Part 23

Elsie chose a corner inside, and Madame Lefaivre is sketching outside, so I got the guardian, who is also the administrator of the orchard and hacienda, to unlock the church. Several gilded _Churrigueresque_ altars still remain--intricately designed, time-softened, lovely, and on the altar steps were some charming old candlesticks, five or six feet high, in the same lovely style of gilding and twisting. How they have remained there during a century of suburban vicissitudes I know not. Various saints in ecstasy, San Joaquin in special, were portrayed, almost life-size, their garments floating, falling, blowing about, with the special unquiet but lovely _Churrigueresque_ touch. Winged, open-mouthed cherubim and seraphim hold up the vaulting with its wealth of lovely, conventional motifs; throughout Mexico, in churches where everything else is gone, one finds the out-of-reach vaultings intact.

There is a school of a sort, held in what was once the seminary behind the church; and some barefooted, bareheaded, and otherwise scantily clad wrestlers with the "three R's" came out from one end of the church and passed through, followed by their teacher, a shabby, bored-looking young Mestizo of doubtful cleanliness and dubious competency.

Calle Humboldt, _Later_.

I left you in the _patio_ of San Joaquin. When I went to see how the artists were progressing, I found them both looking miserable and discouraged. No "fine frenzy" to the roll of their eyes, though they _were_ "glancing from heaven to earth." The beauty here isn't one to record on canvas, rather on memory and soul, which, having remarked to them as gently as I could, they began to clean their palettes.

We took a last, regretful look at all the pinky loveliness, the tiled dome, the silent belfry, the slender heads of the two straight, coal-black cypresses, and the inexpressibly lovely wall, wrapped ourselves about with the shining air, and bumped homewards. "Quick, thy tablets, memory."

_July 20th._

We dined last night at the Ernesto Maderos' in their handsome house in the Paseo, large enough to lose the six children in. Madame M. has been in mourning (something that seems to happen to women oftener in Mexico than in other places) and now is "out" again.

The official Mexicans spare no expense on the occasions when they open their houses, but it is always with ceremony, without individuality; _enfin_ Mexicans receiving foreigners. The Riedls were there, and the Simons; I have an idea Mr. S. finds his task a big one. He rarely goes out, but this, to the Secretary of the Treasury, was strictly within his orbit. Madame Simon wore a beautiful black _pailletté_ gown, with subtle touches of "point de Venise," recently out from Paris.

She has driven us all nearly crazy, anyway, with the ravishing _croquis_ and _échantillons_ Drecoll and Doeuillet have been sending her, and which lie, temptingly, among the latest French reviews and newest books on her table.

I sat by Lascurain, talking pleasantly of things not political; that ground is volcanic and no place for foreigners, even well-disposed. The new Belgian chargé, Letellier, was on my other side.

A letter to-day from Madame de la G. from Châlons-sur-Marne, where the Marquis is in command of the garrison. She will always be, to me, typical of the _grandes dames de France_ as they have appeared throughout the centuries--those highly born, highly placed, highly cultured women with many natural gifts, whose wit and beauty are the common heritage of us all.

I bear that picture of her in her armchair, so beautifully dressed, especially in that white chiffon gown we liked so much, with a single dusky rose at her slender waist, her dark hair so perfectly _coiffé_, her charming welcoming smile, with its hint of suffering borne, remote from miseries, yet knowing pain. I can see the background of bookcases; near by her shining tea-table, and the little low table with its vase of flowers and bibelots, and the latest book with a paper-cutter in it, or some consoling volume whose pages were cut by other generations.[56]

With a change of costume, change of hours of visits and dinner, she pictures to my imagination Madame de Sévigné writing to Madame de Grignan, Madame de la Fayette talking to La Rochefoucauld--all that flowering of an elegance of mind with its roots of culture, not alone in books, but in the heart. Her mind is receptive, yet so giving, her conversations so sparkling, with its _fond_ of philosophies and politics, its richness of _nuance_, its elastic impersonality, yet French, though dipped in a thousand dyes and run in a thousand molds.

Her three boys go into the army, and of Marguerite she says: "_Gretl est vraiment mon ange gardien, ne me quittant jamais, et me soignant, toujours gaie, toujours dévouée._"

"_Châlons étant à deux heures de Paris, les amis viennent facilement._" She gave me news of the Paul Festetics, who had recently been there--"_Fanny toujours l'esprit aussi alerte et aussi charmant_"; of the De B.'s, to whom my heart goes out, "_Très-courageux, mais vous pensez si c'est dur de continuer une route ainsi ravagée_"; and for me "_Nos chemins se Croiseront-ils jamais à nouveau?_ It does not look like it, _hélas_."

_July 21st._

This evening, from the hill of Tepeyac, I watched the sun go down into a world of purple shadows rising from the mysterious plain of Anahuac. The valley had been stretched out before us like a chart, the hills in light and shadow. We could name each glistening road leading from the great city, and yet, little by little, one succumbed to the mysteriousness of it all--until the whole spectacle became an inner rather than an outer thing.

No rain except for some silver clouds with strange, fugitive effects, just before sunset, that sifted a diamond-like rain for a few minutes over the face of the plain. No wind, but something like a great, cool breathing was about us.

We passed by the richly tiled _Capilla del Pocito_ (Chapel of the Well), of which he who drinks returns, and went up the romantic old stone stairway leading to another chapel. Half-way up are the celebrated "stone sails of Guadalupe," their origin dateless, the hands that put them up unrecorded. They can be seen for miles about, and near by they have a _belle patine_, and mosses and bits of cactus and a flower or two grow from them. They commemorate the escape from sea perils of Mexican mariners who had prayed the Virgin of Guadalupe to bring them safely into port. When this had come about, tradition has it that, continuing to believe _after_ they were safe in Vera Cruz, they fulfilled their vow by bringing up on their shoulders the rigging of their ship, afterward encasing it in a covering of stone.

There are hooded, shrine-like resting-places as one goes up the broad, flat steps between the beautiful, high-scalloped wall, often a _Via Dolorosa_, for a cemetery is on the very top behind the chapel that was built on the spot where Juan Diego gathered the flowers, suddenly springing up to be given as testimony to the unconvinced bishop.

A great wooden cross is in the little atrium, and we found an Indian family sitting about it, eating their supper, wrapped in their colored blankets, doubtless preparing to spend the night "at the foot of the cross." There was once a temple to the Aztec Ceres, "Tonantzin, our Mother," on this same spot.

In the cemetery lies buried the body of Santa Anna, he who led his troops against ours.

There is a continual operative magic, some peculiar proportioning of the subjective and the objective here, with correspondences between the seen and the unseen forever making themselves felt.

The domes and spires of the city shone in the afternoon light. Where one once saw the great aqueducts, and the still more ancient canals, now rise the slender steel frames bearing the wires of the light-and-power company, charged in Necaxa, a hundred miles away, down in the Hot Country. The lakes were yellowish-silver mirrors, the eternal hills swam in their strange translucence, the great volcanoes pierced a lovely sky; all quite relatable, except just what it is that pulls your soul out of you as you look upon the deathless beauty and think of the dark, restless, passionate races whose heritage it is.

As we turned to descend the old stone way, the shining city afar was as if suddenly dipped in purple, but the sky above was of such pure and delicate tints--lemon, saffron, and pale pink--that we wondered whence the "Tyrian" purple could have come. We drove silently home in a many-colored twilight.

_July 23d._

Yesterday I found a curious book, "_par un citoyen de l'Amérique méridionale_" ("by a citizen of South America") (vague enough not to get him into trouble), called _Esquisse de la Révolution de l'Amérique Espagnole_, Paris, 1817.

It is a saddening, mighty spectacle, the presentation of that immense area in the throes of revolution. A few enlightened viceroys at Mexico, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, might have saved the day. They were not ready for self-government, but for Spain the hour had sounded when she was to lose her great colonies; and Mexico, the dearest, the richest, the most accessible, the most beautiful, was to enter on her century of horrors, heroisms, sacrifices--and the end is not yet.

I feel at times as if I were behind the scenes of a mighty drama. I have read so much that I know many of the _répliques_; have sorted some of the red threads of the century-old plot, and, if I am not behind the scenes really, I _am_ in a sort of _avant-scène_, where some of what goes on behind the curtain can be surmised.

This is the second summer of books read to the pouring of tropical rains. Mr. S. has brought me several volumes of Jean Christophe--_l'Aube_, _La Révolte_--unread before and deeply relished. With all his other gifts, Romain Rolland[57] has the international mind and keeps his seat extremely well, _à cheval_ as he is, between France and Germany. To-day I finished _Le Buisson Ardent_. During two strange, restless afternoons, I followed Anna's story in the darkness of the tropical downpour, an earthy freshness coming up from the flowers in the _patio_, and a sound of heavy water falling from rain-spout and roof.

_July 27th._

A lovely morning on the roof with E., drying our hair in matchless sun, looking at the volcanoes and talking.

She said I reminded her of the _art nouveau_ inkstand, that for my sins I won at bridge the other day, which has the hair drawn down to the feet of the figure for the pen to rest on. _She_ looked as if she had stepped out of some lovely old Persian tile with her masses of dark hair standing out about her handsome head. There is a poet brother, whose portrait of some years ago hangs in one of the rooms, a large-eyed, straight-featured boy, with a speculative forehead and remote eyes.

From what I gather, he is evidently a genius, not meant for harness, feeling the world owes him a living (which it probably does), that he may toss off a sonnet, when so impelled, or feel free to read Euripides in some choice edition bought with his last dollar, in the completest insouciance as to the date and amount of the next remittance. He used to take long, lonely, timeless walks about these hills and valleys, reappearing after hours or days, with a poem that he wouldn't show, or a thought not convenient in family life.[58]

[54] Orozco was arrested with General Huerta by the United States authorities on June 27, 1915. A few days later he escaped his guard at El Paso, and shortly afterward was killed during a raid on the border.

[55] A young mining engineer lately come out of Mexico on one of the intermittent trains, over the once favorite northern route, tells me that everywhere the stations are destroyed. Overturned rolling-stock lies rotting in the ditches; at one point where the fuel gave out the trainmen got down and chopped up the seats remaining on what once had been a station platform, and at another a Pullman car was smashed and fed to the engine. What intending travelers and the stockholders in the company think of Carranza's passion for reconstruction is said to be too fierce for expression!--E. O'S., January, 1917.

[56] Marquis de la G., then military attaché at the French Embassy in Berlin.

[57] _Et comment fera celui qui a reçu du sort le don superbe et fatal de voir la vérité, et de ne pouvoir pas ne pas la voir?_--ROMAIN ROLLAND, _Vie de Tolstoi_. (January, 1917.)

[58] Killed in battle at Belloy-en-Santerre, July, 1916.

A friend and companion of Alan Seeger's Harvard days, Pierre Abreu, himself extraordinarily fitted for the understanding of the "humanities" in every sense, told me of him one windy twilight crossing to France on the _Espagne_ that autumn after his death. I had just seen, in my _North American Review_, that most charming of all his poems, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death."

He was evidently a free, romantic being, Latinized in temperament and mentality, receptive and creative. Abreu met him first at a Sophocles course--he was a brilliant, original classical scholar, with an elasticity of culture that made him also able to translate a gem of Clément Marot, or Ronsard, into perfect form at sight. For the impressionable years of gifted adolescence, what more suggestive setting than that magnetic valley of Mexico?

Now he lies in France. His high, adventurous spirit was meant for wars and chances, doubtless in the old, romantic sense of battle.

"Heroes battling with heroes and above them the wrathful gods."

For this type there could be but one consummation. But it seems to me all can be fulfilled as well at twenty-eight as at threescore and ten, and the completion of no man's destiny is dependent on his years.--E. O'S., January, 1917.

XXVI

Balls at the German Legation and at Madame Simon's--Necaxa--A strange, gorge-like world of heat and light--Mexican time-tables--The French trail

_August 17th._

Unwonted festivities here. For two nights running we have "tripped the light fantastic." Night before last Madame Simon gave a big ball, and last night there was one at the German Legation. The dancing world was out in full swing, bumping into a varied assortment of wall-flowers, tropical and temperate.

Handsome favors and elaborate suppers at both these _bailes de confianza_, and the later it got, the wilder and more spirited became the music. I gave the _coup de grâce_ to the pink velvet Buda-Pesth court dress at von H.'s.

The Benoist d'Azy are here from Washington. It always adds to the gaiety of nations to have _étrangers de distinction_ make their appearance. They have all the interest of events. It isn't often the capital sees two smart balls, one after the other.

A long-expected box of suits and things from Peter Robinson's for Elim has just arrived. He didn't fancy trying on, and in the struggle asked me suddenly "Who was Jesus Christ's tailor?" I was a bit taken aback. I must say I had never put those words or ideas together.

When I recovered my mental activity, I told him that Jesus' Mother made his clothes for him, whereupon he answered: "These only came from London," and wouldn't lift his feet from the floor when I wanted him to try on some little trousers. He doubtless needed a spanking which he didn't get. Mama was feeling decidedly slack after two nights of dissipation at an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet. Madame Montessori says a psychological change comes over children at the age of six. I look forward to it.

Necaxa, State of Vera Cruz _August 23d._ Station of the Light and Power Company.

I have only time for a word. We arrived here at five-thirty, after a twelve-hour journey through indescribable beauty. We left the house in a clear dawn--Rieloff, the Seegers, Burnside, and myself--and all day have been winding through mountain passes, deep barrancas, with a sound of rushing waters, and great forests of pine-trees, red and white cedars, and delicate ferns almost as high, through which our little geared-locomotive would have seemed a pioneer had it not been for the sight of the delicate steel towers that support the wires of the Light and Power Company.

In the afternoon great masses of shifting light flooded broad valleys or stamped the heights with shining patches as the rain-clouds passed and repassed between brilliant bits of sunny heaven. We came as the guests of the Light and Power Company, and the manager and chief engineer, an Englishman, Mr. Cooper, met us and brought us to the club-house, very comfortable, according to Anglo-Saxon ideas, with easy-chairs, verandas, etc. After a bountiful repast, according to the same ideas, we walked about the little plateau, in an enchantment of changing lights, till night suddenly fell and everything was blotted out, and we bethought ourselves that _beata solitudine_ was the only fitting finale to it all. We have planned a full morrow, which is near, so good night.

_Sunday, 25th._

I did not write yesterday. In the morning Mr. Cooper took us down to the dynamos, reached by a cog-railway, through a great, dark tunnel-like incline with a bright speck of light at the far end. We issued out of the cool dimness to find ourselves in a strange gorge-like world of heat and light, with a great mass of falling water, the distant edge of the waterfall outlined against a high, shining heaven; against it, again, thousands of small, brilliant blue butterflies, and on all sides the most gorgeous plants and trees. There was an effect of some circle of Paradise, and something mysterious and magic in the very practicality of it all, when one thinks that these falls, nearly six hundred feet high--and a hundred kilometers from Mexico City--supply the light and motor power of the town.

Doctor Pearson is the genius who controls it all, and his name is breathed with awe at Necaxa.[59] As we stood looking up at the falling waters, bright birds and heavy scents about us, "the white man is lord and king of it all," I kept saying to myself.

To-day has been still fuller. In the afternoon we visited the great dam that is just being finished to provide an immense storage reservoir against the dry season. Water is as precious as gold in Mexico, and in many places scarcer.

Some one remarked that there seemed to be little or no _mañana_ about it, and Mr. C. told the story of one of his first experiences in Mexico, when he was still under the spell of the time-table.

He was waiting at a station where the only passenger-train was scheduled to pass every day at 9 A.M. He arrived at the station a few minutes before nine, to see the train just disappearing. On complaining to the _jefe de estación_ about this running ahead of time, he received the bland response that it was _yesterday's_ train that had just passed out and there was every reason to suppose that the train of to-day would be delayed, perhaps as long! He cooled his heels till the next dawn. But Necaxa wasn't built at a cost of a hundred million pesos on that principle, he added.

We had started out after breakfast to explore the "French trail"--a son of Gaul was once owner of Necaxa--plunging perpendicularly over the side of the little plateau, to find ourselves on the most romantic of footpaths, formerly the only road through the gorgeous wilderness.

It got hotter and hotter as we descended, and though Rieloff kept insisting that, technically, we were not yet in Tierra Caliente, all its abundancies seemed to surround us: giant ferns, ebony and rosewood trees, lovely orchids hanging from high branches, convolvuli of all colors; and under our feet mosses, by the yard, of rare and lovely fabric, each patch holding a world of tiny forms and tints. I started to follow one bit of morning-glory vine, but was obliged to give it up. I could nor bear to break it, and it would have led me, like an endless thread, through a labyrinth of sarsaparilla, myrtle, and fern.

The brightest of birds and butterflies were flying about--the sort of things one finds under glass in northern museums--and a huge, scarlet flower of the hibiscus type was everywhere splashed over the green.

Here and there an Indian appeared from _quién sabe_ where. It was all his and yet not his.

We came up in the cool dimness of the cog-railway, and after cold douches and luncheon, enlivened with entomological discussions (that lovely wilderness is alive with invisible biting specimens), we went with Mr. Cooper to the reservoir.

We have spent the evening mostly meeting the officials of the company and playing bridge. (!) Though it was the least _noblesse oblige_ allowed, it seemed a lot after the long, full day--_on paie ses plaisirs_....

However, they were all so nice and so pleased to see people from the outside world that, once in our "bridge stride," it wasn't so hard. Rieloff, who hates cards, after a while went to the piano, bursting into "_Du meiner Seele schönster Traum_"--following it up with the "Moonlight Sonata"; so, in the end, we found ourselves sitting in a dimly-lighted room, with Beethoven floating out on the soft Indian night--and all was well.

I am dead with sleep, and early to-morrow we depart.

42 Calle Humboldt, _August 26th, late evening_.

We were awakened at 5.30 in a dawn of such exceeding beauty that, as I stepped out into it, I was tempted to fall upon my knees rather than hurry to our little train. On one side were the hills, so veiled in splendors of filmy pearls and blues and pinks that their forms could only be imagined; on the other was an abyss of gold and rose and sapphire into which our train was to plunge.

All day long we went from glory to glory; but I got home to find that something human and dreadful had happened in my absence: Little Emma C., playing over the roof with Laurita and Elim, escaped for one unexplained second from Gabrielle--fell from it to the stone _patio_--her fall, for an instant, broken by a balcony railing.

I hurried to her mother's. The child is alive, but dreadfully injured, and, it is feared, for life. Nature was too beautiful at Necaxa not to exact some sort of toll from those admitted to it. I am dreadfully upset.

[59] Dr. F. S. Pearson, to whose genius this astounding engineering feat is largely due, lost his life on the _Lusitania_.

XXVII

A luncheon for Gustavo Madero--Celebrating the _Grito_ at the Palace--The President's brother explains his philosophy--Hacienda of San Cristobal--A typical Mexican Sunday dinner

_September 3d._

The _funcion_ I gave yesterday went off with a good deal of snap. Everybody in town was there, and the house filled to bursting. Elsie S. and I brewed the classic Grosvenor punch ourselves and arranged masses of flowers everywhere. Probably it will be the last gathering I shall have, _sic transit_, etc.

Madame Madero came with her two sisters-in-law. She seems more worn, thinner, and older; a year heavy with anxieties has passed over her since I first saw her in the flush of hope and triumph at the German Legation.

The Porfiristas--all the old régime--hold the United States responsible for Madero's success, because of our permitting him to organize and finance himself on our border, and there are others who think, rather paradoxically, that it is due to us that he has not had _more_ success.