10.30 P.M.
At five o’clock I went down-stairs to my drawing-room—the matchless Mexican sun streaming in at the windows—and poured tea. It was the last time, though I didn’t know it. Many people came in: Kanya, Stalewski, von Papen, Marie Simon, Cambiaggio, Rowan, de Soto, and others; de Bertier had gone to Tampico. No one knew what was to happen to us. Had we received our passports? Were we to stay on? Could negotiations be reopened? Each came with another rumor, another question. The Cardens came in late, Sir Lionel very agitated over the rumors of the Zapatistas coming to town to-night. They are supposed to have joined with the Federals. It was the first time I have seen Sir L. since his return. He seemed whiter, paler, and older than when he went away. Then von Hintze came. We talked of the hazy Vera Cruz incident and its international bearing, if the captain of the Ypiranga had been stopped on the high seas, before the blockading of the port, etc.
There was a gleam in von Hintze’s eye during the conversation, answered by one in mine. We were both thinking that history has a way of repeating itself. He was von Dietrich’s flag-lieutenant at Manila, Rowan’s position with Fletcher at Vera Cruz. It was he who took the famous message to Dewey and received the equally famous and emphatic answer—so emphatic, history has it, that he almost backed down the hatchway in his surprise. Thirteen years afterward he finds himself in an American Embassy, discussing another marine incident concerning Germany and the United States, another flag-lieutenant sitting by!15
During all this time, the Embassy was closely surrounded by troops. Hearing more than the usual noise, I asked Rowan to see what was going on. It proved to be a large squad of soldiers come to take our arms and ammunition away—our sacred doves of peace. All was done with the greatest politeness—but it was done! Two hundred and fifty rifles, two machine-guns, seventy-six thousand of one kind of ammunition, nine thousand of another. It was a tea-party, indeed. At half after seven an officer appeared in the drawing-room, as von Hintze and I were sitting there alone, saying that the President was outside. Von Hintze departed through the dining-room, after hastily helping me and McKenna to remove the tea-table. There was no time to ring for servants. I went to the door and waited on the honeysuckle and geranium-scented veranda while the tearless old Indian, not in his top-hat (“que da mas dignidad”), but in his gray sweater and soft hat, more suitable to events, came quickly up the steps. It was his first and last visit to the Embassy during our incumbency.
I led him into the drawing-room, where, to the accompaniment of stamping hoofs outside, of changing arms, and footsteps coming and going, we had a strange and moving conversation. I could not, for my country’s sake, speak the endless regret that was in my heart for the official part we had been obliged to play in the hateful drama enacted by us to his country’s undoing. He greeted me calmly.
“Señora, how do you do? I fear you have had many annoyances.”
Then he sat back, quietly, in a big arm-chair, impersonal and inscrutable. I answered as easily as I could that the times were difficult for all, but that we were most appreciative of what he had done for our personal safety and that of our nationals, and asked him if there was nothing we could do for him. He gave me a long, intraverted, and at the same time piercing look, and, after a pause, answered:
“Nothing, señora. All that is done I must do myself. Here I remain. The moment has not come for me to go. Nothing but death could remove me now.”
I felt the tears come hot to my eyes, as I answered—taking refuge in generalities in that difficult moment—“Death is not so terrible a thing.”
He answered again, very quietly, “It is the natural law, to which we must all submit. We were born into the world according to the natural law, and must depart according to it—that is all.”
He has wavy, interlacing, but not disturbing gestures as he speaks. He went on to say that he had come, in his name and that of his señora, to ask N. and myself to attend the wedding of his son, Victor, the next day. And notwithstanding much advice to the contrary by timid ones, we think it expedient to go. The safety of all hangs on his good-will, and it will be wise, as well as decent, to offer him this last public attention. Just then Nelson came in. After greeting the President, he said, rather hastily, “They have taken the arms away.”
Huerta answered with a gesture of indifference, “It must be,” adding, “no le hace” (“it doesn’t matter”).
I told him with a smile, which he quite understood, that it wasn’t much in the way of an exchange. (As we had taken seventeen million rounds of ammunition, and God knows how many guns and rifles in Vera Cruz, his haul at the Embassy did seem rather small!) He does not want us to go out by Guadalajara and Manzanillo, and, unless compelled to cut the line, he gives us his train to-morrow night to Vera Cruz, with a full escort, including three officers of high rank.
“I would go myself,” he said, “but I cannot leave. I hope to send my son in my place, if he returns from the north, as I expect.”
I was dreadfully keyed up, as you can imagine; I felt the tears gush to my eyes. He seemed to think it was fear that moved me, for he told me not to be anxious.
I said, “I am not weeping for myself, but for the tragedy of life.”
And, indeed, since seeing him I have been in a sea of sadness, personal and impersonal—impersonal because of the crushing destiny that can overtake a strong man and a country, and personal, because this many-colored, vibrant Mexican experience of mine is drawing to a close. Nothing can ever resemble it.
As we three stood there together he uttered, very quietly, his last word:
“I hold no rancor toward the American people, nor toward su Excelencia el Señor Presidente Wilson.” And, after a slight pause, he added, “He has not understood.”
It was the first and last time I ever heard him speak the President’s name. I gave him my hand as he stood with his other hand on Nelson’s shoulder, and knew that this was indeed the end. I think he realized that my heart was warm and my sympathies outrushing to beautiful, agonizing Mexico; for, as he stood at the door, he suddenly turned and made me a deep reverence. Then, taking N.’s arm, he went out into the starry, perfumed evening, and I turned back into the dwelling I was so soon to leave, with the sadness of life, like a hot point, deep in my heart. So is history written. So do circumstances and a man’s will seem to raise him up to great ends, and so does destiny crush him.... And we, who arrogated to ourselves vengeance for unproven deeds in a foreign land, was vengeance ours?
I left the Embassy staff alone at dinner and came up-stairs, to Aunt Laura. Again I was sick at the thought of leaving her, old, ill, and in troubles of many kinds. I will do what I can for her before I go; but oh, I am sad, very sad, to-night. Whatever else life may have in reserve for me, this last conversation with a strong man of another psychology than mine will remain engraven on my heart—his calm, his philosophy on the eve of a war he knows can only end in disaster for himself and his people. His many faults, his crimes, even, his desperate expedients to sustain himself, his non-fulfilments—all vanish. I know his spirit possesses something which will see him safely over the dark spaces and hours when they come.16