The Missourian Part 42

"Just that little girl----" Driscoll murmured wonderingly.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

CARLOTA

"Der sicherste Weg nicht sehr unglucklich zu sein ist das Gluck 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 G.o.d 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 l.u.s.trous. Her hair was black and very heavy, coiled in the old fas.h.i.+oned 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. Cla.s.sifying others, the Empress found herself cla.s.sified.

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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 l.u.s.trous 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 pa.s.sage of time.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT HESITATE

"The soul of man is infinite in what it covets."--_Ben Jonson._

Stealthily eloin drew aside the bushes, and peered through. The tiny pond with its crystal surface sunk deep in foliage, its flowering island in the centre, looked not unlike a mirror on a dining table luxuriantly wreathed by garlands. The Belgian stared greedily. He did not see quite what Driscoll had seen, yet he saw enough to draw his brow to a narrowing fold of keenest interest. Jacqueline was seated on the raised edge of the basin, pensively dipping a hand into the water. Her plump wrist showed rosy, like coral, and glancing sideways now and again at a poor agitated prince striding up and down, she looked as she did that day in the small boat, while tempting a shark. As she leaned over, the line of her waist and neck was stately and beautiful; and there were the maddening baby tendrils of soft, glowing copper. Maximilian had evidently found her there, in a reverie perhaps, and was at sight of her lured to some act bold and desirous; for just as evidently, if his flushed face and the way he bit his lip were tokens, he had that moment been repelled. eloin watched them avidly, the tall archduke pacing up and down, the demure lady seated on the basin's edge.

"It was but the lowly homage of a prince," Maximilian cried out peevishly. Such was his apology.

"Homage of a play-king," she corrected him with exasperating sweetness.

He turned on her angrily. "Why do you say that--a play-king?"

"Whose emba.s.sies," she proceeded calmly, "cringe for recognition. Like beggars they prowl about that White House at Was.h.i.+ngton, yet never cross the threshold."

Maximilian was too amazed for denial. "How do you know?" he exclaimed.

"While at the same time," she went on, "the same neighbor receives the minister of the Mexican republic, and sends one in turn. But no matter.

The marionettes of empire can dance, so long as Napoleon holds the strings. Was the princely homage a make-believe, too?"

"But--but, if I should convince you, mademoiselle, that the majesty which only asks to kneel is genuine?"

Her eyelids narrowed, and she looked at him with the oddest smile.

"You know--sire--that I only ask to be convinced. Where will Your Imperial Highness begin?"

"Know then that the American peasant named Lincoln, who would not recognize a Hapsburg, is dead. He has been a.s.sa.s.sinated. He will no longer encourage our rebels in Mexico."