XXVI
Homeward bound—Dead to the world in Sarah Bernhardt’s luxurious cabin—Admiral Badger’s farewell—“The Father of Waters”—Mr. Bryan’s earnest message—Arrival at Washington—Adelante!
I am writing in the depths of my cabin on the yachtYankton, which is carrying us to New Orleans as the crow flies—a special trip for the purpose. In another walk of life theYanktonwas known asLa Cléopâtre, and belonged to Sarah Bernhardt. Now I, much the worse for wear, occupy her cabin. She has never brought a representative of the United States from the scene of war before, but she is Admiral Badger’s special ship, carries mails, special travelers, etc., and went around the world with the fleet. The fleet met a typhoon, and all were alarmed for the safety of theYankton, which emerged from the experience the least damaged of any ship. I can testify that she rides the waves and that she even jumps them. Admiral B. says that in harbor he uses her chiefly for court-martials. Now I am here. Life is a jumble, is it not?
At five o’clock, on Friday, May 1st, we said good-by to dear Captain Simpson and all the luxurious hospitality of theMinnesota, Commander Moody and the officers of the day wishing us “Godspeed.” Just as we were leaving Captain Simpson told us that he had been signaled to send five hundred rations to San Juan Ulua. As we pushed off across the water, accompanied by Ensign Crisp, the boat officer of the day, great patches of khakicolored the shores of the town. They were squads of our men, their tents and paraphernalia, the color coming out strong against Vera Cruz, which had an unwonted grayish tone that afternoon. TheYanktonwas lying in the outer harbor, surrounded by battle-ships, dreadnoughts, and torpedo-boats—a mighty showing, a circle of iron around that artery of beautiful, gasping Mexico. It was about quarter before six when we reached theYankton. As I looked about I seemed to be in a strange, gray city of battle-ships. Shortly afterward Admiral Badger put out from his flag-ship, theArkansas, to say good-by to us. He came on board, greeting us in his quick, masterful way. Such power has rarely been seen under one man as that huge fleet represented in Vera Cruz harbor, and the man commanding it is fully equal to the task; he is alert, with piercing blue eyes, very light hair gone white, and a clean, fresh complexion—the typical mariner in a high place. I think he feels entirely capable of going up and down the coast and taking all and everything, even the dreaded Tampico, with its manifest dangers of oil, fire, disease, and all catastrophes that water can bring. He spoke of the thirty thousand Americans who have already appeared at our ports, driven from their comfortable homes, now destitute, and who can’t return to Mexico until we have made it possible.... I imagine he strains at the leash. He loves it all, too, and it was with a deep sigh that he said, “Unfortunately, in little more than a month my time is up.” But all endings are sad. Great bands of sunset red were suddenly stamped across the sky as he went away, waving us more good wishes.
Captain Joyce, who had gone into town to get us some special kind of health certificate to obviate any quarantine difficulties, came on board a little later, and soonafter his return we were under way. The quick, tropical night began to fall. What had been a circle of iron by day was a huge girdle of light pressing against Mexico, as potent under the stars as under the sun. My heart was very sad.... I had witnessed a people’s agony and I had said an irrevocable farewell to a fascinating phase of my own life, and to a country whose charm I have felt profoundly. Since then I have been dead to the world, scribbling these words with limp fingers on a damp bit of paper. This jaunty yacht is like a cockle-shell on the shining waters. Admiral Fletcher and Admiral Cradock sent wireless messages, which are lying in a corner, crumpled up, like everything else.
I said to Elim, lying near by in his own little sackcloth and ashes, “Yacht me no yachts,” and he answered, “No yachts for me.” Later, recovered enough to make a little joke, he said he was going to give me one for a Christmas present.
I said, “I will sell it.”
He answered, “No, sink it. If we sell it dey’ll invite us—dey always do.” He looked up later, with a moan, to say, faintly, “I would rather have a big cramp dan dis horriblest feeling in de world.”
This is, indeed,noblesse oblige! I have suffered somewhat, perhaps gloriously, forla patria, and I suppose I ought to be willing to enact this final scene without bewailings; but I have been buried to the world, and the divine Sarah’s cabin is my coffin. If such discomfort can exist where there is every modern convenience of limitless ice, electric fans, the freshest and best of food, what must have been the sufferings of people in sailing-ships, delayed by northers or calms, with never a cold drink? I envelop them all in boundless sympathy, from Cortés to Madame Calderon de la Barca.
Awhile ago I staggered up the hatchway, a pale creature in damp white linen, to once more behold the sky, after three cribbed and cabined days. A pilot’s boat was rapidly approaching us on the nastiest, yellowest, forlornest sea imaginable. I felt that I could no longer endure the various sensations animating my body, not even an instant longer. Then, suddenly, it seemed we were in the southwest passage of the great delta, out of that unspeakable roll, passing up the “Father of Waters”—the abomination of desolation. Even the gulls looked sad, and a bell-buoy was ringing a sort of death-knell. Uniformly built houses were scattered at intervals on the monotonous flat shores, where the only thing that grows is tall, rank grass—whether out of land or water it is impossible to say. These are the dwellings of those lonely ones who work on the levees, the wireless and coaling stations, dredging and “redeeming” this seemingly ungrateful land, stretching out through its flat, endless, desolate miles.
The water is yellower than the Tiber at its yellowest, and no mantle of high and ancient civilization lends it an enchantment. The pilot brought damp piles of papers on board, but I can’t bear to read of Mexican matters. Whether Carranza refuses flatly our request to discontinue fighting during the mediation proceedings, or a hasty New York editor calls Villa “the Stonewall Jackson of Mexico,” it is only more of the same. My heart and mind know it all too well.
I have a deep nostalgia for Mexico; even for its blood-red color. Everything else the world can offer will seem drab beside the memory of its strange magic.
A radio came from Mr. Bryan at six this morning requesting N. to observe silence until he has conferred in Washington. But N. had already made up hismind thatsilentiumwould be his sign and symbol. Unless we get in at the merciful hour of dawn he will be besieged by reporters. A word too much just now could endlessly complicate matters for Washington.
We are slipping up broad, mournful, lake-like expanses of water. From time to time a great split comes, and it seems as if we had met another river, seeking another outlet. More white and gray houses show themselves against the tall, pale-green, persistent grasses and the yellow of the river. They are lonely, isolated homes, wherein each family earns its bread in the sweat of its brow by some kind of attendance on the exacting “Father of Waters”—mostly, trying to control him.
We have just slipped through quarantine like a fish. Our own extraordinary orders and two or three telegrams from Washington, with orders not to hold us up, made it an easy matter. We saw theMonterey, which had arrived in the morning, with six hundred and twenty-three passengers aboard, moored at the dock. The women and children were to sleep in screened tents on land. Many of them were refugees from Mexico City itself, and they cheered and waved, as we passed by, and called “O’Shaughnessy! O’Shaughnessy!”
The refugees, according to the copy of thePicayunethe health officers left us, are loud in praise of Carden, saying their escape is due to him and not to the State Department, and giving incidental cheers for Roosevelt. Dr. Corput is a martinet; but though he was hot and decidedly wilted about the collar when his six-foot-two person came into the saloon where we were dining, he looked highly competent. It will be a bright microbe that gets by him. He, with his yellow flag, is lord and master of every craft and everything that breasts this river.
The whole question of guarding the health of the United States at this station is most interesting. It is one of the largest in the world, but is taxed to its utmost now by the thousands of refugees from Mexico, most of them cursing the administration, as far as I can gather, during the hundred and forty-five hours of travel since leaving Mexico. The quarantine station itself, under the red, late afternoon sun, looked a clean, attractive village, supplemented by rows of tents. There are immense sterilizers in which the whole equipment of a ship can be put, huge inspection-rooms, great bathing-houses, and a small herd of cattle. It is sufficient to itself. Nothing can get at the inmates, nor can the inmates, on the other hand, get at anything. I should say that the wear and tear of existence would be materially lessened during the one hundred and forty-five hours. The great ships that pass up now are laden with people who have been exposed to every imaginable disease in the Mexicandébâcle. You remember the small-pox outbreak in Rome, and howthatmicrobe was encouraged! Well,autre pays, autre mœurs. The Indian, however, thinks very little more of having small-pox than we think of a bad cold in the head.
We have been going up-stream very quietly, in this dark, soft night, zigzagging up its mighty length to avoid the current. Sometimes we were so near the shores we could almost touch the ghostly willow-trees; while mournful, suppressed night noises fell upon our ears. The mosquitoes are about the size of flies—not the singing variety, but the quiet, biteful kind. My energies are needed to keep them off, so good night; all is quiet along the Mississippi. We have ninety miles from quarantine to New Orleans.
We got into New Orleans yesterday at 6.30A.M., under a blazing sun. There were reporters and photographers galore at the dock to meet us and the good shipYankton. They did not, however, get fat on what they got from N., who refused to discuss the Mexican situation in any way. But wedidlend ourselves to the camera. We were photographed on the ship, on the blazing pier, in the noisy streets, near by, among a horror of trucks and drays rattling over huge cobblestones, and a few more terrors in ink will be broadcast. I then went to the nearest good shop and got a black taffeta gown (a Paquin model with low, white-tulle neck), and began to feel quite human again. Then we motored about for several hours with one of the officers, through a city of beautiful homes, interesting old French and foreign quarters, driving at last over a magnificent causeway. On one side was a swamp filled by all sorts of tropical vegetation, and, doubtless, inhabited by wet, creeping things; on the other side, a broad canal. We reached a place called West End, on Lake Pontchartrain, where we lunched on shrimps, soft-shelled crabs, and broiled chicken, quite up to the culinary reputation of New Orleans. Afterward we went back to the boat under a relentless afternoon sun and over more of those unforgetable cobblestones.
I was completely done up. They were coaling as we got back to the ship, but the sailors hastily shoveled a way for me, and I threw myself on my bed in a state of complete exhaustion. When I came on deck again at 5.30 the hideous coaling was done, the decks were washed, and everything was in apple-pie order. Crowds were again on the pier, and the photographers got in more work. The golden figure of Cleopatra that decorates the prowwas blood-red in the afternoon sun. At six we started out with Captain Joyce, who had literally “stood on the burning deck” all day, overseeing the coaling process. We wanted to show him a little of the city in the sudden, beautiful, balm-like gloaming. We stopped a moment at the St. Charles, where I mailed my longYanktonletter, and found it overflowing with Americans from Mexico, with smiles or frowns upon their faces, according as they were going to or leaving a bank account. We then went to Antoine’s, which has been celebrated for seventy-five years. There we had a perfect dinner, preceded by a mysterious and delightful appetizer, called a “pink angel,” or some such name, most soothing in effect. (It proved to be made of the forbidden absinthe.) Also there were oysters, roasted in some dainty way, chicken okra, soft-shelled crabs again, and frozen stuffed tomatoes.
New Orleans still retains a certain Old World flavor and picturesqueness. One might even dream here. Everything is not sacrificed at the altar of what is called efficiency—that famous American word which everywhere hits the returning native.
Some of the newspapers were quite amusing, and all were complimentary. One congratulates N. on being relieved “from the daily task of delivering ultimatums to, and being hugged by, Huerta.” Others are very anxious to know if “Vic Huerta” kissed and embraced Mr. O’Shaughnessy on his departure. Theabrazois certainly not in form or favor in the more reticent United States of America.
We got in at seven o’clock, and, accompanied by the usual press contingent, came to this hotel. The proprietor had telegraphed to us to New Orleans, saying that N. was the greatest diplomat of the century, Americanpatriot, and hero. We thought we’d try him, he sounded soverypleasant, and we have found comfortable quarters. Now, while waiting breakfast, ordered from a Portuguese, I have these few minutes.
An amusing letter from Richard Harding Davis is here, inclosing newspaper head-lines two and a half inches high—“O’Shaughnessy Safe.” He adds, “Any man who gets his name in type this size should be satisfied that republics are not ungrateful!”
A pile of letters and notes awaits me; the telephone has begun to ring. How will the Washington page write itself?Adelante!
THE END