_ PART II. THE ROSE THAT WAS A THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES
CHAPTER XXIV. THE JOURNALISTIC SAGACITY OF A DANIEL
"Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past Regret and future Fears."
--Omar. At last Jacqueline stabbed a dot after the word "Finis," and so rounded out her chapter on "Failure." Beyond doubt that tiny punctuation point saved many lives. The besiegers were waxing impatient to assault, and within the City famine mobs ran the streets, crying, "Corn and wood! Corn and wood!" Those who could fled to the Republican camp. The Austrians practically mutinied. Starving and dying thousands clamored for surrender. Yet the ugly, revolting pigmy who was lieutenant of the Empire held them back in the terror of his heartless cruelty.
Then the angel of mercy came. From her Marquez the tyrant learned that his speculation in treachery had collapsed. Louis Napoleon wanted no more of that stock. Besides, every French bayonet was needed in France. The rabid Leopard heard, and that night meanly crept away to save his own loathsome pelt. Bombs had begun to fall into the City, when a Mexican general worthier of the name took upon himself the heroic shame of unconditional surrender. The Oaxacans outside marched in, led by their young chief, Porfirio Diaz, and they fed the people, and of "traitors" shot only a moderate few.
Renovation became the order of the days that followed. The President of the Republic was to be welcomed back to his capital. The stubborn old patriot's heart must be gladdened by every contrast to the dreary, rainy night years before when he fled into exile. Mexico would honor herself in honoring the Benemerito of America. So bunting was spread over every facade, along every cornice, green, white, and red, a festival lichen of magic growth. Flags cracked and snapped aloft, and lace curtains decked the outside of windows. Soldiers put on shoes and canvased their brown hands in white cotton gloves, and military bands rehearsed tirelessly.
Din Driscoll sat on a bench in the shady Zocalo, and contemplated the Palacio Nacional and the Cathedral in process of changing sides from Empire to Republic. Innumerable lanterns being hung along their massive outlines were for incense to a goddess restored. The Mexican eagle had prevailed over monarchial griffins, and held her serpent safely in the way of being throttled. The blunt homely visage of Don Benito Juarez, luxuriously framed, looked out from over the Palace entrance. It was a huge portrait, surrounded by the national standards. Among the emblems there was one other, the Stars and Stripes. The gaze of the ex-Confederate was fixed. It was fixed steadily on the Stars and Stripes. Now and then he felt a rising in his throat, which he had difficulty to swallow down again.
"Well, Jack?"
Boone stood over him. Driscoll's eyes were oddly troubled as they turned from that flag opposite.
"Sure it's hard," said Boone quietly, "mighty hard, to forgive our enemies the good they do."
"What enemies?"
"W'y, them," and Daniel pointed to a flag as to a nation. "Yes sir, the Yanks have kept faith. Do you see a single one of their uniforms down here? Do you notice anywheres that Yankee protectorate we were predicting? No sir, you do not! The Yanks--" But the term was damning to eloquence. Mr. Boone found another. "The
Americans, I repeat, have hurled back the European invader. They have given Mexico to the Mexicans. They have endowed a people with nationality. But they have not gobbled up one solitary foot of territory. Which is finer, grander, than your Napoleonic glory! And yet it's selfish, of coh'se it is. But listen here, there'll never be any Utopia, Altruria, Millennium, or what not, that don't coincide with self-interest. And first among the races of the earth, the Americans have
made 'em coincide, and I want to know right now if the Americans are not the hope of the world!"
The orator paused for breath. He had to. And then surprise the most lugubrious unexpectedly clouded his lank features. "Darn it, Jack," he exclaimed in alarm, "if I ain't getting Reconstructed, right while I am standing here!"
"
Talked yourself into it," Driscoll observed scornfully. "But Dan, you can just put the South along with your Americans. The French laughed at the North alone, but later, when--Well, just maybe it's a good thing we did get licked."
Mr. Boone gasped. Sparks of indignation darted from his steel blue eyes. The recoil needed a full minute to spend itself. Then a greater horror appalled him, a horror of himself. "The Lawd help me," he burst forth, "but you're right, Din Driscoll! You are! It
was for the best. But don't you ever think I'm going to admit it again, to nary a living mortal soul, myself included. W'y, it would, it would knock my editorial usefulness--all
to smash. There," he added, "that's decided, we're going back. The colonels want their mamas. They've been men long enough, and they're plum' homesick. All the old grudges up there must be about paid off by now, so's an ex-Reb can live in Missouri without train robbing.
Libertas et natale solum--It's our surrender,
at last."
Driscoll rose abruptly. "Lay down your pen, Shanks," he said. "You're only trying to convert the converted. Of course I'm going too. That there flag, being down here, did it. And don't you suppose
I've had letters from home too?"
Meagre Shanks jumped with relief. He straightened throughout his spare length. As the smell of battle to the war charger, the pungent odor of printer's ink wet on galley proofs assailed his nostrils. There were visions, of double-leaded, unterrified thunderbolts crashing from the old Gutenberg, back in Booneville.
"Missouri," he breathed in fire, "Missouri will sho'ly stay Democratic."
Both men glowed. They were buoyant, happy. But these two could not so soon be quit of the enervating Land of Roses. A pair of countenances fell together. Daniel voiced their mutual thought.
"And Miss Jacqueline?" he queried boldly, with the air of meaning to persist, no matter what happened.
Driscoll showed weariness, anger.
"And Miss Burt?" he parried.
"She won't desert, I told you once."
"You mean that she's going to Paris too? I say, Shanks, they're leaving to-morrow."
Shanks knew that much, quite well enough.
"Have you
tried to stop her?" he demanded sternly.
Driscoll only looked disgusted.
"But have you--
asked her?"
Driscoll's head jerked a nod, of wrath ascending.
The inquisitor wisely swerved. What her answer had been was, to say the least, palpable. But her reason for it was
the question with Daniel.
"Is it," he pursued, "is it because she hasn't any dot? You know, Jack, that in France, when a young lady----"
"No, it's not that. I know it's not."
"Oh ho," said Daniel, "so you've been guessing too! And how many guesses did she give you? No, let me try just a few more. It ain't because, because she's an aristocrat?"
"But I
want an aristocrat," cried the young Missourian, "one to her finger tips, enough of one to be above aristocracy. And
she is."
"Then," said his friend in despair, "it's because she don't, just simply don't care for you?"
"You're a long time finding that out."
"What! You don't mean----"
"Fact," said Driscoll. "Even I guessed it at last. I told her I had been reckoning that she----"
"Cared, yes?"
Driscoll made a wry face. "And she said I mustn't jump at conclusions, I might scare 'em."
The Troubadour chuckled heartlessly. Neither was Driscoll's sense of humor entirely gone.
"'Oh, awful goddess! ever dreadful maid!'" Mr. Boone quoted.
"She's sure a wonder," the other owned gloomily.
"And you are a blind dunce, Jack."
"Don't talk axioms at me," said Driscoll, with a warning light in his eye. "I don't need 'em."
"Well, now," drawled Mr. Boone, "I can't help it if I associate with you any longer, so I'll just mosey round to the flower market. As they leave to-morrow, they'll be wanting some violets."
And he went, and Din Driscoll sat down again and hated him.
Daniel wended his way slowly, an attenuated ranger in gray mid carriages and blanketed forms. "Sho'", he mused, "that girl's heart is fair bleeding for him, can't
I see! Her eye-lashes, they're
wet, every now
and then. And whatever the matter with her is, it's nothing. But nothing is the very darndest thing to overcome in a girl. There's got to be strong measures. It's got to be
jolted out of her.
Archimagnifico, there's the point!"
Mr. Boone drew out a black cigar, and mangled it between his teeth. He pondered and pondered, absent-mindedly kicking at natives he bumped into. "Kidnap 'em!" he cried at length. "N-o," he reflected, "they go in the public stage, and what with the escort, somebody'd get hurt. We don't want any dead men at this wedding. Old Brothers and Sisters would balk anyhow, and our ecclesiastical officiator is the boy we
do need. Now what the everlasting----"
He meant what salutary jolt he
could invent, barring holdups, but in the same breath he meant also a most startling scene which revealed itself as he turned the corner.
A deafening crash of musketry was the first thing, and he looked up. He had come into a small plaza before a church, and against the church's blank wall a scene was taking place before an awe-stricken throng. He understood. Another proscribed "traitor" had just been caught; and executed, naturally. But no, not executed! For as the officer of the shooting squad approached to give the stroke of mercy, the prostrate victim raised himself by one hand and knocked aside the pistol at his head. Then he laughed in the officer's face, the most diabolical and unearthly mirth any there had ever heard. There was not a stain of blood on him. He had dropped in the breath of eternity before the bullets spattered past. But his uplifted face, with chin tilted back, was swollen, black, distorted, corded by pulsing veins, and one of the eyes--a crossed eye--bulged round and purple out of its socket, and
gleamed. The demon of pain was tearing at the man's tissue of life, but by grip of will unspeakable the agony in that grimace changed to a smile.
"Yes, poison! Vitriol!" he chattered at them hideously. "Adios, imbeciles. It's my last--jest!"
Whereat he fell, writhing as the acid burned to his soul. Before the astounded officer could shoot, he had grown entirely quiet.
Boone strained and pushed against the crowd until he reached the spot. The cadaver was in tight charro garb of raw leather. His sombrero lay near, on which was worked a Roman sword, meaning "Woe to the conquered!" Boone turned inquiringly to the officer. The man, who was pallid, touched his thumb to his cap, recognizing the uniform of the Grays.
"You should know him, mi coronel," he explained. "His name was Tiburcio. He deserted from the Imperialistas at Queretaro, but afterward he joined the plot for Maximilian's escape. We had his description, and I found him. He wanted to take me to Marquez and Fischer, whom we would also like to find. He said that he risked himself here, to spy on them, and that he knew where they had fled, the Leopard disguised in the padre's cloak. But of course I paid no attention. I did not delay even to tie his hands. As Your Mercy observes, I had the honor to do my duty, at once."
"I see," replied Boone dryly. "Lawd, this
is a jolt!"
Then he got himself away from there.
"A jolt," he muttered to himself again. "But shucks, it can't--Yes, it can," he decided fervently, "it can be used. We've got to have something terrifying, and poor cock-eyed Don Tibby won't care. He'd appreciate it. And anyhow, I don't seem to be able to stir up inspirations to-day, and this is the only thing."
He was as pallid as the shooting squad he had just left.
"No matter," he reflected, "I'll need just this ghastly state of mind. But here, goodness gracious, I've got to be in a sweat," with which he began to run, a lank knight in gray dented armor.
"Worse luck," his thought pounded along with him, "this here's the first time I've ever faked. And it's a heap the hottest story I've ever handled, too. Our little Parisienne will get a frisson all right, all right, and such a one she'll not be wanting any of again very soon. Dixie Land, I mustn't smoke, I'm to be too excited."
He came into the Zocalo, and drew up before Driscoll, who was still there and still ruminating.
"Listen here," Boone panted, "here's your cue.--In ten minutes--to the second--arrive--knock at her door--appear!"
"With violets?" inquired Driscoll.
"Oh shut up!--Quit, don't stop me, I'm getting cooled off!--Only do what I say.--In just ten minutes--that is--if you want the girl."
And Daniel was off again, "with high and haughty steps" towering along.
"That Meagre Shanks, there, isn't a fool," Driscoll mentally recorded, and he took out his watch.
The two girls were stopping at a hotel in Plateros Street, for Jacqueline had returned to find her beautiful residence, salon and all, ruthlessly dismantled, looted, robbed by Marquez while she was in Queretaro, which was a manner of levying contributions not unfamiliar to the Lieutenant of the Empire.
In the balcony room of their hotel suite the two girls strove valiantly. Crisp gowns and dainty allied mysteries lay spread over the upholstery. They were vanishing into cavernous trunks, with crushing indifference if Jacqueline seized on a garment, but gently when Berthe rescued it, which she always did. Through the double glass doors of the balcony the street sounds below rose to their ears, clarion notes and vivas, hurrying feet and prancing hoofs, and the National hymn a few blocks away in the Zocalo.
Suddenly a grim apparition loomed before the glass doors on the balcony. Berthe half screamed, in dismay clutching at ruffles and laces to hide them, when into the sweet-scented confusion strode Mr. Daniel Boone. He was the grim apparition. Jacqueline withheld her opinion, but she had one. The intruder's spurs were iconoclastic of carpeting, his abrupt presence of feminine sensibilities. But the lean, perspiring face drove away all thought of the conventions. Jacqueline snatched up a fleecy bank of petticoats, making room for him on the sofa. Daniel stared vacantly. The two girls looked very pretty. They were just flurried enough, and they wore white lawn, with sleeves short to the elbow. His fingers groped, and soon they closed over a small, instinctive hand. He kept hold upon that hand for strength, at the same time collapsing on the sofa.
"Now, if you please," said Jacqueline calmly, "what----"
"O Lawd!" Boone gulped, fighting for breath. "It don't matter much--maybe--to you all, but--O Lawd, I got to tell somebody!"
"Tell us, tell us!" cried she of the captured hand.
Daniel had sufficient presence of mind to retain it.
"You know that--that poor devil Tiburcio?" he gasped.
"Yes, yes!" But what anti-climax was here?
"Well, he--he's dead. I saw him.--Lawd!"
"Oh!" It was a little cry of relief.
"But some were--were killed--taking him." Boone noted Jacqueline's intake of breath, her first tremor of alarm. "He fought like a--a wildcat. He had a knife--and a machete--and a pistol--and----"
"
Who was killed? Monsieur--Oh, mon Dieu, what
can you have to tell me?"
Daniel almost repented, there was that in her gray eyes.
"Among them was my--" He nerved himself to it, some way--"my best friend, that peerless----"
"Who?" Her command was imperious, her white teeth were set.
"Din Driscoll!"
The man blurted it out like a whipped schoolboy. He could not look up. He could only feel that she stood there, stricken, suffering.
"Where is he?"
He could not believe that this was her voice. It was hardened, tearless, without emotion.
"Monsieur--where is he?"
The girl at his side sprang up with a sharp cry to her who questioned. Then he raised his eyes. Jacqueline was unaware of the sobbing girl who clung to her. Her face was changed to marble, her body as rigid.
"Take me to him," she spoke again, still with that deathly authority of the grave.
The man stammered before what he had done. The great beads stood out on his forehead. "You would not--you must not--you----"
"He is mine," she said simply. "Wait, I shall be ready, at once." She passed into an inner room, the portieres falling after her.
"She's--she's getting on her hat," Boone muttered inanely. "Buh'the, she's got to be stopped! She's--God, why don't he come? It's shuah ten minutes. It's--What's that?"
Someone had knocked. In the instant Boone had the hall door ajar.
"Round to the balcony window, hurry!" he whispered.
Then he turned, caught Berthe by the hand, and drew her quickly out into the hall. As he closed the door behind him, he heard the portieres rustle, but he dared not look back.
Jacqueline stepped into the room, and her hat was upon her head. It was of straw, with a drooping brim. She had thrown a long cloak over her thin dress. There was ice in her veins on this tropical June day. She paused, for she saw that the room was deserted. But no--there was a shadow between her and the balcony door. She stared at it, and her eyes grew big. The cloak slipped to the floor, and her fingers worked in the tapestry behind her. She fluttered weakly, like a wounded dove on the ground. Her knees trembled under her. And the man there? He was gazing about him in a puzzled way, for the glare outside still blinded him. Then he saw. He reached her, and caught her as she sank. He felt two soft arms, but icy cold, drop as lead around his neck. The white form he held was rigid, and he thought of shrouds and the chilled death sweat. With savage despair he crushed her to him. After a time her body slowly began to relax.
"Oh, oh, my lad, my lad!" he heard her crying faintly, in a kind of hysteria.
He touched her hair dazedly, with unutterable tenderness.
"There, there--sweetheart!"
The word came, though he had never used it before.
Blood awoke, and coursed, sluggishly at first, through her being, until her heart tripped and throbbed and pounded against his own. Her head lay on his breast, the hat hanging by its ribbons over her back, and with the pulsing life the head and her whole body nestled closer. The soft arms grew warm against his neck, and tightened fiercely, to hold and keep him. Gently he forced up her chin, and her eyes, wet with hottest tears, opened under his. He bent and kissed the long lashes. But a small moist hand flattened against his brow and pushed back his head, and she raised on tiptoe. He understood, and--their lips met.
"Tu sais," she murmured deliriously--nothing but her own dear French would answer now--"tu sais, que--oh, mon coeur, que je--que je
t'aime!"
The oddest contrasts fall over life's most sacred moments. The tone of her words thrilled him, set every fibre tingling, yet he thought of dry conjugations and declensions, conned over and over again in school, and he was conscious of vague wonderment that those things really, actually, had a meaning. Meaning? He believed now that no words in English could tell so much. He did not have to understand them. They bore the flesh and blood, the passion and the soul, of a woman who told him that she loved him.
With a hesitant gentleness which bespoke the deep and reverent awe in his yearning, he pressed her head back against its resting place. A man can do without words of any kind. She grew very quiet there. The tense quivering ceased, and she crept closer, and at last she sighed, purringly, contentedly.
But of course there was more which she simply had to say. And this time, when she raised her eyes, they were calm and earnest, and her beautiful forehead was white and very grave. "Do you know, dear," she said, "I should not care to live, I would not have lived, if what he said were--were--" But the eyes filled with tears, and angry with herself, she planted her fists against him to be free, and as impulsively crying, "Oh, my--my own dear lad!" she flung her arms about his neck again. "Oh, oh," she moaned, "he said that you were dead!"
For the first time it dawned on Driscoll that all this must have had a cause, and for the first time since entering the room he remembered Boone.
"
He told you--He----"
But Driscoll did not finish. Putting her from him he sprang to the door and flung it open. There he waited. Boone was outside, and Boone walked expectantly in. Without a word Driscoll raised his fist, drew it back, his cruel arm muscled to kill. Jacqueline saw his anger for her, terrible in murder. She threw herself upon him, got hold of the knotted fist, got it to her lips. Another woman, too, had darted between him and the other man, and she faced him. The gentle Berthe was become a little tigress.
"Not that, not that!" It was Jacqueline's voice. "Listen, mon cheri, I--I thank him. Au contraire, I do! And--and you must, too!"
Driscoll stared at all three, first at one, then at another. He floundered, stupefied. Here was this loving girl, clinging to him as though he might vanish, and he had left her that morning a disdainful beauty. Then here was this Meagre Shanks with his mysterious ten minutes, and here was this dumfounding product of those ten minutes. Driscoll put forth an open hand.
"Dan," he muttered incoherently, "you're a--a wonder, too!"
Boone clenched the proffered hand in his own. "I never once thought, Jack," he said earnestly, contritely, "never once, that she cared so ever-
lastingly much."
"Well," said Driscoll, "don't do it again."
"Not unless," ventured Boone, "not unless she should ever want a little antidote for ennui. By the way, mademoiselle, do you thank me for the quaver of emotion, for the frisson?"
"Frisson?" she repeated scornfully, with loathing. For once she had been unaware of the prized knife-like tremor. In the fear of losing one dear she had lost consciousness of self. She had
lived the tremor, the agony, and it was too dreadful, "No, monsieur," she said, "I want no more of art. I--I want to
live!"
"You needed something, though," said Berthe, "to make you find it out."
Driscoll looked curiously at the two girls.
"Yes, J-Jack'leen"--how quaintly awkward he was, trying her old tomboy nickname without the "Miss!"--"Yes, what was the matter with you, anyhow?"
"Parbleu, I forgot!" cried Jacqueline in dismay. "I was not to have monsieur, no!" And Jacqueline's chin, tilting back with elaborate hauteur, was meant to indicate that she was in her first mind about it.
Berthe laughed outright, and softly clapped her hands.
"Sho'," declared Mr. Boone, "the matter was nothing, nothing
at all!"
But before feminine caprices and scruples it is wiser to bow low into the dust. Jacqueline turned on the editorial personage with vast indignation. "You leave the room, Seigneur Troubadour," she commanded, "and Berthe, you march with him. Haste, both of you!"
They went, meekly. Their attempt to hide content over the dismissal together was extreme, but transparent.
"What was it?" Driscoll insisted, when he and Jacqueline were alone once more.
"You mean," she exclaimed, "that you are going to quarrel--now?"
"Jack'leen, what was it?"
"I reck-on," she observed demurely, "that the animal disputans was--was right, after all. It was nothing, I--reck-on."
He noted mockery, defiance. There was much too much independence after her late surrender. He went up to her and deliberately reassumed the mastery. He held her, by force. "Mon chevalier," she murmured softly. So she confessed his strength.
"Tell me," he said.
"And you did not guess? You--Oh, how I hated you! How I never wanted to see you, never again! Not after, not after--Mon Dieu, you were two exasperating idiots, you and poor Prince Max! He virtually
threw me into your arms. But I, monsieur, am not a person to be thrown. That is, unless--unless I do it myself, which--I did, helas!"
The trooper's grip tightened on her arms. "Then you," he said earnestly, "would have let me lose you?"
She laughed merrily at him.
"And would not you have followed after me?"
"W'y, little girl, I reckon I certainly would of."
"Don't," she gasped. "Let me come--closer. Oh dear, how can the bon Dieu let people be so happy--s-o happy!"
[THE END]
Eugene P. Lyle's Novel: Missourian
_