XIV

A “neat little haul” for brigands—Tea at San Angel—A picnic and a burning village—The lesson of “Two Fools”—Austria-Hungary’s new minister—Cigarettes in the making—Zapata’s message.

There was no disturbance of any kind yesterday. Never were the streets more peaceful, nor the heavens more calmly beautiful. Madame Simon had a luncheon for the new Austro-Hungarian minister, and afterward we all motored out the Toluca road, driving on till from a high mountain place we could see the setting sun filling the stretches of the Toluca Valley with translucent flame colors, mauves, reds, and browns. It was like some new Jerusalem or any other promised glory. Every time we saw a group on horseback we wondered if it were the redoubtable Zapatistas who make that part of the world so unquiet. It was all carefully patrolled, however, with armed men at intervals, cartridge-belts full, and guns across their saddles.

Our party would have been a neat little haul for brigands: the Austro-Hungarian minister, the Italian minister, Joaquin Garcia Pimentel, Señor and Señora Ösi, Madame Simon, and myself. Señora Ösi had on a magnificent string of pearls, likewise a huge diamond pin that blazed in the setting sun. I left my jewels at home, and Madame Simon kept hers well covered. I wonder that wedidget back as we went. It was marvelous, dropping down from the heights to the glistening town, in the mysterious Mexican half-light.

I wonder what President Wilson is going to do about the revolution in Peru? I see they have deported Billinghurst from Callao, and Augusto Durand, the revolutionary chief, has assumed the Presidency. There was a price on his head a day or two before. It will take more than one administration to cure the Latin-Americans of their taste for revolutions. Have sent you aCosmopolitan, with a story, “Two Fools,” by Frederick Palmer; it deals with a certain burning side of the Mexican situation, and has excited much comment.

Yesterday we went out to the beautiful San Angel Inn for tea, six of us in one motor, two empty motors following. Motoring about this marvelous plateau is one of the joys of Mexican life. We watched the sunset over the volcanoes until the rose-tinted “White Lady,” Iztaccihuatl, was only a gigantic form lying against a purple sky, covered with a blue-white shroud; then we raced in to dine with Clarence Hay and the Tozzers, who had a box for a mild circus performance in the evening. The night before last, so von Hintze told N. (and he is always thoroughly informed), forty men and officers in the Guadalupe Hidalgo barracks were shot. They were accused, probably justly, of a plot against Huerta. For days there have been persistent rumors of a military uprising—cuartelazo, as they call it. Perhaps at the predestined hour one such rising will succeed. If Huerta is forced into bankruptcy and can’t pay his troops, what will become ofus, the foreigners? He stated the full truth about elections here when he said that conditions were such that the government of the nation must necessarily be in the hands of the few. A thoroughgoing dictatorship is what he doubtless thinks the best solution—from a close acquaintance with his own people.

This morning, after Mass at nine o’clock, I started with Seeger, Hay, the Tozzers, and Elim for Texcoco. It was marvelous, speeding through the soft, yet brilliant, air, each turn of the wheel bringing us to historic spots. Texcoco was the “Athens” of Mexico in Aztec days, and the whole length of this now so-dusty road was done in canoes and barques. There is a great column near Chapingo which points the spot Cortés started from in his brigantine, in his last desperate and successful attempt at the conquest of the City of Mexico. It was from the ridge of hills beyond that the conquerors first looked down on the marvels of Tenochtitlan, set among its shining lakes and its myriad gardens.

We found it was market-day at Texcoco, and Indian life was beating its full around the old plaza with its Aztec sun-dial, palms, and eucalyptus. Here the Indians set up their innumerable booths with their potteries, baskets, blankets, fruits, and vegetables. We were most amused watching a crowd gathered about a steaming caldron. In it a pig, his outline still quite intact, was converting himself into soup as fast as fire and water could assist him. Cortés, in one of the famous letters, gives as detailed an account of an Indian market as if he were a modern traveling agent sending back data to the firm. In the near-by old church his venturesome heart lay for long years. Now only unlettered Indians crowd in and out of the place. There is a huge adjacent seminary of the Spanish period, unused since the “Laws of Reform.” The most visible results of the “Laws of Reform” seem to be, as far as I have discovered, huge, dusty waste spaces, where schools had once been. All over Mexico there are such.

Texcoco doesn’t offer many inducements to modern picnickers, so we motored back a short distance andstopped at the hacienda of Chapingo, formerly belonging to Gonsalez, President of Mexico before Diaz’s second administration.Hewas allowed to leave the country. As Dooley remarks, “There is no such word as ‘ix-Prisidint’ in Mexico. They are known as ‘the late-lamented,’ or ‘the fugitive from justice’; and the only tr’uble the country has with those who remain is to keep the grass cut.”

Beautiful avenues of eucalyptus adorn the entrance to the gaudy clap-clappy house, and the dozens ofpeondwellings surrounding it. Theadministradorallowed us to have our luncheon in the grounds, and we sat around the dry, flower-grown basin of an old fountain. Hay recited; we picked bunches of violets without moving an inch, and watched cheerful lizards darting in and out. Coming home, great spiral pillars of dust reached up, with a regular rotary motion, to the sky over the lake, the results of the drainage works of the lake and valley of Texcoco.

As we passed thePeñonand got into the straight home road, some one remarked, “Nothing doing in the Zapatista line this time.” A moment afterward, however, volleys were heard in the direction of Xochimilco, and puffs of smoke could be seen. Then about fortyruralesgalloped up. The sergeant, a fresh-complexioned, dull-witted fellow, stopped us and asked if we knew from where the firing came. We apparently knew more than he, little as it was. He continued, in a helpless way: “Those are Mauser shots,pero no hay tren, no hay telefono. Como vamos a hacer?” (“but we have no train, we have no telephone. What are we to do?”) When we asked him the name of the village (pueblo) where it was going on, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, “Quién sabe?” Finally we left theruralesto their own devices and came upon a group of women running fortheir lives and virtue. They all learn to get out of the way of the soldiers, as they are obliged to hear dreadfulgroserías, if nothing worse. A pink- or blue-skirted figure being chased in the maguey-fields is no uncommon sight.

We came back to the Embassy and had tea, learning that a huge fire we had seen burning on the side of a not-distant hill, and which we thought might be from a charcoal-burners’ camp, was a village the Zapatistas had pillaged and set on fire at two o’clock, while we were peacefully picnicking in “violet-crowned” Chapingo.

The Tozzers and Clarence Hay leave for Oaxaca and Mitla, to-morrow night, for a week’s trip. I would have loved to go, but “No traveling” is our motto. We must keep out of possible troubles. Later Kanya de Kanya, the new Austro-Hungarian minister, came to call. He has been ten years in the Foreign Office in Vienna, and is glad to be out of the turmoil of Near-East politics. For him Mexico is relatively quiet. There are only about five or six hundred of his nationals in the whole country, as there has been little or nothing here for them since the Maximilian tragedy. Kanya is a Hungarian. He will be a pleasant colleague, and I certainly hope the Magyar will show itself. He is said to be very musical.

In the evening Seeger came back for dinner; also Burnside, who is up from Vera Cruz for a day or so. We had a “political” evening. Going back over things, it does seem as if the United States, in conniving at the elimination of Diaz, three years ago, had begun the deadly work of disintegration here.

But all the time I kept before my mind’s eye the enchanting background of blue hills and lakes shining in the slanting sun, millions of wild ducks flying across the Lake of Chalco, and, above it, the smoldering village, the reverberations of the Mauser rifles below!

There was a pleasant luncheon at the Lefaivres’ for Kanya. They—the Lefaivres—are both worn out with their long Mexican sojourn, five years, and the heavy responsibilities entailed by the ever-increasing French material losses, and are planning to go on leave in March. They are good friends and I shall miss them greatly, but I have learned to be philosophic about partings. Life keeps filling up, like a miraculous pitcher.

The newspapers have been getting the details of the horrible disaster in the Cumbre tunnel in Chihuahua, a few days ago. A bandit chief, Castillo, set fire to it by running into it a burning lumber-train. A passenger-train came along, collided with the débris, and all that has been recovered is a few charred bones. It is near the frontier, and it is said that Villa allowed the rescue-party to have an escort of American soldiers. There were a number of American women and children on the train; but it is a momentous step—or may be—for American troops to get into Mexico. Castillo did the thing, it is said, to revenge himself on Villa. This latter is getting a taste of the responsibilities success entails. He has Chihuahua, and Juarez, and a long line of railway to protect, and I am sure he doesn’t find guerilla warfare a recommendable pastime, when it is directed against himself and his ambitions.

This morning we went over the magnificent Buen Tono cigarette-factories. Pugibet, who sold cigarettes in the street forty years ago, is the founder and millionaire owner. The factory is a model in all ways, and a testimony to his brains, energy, and initiative. He showed us over the vast place himself. In one of the rooms hehad refrained from installing machinery, as it meant taking work from hundreds of women.

Oh, the deftness and skill of those beautiful Indian hands! Their motions were so quick that one hardly saw anything but the finished article. He loaded us with cigarettes and many souvenirs, and we drove home after a visit to the big church he had built near by. On arriving home, I found the words, “Papa,” “Mama,” “Elim,” and “Kuss,” written in white chalk, in high letters, on the entrance-door. I hated to have them removed.

N. has protested to the Foreign Office regarding the scurrilous language theImparcialhas used about the President, theImparcialbeing a government organ. “Wicked Puritan with sorry horse teeth,” “Exotic and nauseous Carranzista pedagogue,” are samples of its style.

I have had a stone for a heart all day, thinking of the horrors that are to be multiplied. Nelson went to see Gamboa this afternoon. Incidentally the raising of the embargo was mentioned, and Gamboa said he thought Huerta might declare war. Like all the rest, he is doubtless ready to desert the old man.Après moi le délugeand “the devil take the hindmost” are the sentiments governing people here. Mr. Jennings just rang up to ask if we had heard that the letter-bag of the Zapatistas had been seized. In it was a letter to President Wilson from Zapata, saying he upheld and was in perfect accord with his (Wilson’s) policy toward Huerta. A smile on the face of every one!

I went to the Garcia Pimentels’ at four o’clock, where we sewed till seven for the Red Cross. The women there were all wives or daughters of wealthyhacendados. They asked me if there was any news, and as usual,I answered, “Nothing new,” but I felt my eyes grow dim. This measure will strike them hard. Thehacendadosin this part of the country have made great sacrifices to co-operate with the Federal government (it is the only visible thing in the shape of government) in the hope of preserving their properties and helping toward peace.

There were crowds before the Church of the Profesa in “Plateros” as I drove home. The church had been gutted by fire the night before, its second misfortune since we arrived. Its great dome was rent during the terrific earthquake of the 7th of June, 1911—that unforgetable day on which I saw Madero make his triumphant entry into Mexico. At half past four in the morning the town was rocked like a ship in a gale, with a strange sound of great wind.

The Profesa, which has only just been repaired, was built late in the sixteenth century, and was a center of Jesuit activity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all the great marriages, baptisms, and functions took place in it. One can see in one’s mind the array of proud viceroys and their jewel-decked spouses and all the glittering functionaries, and last, but not least, the inevitable accompaniment of the Indian population, wandering in and out. Yesterday, at San Felipe, Mass was celebrated by a priest with a pronounced Spanish eighteenth-century ascetic face of the Merry del Val type. As he turned to give the blessing, I thought of the many elect and beautiful priests of Spain who had in bygone days turned with that same gesture and expression to give the same blessing to like throngs of uplifted Indian faces. The Indians crowd the churches and I am thankful that Heaven can be foreshown to them, somewhere, somehow. They are but beasts of burden here below.

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