the sentinels himself around La Cruz monastery.”
“Oh, does he?” Driscoll whistled softly. “But what’s your plan?” He put the question sympathetically, which disturbed Don Anastasio vastly more than the American’s peremptory tone in the beginning. “What’s your plan?” he asked again, gently coaxing.
430Murguía hesitated. This polite drawing-room interest was the most ironical of encouragement for villainy. Driscoll frowned impatiently, but at once he was smiling again. He placidly filled his corncob, and a moment later, his gaze piercing the tobacco smoke, he said, “Then I’ll tell you. You’re here to make a dicker, you and your tool between the lines. The monastery of La Cruz on top of the bluff is the citadel of Querétaro. Maximilian has his quarters there. The troops there are the reserve brigade. This puppy, this mongrel, commands the reserve brigade. He places the sentinels. And you are his orderly.–Oh, I haven’t forgotten how he let you off that time he condemned me!–So now you are his orderly, for your own reasons and his. And here you are, talking mysteriously aboutcapturingMaximilian. But you don’t mean that, snake. You are here tosellhim! Howsoever,” and smiling a little at the stilted phrasing, Driscoll paused and delicately rammed the tobacco tighter in the bowl, “howsoever, Murgie, you’ve come to the wrong market. No, there’s no demand for Maximilians just now, not in this booth. But why in blazes didn’t you go to Escobedo? With his Shylock beard, I reckonhe’dtake a flyer in human flesh.”
“I was going to him, but I came to you first, to take us there, to take Lopez and myself, I–I thought you would manage it all, because you–Your Mercy is the strongest, the most resourceful––”
“Resourceful enough, eh, to dodge the bullets you had fixed up for me once? Thanks, Murgie, but I liked your attentions then better than your slimy advances now. By the way, how are you going to get to Escobedo?”
The tone was honey itself.
Murguía gasped, yet not so much to find himself a prisoner, as to find himself mistaken in the American.
“Now maybe,” Driscoll suggested, “maybe you’ll be wondering yourself why you bring your dirty little affairs to me?431Lopez may be an open book, but you seem to’ve readmewrong. Prob’bly the language is foreign.”
Murguía’s jaw dropped, and he gaped as one who beholds the collapse of high towering walls. It was his system of life, of motives calculated, of humanity weighed. It was the whole fabric of hate and passions which quivered and crashed and flattened in a chaos of dust before his wildly staring eyes.
“You mean, señor, you mean you do not want–as well, asI!–to bring to his end this libertine, this thief of girlhood, this prince who scatters death, who scatters shame, this–this––”
“Man alive, you’re screaming! Stop it!”
With his nails the old man combed the froth from his lips.
“But you too have cause,” he cried, “cause not so heavy, but cause enough, as well as I! There was my daughter, my little girl! With you there is that French wo––”
He stopped, for he thought he heard the sharp click of teeth. But Driscoll was only grave.
“Well, go on,” he said. “But–speak for your daughter only.”
“I can’t go on. I won’t go on,” Murguía burst out desperately, and flung up his arms. “If you don’t understand already, then I can’t make you. It’s useless. A book? You’re a stone! But any other, who had a heart for suffering, in your place would––”
“Oh shut up, Murgie!” cried Driscoll wearily, but in something akin to supplication.
With the serpent’s wisdom, the tempter struck no more on that side. His fangs were not for the blighted lover. What, though, of the soldier?
“No one doubts, señor,” he whined unctuously, “that Your Mercy is loyal to the Republic. So it cannot be that Y’r Mercy knows––”
“See here, Murgie, I’m getting sleepy. But I’ll find you a comfortable tent, with plenty to eat, and a polite guard––”
432“Señor,” stormed the old man, “I tell you you don’t know what this means to the Republic. Maximilian will escape, no matter the cost. At daybreak there is to be a concentrated attack on some point in your lines; but where, nobody knows except Miramon. Then Maximilian will cut through with the cavalry. The infantry will follow, if it can. And after them, the artillery. You Republicans may not even know it until too late, because meantime you will be fighting the townspeople, thinking you are fighting the whole army.”
Driscoll roused himself suddenly. “The townspeople?”
“Si señor, they are to be a decoy. Some volunteered, the rest were drafted. They have been armed, but they are only to be killed, they are only to draw the Republican strength, while the Emperor and the army escape.”
Driscoll sprang from his seat, in an agitation that was Murguía’s first hope.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that this Maximilian who makes speeches about not deserting intends now to sacrifice these poor helpless devils? Prove it!”
Murguía had touched neither lover nor soldier. But what man was here, in boots and woolen shirt, puffing angrily at a corncob, yet sitting in judgment supreme on the proud Hapsburg himself? Blindly stumbling, Murguía had touched the inexplicable man who was of stone, and the baffled fiend that was in him leaped up with a cry of glee.
“To prove it?” he cried, “Ai, then Lopez shall walk with you in our outer trenches. For in them you shall see the doomed townsmen themselves, a thousand townsmen, sleeping there until the dawn. Afterward, when Maximilian is safe, they who are still alive will be free to surrender.”
“And then––” But Driscoll knew the temper of the siege. What with the chief prize lost, there would be scant mercy for surrendered townsmen.
“God in heaven,” he muttered fervently, “if there’s any to433suffer, it might as well be the guilty one, and a thousand times better one than one thousand! A man’s a man, or alleged to be!–Murgie, you wait here, I’m going to call the others.”
The others came, and heard. It was the court en banc, five Missourians and a Kansan. And the culprit was a Cæsar. But they hewed forth their Justice as rugged and huge, and as true, as would the outlaw, Michel Angelo. Like him, they were their own law. Nor were they nice gentlemen, these Homeric men who spat tobacco. Finding their goddess pandered to by those who were nice gentlemen, and finding the gift of these a pretty scarf over her eye, they roughly tore it away. For them she was not that kind of a woman.
“W’y, this prince is no Christian,” Crittenden announced in querulous discovery.
“One thousand loyally dying for their sovereign,” Daniel mused, his romantic soul wavering. “Sho!” he cried the instant after, “that thing’s out-dated!”
“And the prince there––” began the Kansan angrily.
“May just go–to–the–devil!”
All swung round on one of their number. It was the parson himself who had pronounced sentence.
Then they set out under the stars to attend to it.