We stepped from the car straight into the office of the hotel, and then the C.E. and I set out with Lupe to escort her to her uncle's house, but at the first dark turning she gave a smothered little scream and melted into the arms of a dusky cavalier. Emilio, when he could spare the time to be introduced, proved something of a landscape,—large for a Mexican, very much the patrician with his slim hands and feet and correct Castilian manner. Guanajuato is rather old-fashioned and he wears the high class, native costume, and when Lupe is at home here, she always wears a reboso instead of a hat.
He is the son of so many revolutions, it must make him dizzy to remember them, but I like him and I mean to help him win his pearl maiden. He discreetly left us before we reached Lupe's house and delivered her over to a very impressive Blue-beardish sort of person who was very gracious to us and asked me to visit Lupe. I shall,—it fits in perfectly with my plans! I go there to-morrow.
Meanwhile, I go to sleep!
Drowsily,
Jane.
At Señor Don Diego's Palacio.
Sally, mía, how you'd adore this house! The floors are of dull-red tiles and they are massaged three times a day, and the whole thing is medieval in flavor,—a flock of velvet-voiced, dove-eyed servants who adore Lupe and are pledged to her cause. Old Cristina, who was her mother's nurse, is to be our stoutest ally.
Every night for an hour Emilio stands under her balcony "playing the bear." Lupe, her face shrouded in her reboso, leans over and whispers. I hover in the background like Juliet's nurse. Afterward the C.E., having ridden in from his mine, comes for me, and we sally forth in the night like the Caliph and walk slowly up and down the Street of Sad Children, where the music comes daintily to us, filtered through the trees. Sometimes "Emily," as the C.E. wickedly calls him, joins us, to talk of his two loves,—Lupe, and Mexico. Sally, never laugh again at the Mexican revolutions,—they're not funny, only pitiful.
My chief task now is to infuse a quality of hope and—ginger—into these little lovers. Sometimes their attitude of Dios no lo quiso—heaven wills otherwise—makes me want to shake them, but slowly and surely I'm rousing them to action.
To-day we visited the prison here ... not the show model of Mexico City. This one is a hold-over from the Dark Ages. Young and old, gentle and simple, murderers and thieving children—all herded in together. In the huge court, before pillars with chains, a peon was mopping up some dark stains.... Ugh! This is the broken heart of Mexico where tears and blood are brewing.