We caught a 10 o’clock train to Cholula. It was terribly crowded, but
we managed to get a front seat in the second car.
Halfway along the line, the front car ran off the track. It took at
least an hour and a half hard work on the part of a crowd of Indians,
to get it back again. They all looked so clean in their white linen
pajama suits (they look like this) tied round the waist with a faded
and fringed blue or red sash, and the absurdly big sombrero hat, and
bare feet. One wonders how a working man can wear white, it seems so
impractical, and yet these men looked cleaner than Dick when he is in
white, at the end of a day! How can they dig as they do, with naked
feet on the iron spade?
We sat down on the grass in a broiling sun and watched their efforts
to reinstate the car. Presently, on his private trolley, arrived the
“traffic superintendent,” a young stalwart American, who threw off
his coat, displaying a khaki shirt and a large revolver in his belt.
There was no mistaking him for anything but an American. He was the
rather brutal, square-jaw’ed type. He contained in his face everything
that the Latin and the Indian lacked: force, determination, power to
command. Moreover, he was broad-shouldered and a head taller than
anyone else. When he lifted a crowbar and attempted to do any work
himself, the Indians fell back and watched him openmouthed! I said
things to myself about the Anglo-Saxon race.
He heard me call Dick, and asked me instantly if I were English. He
seemed glad to have someone to talk to. I asked him if he had been in
the war, and of course he had, been at Chateau Thierry, and in every
other fray. He said he was working for an English company (which the
tramcar system is), and that nearly all the superintendents and heads
of the English lines were Americans. I was surprised at this, for we
had good colonizers, and if we can get on with natives in India, South
Africa, Australia, Nigeria, etc., why not with Mexicans. I told him so.
He explained that the Mexican is quite different to work with and very
difficult; that he is very sensitive and touchy, and that he will only
work with good will, “as a matter of fact” he said, “I have _not_ their
good will as you can see by my hip,” and he patted his revolver. “Why
not?” I asked. “They’re Bolsheviks!” he explained, and unfortunately
for me, at that moment, the car went back onto the rails and there was
a rush for the seats. We secured our same front row, but another man
came and sat next to us, who had not hitherto been there. I disliked
the look of him, and before we had gone very far, it was evident he was
drunk. He was not an Indian, but the world-wide white type that can be
revolting and repulsive. The look on his face made me feel quite sick.
I felt if I had a revolver it would have been an awfully good thing to
shoot him, because nobody could have minded, and it so obviously would
have been a helpful thing to do. When he bent across Louise and bought
a couple of bananas off the Indian on my left, and offered them to
Dick, I said firmly “_no_.” So he looked at me, a terrible look, and
threw the two bananas out of the window, and the change he got back
from paying for them followed the bananas. He then turned round and
entertained the whole car behind us, at our expense. Though, what he
said we could not understand.
Arrived finally, two hours late, at Cholula, he was walked off by four
seemingly very devoted friends. I doubt not they purposed to rid him
of the rest of his money instead of letting him fling it into the
grass.
In the middle of the village street we stood still and looked up and
down. It was one o’clock. We had brought no food with us and we knew
not where to go, nor whom to ask. A fellow traveller, respectably
dressed, a Mexican farmer probably and who could speak about five words
of English came to our rescue: “What you want...?” he asked.
A restaurant? He shook his head! A Hotel? He came from Cholula but had
never heard of such a thing. Tourists brought their food with them, he
made us understand. “But I will ask” and he went into the chemist shop.
Surely, there was a restaurant, down the road. We tracked it down, he
came with us. The street was formed by perfectly straight barefronted
houses. It might have been an Irish village, but looking through
doorways there seemed to be contained in it a whole world of gardens
and patios. We entered one of these, as directed, and found ourselves
in a clean bare yard. We went to the first door on the yard, but it
was a bedroom. The second door was the restaurant, the third combined
kitchen and chicken house. An old wizened, bent woman came forward to
greet us, and two pretty young Indian girls. Could she give us food?
She could.
Soon?
Immediately.
What could she give us?
Some _huevos_ (eggs) and some _carne_ (meat) with _potata_. Our kind
cicerone then left us, excusing himself, he had business. We seated
ourselves in the primitive room, which was clean and whitewashed, and
floor tiled. They laid a cloth for us which was clean and still wet. We
waited hardly any time at all before they served us a hot and excellent
meal, the best I have had in Mexico, and for two pesos, the three of
us. But the wizened old woman was much concerned that she could not
talk with us. She longed, I could see, to know where we came from, and
she kept asking why our Signore had gone away, and not returned! When
her two habitual customers came in for their meals, she began great
discussion with them about us. We were a great diversion. The men who
came in were not Indians, they were sullen Mexicans. One of them talked
to the little Indian serving girl as if she were a dog, ordered his
food gruffly and never said thank you.
Women have no position in Mexico--they are supposed to exist solely for
the satisfaction of men.
We said good day, and “Mucho gracias” and sallied forth into the street
once more. Not knowing where to go, nor where to find the famous
pyramid, and Dick being far from well, I decided to go to the nearest
place in reach. This happened to be a steep hill with a white church
on the summit. It had been a beacon to us for miles in the plain as we
travelled steadily towards it. Slowly we ascended by wide low stone
steps, that went winding up among the vegetation and wild flowers.
About halfway we suddenly heard a band of music, and it came nearer and
nearer. Soon there came into view a procession of white clad sombrero’d
Indians playing their instruments as they came down the winding hill
steps. The pageant did not come our way, but passed in front of us,
and cut down into a steep and narrow path, and were lost to view among
the shrub. Taking our time (for Dick seemed weak, and our hearts were
thumping somewhat, as they always do with the slightest exertion at
this altitude--) we eventually reached the summit. It seemed utterly
deserted. The stillness was uncanny. The church, which may be old but
had a renovated and very newly whitewashed appearance, had tiled domes
that were quite beautiful. Tall cypresses, as in Italy, grew on the
terrace in front. There was a rampart with seats all round the terrace
edge. The climb had satisfied my desire, which is always to get onto
a height, when arriving in a new place, in order to survey the land
and ‘place oneself’. From this church height one certainly surveyed
the country for miles. Louise and I walked round and round, looking
everywhere for anything that might be interpreted as a pyramid. But we
never satisfied ourselves on that. It was not until we got back in the
evening and read up the guide book, that I learnt that was a pyramid we
were on. The pagan pyramid, dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl, on the
summit of which the Christians had built their church.
While thus absorbed, in the distant view, Dick disappeared. When I
looked round for him he was nowhere to be seen. I went down the steep
flight of steps to the half way terrace below, and called. Presently
the little figure appeared from above, and followed me down. He came
to me with a pious and mysterious look. “Some day” he said, “I’ll tell
you what I’ve been doing.” I said, “I must know, now, at once--do tell
me....” He looked shy, and then explained that he had gone _inside_
the church. “It was quite a nice church inside--there were none of
those awful figures like we’ve seen,--you know--and I said a prayer
... knelt down ... right up by the steps in front of the railing. Oh!
just prayed for Teta-tee[10] that she might come back to us...!” It
was so unexpected. I did not know that Dick believed in God. I did not
know he wanted Margaret back with us ... but there in the stillness of
the great Mexican plain, high up on the hill of a little town called
Cholula, Margaret had not been forgotten. It seemed almost like a
wireless from her.
It must be explained that Margaret is living in England with her
father’s family. She is being educated with a little cousin her same
age. They share a French governess, have a villa at Cannes in the
winter, riding, swimming, gymnasium and special dancing classes. A
house with a garden in London, dogs, rabbits, horses and birds, Rolls
Royce cars, servants to wait, party frocks, lessons in deportment, and
all the things that are necessary, I am told, to the perfect bringing
up of a proper little girl. Not good for her, they assure me, wild
trips to Mexico, wild talk about Russia, Americanization in New York,
studio environment of her mother. These things are possible (though not
desirable) for a boy, but for a girl.... Well, I would be selfish if
I refused for her all the things that I cannot give her. Sometimes my
soul rebels, and I say to myself “Two rooms, anywhere, however humble,
but both children to share my standard of life....” Since last February
when she saw us off on the Aquitania we have not seen our Margaret. The
trip to Russia and the work it offered, enabled me to have one child
to live with me, and that was Dick, who had lived with my parents ever
since he was born and I had to work.
Perhaps there existed in the bottom of my heart a vague hope that
Mexico might give me back Margaret, as Russia had given me back Dick.
However and wherever this is eventually achieved, there is no doubt
in my mind that the only crown to my work can be the reunion of us
all three. Until I can build up a home and an environment worthy of
Margaret, I have achieved no success. It is an incentive to work, and
in the meanwhile one must not lose heart. One must not count, at night,
the months that have passed since January. One must not think of the
growth, in body, mind and soul, of the child who is out of sight. One
must not expect her to be just as one left her. One must not think too
much about her at all, for fear it gets too hard--and above all one
must never allow oneself to think on lines that critics would describe
as “sob-stuff.”
[Illustration: MARGARET, WHO IS BEING BROUGHT UP IN ENGLAND, LIKE A
CONVENTIONALLY PROPER LITTLE GIRL!
(Photograph by Marceau)
]
We lay on our hillside which was really a pyramid side, and the sun
burnt as I tried to count how many churches there were in the plain,
but gave it up as too long a job. Beautiful old toned bells kept
ringing around and below us from every direction. One big church
would have been ample for the size of the little town, and money and
labor better spent on drainage and sanitation. While thus ruminating
a cassocked priest came down the winding way, saying his prayers out
loud, out of a book. By him walked an attendant who held a linen
umbrella over his head to shade him. So absorbed was he in his prayers
that he never noticed the Indian man and woman who got up from their
seat under the tree and came towards him. He had to stop on his way
when they threw themselves down on their knees before him. He blessed
them with the sign of the Cross, and they remained kneeling and
crossing themselves until he was out of sight and sound.
When we got back to Puebla at 5 o’clock, Dick threw himself on my bed
all of a heap. I took his temperature--it was 102--I undressed him and
in a few minutes he was in a heavy feverish sleep.
Twice that night he waked me suddenly by loud cries. He screamed in
terror. When I put the light on he looked at me with glassy eyes
and did not know me. He was momentarily delirious. Never had I any
experience of such a thing. I realized in a flash all that my family
thought of my bringing Dick to Mexico. I thought of Margaret and of the
contrast of her proper environment. I got into a panic and resolved
that if it were humanly possible for him to travel, Dick should return
to Mexico by the 6:30 train next morning.
At five, when we had to get up, he was tired and weak, but his fever
had subsided.