THE STRANGEST AVOWAL OF LOVE
"Nae living man I'll love again,
Since that my lovely knight is slain."
--_Lament of the Border Widow._
Back once more at the hacienda, Driscoll recovered his coat still
hanging over the dungeon window. Lopez would have called it insolence,
had he been there instead of scouring the country toward Mexico.
Jacqueline and Berthe settled themselves in the traveling coach left for
their comfort by Maximilian. Driscoll's effects, including his gray
cape-coat and the bundle he had carried behind his saddle, were found in
his room at the House. Jacqueline took them into the carriage with her,
along with that absurd little valise that she had brought from the ship
for an hour's jaunt on shore. Driscoll rode with Ney and the Austrians,
and was once again headed toward the capital, still sixty fair Mexican
leagues southward.
For six days it was an uneventful journey, seemingly. By day there were
sierras, and valleys, and wayside crosses marking violent deaths. By
night they accepted either ranchero hospitality or put up at some
village meson. But within himself, adventures were continuous and
varying for the Storm Centre. He could not account for the strange,
curious elation that possessed him, especially when Jacqueline would
take Ney's horse and ride at his side, perhaps for an hour, when the sun
was not too hot. Driscoll never knew how long these occasions lasted. He
did not know that they were long at all. As a matter of fact, he had
ceased using ordinary standards of measurement. The universe, and sordid
accessories such as time, radiated entirely about one little velvet
patch near a dimple satellite.
There came to be long silences between them as they rode, either boy or
girl content to have it so, and neither the least bit lonesome. And they
talked too, naturally, though this was not so significant. She would
slyly provoke him. To her mind, there was never anyone quite so
satisfying at a quarrel. She would pause in delighted expectancy to see
his eyes grow big when she thrust, and then to see his mouth twitch at
the corners as he caught her blade on his own keen wit. She had
forgotten that he was rustic, except for the added zest it gave. Nor was
there a false note in him, so happily and totally unconscious was he of
self. And as for a certain gaucherie, that was the spice to his whole
manner.
They talked of many things; rather, she made him talk. She learned that
his name was John, as hers was Jeanne, and she wanted to know why the
horse was Demijohn.
"Because, Miss Jack-leen," he answered, "he's my other half, and
sometimes the better one, too." He remembered that once, when he had
drooped limp over the saddle, the buckskin had carried him out of the
fighting to the rear. "You see," he added, "we were both colts when our
little shindy up there broke loose."
"And you both went? Ah, Monsieur the Patriot, you did go, you did
affront the tyrant? Yes!" She had the explorer's eagerness. Perhaps she
might discover in him her own especial demon of self-introspection.
"N-o," he replied, "I reckon we went mostly for the fun of the thing."
"Fi donc!" she cried. "But wait till you are old. Oh yes, we have them
too, those blessed, over-petted veterans of the Grande Armee. They are
in the Hotel des Invalides, with medals to diagnose their glory. Oh, la,
la, but there's a pleasant fashion! The people, the politicians, they
forget the hot blood that fought simply because there were pretty blows
to strike. They see only the gray hairs. 'Honneur aux patriotes!' You
wait, monsieur. You, too, will be made into the hero, ex post facto, and
you will believe it yourself. Yes, with the wolves, one learns to howl."
"N-o," said the young Confederate, "we--we got licked."
They talked--he rather--of Missouri. He was not reluctant to have
stirred the memories of his home, not with one who could listen as she
did. In his heart settled a warmth that was good, and the glow of it
shone on his face. He became aware that the gray eyes were upon him,
taking conscious note of his hair, his mouth, his chin, as though she
were really seeing him for the first time. What made a girl do that way?
He felt queerly, it being thus brought to him that he had awakened
interest in a woman, but the tribute she paid him was ennobling, and a
deep thankfulness, though to whom or for what he had not the least idea,
made more kindly and good the cheery warmth around his heart. The gray
eyes had never sparkled on him in coquetry as they sometimes did on
other men, and now they were grave and sweet. It was a phase of
Jacqueline that only her maid had known.
The marquise gathered that Missour-_i_, as she called it, was an
exceedingly strange and fascinating region. She learned that it was a
state, like a department in France, like her own Bourbonnais for
instance. But there the comparison ended. The rest was all startling
versatility. For the inhabitants had not only taken both sides during
the Civil War, but through their governor had proclaimed themselves an
independent republic into the bargain. They must be unusual citizens,
those Missourians.
But they were strangest because they did not seem to be actors. They did
not refine living into a cult, with every pleasure and pain classified
and weighed out and valued. No, they actually lived. It was hard to
realize this, but in the end she did, and with ever increasing wonder,
with also a beginning of envy and hunger. But there was still another
thing even more indefinable. It centered in the word "home," which she
knew neither in French nor Spanish, but which she came to know now, as
its meaning grew upon her. It was more than a "maison" or a "casa," or a
"chez nous." It was a manner of temple. And the high priest there was a
grim lord. How very grim, indeed! There was no compromise, no blinking,
no midway gilded dais between the marriage altar and the basest filth.
As grim, this was, as that original Puritanism which has become a
synonym of American backbone. Grim, yes; but the woman there, where the
high priest blinked not, was a divinity. She was a divinity in the
tenderest and most devoted sense of the word. And the Puritanism was
purity enshrined, as a simple matter of course. The longing, if only to
know more of this odd country, rose in her mysteriously, and stronger
and stronger.
When on one occasion she went back to the coach, she found that Berthe
also was enjoying the change to horseback. Jacqueline was glad of it.
Now she could be alone, and she believed that she wanted to think. But
she could not pin down what she wanted to think about; because, no
doubt, there was so very much. Instead, she looked vacantly at the Storm
Centre's cartridge belt and pistols on the seat in front of her. They
were grim, too, these playthings of a boy.
Dupin had left the weapons with Ney, back at the hacienda, and Ney had
turned them over to Jacqueline as to the real strategic chief of the
expedition. And Jacqueline had kept them, perhaps to look at, perhaps
because of a whim that a prisoner should not be armed. She liked to hear
Driscoll mourn for them, not knowing where they were, and she held back
the surprise as one lingers before an anticipated pleasure. She picked
up the great, black revolvers with a woman's fascinated respect for the
harsh, eternal male of her species, who is primeval and barbaric yet,
and ever will be, to hold his mate his very own. Her touch was gingerly,
but there was a caress in her fingers on the ugly things.
She lifted the belt. How heavy of metal it was! Idly, she thought she
would count the leaden missiles. When finally she laid the belt aside, a
bullet remained in her lap. It had fallen there out of its shell.
Starting to fit the bullet in again, she suddenly dropped both bullet
and cartridge. Her hands trembled. This particular shell contained no
powder. But it contained a tightly rolled slip of oiled paper. The
cartridge was a dummy, a wee strong box for some vital document.
It was not for scruples against looking that she paused. On the
contrary, it was that she must look, absolutely, in sacred, patriotic
duty bound, that finally decided--nay, compelled her to look. Still she
hesitated before drawing out the paper. She dreaded what it might tell
her. Concealed thus, and revealed only by a hazard, the paper held, she
felt certain, the secret and the significance of the American's errand
to Mexico. And she did not want to know. She reviled bitterly the cruel
chance that had thrust it on her.
She read. The paper was a communication addressed to the Emperor
Maximilian by the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippi
department. Foreseeing Lee's surrender, they had gathered from
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, at a place in the latter state named
Marshall, and there they had decided that they would not surrender. They
would seek homes and a country elsewhere, swords in hand. At this
meeting, which had been inspired by Gen. Joe Shelby, they had deposed
the cautious general commanding, Kirby Smith, and they had put in his
stead Simon Bolivar Buckner. The Trans-Mississippi department numbered
fifty thousand men. There would also be fugitives from Lee's and
Johnson's corps, besides Jefferson Davis in person, should he contrive
to pass the Federal lines. Many thousands of veterans would shortly be
marching across the Rio Grande. In Texas, at the Confederate arsenals
and depositories, they would seize what they needed: guns, ammunition,
horses, provisions, money. In Mexico they would become citizens, and
they would defend their new homes against outlawry, rebellion, or
invasion. The signatory generals prayed the Emperor Maximilian to
consider this, and "to do it quick."
Jacqueline put the letter back in the cartridge, and everything looked
as before. But no genii, once out, can ever quite be bottled up again.
That stray bullet had wounded her to the heart.
"As bad as fifty thousand!" she cried half aloud. "And they will become
citizens, too--Mon Dieu, _that_ is a nation!"
With them Maximilian would have a people behind him, and his throne
would be as a rock. He could, and most certainly would, disdain the
French army of occupation with its thirty thousand bayonets. The French
might go back home. He would speed them cheerfully, and henceforth be
Emperor in fact.
"But our treasure and our dead," sighed Jacqueline bitterly, "we cannot
take _them_ back. No, nor our hopes, though they weigh little
enough now, for that matter. Oh dear, and _I_ am one of those
hopes!--Help me Heaven, else I shall hate my own country. Oh, I must be
true!--Now, _why_ couldn't those Missourians have sent--someone
else?"
That evening she held a pen, but it would not move, not while her
thoughts were upon it. So, by sheer will, she nerved herself not to
think, and wrote mechanically. She wrote a message to Lopez, and another
to Dupin, and yet a third. The third brought the tears long before it
was finished. An Austrian took the first two, and rode all that night.
She kept the other one herself.
This was the fifth day of their journey since leaving Murguia's
hacienda. They had taken pains to keep behind Lopez. Their pursuer,
ahead of them, had not made twenty miles the first day, for he had
delayed in order to search here and there. But the second day, he had
evidently accepted failure, and hastened on to overtake the Emperor. The
Emperor himself, after traveling constantly for a night and a day, had
rested a night and half a day to reflect on his late energy, and
thereafter he was proceeding as roadside ovations would permit.
Accordingly on this, the fifth night, Lopez was close behind the
Emperor, and both were within a day of the capital, and less than a day
ahead of Driscoll, Jacqueline and Ney.
All the next day Jacqueline kept to her coach. She was cross or
nervously excited or melancholy, and by erratic turns in every mood that
was hopelessly downcast, until her maid became well nigh frantic. At
first Ney would hover near in helpless concern, but she ordered him away
angrily. However, the storm broke at last when Driscoll reined in and
waited at the roadside. She could see him through the little front pane
of glass as the carriage drew nearer, and she watched with a fierce
hunger in her eyes. All the time she stirred in greater agitation, and
her breath came more and more quickly. At the very last moment, when a
second later he might have seen her, she sprang to the window, looked
once again, then in a fury snatched at the shade and jerked it down.
Driscoll paused uncertain, but wheeled and galloped back to the head of
the column. Berthe turned to her mistress. She was lying weakly against
the cushions, staring at nothing and panting for air.
Toward dusk they reached Tuxtla, a little pueblo on the highroad set mid
maguey farms that made the rolling hill slopes of Anahuac look like a
giant's cabbage patch. In the distance, under two snow-capped peaks
beyond, the mosaic domes and sandstone towers and painted walls of the
capital glittered in the setting sun like some picture of an Arabian
city vaguely known to memory. The travelers were not a dozen miles from
their destination, but Berthe announced that madame her mistress would
rest at Tuxtla for the night.
The Austrians were quartered in the village, and Ney and Driscoll found
accommodations for the two girls and themselves farther down the road,
at the house of a maguey grower whom they persuaded to vacate. While it
was still light Driscoll amused himself strolling alone between the rows
of the great century plants. Under their leaves, curving high above his
head, he watched peons with gourds suck out the honey water from the
onion-like bulbs into goatskin bags. After a time he wandered through
the hacendado's primitive distillery and on back to the house, with a
feeling for supper.
As he entered, he heard the clanking of a sabre in the dark room. He
thought nothing of it, but almost at once something cut through the air
and a noose fell over him. He swung round, but the rope jerked tight
about his knees, and he lurched and swayed as an oak before the axe. He
struck with his fist and had a groan for reward, but a second lariat
circled his shoulders and bound his arms to his body. As he went down
under the weight of men, the shutters were thrown open, and he looked up
into the red-lidded eyes of Colonel Lopez. A troop of cavalry was
passing on the road outside, and he caught the sound of wheels
departing.
"You hear?" said Lopez. "The marquesa is going to the City, having
decided not to wait for you. But she leaves a note, pour prendre conge,
eh? You will perhaps have time to read it before the shooting."
Once more Driscoll found himself in an adobe with a sputtering candle
for company. But he also had her note. It was the third of the messages
which she had written the night before.
"Monsieur," it began, "I cannot let you die without telling you that it
was I who betrayed----"
He jumped to his feet. "Oh--the pythoness!" he breathed fervently.
"----who betrayed you," the letter read. "That you know this, monsieur,
that your last thought shall be a curse at me, such will be my
punishment. It is a self inflicted one, because you need not have known
what I have done. The telling of this to you is my scourge, but it is
not penitence. Worse and more unbearable is my sorrow that the penitence
will never come, that I can feel no remorse, no more than if some
inevitable thing, like the fever, had taken you. I would always do again
what I have just done; as pitiless as I must be for you, Fate is for me.
Your life, monsieur, is but added to the hundreds already snuffed out in
this country for France's sake. Those hundreds are my countrymen, and
you, if you lived till to-morrow, would make _their_ offering
useless. I have tried to save you, monsieur, but you would not permit.
You would not return to your own country, and--there was no other way.
But do not think there will come emissaries in your place. Do not
believe that I would so send you to death needlessly. There will be no
emissaries after you. Your Confederates shall know that Maximilian's
court martial executed you, and is it that your compatriotes will then
desire to help Maximilian? Believe--only believe, monsieur--that it is a
cruel duty not permitting that I shall listen to my heart. If you but
knew, if you but knew--and you shall know. Monsieur Driscoll--oh, mon
chevalier, it is that I love you. There, know then, dear heart cheri,
the enormity of my sacrifice. Know the necessity of it. Know that I envy
you, for you are going, and I must stay, all alone, without you. Mon
bien aime, _without you_, through all my long life!"
She had signed it simply, "Jacqueline."
Again Driscoll was on his feet. He paced up and down the room. "There's
one thing," he muttered, "and that is, there's nothing between her and
Maximilian, not when she's keeping help from him." And on he paced, his
fists opening and clenching. Suddenly he came to a dead halt.
"By God," he cried, "I'm not going to be shot, no sir, not now, not
after--not after this letter!"
Here was neither boy nor warrior. It was very much in the way of a
lover.