The Missourian Part 65

"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 finger nails cracked disagreeably, and his features worked in an extreme of agitation. He tried to fix his s.h.i.+fting blue eyes upon first one and then the other of the two girls, as though to ferret out what they must know. "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, mi coronel, all must acclaim your bravery, as well as--your loyalty. But take me to your beloved Prince Max, for I do a.s.sure you, senor, my news goes not without myself."

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

Pa.s.sing on through the ravaged Alameda, they entered the streets of Queretaro.

"Hear!" Jacqueline exclaimed. "Such a quant.i.ty of vivas and clarins and national 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 out emaciation. They had broken through to food that day. Bueno, could they not do it again? Old croons had returned to their stalls and accustomed corners in the market place, and as in days of peace were already squatted before corn or beans heaped on the stone pavement in portions for a quartilla, a media, or a real, as though the pyramids were not so pitifully little, as though the wholesale purchase were not made just that morning in heavy terms of blood.

Behind the ponderous a.s.syrian-like church of Santa Rosa, in the old, half ruined monastery and garden, was the hospital of the besieged. A stifling, fetid odor, far worse than of drugs merely, sickened the two girls as a foul breath when they pa.s.sed with their guide between thick walls into the large, overcrowded rooms. Military medical service was not yet become an inst.i.tution in Mexico, and this place was like some horrible antechamber of the grave. Every cot had its ghastly transient, and so had the benches, brought here from the different plazas. More and more wounded were arriving constantly, and those found to be still alive were laid on the flagstones wherever s.p.a.ce for a blanket remained. But in spite of the morning's fight, in spite of almost daily skirmishes for weeks past, the sick outnumbered all others; and those who did come with wounds, and survived them, stayed on to swell the longer list. Men tossed in fever, craving what they might not have, a cooling draught, a proper food, and effective medicine, until, with waking, they craved an easier boon, and died. But the hospital fever, the calenturas, the gangrene, were not to be all. Out of the diseased air, mid the fumes of pious tapers, the spectre of epidemic was taking hideous shape over the many, many upturned faces. The spectre was the tifo, a plague more dreaded in high alt.i.tudes than black vomit in the low.

Jacqueline found Maximilian bending over a stricken cavalry officer. The Emperor was far from a well man, and his fair skin more than ever contrasted as something foreign and lonely among the swarthy faces on every side. His ostentation was now simplicity, as befitted a monarch in camp. He wore neither sword nor star. His garb was plain charro, in which he often walked among citizens and soldiers, inquiring about rations, or requesting a light for his cigar, never minding if a sh.e.l.l burst and kicked dust over him, and always affable, always ready to smile 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 no kingly precedent.

Pausing unseen, Jacqueline noted tears in the blue eyes as he pinned some decoration on the officer's bloodstained s.h.i.+rt. A good heart, she thought, 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. His hands trembled from haste, for he would have the soldier appear before that dread Throne above as a Caballero of the Mexican Eagle. In pity for them both, Jacqueline asked herself what precedence awaited the new Caballero of the Mexican Eagle in a Court, not Imperial, but Divine.

Jacqueline had not journeyed her perilous way out of simple friends.h.i.+p for a desolate prince, but could she have foreseen how his eyes lighted with gladness to behold one friend who remembered, in sweet charity she would almost have come for that alone.

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

There was beseeching in Maximilian's quick scrutiny of her face, as though the helpless messenger had aught of power over her tidings.

"In--in a moment, mademoiselle," he said tremulously. "I always see the--new ones, before I go."

The "new ones" were still being brought in, until any first aid from the distracted surgeons was of the most casual--the ripping of bandaged cloth, a knot tied, and so on to the next. Followed by Lopez, the two girls, and several officers of the hospital staff, Maximilian pa.s.sed from ward to ward. But Jacqueline's hand seemed always to be threading a needle, or holding a ligature, or lightly touching a hot forehead, and in every case the surgeon would nod quickly, gratefully, as to a fellow craftsman. 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 green pantaloon whom Lopez had carried off the field. One of the nurses had placed a handkerchief over his face, because of the stinging flies, but Jacqueline recognized the thin white hair and the twisted wig as of the old man whom she had sent ahead in her coach. At first he seemed to be dead, for he lay very still on the floor, though a surgeon was probing his wound, and his blood was fast filling the bowl held by the nurse.

But now and again, the straining cords in his emaciated wrist twitched with 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 Anastasio Murguia, the father of Maria de la Luz.

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

"I remember him," said Maximilian softly, looking up to the others. "One of 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 there he 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 the wound and dropped a bullet to the floor. Next he gently rolled the patient over on his back, and then it was that Jacqueline saw in Murguia's hand, in the hand that had been under him, a little ivory cross. Fainting, unconscious, he still clutched it, from Driscoll's leaving him on the battlefield until the present moment. By now the stains of his child's blood were washed away in his own. Jacqueline's quick eyes caught an inscription on the gold mounting, and leaning close she read the dead girl's name, "Maria de la Luz."

With the gripping of the bullet and its extraction, or possibly at the sound of a voice--Maximilian's--the old man's eyes opened, and held the Emperor's in a deathly stare. Jacqueline watched the piercing beads grow smaller and smaller in their cavernous sockets, and all the while they seemed to concentrate their intense fire. The others, except Lopez, thought it delirium, but Jacqueline would have named it the very blackest 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 a smile?" Jacqueline wondered. But the Imperial party took its leave, and the tragedy lurking beneath was not revealed, as yet.

Through the throng waiting outside the hospital to acclaim him again as a prince victorious, Maximilian led the two girls to their coach, and went with them to the convent of Santa Clara, where he asked that they be received as guests by the sisters. Here, in the comfortless _parloir_ of the retreat, he learned the reason of Jacqueline's daring journey from the capital.

"I bring Your Highness," said she, "the most spiteful news my feeble s.e.x can 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 had just heard the answer to the one question, to the one hope, of all Queretaro.

"You, you mean Marquez?"

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

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

"But why? Tell me!"

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

"Sell the capital?"

"Just a little patience, sire. Now what did Diaz do, but take Puebla by a.s.sault before Marquez could arrive? Then he turned on Marquez, and Marquez turned and ran. Oui, oui, sire, he _ran_, ran like the little ugly, skulking Leopard that he is. To cross a creek, he filled it with all the ammunition, and kept on running, leaving his army defenseless behind him. Groan if you must, sire; others have died in groans. But the Leopard had done this kind of thing before, it should have been remembered. He got back safely though, and squandered the army that might have relieved Queretaro to do it. Mon Dieu, what that panic must have been! One entire battalion surrendered to fifty guerrillas.

Yet the Austrian cavalry, the Hungarians, and some others fought, fought with their sabres, and won victories too. Helas, they only proved what might 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 and bleeding and filthy, straggled back into Mexico during the next few days. Now they are besieged there. Oui, oui, _besieged_, by Diaz, by the army of the East, by twelve thousand Republicans, formerly called brigands. And inside is the Leopard, snarling as ever with his regency of terror. Oh no, he will not come to Queretaro. Bonte divine, he cannot. 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 he was safely away."

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

Jacqueline's eyes snapped contemptuously. "Young Diaz," she replied, "is not a fighter to buy what he can take. It's only a question of a few weeks."