April 20th. 10 A.M.
We have awakened to a busy morning. At seven o’clock I began to telephone all those women. If anything happens, American women here will be thankful to be out of the way, and if the clouds blow over, they will only have done what they have done before, on several occasions—taken an unnecessary trip to Vera Cruz. Every American in town has either appeared at the Embassy or telephoned. Rowan remains with us, I hope. N. has telegraphed Admiral Fletcher that in view of the fact that he is alone with me at the Embassy, he begs not to have Rowan recalled. He is a dear fellow, and a great comfort and support. Anything his courage and good sense can keep from happening to us will not happen. A cable saying the matter will be laid before Congress this afternoon, instead of this morning, is just received. It gives us a breathing-space. But the telephone! The newspaper men! The frightened Americans! If we are obliged to go, Aunt Laura will stay with Mrs. Melick, that friend of hers who has a handsome house just across the way. This relieves both her and me from anxiety. Americans are leaving in hosts—about five hundred persons, of all nationalities, leave to-day.
I have just found on my table an envelope, “From Elim to Mamma.” A drawing inside represents a tombstone, and a star shines above it. It has a little bunch of fresh heliotrope fastened to it with a clipper, and the back is decorated with three crosses—a bit startling in these potential days! My heart is sick. Wednesday that great fleet arrives. What is it going to fight? It can’t bombard Vera Cruz. The streets are full and the houses overflowing with fleeing non-combatants. It can’t climb the mountains and protect the countless Americans getting their living in the fastnesses or in the valleys. Huerta’s army is engaged in the death-struggle, in the north, against enemies of the government, armed with our munitions. Oh, the pity of it!
And this city, this beautiful city, placed so wonderfully, so symmetrically, on the globe, in the very center of the Western Hemisphere, a great continent to north and south, half-way between immense oceans, and lifted nearly eight thousand feet up to the heavens! Strange, symbolic correspondences between the seen and the unseen constantly make themselves sensible, in some unexplainable, magic way, while to the eye there are the manifold abundancies of mother earth, and this queer, dark, unchanging, and unchangeable race, whose psychological formula is unknown to us, inhabiting and using it all.
April 20th. 7.30.
This afternoon a whirlwind of rumors. First, that Congress had voted full power to Mr. Wilson, and one hundred and fifty million dollars; that Vera Cruz was being bombarded; that an attack is being planned against the Embassy to-night. There is, doubtless, nothing in this last, but N. telephoned to Eduardo Iturbide, always to be counted on, who is sending us one hundred mounted gendarmes. Captain Burnside is coming over here to sleep, and Rowan is with us, besides secret-service men and our own gendarmes. We have machine-guns, rifles, and quantities of ammunition. Many people were in for tea, when I am always to be seen. Madame Simon expects to leave to-night for Vera Cruz, with her little boy and two maids. Clarence Hay and the Tozzers are going, too, and about one hundred Germans. Von Hintze has sent away as many men, women, and children as he could induce to go.
I had a curious experience with Adatchi. Suddenly, as he was sitting on the sofa, drinking his tea, von Papen and Ayguesparsse also in the room, I had a queer psychic impression that he was not speaking of what he was thinking. I thought no more of it until he came over to a chair near me and said, with a curious, Oriental smile:
“I had a talk with Portillo y Rojas, this afternoon. All is not yet lost. I have left my secretaries working on a long telegram to Tokio.”
I asked: “You mean there may be a possible arrangement?”
And he said, “Yes,” without enlarging on it. N. is out, calling on Iturbide to thank him for the guard, and Adatchi returns at nine-thirty. After he left, I told Ayguesparsse and von Papen what Adatchi had said.