Part 24

But I must go back to Wednesday night--our last night in Mexico City--when I was too tired for feeling or thought. In the morning Nelson decided that, under the circumstances, he would not, _could_ not, go to the Huerta wedding. Then I decided to go alone. Rowan went with me, in the automobile. I put on my best black things, long white gloves, and pearls, got through the crowd in front of the Embassy, and went to the President’s house in the Calle Alfonso Herrera, enfolded and exhilarated by dazzling air. I got there to find myself the only foreigner, of course, and only three or four other women, the wives of Cabinet Ministers and generals. The men were mostly in full uniform. Madame Huerta came in, looking very handsome and dignified in a becoming dress of delicate pomegranate color veiled partly with black lace--a _good_ dress. We gave each other the _abrazo_, and she placed me at her side, on the sofa. The youngest son, Roberto, a fat but _sympatico_ boy of fourteen, also in full uniform, came in and kissed his _mamacita’s_ hand, and asked for some order. The dark, bright-eyed bride, in a dress with a good deal of imitation lace, arrived nearly three-quarters of an hour late. Immediately after her arrival the President entered, in his slouch-hat and the celebrated gray sweater.

He quickly greeted the guests, called his wife, “Emilia,” and then turned to me. “Mrs. O’Shaughnessy,” he said, and indicated a place near the table where the marriage contract was to be signed. So I rose, and stood with the family during the ceremony, which he had put through at a lively pace. The contract, in referring to the parents of the bridegroom, said “Victoriano Huerta, fifty-nine,” and “Emilia Huerta, fifty-two.” His age may be lessened in this document a year or two, but I doubt it. Madame Huerta can’t be much more than fifty-two. The youngest girl, Valencita, is only seven.

After the ceremony, when we all went out to get into the automobiles, Señora Blanquet was with us. She is short, stout, and elderly. I wanted to give her her place as wife of the Minister of War, but the President, who helped me in, insisted first upon giving me his wife’s place. I said, firmly, “No”; but I was obliged to take the seat beside her, while Señora Blanquet struggled with the narrow _strapontin_! Imagine my feelings as we started off through the dazzling streets to the somewhat distant “Buen Tono” church--built by Pugibet, of “Buen Tono” cigarette fame, and put by him, most beautifully decorated, at the disposition of the President for the wedding. On our arrival the President, who had gone ahead, appeared to help us out of the motor; then, saying to me, “_Tengo que hacer_” (“I have something to do”), he disappeared. I never saw him again.

I went up the aisle after Madame Huerta, on Rincon Gaillardo’s arm. As soon as we were in our seats the archbishop came out and the ceremony began--dignified and beautiful. Afterward there was a low Mass with fine music. The tears kept welling up in my eyes as I knelt before the altar of the God of us all. After the ceremony was over we went out into the sacristy. I congratulated the bride and groom, spoke to a few of the colleagues who were near, and then, feeling that my day and hour were over, I went up to Madame Huerta.

We embraced several times, with tears in our eyes, each of us knowing it was the end and thinking of the horrors to come. Then I left the sacristy on some officer’s arm--I don’t know who it was--and was put into my motor, where Rowan was patiently waiting. There were huge crowds before the church, but never a murmur against us. Tears were raining down my cheeks, but Rowan said: “Don’t mind. The Mexicans will understand the tribute, and all your sadness and regret.”

We passed by the round point, the “Glorieta,” where I had seen the statue of George Washington so solemnly unveiled two years ago, on the 22d of February, 1912. It had been pulled down in the night. On the defaced pedestal had been placed a small bust of Hidalgo. Flowers were scattered about, and a Mexican flag covered the inscription on the marble base. I learned afterward that the statue had been dragged in the night by powerful automobiles, and placed at the feet of the statue of Benito Juarez, in the Avenida Juarez, whence the authorities had had the courtesy, and had taken the time, to withdraw it--through streets whose windows were hung with flags of every nationality except ours: German, French, English, Spanish.

At 12.50 I got home to find still larger crowds of Americans at the Embassy--orderly and polite, but deep anxiety was on every face; all realized the issue before them. At three o’clock I heard that we would be leaving about seven. So many people were coming in that I had no time to separate my things from the Embassy things, nor even to make any selections. Berthe was occupied in throwing various articles into open trunks and valises, some of value, some without. I don’t think _she_ lost a pin. I didn’t get even to my big writing-desk, where I had sat for seven months. You can imagine all the things that were left there, the accumulations of these historic months. All my bibelots were left about the _salon_, the _mantas_ and _serapes_, the signed photographs that have accompanied me for years, my beautiful old frames. But in the face of the national catastrophe, and the leaving of our people to God knows what, I seemed to lose all sense of personal possession or to feel that objects could have a value.

* * * * *

We have just passed Paso del Macho. Many people, motley groups, were standing near the train, crying “_Viva la Independencia de Mexico!_” Rowan says _he_ wants to hear more “_Mueran los Gringos!_” We are about forty-five kilometers from Vera Cruz, and the heat, after the plateau, seems intense; though it is not disagreeable to feel the dissolving _détente_ of the skin and nerves after the dry tenseness of many months at eight thousand feet.

SOLEDAD, _1.15._

A blaze of heat, merciless, white. We find Mexican rifles stacked at intervals along the station platforms, and there are groups of young _voluntarios_ looking proudly at their first guns or drawing long, cruel knives from their belts. Some are eating small, green limes, not nourishing at best, slashing at them with their _machetes_. The lack of a commissariat is what prevents the Mexican army from being in any way efficient. (Think of the full stomachs and comfortably shod feet of our men.) Flatcars with cannon and automobiles are on the sidings. General Gustavo Maass, whom I have not seen since our trip to Vera Cruz in January, is here in command. He will not prove efficient--a blue-eyed Mexican, wearing his sandy-gray hair in a German brush effect, _can’t_ be.

_4 o’clock._

We have passed Tejería, the last Mexican station; the sand-hills and spires of Vera Cruz will soon be distinguishable. I have just looked out the window, my eyes dim with tears. Far up the broken track the blessed white flag of truce can be seen approaching--our people, our men, coming for their own. Admiral Fletcher evidently got the telegram. Am writing these words on the bottom of a little bonbon-box, which afterward I will tuck into my hand-bag. Oh, the burning dreariness of this land! The hot, dry inhospitality of it! The Mexican officers of our escort are passing and repassing my door, with troubled, anxious, hot faces. It is a bitter pill, but I see no use in trying to sugar-coat it by conversation. They know my heart is heavy, too.

_Later, on the margin of a page of the “Mexican Herald.”_

Nelson has gone with the Mexican officers up the track to meet our men, and all are getting out of the train, standing in the rank, stiff grass by the track. God made the heaven and the earth....

_Vera Cruz, April 25th. Morning._

On board the _Minnesota_, in the very comfortable quarters of the admiral. We were awakened by the band playing the “Star-spangled Banner,” “God Save the King,” the beautiful Spanish national air, the “Marseillaise”--all according to the order of the arrival of the ships in the harbor. A delightful breeze is blowing and the electric fans are at work.

The last word I scribbled yesterday afternoon was when I was waiting in my state-room for Nelson to come back to our Mexican train, with our officers, under the white flag. I was delighted and deeply moved when suddenly big, agreeable, competent Captain Huse appeared at the door and said, “Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, I am glad to see you safely arrived and to welcome you to our lines.”

Poor General Corona stood by at the meeting, and I turned to him with a more than hearty handshake. He kissed my hand, and his eyes filled. Poor, poor people! As Captain Huse helped me out of the train, to my joy and surprise I saw Hohler standing by the track. He had taken down a trainful of agitated Germans, English, and Americans, two days before, and was to go back to Mexico City with our returning train and escort. I had a few words with him, amid the dry cactus of the parched field, and commended to his courage and good sense our poor, distracted compatriots left in the volcanic city. There may be no concerted massacre of Americans, but the day will come when there will be other horrors. Hohler said he had not slept for three nights, and only prayed for a couple of hours of oblivion before tackling anything else. I wished him Godspeed, and gave him a handclasp to match the temperature.

Then Captain Huse came up to me, saying: “We must go. Time is passing, and we are unarmed.”

As I turned to walk down the track with him I saw the pathetic spectacle of Madame Maass, whom I had parted from on that starry night of the Fletcher dinner, four months or more ago. She had walked, bareheaded, up that dusty stretch of track, from one train to the other, to go to join her husband at Soledad. The step on to the train by the steep embankment was so high I could not get up, nor could she descend; so she leaned down to me and I reached up to her. Tears were streaming down her grimy face; her black skirt was torn and rusty, her other clothing nondescript, to say the least; a pathetic, stout, elderly woman caught out in the troubles of war--or of peace, as they tell me it is called in Washington.

Then Captain Huse and two of his officers, Lieutenant Fletcher, nephew of Admiral Fletcher, and Ensign Dodd, walked down the track with me about two kilometers. The rails were torn up, but the road-bed was undestroyed, and as we walked along in the blazing sun, with scrubby, dusty palms and cactus in the grayish fields on either side, my back turned to the Mexican train, I was divided between joy and sorrow--joy to see and be with my own again and the haunting thought of poor, distracted Mexico, and of our own people, whom we had been obliged to leave to Heaven knows what fate. It is easy to be the last out of the danger zone, but very, very hard to be the first; I hope that another time, if fate puts us again in such strange places, we will be the last to go.

We finally got to our own train, which was run by a poor, dilapidated, leaking, propped-up engine, all that was left. The Mexicans had been quick about the machines, and every locomotive had been seized by them and sent away, after which they had destroyed those kilometers of track. Everybody climbed into the relief-train, and there came the question of getting our luggage from one train to another. Captain Huse had been obliged to come without an escort, accompanied only by Fletcher and Dodd, unarmed. Until they had us they could not make terms. So, to make a very long story short, several cutthroat-looking peons, casting deadly glances at _los Gringos_, transferred a lot of the hand-luggage, aided by the men of the party. All I possess of value, except that left at the Embassy, is contained in a single, large trunk, now reposing in the cactus-fields in the enemy’s lines, watched over by the same shambling, dark-browed, cutthroat Mexicans who helped to transfer the small baggage.

Captain Huse, finding himself with a broken-down engine and a lot of unarmed civilians, and with sundown approaching, was too anxious to get into his own lines to think of such trifles. He said, afterward, “You didn’t realize what danger we were in.” I remember that I saw his face suddenly light up, as we slowly moved along. He had caught sight of the outposts that Admiral Fletcher, with vigilant forethought, had placed five miles out of town, with guns and telescopes, ready to rush to our aid, if necessary. Then he knew all was well, and, in spite of the fact that I had not been able to realize any danger, my eyes filled again at the sight of our brave men, some looking through their telescopes, others ready with their guns.

I asked Captain Huse, “Are we at war with Mexico?”

And he answered, “I don’t know.” Adding, “They say not; but when one armed force opposes another armed force, and many are killed, we are rather of the opinion that it is war.”

He had just come from the thick of the fray. _We_ had sixty-three wounded, seventeen killed, and several hundred Mexicans were killed and wounded. The Cadet Academy made a fine defense. There would have been more casualties for us, but at the critical moment the _San Francisco_, the _Chester_, and the _Prairie_ opened fire on the Academy, a few feet only above the heads of their own men, neatly piercing the windows of the broad, low façade, as they would bulls’-eyes. All the officers are agreed that the immense sums spent in target practice by the navy in the past five years were amply compensated by that moment.

As we neared Vera Cruz our men in khaki (or white clothes dyed in coffee, according to the hurry order) were seen in big detachments in classic poses--standing, leaning on their guns, or sitting in groups on the ground, drinking coffee and smoking. I must say it looked very cozy and safe. Admiral Fletcher met us at the station, and I was glad indeed to clasp that brave, friendly hand again. He has done splendid work along all lines, passive or active, ever since he came to Mexican waters. Shortly afterward I said good-by to him and to Captain Huse, who is his chief of staff, and we went out in the admiral’s barge over the glistening harbor, a thousand lights still lighting it, as when I last saw it, but all else changed. Captain Simpson, of the _Minnesota_, is on land duty, but the second in command, Commander Moody, met us at the gangway and we were shown into these most comfortable quarters. I have heard so much of the discomfort and heat of the men-of-war that I am most agreeably surprised. The electric fan is working ten thousand revolutions a moment; some one has called the new fan _la Mexicana_, for obvious reasons. Admiral Badger came to welcome us last night, a great, powerful, steam-engine of a man--a “dictator” (pardon the awful word)! It is a big thing to have complete charge of so powerful a combination as the North Atlantic fleet. He also said he didn’t know whether we were at war or not, but that armed, opposing forces with heavy casualties on both sides was generally considered to be war; that we now “enjoyed all the _dis_advantages of both peace and war.” He had heard we were arriving with eight hundred refugees, and had chartered the _Mexico_, of the Ward Line, to take them away.

He asked, “Where are all the others?”

We said, “We are all that were allowed to come.” Apropos of that, if it isn’t war, it is, as some one remarked, “sufficiently Shermanically synonymous” for those left in the interior!

_11 o’clock._

Captain O’Keefe, of the _Mexico_, came to my state-room a while ago. I had not seen him since before the “peace at any price” régime was inaugurated. He is waiting for a full complement of refugees; they are expecting a boatful from Coatzacoalcos, this afternoon. Am sitting in the drawing-room of the admiral, cannon trained from the windows. The _Condé_ got in early this morning. Lying in my berth I could see her manœuvering into hers. It is intensely hot in the harbor. Two hours ago Nelson went to the Consulate with his clerks. There is a mass of work to be done, besides negotiations for getting all Americans out of Mexico City. I wonder if that big, pleasant Embassy is now a mass of charred ruins? A heavenly breeze is blowing through the room as I write. I would be very interested in what is going on about us were it not for the preoccupation about those left behind. Elim has a toy pistol which he has been showing to the blue-jackets. He says it is strange how frightened they all are, and told me, with shining eyes, he already had four friends on the ship and would soon have six. It is a blessed age--where one can so definitely count one’s friends.

_4_ P.M.

I have been sitting on deck, watching this busy port. Innumerable small boats, flying our flag are rapidly passing to and fro over the burning waters. Behind the _Condé_, which has effectually blocked the view of the outer harbor, is the _Solace_. She contains the wounded, the dead, and, mayhap, the dying ones. The _Minnesota_ is so near the Sanidad pier that one can almost recognize individuals. Squads of our men are constantly marching along with prisoners between double files, men who have been caught sniping, bearing arms, or doing some overt act or deed of violence. Last night, while dining, the echo of shots came from the shore, and during the night, from time to time, desultory ghostly sounds of sniping were heard.

I have just looked through the glass to distinguish about a dozen of our men standing at the head of a street with fixed bayonets, facing a pink house, evidently ready to protect some one coming out of it, or to do justice. The lone torpedo-tube from San Juan Ulua is trained toward the _Minnesota_, but it is believed to be inoffensive. I am sure I hope it is, cuddled under our bows, so to speak. Yesterday two Mexican officers came out of that historic fortress, begging to be allowed to get food. They said they and all the inmates were starving. I saw the conditions in days of relative plenty. What must they be _now_ in those damp, deep, vermin-infested holes? Pale specters of men, too weak to move, or wild with hunger and all the ensuing horrors--and all this so near that I could almost hit it with a stone.

Ships of refugees are passing in and out. A Dutch ship, _Andrijk_, has just left, and a French one, the _Texas_, passed by us, leaving for Tampico to gather up refugees. Think of all the comfortable homes, with the precious accumulations of lifetimes of thrift and work, that are deserted in the disorder of flight, to be left later to the complete devastation of looters. All over the country this is taking place. An officer who saw a group of thirty or forty refugees at Tampico told me he thought at first it was a band of gypsies; it proved, however, to be half-clad, starving women and children who but a few days before had been prosperous American citizens.

The sun is under a cloud, but a hot, damp atmosphere has enveloped the port, and an opalescent light plays over the town. From where I sit I can see the old white fortress of Sant’ Iago which we shelled, and the yellow Naval Academy where the Mexican youths made their gallant stand. The chartered boats of the Ward Line, _Mexico_, _Monterey_, and _Esperanza_, also the now historic _Ypiranga_, are lying close to the various piers, ready to receive refugees and take them to New Orleans or Galveston. There they will be, in many cases, a three days’ source of interest--and then they can starve!

Helen, the deer, a great pet of the sailors, and got in Tampico, keeps trying to nibble my long, white veil; the spotless decks are rather poor for browsing, and she looks a bit disconsolate at times. A snappy green parrot is being taught to say, “Look out for the snipers.”

_April 25th. 10.30._

I spent yesterday quietly on board, getting my breath. N. was at the Consulate all day, where he had been sending off his mail. About five o’clock, when he went to return Admiral Badger’s call, I went into town, first to the headquarters of Admiral Fletcher, at the fly-infested Hotel Terminal. In the past the proprietor has encouraged in many ingenious ways the propagation of the fly. He owns the other hotel, the Diligencias, where he has his cuisine. In order to save himself the expense and bother of keeping two cooking-places going, he allowed the Terminal to become so disgustingly infested with flies that the “guests” are obliged to tramp through the hot streets to the Diligencias whenever the pangs of hunger or thirst assail them. We have cleaned out more things than flies in the tropics, however.

I saw at the headquarters, for a moment, Captain Huse, Sir Christopher, and _le capitaine de vaisseau_ Graux, commanding the _Condé_, and many others. Afterward Admiral Fletcher sent Rowan with me to see the town.

Everything is closely watched and controlled by our five thousand or more blue-jackets and marines. Everywhere are the marks of bullets along the once-peaceful streets--the clean perforations of the steel-jacketed bullets of the American rifles; quaint cornices chipped; electric street globes destroyed; pink façades looking as if there was a design in white where the shots had taken off the color. We walked over to the Plaza, meeting acquaintances at every step, harassed and discomfited refugees. Several hundreds had just got into the city of the “Truly” Cross from Mexico City in the last train, having been nearly twenty hours _en route_ and having left most of what they possessed for the mobs of Mexico City. It is difficult to get any exact information from them. According to their stories, many of the bankers were in jail; American shops were looted; some Americans were killed; and all Mexican servants had been warned to leave American homes. As they left only seven hours later than we did, I don’t know that their information is worth much. The telegraph lines are down. What we do know is that dreadful things can happen in that beautiful city at any moment. When the Embassy was closed, the whole thing collapsed, from the point of view of Americans.