The Missourian
Page 11
CHAPTER VIII
THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH MAY BE PRODIGIOUSLY LONG THOUGHTS
"And many a Knot unravell'd by the Road; But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate." --_Omar._
Another young person, Jacqueline herself, was also pondering rathersoberly this morning. And her thoughts fitted as oddly with her piquant,lightsome, cynical youth as the gloomily patriotic ones of the StormCentre did with his youth, which was robust and boyish andswashbuckling. To judge from the way their brains worked now, both youngpeople might have been grave wielders of state affairs, instead of thelad and the lass so heartily and pettily scorning each other a shorthour before.
Yes, the great rugged Missourian had his disdain too, and for none otherthan the darling beauty of two imperial courts. The beauty would havebeen vastly amused, no doubt, had she known of the phenomenon. Butknowing a little more, such as its source and the man himself, she musthave flushed and drooped, piteously hurt, as none in her own circlecould have wounded her. The shafts which flashed in that circle werekeenly barbed. They were the more merciless for being politely gilded.But she understood, and despised, the point of view there. It was a daisof velvet, of scarlet velvet. And a worldly little gentlewoman like theMarquise Jeanne was not one to be unaware of the abyss beneath, of whichthe flaming color was a symbol. But she rather enjoyed the darts, ifonly to fling them back more dazzlingly tipped.
The perspective of the Missouri boy was different. And his disdain wasdifferent. A titled belle mattered little with him, and was apart, likethe girl in a spectacular chorus. Operettas and royal courts were shows,which real men and women paid to see, and to support. He was adeep-breathing, danger-nourished man of life and of things that count.And his only cynicism, and even that unconscious, was the dry honestsort which sheer unpolished naturalness bears to all things trivial andvain and artificial. One can readily understand, then, the attitude ofsuch a man toward a playactor off the stage; toward a playactor, thatis, who thinks to impress the great, wide, live world with thesuperficial mannerisms of his little playacting world. Here was DinDriscoll, Jack Driscoll, Trooper Driscoll, here he was, traveling near ahandsome young woman who for the moment had been cut off from herprecious wee sphere. And he saw her outside of it, playing coquettishly,and to her own mind, seriously; playing bewitchingly her shallow rolepatterned after life, yet without once realizing the counterfeit. TheWestern country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanicalbackbone in common with the whole American race. And without being awareof it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy Frenchgirl was a sneer, a tolerant, good-natured and indifferent sneer.
However, Mademoiselle la Marquise was neither amused nor hurt, because,quite simply, she rode in happy oblivion of the rustic and his standardsfor the appraising of a girl. He looked very straight of neck and spine,and she wondered if he had been cradled in a saddle, but that was all.
Now if Lieutenant-Colonel Driscoll had had the slightest glimpse of whatwas actually passing through the winsome and supposedly silly littlehead behind him, there is no reliable telling into what change ofopinion he might have been jostled. But this is certain, that if he hadknown, he could have saved himself some rare adventures afterward.
In Jacqueline's musings there was poetry and there were politics. Thepoetry justified the politics; moreover, was their inspiration. Adilettante such as Jacqueline, aesthetic and delicately sensitive, wasnaturally a lover of the beautiful in her search after emotions. Asentiment for her surroundings came now as a matter of course. If sheturned, she beheld the chaparral plain stretching flatly back of her tothe sands and lagoons of the coast. If she flirted her whip overhead,down hurtled a shower of bright yellow hail from the laden boughs. Hernostrils told her of magnolias and orange blossoms; her eyes and ears,of parrots and paroquets and every other conceit in fantastic plumage.They were a restless kaleidoscope of colors blending with the foliage,and from their turmoil they might have been quarreling myriads, andnever birds of a paradise. Little red monkeys grinned down at her asthey raced clutching among the branches, while a big bandy-legged sambo,an exceedingly ill-tempered member of the same family, bawled hisreproaches in a tone gruesomely human. Now and then her horse rearedfrom an adder squirming underfoot, or she would see a torpid boa twinedsluggishly around a limb, as about a victim. Once in a jungle-like placeshe experienced something akin to the prized ecstatic shudder as shemade out the sleek form of a jaguar slinking into the swamp. The ugliestof the picturesque "properties" was a monstrous green iguana with hisprickly crest and horn and slimy eye, basking full five feet along arotten log.
But the things of horror merely gave to those of beauty a neededcontrast, and did not hurt the poetry in the least. They were every oneon the same grand, wild scale. As the palms, for instance, rising likeslender columns a hundred feet without a single branch. As yet otherpalms, which were plumed at the summit like an ostrich wing; or as thesmaller ones at their base, spreading out into fans of emerald green.Again, as the forest giants which far overhead were the arches of awatercourse, like the nave of a Gothic cathedral. And even the parasitevines were of the same Titan designing, for they bound the girders ofthe vault in a dense mat of leaves and woven twigs, while underfoot thecarpet was soft inches deep with fern and moss. As for theflowers--Jacqueline wanted to pluck them all, to wreathe the wonderingfawns, as ladies with picture hats do in the old frivolous rococofantasies. And as to that, she might have been one of those Watteauladies herself, so rich was the coloring there, and she in theforeground so white, so soft of skin, so sylvan and aristocratic ashepherdess.
And then it was a thing for wonderment, that beyond, where the mountainswere, all this world changed, yet changed to another as strange andvast. And that still farther on there stretched yet other regions, andeach one different, and each no less marvelous and grand. A bewilderingprodigality of Nature, spelling the little word "romance"! Jacqueline'slip quivered as she gazed and imagined, and as the poetry of it filledher soul. But of a sudden the little woman sighed. It was a sigh ofrebellion. And just here the politics leaped forth, inspired of the wildthrilling beauty of the world.
"To think," she half cried, "that we are losing this--all this! And yetwe have won it! Mon Dieu, have we not won it? Yet for whom, alas?Maximilian?--Faw, an ungrateful puppet such as that, to have, to takefrom us, such as--this! Now suppose," her lips formed the unutteredwords, while her gray eyes closed to a narrowing cunning, "just supposethat we--that someone--reminds His Majesty how ingratitude falls shortof courtesy between emperors."
The boy's thoughts were of the country he had lost. Those of theresplendent and wayward butterfly were of an empire she meant to gain.But in her, who might suspect the consummate diplomat? Even then she wasspeaking to Murguia, asking if it were not time that Fra Diavoloremembered his engagements. Driscoll heard the query, and his commentwas a mental shrug of the shoulders.