The Missourian Part 36

CHAPTER XXVII

BERTHE

"Il y a deux etres en nous: l'acteur et le spectateur."

--_Sienkiewicz._

The same evening, though two hours later, a public hack entered an outlying quarter of the City of Mexico called San Cosme, and drew up before a white mansion with beautiful gardens. A young girl with soft brown hair and gentle eyes got out, ran to the door, and brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation. To the flunkey, who noted the public hack and was reproachful, she said, "I must see His Excellency. Here, I have written my name on Mademoiselle d'Aumerle's card. I am her maid. Say to Monsieur le Marechal that he will regret it, if I do not see him at once. Quick now, you!"

If possessed of guile, Berthe could not have done better. With Jacqueline's card, used only because it had a blank side, her admittance was certain and immediate.

She pa.s.sed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine's private cabinet. At one end there was a j.a.panese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. The marshal, thick necked, heavy cheeked and stocky, was standing, waiting for her.

"So," he exclaimed, "milady is arrived, eh, and you bring me her commands?"

"No, Your Excellency, my mistress does not know that I am here. When she learns, she will dismiss me. I----"

The marshal of France grew cold. "It was a decoy then, the card you used?" he interrupted. "And was that one also, young woman, when you threatened that I should regret----"

"You will indeed regret, monsieur, if you do not let me speak. There's a mistake to correct if--if it's not too late."

The chief of the Army of Occupation shrugged his shoulders until the back of his neck folded over itself. He had been correcting mistakes ever since Maximilian's landing. But he was a child of the people himself, and the distress in her eyes made him patient. "Well, what is it?" he asked.

"It is an American. They will shoot him, monsieur!"

"Ah, one who interests the young person now before me, eh?"

"And I want you to stop them, monsieur! I want----"

"Child, child, whom am I to stop?"

"Colonel Lopez, monsieur. The American escaped once, but mademoiselle gave him up again. He'd saved mademoiselle's life, too. And mine."

The veteran soldier rubbed his finger tips on his bald, bullet-like head. "He saves her, and she gives him to Lopez. He must be an important species of American!"

"Yes, yes, monsieur."

"There, don't worry. His Majesty will pardon your friend to-morrow--if,"

he added to himself, "only from habit."

"But Lopez will shoot him before the Emperor knows."

The marshal had shrewd eyes, and now they opened wide. "Getting more important, our American!" he grumbled uneasily. "Berthe, did your mistress know that Lopez would shoot him before he could be pardoned?"

"Oh yes, monsieur."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BERTHE"

"... Brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation"]

"Name of a name, what does she want him killed for? Why is this drole of a Lopez in such a hurry?--See here, child, you know something more.

What did you mean by my regretting----"

"Because, because everybody seemed to think that the poor brave American had come with an offer of aid for Maximilian, and as you need more troops, I thought----"

"Who, in all mercy, is this American?"

"A Confederate officer, monsieur."

Not one man, but two, paced the floor because of Jacqueline that evening. The second was the marshal of France, and he went at it now, on hearing of the first man. "A Confederate officer?" There were twin creases over his straight nose, furrows of vexed and intense thinking.

The lone Southerner was linked intimately in his reflections with the parliament of a great nation. The people of France had never warmed to the Mexican dream, and the Chambers already were clamoring for the return of the troops. And now, for every Confederate enlisted, a pantalon rouge could be sent back home. But why--name of a name--should Jacqueline try to prevent?

"Did she," he asked, but not very hopefully, "did she have any cause to dislike this American?"

"Oh, monsieur!" The cry was pained surprise. That her mistress could or would pay a grudge! "On the contrary," she protested vehemently, "I have never seen her so moved, never, and if _you_ had seen her, monsieur, as we left Tuxtla! I thought she must surely lose her mind.

One cannot imagine her terror. She cried to the driver, to the outriders, to lash the mules, harder, faster, till it's a miracle we did not crash over a cliff. And all the time she would look back, and at every sound she would clap her hands over her ears and cry out to know if that was shooting. And then she would pound at the window to them to go faster. She wanted to get out of hearing, monsieur. It was only when we were really here in the City that she quieted, but that was worse.

She lay and moaned. I cried, I could not help it, hearing her. She would mutter things, too. 'France, France!' she said once, and it made me shudder. One almost thought she had a dagger in her hand----"

"Never mind, what else did she say?"

"She said, 'Oh, I hate thee, my country!' but she wasn't in her mind, oh no, monsieur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet.

Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could see, for we were pa.s.sing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. 'G.o.d bless him!

G.o.d--Oh, I hope there _is_ a G.o.d, just for this, to bless him, and keep him!'"

"H'm'm," said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed than ever.

Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline; that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon's wish, however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great deal to catch the Sphinx's whisper at all. Besides, he owed his elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.

"Berthe," he said at last, "there's just one man who can interfere where Mademoiselle d'Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the Emperor of France."

The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. "My dear mistress!" she sobbed.

There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was brushed aside.

"Perhaps," came a softly ironical voice, "a woman might so much as veto our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho."

Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband's secret was never one for her.

"Step into this little room," she said to Berthe, opening a door. "It will not take long," she added, an a.s.sured light in her dark Spanish eyes.

"You will save him, madame? You----"

"Against all the marshals of France, child. Go, wait in there."

The marshal of France present smiled on his bride indulgently, admiringly, as she closed the door and faced him.

She was less than half his age, the girl wife of a gray-haired veteran, and as his wife she was second lady of the land. A Mexican aristocrat, small and slender, of a subtle, winsome beauty, with the prettiest mouth and the most pyramidal of crinolines, she had reminded Bazaine of his first wife, and he had courted her. At the wedding Maximilian had stood padrino for the groom, and Charlotte madrina for the bride. The imperial gift to groom and bride was Buena Vista, as the white mansion and gardens in San Cosme were called. Naturally, then, Madame la Marechale approved of Napoleon's _official_ instructions, which directed that Monsieur le Marechal was to establish the Mexican empire solidly and for all time.

Now her manner of calling the marshal Pancho was considerable of an argument, especially when, archly formal, she made it Don Pancho. What if this Confederate aid were to go to the Mexican rebels, as it surely would if the emissary at Tuxtla were shot? And, without either French or Confederates, the Empire would fall, the rebels would win; and then, she wanted to know, what would become of their beautiful home, of their high position? Moreover, the United States was threatening to drive the French from Mexico, and Madame la Marechale believed it a very good thing for the French to have at their side some of the very men who had held those Yankees back for four long years.