The Missourian

by Eugene P. Lyle

  CHAPTER XV

  OF ALL NEWS THE MOST SPITEFUL

  "O poor and wretched ones! That, feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust Upon unstaid perverseness."--_Dante_.

  Her gestures, her every word, were an effervescence. There was somethingnear hysteria in the bright flashes of her wit. However gay, joyous,cynical, Jacqueline may have seemed to herself, to Berthe, terrifiedthough the girl was, Jacqueline's mood was a sham.

  "The _frisson_, oh, those few exquisite seconds of emotion, ehBerthe?" she exclaimed. "Pursued by robbers--the chase--the rescue--andthe jolting, the jolting that took our breaths! Why, Berthe, what morewould you have? Helas, to be over so quickly! And here we are, leftalone in our coach, robbers gone, rescuers gone! Berthe, do you know, Ibelieve they compared notes and decided we weren't worth it. But I_should_ have thought," she went on in mock bitterness, "I shouldindeed, that at least our Fra Diavolo would have been more gallant, evenif----"

  "Even if?" prompted Berthe, then bit her lip.

  "Even--Oh Berthe, _fi donc_, to catch me so because I waswandering!--even if one could expect no such gallantry from theChevalier de Missour-_i_. There now, do you tell Tobie to driveon----"

  "But mademoiselle----"

  "Say 'Jeanne'," the marchioness commanded, stamping her foot.

  "My lady," the girl persisted, but added with affectionate earnestness,"and my only friend, I was simply going to say that we are not desertedafter all."

  "But didn't I see him riding away?"

  "_Him_, yes, but look out of the window. See, he's left six oreight--O--oh----"

  It was a joyful cry, which got smothered at once in confusion. Turningquickly, Jacqueline beheld a little Bretonne with eyes cast down andcheeks aflame. Yet even then Berthe gave a cosy sigh of relief. Therewas cannonading not far away. They had just been taken by brigands, andas suddenly left alone on the road. Thus Jacqueline's company ever costher many a tremor. Yet somehow one of those chevaliers deMissour-_i_ needed only to appear, and she felt as secure as akitten on the hearth rug. A chevalier de Missour-_i_ had but nowridden up to the coach door.

  "Berthe!" whispered Jacqueline severely, so that the girl thought herdress was awry. "Quick, tuck your heart away in your pocket. It's rightthere on your sleeve." Whereat Berthe employed the sleeve to hide herhigher mantling color.

  Jacqueline turned on the chevalier at the window, and surveyed_his_ sleeve. It was covered with dust, but Jacqueline's big eyescould see through dust. She felt about her a subtle atmosphere that madeher 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, "Madamel'Imperatrice, uh--how goes it?"

  Jacqueline's lashes raised inquiringly, until she remembered how thelank gentleman before her, with the tender heart of a Quixote, hadmistaken Berthe for the Empress, months before at the Cordovaplantation. She liked him somehow better now for persisting in it.

  "Her Imperial Highness," she explained, very soberly, "may deignpresently to observe that you are here, monsieur, though, as you see,her thoughts are far away. However, if you can possibly give your own toa humbler person, to myself, dear Troubadour, I should very much like toknow what is to happen next. Use fine words, if you must; even put itinto verse, only tell me----" With an impulsive shove she flung open thedoor and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll's troop, orrather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Queretaro, but her arm sweptthe horizon impersonally. "Only tell me," she demanded, "what'shappening 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 theirmore gallant fibs with a harp."

  Her vivacity was rising fast, and for some reason, Berthe darted anangry look of warning on Mr. Boone. But the poor fellow was blind toJacqueline's jealousy of a distant conflict, and he blundered further.

  "Jack Driscoll's just that way," he apologized for his friendcheerfully. "_Abundat dulcibus vitiis_--he's chuck full of pleasantfaults. When there's a clash of arms around, let the most alluring Perithat ever wore sweet jessamine glide by, and--she can just glide. Whilewith me----"

  "I see. _You_ have stayed. But I, too, like battles, monsieur.Tobie, get back up there with the driver. There's no admission charge, Iimagine, to this battle?"

  Boone gladly offered to take them for a nearer view, but he sawBerthe--his eyes were never elsewhere--shrink involuntarily.

  "Stop, arretaz! Hey there!" he ordered, and the driver stopped.

  Jacqueline's pretty jaw fell in wonder. The natural order of things wasprevailing over the artificial. Social status to the contrarynotwithstanding, it was Berthe who commanded here, and not Mlle. laMarquise. But Jacqueline was happy in it, and perhaps a little envioustoo. Ah, those _Missouriens_! This one, who would rather stay thanfight! And that other, who was now fighting for quite the oppositereason! They had a capacity for variety, those _Missouriens_!

  It was much later, after a lunch from Jacqueline's hampers under thenearest trees, and after the distant fusillades had quieted to anoccasional angry spat, that the ladies' escort of Gringo Grays, bearinga flag of truce, set out with their charge toward the town. Daniel rodebeside the coach window, and the flaps of the old hacienda conveyancewere drawn aside. He wondered how it happened that the hours had passedso quickly. He would not believe that his comrades had been fighting,that many of them had died, so blissfully fleeting were those hours tohimself.

  "It's all according," he mused profoundly.

  And he could not help singing. He hummed the forlorn chanson of JoeBowers of the State of Pike, which Bledsoe, then lying cold and stiffunder 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."

  But he sung it as a plaint, yet not hopelessly, and Mademoiselle Berthewas the maid entreated of his melody.

  The sharpshooters on both sides paused as the coach drove into thelittle sweet-scented wood that was called the Alameda, and theMissourians, with sabres at salute, transferred their charge to theImperialists crowding around. Among the latter were some of Jacqueline'sown countrymen, and those, in starvation and defeat, were as debonair asthe 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 arescattered everywhere among the leaves, among the fallen branches, amongthe shattered statues of our classic grove here. See, like the rose Itender, you come among us poor broken soldiers of fortune. I think, dearlady, there will be those above to bless you for it."

  Jacqueline smiled behind her tears. "Always a Frenchman, eh, monlieutenant?" she said.

  The fragrance of the place was smothered under gunpowder and sluggishfumes. The pleasant drives, the grass, the flowers, were trampled bygaunt soldiers bearing their wounded, but the young officer murmured onin 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 thelate bloody field, and that moment staggering across the trenches intothe Alameda. It was an act that moved her, for the rescuer was a richlyuniformed officer, and the other but a common soldier. With Berthe closebehind, she alighted from the coach and hurried forward to help. Thewounded soldier's face lay on the officer's breast, and she saw only hishair, matted and very white, from which a rusty brown wig had partlyfallen. But more to the purpose she saw that he was bleeding, and thecallous warriors there knew that the angels of the siege had come atlast.

  "Lay him in my carriage--but carefully, you!" she said, and was obeyed,while Berthe deftly fixed cloaks and blanket
s around the withered form.Someone mounted with Toby and the driver, and the coach rolled slowlyaway to the hospital, leaving behind the two girls staring at the richlyuniformed officer, and the officer staring tenfold harder at them. Hewas a large man, with big hands and feet, and for a Mexican he had amongrel floridness of skin. His cap was in his hand, and his hair wasred and thin. Amazement and a startled prying anxiety choked hisutterance.

  "Now then, Colonel Lopez," Jacqueline addressed him calmly, "may I askyou the way? I have come to speak with Maximilian."

  "La Senorita d-d'Aumerle!" he stuttered.

  "Faith, no other, who is awaiting your pleasure, senor."

  "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 fingernails cracked disagreeably, and his features worked in an extreme ofagitation. He tried to fix his shifting blue eyes upon first one andthen the other of the two girls, as though to ferret out what they mustknow. "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, micoronel, all must acclaim your bravery, as well as--your loyalty. Buttake me to your beloved Prince Max, for I do assure you, senor, my newsgoes not without myself."

  "He visits the hospital every day," Lopez advised reluctantly. "Perhapsif I should take Your Mercy there first----"

  Passing on through the ravaged Alameda, they entered the streets ofQueretaro.

  "Hear!" Jacqueline exclaimed. "Such a quantity of vivas and clarins andnational hymns and triumphant dianas, one would imagine, for example,that there had been a great victory?"

  "Eh? Oh yes, or a hearty breakfast, senorita."

  Which was more essential. And why not? Hope's bright hue blotted outemaciation. They had broken through to food that day. Bueno, could theynot do it again? Old croons had returned to their stalls and accustomedcorners in the market place, and as in days of peace were alreadysquatted before corn or beans heaped on the stone pavement in portionsfor a quartilla, a media, or a real, as though the pyramids were not sopitifully little, as though the wholesale purchase were not made justthat 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. Astifling, fetid odor, far worse than of drugs merely, sickened the twogirls as a foul breath when they passed with their guide between thickwalls into the large, overcrowded rooms. Military medical service wasnot yet become an institution in Mexico, and this place was like somehorrible antechamber of the grave. Every cot had its ghastly transient,and so had the benches, brought here from the different plazas. More andmore wounded were arriving constantly, and those found to be still alivewere laid on the flagstones wherever space for a blanket remained. Butin spite of the morning's fight, in spite of almost daily skirmishes forweeks past, the sick outnumbered all others; and those who did come withwounds, and survived them, stayed on to swell the longer list. Mentossed in fever, craving what they might not have, a cooling draught, aproper food, and effective medicine, until, with waking, they craved aneasier boon, and died. But the hospital fever, the calenturas, thegangrene, were not to be all. Out of the diseased air, mid the fumes ofpious tapers, the spectre of epidemic was taking hideous shape over themany, many upturned faces. The spectre was the tifo, a plague moredreaded in high altitudes than black vomit in the low.

  Jacqueline found Maximilian bending over a stricken cavalry officer. TheEmperor was far from a well man, and his fair skin more than evercontrasted as something foreign and lonely among the swarthy faces onevery side. His ostentation was now simplicity, as befitted a monarch incamp. He wore neither sword nor star. His garb was plain charro, inwhich he often walked among citizens and soldiers, inquiring aboutrations, or requesting a light for his cigar, never minding if a shellburst and kicked dust over him, and always affable, always ready tosmile and praise. It was a role that came naturally to his gentle soul.One would like to believe--if one could, alas!--that he had in mind nokingly precedent.

  Pausing unseen, Jacqueline noted tears in the blue eyes as he pinnedsome decoration on the officer's bloodstained shirt. A good heart, shethought, 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. Hishands trembled from haste, for he would have the soldier appear beforethat dread Throne above as a Caballero of the Mexican Eagle. In pity forthem both, Jacqueline asked herself what precedence awaited the newCaballero of the Mexican Eagle in a Court, not Imperial, but Divine.

  Jacqueline had not journeyed her perilous way out of simple friendshipfor a desolate prince, but could she have foreseen how his eyes lightedwith gladness to behold one friend who remembered, in sweet charity shewould almost have come for that alone.

  "When Your Highness has finished here," she said, glancing at theinquisitive Lopez near her, "or whenever I can speak with Your Highnessin private----"

  There was beseeching in Maximilian's quick scrutiny of her face, asthough the helpless messenger had aught of power over her tidings."In--in a moment, mademoiselle," he said tremulously. "I always seethe--new ones, before I go."

  The "new ones" were still being brought in, until any first aid from thedistracted surgeons was of the most casual--the ripping of bandagedcloth, a knot tied, and so on to the next. Followed by Lopez, the twogirls, and several officers of the hospital staff, Maximilian passedfrom ward to ward. But Jacqueline's hand seemed always to be threading aneedle, or holding a ligature, or lightly touching a hot forehead, andin every case the surgeon would nod quickly, gratefully, as to a fellowcraftsman. 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 greenpantaloon whom Lopez had carried off the field. One of the nurses hadplaced a handkerchief over his face, because of the stinging flies, butJacqueline recognized the thin white hair and the twisted wig as of theold man whom she had sent ahead in her coach. At first he seemed to bedead, for he lay very still on the floor, though a surgeon was probinghis wound, and his blood was fast filling the bowl held by the nurse.But now and again, the straining cords in his emaciated wrist twitchedwith 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 AnastasioMurguia, the father of Maria de la Luz.

  Jacqueline fell back with bloodless lips. The father of that deadgirl--and Maximilian! They were face to face, these two! But theEmperor's expression was of pity only. He sank to his knees, the betterto make the wounded man understand the words of comfort on his lips. ForJacqueline, the horror of it chilled her. Surely, surely, she thought,the hidden tragedy must now unmask; because of its very awfulness, itmust! That the prince should be thus oblivious of such a knowledge, andyet kneeling there, made the scene ghastly beyond words.

  "I remember him," said Maximilian softly, looking up to the others. "Oneof 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 therehe 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 thewound and dropped a bullet to the floor. Next he gently rolled thepatient over on his back, and then it was that Jacqueline saw inMurguia's hand, in the hand that had been under him, a little ivorycross. Fainting, unconscious, he still clutched it, from Driscoll'sleaving him on the battlefield until the present moment. By now thestains of his child's blood were washed away in his own. J
acqueline'squick eyes caught an inscription on the gold mounting, and leaning closeshe read the dead girl's name, "Maria de la Luz."

  With the gripping of the bullet and its extraction, or possibly at thesound of a voice--Maximilian's--the old man's eyes opened, and held theEmperor's in a deathly stare. Jacqueline watched the piercing beads growsmaller and smaller in their cavernous sockets, and all the while theyseemed to concentrate their intense fire. The others, except Lopez,thought it delirium, but Jacqueline would have named it the veryblackest 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. "Could that be asmile?" Jacqueline wondered. But the Imperial party took its leave, andthe tragedy lurking beneath was not revealed, as yet.

  Through the throng waiting outside the hospital to acclaim him again asa prince victorious, Maximilian led the two girls to their coach, andwent with them to the convent of Santa Clara, where he asked that theybe received as guests by the sisters. Here, in the comfortless_parloir_ of the retreat, he learned the reason of Jacqueline'sdaring journey from the capital.

  "I bring Your Highness," said she, "the most spiteful news my feeble sexcan 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 hadjust heard the answer to the one question, to the one hope, of allQueretaro.

  "You, you mean Marquez?"

  "Yes." And then she told him, and seeing how stricken he was, herexasperation at his vain incapacity changed to pity for his breakingpride--which may be called his breaking heart.

  "But mademoiselle, I gave my empire into his keeping," he protested, asthough such trust in a man of itself proved that man's constancy. Butthe 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 ofthe Empire, and sent him to the capital for aid. Bien, he turned out theministers. He broke into homes, and pillaged even the stanchestImperialists. He heard that Puebla was besieged by a Liberal general,Porfirio Diaz, so instead of coming here, Marquez marches all his armydown there. You will observe, sire, that he wanted the road kept open toVera Cruz."

  "But why? Tell me!"

  "Ma foi, to sell the capital more easily. In any case to be able to savehimself."

  "Sell the capital?"

  "Just a little patience, sire. Now what did Diaz do, but take Puebla byassault before Marquez could arrive? Then he turned on Marquez, andMarquez turned and ran. Oui, oui, sire, he _ran_, ran like thelittle ugly, skulking Leopard that he is. To cross a creek, he filled itwith all the ammunition, and kept on running, leaving his armydefenseless behind him. Groan if you must, sire; others have died ingroans. But the Leopard had done this kind of thing before, it shouldhave been remembered. He got back safely though, and squandered the armythat might have relieved Queretaro to do it. Mon Dieu, what that panicmust have been! One entire battalion surrendered to fifty guerrillas.Yet the Austrian cavalry, the Hungarians, and some others fought, foughtwith their sabres, and won victories too. Helas, they only proved whatmight 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 andbleeding and filthy, straggled back into Mexico during the next fewdays. Now they are besieged there. Oui, oui, _besieged_, by Diaz,by the army of the East, by twelve thousand Republicans, formerly calledbrigands. And inside is the Leopard, snarling as ever with his regencyof terror. Oh no, he will not come to Queretaro. Bonte divine, hecannot. 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?"

  "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 Queretaro, once hewas safely away."

  "Then why doesn't he sell out to Diaz?"

  Jacqueline's eyes snapped contemptuously. "Young Diaz," she replied, "isnot a fighter to buy what he can take. It's only a question of a fewweeks."

  "Then by all that's mysterious, _who_ would 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 clenchedtightly.

  "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 ofMarquez.

  "And I," Jacqueline added calmly, though she was still flushed, "I haveforwarded his offer to Napoleon."

  "You, mademoiselle? You, an accessory?"

  "To Your Imperial Highness's downfall? Ah no, sire! Your Highness is nolonger a factor. Your August Majesty will be eliminated absolutelybefore Napoleon can reply to my despatch. As I said, the Liberals aroundQueretaro will attend to that. Your Highness has merely delayed theprofit my country might have had from his abdication. Meantime YourHighness himself has made his own ruin inevitable. But I, sire, I wouldnot see Marquez, nor receive a word from him, until we were actuallybesieged in the capital, and he beyond the hope of coming to YourHighness here. Now then, if Marquez only holds out until the army ofFrance 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 hiselimination!

  "Mademoiselle," he cried suddenly, generously, "you are--superb! Dearlittle Frenchwoman, you are, you are!"

  "Poof!" said Jacqueline. "But don't you see, sire," she hurried oneagerly, "that we will have to fight the Americans? Yes, yes, then theycan no longer say they _drove_ us out."

  "Indeed they cannot. And I, among the first, and the most heartily, dowish you a warlike answer from that firebrand of a Napoleon. But tellme, why do you come to Queretaro? How did you come?"

  "How? Easily. All the guerrilla bands--except one, which I escaped--areconcentrated 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 myown cipher, and after he had sent it by a scout to Vera Cruz, I informedhim that in it I had directed Napoleon to send his answer to me atQueretaro. Otherwise Marquez would have kept me in prison rather thanlet me go. But as it was, he assisted me through the Republican lines bya 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 leavethe 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, France will 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 leapedinto 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 Queretaro."

  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 sooften done before.


  "But," protested the girl, "if they capture Your Highness, if they--ifthey hold you for trial?"

  She stopped, for Maximilian was laughing, and laughing heartily. Theidea of hands laid on him, an Archduke of Austria--ha, he was gratefulto her. Its very absurdity had given him the first relaxation of a laughin months.

  "Nevertheless," persisted Jacqueline, whose heritage of a revolution wasan obstinate bundle of these same absurdities, "nevertheless, I hadhoped to save Your Highness with my news, since it is news that leavesno hope. Why not, then, escape? Treat for terms, do anything, only saveyour followers and--yourself, sire?"

  But she found it impossible to sway him from this, his latest conceit.His new role, the more desperate it looked, only ensnared him as themore worthy. He contemplated the end serenely. As a military captain hewas culling laurels against theatric odds. His heroic loyalty to a lostcause, with perhaps a little martyrdom (of personal inconvenience), howthese would count and be not denied when he should return to his destinyin Europe!

  His was even a mood to consort with lofty traits in others, and in akind of poetic ecstasy he thought of Jacqueline's steadfast devotion toher country's glory. And he was moved again by the vague, chivalrouslonging to bend the knee, to do her some knightly service. But--yes, heseemed to remember, there _was_ such a service to be done, yet andyet--no, he had forgotten.

  Then quite curiously, yet still without remembering, he dwelt in reverieon that man named Driscoll who had so filled the morning with valiantdeeds.