Part 14

The Vice-President, young, tall, dark-skinned, black-eyed, black-mustached, regular of features, without, however, any perceptible color of personality, was accompanied by his wife and a contingent of satellites, moving wherever he moved with the regularity of the heavenly bodies--no intention of revolving alone in the unknown social orbit. The _Corps Diplomatique_ was out in force, and the Protocole, Carmona, Nervo, Pulido, etc., also Don Felix Romero, chief of the Supreme Court, and his wife, Judge and Mrs. Sepulveda of California, naturalized Americans, with a handsome daughter. But beyond these I did not see any of what might be called "pillars of society," or, indeed, anything remotely resembling props to uphold the new order. We presented Monsignor Vay de Vaya, who struck the international note in the pink-and-white-and-gold _salon des ambassadeurs_, whose spaces were known to those princes of his monarchy, Maximilian and Carlota.

_December 23d, evening._

The Christmas tide is flowing full about the Alameda, where the Indians have again stocked their _puestos_ with reminders of the season. We have just come from a little _tournée_ between the rows of booths hung with lanterns of every size and color, the odor of _la race cuivrée_ mingling with the more familiar scent of freshly cut pine-trees. Tiny plaster and terra-cotta groups of the "Three Kings" abound--a white man, a negro, a Mongolian in various fanciful garbings--shone on by the largest of stars, and all sorts of "Holy Families," especially the "Flight into Egypt," where the burro seems to have come into his own.

On all sides were great piles of peanuts, fruits known and unknown, highly colored sweets, heaps upon heaps of fragile potteries, and charming, pliable baskets, brought to the city from mountain fastnesses or distant plains by Indian families afoot.

Soft, shining-bodied children were sleeping in the most fortuitous of positions, uncovered, in the chill night air. I could but think of blue-eyed, white-skinned children in warm nurseries. They lay beside grotesque _naguales_--figures with hideous human faces on woolly four-footed bodies, whose _raison d'être_ is to frighten. The population inclines to the grotesque, anyway, on the slightest provocation, and side by side with the _naguales_ are other hideous clown-like figures--_piñatas_--which are the high-lights of certain time-hallowed post-Christmas festivities. They are of all sizes and prices--from little paper dolls hanging from bamboo rods that will decorate adobe huts to the more expensive figures, bulky about the waist, whose tinsel and tissue-paper garments conceal a great earthenware jar filled with toys and candies.

The _cohetes_ are sounding as I write--a sort of fire-cracker--announcing the advent of the Child to this Indian world.

As for the Posadas, we are evidently not to be initiated into their mysteries. The Mexican families of note continue to sport their oaks since the coming in of the Madero administration, and the Diplomatic Corps this year is left out in the cold on these intimate occasions, which are family parties held during nine days before Christmas, symbolic of the efforts of Mary and Joseph to find a resting-place in crowded Bethlehem.

_December 24th._

We see the list of diplomatic shifts; among them are a few real Christmas presents. Dearing, who returned a short time ago, is made assistant chief of the Latin-American division of the State Department. He has made and will continue to make _une bonne carrière_. Schuyler, whom I have not seen since he passed through Copenhagen _en route_ for Petersburg, takes his place here. Cresson goes to London, which will please him; the Blisses get Paris, quite the handsomest of all the presents. Weitzel, who was here when we arrived, goes to Nicaragua, and so on through a long list. I felt, when I saw the changes, a sort of hankering for the Aryan flesh-pots, a sudden feeling of my unrelatedness to Latin America. I was, so to speak, for the moment "fed up" on the tropics with a thick sauce of world pain. Any light-colored diplomat will know just what I mean, and I dare say the dark ones feel it in higher latitudes.

Diplomacy, as offered by the United States Government, is a most unsettling thing, anyway. The basic uncertainties of the _carrière_, to begin with, and then, if you are in a place you like, the feeling that at any time the trump may sound, and if you don't like it, hoping to be changed. However, it all goes up like smoke along with other human things.

[27] During the first Carrancista occupation of Mexico City this house was sacked and stripped of all belongings. Not an electric-light fixture, not a door-knob was left; even the costly floorings were torn up. Street-cars run through the Calles de Londres and ---- told me that for days the traffic was interrupted by cars filled with the Creels' furniture and works of art, which were left standing in front of the house. One rather sighs for the fate of the Sèvres vases, and one thinks involuntarily of the new verb in the Spanish language, "_carranciar_," to steal like a Carrancista.

[28] _Diplomat's Wife in Mexico_, Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

XV

The first Christmas in Mexico City--Hearts sad and gay--Piñatas--Statue to Christopher Columbus.

_Christmas Day, 1911._

My first thought was of my precious mother, _l'absence est le plus grand des maux_. I went to midnight mass at the French church with Madame Lefaivre. The _Adeste Fideles_ was beautifully sung, and I thought of the millions of throats, all over the glad, sad earth, singing the peace-bringing air.

I was so happy that of the people assembled around the tree three knew you and spoke of you--Monsignore Vay de Vaya, and Mrs. Bedford and her daughter. It was sad to have Aunt L. so near and yet so far.

The little party went off very well--tiny souvenirs for each. Elim was overwhelmed with toys of the most elaborate kind, and I was almost embarrassed at one time, as they came piling in. The only children present, alas, were Jim Chermont, Mrs. C. R. Hudson's pretty blond-haired little girl, the Japanese children, and little Harold Hotchkiss. They played near the tree, mostly lying on their little tummies, with their heels in the air, as near the lights as possible.

Allart sent the dearest miniature _charro_ costume as a present to Elim, with a line that he was too sad to come; his beloved little daughter is in Belgium.

In the morning I drove down to the San Juan Letran market and brought back a great bundle of the gorgeous _flor de Noche Buena_ (Poinsettia), most difficult to arrange on account of the thick, angular stems, and not too trustworthy about keeping fresh, even here on its native heath. But the red made lovely splashes of color in the rooms, which were packed. It ended by my inviting every Anglo-Saxon in town, as well as the diplomats, but I have noted that on festive occasions people like being packed.

The punch, after an excellent receipt given me by Madame Bonilla, was good and heady, as a punch should be, and the ambassador sent his Belgian _maître d'hôtel_ to superintend the serving of the _refrescos_. I know, however, that many a thought was far, and many a heart sad, because of separations and vanishings.

At four o'clock to-day I light up the tree for the servants, and give them their presents. They have _carte blanche_ to bring any of their related young, so I imagine we will be fairly numerous. I then take Elim to the Chermonts' tree, and we dine at the Kilverts' at Coyoacan, driving out with the ambassador and Mr. Potter and Mr. Butler.

To-morrow Elim goes to a _piñata_ given by Madame Bonilla, childless herself, but always so eager to make children happy. Wednesday to another at Madame Clara Scherer's. I don't know how he will stand so much "going out." He and Jim Chermont had quite a little "shindy" toward the end of the afternoon yesterday, at which the tiny Jap assisted with joy.

The _piñata_ is hung from the ceiling of the zaguan (vestibule entrance into the _patio_). Each child in turn is blindfolded, presented with a long stick, turned around, and then told to proceed. When a lucky hit breaks the _piñata_, there is a stampede for the scattered treasure.

On Wednesday Madame Lefaivre has Monsignore to dinner; they had met before in Paris at the Princesse de Polignac's.

Elim went to bed with a goat with sharp horns, from Madame Lie, a whip, and nearly a brigade of soldiers, which I removed from him in the "first sweet dreams of night."

_December 28th._

The _piñatas_ continue, one this afternoon at Mrs. C. R. Hudson's. They appear to be quite exciting, for little darlings dream and moan about them in their sleep.

Yesterday Elim was taking the papers out of the waste-paper basket in the library and loading them onto one of the Christmas wagons. He was clad in pale blue, looking inexpressibly fair and remote from earthiness, when he raised those blue, blue eyes to me and said: "Mama, _ich bin der Mistmann_" (I am the garbage-man). Talking of contrasts!

Now I must dress for the dinner at the French Legation for Monsignore. He is looking very worn. These long world-journeys that he makes for his emigration work take it out of him. From the founding of an orphanage in Corea to the visiting of Hungarian dock laborers on the Isthmus of Panama _is_ rather a stretch of nerves as well as space.

We have the news that General Reyes' Christmas gift was his surrender to the Federal troops--quite a pleasant surprise for Mr. Madero's "stocking." He is eliminated; but all seem ready to fight over the bones of peace that Diaz left--though not one of them is worthy to tie his shoe-strings from the point of civic government and keeping of order, which last I now see is the first requisite for any state.

There is a cartoon in the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_ of Madero trying to hold his hat on, with Diaz watching from Europe. That Parthian shot of his, that in the end the Government would have to use his methods, is going home.

_December 29th._

The "angel boy" has lost a front tooth--one of those that _you_ watched come. It fell out at Madame ----'s _piñata_, in her big, too-handsome house, where the entertainment was most elaborate, and the toys that were scrambled for when the _olla_ was broken were of the most expensive kind. Afterward all imaginable rich things were served in the big dining-room. The hottest, pepperiest tamales were passed around to about forty little Mexican darlings, who ate them, not only with relish, but composure; my taste brought tears to my eyes and a call for water.

Elim left his seat to bring his tooth triumphantly to me and tell me I must have it set in gold. He is so little that he will be around for years with a hole in his mouth. I felt much the way I would have felt had I discovered him growing a mustache. Madame ----'s house, in good taste outside, architecturally, is like her pictures inside, the frames too rich for what they inclose. There are agate-topped tables and malachite bric-à-brac in heavy gilt vitrines, and "hand-painted" screens. It is beautifully situated in the Glorieta Colon, the _rond-point_ where the statue of Christopher Columbus, by a French artist, was raised in 1877. It shows him surrounded by the two monks who helped him in the great adventure, and Fray Pedro de la Gante and Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, lovers and protectors of the Indians.

The monks are Padre Juan Perez de Marchena, prior of the convent of Santa Maria Rabada, who had the wit to understand and the power to further Columbus's project. The other, Fray Diego Dehasa, was the confessor and adviser of King Ferdinand. It's too bad Humboldt could not have seen it, for he says: "_On peut traverser l'Amérique Espagnole depuis Buenos Aires jusqu'à Monterrey, depuis la Trinité et Porto Rico jusqu'à Panama et Veragua, et nulle part on ne rencontrera un monument national que la reconnaissance publique ait élevé à la gloire de Christophe Colomb et de Hernan Cortés._"

_December 29th._

Two sportsmen of note, Count Sala and Mr. Williams, came for lunch to-day, also Riedl. They are here en route to Tampico for tarpon-fishing, the only really fine sport Mexico offers to foreigners. They were at the delightful dinner at the French Legation the other night for Monsignore.

_December 30, 1911._

One of Aunt Louise's exquisite letters came this morning--I will forward it another time. She begins by saying, "Where are you, wandering star?" and wishes me, wherever the end of the earthly year finds me, "joys that reside in little things, as well as fortune's greater gifts."

Outside night and snow were falling. Within lamps were lighted and fire glowing. Genevieve was playing "Robin Adair," and her "heart was suddenly sad to plumbless depths," because of separations. She closes with a verse (I don't remember from whom):

When windflowers blossom on the sea, And fishes skim along the plain, Then we who part this weary day, Then you and I will meet again.

XVI

Off for Tehuantepec--A journey through the jungles--The blazing tropics--Through Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored dawn--Ravages of the revolution--A race of queens

_January 1, 1912._

My first thought flies to you this morning. I have sorrowed, smiled, in other years, perhaps learned to pray, so mayhap my heart is ready for 1912.

N. has gone to the Palace, where the President receives the gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps; this afternoon Madame Madero receives both _messieurs et dames_. Last night a pleasant dinner at the Embassy, at which I presided. Americans only, the ambassador's special friends, and home in reasonable time. I was "hung solitary in the universe" when twelve o'clock struck and kindly healths were drunk. I thought of the light already beginning to break over the wintry Zürich hills, and of you, and Elliott and his Calvary, and that other dear one of our blood, lost to men but not to God. Was he sleeping quietly?

_January 2d._

N. came in a while ago with arrangements complete for the trip to Tehuantepec. A telegram from Aunt Laura last night says: "All quiet here again; so glad you are at last coming."

It seems like a fairy-tale that I am off to San Gerónimo, that exotic memory of my childhood. I remember we called it San Ger_onímo_ instead of pronouncing it San Her_ó_nimo. How the letters used to come dropping in--and the presents! The red-leather-covered sandalwood box, with its brass nails; the strange, square, old Spanish silver coins, just chopped off, as one would a bit of dough, and stamped hot; the painted gourds, the idols and the bright bits of embroidery.

N. has just been delegated to go to get an American out of jail, the third one this week. They are taken up for nothing; we are not popular here just now.

Madame Madero's New-Year's reception for the _Corps Diplomatique_ was poorly attended and there was no enlivening touch in the way of refreshments and nothing in which to drink healths. The wife of the ---- minister asked the President for a _verre d'eau_ toward the end. He was very apologetic, pleasant, and modest, and said: "Oh, we don't know how to do these things." He seemed full of good intentions and hope for 1912--but alack! alack! never has it been seen that nobility alone is able to maintain its possessor!

Elim is begging me to bring him a monkey when I come back. I hate to disappoint him--but do you see me traveling with anything belonging to that species? The trip is said to be magnificent--two nights and one day. I wish it were two days and one night.

Aunt L. is thinking of me and preparing for me; I know what it means for some one of her own to penetrate to her fastness, or rather her jungle. Mr. Cummings has put the telegraph at N.'s and my disposal while I am away. I have not been outside the Federal district since I arrived, so content with the treasures of this matchless valley; but of course one easily gets the _Reisefieber_.

I will write _en route_ to the "blazing tropics." Now, farewell.

_January 4th_, Córdoba, _10 a.m._

We have just descended into a dew-drenched world. It is supposed to be the "dry season," _estación de secas_. A warm, wet, glistening air comes in at the window, and my furs are in the rack.

I have been watching endless coffee-plantations with red berries shining among the foliage, and great tobacco-fields of broad, shiny leaves. Banana-trees grow close to the tracks, and everywhere are the most perishable of homes, built of what looks like nothing more solid than corn-stalks and dried leaves.

Cordoba was founded early in the seventeenth century by a viceroy, who modestly called it after himself.

Later.

A series of the most gorgeous mountain vistas, tunnel after tunnel, and in between each darkness a world of beauty. Lovely palms abound, delicate yet definite in their flowery symmetry. The Pico de Orizaba has made various farewell appearances, one more enchanting and regretful than the other. Now a great plain is rolling away, of seemingly incredible fertility, with shadows of clouds on its shining stretches.

The faithful banana, which was first brought to this continent by a Dominican monk, _via_ Haiti, about the time of the Conquest certainly came into its own in this hot, moist land. One of the early ecclesiastical writers in Mexico was so impressed that he hazards the statement that it was the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve. It certainly continues to tempt both sexes and all ages to idleness.

_Later._ Presidio, in the cañon of the Rio Blanco.

I have been absorbed in watching the tropical jungles, where form is eliminated. Every tree is choked or cloaked by some sort of enveloping _convolvuli_; every wall has its formless abundant covering. No silhouettes anywhere, no "cut" to anything--which is why all this richness could, I imagine, get monotonous.

Tierra Blanca, _3.30_.

In the "blazing tropics"! A heavy, hot atmosphere comes in at the window. All along there has been much sitting of a dark race under banana-trees, where not even a change of position seems necessary in order to be fed.

We have had a long wait here at Tierra Blanca, which is the junction of a branch line to Vera Cruz, and I have been watching station life. It's very highly colored. Here and there appears an unmistakably American face--the "exploiters" some would call them; but it seems to me they gather up all this vague splendor, this endless abundance, into something definite, with benefits to the greater number, though some get "left," of course.

There is a decided note of _carpe diem_ transposed into orange, scarlet, and black, which all the coming and going of men, women, and children with baskets of coffee-beans doesn't do away with. In the tropics the white man is king, be he Yankee, Spaniard, or Northman, and it is part of the lure. The abundances of Mother Earth are for his harvesting; a strange, native race seems there to do him honor, render him service, asking only in return enough of the abundance to keep soul in body for the allotted span.

We have just passed the broad Rio Mariposa (Butterfly River), and are at a place called "Obispo." Indian women are holding up baskets of the most gorgeous fruits, babes on their backs, cigarettes in their mouths. We are near the celebrated Valle Nacional. I remember some terrible articles in one of the magazines about the human miseries in the working of the tobacco-factories, herds of men, women, and children locked together into great sheds at night during tropical storms, enslavements, separations. It's easy to hope it is not so, but I dare say it is.

We are zigzagging through dense jungle with the gaudiest splashes of color. Flashy birds are flying about. Sometimes one wonders if it is bird or flower. All the green is studded with bright spots. There are great, flat, meadow-like spaces, the soil looking rich enough to bear food for all the hungry millions of the earth, and numberless cattle are grazing over it. But oh! the inexpressible slipshodness of the human abodes! Anything perishable, nearest at hand, sugar-cane stalks, palm leaves, continue to compose the dwellings; and oh! the crowds of children, of human beings, just as slipshod, just as perishable!

The sun is setting. Great pink brushes of cirrus are covering the sky, against a blue that hates to give way, but in a moment I know it will be dark.

_Later._

A wonderful day, but somehow I am glad I was born in the temperate zone. I suppose it's the New England blood protesting against all this, as something wasteful and unrelated. Since we passed the heavy-flowing Rio Mariposa I have been having more than a touch of "world-pain." The light is so poor in my state-room that I can't read, but I arrive at San Gerónimo at 5.30, which means a 4.30 rising, so good night.

_January 5th, 5.30 a.m._

Chivela Pass in the lemon-colored dawn! I don't know what I went through in the night, but now I am descending to the Pacific. Sharp outlines of treeless, pinkish hills are everywhere showing themselves, with here and there patches of the classic and beautiful organos cactus. It is almost chilly. My heart and I are ready for the meeting. The porter tells me there are only two more stations.

_San Gerónimo, January 6th, evening._

As the train got in to San G. I saw a very pale, very blue-eyed, slim, white-clad figure. New England, though a thousand cycles had been passed in the tropics. We met in silence, two full hearts, and in silence we went over to the house....

_January 8th, evening._

We have been walking up and down the garden under the big fig-tree, where a huge and very beautiful _huacamaia_, a sort of parrot, with a yellow-and-red head and a long blue tail makes his home. We have been thinking and talking in a way so foreign to the thick tropical darkness enveloping us.

The sun went down on a world of ashes of roses and then this soft, very black night fell. At sunset we took a turn about the sandy, desolate-looking town.

Women, scriptural women, were washing and bathing in the broad, high-banked stream. It reminded me of Tissot's pictures of the Holy Land--the barren banks of the pebbly river, the fig-trees, the little groups. The women wear most lovely garments as to outline. A wide skirt with a deep flounce is tucked up in front, for more ease in moving, and the falling flounce gives quite a Tanagra line.

Little girls are always dressed, from their tenderest age, in skirts too long; but little boys go naked till they are eleven or twelve, and the clad and the unclad play about together.

When Don Porfirio took things in hand the boys were made to dress to go to school, and as a last touch of fashion made to tuck their shirts inside their trousers. It appears, however, they only tuck them in as they enter the school door, pulling them out when they are released.

... But Aunt L. says she is tired of it all--the naked children, the barren stretches, the _carpe diem_, the ultimate unrelatedness of her life to its frame, though I kept thinking of Henley's line, "and in her heart some late lark singing." ...

... Each life, it seems to me, short or long, is wonderful when it becomes a perfected story, if we could only get it in perspective, against its own destined background; not blurred and mixed with other unrelated lives, but by itself, in relief, as the great artists show their masterpieces. I can't feel the ordinariness of any human life. Some are dreadful, some beautiful, some undeveloped; but each in its way could be an infinitely perfect story were the artist there to record it.

_January 10th, evening._

To-day we drove over to Juchitan, the "county-seat"--Aunt L. to get some papers witnessed and signed at the _jefatura_, and to show me the ravages of the revolution of November.