_ PART II. THE ROSE THAT WAS A THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES
CHAPTER III. AS BETWEEN WOMEN
"A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market."--Lamb.
Jacqueline had wrought close to success during that May twilight on the edge of the Cuernavaca pond. She had won a promise of abdication. Yet in the end it was not the Emperor that left Mexico, but the Empress. And Jacqueline was to accompany her, to leave despite herself the scene of her labors. Such was the case precisely, and it all came to pass in this wise.
Maddened by the distance which his temptress kept, also goaded to it by the sorry state of his empire, Maximilian thought only of abdication. Napoleon responded to Jacqueline's cipher dispatch with orders to Bazaine. But Bazaine, urged thereto by Empress and marechale, ignored the orders, and advanced Maximilian more money. And Maximilian, having no longer his excuse to quit, stayed on to spend the money. Jacqueline sighed, and--began all over again. Consequently Bazaine, hearing once more from Napoleon, found himself a defaulter, and virtually recalled. Consequently, Napoleon set dates for evacuation. Consequently the rebellion sprang into new life, and the Empire lost armies and cities, and thousands of men by desertion. But the darkest cloud was formed by one hundred thousand Yankees massed along the Rio Grande. Napoleon took heed. He ordered that the French troops should leave at once, unless half the Mexican customs were turned over to the French administrator. This was during the summer of 1866, only six months after the bright hopes embodied in the Black Decree of general amnesty. Utterly appalled, Maximilian took up his pen again to sign his abdication.
But there was Charlotte. Even yet she pettishly clung to her crown. The Mexican agents in Paris had availed nothing with Napoleon. Bien, she would herself go to Paris. She would get the ultimatum recalled, and Bazaine as well, because Bazaine no longer advanced money. The imperial favorites, among them the sleek-jowled padre recommended by Eloin, seconded her intention. And as they all talked so well, Maximilian quaffed of hope. With a spite hardly noble though entirely royal, he predicted that soon the marshal would find himself in a sadder fix than himself, the Emperor.
Suddenly, secretly, a little after midnight, Charlotte left the capital. Maximilian bade her good-bye with a solemn promise to rejoin her in Europe if she failed. Three days later Dupin and his Contra Guerrillas met her in the Tierra Caliente, and offered to join her French cavalry escort. The Empress took his presence as an affront. Of late small things excited her to a feverish agitation which she was unable to control. The Tiger bowed over his saddle, and kept his gray hair bared to a torrential downpour while her carriage passed on. It was the tropical rainy season. The clouds hung low around the mountain base and truncated the more distant peaks, while the valley below was a bright contrast in wet, tender green. The wheels sank deep, and mired in the black, soggy earth. Men tugged constantly at the spokes, and the steaming mules reared and plunged under the angry crack of whips.
The Tiger of the Tropics waited as carriage after carriage toiled past him and creaked and was forced on its way. Behind the dripping windowpane of the very last he saw a face he knew, a beautiful, saddened face, puckered just now by some immediate ill-humor. She frowned on recognizing the French barbarian, but unlike Charlotte, she did not jerk down the shutter. Instead, she lowered the glass by the length of her pretty nose.
"Is it dotage already, monsieur? Then put on your hat!"
"Name of a name, yet another petulant grande dame!" But the Frenchman turned his horse and rode beside her coach.
"Did Her Majesty pout, then?" inquired the lady within.
"Almost as superbly as Mademoiselle la Marquise."
"Thank you well, but I have a superb reason for it."
"Because you return to Paris, surely not? Yet, if that is the reason, you need not quite despair."
"Why, what--what do you mean?"
"Only brigands, mademoiselle. When everyone is looking for abdication, a cortege mysteriously leaving the City must be the Emperor who goes back to Austria. The news travels like wildfire. The Indito runners go as fast as when they brought Moctezuma fresh fish from the Gulf. I rather think they have carried the news to an old friend of ours. It's my chance to catch him."
"Not my Fra Diavolo--Rodrigo Galan?"
"None other. But Rodrigo is stirred by more than patriotism these days. Upon it he has grafted a deep wrong, and he swears lofty vengeance by a little ivory cross such as these Mexican girls wear. The conceited cut-throat imagines there is a blood feud between himself and His Majesty. So if he hears that Prince Max comes this way----"
"He will find Charlotte instead? But he must not detain her."
"Tonnerre!" exclaimed the Cossack chief. "Why not? She goes to Europe to sustain the Empire, while we French----"
"All the same, let her go. She will gain nothing there. Listen to me, monsieur. She leaves that he may
not abdicate, while if I stay, she fears that----"
"He
will abdicate?"
"Your wits, mon colonel, are entirely satisfactory. And so she invited me to go with her, and as first lady of her household, I could not refuse. I wonder, now, if Fra Diavolo would deign to capture just me, alone!"
The sharp look which Dupin gave her from behind the streams tumbling off his sombrero was the sixth of a half-dozen. But it was this last one that seemed to satisfy him.
"Put up the window, mademoiselle," he said, "you're getting wet."
Ten minutes later Jacqueline felt the coach lurch heavily and sink to the hub on one side.
"Go on with your nap, Berthe," she said to her one companion. "They'll pull us out, as usual."
The customary yelling and straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long seance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin's grizzled head appeared.
"Mademoiselle, I regret to have to announce that a wheel is dished in."
Jacqueline's gray eyes regarded him quizzically. The sardonic old face spread to a grin, but deftly readjusted itself to the requisite despair.
Not a carriage except the wrecked one was in sight. Only the Tiger's whelps, by the hundred, surrounded her.
"And the others? Her Majesty?"
"The others did the sensible thing. They know that you will catch up with them when they themselves are mired. Her Majesty, being ahead, is probably still in ignorance of your accident."
"But the wheel?"
"If mademoiselle wishes it mended?"
"Is it so bad?"
Dupin caught her expression. "It will take six hours," he said mercilessly.
"Oh dear!" said Jacqueline.
"There's a settler's cabin a mile from here. If you will accept my horse, and Mademoiselle Berthe can mount behind----"
"Poor Berthe," sighed Jacqueline. But she nodded eagerly. _