April 15th
Another day, full to exhaustion, and winding up with the reception at Chapultepec. There, while the President and N. were conferring, we, the sixty or seventy guests—Mexicans, plenipotentiaries, officials, civil and military—waited from six o’clock until long after seven to go in to tea, or “lunch,” as they call it here. Beyond occasional glances at the closed doors, no impatience was manifested. All know these are the gravest and most delicate negotiations. We whiled away the time on the palm-banked terrace, listening to the music of a band of rurales, who made a picturesque mass in their orange-colored clothes embroidered in silver, with neckties so scarlet that they were almost vermilion, and great, peaked, white felt hats, with a heavy cord around the crown of the same color as the flaming cravats. They sat in one corner of the great terrace, playing their national music most beautifully—dances full of swing, or melancholy and sensuous airs of the people, on zithers, mandolins, guitars, harps, and some strange, small, gourd-like instruments played as one would play on a mandolin.
At last the President and N. came in, looking inscrutable. No time to ask results now. The President gave his arm to me, and he then wanted N. to take in Madame Huerta; but the chef du protocol headed off this rather too-close co-operation, saying that was the place of the Russian minister. I talked to Huerta to the limit of my Spanish, with pacific intent, but he kept glancing about in a restless way. I even quoted him that line of Santa Teresa, “La paciencia todo lo alcanza.” He asked me, abruptly, what I thought of his international attitude, and before I could reply to this somewhat difficult question he fortunately answered it himself. “Up to now,” he said, “I have committed no faults, I think, in my foreign policy; and as for patience, I am made of it.” He added, “I keep my mouth shut.” I changed the subject, too near home for comfort, by telling him that his speech of yesterday, to the troops, might have been made by the Emperor of Germany. I thought that would send his mind somewhat afield; you know he loves Napoleon, and would be willing to include the Kaiser. He brightened up and thanked me for the compliment, in the way any man of the world might have done.... It is a curious situation. I have all the time a sickening sensation that we are destroying these people and that there is no way out. We seem to have taken advantage of their every distress.
We hurried away at eight o’clock, so that N. might see Courts at the station, and give him the summary of his conversation, to be repeated to Admiral Fletcher. It was that Huerta would be willing to give the salutes if he could trust us to keep our word about returning them. As he certainly has no special reason for any faith in our benevolence, he finally stipulated that the twenty-one salutes be fired simultaneously. N. said he was very earnest and positive during the first part of the conversation, but that toward the end he seemed more amenable. Heaven alone knows how it will all end. One thing is certain—it is on the lap of the gods and of Huerta, and the issue is unknown to the rest of us.
I got home from the station to find Mrs. Burnside in the drawing-room, ready to spend the evening. The captain was down-stairs, with what he afterward characterized as “blankety blanks” (willing, but unmechanical civilians), who were helping him to set up the rapid-firing guns, otherwise known as the “doves of peace.” Mrs. Burnside tried to persuade me to go to Vera Cruz to-morrow, when she departs, but I couldn’t, in conscience, cause a probably unnecessary stampede of people from their comfortable homes. If I had taken advantage of the various opportunities held out to flee, I would have had, in common with many others, an uncomfortable winter à cheval between Mexico City and the “Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz.”
I don’t know what answer has been made to the Hague proposition, if any, by Washington; but it must have staggered Mr. Bryan and caused him to blink. The Hague is one of the dearest children of his heart, and universal peace has ever been a beloved and fruitful source of eloquence. When it confronts him at this special moment, can he do otherwise than take it to his bosom?