Suddenly the café door opened, and Jacqueline emerged, tripping lightly. Din Driscoll was filling his cob pipe, but he paused with a finger over the bowl. “If there isn’t a woman in it!” he muttered. He felt imposed upon. The game was a man’s game, and now its flavor was gone.
48Jacqueline had seen nothing of the fray, but now she saw Fra Diavolo’s Contra Guerrillas skulking away and the sardonic captain himself fuming in ignoble soreness on his back. “Indeed,” with fine scorn she demanded of Ney, “and how did you manage it?”
“Looks like the wrong side won out,” mused Driscoll, feeling a little uncomfortable.
“Permit me to congratulate you–sergeant,” she went on. “It’s a good beginning for promotion. If you only knew how hard Maximilian tries to win over these natives, and here the very first thing you–Hélas! poor Prince Max!”
Driscoll caught one word from her French. “What’s that about Maximilian?” he interrupted. He had to repeat, and then Jacqueline only glanced at him over her shoulder. Some mule driver, she imagined, and turned again to the abashed Chasseur.
But the pseudo mule driver moved squarely in front of her. He was embarrassed and respectful, but determined. Jacqueline lifted her brows. “My good man, this is effrontery!” But her good man did not quail. She noticed him a little then. He was ruddy and clean, with a stubble growth on his jaw. Since the civilization of Mobile, Lieutenant Colonel Jno. D. Driscoll had backslided into his old campaign ease. His first genuine stiff beard had found him sabre in hand, so that his knowledge of cutting instruments and of arched brows was limited. He said that he would be much obliged to have his question answered. Whereat Jacqueline thought, by her faith, “What a round, wholesome voice these rustics sometimes have!” The one she heard possessed the full rich quality of an Irishman’s brogue, with the brogue worn off.
“You know Spanish, do you not, señorita?”
“Mais–why, better than I thought,” she returned in English; and in English that was piquant because it could not 49help being just the least bit French as well. “Much better–because, I comprehend even yours, sir.”
“Con-grat-ulate you,” Driscoll returned. “But what’s this about Maximilian?”
An eagerness in his manner caught her attention. But she answered with her old irony. “His Imperial Majesty seems to concern you profoundly, monsieur?”