CHAPTER XXVI
THE STRANGEST AVOWAL OF LOVE
"Nae living man I'll love again, Since that my lovely knight is slain." --_Lament of the Border Widow._
Back once more at the hacienda, Driscoll recovered his coat stillhanging over the dungeon window. Lopez would have called it insolence,had he been there instead of scouring the country toward Mexico.Jacqueline and Berthe settled themselves in the traveling coach left fortheir comfort by Maximilian. Driscoll's effects, including his graycape-coat and the bundle he had carried behind his saddle, were found inhis room at the House. Jacqueline took them into the carriage with her,along with that absurd little valise that she had brought from the shipfor an hour's jaunt on shore. Driscoll rode with Ney and the Austrians,and was once again headed toward the capital, still sixty fair Mexicanleagues southward.
For six days it was an uneventful journey, seemingly. By day there weresierras, and valleys, and wayside crosses marking violent deaths. Bynight they accepted either ranchero hospitality or put up at somevillage meson. But within himself, adventures were continuous andvarying for the Storm Centre. He could not account for the strange,curious elation that possessed him, especially when Jacqueline wouldtake Ney's horse and ride at his side, perhaps for an hour, when the sunwas not too hot. Driscoll never knew how long these occasions lasted. Hedid not know that they were long at all. As a matter of fact, he hadceased using ordinary standards of measurement. The universe, and sordidaccessories such as time, radiated entirely about one little velvetpatch near a dimple satellite.
There came to be long silences between them as they rode, either boy orgirl content to have it so, and neither the least bit lonesome. And theytalked too, naturally, though this was not so significant. She wouldslyly provoke him. To her mind, there was never anyone quite sosatisfying at a quarrel. She would pause in delighted expectancy to seehis eyes grow big when she thrust, and then to see his mouth twitch atthe corners as he caught her blade on his own keen wit. She hadforgotten that he was rustic, except for the added zest it gave. Nor wasthere a false note in him, so happily and totally unconscious was he ofself. And as for a certain gaucherie, that was the spice to his wholemanner.
They talked of many things; rather, she made him talk. She learned thathis name was John, as hers was Jeanne, and she wanted to know why thehorse was Demijohn.
"Because, Miss Jack-leen," he answered, "he's my other half, andsometimes the better one, too." He remembered that once, when he haddrooped limp over the saddle, the buckskin had carried him out of thefighting to the rear. "You see," he added, "we were both colts when ourlittle shindy up there broke loose."
"And you both went? Ah, Monsieur the Patriot, you did go, you didaffront the tyrant? Yes!" She had the explorer's eagerness. Perhaps shemight discover in him her own especial demon of self-introspection.
"N-o," he replied, "I reckon we went mostly for the fun of the thing."
"Fi donc!" she cried. "But wait till you are old. Oh yes, we have themtoo, those blessed, over-petted veterans of the Grande Armee. They arein the Hotel des Invalides, with medals to diagnose their glory. Oh, la,la, but there's a pleasant fashion! The people, the politicians, theyforget the hot blood that fought simply because there were pretty blowsto strike. They see only the gray hairs. 'Honneur aux patriotes!' Youwait, monsieur. You, too, will be made into the hero, ex post facto, andyou will believe it yourself. Yes, with the wolves, one learns to howl."
"N-o," said the young Confederate, "we--we got licked."
They talked--he rather--of Missouri. He was not reluctant to havestirred the memories of his home, not with one who could listen as shedid. In his heart settled a warmth that was good, and the glow of itshone on his face. He became aware that the gray eyes were upon him,taking conscious note of his hair, his mouth, his chin, as though shewere really seeing him for the first time. What made a girl do that way?He felt queerly, it being thus brought to him that he had awakenedinterest in a woman, but the tribute she paid him was ennobling, and adeep thankfulness, though to whom or for what he had not the least idea,made more kindly and good the cheery warmth around his heart. The grayeyes had never sparkled on him in coquetry as they sometimes did onother men, and now they were grave and sweet. It was a phase ofJacqueline that only her maid had known.
The marquise gathered that Missour-_i_, as she called it, was anexceedingly strange and fascinating region. She learned that it was astate, like a department in France, like her own Bourbonnais forinstance. But there the comparison ended. The rest was all startlingversatility. For the inhabitants had not only taken both sides duringthe Civil War, but through their governor had proclaimed themselves anindependent republic into the bargain. They must be unusual citizens,those Missourians.
But they were strangest because they did not seem to be actors. They didnot refine living into a cult, with every pleasure and pain classifiedand weighed out and valued. No, they actually lived. It was hard torealize this, but in the end she did, and with ever increasing wonder,with also a beginning of envy and hunger. But there was still anotherthing even more indefinable. It centered in the word "home," which sheknew neither in French nor Spanish, but which she came to know now, asits meaning grew upon her. It was more than a "maison" or a "casa," or a"chez nous." It was a manner of temple. And the high priest there was agrim lord. How very grim, indeed! There was no compromise, no blinking,no midway gilded dais between the marriage altar and the basest filth.As grim, this was, as that original Puritanism which has become asynonym of American backbone. Grim, yes; but the woman there, where thehigh priest blinked not, was a divinity. She was a divinity in thetenderest and most devoted sense of the word. And the Puritanism waspurity enshrined, as a simple matter of course. The longing, if only toknow more of this odd country, rose in her mysteriously, and strongerand stronger.
When on one occasion she went back to the coach, she found that Berthealso was enjoying the change to horseback. Jacqueline was glad of it.Now she could be alone, and she believed that she wanted to think. Butshe could not pin down what she wanted to think about; because, nodoubt, there was so very much. Instead, she looked vacantly at the StormCentre's cartridge belt and pistols on the seat in front of her. Theywere grim, too, these playthings of a boy.
Dupin had left the weapons with Ney, back at the hacienda, and Ney hadturned them over to Jacqueline as to the real strategic chief of theexpedition. And Jacqueline had kept them, perhaps to look at, perhapsbecause of a whim that a prisoner should not be armed. She liked to hearDriscoll mourn for them, not knowing where they were, and she held backthe surprise as one lingers before an anticipated pleasure. She pickedup the great, black revolvers with a woman's fascinated respect for theharsh, eternal male of her species, who is primeval and barbaric yet,and ever will be, to hold his mate his very own. Her touch was gingerly,but there was a caress in her fingers on the ugly things.
She lifted the belt. How heavy of metal it was! Idly, she thought shewould count the leaden missiles. When finally she laid the belt aside, abullet remained in her lap. It had fallen there out of its shell.Starting to fit the bullet in again, she suddenly dropped both bulletand cartridge. Her hands trembled. This particular shell contained nopowder. But it contained a tightly rolled slip of oiled paper. Thecartridge was a dummy, a wee strong box for some vital document.
It was not for scruples against looking that she paused. On thecontrary, it was that she must look, absolutely, in sacred, patrioticduty bound, that finally decided--nay, compelled her to look. Still shehesitated before drawing out the paper. She dreaded what it might tellher. Concealed thus, and revealed only by a hazard, the paper held, shefelt certain, the secret and the significance of the American's errandto Mexico. And she did not want to know. She reviled bitterly the cruelchance that had thrust it on her.
She read. The paper was a communication addressed to the EmperorMaximilian by the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippidepartment. Foreseeing Lee's surrender, they had gathered fromLouisiana, Ar
kansas, and Texas, at a place in the latter state namedMarshall, and there they had decided that they would not surrender. Theywould seek homes and a country elsewhere, swords in hand. At thismeeting, which had been inspired by Gen. Joe Shelby, they had deposedthe cautious general commanding, Kirby Smith, and they had put in hisstead Simon Bolivar Buckner. The Trans-Mississippi department numberedfifty thousand men. There would also be fugitives from Lee's andJohnson's corps, besides Jefferson Davis in person, should he contriveto pass the Federal lines. Many thousands of veterans would shortly bemarching across the Rio Grande. In Texas, at the Confederate arsenalsand depositories, they would seize what they needed: guns, ammunition,horses, provisions, money. In Mexico they would become citizens, andthey would defend their new homes against outlawry, rebellion, orinvasion. The signatory generals prayed the Emperor Maximilian toconsider this, and "to do it quick."
Jacqueline put the letter back in the cartridge, and everything lookedas before. But no genii, once out, can ever quite be bottled up again.That stray bullet had wounded her to the heart.
"As bad as fifty thousand!" she cried half aloud. "And they will becomecitizens, too--Mon Dieu, _that_ is a nation!"
With them Maximilian would have a people behind him, and his thronewould be as a rock. He could, and most certainly would, disdain theFrench army of occupation with its thirty thousand bayonets. The Frenchmight go back home. He would speed them cheerfully, and henceforth beEmperor in fact.
"But our treasure and our dead," sighed Jacqueline bitterly, "we cannottake _them_ back. No, nor our hopes, though they weigh littleenough now, for that matter. Oh dear, and _I_ am one of thosehopes!--Help me Heaven, else I shall hate my own country. Oh, I must betrue!--Now, _why_ couldn't those Missourians have sent--someoneelse?"
That evening she held a pen, but it would not move, not while herthoughts were upon it. So, by sheer will, she nerved herself not tothink, and wrote mechanically. She wrote a message to Lopez, and anotherto Dupin, and yet a third. The third brought the tears long before itwas finished. An Austrian took the first two, and rode all that night.She kept the other one herself.
This was the fifth day of their journey since leaving Murguia'shacienda. They had taken pains to keep behind Lopez. Their pursuer,ahead of them, had not made twenty miles the first day, for he haddelayed in order to search here and there. But the second day, he hadevidently accepted failure, and hastened on to overtake the Emperor. TheEmperor himself, after traveling constantly for a night and a day, hadrested a night and half a day to reflect on his late energy, andthereafter he was proceeding as roadside ovations would permit.Accordingly on this, the fifth night, Lopez was close behind theEmperor, and both were within a day of the capital, and less than a dayahead of Driscoll, Jacqueline and Ney.
All the next day Jacqueline kept to her coach. She was cross ornervously excited or melancholy, and by erratic turns in every mood thatwas hopelessly downcast, until her maid became well nigh frantic. Atfirst Ney would hover near in helpless concern, but she ordered him awayangrily. However, the storm broke at last when Driscoll reined in andwaited at the roadside. She could see him through the little front paneof glass as the carriage drew nearer, and she watched with a fiercehunger in her eyes. All the time she stirred in greater agitation, andher breath came more and more quickly. At the very last moment, when asecond later he might have seen her, she sprang to the window, lookedonce again, then in a fury snatched at the shade and jerked it down.Driscoll paused uncertain, but wheeled and galloped back to the head ofthe column. Berthe turned to her mistress. She was lying weakly againstthe cushions, staring at nothing and panting for air.
Toward dusk they reached Tuxtla, a little pueblo on the highroad set midmaguey farms that made the rolling hill slopes of Anahuac look like agiant's cabbage patch. In the distance, under two snow-capped peaksbeyond, the mosaic domes and sandstone towers and painted walls of thecapital glittered in the setting sun like some picture of an Arabiancity vaguely known to memory. The travelers were not a dozen miles fromtheir destination, but Berthe announced that madame her mistress wouldrest at Tuxtla for the night.
The Austrians were quartered in the village, and Ney and Driscoll foundaccommodations for the two girls and themselves farther down the road,at the house of a maguey grower whom they persuaded to vacate. While itwas still light Driscoll amused himself strolling alone between the rowsof the great century plants. Under their leaves, curving high above hishead, he watched peons with gourds suck out the honey water from theonion-like bulbs into goatskin bags. After a time he wandered throughthe hacendado's primitive distillery and on back to the house, with afeeling for supper.
As he entered, he heard the clanking of a sabre in the dark room. Hethought nothing of it, but almost at once something cut through the airand a noose fell over him. He swung round, but the rope jerked tightabout his knees, and he lurched and swayed as an oak before the axe. Hestruck with his fist and had a groan for reward, but a second lariatcircled his shoulders and bound his arms to his body. As he went downunder the weight of men, the shutters were thrown open, and he looked upinto the red-lidded eyes of Colonel Lopez. A troop of cavalry waspassing on the road outside, and he caught the sound of wheelsdeparting.
"You hear?" said Lopez. "The marquesa is going to the City, havingdecided not to wait for you. But she leaves a note, pour prendre conge,eh? You will perhaps have time to read it before the shooting."
Once more Driscoll found himself in an adobe with a sputtering candlefor company. But he also had her note. It was the third of the messageswhich she had written the night before.
"Monsieur," it began, "I cannot let you die without telling you that itwas I who betrayed----"
He jumped to his feet. "Oh--the pythoness!" he breathed fervently.
"----who betrayed you," the letter read. "That you know this, monsieur,that your last thought shall be a curse at me, such will be mypunishment. It is a self inflicted one, because you need not have knownwhat I have done. The telling of this to you is my scourge, but it isnot penitence. Worse and more unbearable is my sorrow that the penitencewill never come, that I can feel no remorse, no more than if someinevitable thing, like the fever, had taken you. I would always do againwhat I have just done; as pitiless as I must be for you, Fate is for me.Your life, monsieur, is but added to the hundreds already snuffed out inthis country for France's sake. Those hundreds are my countrymen, andyou, if you lived till to-morrow, would make _their_ offeringuseless. I have tried to save you, monsieur, but you would not permit.You would not return to your own country, and--there was no other way.But do not think there will come emissaries in your place. Do notbelieve that I would so send you to death needlessly. There will be noemissaries after you. Your Confederates shall know that Maximilian'scourt martial executed you, and is it that your compatriotes will thendesire to help Maximilian? Believe--only believe, monsieur--that it is acruel duty not permitting that I shall listen to my heart. If you butknew, if you but knew--and you shall know. Monsieur Driscoll--oh, monchevalier, it is that I love you. There, know then, dear heart cheri,the enormity of my sacrifice. Know the necessity of it. Know that I envyyou, for you are going, and I must stay, all alone, without you. Monbien aime, _without you_, through all my long life!"
She had signed it simply, "Jacqueline."
Again Driscoll was on his feet. He paced up and down the room. "There'sone thing," he muttered, "and that is, there's nothing between her andMaximilian, not when she's keeping help from him." And on he paced, hisfists opening and clenching. Suddenly he came to a dead halt.
"By God," he cried, "I'm not going to be shot, no sir, not now, notafter--not after this letter!"
Here was neither boy nor warrior. It was very much in the way of alover.
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