BERTHE
"Il y a deux etres en nous: l'acteur et le spectateur."
--_Sienkiewicz._
The same evening, though two hours later, a public hack entered an
outlying quarter of the City of Mexico called San Cosme, and drew up
before a white mansion with beautiful gardens. A young girl with soft
brown hair and gentle eyes got out, ran to the door, and brought down
the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her
present agitation. To the flunkey, who noted the public hack and was
reproachful, she said, "I must see His Excellency. Here, I have written
my name on Mademoiselle d'Aumerle's card. I am her maid. Say to Monsieur
le Marechal that he will regret it, if I do not see him at once. Quick
now, you!"
If possessed of guile, Berthe could not have done better. With
Jacqueline's card, used only because it had a blank side, her admittance
was certain and immediate.
She passed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine's
private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp
behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of
a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. The marshal, thick
necked, heavy cheeked and stocky, was standing, waiting for her.
"So," he exclaimed, "milady is arrived, eh, and you bring me her
commands?"
"No, Your Excellency, my mistress does not know that I am here. When she
learns, she will dismiss me. I----"
The marshal of France grew cold. "It was a decoy then, the card you
used?" he interrupted. "And was that one also, young woman, when you
threatened that I should regret----"
"You will indeed regret, monsieur, if you do not let me speak. There's a
mistake to correct if--if it's not too late."
The chief of the Army of Occupation shrugged his shoulders until the
back of his neck folded over itself. He had been correcting mistakes
ever since Maximilian's landing. But he was a child of the people
himself, and the distress in her eyes made him patient. "Well, what is
it?" he asked.
"It is an American. They will shoot him, monsieur!"
"Ah, one who interests the young person now before me, eh?"
"And I want you to stop them, monsieur! I want----"
"Child, child, whom am I to stop?"
"Colonel Lopez, monsieur. The American escaped once, but mademoiselle
gave him up again. He'd saved mademoiselle's life, too. And mine."
The veteran soldier rubbed his finger tips on his bald, bullet-like
head. "He saves her, and she gives him to Lopez. He must be an important
species of American!"
"Yes, yes, monsieur."
"There, don't worry. His Majesty will pardon your friend to-morrow--if,"
he added to himself, "only from habit."
"But Lopez will shoot him before the Emperor knows."
The marshal had shrewd eyes, and now they opened wide. "Getting more
important, our American!" he grumbled uneasily. "Berthe, did your
mistress know that Lopez would shoot him before he could be pardoned?"
"Oh yes, monsieur."
[Illustration: "BERTHE"
"... Brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that
it abashed her, for all her present agitation"]
"Name of a name, what does she want him killed for? Why is this drole
of a Lopez in such a hurry?--See here, child, you know something more.
What did you mean by my regretting----"
"Because, because everybody seemed to think that the poor brave American
had come with an offer of aid for Maximilian, and as you need more
troops, I thought----"
"Who, in all mercy, is this American?"
"A Confederate officer, monsieur."
Not one man, but two, paced the floor because of Jacqueline that
evening. The second was the marshal of France, and he went at it now, on
hearing of the first man. "A Confederate officer?" There were twin
creases over his straight nose, furrows of vexed and intense thinking.
The lone Southerner was linked intimately in his reflections with the
parliament of a great nation. The people of France had never warmed to
the Mexican dream, and the Chambers already were clamoring for the
return of the troops. And now, for every Confederate enlisted, a
pantalon rouge could be sent back home. But why--name of a name--should
Jacqueline try to prevent?
"Did she," he asked, but not very hopefully, "did she have any cause to
dislike this American?"
"Oh, monsieur!" The cry was pained surprise. That her mistress could or
would pay a grudge! "On the contrary," she protested vehemently, "I have
never seen her so moved, never, and if _you_ had seen her,
monsieur, as we left Tuxtla! I thought she must surely lose her mind.
One cannot imagine her terror. She cried to the driver, to the
outriders, to lash the mules, harder, faster, till it's a miracle we did
not crash over a cliff. And all the time she would look back, and at
every sound she would clap her hands over her ears and cry out to know
if that was shooting. And then she would pound at the window to them to
go faster. She wanted to get out of hearing, monsieur. It was only when
we were really here in the City that she quieted, but that was worse.
She lay and moaned. I cried, I could not help it, hearing her. She would
mutter things, too. 'France, France!' she said once, and it made me
shudder. One almost thought she had a dagger in her hand----"
"Never mind, what else did she say?"
"She said, 'Oh, I hate thee, my country!' but she wasn't in her mind, oh
no, monsieur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet.
Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her
heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could
see, for we were passing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my
breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. 'God bless him!
God--Oh, I hope there _is_ a God, just for this, to bless him, and
keep him!'"
"H'm'm," said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed
than ever.
Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she
started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not
dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the
tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf
behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the
mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline;
that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under
some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she
had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that
no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon's wish,
however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was
sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of
meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx
reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great
deal to catch the Sphinx's whisper at all. Besides, he owed his
elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.
"Berthe," he said at last, "there's just one man who can interfere where
Mademoiselle d'Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the
Emperor of France."
The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. "My dear
mistress!" she sobbed.
There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was
brushed aside.
"Perhaps," came a softly ironical voice, "a woman might so much as veto
our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho."
Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often
retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the
loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband's secret was never
one for her.
"Step into this little room," she said to Berthe, opening a door. "It
will not take long," she added, an assured light in her dark Spanish
eyes.
"You will save him, madame? You----"
"Against all the marshals of France, child. Go, wait in there."
The marshal of France present smiled on his bride indulgently,
admiringly, as she closed the door and faced him.
She was less than half his age, the girl wife of a gray-haired veteran,
and as his wife she was second lady of the land. A Mexican aristocrat,
small and slender, of a subtle, winsome beauty, with the prettiest mouth
and the most pyramidal of crinolines, she had reminded Bazaine of his
first wife, and he had courted her. At the wedding Maximilian had stood
padrino for the groom, and Charlotte madrina for the bride. The imperial
gift to groom and bride was Buena Vista, as the white mansion and
gardens in San Cosme were called. Naturally, then, Madame la Marechale
approved of Napoleon's _official_ instructions, which directed that
Monsieur le Marechal was to establish the Mexican empire solidly and for
all time.
Now her manner of calling the marshal Pancho was considerable of an
argument, especially when, archly formal, she made it Don Pancho. What
if this Confederate aid were to go to the Mexican rebels, as it surely
would if the emissary at Tuxtla were shot? And, without either French or
Confederates, the Empire would fall, the rebels would win; and then, she
wanted to know, what would become of their beautiful home, of their high
position? Moreover, the United States was threatening to drive the
French from Mexico, and Madame la Marechale believed it a very good
thing for the French to have at their side some of the very men who had
held those Yankees back for four long years.
Bazaine wavered. Then he smiled. This Mexican bride of his was Mexican
all the time; and French, sometimes not at all. She had not the big
trust in the pantalons rouges when it came to those Yankees.
"But, Pancho mio," she went on softly, "now for the real reason, the one
that holds you back. It is your Emperor Napoleon, verdad? You think that
he does not want this offer to reach Maximilian. Bien, have you had any
intimation of what he wants? Any orders? Of course you haven't. Then
save this American. Look at me--Don Pancho, I say-if----"
"Sapristi, call the girl in! No, first I must have----"
When madame could free herself from what he must have, she opened the
door and triumphantly called to Jacqueline's maid.
A half-hour later, in one of the marshal's own carriages, Berthe
returned to the castle of Chapultepec. At once she hastened to her
mistress's apartments, and confessed what she had done. Still in the
blue flowered calico, with the dust of their frantic ride still on her,
Jacqueline was seated before a little desk. Her head was buried in her
arms, and her loosened hair fell like a shower of copper over her
shoulders. She did not move as Berthe entered, nor give any sign. But
when in a word the story was told, she got to her feet and stared
blankly at the girl. Berthe expected dismissal, but the next instant two
arms were about her, and lips were pressed to hers, and hot tears, not
her own, wetted her cheek.
"Berthe, you little addle-pated goose! You--oh you little ninny, you,
you----" Her phrases were broken by laughter, then by an uncontrollable
peal that was near a shriek, "Little, little fool, dost thou know, thou
hast this night lost to France fifteen thousand leagues of empire?
Thou--thou----" Yet kisses were again the portion of the thief of
fifteen thousand leagues.
"But do you think they will be in time, Berthe? Yes, yes, you've
answered that once. And Michel leads them, you say?"
"Oui, madame, Monsieur Ney was most eager to go, above all when His
Excellency gave him Frenchmen to command. They are the cuirassiers. They
will surely save the American monsieur."
"But will they be in time? Yes, yes, I think I've asked that already."
Her hysteric glee, changing to anxiety, now changed as quickly to
something else. Her face went deathly white, the pretty jaws set hard,
and there was the glint of resolution in the gray eyes. She seized a
cloak and threw it about her.
"Come," she said to the maid.
"Madame is going----"
"Yes, to _undo_ your mischief. Bazaine must send to overtake Ney,
must command him _not_ to interfere with the execution. Bazaine
will do this, when I see him."
"But you will not find His Excellency to-night. Madame la Marechale
ordered the carriage for them both, as I was leaving there."
"Indeed? Then she knew you were coming here to me? Then she did not
mention where they were going?"
"No, madame."
"Of course not. Oh, she is cunning, your Madame la Marechale!"
Alas for Jacqueline! She might conquer herself, but add to herself a
second woman against her, and she was beaten. She confessed defeat by
throwing off the cloak.
"Tuxtla is far, you think they will--will----"
"Oh I think they will, madame!"
"Say you _know_ they will! Say it, Berthe, say it!"
"Oh, I hope so, madame. Monsieur the American is lucky."
The American? Somehow the blood swept hotly into Jacqueline's cheeks.
"Say they will _not_ save him, Berthe. Say no, no, no!" she
commanded, and imperiously stamped her foot, but stamp as she would, her
furious shame was there still, flaunting its glorious color. She was
thinking of her letter, of her avowal to a doomed man. After that,
_any_ man was under obligations to get himself shot. Only, this one
was of a contrary fibre.
In such an April mood, Jacqueline was capable of yet another caprice.
"Berthe," she cried, even as the whim came, "one is tired after playing
the goose, n'est-ce pas? Do you, then, rest--yes, yes, while I comb your
hair."
"Madame!" Berthe protested with what breath astonishment left her.
"Do ye call me chief?" demanded the mistress. "Then, de grace, sit
still! And why shouldn't I, parbleu? If it took our big French
Revolution to throw me up an ancestor out of the common kettle, there
has just now been another revolution here"--she pressed a hand against
her breast--"to stir me back among the people again. Do you know, dear,
that your hair is beautiful!"
And so they were two girls, girl-like, passing the evening together.
Of a sudden Jacqueline stopped, the braiding arrested by a most
startling thought.
"Grands dieux," she told herself slowly, for it had to be believed,
however improbable, "until this very moment I've never once stopped to
think of all the emotions I have been having this day. I've never once
examined them, and such emotions--Oh, la, la, they're a collection, a
veritable museum of creeps! And here I've hurried through that museum,
till I've even forgotten my umbrella at the check stand!"