Don Porfirio is more completely vindicated than he could ever have hoped, or even wished.
XXII
The home of President Madero's parents—Señor de la Barra returns from Europe—Zapatistas move on Cuernavaca—Strange disappearances in Mexico—Oil—The President and the railways
April 23d.
Have been busy to-day looking over things and getting boxes and trunks off to be repaired. A feeling of migration is in the air. A lot of damage was done getting to Mexico. A locksmith asked fifteen francs to open that small trunk where I keep my papers and give me a new key. He took the fifteen francs, but brought no key until pressure was put on him, when he sent back a key that fitted, having, however, a large, ornamental wrought-iron handle from the viceregal period. I should say that takes up more room than all our other keys together. It would look better in a vitrine.
If the end comes suddenly, which I don't believe, we can get out comfortably and with the philosophy engendered by the fact that, after all, these are not our Lares and Penates.
We dine at the British Legation to-night. The Stronges are very comfortably and handsomely installed, though the drawing-room, with its pale-blue hangings, endless modern chairs and cabinets and small tables, sent out from England, make it less artistic, to my mind, than in its former spare furnishing with Hohler's lovely old things.
Just home from the Country Club, where I left N. starting out on a "foursome" with Susana Garcia Pimentel,[44] Señor Bernal, her brother-in-law, and an unknown fourth. On those beautiful links she seemed more beautiful than ever, with a tall slenderness, an exceeding and arresting straightness of feature, long, idealized "Hapsburg chin," and what we call a "complexion" not often seen here. She was Diana-like as she started off in a thin, extremely expensive, white, unmistakably French dress and an equally French flopping Leghorn hat, the little Indian caddy following with the arrow-case.
I called on Madame Madero, senior, yesterday, and found more than a hint of the patriarchal—sons and daughters and grandchildren coming and going. They seem quiet, dignified people. The father came in as I was sitting there with various other visitors, and the two daughters rose and kissed his hand and called him papacito. The devotion of families and the permanence of ties here is quite remarkable, a decided contrast to the more airy conjugal relations in the United States.
After tea had been served we went into the big drawing-room, where I sat with some anonymous, silent, big-hatted, small-footed Mexican women, while Angela Madero sang charmingly and easily, without the tiresome urging so often necessary. She speaks of going abroad or to New York to study, when political affairs are quite settled. The house,[45] recently built in the handsome Colonia Juarez, Calle Berlin, is comfortable but banal, without the good things of the "old" families. Few books—in fact, like most of the modern Mexican houses.