SWORDSMANSHIP IN THE DARK
"Cry 'holla' to thy tongue, I prithee; it curvets unseasonably."
--_As You Like It._
"Strange there's no motion," thought Jacqueline the next morning,
rubbing her eyes. "Why, what ails the old boat, I wonder?" Then she
remembered. She was in the Tampico hotel which called itself a cafe, and
the landlord's wife was knocking on her door and calling "Nin-a, nin-a"
with a plaintive stress on the first syllable. The word means girl, and
oddly enough, is often used by a Mexican servant to address her
mistress.
"I'm not a n-e-e-n-ya," Jacqueline assured her drowsily, "and if I were,
madame, why make a fete out of it this way in the middle of the night?"
"Nin-a," the unctuous nasal rose higher, "if Your Mercy goes with Don
Anastasio, she must hurry. It is late. It is four o'clock, nina."
"Four o'clock--late?" gasped the luxurious little marquise. "And how
much difference, exactly, would your four o'clocks make on the planet
Mars, my good woman?"
"But nina, there is Don Anastasio, he is ready to start."
"And who is Don Anastasio, pray?"
"The trader, nina, at the meson. He is to take Your Mercy to Valles, as
Don--as the Capitan Morel told Your Mercy yesterday."
"The Capitan Morel, _pardi!_ Faith, if any man had told me it meant
rising at any such unholy hour. Oh well, I suppose it is the hour for
larks, too."
And sighing at the sacrifice of an age of slumber, Jacqueline reached
out for the matches. But there was no dainty limbed night table of a
Louis XV. beside her bed, which helped her again to remember where she
was, and if doubts still remained, they were gone when her bare feet
touched the fibrous, prickly native carpet instead of soft furs.
She groped to the door, and opened it enough to take a greasily odorous
candle from a dusky hand outside. As the sickly glimmer awakened the
shadows, she called the woman back in sudden dismay. "My trunk, senora,
kindly have it sent up at once. No," she added, catching a fluffy
garment from a chair, "in five minutes."
There was a brief silence, followed by positive lament. "Nina, it is not
here. I believe, nin-a, it is at the meson, with Don Anastasio."
"F-flute!" cried Jacqueline. The word means nothing at all, but it may
express a lass's exasperation in a wardrobe crisis, and that is nothing
except a catastrophe. "Now just possibly," she soliloquized, "they
permit themselves to imagine that one can wear a white frock two days
together," whereupon she sat herself down despairingly among the crisp
things that had already had their poor little day. To mock her there was
the jaunty handsatchel packed for an hour's shore leave. She let
petulance have sway, and informed herself that she should not go a step,
when the voice in the hall pleaded insidiously that Her Mercy make
haste.
"But I am, senora, I'm making fast haste," and she sat three minutes
longer, communing with her tragedy. "_Oh_, this bitten, biting
country," she cried, gazing ruefully at arms and shoulders, and fiery
blotches on the soft white skin. "Still, if there's a brigand for every
mosquito, it may yet be worth while." Hopefully she rose and called
Berthe from the next room to help her dress.
When the two girls came downstairs, the landlord's wife took their
satchel, and led them over broken sidewalks to the meson, where the
street was filled with torches and laden burros and blanketed shadows.
Murguia's caravan was forming, making a weird, stealthy scene of
activity. Jacqueline picked up a lantern, and searched here and there.
"Now where _can_ it be?" she cried.
The rebosa about the shoulders of the Mexican woman rose. She knew
nothing. But the gesture was an unabridged philosophical system as to
the resignation and the indifference that is seemly when one knows
nothing. Jacqueline refrained from pinching her, and pursued the quest
of her trunk even into the meson.
Hardly had she passed within when a greatly agitated little old man
tried to overtake her. But at the door he thought better of it and
vented his chagrin on the Mexican woman.
"Why did you let her go in there?" he cried. "She will wake the Gringo,
she will wake the Gringo!"
Jacqueline reappeared. "No trunk," she announced. "Do you know, Berthe,
I do not believe it came at all?"
The old man's voice sounded at her elbow, faltering, placating. "With
permission, senorita, we must be starting."
"And similarly with permission, senor, who are you?"
"Anastasio Murguia, the servant of Your Mercy."
"Ah, the poor little crow? Perhaps you will tell me, sir, why neither
the Senor Ney nor Fra--nor Captain Morel is here?"
The young French caballero had visited the fort last evening, he
replied. Her Mercy knew that? Yes, precisamente. Yes, the caballero had
spent the night up there with his compatriots of the garrison. Her Mercy
did not know that? No? But it was quite exact, yes, because he, Don
Anastasio, had been so informed. But the Senor Ney would meet them out
of Tampico--yes, precisamente, with a detachment of cavalry from the
fort."
"That poor Michel!" said Jacqueline. "He's determined that I am to have
a French escort. But Captain Morel, senor?"
Murguia would not answer. He repeated the question to the Mexican woman,
who took up explanations with a glib readiness. "Si, nina, I saw the
capitan, not more than an hour ago. He was riding by the cafe, to meet
his--Contra Guerrillas. But he stopped and woke me. He said that I was
to bring Your Mercies here to the meson, and to say that he would meet
Your Mercies--yes, surely, before you had gone very far, nina." Her tone
was a sugared whine, and more than once she peered around at Murguia;
while he, for his part, stood by as though overseeing a task. But
Jacqueline only allowed herself a little inconsequential sniff, and went
back to the really serious business that did worry her. She demanded her
trunk.
"How, the senorita does not know?" asked Murguia.
"Know what?"
"That the sailors did not come back from the ship?"
"Not come back! Eh bien, I will not go a step."
At first Don Anastasio's pinched face lighted with relief. But at once a
conflicting anxiety, lest she might _not_ go, seemed to possess
him. "But senorita," he protested, "what will Your Mercy do? The ship,
yes, senorita, the ship has sailed already. It left last night for Vera
Cruz."
"And here am I," Jacqueline exclaimed, tapping her foot, "with only one
dress!"
A long bubbling whistle sounded near a gendarme's lantern in the middle
of the street. A block away another sounded, then another, and another,
and others yet, each thinly shrill and distant. It was the challenge to
slumber and the answer of wakefulness from the watches of the night over
the silent city.
"Another quarter gone by!" Murguia exclaimed nervously. "Come,
senoritas, if we are to reach the Valles stage by nightfall, we have no
time to lose. There are your horses, I will----"
A tremor cut short his words. Someone had just emerged from the meson.
"Gracious, Murgie, off so early?" the newcomer observed cheerily.
Murguia scowled. He knew that tone.
"If I'm late, I apologize," the other drawled gently, from behind the
flare of a match over his pipe. "Howsoever, all my eyes weren't shut,
and you wouldn't of left me. Pretty quiet about striking camp, though!
Didn't want to disturb me, maybe? Well, well, who made you so
thoughtful? Not Captain Morel? Now I wonder!"
"I uh, why _should_ I wake you, Mis-ter Driscoll? Have I asked you
even to go?"
"N-o, but you evidently asked old Demijohn there." And Driscoll pointed
to his horse, all saddled. "But cheer up, Convoluting Squirmer, of
course I know you aren't a horse thief. No, I just come out to say you
forgot the blanket. I was sleeping on it."
Then he turned to the two girls. They were going also. But why try to
leave him behind, even without a horse? He knew, for all his whimsical
cheerfulness, that something serious was afoot. It was hardly likely
that the girls themselves had interfered. Still, he must make sure. To
provoke a reply elsewhere, he asked Murguia if it were the senoritas,
perhaps, and not Captain Morel, who preferred his absence? A surprised
"Ma foi!" from Jacqueline answered him. As he supposed, she had not
thought of him one way or another.
But she deigned to say, that since the American _gentleman_--there
was a lingering on the word, which opened wide the Storm Centre's eyes
with anticipation of battle--that since the American gentleman had
broached the subject of his going (as no doubt interesting him, being
about himself), then she would permit herself to inquire why, indeed, he
should be going with them at all. She had not observed any cordiality in
the requests for his society.
The light was not good, and she did not see his lips pucker as for a
long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so
sweetly that Murguia quailed for the little shrew.
"W'y miss," he said, "it all comes of feeling my responsibility. I'm the
cause of your going, and that's why I'm going too."
His very earnestness gave her to understand that he had forgotten her
entirely. The finesse of the Tuileries could not have struck home more
delicately, and more keenly. "I've often heard," she thought to herself,
"that an awkward swordsman is dangerous." But she made no cry of
"touchee!" Instead she caught at the point to turn the blade aside.
"Responsibility? Truly sir, you _are_ considerate. But permit
me--my safety on this trip, what concern can that have for Your Mercy?"
"None at all," replied Driscoll, heartily.
His brow, none the less, was crinkled, and he watched dubiously as
Murguia helped the two girls into great armchair-like saddles. There was
not a woman's saddle in Tampico, but Jeanne d'Aumerle did not mind that.
She, the marchioness, enjoyed the oddity of a pommel in lieu of horn.
And the lady's maid might have been on a dromedary, for all the
consciousness the poor child had of it.
"Say," Driscoll interrupted with cool obstinacy, "where's our friend the
captain and that sky-blue Frenchman?"
Murguia pretended not to heed him. Jacqueline really did not. But Berthe
spoke up eagerly. She said that the two gentlemen were to meet them
later in the day. At least she hoped so, but--no, no, there could be no
doubt of it! Yet her words faltered, and there was an appeal in them.
But if she placed any hope in the strange American, she was quickly
disappointed.
"All right," he said, as if the matter were of no further consequence.
"Then I can make a nice comfortable report to Maximilian."
"Report to Maximiliano?" exclaimed Murguia.
Driscoll nodded indifferently.
"But Senor Coronel, when you do, you--you will remember that I said
nothing to--that is, to persuade the senoritas to take this journey."
"Nor not to take it, Wriggler."
"Yet you will say to His Majesty that I did suggest--yes, I do now--that
they had better not----"
His utterance drivelled to incoherency. The Mexican woman, she of the
cafe, stood before him. There was a warning on her stolid countenance.
Murguia wet his lips. "But," he stammered, "there--oh what danger can
there be in their going?"
Driscoll shoved him aside and placed himself at the head of Jacqueline's
horse. "You had better risk the water, miss," he said quietly.
"My good sir," she replied, clear and cold, "I commend your prudence, in
making certain, before you dared touch my bridle-rein, that neither of
the two gentlemen were here."
Din Driscoll swung on his heel. "Damned!" he murmured, and he pronounced
the "n" and the "d" thoroughly, to make the word adequate if possible.
"Lord, I believe I feel like a closed incident! And to think, Demijohn,"
he went on as he busied himself about his horse, "to think that it's the
first and only time we've ever seen trouble coming and tried to keep out
of it."
But the trouble might appear now, he had done what he could. The thought
brightened him, and he patted his short ribs musingly. There was a
friendly protuberance there on either side. His belt sagged
comfortingly. He opened the pack which he was tying with his blanket
behind his saddle, and from it he filled with cartridges the pockets of
his rough cape coat.
By now the caravan was passing him. The burros, like square-shelled
monstrosities with ears, were settling into a steady trot. Their
blanketed arrieros ran beside them and prodded, and were in turn prodded
by the fretful Murguia. Then Jacqueline rode by on an ambling little
mountain-climber. She had forgotten his presence. This was not a pose
with the Marquise d'Aumerle; she had, really. But her little Breton maid
coming behind timidly drew rein. Driscoll looked and saw in the moving
yellow torchlights that her face was white. A thing like that somehow
alters a man's attitude. "W'y, child," he exclaimed, "what's----"
"Monsi--senor," she said hastily, in pathetic and pretty broken Spanish,
"you, oh, you will not leave us! In the mercy of heaven, tell me that
you will not! Ah, seigneur," she sobbed, "mademoiselle will yet lead us
to our death!"
"Berthe," mademoiselle at that instant called, "oh you little ninny, are
you coming ever?"
The maid obeyed. "Just the same," she sighed, "God bless her!"
"And did I," Driscoll had begun angrily, but she was already gone, and
he finished it to himself, "did I once intend to leave you?"
He leaped astride his buckskin horse, who trotted with him briskly to
the head of the caravan. Behind was Anastasio Murguia, a quaint
combination of silk hat, shawl, and ranchero saddle. The two Frenchwomen
followed, and behind came the straggling file of burros and pack horses.
Yet the American was as a solitary traveller leaving a town for the
wilderness at the first touch of dawn. The road soon narrowed down to a
trail as it wound through the undergrowth of the Huasteca lowlands, then
westward toward a bluish line of mountains. At each cross trail the
American would turn in his saddle to force an indication of their course
from Murguia. Then on he would ride again, the while sinking deeper and
deeper into his thoughts; thoughts of why he had come, of how he might
succeed, and of the Surrender at that moment perhaps a fact. For him,
though, there was his sabre yet, dangling there under his leg. And there
were the sabres of comrades that likewise would not be given up, for to
save them that shame was he in Mexico. Riding there, so much alone, and
lonely, he was a rough, savage, military figure. But in his meditations,
so grave and unwonted in the wild, hard-riding trooper lad, there was
nothing to indicate a second nature in him, an instinct that was on the
alert against every leafy clump and cactus and mesh of vine.