Part 10

The President asked me to go out on the balcony; I was the only lady of the American Embassy present, and I stood there for a few minutes between him and Madero and looked down upon those thousands of upturned faces. I felt the thrill of the crowd. Nameless emanations of their strange psychology reached me. But also I was sad, thinking of the impossible which has been promised them.

Madero was very silent, but his hands twitched nervously as he gazed out over that human mass he had come to save. I felt how diverse our thoughts as we stood looking down on the faces, on that forest of peaked hats, on police riding down the little avenues which traced themselves between the crowd. Everything was orderly. I think Gustave Le Bon could have added another chapter to _La Psychologie des Foules_.

[12] We must get even the water from the Spanish woman.

X

The uncertainty of Spanish adverbs--Planchette and the destiny of the state--Madame Bonilla's watery garden-party--De la Barra's "moderation committee"--Madero's "reform platform"

_September 21st._

To-day we go for a farewell lunch at the Austrian chargé's, who is leaving almost immediately. His cousin, the new Austrian minister, Riedl von Riedenau, and his American wife, have arrived and are to have his house.

I have been out very little lately--only to a dinner at Hohler's and a luncheon at the Embassy. This is not a climate where foreigners can put screws on themselves with impunity. The mornings are indescribably clear-washed, brilliant, radiant, but the trouble about all this beauty is that it is too high. Very few resist it _à la longue_.

I have been reading C. F. Lummis's _Spanish Pioneers_--a noble picture of their romantic achievements. I am sending it. Please keep it with my other Mexicana. I am also sending _Howard's End_, this last a history of a life, to fill a dark afternoon.

I hear Elim, who is picking up a lot of Spanish, remonstrating with Elena, saying, "_No mañana, orita!_"[13] His infant soul has perceived the full significance of the fatal word _mañana_. _Orita_, I have discovered, is also apt to be followed by a maddening wait; and, in general, Spanish adverbs of time awaken uneasiness.

_September 23d._

Last night there was a big dinner at Von H.'s, at which I did the _maîtresse de maison_. I wore the pastel-blue satin with the silver embroidery and the dull-pink bows. I thought I had ruined it forever in Vienna, at the French Embassy, when the French ambassador had his ball of twenty couples only, for the Princesse de Parme, and I gaily swept the floor with it during some hours. Gabrielle, however, who realizes that the source of gowns is far, has resurrected it.

There was much talk of the great reliance Madero places on the spirits. It is said that Madame M. goes into spiritualistic trances, and when in that condition answers doubtful questions, and that the planchette is fated to play a rôle in the destiny of the state.

However that may be, there is a most authentic story of Madero's having consulted the spirits through the medium of the planchette some years ago. When he asked what the future had in store for him he was told that he would one day be President of Mexico. He is supposed to have arranged his life in conformity to this prophecy, which put him in a condition of mind where everything that happened of happy or unhappy augury bore on the fulfilment of this destiny. It is certainly one way of coercing fate.

There was an amusing but watery garden-party at Madame Bonilla's. We found ourselves at one time sitting under a dripping arbor of white musk-roses in a rain resembling a cloudburst. A large lizard fell from the arbor on to the ambassador's head, and thence into my lap, and various other zoölogical specimens were washed down from time to time. The ambassador, immaculately garbed in newly arrived London clothes, suggested, but rather feebly, the impossible feat of going home. After everybody's clothes were spoiled, we made a two-hundred-yard dash to the uninhabited, picturesque house, where it speedily got dark. There were no means of lighting, of course, as the house had not been lived in since the dear old candle days. The French minister, so handsome and most carefully dressed in gray, was also perfectly miserable under the arbor, with the elements at work, though he repeated at intervals, "_Faisons bonne mine à mauvais temps_," and recklessly took what had once been my black tulle hat, now turned into a formless thing of gummy consistency, under his immaculate gray "wing."

The Latins in general, and the French in particular, don't care about unsuccessful _al fresco_ entertainments. The volcanoes, as I stood at one of the wide windows, showed themselves from time to time, in strange rendings of the heavens by narrow threads of lightning, with something frightening and portentous in the aspect of their red-brown peaks. Above them were great, shifting masses of blue-black clouds.

Finally the violence of the storm passed and a chastened group of picnickers groped their way down the broad old stairway into the little _patio_, where the autos were waiting, and we were infolded in some of those strange shadows that seem to creep up from the earth rather than descend from the heavens.

I have a lovely photograph of the volcanoes, with a pine-tree in the foreground, taken from the Bonillas' place. I am sending it.[14]

I have just come back from looking up at my starry square. Unknown constellations are near, but you are far. Good night.

_September 25th._

We notice there is a coldness in Maderista quarters at any praise of President de la B. He is too popular. He could unite in his person too many factions, old and new. Even that invisible "smart set" might re-emerge from Paris or the country. Up to now I have not laid eyes on a member of what would be known in Vienna as the _erste Gesellschaft_, with the exception of young Manuel Martínez del Campo, who began his diplomatic career under Diaz and is now Third Introducer of Ambassadors.

De la B. has appointed a "moderation committee." Its real use, when all is boiled down, is, if possible, to prevent the various factions from calling one another names, or even taking one another's lives. I say, "God bless our home."

General Reyes is very strong in certain quarters. I liked his eyes, shrewd yet kindly, and his firm hand-clasp, when I met him that time at the British coronation housewarming. For some reason, outside the army he is not popular. The "common people" (I don't know just what that expression means here) don't like him. With postponement either he or De la B. _might_ be elected, though De la B. reiterates that he does not want it. Now the Madero tide is high, and will without doubt wash him into the presidency.

_September 27th._

Elections in the land of revolution and maguey are to be held on Sunday. Everybody is wondering how the people will stand the change from the iron hand to _sufragio efectivo_.

Just back from lunch at the French Legation. Mr. Lefaivre is never so happy as when he is offering hospitality. Their beautiful old silver is out, the dining-room glistening with it, priceless dishes and platters from Madame Lefaivre's family.

The Legation seemed very pleasant when De Vaux had it, but, of course, many valuable things then packed away have made their appearance since the minister's return. Madame Lefaivre returns next month. The luncheon was for Baron and Baroness Riedl, just arrived from Rio de Janeiro, _via_ Paris. They will be a great addition to the "Cuerpo."

Baroness R. had on a dark-blue and white foulard, smacking of _La Ville Lumière_, and a trim, black hat put on at the right angle. We had a very pleasant lunch. It is always amusing to put new-comers wise to the actual situation. Of course, the Simons and ourselves are almost too bright for daily use. Rio is a place with many Austro-Hungarian interests, but since the days of Maximilian there has been little enthusiasm about Mexico in the Austro-Hungarian political breast. After all these years, nearly half a century, there are under a thousand of Riedl's nationals in the whole of Mexico.

To-morrow night, dinner at the Brazilian chargé's for the Riedls, and as the other colleagues follow with affairs it will all mean quite a little round of gaiety.

I must go to the station to meet dear Mrs. Wilson, who arrives on the eight-o'clock train from Indianapolis, accompanied by her sister.

_September 30th._

Just returned from the Requiem Mass for the five hundred sailors and officers of _La Liberté_. It was most impressive, with a great Tricolore unfurled across the high altar. Nearly all the lost were Bretons, and over a thousand widows and orphans are weeping. The Mass was held in the Church of El Colegio de Niños, on one of the busiest down-town corners, and which has survived many different tides of life. It is now the "French" church, served by French clergy, and is clean and orderly, but dismantled of beauty or treasures.

It dates from Fray Pedro de Gante, one of the greatest of the friars, and I dare say was once full of beautiful things, now possessed or scattered by tourists, or by various breeds of revolutionaries. Mexico has been such a bottomless, inexhaustible source of treasures fashioned by the genius of Spain.

The political outlook is still very uncertain. Madero, of course, for President. The vice-presidency between de la Barra, who does not want it, another man, Vasquez Gómez, who does want it, and Pino Suarez, the obscure and evidently not over-popular Maderista candidate from Yucatan. Personally I shall be most sorry to see the De la B.s go. They are people of the world. De la B. is a trained diplomat, and these months of his "Interinato"[15] have been a "finishing-school" indeed. His father and mother were Chilians, afterward naturalized in Mexico.

Crowds parade the streets crying "_Pino-no-no-no!_" Why Madero insists on that running-mate we don't understand. Pino Suarez was an unknown editor of a Yucatan newspaper before fate beckoned to him, making him first governor of Yucatan, and now pointing him on to the vice-presidency.

Madero's party, with its banner cry, "_No reelección y sufragio efectivo_," is called "Progressive Constitutional" (we couldn't do better at home). His platform, if it will hold under the weight of virtue and happiness it bears, is quite wonderful.

To begin with, it re-establishes the "dignity of the Constitution," and there is to be no re-election. The press is to have its antique shackles struck off, pensions and indemnities for working-men are to be introduced, and the railways are to be "Mexicanized," which will make travel a bit uncertain for a while. Even the _jefes_ must go.

I couldn't explain, if I would, the real uses of the _jefe_. You have to live in Mexico to understand even dimly his attributes. Madero, whom no difficulties daunt, even tackles the vexed question of the Indians, saying that he intends to show the same interest in their affairs as in those pertaining to other shades of Mexicans, especially in those of the Mayas and the Yaquis, whose tragic deportations in great groups from hot climates to cold climates, and _vice versa_, have long been a blot on the Mexican 'scutcheon. In fact, everything is to be made over--the judiciary, the army. Foreign relations are to be founded on brotherly love instead of interest; a fight is to be waged against alcoholism and gambling; and there are many other reforms I don't remember now. _Ojalá_, but it makes me sad!

[13] Not to-morrow, immediately.

[14] _Vide A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico._

[15] Interinato, _ad interim_ presidency.

XI

Election of Madero--The strange similarity between a Mexican election and a Mexican revolution--The penetrating cold in Mexican houses--Madame de la Barra's reception--The _Volador_.

_Sunday evening, October 1st._

This morning we started out in good season for a Sabbath run, shaking the election dust from our feet, or rather wheels, skimming out through the shining city, which yesterday afternoon had had what may be its last good bath till next June.

We went out the broad Tlalpan road, black with motors full of golfers, and when we got to a place called Tepepa began the magic ascent of the Ajusco hills between us and Cuernavaca, with a continual looking back. For at our feet was spread the lovely "vale of Anahuac," like some kingdom laid out in a great chart of emerald, turquoise, and jasper.

An unexpected rain-cloud was threatening from over the western hills, and across the valley columns of light and shade continually passed and repassed. Every dome and spire of the city shone, but the hill of Chapultepec was black, distinct, and solitary, only the castle a white point. At one moment we found ourselves hanging over the lovely lake of Xochimilco, with its green, lush, sweet-water shores, and the verdant band of the lake of Chalco showed itself separated from the barren white _tequesquite_ shores of Lake Texcoco only by a narrow strip of roadway.

The two Peñones and the hill of Guadalupe were sometimes dark and sometimes shining, and a far-off fringe of sapphire hills marked the valley's end. It was "Jerusalem the Golden," well worth sighing for.

At a place called Topilejo we found a church on a hillock by the side of the road, its large atrium up a row of grassy steps, entered by an old carved archway. Looking through it, we saw a strange sort of festival going on, having a decided Moorish touch.

What seemed to be kings were seated in a row of rush-bottomed stools. Gaudy crowns of gilded cardboard, or something stiff and glittering, crowned them, and about them were flung twisted capes, like the Arab burnoose, with the hood falling back. The play was proceeding _con mucha calma_ except for a large Indian, evidently "stage manager," who was trying to bring about some sort of dénouement. Behind was the open church door. It was about twelve o'clock, and the last Mass had been said. A melancholy chanting proceeded from some Indians, their hands tied together, who stood in front of the "kings." It was all strange and unexpected on those heights.

The village on the other side of the road was in the sneezing and coughing throes of one of the bronchial epidemics so common in cold or damp weather in the hills. The children were scarcely covered; I can't bear to think of all the little brown backs and thighs in these cold waves. A dreadful, unrestrained-appearing person, in a battered hat and warm red zarape, looking as if he might have been the "father" of the village, towered above them all, everything about him bespeaking pulque. We decided that "song" was what he had given up.

Silent Indians, _carboneros_, inhabit these parts, and their fires could be seen high up on the wooded mountainsides. They were coming and going, bent, and almost hidden under great sacks of charcoal. We sped on till we got to a place called La Cima, the highest point, whence I wanted to make a dash for Cuernavaca, in spite of brigands, but the gentlemen and the chauffeur decided against it. Here was a huge stone cross, _La Cruz del Marqués_; solitary and moss-grown, it still stands, marking the boundary of lands once granted to Cortés by the crown, where he passed on the venturesome march to Mexico City from Cuernavaca.

I indulged my passion for Cortés by walking around the historic cross and picking an unfamiliar scarlet flower, while the men worried about Zapata and his brigand host, to whom these hills belong in 1911.

After some parleying we turned back. But beyond the hills lay the Hot Country, full to the south, its mysterious valleys filled with gorgeous blossoms, where vanilla, myrtle, jalap, cocoa, and smilax grow. Four hours down would have brought us into the fullness of its beauty, to lovely Cuernavaca, once the haunt of kings and emperors, where Cortés pondered on the insecurity of princely favor and planned his expedition to the Mar del Sur.[16] Now it is the capital of Zapata, and shunned since a few months by anybody with anything on his person or anything negotiable in the shape of worldly station. A great bore. My sentiments were all for pressing on with the added thrill of danger.

The roads here, with the history of Spain cut into them, and Indian life flowing ceaselessly over them from sea to sea, from north to south, are inexpressibly appealing. They are like a string, holding the beads of Mexican life together, and what "a rosary of the road" the glories and sorrows of their history would make! I don't feel the literary call, however. My life is run in another mold. But I have undergone a violent and probably permanent impression of this race, this country--its past, its present, its uncertain future, and oh, its beauty!

_October 3d._

You can't tell an election from a revolution here. It's all lively to a degree. I have now seen both.

Madero has been duly elected, and the streets rang all night to _vivas_ for him. Groups were passing continually up and down the Paseo, spilling into Calle Humboldt. Many students were among them and Latin-American youth seemed at its noisiest. There were some decided expressions of other political opinions, voiced largely in the now accustomed sound of _Pino-no-no-no_, but the Madero tide will doubtless wash him into the vice-presidency. It's quite irresistible.

Madame de la B. was among my callers to-day, smiling and handsomely gowned in a new French dress. Of course, she gave no hint of what she thinks about the situation. She and her husband go abroad after Madero's inauguration, now set for November 20th. The President is finally to take the thanks of the Mexican government to the King of Italy for the special mission sent to represent him at the _Centenario_ of 1910--which seems as remote as the landing of Cortés.

There is no provision for heating in any of the houses here. They tell me that in December and January, if a _norte_ is blowing at Vera Cruz, one is almost congealed in Mexico City.

Even now the late afternoons and evenings are cold, but there is a glorious warm sun every day till the afternoon rains begin, and all the Indians in the city, come out from _quién sabe_ where, are warming and drying themselves on curb and bench and against sunny walls all over town. I suppose it is the only moment of comfort they have. Often now, instead of rain, there is the most gorgeous banking of heavy, dark clouds, with hints of orange, red, and purple linings.

_October 5th._

Just returned from Madame de la B.'s reception. She does the "first lady in the land" very well. The President came in later, to the sound of the national anthem. He is of infinite tact in these strange days. He was clad, as usual, in an immaculate gray frock-coat, and showed no trace of the Procrustean bed he sleeps in. All his Cabinet were there and the _Corps Diplomatique_, and several well-set-up competent brothers, who, doubtless, will get some sort of foreign post. After all, I am rather a believer in nepotism, not too exaggerated. But if one does not do for one's own, who will?

De la Barra has been a sort of suspension-bridge between Diaz and Madero, and that he and the republic are still "suspended" is testimony indeed. The disbanding of the famous Liberating Army, financially and morally, continues to be the great difficulty, as from it have sprung all these flowers of banditry whose roots lie too deep, apparently, for plucking.

I met, at the reception, Don Alberto García Granados, an elderly man of long political experience, with a clever, perspicacious look, accentuated by deep lines above the prominent brows, showing that his eyes had often been raised in surprise or remonstrance. He is a great friend of De la Barra, and resembles statesmen I have met in other climes. He is now Minister of Gobernación (Interior).[17]

I had a luncheon to-day for Mrs. Wilson and her sister, Mrs. Collins, who look very well together--handsome, slim-figured, small-footed, carefully dressed women. The table was really charming, with heaps of yellow chrysanthemums. The dining-room is sun-flooded, flower-vistaed whichever way you look, and its pale-yellow walls, and good old pieces of porcelain in handsome old cabinets, and fine old engravings on the wall, all picked up as occasion offered by the Seegers during their long Mexican years, take the light most charmingly.

Baroness Riedl, Madame Lie, Madame Chermont, and some American friends, Mrs. McLaren, Mrs. Kilvert, and Mrs. Harwood made up the guests. There are several menus that the cook produces very well, and Elena and Cecilia serve quietly and quickly, in neat black dresses, white aprons, cuffs, and collars.

Some vigilance is needed as to their collars. They loathe them in their souls, being of the casual, rebozo race, after all, and though they bow to this especial inevitable, I imagine it comes hard.

I don't often penetrate to the kitchen regions; I couldn't change anything if I wanted to, and I am not endowed with culinary talents. But I did see, as I passed through not long ago, fish being broiled on the beloved _brasero_, which the cook was fanning with the beloved turkey wing.

One can't change the washing processes, either. Some time ago Gabrielle noted holes appearing in all our new linen. I told her to investigate and let me know the result, which she did. I then ascended to the roof from which all creation, lovely Mexican creation, is stretched out to view, and the linen floats in the purest, bluest ether.

I found the two washerwomen sitting on their haunches, pounding and rubbing the linen between stones. I let them know I thought washboards were what the situation required, but no signs of enthusiasm were visible. They told me, with an air of complete finality, _es el sol_ (it is the sun), when I pointed out various and obvious signs of damage.

Just sent off an _Atlantic Monthly_ with a most interesting contribution, "Within the Pale," by a young Russian Jewess, Mary Antin. I haven't been seeing the _Atlantic_ for some years and I am glad they keep their good old historic cover instead of allowing themselves to be seduced by _art nouveau_, with the usual dreadful consequences.

Elim is climbing all over me as I write. He has been promised a cat by the drug-store clerk, but, fortunately, there has been some hitch in the proceedings. You know my feelings toward the felines. Elim can fling the _quién sabes_ and the _mañanas_ with the best of them, and evidently takes in Spanish through the pores; he is very little or not at all with the Mexican servants.

He told me the other day that he could count better in Spanish than in English, and when I asked him to show me he did very well up to four, which he replaced by the word "pulque," getting quite argumentative. I thought it worth while to investigate the intricacies of the infant mind. I find four is simply the magic hour when the cook leans over the railing and sings out "pulque" to call the expectant _concierge_ contingent upstairs, for its afternoon refreshment, as fixed as the laws that govern the hours.

_Saturday noon._

Just home from the _volador_ (thieves' market), with "goods" upon me. Toward the end of the week it gets increasingly aromatic, as it is only swept and garnished Saturday afternoon, and it is traditional and expedient for the foreigner to patronize it on the Sabbath rather than other days. But having been to "La Joya," a very nice and expensive antique-shop in the Avenida San Francisco, where I got a frame of dark wood with ivory inlay, just the size for my Ravell photograph of the Church at Guanajuato, also a love of a little tortoise-shell _petaca_ (miniature valise) with silver clampings, I thought to strike an average in prices at the _volador_, where the sun was shining brilliantly on purely Indian commercial life.