THE RITUAL
"... a bearded man,
Pamper'd with rank luxuriousness and ease."
--_Dante._
The Emperor was coming--elaborately, by august degrees.
First, and far in advance, arrived a haughty pack liveried in the royal
green of ancient Aztec dynasties. New tenants might have been moving on
this bright May day, for the flunkies attended a small caravan of
household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts
into a goose's maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty's absolute
necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and
portieres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a
velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose
stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a
Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then--there was the Ritual.
The Ritual was a massive tome, of glazed, gilt-edged paper, of print as
big for the proclaiming of truth as the Family Bible, of weight to
burden a strong man, of contents to stagger a giant brain, unless the
giant brain had in it the convolution of a smile. Maximilian and
Charlotte had reigned a year, and so far the Ritual was the supreme
monument to the glory and usefulness of their Empire. It decreed, by
Imperial dictation and signature, the etiquette that must and should be
observed in the courtly circle. But alas, you can't codify
genuflections, nor yet a handshake.
The next degree in the imperial advent was the imperial courier, who
proclaimed from a curveting steed what everybody suspected. "Our August
Sovereign" was approaching.
Several hundred peons stared with open mouths. Gathered before the
house, they prattled to one another in childlike expectancy of the Senor
Emperador. Most of them were learning for the first time that they had
an emperor. Still, it sufficed to know this was an occasion for
auto-inspiring vivas, like once when the Ilustrisimo Bishop came. They
took new hold on the green boughs they were to wave. A handkerchief here
and there fluttered from a bamboo pole. Down in an adobe village by the
river junction, every gala scrap of calico print, whether shirt or
skirt, pended from cords stretched across the street; and cotton
curtains, some of crude drawn work, hung outside the windows. All the
poor finery of the Indians was on exhibition to do honor to a gorgeous
Old World court. But the fiesta air had already gotten into the
susceptible native lungs, and that alone, with only a trumpet's blare,
would make for a hurrah in genuine fervor.
The roomy porch of the old mansion was crowded with the chief people of
the hacienda, clerks, foremen, house servants, besides the administrador
and the chaplain. Behind a remote column were the three wanderers in the
wilderness; the Storm Centre, the Marchioness, and the Maid. They were
to have been gone by now, and yet it was not the coming of the emperor
that had stopped them. The cause was nearer at hand. Smoking a long
black cigar, "grizzled and fierce, as ornate in braid and decorations as
a bullfighter," Colonel Dupin had delayed them.
His Cossacks thronged the colonnade. The brick-red of their raw leather
jackets splotched every other color with rust. The Contra Guerrillas
were many things. They were Frenchmen and Mexicans. They were Americans,
Confederate deserters, Union deserters. They were Negroes and Arabs.
They were the ruined of fortune, now soldiers of fortune. They were
pirates and highwaymen. They were gold hunters, gamblers, swindlers.
They were fugitives from the noose, from the garrote, from the
guillotine. But they were all right willing desperadoes. And there was
not a softened feature on a man of the troop. Only a tigerish ferocity
could lead them, could hold them.
They surrounded the Missourian on the hacienda portico. If only for his
debonnaire indifference, they knew him for a "bad man" such as none of
them might ever hope to be. And they watched him like lynxes, though he
was unarmed. Yet he did not look "bad." He merely looked bored. He was a
prisoner, but not the only one. Anastasio Murguia fidgetted among the
Cossacks on his own porch. His restless eyes roved incessantly over the
crowd, seeking his daughter, but they were steadily baffled.
Down in the valley, where the Rio Moctezuma joined its course with the
Panuco, a dusty mist moved nearer along the old Spanish highway, and
faintly there came the sound of clarions. An eager murmuring arose from
the throng on the hillside. It swelled more confidently to a buzz as the
far-away dust lifted at the ford and revealed the beaded stringing of a
numerous company. The distant bugles rang clearer on the pure air. "Yes,
he comes," the people cried, "There! Seest thou, hombre?--_There!_
Viva el Senor Emperador!"
For Colonel Dupin the cloud of dust would shortly evolve into a staying
hand of mercy, into the exasperating stupidity of mercy. He had captured
the American not ten minutes before, and here was interference in a
gauzy haze of dust. He signed to one of his men to follow with Murguia,
and he himself placed a gauntleted hand on Driscoll's shoulder. "Now,"
he said.
But a white figure of Mexican rebosa and silken instep moved swiftly
from behind a column and touched the Tiger's arm. Both Jacqueline and
Berthe had been watching the Cossack chief rather than the spectacle in
the valley. And as he turned on his prisoner, Berthe half screamed and
clutched at the bosom of her dress. It was Jacqueline who gained his
side. She addressed him sharply as one who hates to reopen a tedious
argument.
"Monsieur Dupin," she cried, "have I not already permitted myself to
tell you--yes, I repeat, you are mistaken. He is in no sense whatever an
accomplice of Rodrigo Galan."
The Tiger heard, no doubt, but he did not stop. He kept on toward the
door, Driscoll beside him, and his men around him. He meant to pass
through the house. Some secluded corral in the back would do for the
execution. Driscoll seemed as indifferent as ever, though there was a
lithe, alert spring in his step. Behind him Murguia was moaning, praying
to see his daughter. Berthe followed, bewildered, and silently wringing
her hands. But the death march was so business-like, and every one else
was so intent on the approach of a royally born person, that the crowds
shoved aside by the little group never once suspected that they had just
brushed elbows with tragedy in the making.
Jacqueline caught her breath, sucked it in rather, in a pang of angry
despair; and plucking up her skirts she ran ahead until she could oppose
her slender figure squarely in front of the burly Frenchman. If he were
to move on, he must trample her down. Her eyes, usually so big and round
and shading to a depth of blue with their lively mischief, were all but
closed, and through the narrowed lashes they gleamed like white steel.
Her voice, though, was clear and even, of a studied courtesy.
"Yes, I know, Monsieur le Coronel, suspicion with you is quite enough.
But," she went on in contempt and feigned surprise at his dullness,
"this rage of yours at being outwitted by Rodrigo Galan blinds you to
something else.--Pardon, monsieur, a Frenchman does not jostle a
woman.--Thank you."
"But the jostling by a woman's tongue, mademoiselle.--Well, what is it?
Have mercy, be brief, since I am not even to breathe while my lady
talks."
"I was thinking, dear monsieur, of the feelings of an artist, to which
you are very, very blind."
"Feelings, artist? Name of a name, mademoiselle!"
"Precisely, Maximilian's feelings. You know how he abhors the sight of
blood. Ma foi, and I agree with him."
"Go it, Miss Jack-leen!" Driscoll abetted her. Never a word of their
French did he understand, but he knew that she had a power of speech.
Dupin evidently knew it better yet, for though he laughed, he did not
laugh easily.
"Never fear," he said, "His Majesty's delicate prejudices are safe. It
will be all underground before he comes, and no muss at all."
"But you forget," Jacqueline cried testily, "you forget the imagination
of a poet."
"And he will imagine----"
"Yes, because I shall tell him."
"Sacre----"
"And possibly he would brace his feelings to a second aesthetic horror as
a rebuke for the first. In a word, my colonel, there will be one more
body to follow--underground. Now is this quite clear, or--do you require
my promise on it?"
The savage old brow manifested the desire to make her a victim as well,
but in this extra blood-thirst she knew that Driscoll was safe. "I
understand, Mademoiselle la Marquise," he said, laying on heavily the
suave gallantry of a Frenchman. "Yes, I understand. Prince Max values
Your Ladyship's good taste so highly---- Pardi, I believe he would
certainly shoot me if you told him to."
"Exactly," Jacqueline coldly assented.
"And Monsieur l'Americain may congratulate himself on the influence of
mademoiselle, the arbiter elegantiarum--with His Majesty."
"As Monsieur le Tigre may congratulate himself that the American does
not understand this insult, sir."
Behind her rose a dry hysterical cackle of renewed hope. "The Little
Black Crow!" she exclaimed. "See, my colonel, he is not worth an
execution all to himself, so do we all go back to contemplate Prince
Max's loving ovation."
"The Emperor arrives!" she cried gayly, returning to the porch. With the
others she was once more behind the remote column, an end of the rebosa
hanging over her arm ready to be flung across her face. "But
what--Helas, I haven't my Ritual with me."--The Ritual classified every
movement, every breath of the Court, as rigidly and with as little
consciousness of humor as Linnaeus did his flowers.--"It can't be a Minor
Palace Luncheon of the Third Class," she mused, "and it isn't Grand
Court Mourning of the First Degree. Ha, I have it, He--that 'H' is a
capital, please, not as a sacrilege, but to be Ritualistic--He is out on
a voyage of the Minor Class, Small Service of Honor, Lesser Cortege. Now
then, all's comfortable; no room for plebeian misconceptions."
On they came, each rigidly after his kind, a Noah's procession of
Dignitaries with the August Sovereign first of all. To bring on the
majestic climax so early was illogical, of course, but dust having
happened to be created before precedence, the Cortege was changed the
other way round for a voyage, so that the First Category people breathed
what the August Sovereign kicked up and kicked up some additional for
the Second Category, and the Second did the same for the Third, and so
on down to the Ninth, or "And all others," who breathed the best they
could and paid the bill.
Nothing preceded the royal coach except the royal escort, and that by
exactly two hundred paces, in which interval a canonical obligation was
laid on the dust to settle. It was a particularly gallant royal escort.
The Empress's Own, or the Dragoons, or Lancers, or Guardsmen, or
Hussars, or whatever they were, were picked Mexicans; and they were
frankly proud of their rich crimson tunics; also, perhaps, of their
heavily fringed standard worked by Carlota herself. A cavalry detachment
in fur caps with a feather completed the body guard. Mexico is a hot
country, but that was no reason why an Austrian regiment should
sacrifice its furry identity.
"Belgians too!" exclaimed Jacqueline. "And the Mexican emigres! They
came back when we made it safe for them. But where, oh where, are the
French?"
"Everywhere," growled the Tiger, "in mountains and swamps, dying
everywhere, fighting for this Austrian archduke. But he doesn't like to
be seen with them."
Behind eight white mules of Spain, four abreast, rolled the coach of the
Emperor, solitary and marked as majesty itself. There were postilions
and outriders and footmen arrayed in the Imperial livery with the
Imperial crown. And on the coach door flashed Maximilian's escutcheon,
his archducal arms grafted on the torso of his new imperial estate.
There were the winged griffins with absurd scrolls for tails. They had
voracious claws, had these droll beasts of prey, and they clutched at an
oval frame ruthlessly, as though to shatter it and get at a certain bird
within. Poor bird, his shelter looked very fragile, and he about to be
smothered under an enormous diadem as under an extinguisher. He was none
other than the Mexican eagle perched on his own native cactus, and he
desired only peace and quiet while he throttled the snake of ignorance
in his talons, which snake had been his worry ever since the Aztec
hordes from the north had first caged him in. Beneath the Imperial arms
was the motto, "Equidad en la Justicia," but it seemed an idle promise.
In the huge traveling coach, with a greyhound at his feet, sat one lone
man. He had a soft skin, rosy like a baby's, and blue eyes, and what
some called a beautiful golden beard. The huzzas swelled and surged from
all sides, and he smiled on the people. But he gazed beyond them, and
into the blue eyes came the light of exaltation such as is inspired by
music that starts a heartstring in vague trembling.
The Cortege followed in carriages one hundred paces apart. The first
held the First Grand Dignitary, the only Dignitary of Third Category
rank, and hence the only one who could stand near the throne after
Highnesses, Grand Collars, and Ambassadors. He was the Grand Marshal of
the Court and Minister of the Imperial Household. His privileges
consisted of seeing "His Majesty when called for," and of "communicating
with Him in writing." But he could not see Him when not called for. In
reality the Grand Marshal was a quiet old Mexican gentleman who seemed
ill at ease. He was General Almonte, one of those conservatives who had
sought their country's tranquillity in foreign intervention. But
Maximilian had bespangled him into a Dignidad, and thus lost to himself
an able politician's usefulness. The real man of affairs was an obscure
Belgian who openly and insolently despised everything Mexican. He also
sang chansonettes. He was the sour-browed Monsieur Eloin already
mentioned.
Dignidades enough to make up the Lesser Cortege were not lacking. Riding
alone was the Chief of the Military Household, who could return no
salutes when near His Majesty except from First and Second Category
personages. Under the circumstances, recognition of his own father would
have been rank heresy. Then there was the Grand Physician, the Grand
Chaplain, and Honorary Physicians and Chaplains, who could wear Grand
Uniforms and a Cordon and eat at the Grand Marshal's table; and there
were Chamberlains and Secretaries of Ceremony and Aides. Many
surreptitiously peeped into a monster volume as they rode. It was not a
mass book nor a materia medica. It was the Ritual.
The Sixth Grand Dignitary of Cabellerizo Mayor helped His Majesty to
descend from His coach. He did it mid vociferous cheering and waving of
boughs and agitation of handkerchiefs on bamboo poles. Aides and Deputy
Dignitaries worked industriously driving back the simple Inditos.
"'The General Aide de Camp,'" Jacqueline quoted reverently, "'will keep
the people from the Imperial coach, but without maiming them.'"