The Missourian Part 74

"Years of Destiny!" she cried, thinking to touch him there.

"No!" he exclaimed, so harshly and quick that it startled her. "But for me they will be years of dearest mercy. Wait, tell me first, Miramon and Mejia----"

"Yes, yes, we will save them too. Only, the risk is greater."

"Bien!" He had almost accepted, but he smothered the word, and starting up, began to pace the room. At last he stopped. "The risk must be lessened, for them," he said. "_I_ will remain."

"H'm'n," the girl e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Hamlet declines? Then there will be no play at all, at all."

Maximilian knew how stubborn she could be; and so, reluctantly, he joined the plot.

"I have deserved Marquez and Fischer and Lopez," he sighed. "But why there should be friends, even now, that I cannot understand."

Yet she told him bluntly why she wanted his safety. It was on France's account. Still, his grat.i.tude was no less profound. She who would give life to others, what was her life to be henceforth? The mellowing sorrow, which her vivacity could not hide, smote him again, as it had that evening in Mexico when he came to her for counsel. He remembered.

Out of a useless ambition for her country she had squandered her name, blighted her future. He remembered how, looking on her saddened face, he had been exalted to a pure devotion, and had burned with knightly fervor to do her some impossible service. But what was the service? There his memory failed, and he despised the chivalrous ardor which could be quenched with feeding on itself. After the fearful vigil of the night before, he had found a suit of armor beside him. In a word, he had forgotten self. Simple compa.s.sion was enough. That service? that service? If he could only remember. But he must. And in hot anger he strode back and forth, while Jacqueline sat and gazed in wonder. Once, turning from the corridor window, he paused. The guard had stopped a man, who now was evidently waiting until the prisoner should be unoccupied. Unseen himself, Maximilian recognized in the man the American named Driscoll. And then he remembered. He remembered Jacqueline's secret, betrayed to him that evening in Mexico. He remembered that her happiness was lost in the loss of this man's respect. Here, at last, lay the impossible service!

Maximilian glanced toward her stealthily. No, from where she sat she could not see the corridor, could not see the waiting American. A moment later Maximilian stood behind her; and when he spoke, she thought it odd that he should change from French to halting English.

"Miss d'Aumerle," he began, in distinct if nervous phrasing, "yes, it was for France, all, all of which you haf done. Therefore is it that you haf come to this country, and here to Queretaro, whatever is to the contrary said."

"De grace," she laughed, rising abruptly, "there's enough to do to-day without discussing----"

But he intercepted her even as she opened the door.

"Will Your Highness kindly let me pa.s.s?"

"And I know, I alone, that nefer haf you toward myself once felt, once shown, that which----"

A sharp, indignant cry escaped her. Following her gaze he saw the American pa.s.s on down the corridor and out of hearing.

"Now who," exclaimed the chagrined prince, "would ever have imagined such delicacy of breeding!"

"And don't ever again," cried Jacqueline furiously, "imagine that _I_ stand in need of being righted!" Wherewith she too was gone, leaving her clumsy knight staring blankly after her.

A few moments later Driscoll knocked.

It was the first meeting of these two men since the memorable afternoon at Cuernavaca, when Driscoll had surprised Jacqueline listening to royalty's shameless suit. Now he beheld Fatality's retribution for that day's bitterness. Retribution, yes. But it was not rest.i.tution. The girl he loved had just pa.s.sed him in the corridor with a slight casual nod, and he would not, could not, stretch forth a hand to stop her. Instead, the smile so ironical of Fate had touched his lips.

"I was sent by Senor Juarez, sir," he addressed the archduke in the tone of military business. "The President is afraid your three days of reprieve will be misunderstood. He sent for me as I was leaving San Luis yesterday, and I--I was to tell you----"

"You need not hesitate, colonel."

"Well, that you must not hope for pardon, for the sentence will positively be carried out day after to-morrow. That--I believe that is all."

"But--" Maximilian called, staying him. "Dios mio, such news merits a longer telling. It seems to me too, Senor Americano, that you should enjoy it the more, since it was partly you who brought me to this."

"I don't know as I'd thought of that. How?"

"You ask how? Do you forget how you took the traitor Lopez to Escobedo, the night I was betrayed?"

Driscoll swung bluntly round on his questioner. "No I don't," he replied. "But you see, there was such a lot of bloodshed scheduled for the next day?"

"Isn't that rather a curious reproof from a soldier? Loyal hearts would have bled, yes, and gladly. n.o.ble fellows, they would have saved their Emperor!"

Driscoll half snorted, and turned on his heel. But he stopped, his lips pressed to a clean, hard line. "What of those townsmen in the trenches?"

he demanded. "It wasn't their fight."

Maximilian's eyes opened very wide, and slowly his expression changed.

The thick lower lip drooped and quivered. Suddenly he came nearer the American, a trembling hand outstretched.

"I was saved that," he murmured earnestly.

"They were," the grim trooper corrected him.

"The townsmen, yes. But I--I was kept from murder. G.o.d in heaven, I would have murdered them! Ah, senor, if I could put to my account a night's work such as yours, that night, when you used the traitor! I could almost thank Lopez. I do thank you."

Still Driscoll failed to notice the proffered hand. He might have, had he seen his suppliant's face, and the tense anguish there.

"Those innocent non-combatants, then," Maximilian went on, "so they counted more than a prince with you?"

"Of course, there were a thousand of 'em."

The other's haggard look gave way to a smile, half sad, half amused, and taking the American by the shoulder in a grip almost affectionate, he said, "Colonel, did you ever happen to know of one Don Quixote of La Mancha? Well, lately I've begun to think that he was the truest of gentlemen, though now I believe I could name another who----"

"And," interrupted Driscoll, "did you ever try to locate the most dignified animal that walks, bipeds not excepted? Well, sir, it's the donkey. Take him impartially, and you'll say so too."

The strain was over. Maximilian laughed. "If Don Quixote had only had your sanity!" he began; "or rather," he added, charmed with the conceit, "if knighthood had had it, then the poor don would never have been needed to be born at all."

Ignoring the sincerity of the Hapsburg's new philosophy, and how tragically it was grounded, Driscoll only smiled in a very peculiar way.

Knighthood? The word was supercilious cant, and irritated him. During that very moment, while listening to Chivalry's devotee, the young trooper thought of a little ivory cross in his pocket, a cross which was stained with a girl's blood. Murguia had given it to him, to give to Maximilian on the eve of execution. But Driscoll had not promised, and yet Murguia had implored him to take it, even without promising. The old man held faith in vengeance as a spring to drive all souls alike, and if Maximilian's last earthly moment could be embittered with sight of a cross, then, he firmly believed, the American needed only to be tempted with the means to do it. Moreover, in a sudden impulse, Driscoll had taken the holy symbol, "to do with as he chose." There was no message, Murguia had explained. The Senor Emperador would read the graven name, "Maria de la Luz," and that would suffice.

Looking now on the cultured gentleman caressing his beard, Driscoll thought again how h.e.l.lishly distorted was the sign of salvation then in his pocket. But he left it there. He, too, had a king's pride, incapable of low spite. Charity alone, though, would have held him, if he had but known that Maximilian was ignorant of the dead girl's fate.

The archduke for his part had been amiable and conciliatory, because there was a certain delicate question he wished to ask.

"Oh by the way, mi coronel," he said abruptly, "I must extend my excuses for keeping you waiting in the corridor just now. But there was another visitor here. And as we happened to be talking of--well, of a rather personal matter, not intended for outside ears----"

"Do not worry. When you raised your voice, I turned and left."

"But perhaps," said Maximilian slowly, "it would have been better if you had overheard, either you or another knowing the cruel rumors which--which link my recent visitor's name with my own. Then the truth would have been made known. That truth, senor," he hastened to add, despite a hardening frown between the American's eyes, "means first that I have been honored, indeed, in my visitor's----"

He got no further. A broad hand closed over his mouth.

"Another word of that, and I'll--I'll----"

The threat was left unfinished. Gasping in the chair where he had fallen, Maximilian found himself alone. He was vaguely nonplussed. There had been so many revelations of late that he thought this one simply a further re-adjusting of himself to the modern world of men. The present instance had to do with the critical juncture where the woman enters.

But he had learned something else, too. The American loved her, and that was important. Yet lovers were very contrary beings, he mused lugubriously.