The Missourian Part 55

Then, without abrupt change, he talked of Austria's late woes. Had he but commanded his country's s.h.i.+ps at Lissa! Could he but have risked his life at Sadowa! And moreover, he was still needed over there. But in some quick recollection a moisture dimmed the blue eyes. He drew from his vaquero jacket a dispatch. It was from Franz Josef. If Maximilian returned to Austria, the message ran, then he must leave behind the t.i.tle of Emperor--leave behind even the t.i.tle!

"And will that hurt so much?" asked Jacqueline.

The Ritual again! For it a man withheld asylum from his brother.

"Is there no mother," cried the exasperated girl, "to spank both your Majesties?"

"'Tis of Her Serene Highness----" Maximilian began with dignity.

"Highness? Yes, I forgot, but not high enough to chide majesty, though she be a mother."

"Yet she has only just warned me of her deep displeasure if--No, her message shall wait. I wish to hear first what you think. Tell me, shall I go, or shall I stay? Tell me, tell me, and why!"

Feverishly the man craved one frank word. There was in his look the prayer of a desperate gambler who watches a card poised between the dealer's fingers. Jacqueline had one answer only. But exactly how to express it, lest she be wrongly taken, made her pause.

"In the first place," she began slowly, "there is only a single consideration involved, and in that lies the solution of Your Majesty's doubts. I mean the consideration of honor. Now if Your Highness is--_whipped_ off his throne--_that_ is ignominy--But wait, wait, I am not through. I----"

"Almost my mother's words!" he cried triumphantly. And with a hand that trembled, he got out the letter from that Archd.u.c.h.ess Sophia who had given one son a crown and loved this other as her darling.

"'Rather than suffer humiliation by a French policy'" he read from her letter, "'stay, stay, though you be buried under the walls of Mexico!'"

"But----" Jacqueline interposed. She had been taken amiss after all.

"You too bid me stay," he insisted. "But I might have known. I might have known. One who never errs said that this would be your counsel. The Padre is wonderful--wonderful!"

Father Fischer, of course! What else? How consummate was the snake in his cunning! He counted on honesty and n.o.bility in another, though having none himself. He knew Jacqueline. He thought that, both good and frank, she must advise the Emperor as his mother had done. Accordingly, when Maximilian became afflicted with doubts, the priest allowed him to go to Jacqueline. She would be an accomplice despite herself. Only his judgment did not go quite far enough. Jacqueline had not spoken _all_ her mind.

Imperiously she compelled Maximilian's attention. "I said ignominy, yes," she persisted, "but I would have added that honor--the modern and the decent--and the only courage, lies in facing this same ignominy.

Listen. If the least of impure ambition enters in your decision to remain, then for each death in the civil war that must result, Your Highness may hold himself to account, and so be held by history. Now,"

she went on, unmoved by the fact that he had winced, "the question remains with Your Highness--does aught besides honor hold you to stay?"

To himself he answered as she spoke, and guilt confessed mounted his brow.

"But there," she said, "Father Fischer will interpret the will of the Almighty. Before Your Imperial Highness retires to-night, my words will be forgotten."

The lash fell on flesh already raw and smarting. To predict that he would change yet again, when to change he branded himself a wilful murderer--no! That was more than he could endure. She must not think that of him. He held out his hand. "Jeanne!" he murmured imploringly.

"Don't!" she cried, "Don't call me that!"

Then she bit her lip, and her fury turned against herself. "Jeanne" was feminine and French for "John," which was masculine and--American. This important discovery she had made months ago when riding beside a man whose horse was "Demijohn." As a girl in love, she had found a cozy joy in their names being the same. But for that very reason any recollection of it, since then, was the less to be borne.

Blus.h.i.+ng indignantly, she saw that Maximilian was regarding her with a puzzled expression. Manlike, he referred it to himself, and suddenly, he too started. Only once before had he addressed her thus familiarly, which was during that memorable afternoon beside the artificial lake at Cuernavaca. Here, therefore, must lie the a.s.sociation that caused her agitation. Yet, since that afternoon, she had permitted no reference to their interview, unless to raise her brows quizzically at his continued presence in Mexico. But now, what of the self-betrayal into which he had just surprised her? It could not but be connected with that other time when he had murmured her name. There was, however, no conscious vanity in the remarkable explanation. It was remorse. He thought of Charlotte, his wife. And this other woman, had he wronged her also? For during the past weeks of trouble he had forgotten that he had loved her, and she had not forgotten. In two such facts, falling together, was the wrong, and one that a woman scarcely ever forgives, as he had had reason to know.

"I could not help supposing, mademoiselle," he ventured diffidently, "that what you said at Cuernavaca was inspired by--by no feeling toward myself. I could suppose nothing else in the light of your utter indifference since then, and--and your aversion for my very presence."

Jacqueline laughed pleasantly. "In that Your Highness deceives himself.

I did then, as I do now, feel for Your Highness enough to wish him safely out of Mexico."

"Charity, then?"

She did not protest.

"As I thought," he said. "There was no feeling in--in----"

Jacqueline raised her eyes and met his frankly.

"When a woman feels in the sense you mean, sire," she said, "then she does not make an empire, even the Austrian Empire, a condition. If the man in question has no more than his horse, his pistols, even his pipe, then the woman----" But she stopped abruptly.

"With you," he granted honestly, "it was not a matter of personal ambition either. But if neither of these, then what--_Now_ I see!"

he cried. "A state reason! A decoy, to tempt me out of Mexico! Yes, yes, now I see!"

"It is good to know," said Jacqueline, not ungratefully, "that Your Majesty at least, if no other, can see a high motive in my self abas.e.m.e.nt."

"Now what can she mean by that?" he demanded of himself. "What other, in particular, thinks hard of her that she should care?"

eloin was the only other man who could have seen them, there at Cuernavaca. No, little it mattered to her what eloin thought. But--yes, there was another. There was the American who had intruded and wanted to save his empire. Maximilian recalled now her change to bitterness after the American had left them, and a moment ago he had seen the identical pain of self-contempt tug at her lips. And yet, once she had left the American to die. But Maximilian answered even that objection. Leaving him to die was a necessity for her country. And the sacrifice had gone farther. It had not faltered before the self-degradation of which she had just spoken.

The admiration in his eyes grew. The chivalry in his race awoke within him, and exalted him. He felt himself become the true knight, in the purity of devotion to a woman--a gentleman, as real chivalry would have the term. Poor man and poet, he felt even the impulse to bend the knee and crave as a boon some risk of life in her service, without thought of boon thereafter--a knightly impulse nearly obsolete in chivalry, if ever customary. But he knew now that the impulse was really possible, and the proof was this: that the constraint between them had vanished, that soon he was talking with her easily and naturally.

For Jacqueline also the air had become blessedly pure, and deeply, gratefully, she breathed of it. Because now she talked with one whose respect was a fact, who _knew_ her for what she was, and during a moment's s.p.a.ce she was happy, with the happiness of delusion. It seemed that other men, that one other man, might one day know her too, and give her his esteem. But the phantasy pa.s.sed. The knowledge must forever be restricted to the man before her, and for him she did not care.

Maximilian, very strangely, was thinking of the very self-same thing.

Here was a service in her behalf already offering. If he could cause that other man to know? But it was out of the question. Men may convince one another of a woman's guilt, and only too easily. But of her innocence? No, it was absurdly out of the question. Besides, next day the true knight would be starting back for Europe. Had he not just decided?

CHAPTER IX

INTERPRETER TO THE ALMIGHTY

"... and could make the worse appear The better reason."--_Paradise Lost._

After half an hour's sharp canter, Maximilian dismounted at La Teja, his suburban hacienda. He had come quickly from Jacqueline's, for his heart was light. The stress and storm of wavering were ended at last. Soon now he would be at Miramar, at beautiful Miramar, overlooking the sea, where Charlotte awaited him, but knew it not. And by love and tender care he would coax her back to sanity. Ah, no, the pure joy of living was not done for them yet!

"Desire Father Augustin to attend me in my private cabinet," he said to the first lackey.

The huge priest came on the instant. He bore a candle in one fat, freckled hand, and above its light the dull flesh of his face shone yellow. His head was as ever pear-shaped with its heavy, flabby jowls, and in the apex the two little beads of eyes leaped adventurously at sight of the prince.

"I am here, sire," he said purringly. "Your Majesty, then, wishes me to prepare for his return to the imperial palace to-morrow?"

"No, father," His Majesty answered stoutly, though not without an uneasy glance. "To-morrow I set out for the coast. The _Dandolo_ is still there at anchor. You will give the necessary orders to my Hungarians, who will be my escort."

Fischer opened his lips, to close them. The involuntary creasing of his brow smoothed at once. Maximilian, who had dreaded argument from this man, breathed easier. But of course any man would give way when a Hapsburg had irrevocably made up his mind. The padre laid down the candle, and interlaced his bloated fingers over his paunch in an att.i.tude of sleek calmness. He was smiling and fawned meek anxiety to second his patron's least wish.

"Your Imperial Majesty's wisdom, I see, is not a thing to be turned by the fraulein?"