CARLOTA
"Der sicherste Weg nicht sehr ungluecklich zu sein ist das Glueck nicht
erwarten."--_Schopenhauer._
Everybody he met seemed to twist Driscoll's business into a vital
personal issue, and it did not take him long to place M. Eloin. The
supercilious Belgian of the rancid brow, as Driscoll mentally described
him, wanted the perpetuation of the empire, and he wanted it for the
very simple reason that the favorite of a realmless prince does not
amount to much. Hence he intrigued for the acceptance of Driscoll's
offer and for the confusion of Jacqueline.
A small escort of Belgians joined him and Driscoll at the garita, or
little customs house, on the edge of the City. Accompanying them was a
burly priest with a head shaped like a pear. The padre had very small
eyes for so large a man, but they were exceedingly bright and roved
adventurously. They would settle with crafty calculation on Eloin time
and again, though his manner toward the favorite was always a thing of
humble deference.
"His Dutch Holiness from Murgie's!" Driscoll observed to himself.
But there might be an ecclesiastical college along, for all the
Missourian cared. His own thoughts were battalions. "When it's over, one
way or another," he kept deciding, "I'll speak to her, yes I will!
What's there to be afraid of? W'y, she's--only a girl." It might be an
unfair advantage, his not dying after the confession in her farewell
letter to him, but he would have her, he would have her! The Lord be
good to him, he _had_ to have her!
Late in the afternoon they arrived at the quaint old Aztec village of
Cuernavaca, which had been the country seat of Cortez, and was now that
of a second fair god and a second Hernando. After dismounting at the
hotel near the conquistador's palace, Eloin hurried Driscoll across the
plaza into the beautiful Italian gardens where Maximilian made his home.
At the villa, Charlotte's own residence in the gardens, Eloin had
himself announced to Her Majesty. The American reflected that women
seemed to have a great deal to do with the reigning business. In the
drawing room, the Empress received them.
She was a slender young woman whose lips were thin and proud, whose eyes
were dark and lustrous. Her hair was black and very heavy, coiled in the
old fashioned style away from a high forehead that was beautifully
white. She could not be older than twenty-five, and there was even a
girlishness in her bearing. But she had a steadiness of gaze--one eye
seemed the least heavy lidded--and there was a firmness to the slightly
large mouth, which gave an impression of strong lines to what was really
a soft, oval face. Yet the temperament could not be mistaken. She was a
woman of acute nerves. She was tensely strung, inordinately sensitive.
Driscoll believed now what he had heard, that the Empire fared better
when Charlotte was regent and her lord on a journey. Maximilian dreamed,
while she realized. The Hapsburg cadet, gazing over the Adriatic from
the marble steps of Miramar, had brooded fondly on what Destiny must
hold for him. He would be king of a Poland born again among the nations.
Then Louis Napoleon whispered of another throne in the building.
Whereupon _she_ began the study of Spanish; _she_ decided her
half hesitating spouse to accept, however loftily they both scorned the
adventurer who helped them to it.
Carlota, for so the natives called her, amiably greeted the Missourian.
She was a woman of tact, and though one Din Driscoll was for her as
impersonal a thing as some opportune event, yet events must be neatly
turned to account.
"His Majesty and I have discussed your presence in our country, sir,"
she began in English, "and feeling that he desires to see you again, I
requested M. Eloin to bring you to Cuernavaca."
"Why, thank you, ma'am," said Driscoll.
She all but reproved the form of address. But, for her at least, common
sense was beginning to prevail. The rigid court punctilio, largely of
her own enthusiastic designing, had gone hard with her. Her husband had
proved no more than consistent to the medieval revival. He was but true
to that old chivalry which distinguished between the divinely fair
damsel to be won and the mere woman won already. He was the monarch, she
his consort. Classifying others, the Empress found herself classified.
He was her liege, and she might not even enter his presence unannounced.
But how much happier was she in the blithe sailor prince who came
a-wooing, who wooed for love, in accordance with that same ancient
chivalry!
A princess of the Blood, of the House of Orleans, Charlotte had had that
nicest poise of good breeding, the kind that is unconscious. But here
among the Mexicans, she had to proclaim a superiority not taken for
granted, and the nice poise was gone. In her the generations--Henry IV.,
the Grand Monarch, and all of that stately line--in her they stooped.
And an element of sheerest vulgarity, as plebeian as a Jew's diamond,
crept in perforce. Poor tarnished escutcheon of Orleans! Poor princess
of the Blood, become menial with scouring it! She was weary. Over this
New World there floated too much of obscuring democratic dust. So she
allowed "ma'am," like a homely fleck, to settle unreproved on the
ancestral doorplate.
Driven to expediency for her very Empire's sake, she herself trampled on
the Ritual. Waiving all formalities, they would go and seek out His
Majesty. He must be somewhere in the gardens, perhaps beside the pond
with its fringe of deep shadows from the trees. There they expected to
find him, breathing the air of orange blossoms, gazing enraptured into
the water, and on the gold fish and the swans and the fountains. He
would be teasing Nature for a sonnet's inspiration.
Driscoll went ahead, since Carlota and Eloin talked earnestly in French,
intent on their plot for the persuasion of the Emperor. But as the
American parted a clump of oleanders and laden rosebushes that hid the
little lake, he stopped, his eyes wide on something just beyond. In the
instant he fell back, and confronted the other two with such a look on
his face that both started in vague alarm. They saw the sickened look of
one who turns from a revolting sight. A wretch stricken suddenly blind
may know at once the fact of a terrible grief, yet he cannot quite at
first gather to himself the fullness of the horror. He is only aware
that, afterward, the meaning will slowly take shape, like a gradually
darkening despair.
Driscoll gazed uncertainly at the Empress, as though she had somehow
arrested his thoughts. Then, as a strong man rushing from danger, he
comprehended that here was a frail woman near the same peril.
"You will not go, ma'am," he ordered in a kind of terror for her.
Eloin had already hastened on to the screen of roses. Being a fellow of
the arras and closets, he scented a royal secret. The Empress lifted her
shoulders and would have followed, but Driscoll did not hesitate. He
took her by the elbow and gently turned her the other way.
"You must not!" he said again, with that same scared manner on him.
She bridled indignantly, but when she saw how white he was, and how
earnest, something there awed her. In a flash she understood. Her lip
curled, baring teeth of the purest pearl, and a sneer quivered on the
highbred nostrils. But suddenly, in piteous tumult, her breast heaved
once, and betrayed the wound. It gave him to know the knighthood which
covets blows in a woman's behalf. But she, with a will that held him in
admiration and reverence for her, spoke to him, and her tone was even,
was unbroken.
"I dare say you are right," she said, and turned to retrace her steps.
But, as if to drink deeper of the bitter cup, she paused, and forced
herself to a last word.
"I suppose I should thank you," she went on, and her eyes, still dry of
tears, were lustrous as they lifted to his, "but a gentleman--and I have
never known one more than you, sir, this minute past--will understand
that I cannot--There, I am going now. And after--after this that you
have just beheld, I shall never see you again, sir. Alas, it's the more
pity. Such as you are rare, even in--in my world."
Driscoll watched her blankly as she left him, her head poised high, her
step as slow as dignity itself. His own face was cruelly drawn, with the
first sickened ghastliness still on him. He stumbled to a bench, and sat
down. But there was nothing to think about, nothing he could think
about, just then. Yet his brain was full to throbbing, and he had no
consciousness of where he was, nor of the passage of time.