Eugene P. Lyle

“ After the affair at Tampico, he came back with a troop of colonels. They were the nucleus of a cavalry which he loved more than Demijohn, more than his ugly pistols, more than his pipe.
It was a grim affection that Driscoll bore his regiment of horse. He was no longer the same man as when he left. He returned from Córdova with a mood on him, which settled more and more heavily as he nursed his troops into a splendid fighting machine. There was a dangerously quiet exultation in the patience with which he built the regiment up to full strength and trained it into the power of a brigade. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The Emperor paused in his walk. “Alas,” he sighed wearily, “a Hapsburg sacrifices himself to regenerate a people, and–they do not appreciate it.”
Jacqueline bent her head to hide a smile. She dreamily made rings in the water, and seemed to fall into his mood of poetic melancholy. “A comedietta of an empire,” she mused sympathetically, “a harlequinade, nothing more. Grands dieux, I do not wonder that Your Highness finds it unworthy!”
There is no such incense to a man as when he imagines himself understood by a pretty woman.
Yet the temptress now found herself the harder to master. ”

“ Maximilian stirred restively. One has seen a lion watch the trainer’s whip, as though he wondered that a creature with only a whip should yet, in some way, compel him to do this or that. Before an obscure adventurer the monarch hastened to justify his abdication. But it did not make him easier because the padre listened so obsequiously, with never a quiver before the horror and misery pictured. He only listened, this man of God, noting it all deferentially, item by item, with a smiling gesture that he heard and understood, and was quite ready for the next. ”

“ Miramon, Mejía, they are the leaven. They redeem Lopez, they redeem Marquez, they redeem the deserters who now so largely form my armies, who before had deserted me for the French invasion. By the signal example of these two men to die to-morrow, the world shall know that Mexicans are not all traitors. And as we grow, we Mexicans, we may grow beyond the empty loyalty of glowing Spanish words. Remembering such an example, we may come to be, in our very hearts, breathing things of honor. We have been shackled because of infamy during the last centuries. ”

“ By now the caravan was passing him. The burros, like square-shelled monstrosities with ears, were settling into a steady trot. Their blanketed arrieros ran beside them and prodded, and were in turn prodded by the fretful Murguía. Then Jacqueline rode by on an ambling little mountain-climber. She had forgotten his presence. This was not a pose with the Marquise d’Aumerle; she had, really. But her little Breton maid coming behind timidly drew rein. Driscoll looked and saw in the moving yellow torchlights that her face was white. A thing like that somehow alters a man’s attitude. ”

“ Driscoll found him so, and became his first recruit.
For the moment Régules had no army, but armies were only 364weapons brandished by the real principals in the duel. Over battle and rout and slaughter the two chiefs would glare each at the other, blade in hand and panting, but either ever ready for the stroke that should thrust through the army to the heart of its general. Such a struggle needed only antiquity and a bard to be Homeric. No Greek could equal either champion in cunning, nor Trojan in prowess, nor both in grim persistence and rugged hate. ”

“ More than a year before, when Driscoll changed sides, he was embarrassed to find a side to change to, so thoroughly had the Empire swept away all vestiges of the Liberal strength. But on achieving that farewell of his to Mendez, he rode happily southward, with some vague notion of tracking the Republic into Michoacan. The first night he slept under the stars mid tunas and Spanish daggers, and when he awoke it was to find a strange Indito squatting patiently at his feet. He sat up and rubbed his eyes at what might have been a Hindoo image, except that it doffed a straw sombrero. ”

“ Despise herself as she might, Jacqueline knew how the sight of the man halted there would leave her whole woman’s being athirst and panting.
Maximilian’s thin white face lighted eagerly when he perceived that Driscoll had come. The haggard despair of two days before had given way to a serene calm, like that which soothes a dying man when the pain is no longer felt. In a gentleness of command that would not be denied, he rose and brought the American into the room.
“Colonel Driscoll,” he began, “you know, of course, that a witness is the world’s deputy. ”

“ But in the Plaza were more cannon, which had been taken from the trenches and massed for the supreme effort. They lay silent, under the silent bells of the church. They lay under the giant Cross of the Apparition, which was adorned by the Inditos with garlands in vague memory of pagan rites on that very spot. They lay under the splendid Arabian palms. They lay among defenders. To take them was like prowling with a torch among broken casks of gunpowder. Not a shot must be fired until the thing was done. Otherwise, a quick second shot was to find the heart of Lopez. ”

“ The Woman Who Did Not Hesitate
“The soul of man is infinite in what it covets.”
–Ben Jonson.
Stealthily Éloin 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That cynicism of life which had become a part of the young girl was yet gaiety itself. Youth and health and beauty would not have even cynicism otherwise. But now, as she spoke, the irony was bitter, and worn, as of age. And behind it was a woman’s reluctance before some abhorred sacrifice, a sacrifice which would entail the woman’s power to give.
Ney stared at her uncomprehendingly. Here lay a clue to her mysterious errand in Mexico. But he was not thinking of her as the Napoleonic enigma personified. It was of herself he thought, an enigma apart. ”

“ The American was riding ahead. “Fire and sword,” Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, “they make the final tableau, but–it’s gaudy, it’s cheap.”
The trail had broadened into a high road, and now it wound among the hills like a soiled white ribbon. Driscoll turned in his saddle. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he observed in the full-toned drawl that was peculiar to him, “but what we’d better be projecting a change of venue. This route is too public, and publicity around here strikes me as sort of prejudiced. S’pose we just stir up an alibi?” ”

“ Murguía’s jaw dropped, and he gaped as one who beholds the collapse of high towering walls. It was his system of life, of motives calculated, of humanity weighed. It was the whole fabric of hate and passions which quivered and crashed and flattened in a chaos of dust before his wildly staring eyes.
“You mean, señor, you mean you do not want–as well, as I!–to bring to his end this libertine, this thief of girlhood, this prince who scatters death, who scatters shame, this–this––”
“Man alive, you’re screaming! Stop it!” ”

“ Jacqueline put the letter back in the cartridge, and everything looked as before. But no genii, once out, can ever quite be bottled up again. That stray bullet had wounded her to the heart.
“As bad as fifty thousand!” she cried half aloud. “And they will become citizens, too–Mon Dieu, that is a nation!”
With them Maximilian would have a people behind him, and his throne would be as a rock. He could, and most certainly would, disdain the French army of occupation with its thirty thousand bayonets. The French might go back home. He would speed them cheerfully, and henceforth be Emperor in fact. ”

“ This fury boiled through oaths, unable to spend itself in blows. The tigerish rage seized on them every one. Teeth grated vengefully as men struck.
“Lambaste ’em, Din Driscoll!”
“Lambaste ’em–good–Din Driscoll!”
The yell swelled to a murderous chorus. These men did not know that they were raving. A war cry is just the natural vent. It is simply the whole pack in full cry.
But never before–for now around him there was the contrast of hate and panting and passions in ferment–had Driscoll seemed so distant a thing from flesh and the human sphere. ”

“ Grays and brigands chased them back toward Querétero. The fleeing remnant began yelling for help. Driscoll rose in his stirrups, and saw just ahead a large force of the enemy. It was gathered around the Casa Blanca, a little house on the plain. The large Imperialist force there was an army, nothing less, though still disordered from the late action and victory. Surrounded by a brilliant staff was a tall, golden bearded chieftain, sumptuously arrayed as a general of division, regally mounted on a cream-coated horse of Spain. He was Maximilian, viewing from there the winning of his empire. ”

“ As he entered, he heard the clanking of a sabre in the dark room. He thought nothing of it, but almost at once something cut through the air and a noose fell over him. He swung round, but the rope jerked tight about his knees, and he lurched and swayed as an oak before the axe. He struck with his fist and had a groan for reward, but a second lariat circled his shoulders and bound his arms to his body. As he went down under the weight of men, the shutters were thrown open, and he looked up into the red-lidded eyes of Colonel Lopez. ”

“ Had not the dauntless anciano, the self-same Don Anastasio, fallen in defence of the two French señoritas? And yet, did he not keep Rodrigo at bay? Si, señores, he had indeed, until Colonel Dupin and the Contras arrived. He, the witness, was with them. He had seen these things. Now, let anyone say that the loyal Señor Murguía was an accomplice of that cut-throat without shame, Rodrigo Galán; whom he, the witness, loathed from the innermost recesses of his being; whom he, the witness, should be greatly pleased to strike dead. But let anyone again besmirch the character of Don Anastasio! ”

“ The loyalty of Miramon and Mejía has been loyalty to an invader, a wrong their country will not forgive. But our cultured gentleman of Europe, our vain fool who would regenerate the poor Indito, he will perhaps not feel so ashamed of us, not when he has two such companions in death, and not when he learns, though painfully, that the rod of Mexican justice respects neither immunity nor privilege of birth. ”

“ In such a way, her life long, Jacqueline had sustained existence. Her nourishment was ever the latest “frisson,” to use her own word. She craved thrills of emotion, ecstatic thrills. Naturally, then, three weeks of ocean had fretted the restless lass as intolerable, tyrannical.
During the norther’s blinding fury, the liner of the Compagnie Trans-Atlantique had groped widely out of her course, to find herself off Tampico when the storm abated. But the skipper saw in his ill-luck a chance for fresh meat, and he decided to communicate with the port before going on to Vera Cruz. ”

“ And each man’s wits were straightway alert, according to the hates and ambitions of each. Even Miguel Lopez, dense of understanding, had his suspicions. Murguía’s yellow features darkened malevolently. The hacienda priest whispered to M. Éloin, and M. Éloin, brushing the man of God aside as though he had been thinking of the very same thing himself, tried to get a word with Maximilian. But Jacqueline spoke first to the Emperor. She knew the susceptibility of the royal ear. Maximilian nodded at what she said, and Éloin bit his lip. Maximilian glanced at the American’s clothes. ”

“ But to His Majesty in our own Mexican capital, to His Glorious Resplendent Most Christian, Most Catholic, priest-ridden, bloodthirsty, foppish, imbecile decree-making fool of a canting majesty–to this Austrian archduke who drove forth the incarnation of popular sovereignty by the brutal hand of the foreign invader–to him I will yet make it known that the love of liberty, that the loyalty to Liberal Reforms, to the Constitution, to Law and Order, to–uh–are not yet dead in these swamps and mountains of our Patria. ”

“ And his only cynicism, and even that unconscious, was the dry honest sort which sheer unpolished naturalness bears to all things trivial and vain and artificial. One can readily understand, then, the attitude of such a man toward a playactor off the stage; toward a playactor, that is, who thinks to impress the great, wide, live world with the superficial mannerisms of his little playacting world. Here was Din Driscoll, Jack Driscoll, Trooper Driscoll, here he was, traveling near a handsome young woman who for the moment had been cut off from her precious wee sphere. ”