And the Marquise d’Aumerle? Learning to eat roasting ears, which somehow just would leave a grain on her cheek with every bite, the dainty Marquise thought how much finer was this than the tedious bumping ship. How much more tempting than the ultra-belabored viands on white china that had to be latticed down! Here was angel’s bread in the wilderness. And the appetite that drove her to ask for more, that was the only sauce–an appetite that was a frisson. A new sensation, in itself!
And later, sleep too became a passion, a passion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night’s abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And 104both girls laughing together over the masculine notions for their comfort, knew a certain happy tenderness in their gaiety.
“Éh, but it’s deep, madame,” said one.
“It’s the politeness of the heart,” the other explained.
Outside Driscoll spread his blanket across the doorway where his horse was sheltered, and wrapped in his great cape-coat, he stretched himself for a smoke. But Murguía came with cigars, of the Huasteca, gray and musty. Driscoll accepted one, waving aside the old man’s apologies. He puffed and waited. Conviviality in Don Anastasio meant something.
“Ah, amigo,” the thin voice cracked in a spasm of forced heartiness, “ah, it was a banquet! Si, si, a banquet! Only, if there were but a liqueur, a liqueur to give the after-cigar that last added relish, verdad, señor?”
Driscoll tapped his “after-cigar” till the ashes fell. “Well? he asked.
“Ai de mi, caballero, but I am heavy with regrets. I can offer nothing. My poor cognac–no, not after such a feast. But whiskey–ah, whiskey is magnifico. It is American.”
He stopped, with a genial rubbing of his bony hands. But his sad good-fellowship was transparent enough, and in the darkness his eyes were beads of malice. Driscoll half grunted. A long way round for a drink, he thought. “Here,” he said, getting out his flask, “have a pull at this.”
Murguía took it greedily. He had seen the flask before. The covering of leather was battered and peeled. “Perhaps a little–water?” he faltered. Driscoll nodded, and off the old Mexican ambled with the flask. When he returned, he had a glass, into which he had poured some of the liquor. The canteen he handed back to the trooper, who without a word replaced it in his pocket. Murguía lingered. He sipped his toddy absently.