XXVIII
Good-by to Mexico, and a special farewell to Madame Madero—Vera Cruz—Mexico in perspective
October 1st.
We take the Mexico of the Ward Line on the 10th. So sorry not to be going with Madame Lefaivre straight to France, but we think it will be well to wrap the Stars and Stripes about us for a space.
This is only a word. I sit among open boxes in what will never again be my home, "things I have known and loved awhile." Through it runs my Mexican étape, my "rosary of the road."
October 3d.
Madame Lefaivre and I have each received diplomas and testimonials from the Red Cross, and a very polite note from Madame de Palomo. It was a curious and salutary experience in things human.
The ambassador sent N. a really beautiful letter of appreciation. He has a quite perfect epistolary turn—finished off by a very chic signature, and has been all that a chief could be during the long, strange Mexican months, while Mrs. Wilson has been the kindest, most considerate of friends.
October 5th.
This morning I went up to Chapultepec to say good-by to Madame Madero. As I drove up the winding way in the white morning the flowers were shining softly along the embankments, the trees were feathery, unsubstantial, the birds singing "like to burst their little throats." It might have been the road to Paradise instead of to the abode of care.
I went in through the great iron gate, the guard saluting, across the flat, stone terrace where some cadets were at drill, and got out at the glass doors leading up to the big stairway. The President was standing there as I drove up, his auto waiting to take him to the palace to a Cabinet meeting. I thought he looked slightly—very slightly—troubled, though I had a feeling that his head was still in the morning clouds of the dazzling day. He wished me a bon voyage and prompt retour and drove away. Our personal relations with them both have always been most friendly.[66]
I imagine there has been little or no change in his psychology along the lines of practical statecraft. His true habitat is the world of fancy, where he feels himself protected and led on by benign powers as definitely as was Tobias by the angel. A state of mind like that can be very compelling, and he may witness what the unkind say is his pet ambition—his own apotheosis.
The dim progression of Mexican events seems to have left his spirits untouched, though his fleshly being must be a mass of black-and-blue spots from the hard facts he bumps into. "One man with a dream at pleasure," but I felt like leaving him a pocket edition of Le Prince.
I thought Madame Madero showed the strain of that climb from obscurity and prison up the via triumphalis to the presidential peaks. The flood of morning light, as we sat on the terrace, did not spare her worn and anxious face. I have an idea that she is very practical, but it is not her practicality, but her husband's dreams, that brought them to Chapultepec. It's a situation to discourage common sense.
She was, as always, courteous and friendly, but a puzzled look was on her face, and I felt that there were questions that she would have liked to put to me, that the circumstances forbade. We spoke of the work she is just now especially interested in, for the amelioration of the Mexican woman's lot—the organizing of the lace and embroidery industry, à la Queen Elena, in Italy, several years ago. There is a really lovely product here, the drawn linen work—deshilados, it is called—introduced by the Spaniards and practised through generations in cloisters and religious schools.
She told me that in Puerto Rico one hundred thousand women had been organized, and she wanted to do the same here, asking me if I could not interest people in New York in the industry.
I felt how frail her body, but how determined her will as we embraced in the dazzling morning. About us was the perfume of the rare and lovely shrubs of the patio, the splash of the fountain, the singing of birds, the lustrous hills, the shining volcanoes; that crystal air enfolded us, closer than human touch, but beneath us was the restless city and the shifting will of the Mexican people.
On board the Mexico in Vera Cruz Harbor.
October 10th.
We got down last night over the International; so many friendly faces at the station—une belle gare—reminding me of the unforgetable going away from Copenhagen. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Chef du Protocole, nearly all the colleagues, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Aunt Laura, and many American friends were there.
The train departed at last without the slightest warning, but, the hour being at hand, we were standing near the steps, and as it quite slyly began to move out I was pushed into it by friendly hands with my load of flowers. Various other passengers had only time to scramble into the baggage and rear cars; and so, without any sound except those of friendly adieux, we slipped out of the station into the starlit valley, toward the hills that hold the splendors of this Indian world.
I had a feeling as of some one who leaves treasure behind, and the thought that my eyes will probably never again rest on the beauty of Mexico gives me a clutching at the heart. "Heureux ceux qui n'ont pas vu la fumée de la fête de l'étranger et qui ne se sont assis qu'aux festins de leurs pères."
It is seventeen months since we landed, but changing governments have not changed Mexico.
On arriving, at 7.30, we repaired to the Arcades of the Hotel Diligencias of somewhat branded reputation, in one of the little rickety cabs. If its back flap is loose, you have a lovely breeze. If not, you feel as if you were in a "hot country" not of earth.
I asked for tea, but when it was poured out I decided 'twere better to do in Vera Cruz as the Veracruzanos do, and ordered, as a farewell tribute, "chocolate Mexicano," which, though it brought my own temperature up to the boiling-point, was very good.
The dissolving sensation is not unpleasant after having one's nerves screwed up to the last turn by all those "high" months. Something thick and stiff, in very small cups, being served on an adjacent table to a couple of indigènes, was "chocolate español."
Afterward I went across the palm-planted Plaza, that I had only seen in the dim light of my arrival, to the old cathedral—wind-swept, sun-enveloped, rain-deluged, the patine of centuries making it lovely beyond description, with its flying buttresses and quaint gargoyles, and its pink belfry, in which swing old, green-bronze bells.
Inside, the modern Veracruzanos have let themselves "go" as regards art. Cheap stained-glass windows, "made in Germany," and realistic portrayals of saints in agony, one more appalling than the other, encumber the chapels, and, I hate to record it, only paper and tinsel flowers were on the altars. But I turned my thoughts to One who walked upon the waters, and prayed for a safe voyage.
They tell me there are fish as beautiful as flowers to be seen in the market, but instead of continuing the investigation of Vera Cruz in the garish light of its October day we went back to the ship. On our way we met an Oxford friend of N.'s, a young Englishman, perfectly turned out in spotless white, who might have been called suddenly before the viceroy (I find myself getting a little wild) without the slightest change in his raiment. He hadn't spoken with one of "his kind" for weeks, and was not expecting any one. England's true conquest of the world, it seems to me, identity, habits, customs, unchanged by that most potent of all alchemies—the tropics.
The German and Russian ministers take the Mexico as far as Progreso, whence they depart on some sort of hunting expedition, and promise aigrettes and similar vanities. We have all been sitting on the breezy side of the boat, sipping lemonade, talking of Mexico in perspective and "letting him who will be wise." Vera Cruz is a memory of color, green and pink and white, merciless sun, refreshing breeze, and the Veracruzanos, of all shades and origins, coming and going, carrying on their heads the abundances of earth and sea. I post this in Havana.
October 12th.
Last night, in the dim prow, some Indians were chanting in mournful, wailing voices, a half-sensuous, half-imploring air of sad peoples. As it floated toward me in the soft, thick darkness it possessed me with its melancholy—but I must trim my lamp for other nights.
THE END