The Missourian Part 35

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 still hanging 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 for their comfort by Maximilian. Driscoll's effects, including his gray cape-coat and the bundle he had carried behind his saddle, were found in his room at the House. Jacqueline took them into the carriage with her, along with that absurd little valise that she had brought from the s.h.i.+p for an hour's jaunt on sh.o.r.e. Driscoll rode with Ney and the Austrians, and was once again headed toward the capital, still sixty fair Mexican leagues southward.

For six days it was an uneventful journey, seemingly. By day there were sierras, and valleys, and wayside crosses marking violent deaths. By night they accepted either ranchero hospitality or put up at some village meson. But within himself, adventures were continuous and varying for the Storm Centre. He could not account for the strange, curious elation that possessed him, especially when Jacqueline would take Ney's horse and ride at his side, perhaps for an hour, when the sun was not too hot. Driscoll never knew how long these occasions lasted. He did not know that they were long at all. As a matter of fact, he had ceased using ordinary standards of measurement. The universe, and sordid accessories such as time, radiated entirely about one little velvet patch near a dimple satellite.

There came to be long silences between them as they rode, either boy or girl content to have it so, and neither the least bit lonesome. And they talked too, naturally, though this was not so significant. She would slyly provoke him. To her mind, there was never anyone quite so satisfying at a quarrel. She would pause in delighted expectancy to see his eyes grow big when she thrust, and then to see his mouth twitch at the corners as he caught her blade on his own keen wit. She had forgotten that he was rustic, except for the added zest it gave. Nor was there a false note in him, so happily and totally unconscious was he of self. And as for a certain gaucherie, that was the spice to his whole manner.

They talked of many things; rather, she made him talk. She learned that his name was John, as hers was Jeanne, and she wanted to know why the horse was Demijohn.

"Because, Miss Jack-leen," he answered, "he's my other half, and sometimes the better one, too." He remembered that once, when he had drooped limp over the saddle, the buckskin had carried him out of the fighting to the rear. "You see," he added, "we were both colts when our little s.h.i.+ndy up there broke loose."

"And you both went? Ah, Monsieur the Patriot, you did go, you did affront the tyrant? Yes!" She had the explorer's eagerness. Perhaps she might 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 them too, those blessed, over-petted veterans of the Grande Armee. They are in the Hotel des Invalides, with medals to diagnose their glory. Oh, la, la, but there's a pleasant fas.h.i.+on! The people, the politicians, they forget the hot blood that fought simply because there were pretty blows to strike. They see only the gray hairs. 'Honneur aux patriotes!' You wait, monsieur. You, too, will be made into the hero, ex post facto, and you 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 have stirred the memories of his home, not with one who could listen as she did. In his heart settled a warmth that was good, and the glow of it shone 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 she were 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 awakened interest in a woman, but the tribute she paid him was enn.o.bling, and a deep 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 gray eyes had never sparkled on him in coquetry as they sometimes did on other men, and now they were grave and sweet. It was a phase of Jacqueline that only her maid had known.

The marquise gathered that Missour-_i_, as she called it, was an exceedingly strange and fascinating region. She learned that it was a state, like a department in France, like her own Bourbonnais for instance. But there the comparison ended. The rest was all startling versatility. For the inhabitants had not only taken both sides during the Civil War, but through their governor had proclaimed themselves an independent republic into the bargain. They must be unusual citizens, those Missourians.

But they were strangest because they did not seem to be actors. They did not refine living into a cult, with every pleasure and pain cla.s.sified and weighed out and valued. No, they actually lived. It was hard to realize this, but in the end she did, and with ever increasing wonder, with also a beginning of envy and hunger. But there was still another thing even more indefinable. It centered in the word "home," which she knew neither in French nor Spanish, but which she came to know now, as its 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 a grim 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 a synonym of American backbone. Grim, yes; but the woman there, where the high priest blinked not, was a divinity. She was a divinity in the tenderest and most devoted sense of the word. And the Puritanism was purity enshrined, as a simple matter of course. The longing, if only to know more of this odd country, rose in her mysteriously, and stronger and stronger.

When on one occasion she went back to the coach, she found that Berthe also was enjoying the change to horseback. Jacqueline was glad of it.

Now she could be alone, and she believed that she wanted to think. But she could not pin down what she wanted to think about; because, no doubt, there was so very much. Instead, she looked vacantly at the Storm Centre's cartridge belt and pistols on the seat in front of her. They were grim, too, these playthings of a boy.

Dupin had left the weapons with Ney, back at the hacienda, and Ney had turned them over to Jacqueline as to the real strategic chief of the expedition. And Jacqueline had kept them, perhaps to look at, perhaps because of a whim that a prisoner should not be armed. She liked to hear Driscoll mourn for them, not knowing where they were, and she held back the surprise as one lingers before an antic.i.p.ated pleasure. She picked up the great, black revolvers with a woman's fascinated respect for the harsh, 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 she would count the leaden missiles. When finally she laid the belt aside, a bullet remained in her lap. It had fallen there out of its sh.e.l.l.

Starting to fit the bullet in again, she suddenly dropped both bullet and cartridge. Her hands trembled. This particular sh.e.l.l contained no powder. But it contained a tightly rolled slip of oiled paper. The cartridge was a dummy, a wee strong box for some vital doc.u.ment.

It was not for scruples against looking that she paused. On the contrary, it was that she must look, absolutely, in sacred, patriotic duty bound, that finally decided--nay, compelled her to look. Still she hesitated before drawing out the paper. She dreaded what it might tell her. Concealed thus, and revealed only by a hazard, the paper held, she felt certain, the secret and the significance of the American's errand to Mexico. And she did not want to know. She reviled bitterly the cruel chance that had thrust it on her.

She read. The paper was a communication addressed to the Emperor Maximilian by the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippi department. Foreseeing Lee's surrender, they had gathered from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, at a place in the latter state named Marshall, and there they had decided that they would not surrender. They would seek homes and a country elsewhere, swords in hand. At this meeting, which had been inspired by Gen. Joe Shelby, they had deposed the cautious general commanding, Kirby Smith, and they had put in his stead Simon Bolivar Buckner. The Trans-Mississippi department numbered fifty thousand men. There would also be fugitives from Lee's and Johnson's corps, besides Jefferson Davis in person, should he contrive to pa.s.s the Federal lines. Many thousands of veterans would shortly be marching across the Rio Grande. In Texas, at the Confederate a.r.s.enals and depositories, they would seize what they needed: guns, ammunition, horses, provisions, money. In Mexico they would become citizens, and they would defend their new homes against outlawry, rebellion, or invasion. The signatory generals prayed the Emperor Maximilian to consider this, and "to do it quick."

Jacqueline put the letter back in the cartridge, and everything looked as 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 become citizens, too--Mon Dieu, _that_ is a nation!"

With them Maximilian would have a people behind him, and his throne would be as a rock. He could, and most certainly would, disdain the French army of occupation with its thirty thousand bayonets. The French might go back home. He would speed them cheerfully, and henceforth be Emperor in fact.

"But our treasure and our dead," sighed Jacqueline bitterly, "we cannot take _them_ back. No, nor our hopes, though they weigh little enough now, for that matter. Oh dear, and _I_ am one of those hopes!--Help me Heaven, else I shall hate my own country. Oh, I must be true!--Now, _why_ couldn't those Missourians have sent--someone else?"

That evening she held a pen, but it would not move, not while her thoughts were upon it. So, by sheer will, she nerved herself not to think, and wrote mechanically. She wrote a message to Lopez, and another to Dupin, and yet a third. The third brought the tears long before it was 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's hacienda. They had taken pains to keep behind Lopez. Their pursuer, ahead of them, had not made twenty miles the first day, for he had delayed in order to search here and there. But the second day, he had evidently accepted failure, and hastened on to overtake the Emperor. The Emperor himself, after traveling constantly for a night and a day, had rested a night and half a day to reflect on his late energy, and thereafter he was proceeding as roadside ovations would permit.

Accordingly on this, the fifth night, Lopez was close behind the Emperor, and both were within a day of the capital, and less than a day ahead of Driscoll, Jacqueline and Ney.

All the next day Jacqueline kept to her coach. She was cross or nervously excited or melancholy, and by erratic turns in every mood that was hopelessly downcast, until her maid became well nigh frantic. At first Ney would hover near in helpless concern, but she ordered him away angrily. However, the storm broke at last when Driscoll reined in and waited at the roadside. She could see him through the little front pane of gla.s.s as the carriage drew nearer, and she watched with a fierce hunger in her eyes. All the time she stirred in greater agitation, and her breath came more and more quickly. At the very last moment, when a second later he might have seen her, she sprang to the window, looked once again, then in a fury s.n.a.t.c.hed at the shade and jerked it down.

Driscoll paused uncertain, but wheeled and galloped back to the head of the column. Berthe turned to her mistress. She was lying weakly against the cus.h.i.+ons, staring at nothing and panting for air.

Toward dusk they reached Tuxtla, a little pueblo on the highroad set mid maguey farms that made the rolling hill slopes of Anahuac look like a giant's cabbage patch. In the distance, under two snow-capped peaks beyond, the mosaic domes and sandstone towers and painted walls of the capital glittered in the setting sun like some picture of an Arabian city vaguely known to memory. The travelers were not a dozen miles from their destination, but Berthe announced that madame her mistress would rest at Tuxtla for the night.

The Austrians were quartered in the village, and Ney and Driscoll found accommodations for the two girls and themselves farther down the road, at the house of a maguey grower whom they persuaded to vacate. While it was still light Driscoll amused himself strolling alone between the rows of the great century plants. Under their leaves, curving high above his head, he watched peons with gourds suck out the honey water from the onion-like bulbs into goatskin bags. After a time he wandered through the hacendado's primitive distillery and on back to the house, with a feeling for supper.

As he entered, he heard the clanking of a sabre in the dark room. He thought nothing of it, but almost at once something cut through the air and a noose fell over him. He swung round, but the rope jerked tight about his knees, and he lurched and swayed as an oak before the axe. He struck with his fist and had a groan for reward, but a second lariat circled his shoulders and bound his arms to his body. As he went down under the weight of men, the shutters were thrown open, and he looked up into the red-lidded eyes of Colonel Lopez. A troop of cavalry was pa.s.sing on the road outside, and he caught the sound of wheels departing.

"You hear?" said Lopez. "The marquesa is going to the City, having decided 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 candle for company. But he also had her note. It was the third of the messages which she had written the night before.

"Monsieur," it began, "I cannot let you die without telling you that it was 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 my punishment. It is a self inflicted one, because you need not have known what I have done. The telling of this to you is my scourge, but it is not penitence. Worse and more unbearable is my sorrow that the penitence will never come, that I can feel no remorse, no more than if some inevitable thing, like the fever, had taken you. I would always do again what 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 in this country for France's sake. Those hundreds are my countrymen, and you, if you lived till to-morrow, would make _their_ offering useless. 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 not believe that I would so send you to death needlessly. There will be no emissaries after you. Your Confederates shall know that Maximilian's court martial executed you, and is it that your compatriotes will then desire to help Maximilian? Believe--only believe, monsieur--that it is a cruel duty not permitting that I shall listen to my heart. If you but knew, if you but knew--and you shall know. Monsieur Driscoll--oh, mon chevalier, 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 envy you, for you are going, and I must stay, all alone, without you. Mon bien 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's one thing," he muttered, "and that is, there's nothing between her and Maximilian, not when she's keeping help from him." And on he paced, his fists opening and clenching. Suddenly he came to a dead halt.

"By G.o.d," he cried, "I'm not going to be shot, no sir, not now, not after--not after this letter!"

Here was neither boy nor warrior. It was very much in the way of a lover.