The Missourian Part 41

The superb Indian lord was never so hedged in with barbaric ceremony as was his Teuton successor of three centuries later. But Driscoll was patient. He advanced as the red tape gave way, humming under his breath "Green Grows the Gra.s.s," a schottische which the American invaders of '48 had sung in taking this same fortress, which also had given all Americans the name of "Gringo."

Guardias Palatinas saluted the Missourian at the entrance. Two Secretaries of Ceremony, Grand Uniform, with cordon and the Imperial eagle, bowed before him in the Gran Patio. One stepped to his right, the other to his left, with all the ceremony of which they were secretaries, and the three walked abreast the length of the Galeria de Iturbide, where they were joined by the Lesser Service of Honor. Thus, swelling by c.u.mulative degrees of impressiveness, Trooper Driscoll came at last into the Sala de Audiencias, and gazed with admiration at its beautiful Gobelin suite.

The Emperor was there, tall, white browed, refined. He bowed. Driscoll bowed, and started toward him, for they were scarcely in speaking distance. But His Imperial Highness bowed again. He was absent-minded, evidently, but Driscoll bowed also, and pretended not to notice. Then yet a third time the monarch bowed. And with true courtesy the American overlooked what was growing ridiculous, and did likewise. Thus the ritualistic three obeisances were accomplished.

Maximilian dismissed the Lesser Service, and he and his guest were alone. Now Driscoll supposed, considering the discommoding interest his mission had awakened in everybody except in the Emperor, that the Emperor himself would this time be concerned enough to "get down to business." But not so. There were yet the formalities.

"I understand, Senor Embajador," Maximilian began in the language of his court, "that Your Excellency----"

"Thank you, sir, but my name is Driscoll."

"That Your Excellency comes accredited from a government that no longer exists. But We will waive that, since the said power existed at the moment of Your Excellency's departure."

This was to harmonize the absurdity with the Ritual. Maximilian liked to play at receiving an American representative. It grieved him sorely that the United States had never recognized his dignity, but that it had consistently rated him as merely "the Prince Maximilian."

Driscoll's first words cut short the make-believe.

"You'd hardly call them credentials," he said. "Our president, it is true, helped me on my way, but I have nothing from him to you. And yet I bring more than Mr. Jefferson Davis could send. Here," and he produced the memorandum from the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippi department, which in his belt Jacqueline had had restored to him with his other effects.

Maximilian took the note handed him, but stared at the emissary.

Charlotte had induced the monarch to grant the audience. She had hinted at its importance, but not until now did Maximilian recognize his guest.

Driscoll was attired in the full uniform of a lieutenant colonel of cavalry, which, by the way, was what he had carried so jealously in the bundle behind his saddle. From the dignified young officer in gray back to the desperado young giant in homespun proved considerable of a reach for the Hapsburg; but at last, by virtue of much caressing of his silky beard with delicate finger tips, he arrived.

"So, it was you the marshal saved!" he exclaimed. "Yes, yes, I should have remembered sooner. Colonel Lopez told me. A capable, faithful officer, is Lopez! I could not but approve the finding of his court martial. And yet, against his urgent advice, I have decided to pardon you."

"To apologize, you mean?"

The Emperor looked hurt. As a foil for his royal clemency, there should be humble grat.i.tude. Maximilian often mistook fawning for such.

"Isn't it a bit odd," Driscoll queried whimsically, "that an amba.s.sador should be arrested?"

"Jove, that's a fact! I hadn't thought."

"Certainly. But if it don't occur again, we'll just let the apology go."

"No, no," protested the monarch. "You must have your apology. You will receive it from the Grand Chamberlain to-morrow, and it will appear in the Journal Officiel."

"Oh, all right," said Driscoll, "anything to clear the way." Whereupon he plunged and stated his business.

With debonair Prince Max it was not a question of even who talked best.

It was who talked last. And Driscoll, being for the moment an exhorter of both descriptions, drove home conviction as a sabre point. He spoke bluntly, earnestly; and, at the scent of opposition, he spoke fiercely.

The South was defeated, he said, and the North would now make good its threat to drive out the French. And the French would go, too. Suppose they were even willing to undertake a great war for Maximilian, yet they would go just the same. And why? Because they had fought the Russians.

They had fought the Austrians. And they were keeping the Italians out of Rome to help the Pope. So they had not a friend left, not one, to help them against the enemy they must soon fight, which was Prussia.

Consequently they would draw every bayonet out of Mexico, and Maximilian would be left alone to face his rebels. But Maximilian could not face the rebels alone. They had been dominant before the French came. To replace thirty thousand French, Driscoll offered fifty thousand Southerners, fifty thousand well-equipped, splendid veterans.

Twenty-five thousand were already on the frontier, he meaning those under General Slaughter at Brownsville, and Shelby and the others were not far behind.

"But," said Maximilian, smiling bitterly, "you forget that the United States would still object to my poor Empire."

"Not when the French leave, they wouldn't. We would become citizens. We would not be a foreign intervention. You would be backed up by Mexicans against Mexicans, and the North could not interfere. But, suppose that the French remain, wouldn't they have to fight? And they would need our aid to do it, too. Don't you see, sir, that in any case you should make us very welcome?"

"There is a.s.suredly no other way to look at it!" admitted the prince uneasily.

Dreaming himself a monarch of chivalry days, Maximilian was subtly enthralled by the idea of a band of heroes flocking to his standard, their swords on high. Stouter than those warriors who had helped Siegfried to his bride, they would hold for him a treasure greater than that under the Rhine. Themselves and their children forever, they would be the real mainstay of the dynasty founded by Maximilian the Great.

They were Anglo-Saxons, Germanic, his own kindred, and to him they came for new homes and a new country. They would be his landed gentry, his barons, his hidalgos. It was a prospect for an emperor; above all, for a poet emperor. As he looked now on the young Confederate officer, on him who had seemed a desperado, Maximilian thought that here stood one who was the instrument of Destiny.

"Can--can they really come?" he demanded breathlessly.

Driscoll smiled. "Of course, there's no time to lose," he replied. "For instance, if I'd had your answer there at Murguia's ranch, I'd have gotten back in time to head off whole regiments who've probably given up their arms since then. But you can still count on an army west of the Mississippi that hasn't surrendered yet. At least _my_ general hasn't, not Old Joe, and he won't either. But you must say 'yes' pretty quick. We're restless, and might conclude to run the French out of here.

We haven't forgotten how Napoleon forgot to help us."

It was a cunning stroke. Maximilian would have asked nothing better than independence from his "dear imperial brother," and just this was the bribe so temptingly held out by the instrument of Destiny. But the Hapsburg of the heavy, trembling underlip credited wavering as statesmanlike prudence.

"To-morrow," he said, "no, the day after, you shall have my decision."

Jacqueline witnessed the amba.s.sador's departure. Hidden among the roses of the fortress rock, where she sat with a book, she peeped out as he came down the steps to the marshal's landau. The glacial Secretaries of Ceremony flanked him on either side, and the statuesque Palatine Guards saluted. She could not be mistaken, the corners of his mouth were twitching. It was such an inimitable commentary on the Ritual that she had much to do not to dart out and laugh with him in gleeful mischief.

Then, she noted his uniform. After the ornate regimentals of all Europe, what a relief was the simple gray! There was the long coat, the belt, the dragoon sabre, the un.o.btrusive insignia on the collar, and she murmured her verdict advisedly. It was beautiful! Next she noted the man--as though she had not in the first place. His easy frame still had that charm of gaucherie, and the rollicking daredeviltry lurked quiescent in the brown eyes, but enough to recall the rider of fury, her chevalier de Missour-_i_, plunging through a wall and cloud of dust on a big-boned yellow charger. And though now he was in this beautiful simplicity of gray, she looked in vain for some hint of martial stride or pompous chest.

She wondered for a moment why he had worn the uniform. It signified nothing, since the Confederacy had fallen. Then she understood.

_He_ had not surrendered. Nor had those he represented. The gray, for him, still had its reason, and was a power yet; the power to decide an empire's fate. It was the grave dignity of a lost cause; striving, before being doffed forever, to leave behind a new cause. Or, if failing, to accept the lot of surrender. In either case, her chevalier de Missour-_i_ was wearing the dear uniform for the last time. With her keenness for intuition and sympathy, Jacqueline _knew_. She knew what it must mean. And he looked so strong, so splendid! Her eyes unexpectedly dimmed in tenderness for him.

Driscoll, being now a free man, established himself at a hotel near the diligencia office in the busy Plateros street. He drilled through the following day with tedious waiting for the day after, when he was to have the promised reply. Used to men who knew their own minds, he hoped for strength in this emperor fellow. Then, his mission successful, he would be in the saddle by the next night, perhaps by noon, and hastening toward the border with tidings of homes and more fighting for his comrades of the Old Brigade. But the next morning, even as he was mounting Demijohn to go to Chapultepec, a thin man in riding breeches entered the hotel patio and accosted him.

"I am Monsieur eloin," the stranger announced in English that could be understood, "of Her Majesty's household. Also aide and secretary in private to the Emperor. I see, you go to horse. It is well, sir. Mine is outside."

"What's the answer?" asked Driscoll. "I'm not up on conundrums."

"It is that we go to Cuernavaca."

"You don't say! Now where's that, and what for?"

"Cuernavaca is His Majesty's country sit-down, about a douzaine of leagues from here. You have not read of this morning the Journal Officiel? Here it is. The court went there yesterday. His Majesty has to need rest."

"But he was to see me to-day! What's the matter with him?"

M. eloin's brow contracted narrowly, and he shrugged his shoulders. "His Imperial Highness is much worked. He is worse of good health. Her Majesty sought at having him stay, to give you that same-self answer he had promised already. And the Marshal Bazaine, sensible this once, did talk yesterday night before last, after you were there, and beseeched him to accept your offer. And they all beseeched, Her Majesty and Madame la Marechale, and I.--But, what would you?"

"I'm sure I don't know. What the devil----"

"No, not him! But her, sir, her!"

"Her, who?"

"Why, her. We all talk, argue, beseech; and she, in one little whisper, she only tell His Majesty he has to need that rest--and, poof! off they all go to Cuernavaca, and I know nothing. Her Majesty leave me a note. I bring you it here."

"But who is the 'she?' You don't mean----"

"Yes, we others call her Jacqueline. She did it, against everybody who beseech. But we--how you say?--we fool her, you and me. Come, we are there to-night, at Cuernavaca."