A FRA DIAVOLO IN THE LAND OF ROSES
"A haunter of marshes, a holder of moors."--_Beowulf._
The torpid, sordid and sun-baked port of Tampico gave little promise of
aught so romantic and rare and exotic as the young French woman's
coveted thrill of ecstasy. There was first the sand bar, which kept
ships from coming up the deep Panuco to the town. Beyond there were
lagoons and swamps mottling the flat, dreary, moisture-sodden,
fever-scourged land. There were solemn pelicans, and such kind of
grotesque bird as use only one leg, it being long enough for two, and
never that to walk upon, so far as anybody had ever noticed. Such an old
fellow would outline himself against the yellow loneliness, like a lump
of pessimistic philosopher impaled on the end of his own hobbling
crutch. Tarpons and sharks and sword-fish, monstrous, sinister, moved
slothfully in the viscid waters. From scrubby growth on the banks a
hundred or a hundred thousand crows had much ado with rebuking the
invaders of their solitude.
Next, clusters of thatch roofs appeared, and in an hour the party from
the _Imperatrice Eugenie_ gained the wharf of the port. The sailors
managed to steer through a tangle of shipping and dugout scows, the
latter heaped high with fruits and flowers of many colors, or hides or
fish of many aromas. Before the small boat could touch the worm-eaten
quay, Jacqueline had poised herself on its edge, caught her skirts, and
hopped lightly over the stretch of water yet remaining. Then she gazed
curiously around on Mexico.
And Mexico was there in various forms to greet her, though in no form
animated. Sluggish creatures under peaked sombreros of muddied straw
seemed to be growing against the foreground of wharf and dingy
warehouses, and fastened to the background of sallow blazing streets and
sallow reflecting walls there were still the same human barnacles. But
no creature seemed ever to move. They all looked a part of the decay, of
putrefying vegetable and flesh and fish everywhere, which grew so rank
in life that in death their rotting could never keep pace.
A lazy town stretched up a lazy street. On a hill farther up the river a
fortress basked in peace, and had no desire to be disturbed. In the town
the buildings were of warped timber, and a few of stone. Parasitic
tumors, like loathsome black ulcers, swelled abundantly on the roofs.
They were the buzzards, the only form of life held sacred. To clean up
nature's and man's spendthrift killing was a blessed service in Tampico.
It saved exertion.
A strange region, by all odds! But at least one could walk thereon, and
Jacqueline thought it droll. An outlandish corner of the earth such as
this was something never experienced before. But as to that, the
outlandish corner might have said the same about Jacqueline. Men stared
like dazed sheep on the astounding apparition of a lady. Some among them
were entirely clothed, in sun-yellowed white. There was a merchant or
so, a coffee exporter or so, a ranchero or so, and hacendados from the
interior. But they were all hard, typical, and often darkly scowling,
which seemed an habitual expression inspired by the thought of a foreign
Hapsburg emperor so mighty and proud, far off in their capital. There
was not an officer among them; nor, quite likely, a gentleman. Never a
bit of red was to be seen from the garrison on the hill. The French
invaders up there, with pardonable taste, kept to themselves. Their
policing ended with the smothering of revolt. So against the stain of
tainted mankind, the vision of delicate femininity contrasted as a fleck
of spotless white on a besmeared palette. But crows, scavengers, men,
they were all so many "creatures" to Jacqueline--the setting of a very
novel scene, and she would not have had it otherwise.
She turned to her maid, who shrank hesitating in the boat. "Berthe, you
pitiful little ninny, are you coming? Then do, and do not forget the
satchel." For a promenade of an hour the inhabitants of two imperial
courts must needs have a satchel, filled of course with mysteries of the
toilet. The maid obeyed, and followed her mistress up the lazy ascending
street. They passed through the Alameda of dense cypresses, an inky blot
as on glaring manila paper, while the shade overhead was profane with
jackdaws. The lady tripped on, and into the street again. Ney and a
sailor hurried to overtake her. The other sailors meantime went on their
errand for fresh meat, but Michel had said to the steward in charge, "If
there should be any need, I'll send this man to you. Then you come, all
of you, quick!"
Jacqueline pushed on her voyage of discovery, and her retinue trooped
behind, single file, over the narrow, burning sidewalks of patched
flagstone. The word "Cafe" on a corner building caught her eye. It was a
native fonda, overflowing with straw-bottomed chairs and rusty iron
tables half-way across the street, making carts and burros find their
way round. Mexico's outward signs at least were being done over into
French. Hence the dignity of "Cafe."
"Here is Paris," the explorer announced. "And this is the Boulevard."
She seated herself before one of the iron tables that rocked on the
egg-like cobblestones. She made Ney sit down also, and included Berthe
and the sailor. An olive barefoot boy took their order for black coffee.
Jacqueline's elbows were on the table and her chin on two finger tips,
and she disposed herself placidly, as though this were the Maison Doree
and Tout Paris sauntering by. The town was beginning to stretch after
its siesta. That is to say, divers natives manifested symptoms of going
to move in the course of time.
"Look!" exclaimed Jacqueline. "Only give yourself the trouble to look!"
She was pointing to a man, of course. The Chasseur stirred uneasily. One
could never see to the end of Jacqueline's slender finger. "There,
Berthe," she cried, "it's Fra Diavolo, just strayed from the Opera."
The stranger she meant was talking darkly to another man in the door of
the Cafe. If a Fra Diavolo, he was at least not disguised in his monk's
cowl, either because the April day was too hot or because he had never
owned one. But he stood appareled in his banditti role, very picturesque
and barbaric and malevolent. And though he posed heavily, he yet had
that Satanic fascination which the beautiful of the masculine and the
sinister of the devil cannot help having. His battered magnificence of a
charro garb fitted well the diabolic character which Jacqueline assigned
him. Spurs as bright as dollars jangled on high russet heels. His
breeches closed to the flesh like a glove, so that his limbs were as
sleek as some glossy forest animal's. The cloth was of Robin-Hood green,
foxed over in bright yellow leather. From hip to ankle undulated a seam
of silver clasps. More silver, in braided scrolls, adorned his jacket,
and wrapped twice around the waist was a red banda. Jacqueline would
have preferred the ends dangling, like a Neapolitan's. The ranchero, for
such he appeared, wore two belts. One was a vibora, or serpent, for
carrying money; the other held his weapons, a long hunting knife and a
revolver, each in a scabbard of stamped leather embroidered with gold
thread. His sombrero was high pointed and heavy, of chocolate-colored
beaver encircled by a silver rope as thick as a garden hose.
"Now there's realism in those properties," Jacqueline noted with an
artist's critical eye. "See, there's dry mud on his shoes, and his
bright colors are faded by weather. That man sleeps among the rocks,
I'll wager, and he's in the saddle almost constantly too. My faith, our
Fra Diavolo is exquisite!"
The other of the two men was a withered, diminutive, gaunt and hollow
old Mexican. He quailed like a frightened miser before Fra Diavolo.
"The risk? Coming to this town a risk!" Fra Diavolo was echoing the
ancient man. "Bah, Murguia, you would haggle over a little risk as
though it were some poor Confederate's last bale of cotton. But I--por
Dios, I get tired of the mountains. And then I come to Tampico. Yet you
ask why I come? Bien, senor mio, this is why." A gesture explained. Fra
Diavolo unctuously rubbed his thumb over his fingers. The meaning of the
gesture was, "Money!"
The old man recognized the pantomime and shivered. He shrank into his
long black coat as though right willingly he would shrink away
altogether. His parsimony extended even to speech. He pursued his
fugitive voice into the depths of the voluminous coat and there clutched
it as a coin in a chest. Then he paid it out as though it were a coin
indeed.
"But----" he stammered.
"No buts," the fierce ranchero growled thunderously. "Not one, Don
Anastasio, not while our country bleeds under the Austrian tyrant's
heel, not while there yet breathes a patriot to scorn peril and death,
so only that he get the sinews of war."
The curiously unctuous gesture grew menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio
twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra
Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his
attire accorded with his meagre frame. It was secretive, miserly. A
black stock covered a withered collar. A dingy silk tile was tightly
packed over a rusted black wig. Boots hid their tops under the skirts of
his coat, and the coat in turn was partly concealed under a black shawl.
But there was one incongruous item. Boots, coat, hat and all were
crusted with brine. He had evidently passed through salty spray, had
braved the deep, this shrinking old man in frayed black. Just now his
eyes, normally moist and avaricious, were parched dry by fear, as though
a flame had passed over them. They might have rattled in their gaping
sockets. Fear also helped him clutch his voice, which he paid out
regardless of expense.
"You know, Don----" But Fra Diavolo scowled, and the name died on his
lips. "You know," he went on, "why you haven't seen me for so long. It's
the blockade up there. It's closer than ever now. This time I waited
many nights for a chance to run in, and as many more to run out again."
"And you squeezed the poor devils all the harder for your weevily corn
and shoddy boots?"
Jacqueline, who could not hear a word, told her companions with a
child's expectancy only to wait and they would see Fra Diavolo eat up
the poor little crow.
The crow, meantime, was trying to oust the notion that had alighted in
the brain of Fra Diavolo. "Of course I ought to ask the Confederates
higher prices as the risks increase," he said, then paused and shook his
head and wig and hat like a mournful pendulum. "But how can I? The South
hardly grows any more cotton. It cannot pay high, and----"
"And that's not my affair, but----" Again the business of thumb and
fingers--"but this is. Quick now!"
"Senor, I--Your Mercy knows that I always pay at--at the usual
place--near the forest."
[Illustration: "MURGUIA"
"He had evidently passed through salty spray, had braved the deep,
this shrinking old man in frayed black"]
"You mean that you won't pay here, because I am the one in danger here,
and not you? Bien, you want a money-getting man for your daughter, eh,
Don Anastasio, though you'll deny that you would give her to any man?
Bien, bonissimo, I am going to prove myself an eligible suitor. In
another minute Your Mercy will be frightened enough to pay. Attention
now!"
So saying he drew a reed whistle from his jacket. It was no thicker than
a pencil, and not half so long.
Murguia gripped his arm. "My daughter?" he cried. "It has been weeks
since I--but you must have seen her lately. Oh tell me, senor, there is
no bad news of her?" He had forgotten the threatened extortion. His
voice was open too, generous in its anxiety.
"News of her, yes. But it is vague news. There's a mystery about your
daughter, Don Anastasio."
But at this point Fra Diavolo dismissed mystery and daughter both with
an ugly grimace. Nor would he say another word, for all the father's
pleading. Instead, he remembered the little reed whistle in his hand,
and swung round to blow upon it, in spite of the palsied hand clutching
at his arm. But in turning, he became aware of the amused Parisienne
watching him. His jaw fell, whereat Don Anastasio's hand slipped from
his arm, and Don Anastasio himself began to slip away.
"Stop!" roared Fra Diavolo. "No, go ahead. Wait at the meson, though,
until I come. Wait until I give you your passports."
Then he turned again to stare at the girl who all unconsciously had
wrought the poor little crow's release.