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.