CHAPTER XXII
THE ABBEY OF MOUNT REGRET
"O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh." --_Romeo and Juliet_.
It is curious and humiliating, how Nature does not vex herself in theleast for the dying of a man. And yet, to the man, the event is so veryimportant! Each breath of spaceless night, each twinkle from thefirmament, though but the phantom of a ray quenched ages before,everything, he teases into anxious commentary on his own puny end. Therecould not be more ado if the Universe were in the throes, writhingagainst a reconquering Chaos. Harassed creature, what ails him is onlythe pathetic fallacy, which is a soothing melody and stimulating tomortal pride. But the lapses into healthier realization are very, veryhard to bear.
How cold it was, when Maximilian awoke! The chill seemed creeping nearerhis heart, nearer the citadel. And how black the night, before the dawn!But where, now, were his matches? He had the same monotonous trouble ofany other morning in getting one to light. Then the two candles gutteredfitfully, sordidly, just as they had always done. The white cloths ofthe last communion seemed a ghostly intrusion on what was of every day.Maximilian drew his cloak about him. The chill was simply of theplateau, of the night, not the portent of death. The world without wasdark and desolate, but that had no reference to the tomb. The world wasmerely taking its normal sleep. The heavy cloak ought to answer--but, itdid not.
He took up the snuffers, coaxing the yellow flames to brighter promise,then set the candles before him on the table. A piece of dripping tallowfell upon his hand, and the hand jerked back. The man pondered. So, evenhis flesh was part of Nature too, and heeded trivial pain, with nothought of the bullets to drive through it shortly.
He wrote two or three letters yet remaining, to friends, to his brother,the Emperor of Austria. He penned words of farewell, yet even as thetears welled in his eyes, he needed to stop and make sure that he hadindeed not more than three hours yet to live. It was difficult, though,with the candles spluttering there, in the ordinary, every-day fashion.He signed the last letter, to his mother. He gazed at the signature, ofcharacters squarely formed. He might have written it yesterday, or theyear before. It looked the same. But the pen he had just dropped haddropped forever. No, no, that should not be! And he snatched it upagain, and wrote, scribbled, covered paper, fearing to stop. But at lasthe did stop, with a shivering laugh. He must face this thing, hedecided. And over and over again he told himself, "I have written mylast. Yes, my last!" and steadfastly resisted the taunting, airy quilllying there. So, what was harder than farewell to loved ones, he nervedhimself to end the small actions of his daily existence.
Maximilian had his life long been a dreamer, ever gazing wide-eyed as achild on the wonderful fantasies that came, whether entrancing ordreadful. But the child's fantasies are kindred with man's philosophies.Often, as he lay awaiting sleep, there was one particular thought thatwould bring him quickly, stark, staring awake. And this thought was, howcertain things always came to pass. No matter how far away, nor how veryslow their approach, making vague the hope or horror of them, yet theactual, present hour of their happening always struck at last. There wasthe eve of the day when he should be of age. Oh, but he had longed forthat day! He had longed until he craftily suspected it never wouldarrive. And yet, despite those leaden-footed oxen, the minutes, arriveit did, in very fact. The eve of that day was a happy bed-time; but overhis ardent reveries, over the vista of future achievements, theresuddenly, darkly loomed another thought, a foretoken and clammy shroud,which smote the young prince with trembling. For would not the day ofhis death, however far away also, sometime be the present, passingmoment, as surely, just as surely, as this anniversary of his birth?Here was a terrifying glimpse of mortality.
When, not fifteen years later, Maximilian opened his eyes in the blackCapuchin cell, and comprehension grew on him of the present day'smeaning, he recalled how the fantasy of a morning of death had firstcome to him. He was a boy, and he was to go on a voyage. The boy hadawakened when there was scarcely light as yet, and heard his mother atthe door. "It is time, dear." She spoke low, not liking to break hisslumber. But in the silence of all the world her voice was clear, andvery sweet, and the words stood forth against his memory ever afterward.He was to be gone from her for a time, and this was in her mind as shecalled him. The boy, though, could think of nothing except that hislittle excursion among new and strange adventures was to begin, actuallyto begin. But then, quite unaccountably, there fell over his eagernessa chilling gloom. The delightful sprite named Expectation, who hadwhispered so piquantly of this same eventful morn, had basely changedherself into a hideous vampire, and she muttered at him, in frightful,raucous tones. Yet the hag's snarls were true promises. There wasto come, surely, inexorably, a certain other eventful morn, andhe would awake, and without his mother's calling him, he wouldknow--_know_--that it was time!
Back in that childhood hour he had lain for a while quite inconsolable,until his mother came again, and rested her hand on his head, and toldhim--"Why, one would think the little goose was going away forever!" Itwas broad daylight by now, too; and wholly comforted, he had sprung up,joyfully alive. Eternity did not worry him any more for a week.
But the awakening of this later morning, in a Mexican prison! And whenhe understood that the old familiar fantasy was become a fact! When heremembered how once he had been consoled in his boyhood! For a momentthe sense of loss and of helplessness was stifling, and heyearned--yearned frantically, as he never had as a boy--for the touch ofhis mother's hand, for her voice, so low and sweet. The horrid crueltyhe could not, during that moment, bear. He felt that he must cry out forher, like a very child. And though he wept, it was the man, and theman's despair that his was not now the boy's need of comfort.
But when they came in the first dawn and knocked at his door, they foundhim serene, untroubled, and only the wonted shade of melancholy on hisbrow. He greeted them courteously, and was desirous that they shouldhave no unnecessary difficulties on his account. Being dressed already,punctiliously, and in black, he himself went to call Miramon and Mejia,and brought them to his own cell, where they received the last sacramenttogether.
Later the three condemned were at breakfast--bread, chicken, a littlewine and a cup of coffee--when horses' hoofs rang abruptly in the streetbelow, and as abruptly ceased under their window. There was a command,and sabres rasped against their scabbards to gain the light. Maximilianraised eyes filled with pity to his two companions. Mejia, an Indianthoroughly, made a gesture of impatience. The handsome Miramon, ofFrench blood, shrugged his shoulders. Then both glanced timidly in theirturn at Maximilian, and each finding a hand stretched forth, grasped itsilently. But the priests of the condemned, who were waiting apart, felttheir blood turn to icy beads. For them the quick metallic gust ofstrident life down in the street had the merciless quality of hammeringupon a coffin lid.
Troops filed up the stairs, and along the corridor. They halted, facedthe door, grounded arms. An officer stepped out, fumbled with adocument, and read the death sentence. Maximilian gently releasedhimself from one and another of those present, and turning to theAustrian physician, handed him his wedding ring. "You will give it to mymother," he said. Father Soria's eyes filled with tears, one plump fistclenched pathetically. Maximilian passed an arm over the good man'sshoulder, and with him walked out among the soldiers. He nodded to themencouragingly, and so started on his little journey.
Three ramshackle public hacks, set high over wabbling wheels, and drawnby mules, waited at the door. Maximilian smiled an apology as hemotioned Father Soria to precede him into the first. The troops usedtheir spurs. A whip cracked. The springs jolted. Everywhere, on thecurbs, in windows, on housetops, there were people. The archduke had theimpression of breath tensely held, and of eyes, eyes strained, curious,and awed, like those of children who witness suffering and cannotunderstand.
Passing the convent of Santa Clara, Maximili
an peered upward at thewindows; and, as he hoped, he saw Jacqueline. She was leaning far out,and tremulously poised. Tender compassion was in every line of her tensebody, but as their gaze met she tried to smile, bravely and cheerfully,and until the hack swung round the corner, there was her hand waving himfarewell. The little journey might have been, a fete, and somehow, hewas comforted.
"I wonder," he mused, "if I've done very much for her, after all. Or forthat American, named Driscoll? Will she--" He shook his head, andsighed. "No, she is not the lass to have him, not after my little sceneof last night. But, the choice does rest with her, now. And for a girl,that is everything.--Alas, poor young man!"
His rueful prophecies were that moment interrupted by a woman's scream.It rose piercingly over the clatter of their march. Maximilian put outhis head and looked back. The woman was running beside Mejia's hack,panting, stumbling through the dust, her black hair streaming. She helda babe in her rebosa, but with her free hand she clutched weakly at thespokes. To the clumsy, pitying soldiers who would force her away, shecried again, "Mercy ... Mercy ... Mercy...." A low murmuring grew onevery side. Maximilian flung open his cab door. But the same instant itwas slammed against him. He sank to his seat, with a stare of dumb painin his eyes that the priest beside him never afterward forgot. The womanback there was Mejia's wife. And Maximilian had had one glimpse of thehusband's face. It was a face stretched to agony, deadened to the colorof lead.
"May I, may I--_pay_ for this!" moaned the one-time Emperor. "OGod, grant Thou that I do pay for this, hereafter!"
Beyond the last hovels of the suburbs, at the foot of the Cerro de lasCampanas, the condemned were told to alight. Here again there was athrong, hundreds and hundreds of swarthy faces, blank in awed pity. Onegaping fellow pointed wonderingly.
"Look, there they are! There--los muertos!"
Maximilian overheard, and a cold shiver crossed his spine. To beidentified already as "the dead one!"
Then he beheld his coffin, there, the longest of the three being borneup the hill. They were boxes of cheap wood, unpainted inside, smearedwith black on the outside. A wavy streak of carmine simulated thedrooping cord and golden tassels of richer caskets. It was the pomp andcircumstance that pertains to the humblest peon clay.
Four thousand serried bayonets squared the base of the hill, and made acompact, bristling hedge to hold back the common people. Through itmarched the doomed Imperialists, each with his confessor and a platoonof guards, and so toiled on up the slope. The archduke looked about him.There were many privileged spectators within the cordon, but nowhere didhe see a former friend. All, all, had kept away, and in his heart heknew that it was better so. He could not ask that much of them. Butstay--yes, a remembered figure caught his attention; a shriveleddecrepit figure. Here, too, mid every color Republican, he beheld in theman's garb a last surviving uniform of the vanished Empire. It was,however, scarcely to be distinguished as such. The red coat wasthreadbare, and soiled with dust. The ragged green pantaloons, held by aknotted rope, were grotesquely faded. Yet the prince, who had oncegloried in dashing regimentals and mistook them for power, was deeplytouched. He recognized a lone unit of what had been none other than theBatallon del Emperador. He paused, to have a word with the miserablederelict.
"So, you would be near me, even now?" he said. "Ah, ever faithful littleold man, but are you brave enough for the horror of it? Are you?"
Red eyeballs rolled upward in their sockets, and for a space met thearchduke's kindly gaze. Then the steady repellant hate in them seemeddisconcerted, and the withered form cowered under the touch of the palewhite hand. Inaudible words rattled in the old man's throat, and hetrembled, as though to turn and run. Maximilian regarded himbenevolently, thinking it a crisis of emotion.
"There, there," he said, "go if you wish. It's not well, you see, tothink of me so much. But you must not imagine that I am ungrateful. Whenyou believed yourself unseen, certainly when you had no hope of reward,throughout my misfortunes, you have always hovered near me, on thebattlefield, and more lately under my prison window. Yes, yes, I haveseen. And now, and now I thank you." The bloodshot eyes roved theground, but did not lift again. "As humble, as loyal as a dog,"Maximilian murmured as he turned away.
They indicated to him that he should take his place before a wall ofadobe blocks which had been piled together near the crest of the hill,only a little lower than those very fortifications built by theImperialists themselves. With a gesture of assent, he complied. Thepriests fell sorrowfully back behind the soldiers, and he and Miramonand Mejia were alone together, three tragic isolated figures in a littleoblong patch of bare rocky hillside. One end of the oblong was the adobeshield. The other three sides were walls of living men, massed shoulderto shoulder, with bayonets pointed outward against the jostling peeringcrowd. The three who were to die could now see no human being beyond thedense, double row of soldiery. The remainder of earth for them was thehollow square, bounded by the slouching backs clothed in blue, by thewhite flats of the kepis, by the line of light playing over the thornsof steel. Beyond was the early morning sun; above, the mystery of space.
Through the gap of an instant the shooting squads tramped in, nearer andnearer, until they halted opposite the condemned. Maximilian thenperceived which squad was to be his own. It numbered seven tiradores anda yellow, beardless officer. The seven were low, cumbersome, tawny, andthey shuffled awkwardly. Their stripling chief thrust out his stomach,and he handled his large sword with an unaccustomed flourish. Thepompous severity was, after all, only insolence. He had need to keepguard on his importance; he did not wish to hear the pounding of hisheart. Yet his muscles twitched unbecomingly, which jerked his mouth,and sometimes his head.
Maximilian stepped forward and addressed them. To each he gave a goldpiece bearing his effigy. It was his last expenditure in that coin. Herequested them earnestly, gently, to aim at his body, not at his head.He was thinking of his mother. He would not have her see him withmangled features. Then with a final reassuring word, he turned back tothe wall.
They were going to place him between the other two, but with a smile andshake of the head, he would not have it so. His last act was forprecedence. Affectionately he drew Miramon to the place of honor, sothat Mejia was on the right, and himself on the left.
Then the _fiscal_ of the Republic appeared, and read the militarylaw. For any who should ask the lives of the condemned, death wasprescribed. But if there was anything the condemned themselves wished tosay....
Maximilian removed his hat. "Mexicans," he said, "may my blood be thelast to be spilled for this country's welfare. Long live Independence!Long live Mexico!"
He spoke the words calmly, gravely, and having concluded, he carefullyadjusted a large handkerchief, so that his beard might not be burned bythe powder. Then he crossed his arms on his breast, and gazed steadilyinto the barrels of the leveled muskets, waiting.
A wave of motion, of tendons stiffening, passed along the thick wall offlesh. Against it the tide without swelled higher, stronger. Tensionstrained upward to the supreme crash. The quiet of a multitude is pain.
But the other two Imperialists had not spoken yet. Mejia shook his headpassionately. He saw only his young wife with her babe, panting,stumbling through the dust. He held a crucifix, and would not take itfrom his lips. Miramon, however, raised his voice to protest against thecharge of treason. Of that crime he died innocent. But he pardoned, ashe hoped for pardon. Then he cried, "Long live Mexico! Long live theEmperor!"
Maximilian started. These were the words that he thought he should liketo hear. But now they grated. They recalled the mistake he had lived,the anachronism of his life. They were scorpions. They stung like theneedle in an ulcer. He turned sharply, in tearful reproach. But a swordflashed, the volley came, and the three men fell, as under a crushingrock, one against the wall; his head broken over upon his breast. Thepert young officer pointed his blade at three convulsive bodies, andthrough each a last bullet sped, burying itself in the earth beneath.The cro
wd pressed, surged, stood on tiptoe.
* * * * *
There was one other among the spectators, but keeping himself hidden,whom Maximilian would have been concerned to see there. He was Driscoll.He came to watch the shriveled derelict, Murguia. He came to stand guardover a soul, Maximilian's. What peace that soul had found should not bedestroyed. And so he screened himself in the crowd, holding ready tocrush a viper whose fangs were heavy with poison. When Maximilian pausedand spoke to the old man, Driscoll was very near, near enough to hear,and to strike. But the old man had only wheezed and mumbled. Though whythat old man did not utter a first word, though why he could not, willnever be explained. But this much is true, that the ambushed soul,moving so calmly toward eternity, then stepping so near the coiledserpent, was yet its own guardian, unwittingly.
Until the very end Driscoll staid there alert. The old man, baffled,insatiate, might yet cry out what he knew. Driscoll's gaze neverrelaxed. He felt as though he watched a murderer while the murder wasbeing done. But the old man only listened. Unable to see within thehollow square, he listened, and waited. His lower jaw hung open, andover his lip a white froth grew and grew, until it broke and trickleddown his chin. The red eyeballs gleamed ravenously, as still he waited.
"When this is over," Driscoll said to himself, "he'll plump down in afit and blow out. Else he'll go raving crazy. Lord, that look!"
When it _was_ over, Driscoll went to him. He had but to reach fortha hand and fasten on his shoulder. He held him against a scurrying ofspectators, whom the tragedy's close had that instant brought to life.
"Here, Murgie, here's something that belongs to you," he said. "Well,what's the matter? Take it, I don't want it."
The old man looked up. An ivory cross was dangling from the other'sfingers. The cross still showed bloodstains; no later flowing of bloodhad washed _them_ away. But the father of Maria de la Luz stared,stared vacantly at the trinket. The masterful, consuming rage of twoyears past was gone out of his eyes. Instead they were watery andsenile. The brows, and even the lashes, had turned as white as the thinstrands of hair, and contrasted gruesomely against the yellow, mottledskin, which stretched like clouded parchment over the bony death's head.At last the old man put out his hand and took the cross, notcomprehending.
"No, I didn't give it to him," Driscoll explained bluntly. "I told you Iwouldn't."
Yet no spasm of chagrin distorted the weazen face.
"This chain here, it's--it's _gold_!" the old man cried.
Then he sputtered, choked. What had he betrayed? Would the strange donorreclaim the gift, knowing it was gold? He leered craftily at Driscoll,and with a hungry, gloating secrecy--his old slimy way of handlingmoney--he smuggled the holy symbol under his jacket. But from cunningthe leer changed to suspicion and quick alarm. He delved into hispockets, one after another. He searched greedily, wildly, until the lastcoin on him lay in his palm. Quaking in every feeble bone, he countedhis poor wealth again and again. There was very little left. He glaredat Driscoll. He glared at townsmen, officers, blanketed Inditos, allswarming past to gaze on the three corpses. He cried "Thief!" first atone unheeding passer-by, then at another.
"I had more than this!" he whined. "More--more than this! There was myhacienda, my peons, my cotton, my mills, my canvas bags. There was myblockade runner. She was Clyde-built, she was named _La Luz_, shecost twenty thousand English gold pieces. Who has taken these thingsfrom me? Who--where----Curse you, do _you_ know?"
Dissipating his hoards, sacrificing his last chattel, all that was now ablank. But his hoards, his chattels, were all that were now worth while,and the miser clamored for them, and them only. Vengeance, however, isan ironical bargainer. Vengeance kept her pay, and "abhorred Styx, theflood of deadly hate," had dried and left a stranded soul, parched byavarice. Driscoll was moved by a pity half ashamed.
"Look here, Murgie," he threatened terribly, "Do you say _I_ stoleyour----By the Great Horn Spoon, I'll----" He flung his hand to hisrevolver.
The counter-irritant had instant effect. All moisture died out of therat eyes, leaving them two little horrible beads. The miser shrank,groveled, in mortal terror of some physical hurt.
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