Driscoll

“ 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. ”

“ Thirlwell suggested, remembering a night watch he had kept while the blizzard raged about Driscoll's shack.
"One does think of examples. Perhaps we generalize too much. It is easy to let an individual stand for a type."
"If the individual is Black Steve Driscoll, I hope he's an uncommon type."
Father Lucien made a sign of agreement. "Driscoll was in my thoughts. A strange man; dogged and sullen, with a heart that kindness cannot touch. Yet one feels he is afraid." ”

“ With a forager’s direct method, Driscoll roused the early slumbering village. He would not take alfafa, he declined rastrojo. It was human food, corn, that he bought for his horse. He housed his dumb friend under a human roof too. After which he prepared a habitation for the women. He swept the likeliest hut clean of ashes, brazier, and bits of pots and jars. He carpeted the earth floor in Spanish moss, as King Arthur’s knights once strewed their halls with rushes. It was luxury for a coroneted lass, if one went back a dozen centuries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was one other among the spectators, but keeping himself hidden, whom Maximilian would have been concerned to see there. He was Driscoll. He came to watch the shriveled derelict, Murguía. He came to stand guard over a soul, Maximilian’s. What peace that soul had found should not be destroyed. And so he screened himself in the crowd, holding ready to crush a viper whose fangs were heavy with poison. When Maximilian paused and spoke to the old man, Driscoll was very near, near enough to hear, and to strike. ”

“ But Driscoll wanted a more definite focusing of the joy. And at times, indeed, yielding to temptation herself, she permitted him to lose his heart deliciously over again. Shadows were lifted now, and she was just a lovable girl, just sweet Jacqueline. And he loved her with the boy’s young strength of adoration and diffident awe. Precisely in which state she made him suffer exquisitely. No one could be more contrary and capricious than the lovable girl of a moment before. ”

“ When they picked up the ringleader, they saw that his fingers had been neatly clipped at the hilt of the machete.
The cavalry officer was Driscoll–but changed! He was changed as bland Mephisto would change a man, if the material were adaptable and Mephisto an artist. Such exquisite gentleness in peril and in slaying could be no other than the devil’s own, and in the most devilishly artistic mood of that suave dilettante.
It was natural that any man should color somewhat into a desperado, considering such an existence among those Sierras, but Driscoll was a desperado refined by cynicism. ”

“ The señor’s presence would a favor be esteemed, in reason that a witness was greatly necessitated.
Wondering not a little, Driscoll hastened back into the town. As the physician did not follow, he arrived alone. But in the door of the archduke’s cell he stopped, angry and embarrassed. For his eyes encountered a second pair, which were no less angry, which moreover, were Jacqueline’s. Maximilian and Padre Soria, the father confessor, were also there, but Driscoll at first saw no one but Jacqueline. ”

“ The cord wood snapped and crackled, the front of the stove got red, and sitting in a corner out of the draughts, they began to talk in low voices.
"Driscoll was delirious; he talked strangely," Thirlwell remarked. "Is a sick man's raving all such stuff as dreams?"
"Ah," said Father Lucien, "we know little yet about the working of the disordered brain, but the imagination sometimes centers on and distorts things that have happened. Did you get a hint of intelligence in what Driscoll said?"
"I did. He said he never had the thing. Somebody—Strange, perhaps—took it with him." ”

“ John Driscoll was in trouble. John Driscoll, aged twenty-seven, was a lone scion of one of the best families of St. Louis, a city where they have good families, certainly. Driscoll's trouble was of the sort which tries a man. He was desperately in love with a fair young woman, but consent to the marriage was absolutely refused by the young woman's father until Driscoll should be worth at least twenty thousand dollars; and a very obstinate old gentleman was Mr. Cameron, who owned much real estate and was looked upon as one of the solid men of a solid city. ”

“ Driscoll explained bluntly. “I told you I wouldn’t.”
Yet no spasm of chagrin distorted the weazen face.
“This chain here, it’s–it’s gold!” the old man cried.
Then he sputtered, choked. What had he betrayed? Would the strange donor reclaim the gift, knowing it was gold? He leered craftily at Driscoll, and with a hungry, gloating secrecy–his old slimy way of handling money–he smuggled the holy symbol under his jacket. But from cunning the leer changed to suspicion and quick alarm. He delved into his pockets, one after another. ”

“ 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. Murguía had given it to him, to give to Maximilian on the eve of execution. But Driscoll had not promised, and yet Murguía had implored him to take it, even without promising. ”

“ More than once he had felt a vague shame for the unsportsmanlike chase after one lone, indomitable old man. Driscoll held a commission, which Michel Ney, happily recovering, had procured for him from the marshal. But as the American’s healthy spirits, like cleansing by vigorous blood, swept the gloom from his mind, he began to wonder at the craving for bustle and forgetfulness which had made him snatch at such an offer. ”

“ Until those words Rodrigo had held the situation. With them he lost it, and Driscoll was master. And Driscoll grew serene, and very sweet of manner. He began filling a cob pipe. A nod of his head indicated the coach as a condition of his going.
“Look, look!” Rodrigo shouted. “Oh, que viva–they’re running! We’ve smoked them out! We’ve smoked them out!”
Driscoll swept the country with his glasses. Thousands of men were running like frightened rabbits down the Cimatario slope, and spreading as a fan over the grassy plain. ”

“ Yet he had had a vision of his life’s dearest happiness, and it was gone, that vision, beyond recall.
368Ignorant as he was of Jacqueline’s mission, Driscoll had but one explanation. A man had been born a prince, and a prince dazzles a woman. Yet the rankling in him was neither because of the prince, nor because of the woman. It was much more hopeless than that. It was because a man could be born a prince at all. Something was out of harmony in the world. The irony of it made him grim, and to his sense of humor that such things could be came the smile. ”

“ Like others of his class, he thought all Protestants pagans, and none Catholic but a Mexican. “Must be something like John the Baptist’s day, 192verdad, señor?” he said. “On that holy day, once a year, we must all take a bath.”
“Quite right too,” Driscoll returned soberly. “A man should go through most anything for his religion.–Haven’t noticed my horse there, have you, Johnny?” The guard pricked up his ears. “Of course not,” Driscoll went on, “you’re worrying about my soul instead. Well, so am I. We Americans, you know, save our yearly baths for one big solemn final one, just before we die. ”

“ Foley gave us to understand," answered Mr. Baxter. "But it's another man, a man named Keating, that's stirring this up."
"Keating!" Mr. Driscoll's lips pouted hugely, and his round eyes snapped. For a man to whom he had taken a genuine liking to be stirring up a fight against his interest was in the nature of a personal affront to him.
"I think I know him," said Mr. Murphy. "He ain't such a much!"
"That shows you don't know him!" said Mr. Driscoll sharply. "Well, if there is a strike, we'll at least have the satisfaction of fighting with an honest man." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Driscoll whispered to those who had staid. “The trenches are filled with townsmen. He took me.”
The Americans glanced once the stranger’s way, and grunted. He was a large man, hidden to the eyes in a Spanish cloak. For all the charity of darkness, he seemed ill at ease, and held himself from them, a marked figure, alone. A leprosy in himself tainted his every thought. He would not willingly come near any man. He understood English, unhappily now for him, and Boone’s warning as they mounted seared like vitriol. ”

“ The thought of his mission gave Driscoll an ironic twinge.
But there was the pantalon rouge, the little soldier boy of France who did the work, and the sight of him put the American into a friendly humor. He was everywhere, the little pantalon rouge, streaming the walks, dotting the cafés with red, and every wee piou-piou under the great big epaulettes of a great big comic opera generalissimo. His huge military coat fitted him awkwardly, and the crimson pompon cocked on his little fighting képi was more often awry, and he could not by any effort achieve a strut. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And as Guatemotzin had once ventured to this place to plead with Moctezuma to save his empire, and to show him how to do it, so Driscoll now entered the portals of Chapultepec on a very similar errand.
The superb Indian lord was never so hedged in with barbaric ceremony as was his Teuton successor of three centuries later. But Driscoll was patient. He advanced as the red tape gave way, humming under his breath “Green Grows the Grass,” a schottische which the American invaders of ’48 had sung in taking this same fortress, which also had given all Americans the name of “Gringo.” ”

“ The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.
Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt all the way down. He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other one for being the kicker’s brother. ”

“ Captain Driscoll is a typical Irishman, just such a man as the soul of Charles Lever would have revelled in, a man of dauntless daring, with a heart of iron, and a face to match. Strangely enough, the captain does not pride himself a bit on his pluck, but he thinks a deuce of a lot of his beauty. As a matter of fact, he has the courage of ten ordinary men, but he would not take a prize in a first-class beauty show. ”

“ The Baptist would hasten straight to Lopez, and Lopez, Driscoll foresaw, would interpret his scruples into a disguised acceptance. The crookedness of the game left the American no other trump, and he played it–against immediate death. Lopez, of course, would send him under guard to Juarez, but Driscoll thought he could trust that staunch old Roman, when once informed, to call for a new deck and an honest deal. ”