The Missourian.

by Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle.

PART FIRST

THE THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES

"Array you, lordyngs, one and all, For here begins no peace."

--_The Ballad of the Battle of Otterburn_

CHAPTER I

A WILFUL MAID ARRIVES FROM FRANCE

"I'll tell thee, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition."--_As You Like It._

Jacqueline was a gentlewoman of France. But there was usually mischief in her handsome head, for all its queenly poise. Just now, she was running away from the ship. Captain and officers of the _Imperatrice Eugenie_, Imperial red pantaloons, gilt Imperial eagles, such tokens of awe were yet not awful enough to hold Jacqueline. So, with the humility of limp things in that sticky air, the sailors shoved closer in the small boat and made place for the adjustment of crisp skirts. With the lady went her gentle little Breton maid, who trembled with the trembling of every plank in those norther-rocked waters. The high sun, just showing himself after the late gale, was sucking a gummy moisture out upon all surfaces, and the perspiring men felt mean and base before the starchy freshness of the two girls.

No one was pleased that Jacqueline was going, except Jacqueline herself.

But she was keen for it. She had been impervious to their fl.u.s.tered anxiety, also to the tributes to her importance betrayed therein. In vain they argued no fewer than two emperors to dissuade her. She meant to have a walk on the sh.o.r.e and--a demure Parisian shrug settled it.

Jacqueline rested a high-heeled boot on a coil of rope and blithely hummed an old song--"Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!" Oh, how she had wearied of b.u.mping, heaving, b.u.mping! At first she had enjoyed the storm. It was a new kind of play, and the mise-en-scene was quite adequate. But ennui had surged in again long before danger had surged out. And now she considered that some later sensation was due her, just as supper after an evening of fasting. 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 la.s.s 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 when Jacqueline found that out, she decided to communicate with the port too.

Little enough harm in that, truly; if only it were any one else but Jacqueline. In her case, though, all concerned would have felt easier to keep her on board. Then, when the ship sailed, they were sure to have her there. Otherwise, they a.s.suredly were not. For they knew well her startling capacity for whims. But never, never, could they know the startling next way a whim of hers might jump. Yet did she give herself the small pains of wheedling? Not she. The mystery of her august guardianship, of no less than two emperors, and the responsibility falling on captain, crew, red trousers, and gilt eagles--He bien, what then? Neither were they cunning with their dark warnings of outlawry and violence. Dreadfulest horrors might lurk in the motley Gulf town held by force against bloodthirsty Mexicans. But croaking like that only gave brighter promise of the ecstatic shiver. So, parbleu, she went!

The brunt of anxiety fell on poor Sergeant Ney. Here was a young soldier whom a month before Louis Napoleon had summoned to the Tuileries, to charge him with the lady's safe return to Maximilian's court in the City of Mexico, where she was First Dame of Honor about the Empress Charlotte. The order was not a military one, else it must have fallen to an officer of rank. It was not even official. But no doubt it enfolded more of weight for that very reason. Napoleon III. believed that in the unofficial, in littleness and dark gliding, lay the way to govern a state. Michel Ney regarded his task as a complete enigma. He had only to see a girl to the end of her journey. He was a slow-thinking, even a non-thinking agent, but in a contingency he could fight, still without thinking.

The girl under his escort, however, was another sort of agent entirely.

She was the spirit of the enigma, the very personification of the Napoleonic sphinx. She was the Imperial Secret flung a thousand leagues, there to work itself out alone in a new land of empire. Two months ago Louis Napoleon had recalled her from the Mexican court to her old circle, to the Tuileries, to St. Cloud, to Compiegne, and almost at once he had sent her back again. This time she came with the sphinx's purpose.

Getting himself into the small boat, Ney stole a glance at the gray eyes opposite him--for the moment they were gray, as well as treacherously innocent and pensive--and he reflected woefully that she had quite too much spirit altogether for an Egyptian dame of stone. She was making it very hard for him. What caprice might not possess her while on sh.o.r.e, and the ship to sail within a few hours? It was not a predicament for sabre play. And he made the mistake of trying to wield his wits a little.

"I should take it as an honor, mademoiselle," he faltered, "I should, truly, if you'd only believe that I would impose my escort for the pleasure it gives me, as well as--as well as----"

But she did not seem to notice that he stumbled. Her eyes were intent on the green water, which the oars trans.m.u.ted into eddying crystals. He would go on, she knew, and lay more exposed the place where she meant to strike. She had coquetted with him, old play fellow that he was, for just a little during the voyage, as with others too, for that matter.

But she had tired of it, as she had also of the chagrin of wives and sweethearts on board, or as she had of Hugo's "Napoleon le Pet.i.t," which she read purely out of contrariness to the censorship laid on the exiled poet. Michel Ney, however, and this she noted carefully, now kept close within his soldier's sh.e.l.l. He had that unofficial duty to think on, which was enough and over.

"----as well as," he finished desperately, "as a duty to an authority over us both. If you would believe that, mademoiselle?"

Then she struck. A word sufficed. "Oh, Monsieur the Sergeant!" she exclaimed. Her tone was deprecating, but she lingered wickedly on the t.i.tle. The young Frenchman looked down on his natty uniform. No other cut or cloth in the whole imperial army of France was more dashing than the sky-blue of a Cha.s.seur d'Afrique, but none of that filled Michel's eyes. For him there were only the worsted stripes. He colored and winced.

"Forgive me," she said meekly, "I should have said, 'Monsieur the Duke.'"

The Cha.s.seur flushed like a boy. "Why _will_ you harp on what a grandfather made me?" he blurted out. "And what's a duke----?"

"And a prince?--the Prince of Moskowa!" She courtesied from her slender waist.

"Alas for my blunders," she sighed, "for it _was_ more delicate after all to call you sergeant. In that I congratulate you yourself, Michel, and never a grandfather."

Ney frowned unhappily. "The first prince of Moskowa was once a sergeant," he murmured, "and why shouldn't I, in this new country----"

"Mironton, mironton, mirontaine," she sang, and smiled on him.

His eyes flashed, and because of the voice his heart quickened. He had heard of "this new country." It was "a gold mine in a bed of roses," but with a thorn, to say nothing of a bayonet, for every bud, and like many another young Frenchman he hoped to win renown in the romantic Mexican Empire, sprung like Minerva from the brain of his own emperor. And now here was a girl humming the war song of his fathers and of his race, and flaunting his warrior's ambition in it.

"My Sergeant has gone to the wars, Far off to war in Flanders.

He's a bold prince of commanders, With a fame like Alexander's-- Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

"Mon Sergot s'en va t-en guerre-- Ne sais quand reviendra.

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!"

Having thus ousted the crusading hero of the song, and put the slang for "sergeant" in his stead, Jacqueline leaned back on the gunwale quite contented. She fell to gazing on the transparent emerald of the insh.o.r.e, and plunged in her hand. The soft, plump wrist turned baby pink under the riffles. Of a sudden Berthe her maid half screamed, whereat with a delighted little gasp of fright, she jerked out the hand. But she put it back again, to tempt the watchful shark out there.

"_My_ grandfather was only a duke," she mused aloud, very humbly.

But she peeped up at Ney in the most exasperating manner. He could just see the gray eyes behind the edge of lace that fell from the slanting brim of her hat. He would not, though, meet the challenge. He kept to sincerity as the safer ground.

"Like mine, mademoiselle, yours made himself one, under Napoleon."

"The _great_ Napoleon," she corrected him gently.

Michel a.s.sented with a sad little nod. Then he raised his head bravely.

"And why not do things _without_ a _great_ Napoleon, and, after all, isn't he _a_ Napoleon, and one who----"

"Is lucky enough to bear a name that means seven million votes. _I_ should rather be a 'sergeant' and congratulate none but myself on it, Monsieur the--Duke."

Again, with the wisdom of a slow intelligence, the Cha.s.seur held back from her subtleties. If only he might betray her into frankness--a compliment she paid to few men and to a woman never--then, just possibly, he might make her tractable as to their prompt return to the ship.

"Still, it _is_ a name to rally to," he persisted, acknowledging in spite of himself the magic that had swayed the Old Guard.

For once she left the poor shark in peace.

"A name, a name?" she repeated.

"Isn't 'France' enough of a name for your rallying, monsieur?"

But the honest mood could not last. In the same breath she hastened on, "Yes, yes, France, the beloved of us proud grandchildren of original dukes. Of myself, sir, with a chateau in the Bourbonnais, whose floors are as well watered as the vineyards outside. And your France too, Michel, giving you only your clean linen to disguise the sergeant and remind us of the marshal of the First Empire. Of course," she added kindly, "there is the bravery. I had forgotten that, O grandson of the 'brave des braves.' But then?--Bonte divine, there's no rank in courage, mon ami! It's not the epaulette of a French uniform--it's the merest lining."

"And that," the youth cried doggedly, "is still enough to----"

"To do things for France, eh pet.i.t piou-piou?"